Pluralistic Universe

Mary-Jane Rubenstein, the author of Pantheologies, visited our class today and it was suitably pluralistically in person! Although she was zooming in we decided to meet in person, having perfected a hybrid community over the course of the semester with our classroom (and sometimes others, as no other class meets Friday mornings on Lang's fourth floor) as well as my laptop, which over the course of the semester has hosted most of the students when covid precautions prevented them from attending in person, swinging this way and that as discussion moved around our table and sometimes even leaving the room to join a group working in another. (After all this hosting it hardly feels like it's just mine anymore, to tell the truth.)

From her home office Mary-Jane shared the laptop - projected today also on a larger screen - with a student on a deep sea research vessel (currently near Hawa'ii) and was passed around the room to meet each member of the class, one of whom is never without her canine companion, before we moved to an extended Q&A the class had prepared. (Look closely at the image above and, in the image from the media console in the corner of the room, you can see the laptop, as well as yours truly taking a picture of the screen, albeit mirrored.) 

Since we were using the laptop speaker (to avoid reverb), Mary-Jane's thoughtful responses, sometimes funny, sometimes moving and always incisive, were heard from each corner of the room as different students framed different questions. It all made for a three-dimensional encounter students said felt markedly different from other virtual class visits they'd experienced. More, it lived out the pluralism Rubenstein takes from James' ongoing overlapping Pluralistic Universe where Things are 'with' one another in many ways, but nothing includes everything, or dominates over everything.