xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
L*writes:
>Hi Diane, I don't have the whole poem to hand, but for those interested
>its
>in her Dream of a Common Language (Norton, 1977), and the poem is called
>"Cartographies of Silence."
couldn't *this* be a spring reading too? i am personally being drawn more
and more
to poetry and fiction as source for "thinking" beyond the boundaries of
academic genres,
not to think with these, but to think _within_ these as valuable resources,
particularly with regard to the historical contributions women/queers have
made to
alternative ways of "languaging" - ?
>
>I think the idea of silence(ing) as active is very important -- making
>what
>you are or what you think or do unspeakable IS an active process. Often
>(as we have discussed here) the silencing activity itself is made
>invisible
>when it intercalates with the taken-for-granted, the central silent
>power.
i admit i have trouble with this concept - while i can appreciate it on an
abstract
level, i also have experienced silences as profoundly (self)destructive -
what we don't say
or more importantly for academics, what we don't write, as acts of
silence, are also
acts of self-censorship - and this is something women have lived in for
too long -
indeed, perkins' "the yellow wallpaper" chronicles the institutional
advice to
'keept quiet' when one's thoughts are too disturbing... it is an active
process, but
isn't it particularly manifested in kinds of
self-denial/conformity/contorting into the normalizing
structures of what is means to say the "unspeakable"? ...that what "i"
might choose
to (not) say is precisely what ought to be said?
silence - as - power strikes me as a masculine privilege that women
inadvertently co-opt
as modes of self-protection. it is not safe to say many things,
and safe to say very little.
>
>One place I have sometimes experienced it is in dismissal of qualitative
>research by fundamentalist quantifiers -- "oh, that's just
>impressionistic." "Oh, you're doing micro-sociology." "But what about the
>big picture?"
indeed, i am one of those who cannot see the trees for the forest,
but to express this as a value to social "scientists" (hahahahaaaa) is
incomprehensible.
am re-reading henri bergson's "creative evolution" as a way to figure
virginia woolf's fiction,
and am struck by the radical concepts of early 20th century departures,
and how these have been absorbed by dominant conceptions of legitimacy.
silence = death. still. can't find my way around that, just as absences
are irretrievably forms of adapting to the culture of denial (i.e.
appealing to Legitimacy),
the folks who refuse to speak are invariably the ones who have the most to
contribute.
>
>Absence is like a current running below this. I am absent from
>mainstream
>sociology journals because I no longer bother sending my stuff to them
>(Michael Burowoy recently resigned from a major sociology journal as a
>protest of the silencing of qualitative research, among other
>things). Absence I think can come prior to or after silencing.
i remember well my experience with disconnection from mainstream academics
- at AERA two(?) years ago,
i presented in the cross-dress of a white-male-intellectual (suit &
Harvard tie) and effectively
called everyone a fascist - and elicited laughs of sheer delight, the
masochism as celebratory pleasure,
yes yes how "awful" we are!! ha ha ha -
please.
i decided to never present at another conference.
writing for MCA, as well, induced a feeling of alienation, in the ways the
genre of acceptability
dictated so much of the writing - as a poet at heart, i recognized the
ways the accepted genre silenced
much of my thinking,
and so i decided, when the article was accepted & published, that i would
never write
for that genre again.
in my acts of silencing and absencing, however, i have punished myself.
so.
what do those who have no recognized status do when these politics
overwhelm
the desired vernacular? ought all those who are different simply choose
silence?
or absence?
had i been less ridiculous, i would have quit - but i persist because i
believe that the genre of difference
has yet to be comprehended, let alone written. if i choose silence, how do
i speak from the position of being
silenced by dominant genres. practices, discourses and so on?
how can change occur if those who are truly inside/outside the regime of
oppression choose to withdraw?
is there no legacy for difference?
>
Leigh, _many_ thanks for re-opening this through adrienne rich - she is a
queen of difference
and deserves some consideration, as do the queer politics of silence in
the university.
gracie bella
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
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