Gordon--- what a difference differance makes! My first academic conference
was AERA in New Orleans---- 1984 I think. I was doing a MAsters at Tulane
(pronounced Toolane) and working as an elem. teacher by day. One of my
profs.
was organizing locally- the students compiled a restaurant guide, which
was passed off as a profs. work, and a select group of us got to
attend "the invisible college" free, in exchange for working
at the registration table. I was in that inner sanctum-- doing
my free labor exchange for a pre=conference that it turns out none of the
profs paid for anyway. We were supposed to feel terribly lucky to
have been invited-- the crowd of the very visible invisble college
was rarified== all the folks whose work I ad been reading about for ages.
Nate Gage, David Berliner, Barak Rosenshine and lots of others
amongst the American cognitive science mafiosi.
Once my first morning of unpaid labor was up, I ventured into the
meeting room. This was my first time witnessing "conference-ese".
I loved it. Talk as the performance of one's own identity/power.
No one listened, actually, to another. Talk was evidently a way of
asserting rights-- to take up space especially. Men
talked infinitely longer than did the few women who spoke, and
there were only white folks. It was clearly clannish.
People spoke as if no one already knew what their views were- but
actually eevertyone knew everyone else who spoke, and those who spoke
let their texts speak them. This was a kind of theatre of
the repressed.
Finally, I added my 2 cents worth. The "leaders" weer animatedly
extolling the virtues of metacognition and studying
experts. I said that I failed to see how this approach was new, since it
had all been said by James, Baldwin and Binet. And that Vygotsky in particular
had already advanced a very sophisticated theory of the relationship between
self-talk and enhanced performance. It seemed to me that was
required further explanation was why people learned, when surely
expertise models were based on people refining their skills, and not on
people unpacking them so as to advance.
Something like that anyway.
I felt like I talked for about an hour, when a quick glance at my watch showed
I had prattled on for about 4 minutes max. My voice
had seemed cavernous as I spoke- my heart was
in
my throat. The silence afterwards was very tangible.
And then, as if in a time warp, a big-wig saved the day and
declared a coffee break.
During the break, when I tried to join in conversations, I encountered
a strange behavior. Badge-checks. The odd person who was willling
to talk would check my badge and move on quickly upon
having realized I was a Nobody. Finally, an elder statesman approached.
I knew his work, and was flattered by his flattery. He liked what
I had to say blah blah blah..... would I join his group (of cronies)
for dinner.
Well, to make a long story short, there ensued what I now know as
"sexual harassment". He was truly shameless and all his colleagues
at dinner knew exactly what was going on (I discvoered later). He made very
clear threats about the impact on my career were I to decline his
"offer". And I wish I could say that bravely I slapped him in the face
and marched off--
Anyhow--- I don't weant to bore you with my squalid tale, but I want to
underscore that this "parlor" metaphor fails explicitly to recognise
that only a select few can occupy a position as "speaker"-- whether
oldtimer of novice a la LPP. For many of us, speaking is an illegitimate
practice, and when we do it, it seems more like what Suzanne and I call
"shitting on the living room floor" than "pass the carrot sticks, and
wasn't that paper by Slapstick marvellous......".
Mary