Ah, the stimulating resonances of fillips
For me as a non-American on the xmca, Phillip C's observations painted a
very recognizable picture, to which I added another brushstroke, as a
person of a non-English mother tongue. Then Phillip W, as a non-Het opens
up the dimension of sex, gender, sexuality. I will not draw in the contours
of my own stigmata in that terrain...
In both cases an important point is made, about how the further from the
North Pole of Power a person is on these gradients of gradients, the more
she learns to be sensitive to difference, to make efforts to understand the
Other. The work of habitual understanding is the duty of the subaltern. And
it is a rough landscape indeed, that we get when we bring in all the
dimensions of difference, as even in this select little community of ours
we, as individuals, are crossed through by them in a diversity of ways.
In this we are not so different from the classroom communities that Jim
Garrison and Stephanie Kimball had in mind when writing about "Dialoguing
across differences" -- even though we have the privilege of having been
drawn together by approaching the same galaxy of ideas, where kids in
classrooms are pushed together by quite different arbitraries.
I do not think it is just self-indulgence to discuss our own communicative
practices once in a while here, when so many of us work with similar
processes of grappling with Difference in other environments. Yet, the
discussion of Xlist practices is more or less -- no, I think I dare say
they ARE the only discussions where there is regularly ACTIVE proposals
that the thread be discontinued. Other threads are just allowed to taper
off spontaneously, by lack of new contributions. As threads always do.
Then, Phillip C, something entirely different: your new project sounds like
a really worthwhile one. Hope you get funding for it. It also reminds me of
the work of Luis Moll and his team, as I heard him present it -- first in
seminar, then in improvised workshop -- one day while I was a LCHC visitor.
No doubt you already know about them.
best W
Eva
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