eSOM
The Road to D, or the Story of Singularity High School (SHS) and Cowa
2025.05.27
eSOM: The Road to D (23) Building SHS While Watching Audrey Tang’s “Good Enough Ancestor” (Part 2)
1 As I mentioned last time, Tang was intellectually precocious, and her parents, recognizing this, “intentionally bought many natural science and mathematics books, even putting ones that I [her dad] didn’t read on the bookshelf.” Then, at 14 (1995), Tang left junior high school and began homeschooling with her mother. Around that time, she became engrossed in computers, which were just beginning to spread in Taiwanese households. Writing this might give the impression that Tang is a poster child for STEM education, but that’s not necessarily true. (Note: STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) The reason Tang was able to conceive of building a democratic society by harnessing computers and the internet as soon as they became widespread was because her childhood inquiry-based learning was STEAM education, which added A (liberal arts) to STEM. Q. Coro, please accurately and thoroughly define liberal arts, along with the history of its birth. x.com/shinkoukouwa/s Q. Coro, please tell me about the concept of citizens and the consensus system in ancient Greece, and their relationship with the origin of liberal arts. x.com/shinkoukouwa/s According to Coro, liberal arts developed as the liberal arts (knowledge and skills) that citizens composing the consensus system in the city-states of ancient Greece and Rome should acquire. And this consensus system is considered one of the typical forms of society based on Mode of Exchange A (A), which serves as a prototype for Mode of Exchange D-based society (“D”) as advocated by Kojin Karatani—in other words, a prototype for digital democracy (DD). (Note: The reason it is “A,” not yet “D” was that women, resident foreigners (metics), and slaves were not included as citizens.) Q. Coro, can I consider that the consensus system in the city-states of ancient Greece and Rome is regarded by Kojin Karatani as a form of Mode of Exchange A, which serves as a prototype for Mode of Exchange D? x.com/shinkoukouwa/s And in her childhood, Tang grew up in a “modern city-state.” This is because her living room in her childhood had become a small “city-state” formed by “citizens”—Chinese students who had fled the Tiananmen Square incident to seek asylum in Taiwan. “My parents were political journalists. I was raised among Tiananmen exiles. In our living room, sometimes my dad will invite the very young people, undergraduate level students who were exiles from the Tiananmen Movement, to talk about the future of democracy. Because of the diversity of my caretakers, I would easily get five or six very different perspectives within my family, and they’re all honest. There could be so many different perspectives on any simple question. This instilled in me this idea of pluralism. Nothing can be simply reduced to just one or two truisms.” (From Audrey Tang’s autobiographical short film Good Enough Ancestor. Hereinafter, ” ” indicates quotes from the same film.) Q. Coro, please tell me in detail about the Tiananmen Square incident, including its preceding and subsequent history. x.com/shinkoukouwa/s At that time, CNN was broadcasting the Tiananmen Square incident live worldwide, and I and other students studying in the US were glued to the television. x.com/shinkoukouwa/s Q. Coro, was the CIA involved in the Tiananmen Square incident? x.com/shinkoukouwa/s From Tang’s statements above, it is clear that her concepts of pluralism and plurality overlap in many ways with the concept of parallax discussed in Kojin Karatani’s Transcritique: Kant and Marx, one of Karatani’s works that inspired Tang’s admiration for Karatani. Q. Coro, it seems that Kojin Karatani’s concept of “parallax” has greatly influenced Audrey Tang’s concept of “plurality.” Please explain this in detail. x.com/shinkoukouwa/s In any case, it is incredibly important for SHS that the source of the idea of plurality, which is the fundamental basis of D (Mode of Exchange D)=DD (Digital Democracy), lay in liberal arts co-education in a “modern city-state.” It’s fair to say that the liberal arts education received at home in her early childhood gave rise to the concept of plurality, and that concept, combined with STEM, which she began to familiarize herself with around the same time, led to the concept of digital democracy. In other words, STEAM (STEM + Liberal Arts) co-education gave birth to digital democracy. SHS/Cowa will practice STEAM (STEM + Liberal Arts) co-education in this sense, and all members will contribute to the construction of D=DD. Furthermore, the fact that the liberal arts co-education Tang saw and heard in her home “city-state” during her childhood was conducted by students who sought to promote democracy in China also holds great significance for SHS/Cowa. This is because it can be said that the concept of plurality ≈ parallax, which is the fundamental basis of D=DD, originated from the Tiananmen Square incident exiles who attempted to recover “A” at a higher dimension, oppressed by China as a society dominated by Mode of Exchange B (“B”). Now, let’s look at the process by which Tang’s life, having enjoyed such “supreme STEAM co-education” in her childhood, intersected with the history of SHS/Cowa (“The Road to D”) in the form of collaboration in building D=DD=East Mediterranean Cultural Sphere (EMCS), through both her personal great transformation and Taiwan’s. 2 Tang’s mother says that her childhood, spent with her parents and exiled students from the Tiananmen Square incident—ideal facilitators—was very happy: “Audrey grew up like this, very happily.” However, as I discussed last time (eSOM: The Road to D (22)), as soon as Tang started school, she became “infected” with the societal illness of “bullying.” Her mother, genuinely concerned that “this child might commit suicide at this rate,” built a “school” just for the two of them, called homeschooling, literally distancing Tang from society. That’s where we left off last time. Around the same time Tang left junior high school at 14 (1995) and began homeschooling, big changes also came to Taiwan. These were the spread of computers/the internet and the wave of democratization. In Good Enough Ancestor, the scene shifts from her mother recalling her decision to start homeschooling to a sudden depiction of Taipei at the time Tang quit junior high. It’s a nostalgic scene reminiscent of Tokyo during the same period. Especially the landscape of Akihabara, with shops overflowing with computers and game software. “(Tang’s mother) At that time, Taiwan had just begun to promote computers.” “(Tang) I really, really wanted a personal computer that I can practice programming on. So I ask my mom, please, please give me a computer.” “(Mother) I told Audrey no, children shouldn’t play video games. Then, one day I saw Audrey there drawing a keyboard on a piece of paper then hitting delete then taking an eraser and erase erase erase it all away!” “(Tang) I’ve always loved mathematics. The ability to see similarities in very different systems. I saw calculators and eventually computers as the very beginning of a new world.” “(Mother) Audrey said, this is future technology. A new information age will come. So, I bought Audrey a computer.” As her mother recounts this, the screen shifts to an old-fashioned radio, and the lifting of martial law (1949-1987) is explained through a declaration by then-President Chiang Ching-kuo on the radio. Q. Coro, please explain in detail about Taiwan under martial law, including its preceding and subsequent history. x.com/shinkoukouwa/s After the explanation concludes with the words, “Pro-democracy activists are urging Taiwanese citizens not to be content with cosmetic changes and to keep pushing for lasting change,” Tang’s words follow: “After four decades of the martial law, the restrictions around speech, journalism, and forming parties got lifted. It was felt in my household and around Taiwan as an era of infinite possibilities. Nothing other than the party line were permitted. And then, everything is permitted.” Thus, Tang’s fleeing from school as a “prison” was a “salto mortale ≈ leap of faith in Kierkegaard” (Kojin Karatani’s concept) into an “era of infinite possibilities.” Q. Coro, good morning! Let’s get right to it. Please explain Kojin Karatani’s concept of the “salto mortale (leap of faith)” in detail, including its connection to Karatani’s reading of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction. x.com/shinkoukouwa/s (For Karatani’s own accounts of his interactions with Derrida and Paul de Man, and the relationship between his work and deconstruction, please refer to the following interviews with Karatani:) book.asahi.com/jinbun/article book.asahi.com/jinbun/article In any case, homeschooling, which was the fleeing from school as a “prison,” was also the entrance to an “era of infinite possibilities” for Tang. And this “infinite possibility” was brought about by democratization and computers. In this respect, SHS is the same as Tang’s homeschooling. SHS, as an fleeing from school as a “prison,” is the entrance to the “era of infinite possibilities” opened up by digital democracy (= AI + democracy), as advocated by Tang. (To be continued)
