Phoenix Order

Yesterday i asked if Harry Potter's association with Oxford signals that school's irrelevance to the social world. Especially as compared to our modern scholastic model, Stanford, which has made "practical" research and development for any number of commercial and state enterprises its reason for being. But after watching "Harry Potter: the Order of the Phoenix" last night i've changed my mind completely.

In the film, Hogarts receives a thorough shakedown from the Ministry of Education for its poor teachers and outrageous lack of discipline. The new professor appointed by the government is Ms. Umbridge and her first order of business is to see to it that the students learn "theories" of magic spells rather than actually "practice" magic spells. Harry smells a fish and realizes this is a sure-fire way to get slaughtered in the coming battle against the evil Vortimer. The students start their own school with Harry as the teacher and all ends somewhat well from there.

The commentary on Tony Blair's 'learn and earn' education reform of the British school system is there to be untangled and any of our British readers are welcome to help us out here. But what struck me last night was that Harry's group of friends are the meek wierdos, the social outcasts of the school. They are the marginalized group in a fantasy world in which race, class, and gender are identities that no longer too heavily exist. And when the government comes to change their beloved school they collectively mobilize and can acquire an institutional space of their own. Its the best part of the movie: a door suddenly appears that opens up into an enormous hallway that has never been there before and only appears, someone says, when its absolutely needed. "Its like Hogwarts wants us to win," says Harry. The building itself has an active role to play in what can and cannot be taught within its walls.

The name of this process in which a room opens itself up where it previously did not exist, in our contemporary moment, is called "interdisciplinarity." And once upon a time it was thought of as a radical, transgressive practice. In fact it was brought about, not by buildings magically conceding a new space for alternative learning, but by protests, marches, and sit-ins. So what was transgressive yesterday is magically on top of today's menu. The building itself becomes the technology that coagulates this historical process. Yes, i like it.

Meanwhile, Harry has chosen this moment to have a personality crisis and can't really decide if he is good or evil as Vortimer has stepped into his mind. Its a subplot on par with our own Spiderman 3. Could it be that in a historical moment when the means of transgression itself have been appropriated by even the poshest, stuffiest of university settings, that subjectivity must now suffer through the realization that it too is interdisciplinary, a new kind of technology, and by that i mean your very own marginal identity can today magically solidify, reify an entire history of struggling people and in the process become firm ground upon which to reap a lifetime of commercial success.

Why all this happens at Oxford and not Stanford im puzzled by. But, no, the Order of the Phoenix is really all about the University of Phoenix. Technology: is it in you?