your ruminations on the differences between the discourse communities
enabled by communication technologies
and the lived communities in which we find our fleshy selves each day
was lovely, if not a little gurgly. certainly, the possibility that
discourse communities
thrive because of the ways some or other folks fail to cultivate
meaningful connections
in that fleshy gurgly world suggests that technology has enabled something
that might never have emerged without the disembodied context -
by the same token, i think yer right - physical distances, bodies in
absentia,
produces an artificial production of words - we might speak of kinds of
ways of being in the world,
but without the context of living in those ways of being
the words will, eventually falter - indeed, words like 'patriarchy' and
'oppression' have lost their impact
because intellectuals have tossed these about without any sense of the
body that
experiences male dominance and inequalities;
the overwhelming dominance of heteronormativity is so pervasive that it is
easier, now, to say everyone is queer
than to admit to the ways heterosexuality operates within a structure of
repression,
and really,
without a body in the world,
all the talk is ultimately meandering, desiring, as if the tongue knew to
search for something wet with which to lick one's lips =
the paradox is that in the real world, of academics, to speak of such
things
is too too horrible = to write of such things is blasphemy,
and to truly digress is, in the wake of the sacrifices folks make for the
sake of tradition,
a crime.
change, i have been discovering lately, is very very messy and unruly -
academics really rather hate the messy and
unruly body, indeed that is perhaps why we succeed as academics.
to change the discourse, the practice, the relations of the academic with
the community,
in my experiences thus far, involves a lot more 'giving up' than giving...
and, for me, part of the freakification of academic success is the very
skill in disembodied discourse,
i.e., there's a reason we're good at this shit,
even if it;s a sign of how i or you or anyone might be socially fucked up.
people are profoundly complex.
i'd rather deal with Woolf, personally, than some middle-aged dyke and he
wife/mortgage/dog/ golf score.
but then perhaps that personifies my dysfunction.
remember schoolhouse-rock? "conjunction-junction, what's your function?" i
think i'd sing, now,
"where's my dysfunction-junction?"
groovy. late. cool.
diane
' 'We have destroyed something by our presence,' said Bernard, 'a
world perhaps.'
(Virginia Woolf, "The Waves")
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, vancouver / university of colorado, denver
Diane_Hodges who-is-at ceo.cudenver.edu