and, Eva, great annecdote about some styles male discourse -
reminded me of Mary Bryson's comments/postings from a couple of years ago.
and Bill, your emphasis on autobiography brought me back to some
considerations i've been pondering about Aarhus - in particular Vera
John-Steiner's keynote lecture - for as Jay Lemke wrote:
> I have a little theory, as some of you who were in Aarhus may have heard,
> that class, race/ethnicity, age, and gender classifications form a single
> unified semiotic system that cannot be understood unless all the elements
> are taken into account in every analysis (just the sort of complexity that
> modern social science hates because it makes research so much less easy).
and a bit farther on -
> But what is wholly left out, and yet must be quite critical, is the
> subsystem of gender classifications ... in which I include a great deal
Vera's lecture was about this very subject, as well as her
struggle to bring socio-cultural theory into agreement with her
autobiography as a woman - hence her title "Socio-Cultural and Feminist
Theory: Mutuality and Revelance."
I hope that someone publishes this lecture, because Vera's lecture
was for me a major theme that i constructed when i sat down to consider
the conference as a whole.
Debra Hicks was where i first heard of a need for critical
theory to be used as a way of explicating what activity theory can reveal.
Hicks wove studying working class girls with Bakhtin with activity theory,
narrative theory & its concern with uniqueness & particulaity, and, in
order to arrive at an everyday sense of truth (the web of sensual & moral
feeling & emotional & intellectual cognition) found that she needed to use
feminists' critical theory -
at another session i attended (one with Michael Cole, Barbara
Rogoss, Eugene Matusov & Yrjo Engestrom), at the end during audience
question time a woman stood up and asked if anyone had been considering
feminist theory to aid in their understandings of activity theory. I was
struck most by the fact that when other members (men in particular) of the
audience had questions, their questions were most often prefaced by a
lengthy explanation of their academic beliefs and values - it seemed to
me that the time for questions was actually to be used as a time of
establishing academic credits. The only session that this did not happen
in was a session that was focused in on children and their needs. At that
session there were only about eight of us.
at another session Judith Diamonstone suggested that research that
uses activity theory as a lens, also use social semiotic theory, focusing
on the reflexivity of language - here she was following up on the work
of Gordon Wells who uses systemic functional linguistics along with
activity theory.
anyway - this is raveling out of control, it seems - but i was
most struck by the fact that after Vera spoke, then in time Jerome Bruner
spoke. Bruner's lecture was followed by a standing ovation.
for which i still experience very mixed feelings - i don't mind
Bruner receiving a standing ovation - but in contrast to Vera's talk, in
which she really placed her self, her autobiography, her struggles, was
openly revealing, took multiple risks and great courage - as i sees it - i
thought it unfair that she didn't receive a standing ovation.
i do think the lack of great response to Vera's story has a great
deal to do with what Jay remarks on, the salience of gender is being
missed, as so the voice of Vera is not heard as clearly as Bruner's.
so, Vera, i right now give you a standing ovation - i found your
lecture deeply moving and saw it as worthy of far greater notice. i hope
that someone publishes it soon, and that you will let us know when and
where.
phillip
phillip white pwhite who-is-at carbon.cudenver.edu
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A relation of surveillance, defined and regulated,
is inscribed at the heart of the practice of teaching, not
as an additional or adjacent part, but as a mechanism that
is inherent to it and which increases its efficiency.
Michel Foucault / Discipline & Punish
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