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Lee
Hoinacki
Biography/Bibliography/Contact
I
was born in Lincoln, Illinois, the only town named
for Abraham Lincoln before he became famous. In
1946, at the age of eighteen, I joined the United
States Marine Corps, partly to "see the world."
They sent me to China where I experienced what
anthropologists call "culture shock,"
and this marked me for life.
In
college I read Thomas Merton's Seven Storey Mountain
shortly after it was published. This was the first
of several books that have strongly affected me,
perhaps acting as catalysts leading to major changes
in my life.
I
entered the Dominican Order in 1951, and in 1959
was assigned to work as a priest in a parish on
the upper east side of Manhattan.
In
1960, I went to Puerto Rico to learn Spanish,
and met Ivan Illich, who directed the language
school. Two years later, I was sent to Chile,
and four years later to Mexico where I joined
Illich in his institute (Cuernavaca).
I
returned to the United States in 1967, married,
and entered graduate school (UCLA). Completing
the degree, I worked in Venezuela, and then in
an experimental university, Sangamon State, in
Illinois. After receiving tenure, I quit to take
up farming, trying to see how far we (wife, two
children and myself) could move outside the economist/monetarist
structure of society. In the meantime, I continued
to collaborate with Illich.
During
the last thirty years, I have attempted to frame
certain questions. For example:
-
Does the concept, "technological society,"
have any explanatory value?
- Are there modern forms of moving toward subsistence?
- Does manual work offer rewards never suspected
by Greek thinkers (philosophers)?
- What are the sources of elaborating a critical
view of contemporary society?
I
have explored these and other questions through
study and actual immersion, that is, hand labor.
The questions are also discussed in two books,
El Camino: Walking to Santiago de Compostela,
and Stumbling Toward Justice.
Currently
I am engaged in searching for an extra-temporal
mode of looking at the questions that have bothered
me since 1946. From a temporal perspective, this
means doxologic speech and action.
Kontakt
lhoinacki@yahoo.com
Bibliograhy
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