Re: you kcan knock it, but try it

From: Diane Hodges (dhodges@ceo.cudenver.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 14 1999 - 18:39:44 PST


hi mike, (papa - ha-oh oh! really, geez, i was just troping around, the
crabby kids are squabbling and the reasonable voice from there - )

- i understand what you're asking, and maybe i can try a different route -
one of the reasons i keep coming back
to this list is, not because it's the only place where i can rant and rave
and pick fights, heh heh, but

rather because of the interdisciplinary group here - political theatre,
semiotics, applied linguistics,
psych, anthropology, philosophy, education, computers, systems, chaos,
and so on,(and then there's bill baroway!! )-

and what links these here is, i recognize, a surface language of interest
in cultural-historical activities,
and those theoretical threads of socioculturalisms - social practice,
moving away from individualism

and into more complex realms - Where there are constraints, that is, when
discussions fling towards polemics
and "mine!" kinds of contests,

is in the ways methodologies are appropriated into kinds of specialized
practices - so the theoretical realms
are vast and interdisciplinary, but the methods of pursuing questions is
re-situated into a closed system of
traditional methods (postpositivism is still positivism, re-described) -

it is the problem of interdisciplinary work, of course, that anyone can
weave connections across a variety
of disciplines, but the "research" production is invariably brought back
to the traditional systems where

interdisciplinary interests have already transgressed - i can connect a
variety of seemingly unconnected disciplines in theme and construct a
space for asking different questions, but to "do" anything, i am pulled
back into the history of the specialized methods - yes yes,
interdisciplinary work is all well and good, but what's your
specialization?

so here, the discussions transgress multiple disciplines, but are
invaribly re-tied to specialized kinds of inquiry -
 this tension, i find, invariably raises the stakes
about what folks do - _do_ as an academic research kind of activity -

i like jay's timescales, believe it or not, because these posit a
different way of thinking about what it is
that a research study might want to reach towards, deeper complexities
within, the layers of the embedded social, the shadows, the histories that
are in the walls of everywhere, like asbestos... no no no, not like that,
but

like a subconscious culture always tucking the tag in the collar of our
shirts, perhaps -

the questions i keep asking myself are about accountability, in that no
matter what we might _do_ in
kinds of research, we write it up, we compose an account of what we did
and what we think it means,

and so it is, in the end, a work of writing, and academic writing is
(ggurrggle) kinda strangled in its speech - limited in what can be
expressed, contained by the cadence of a tradition that was designed for
illiterate scientists, the
hard science boys who could mix the potions and cut the cadavers, but
couldn't write coherently about
what they learned,

hence, the invention of a structured "method" of academic writing - here
is why i am interested in stanton's piece about narrative,
because so much is communicated in narrative, and yet so much is also
repressed in the translation of the
process, in the adherence to specific applied method, in-resistance to the
narrative, as a familiar

genre, the absent academic (not)speaking - without kinds of
account-abilities, that is, writing abilities,

we are all pretty limited in our ways of cross-communicating, and if the
participants represent a collective of
interdisciplinary interests, then the ways we speak about how these
transgress

necessarily writes away from traditional genres, and calls into question
traditional methods (oh wait, did i say 'we?' academese - i meant,
speaking for myself, me, i write away... )

the struggle to pull all these strands together is not so much a question,
to me, of what can we/i do in
my particular research interests that can account for all these
intersecting ideas of,
say,
paleolithic arts and narratives in-relation to emotions, as
historical/social weaves,

but more, how can this change the ways i approach the structures of my
practice, in the ways i write about what
i do, the ways i make use of methods for research - what indeed am i
doing, poking into people's lives for

information anyhow? does this make sense? how many transcipts have to be
gathered over how many decades?
how many hours of videotaping others? what does this give me that is
different from the

traditional in-the-field ethnographer, spying on people as they pee in the
bushes?

these are, to me, the fundamental questions that interdisciplinary
contexts challenge, and so in terms of

what can we do with all this text-talk here, i think there are always
opportunities to explore what it might mean to
let go of the tried and true and tested/texted ways of practicing as
academics,
and re-write/re-question the basic tenets of this work...

my goodness. that was about a buck-fifty's worth eh?
i was aiming for 2 cents.
ha

diane

**********************************************************************
                                        :point where everything listens.
and i slow down, learning how to
enter - implicate and unspoken (still) heart-of-the-world.

(Daphne Marlatt, "Coming to you")
***********************************************************************

diane celia hodges

 university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
==================== ==================== =======================
 university of colorado, denver, school of education

Diane_Hodges@ceo.cudenver.edu



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