[Xmca-l] Re: Analysis of Gender in early xmca discourse

[lpscholar2@gmail.com]

I will add my commentary on this émerging theme of gender and a lack of gender equality in participation.

Maria Christina, your question of the relation of reproduction of the work of the private kilos or family realm that is in counterpart to the production, and design, and planning of our public realm and the unequal distribution of demands in each realm. You are re/searching and hoping to re/veal the actual gendered differences of this distribution of activities through a feminist lens.

Peg responded with a wonderful rejoinder that made explicit what i felt but was unsure how to sensitively put in words. Peg, being an elder deeply appreciates the quality of (taking time).
Peg’s desire is not about filling bucket lists, but is a place of (equanamity.)
Having lived long enough to have lived through what is fine and what horrible in what we are capable of Peg turns towards reflecting upon a legacy of leaving threads and texts that others in the future may pick up that speak to the finer aspects of our human nature. Peg finds *value* in leaving an open ended legacy that may possibly speak to the future offering a legacy turned towards our finer human naturer. 
In this legacy i do not hear the need to be *right*, but to participate in our emerging finer nature. I also hear this orienting to our finer nature as a response to this month’s article saying that current neoliberal practices are *hollowed-out* shallow ways of engaging educational practices.

Peg, as i read how you desire to leave a legacy of threads and texts, and not fulfill bucket lists, i felt a kinship as I turn to reflections of my life and legacy. I still want to plant fruit trees which I may never see bear fruit. I too want to leave a legacy of participating in our finer human nature.

Annalisa, 
I hope this is a response without the pressure and we are (taking time).
You mention fresh air and this generates an image of breath as inspiration, expiration, and reversibility. This movement that *opens* space to breath. This breath that reveals the heart of the matter and takes courage to express (takes cour or heart)

Its about the *gaps and overlaps* as our finer human nature because we join, come apart, rejoin, in the breath of life.
In moments of relaxation and play and breath sparks ignite that could not be anticipated (in determinate designed detail) but do have a *sens* (a sense and orientation) towards our finer human nature.
Happiness happening through happenstance that is as much *passive* as *active*. Not like two sides of a coin with each side *independently* transforming or adapting but more deeply intertwined each in the other.

This is my nod or gesture to gender that may have an archétypal aspect that plays out through historicity, and awakenking us to the finer more welcoming ways of expressing our well—being-in-the-world-with-others.

I will amplify one aspect of this breath and its 3 part structure:  inspiration and expiration and the gap where inspiration reverses and leaps to expiration and then expiration reverses and leaps to inspiration (as counterparts) .
The dance of Shiva, the breath of spirit, the each in the other, as a 3 aspect structure, including *the gap*




Sent from my Windows 10 phone

From: Annalisa Aguilar
Sent: November 1, 2016 11:35 PM
To: 'eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity'
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Analysis of Gender in early xmca discourse


Hello,

It *feels,* if I might say, that we are experiencing a much more plural and nuanced discussion about the topic at hand, without the pressure. It's a fresh of breath air. :)

I agree with Peg that achievement can only bring one so far (if I am reading her correctly), before long one becomes mechanized to the goal rather than the journey. Then the goal being had, the time being gone, it's hard to remember how we got there, or even why.

A lot of what I think Vygtosky brings to us is a means (process) and space (zone) to afford creative gestures (development) in which it's not about me, it's not about you, it's not about me and you, or me or you, but it's about the gaps and overlaps that are created and DISCOVERED by being us being together, those fleeting instances that emerge into our consciousness in time and space, because you and I make that space in between like two flints that join and come apart, join and come apart. And then spark that flies.

Those discoveries or ignitions, cannot be anticipated, nor planned. Still, they seem to appear at that very decisive moment of relaxation and play, by happenstance (Vera showed this to me).

It is difficult to let discovery by happenstance (which has a similar etymology to "happiness," which is also discovered, or revealed – depending upon your worldview) *happen* when,  something Larry had referred to recently – the "dynamic of three boys" – takes over, (no, I don't refer to any 3 boys in particular, but rather to the dynamic), the desired outcome doesn't occur whereby everyone has equal freedom to play, and it's just the privileged or the more-dominant aspirants.

So that is my nod to gender in discourse, which is the name of this here thread, isn't it.

Maria Cristina points out a different cause related to the gap of presence I'd mentioned (the absence of women, and Other discussants, which I'd indicated is a huge loss we as a community experience by not having more vocal presence as presents for us all). She explains the loss as caused by a lack of time, and Alfredo adds a deeper dimension to that, a view of those who have an entirely other world over-taxed with non-professional commitments, duties centered upon personal relationships and the sacrifices required to keep them alive, and even flourishing... we hope...because that is the real food of life.

I don't think they mean to say that those who post have nothing better to do, while others connected to them slave away off screen, but for me, by being more personal (as a feminist viewpoint, let us start with personal experience), there is a rich sense of them as people and who they share their lives. It palpates into a genuine connectedness and a stirring vulnerability that comes with sharing; not displaying, not competing.

To reflect on what Maria Cristina says about accumulated knowledge, it is understood isn't it that any accomplished person is accomplished because of the help of others? There are no rugged individuals here are there? So does it really make sense to have the kind of mindset to win medals and laurels in competition when the rewards (and even glory) are much deeper, more lasting when done in community alongside that openness to happenstance I spoke of above. Medals tarnish and the laurels fade, and when the winter comes, all that matters is how much wood did you chop and who is left to talk with by the fire while the snow falls?

It's difficult to maintain a hardboiled dialectic materialism, when the material of happenstance (or is it happiness) is nothing that comes from a jar, isn't it? And yet the instinct is to look for the object, and if not the object, the means to make that object an object (aka ontology), in order to produce it. That is a lot of work. Perhaps thankless.

Maybe it has more to do with the demand than the production. Just a thought. (I am thinking about Arjun Appadurai right about now and his exploration of the social life of things).

Like Peg, I don't want people to be stuck only with the thought or physical structures we know about and live with. The world is infinite expanding flowering lotus and there are as many possibilities (why settle for eating cold gruel every day, when we can fly?).

Personally, I don't have a problem with long posts. To give equal short shrift to short posts, there are occasions where I have more of a problem with short posts, or posts that seem like swiss cheese. Nothing against the Swiss, or cheese, but I am hinting about the cultural references that are implicative not indicative. But perhaps this is a tall order.

It's like private jokes tossed out as a means to display exclusivity (and even power). But such a kind of discourse requires a third-person, to objectify as the one who can be ignored. The one we can interrupt and dismiss. Isn't that conduct is far easier to do with short posts than long ones?

With long posts, on the other hand, there is an investment to be made, and also to receive: By the one who writes (who gave the time to consider) and by the one who reads (who gives the time to reflect). Both take a lot of work, thankfully. So let the people who want to do the work dive in, and if there is not enough time, then there's not enough time. Save the thread for a rainy day.

I did that very thing with Alfredo's post and subsequent ones. I am staying up late to read, and I'm investing in my reply. I regret Henry has reservations to post all those essays he's written, and I would certainly love to read them, and if you would too, then chime in. Please.

I'd suggest, while wrapping up this long post and sharing my observations and metaphorical weavings, that the Second Great Awakening that Larry shared is connected to the Transcendentalists, i.e., Emerson and Thoreau, who were inspired by many things, including Vedanta, which explains the validity of morality and how it is not a human invention, but a subtle structure of laws upon which the universe unfolds (dharma). So it makes sense to me that moral concern would be the guiding light in their pursuit of freedom and individual conscience. Moral concern, freedom, and individual conscience are birds of a feather.

Unless they are chased by a toddler.

Good night,

Annalisa