The art of the seminar and the power of small things

Jeffrey Goldfarb’s intellectual engagement in the public sphere is rooted in his commitment to the seminar as a unique form of pedagogy, social interaction, and democratic deliberation. His skill around a table is, however, not only a craft that has been honed in the classroom; Goldfarb’s art of the seminar has also travelled geographically and virtually onto various platforms. His commitment to dialogue continues to serve as a way in which individuals can engage with one another across differences. From his early fascination with conversations around kitchen tables in communist Poland to the Democracy and Diversity Summer Schools that he organised with colleagues while teaching at the New School, from the virtual forums of Deliberately Considered, Public Seminar and The Democracy Seminar to his current professorship at the American University of Afghanistan, Goldfarb invites faculty and students to engage with one another to think critically about the pressing problems of our increasingly fractured world.

Jeffrey Goldfarb’s intellectual engagement in the public sphere is rooted in his commitment to the seminar as a unique form of pedagogy, social interaction, and democratic deliberation. While the lecture format provides the opportunity to listen to in-depth arguments on a particular topic followed by questions at the end of a performative speech, the seminar takes a different approach by encouraging dialogue and spirited debate. Unlike a university lecture, seminar discussions are unpredictable and spontaneous because debate is dependent upon the interaction of its participants. Goldfarb excels at the art of the seminar. Moreover, his ability to listen, speak, and encourage others to critically engage with one another transfers from the classroom to publications on pressing issues of our social condition.

In reflecting on Goldfarb’s art of the seminar in the classroom, life-long concern with public spaces, and democratic culture, I was teaching a class on Hannah Arendt from the some of the same editions that I had read with him as a student at the New School many years ago. Indeed, my seminar discussions with students in Estonia were based on the same well-worn and underlined copies of Between Past and Future and The Origins of Totalitarianism that we had read together in New York. In thinking back to my time as a graduate student at the New School, it was particularly in Goldfarb’s doctoral seminar in the 1990s that I began to appreciate the unique gift that he brings to his way of engaging with people about issues in the world. As we sat around that rectangular table without PowerPoint slides, without even much use of a blackboard, Goldfarb would begin the seminar with a few comments on a chosen reading. Then he would draw out responses from students, some of whom, like me, were uncertain about where their dissertation might lead – or even if we could finish it at all. Two such doctoral seminars from the 1990s stand out: one in which we read Arendt’s essay, ‘The Crisis in Culture’, the other focused on ‘Truth and Politics’. During those seminars, Goldfarb created a symphony of discussion in a kind of improvised jazz session.

When it comes to the insights of democratic debate and spirited disagreement, Goldfarb’s fundamental insight about the power of concerted action around a classroom table remains the cornerstone of civic education and democratic engagement that I return to time and time again. Indeed, his pedagogy and sociological approach to the world resonates deeply with Hannah Arendt’s enduring metaphor of the table. As she writes in The Human Condition: ‘To live together in the world means essentially that a world of things is between those who have it in common, as a table is located between those who sit around it; the world, like every in-between, relates and separates men at the same time’ (1998, p. 52).

By orientating ourselves towards the world as something that we share, individuals are open to listening to other viewpoints and try to imagine how others see the world. It is in such situations that disagreement over deeply held ideas need not result in polarisation, silence, or violence. Rather, there the possibility of finding small points of agreement begins to open. Because the world is an ‘in-between’ that can both relate and separate individuals, the seminar is a miniature public space in which we come together around a table to talk and learn from one another. Publics, however, as Arendt emphasises, are increasingly vulnerable to the numbing encroachment of mass society and public relations.

Like Arendt, Goldfarb is fascinated by ways in which individuals engage with one another, as well as with the ideas and traditions that we hold in common or vociferously struggle over. His skill around a table is, however, not only a craft that has been honed in the classroom; Goldfarb’s art of the seminar has also travelled geographically and virtually onto various platforms. His commitment to dialogue continues to serve as a way in which individuals can engage with one another about, as he underscores, ‘fundamental problems of the human condition and pressing problems of the day’ (2014). From his early fascination with conversations around kitchen tables in communist Poland to the Democracy and Diversity Summer Schools that he organised with colleagues while teaching at the New School, from the virtual forums of Deliberately Considered, Public Seminar and The Democracy Seminar to his current professorship at the American University of Afghanistan, Goldfarb invites faculty and students to engage with one another to think critically about problems in an increasingly fractured world.

In his wonderfully engaging way of staying in touch with former students, Goldfarb invited me to contribute to Deliberately Considered and Public Seminar. Then, after not having seen one another for more than ten years, he suddenly wrote with an invitation to participate in a panel at the European Commission with the Europe for Citizens Programme. Once again, he worked his art of the seminar, only this time around the larger, spirited tables of the European Union.

As Goldfarb’s art of the seminar expanded from the university classroom to that of a blogger and editor, so did the interest in, and global readership of, Public Seminar. By now one of the patterns should be visible. With his unique gift of listening to the voices around him, Goldfarb reaches out to former students and colleagues with whom he agrees, as well with those with whom he fundamentally disagrees, to place them together in spirited debate and invite people to leap with him into the unknown. During the pandemic, we spoke over Zoom, and his warmth, humour and sharp intellect emanated through the virtual screen. Afterwards, when I listened to a webinar that he convened with participants from Afghanistan, Poland, Brazil, South Africa, and the United States, I once again witnessed Goldfarb’s alchemy as he introduced the speakers around the Zoom table, framed the discussion, and called on them to engage with one another to discuss Collaboration and Democracy: Confronting Enemies, Opponents and Friends (Goldfarb, 2021). Time flew by as I was transported back to my graduate school days, rapt in the power of spirited and informed debate.

Different interpretations of the past can bring individuals into conversation or potential conflict with one another. As Goldfarb writes in The Cynical Society: ‘I take memory to be the primary cognitive resource for avoiding cynicism’ (1991, p. 12). While cynicism may lead to resignation and withdrawal from the world, discussion about the past opens opportunities to listen to one another and to find common ground. Spirited debate about history is necessary to acknowledge and work through past injustices. Moreover, public debate provides opportunities to recall moments of democratic foundation and collective action that inspired political change. As Goldfarb writes: ‘We must remember democratic accomplishments and their components so that manipulation and its political clichés do not seem to be the essence of politics’ (p. 12).

It is particularly in his writing on art where Goldfarb confronts challenges that controversial memories pose to the social condition. Building on Arendt’s human condition, Goldfarb has a nuanced eye for social structures, problems, and the presentation of self in everyday life. Indeed, he is drawn to the peculiar ‘sociality’ which is expressed in art and memory. ‘Dilemmas emerge from the human condition, where sociality adds another dimension, making for problems that are impossible to solve because of the limitations of the social’ (Goldfarb, 2017, p. 282). Because sociality ‘adds another dimension’ to our everyday life, art and memory create unique public spaces for expressing nuances of the social condition. In his poetic reading of Toni Morrison and Milan Kundera’s novels, Goldfarb sees the process of ‘re-remembering a painful past as a human imperative’ (Goldfarb, 2017, p. 301). As he writes, art ‘opens us to the social conditions of memory, not providing easy lessons, but rather questions, alternative understandings and commitments’ (p. 303). In seminar discussions, blogs, articles and books, Goldfarb fosters critical reflection on ‘the fundamental dilemmas of memory as it is embedded in social life, that is, confronting the social condition of memory’ (p. 301).

It is particularly in his book, The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times (2006), where he argues that discussion can transform quotidian places into public spaces that provide possibilities for change. The politics of small things seeks to illuminate the darkness of injustice and tyranny while resisting totalising grand narratives. Like Arendt’s essays in Men in Dark Times (1995), Goldfarb provides snapshots or moments of illumination by focusing on the everyday actions of ordinary people who lived during extraordinary times. Indeed, the way in which individuals interacted within one another to create spontaneous places in which people might speak and act freely in communist Poland shares much in common with what Arendt admired among the members of the French Resistance, early American town hall meetings, and Soviet council systems. Publics are spaces where individuals appear freely to one another to discuss matters of common concern.

In his original synthesis of the insights of Hannah Arendt and Erving Goffman, Goldfarb offers a theory of public life that focuses on ways in which individuals appear to and interact with one another in public spaces. Both Arendt and Goffman emphasise gestures, habits, routines, and dialogue that often fall into the cracks. Like Goffman, Goldfarb foregrounds how individuals frame themselves in everyday life by focusing on the ordinary spaces between people that are otherwise taken for granted (Goffman, 1986). Giving attention to the ways individuals interact with one another may, he suggests, open democratic alternatives to authoritarianism. If grand narratives depict major events, Goldfarb focusses on overlooked public spaces that cultivate and sustain democratic culture. By placing Arendt into imaginary conversation with Goffman, his politics of small things fosters dialogue, spirited discussion, and ways in which to create alternatives.

What Arendt, Goffman, and Goldfarb share is a capacity to give careful attention to the dramaturgical aspect of how public spaces spontaneously and unpredictably break into ordinary life. Publics might be short-lived; however, they are powerful experiences of concerted action that illuminate the routines of daily life. As Goldfarb argues, theatre, unlike film, is based on the unpredictable relationship between performer and audience. ‘The politics of small things is a constituent element of theater. This characteristic makes theater a distinctively social art form, and points to the small things that are constitutive of political order and change’ (2006, pp. 24–25). Kitchen tables, apartment bookstores, and underground salons in communist Poland were three examples or, as he suggests, ‘snapshots’ of the politics of small things because such ordinary places transformed into theatrical-like spaces in which power was enacted and free publics emerged. It is in the habits and practices of daily life that one might find alternatives. Those sitting around a kitchen table, apartment bookstore, and underground salon held different opinions and yet agreed on the veracity of historical facts. For these interlocutors, truth was not the same as opinion nor was it irrelevant. Rather, as Goldfarb argued, the ways in which individuals interacted within one another in the quasi-public space or ‘free zone’ of their apartments offered ways to resist both powerlessness and cynicism (Goldfarb, 2006, p. 10).

While such careful attention to the interactional nature of publics is important in and of itself, Goldfarb depicts the deep resonance of small things for the formation of democratic alternatives to authoritarianism. This can be seen in his capacity to show that the various ways communism ended in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, as well as the differing paths towards or away from liberal democracy, continue to influence contemporary politics well beyond the continent. As Goldfarb writes: ‘That an axial change has occurred in the last two decades is well known, although its interpretation is very much contested’ (2006, p. 26). It is particularly the interpretation of the various endings of communism in Eastern Europe and Russia that resonate in the region and beyond. ‘The culture of political debate is now formed by the way the revolution in the political landscape is accounted for’ (pp. 26–27). While revolutions are momentous events, they are ephemeral and short-lived. Rather than focus on grand narratives of social change, Goldfarb looks for the overlooked, smaller habits in which publics appear in everyday life to show how they are connected to contingent historical outcomes.

His ‘politics of small things’ is influenced by two Central European dissidents who were imprisoned for writing about freedom. Václav Havel’s idea of the ‘power of the powerless’ and ‘living in truth’ that he developed in communist Czechoslovakia complements Adam Michnik’s argument that one should try to live ‘as if’ one was free in communist Poland (Havel 2018; Michnik, 1986; Matynia, 2014). The kitchen table, apartment bookstore, and underground salon were impromptu spaces that emerged within that most private of spheres,  – the home. Such miniature spaces became ‘public forums’ that addressed ‘the complicated relationship between truth and politics’ (2006, p. 34). The point, for Goldfarb as for Havel and Michnik, is to act ‘as if’ one lived in freedom. By acting as if they were free, individuals re-frame their everyday interaction with others. It is precisely the spontaneous sense of freedom found in ordinary places within communist Poland that fascinated Goldfarb. ‘They made the kitchen tables of that old order into nascent free public domains. They turned many private apartments into a network of independent bookstores, and they turned a few apartments into central public forums’ (Goldfarb, 2006, p. 34).

In taking up his current professorship at the American University of Afghanistan Goldfarb has returned full circle to Havel and Michnik’s ideas of living ‘as if’ one was free. Only this time living ‘as if’ is extended from the social condition of communism to that of living under the Taliban regime. Across time zones, cultures, and religions, the virtual seminars Goldfarb is currently offering are spaces where people can appear to one another ‘as if’ they were free to speak in the public realm. It is this precious freedom to engage with one another – whether in person around kitchen or classroom tables or embedded in virtual platforms – where Goldfarb’s hope for ‘nascent free public domains’ magically persists.

His belief in the spontaneity of conversation, openness to listening to others, and curiosity to learn about controversial pasts distinguishes Goldfarb’s approach to the seminar in classroom discussions, Zoom platforms and blogs. Lively debate, appearance to others, and the exchange of ideas link his academic writing with his teaching pedagogy. As he underscores, when reflecting on the classroom seminar, it is the interaction between those sitting around the table that opens the space for thinking and acting. ‘But the participants define the life of the seminar through their interactions’ (2006, p. 109). In opening oneself to considering alternative viewpoints, participants in a seminar can learn about the world that we live in and are ultimately responsible for. His role in convening the seminar is not to convince participants of his viewpoint but ‘to open them up to considering alternative judgments, while their role is to learn more about the world they inhabit and will be responsible for’ (p. 110). The seminar is thus a forum for thinking, listening, speaking, responding to others, as well as recognising our responsibility to one another and the world.

Classroom seminars, like conversations in communist kitchens, clandestine bookstores, and salons, have the potential to create, as Goldfarb emphasises, ‘a context for a conversation about the human condition’ (p. 111). He links the skills learned in the classroom with the habits of democratic engagement and civil society in The Politics of Small Things, The Cynical Society and Civility and Subversion. It is precisely the in-between spaces or micro-structures within social interactions that not only constitute, but more importantly, sustain democratic culture. The habits learned in the seminar are transported into the spontaneous social interactions that make up the public sphere. Both inside and outside of the academy, then, one tries to live in truth, by extending the classroom or kitchen table into the city square and digital platform. The seminar is, as Goldfarb writes, ‘the fruit of the politics of small things’ (p. 112).

In thinking about these connections forged by Jeff Goldfarb in his writing, organising, and facilitating of seminars, five themes emerge that are vital to cultivating a public sphere.

1. First and foremost, the power of concerted action is, for him, as for Hannah Arendt, a kind of lost tradition. As Goldfarb writes: ‘To point out that there are smaller, less grand ways to combat powerful wrongs, I believe, is not to abdicate responsibility, but to take it’ (ibid., p. 3). It is not only momentous revolutionary events and wars that motivate how people act, but the deeply engrained patterns and prejudices, joys and grievances, of everyday life. Indeed, the politics of small things is linked with responsibility because discussion provides the possibility for action and social change. Grand narratives are insufficient for understanding how social and political transformations occur in everyday life. Instead, ‘the politics of small things’ is indicative of the powerful yet ephemeral nature of collective action.

2. Secondly, Goldfarb has a long-standing interest in the power that is generated by the social interactions that take place between people and their critics – hence his fascination with the seminar as the ideal form of democratic engagement and with the role of actors and spectators within a theatre. Over and over in his thought, new beginnings emerge from unpredictable, critical interactions between people. In his synthesis of Arendt and Goffman, for example, Goldfarb outlines ‘how people make history in their social interactions’ (p. 1). Such power is not synonymous with force or violence but opens alternatives within limited spaces.

3. Thirdly, in his writing for Deliberately Considered, Public Seminar and Democracy Seminar Jeffrey Goldfarb, like Alexis de Tocqueville and Robert Bellah, sought to understand democracy not only as a form of government, but as a way of life. As he writes: ‘When people talk to each other, defining a situation in their own terms and developing a capacity to act in concert, they constitute a democratic alternative to terror and hegemonic force’ (p. 3). Democratic culture is thus rooted in the ability to speak and debate with one another about issues of common concern and deep disagreement. As the Internet transformed (and transforms) the politics of small things, Goldfarb expanded his fascination with kitchen tables in Warsaw to classrooms at the New School to the blogs of Public Seminar and the Democracy Seminar, while remaining committed to the power of interaction among individuals to start something new. Internet blogs and webinars are novel kinds of political interaction which explore the nuances of grey. As he writes, ‘The Internet-mediated politics of small things is more like a seminar room than like a political advertisement on television or a broadcast sound byte. It is mutually sustaining and interactive’ (p. 134).

4. Fourthly, it is not necessary for us to agree with one another, but it is necessary that we learn to listen, disagree, and debate with civility. Whether in person or digitally, it is spontaneous interaction, plurality, and the freedom to speak in public that animates Goldfarb. Of utmost importance for his art of the seminar is to combine civility and subversion (Goldfarb, 1998). As he wrote in his book, Civility and Subversion: The Intellectual in Democratic Society, civility is not opposed to subversion, rather both are necessary in democratic cultures. From the Socratic origins of critical dialogue in the Athenian polis to the distinct role of intellectuals in democratic societies and dissidents in authoritarian ones, Goldfarb argues for the possibility to subvert unjust and undemocratic practices with deliberation and civility.

5. Lastly, Jeffrey Goldfarb’s art of the seminar creates alternatives to the seductive and pervasive currents of cynicism. As he argues in The Cynical Society: ‘cynicism in our world is a form of legitimation through disbelief’ (1991, p. 1). Reinforced by manipulative media, disinformation, deep fakes and bold lies, cynicism prevents concerted action, or as he writes, it ‘promotes acceptance of the existing order of things’ (p. 30). Reasoned deliberation, spirited disagreement, and informed debate serve as alternatives to the malaise of cynicism and paralysis of relativism. Alternatives are by no means a foregone conclusion of engaged debate, but a promise and possibility. Wrapped in the darkness of cynicism, it is easy to become numb to the injustices around us. Whilst we may lack immediate solutions, engaged debate and the willingness to listen to one another opens the possibility of shaking off the malaise of cynicism and moral blindness to find alternatives together.

Many of us have been privileged to experience the magic that occurs when Goldfarb conjures a seminar of spirited participants simultaneously passionate about their beliefs and open to the views of others. Unlike Donald Trump, for whom the art of the deal is a transactional means of cynical competition, bribery and blatant lies, Jeffrey Goldfarb’s art of the seminar fosters the art of persuasion, critical debate, and spontaneous interaction within the framework of civility. Because when people come together to speak and to listen to one another, as he writes, ‘alternatives do appear’ (2006, p. 143).

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).