Provoked by Maxine Greene: Starting Hopeful Conversations-as-Doings in Turbulent Times

Sousanis and Suzuki offer a philosophical-aesthetic inquiry to bring forward Maxine Greene’s practice of conversations-as-doing. Greene situated these conversations in the practice of “wide-awakeness” with the hope that people would take up the commitment and responsibility to actively engage with the world. Provoked by Sousanis and Suzuki, we began by rereading Greene’s writing, noting how Greene’s explorations of shadows, violations, and erosions align with our present world. Rather than focus on darkness, we offer Greene’s response to these “shadowed” times, insisting on light by imagining what could be possible. We take up Greene’s call of starting conversations as initiating the doing, because conversations themselves are the doing. Thinking with Greene and Jennings’s discussions, Dewey’s and Greene’s ideas of public spaces and engagements, and our own research turns with a kaleidoscope, we generate what is possible in imagining a more just and humane world through conversations-as-doing. We end with a call to readers to initiate their own conversations within education and beyond, with the hope that this leads toward solidarity and standing together, with different vantage points, beliefs, and ways of knowing.