Re: thought experiment
Katherine Goff (Katherine_Goff who-is-at ceo.cudenver.edu)
Mon, 13 Sep 1999 11:21:10 -0600
gary writes:
>Here are my questions -- to what degree should I, writing in 1999, be held
>accountable for my lack of use of we and wir? Does the fact that we and
>wir are not a part of my writing mean that i would reject them if they
>existed, or rather only that they do not exist yet? Or is my ignorance
>really a form of false consciousness, that i need to be held accountable
>for? That is, should i have been trying to express the ideas of we and wir
>somehow using the writing conventions that i did have? Or is it a sign of
>false consciousess in my culture that affects everything i say or do, no
>matter how peripheral it might appear to be? Should we therefore go back
>and edit in we and wir? Or would that be our own form of false
>consciousness?
in reading your post, i recall marge piercy's book, _woman on the edge of
time_ .
she proposes a feminist utopia for the future where the personal pronouns
are genderless: per for his and her and person for he and she.
your example would look like this:
Present Clinton returned to Washington, and person immediately convened per
advisors.
so one possibility might be to write fiction.
kathie
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
start all over.
start all over.
we need to make new symbols,
make new signs,
make a new language,
with these we'll redefine the world
and start all over.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^tracy chapman:new beginning
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Katherine_Goff who-is-at ceo.cudenver.edu
http://ceo.cudenver.edu/~katherine_goff/index.html