xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
paul writes:
> You wrote, "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."
>
>This intrigued me because of the importance of bergson's insistence on
>"lived time", the duree.
i haven't finished my rereading, so i won't pretend to be an expert here,
but what i am getting from bergson is the fallacy inherent in the
assumptions of "measuring"
in scientific contexts, that is, scientists are immersed in a denied
"duree" -
the "dominant conceptions of legitimacy" that persist today rest in
desires about "science" and "measurement" - so time scales, for example,
produce what bergson is suggesting is "actually" impossible - in my
understanding,
bergson
is moving into an idea of time-space being the same, that time is spatial
and space is only
knowable through the constraints of time -
the clocks deceive our potential for understanding, as much as the "t"
quotient delude us into
making predictions about something that exceeds our own 'living'ness of
'being' (ha ha) -
legitimacy, then, and today, still seems to be contained in kinds of
regimes that appeal
to empirical paradigms - just as academic writing appeals to kinds of
legitimation-through-citation,
or the "intellectual" mode of discourse -
for example, i am reading bergson, plus A.R. Lacey's (1989) reading of
bergson as a secondary source -
the secondary source is perfectly incomprehensible;
whereas bergson's poetics are far more readable and intriguing.
legitimacy is certainly seductive, but i do see the cost as regressive
instead of progressive.
>I also was intrigued by your statement that, "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" .
>
>Are you saying that when men are silent this connotes or is an exercise of
>power but not so for women for whom it is a mode of self-protection? Do
>you think that it is only women who keep silent out of fear of the
>negative
>consequences of "telling it like it is"?
i think Deborah Tannen's work in this area is probably more useful than my
interpretations,
but certainly men practice silence for different reasons that women,
in that men are rewarded for being "strong silent types"
and women are punished for being "lippy" -
"telling like it is?" what 'what' like 'how' it might be? can't think what
'telling it like it is' might mean here -
in terms of the histories of text, women are substantially
under-represented.
silence is not empowering when it re-iterates a legacy of exclusion;
when the dominant voice chooses not to speak, it is differently
experienced - it is
not a re-iteration of exclusion, but an exercise of self-restraint.
>
>Orwell's Winston Smith writing in his secret journal, "I write this for
>the
>future . . ."
like he'd know.
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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