Continuing a Conversation with Maxine Greene in Comics

Abstract

Purpose To illuminate the concepts of aesthetic experience and wide-awakeness in the philosophy of Maxine Greene by using the aesthetic approaches she discussed - in this case, using the comic book form as a means of visually embodying and extending her ideas. Setting In Maxine Greene's living room, the view through the window, and on the sidewalk across the street from her apartment—under the tree that she looked upon each day. Research Design Philosophical-aesthetic inquiry. Conclusions/Recommendations This philosophical-aesthetic inquiry has left us with more questions than answers as we engaged in an imaginative dialogue with Maxine Greene. Maxine lived her philosophy not just in her work, but in her daily life. Her lived example leaves us with some of the following questions: How do we—as educators, researchers, and philosophers—reconcile the separation between our intellectual lives and personal lives? What does it mean to cultivate our imaginative capacities for social change? How do we see the unseen? How do we see movements in what seems static, and changes in what seems permanent? How do we refuse to accept given “truth” as true and so-called “reality” as real? How do we attend our world anew each day? Maxine's method of asking, rather than answering, opened her to seeing greater possibilities in her world. And it is this attitude for seeing and for asking rather than any “ism” that we take into our own work and seek to convey with this piece.