Re: affectivity in education

Judy Diamondstone (diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu)
22 Feb 1998 02:22:01 -0000

At 01:40 PM 2/21/98 -0800, you wrote:
>At 10:36 PM 2/20/98, Judy Diamondstone wrote:
>> Whatever the discriminations
>>are, they are in the service of some representation/representor.
>>Perhaps we need a critical-reflexive topology of affect? No
>>representation of other without the other's representation of you.
>
>Can you elaborate more on this? I admit I am unclear on what
> "topology" is supposed to invoke here...
>thanks!
>
>diane

Well, you're not the only one. I'm posting a version of
the answer I gave to someone else who asked the same
"back channel"....

Very sorry for my neophrasism. I make up words, too carelessly.
"Critical reflexive topology" is a phrase made up
of Jay's discussion of topology and the trope of "post-modern"
research ("critical-reflexive") that calls for critical
reflection on oneself & for research that invites the researched
to talk back.

Trying to make sense of my own phrasing, retrospectively --
no matter how fine-grained and nuanced the distinctions we
make among mixtures & gradients of affect, unless we account
for the relational ground of feelings, we won't alter
the binary character of our representations (of self/other)
and so we won't undo the effects (like ideological control)
of overly-simple taxonomies. That's close to what I was
thinking at the time. Now I'm not so sure of the sense it makes.

Judy

Judith Diamondstone (732) 932-7496 Ext. 352
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183