Re: activity/reproduction/power

From: Judy Diamondstone (diamonju@rci.rutgers.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 21 2000 - 21:10:52 PDT


Nate wrote:....
  Behaviors, ideology etc. are like like a virus
>>that
>>go on infecting every where it goes. My thinking is micro practices are
>>important not so much because they are consumption practices, but rather
>>that they produce. It seems that reproduction of ideology or normalization
>>often takes the form of those positive relations.

Diane wrote:....
>even these modes of writing as kinds of intellectual normalization,
>and i have noticed when i drift from the normalized discourse, there are
>communicative gaps - suggesting that the ideological discourse is
>essential to the production, and reproduction, of normalization - so we
>agree.
>
>but how are these understood as "positive relations?"

Nate should answer for himself, but I have just read Bonnie Lietowitz's
paper in an old MCA; putting it together with some thoughts about mimesis,
I'd agree with Nate, that normalization takes the form of "positive"
relations -- i.e., reciprocal, compliant relations; 'happy' relations; going
with the flow relations. The story goes on in this story of reciprocity.

Diane wrote:
>...- the problem with ideology is that it
>seems to have been sapped of its implications - we are discussing it in an
>ideological context of "academic meanings," meaning that ideology is "out
>there" but not "in here" where we are practicing and reproducing the very
>structures that
>are relied upon for maintaining the kinds of shared dominance that makes
>ideology
>ideological in the first place - a paradox of activity, indeed.

Right on about the 'out there'-ness of ideology/ critical discourse theory
for academics. As if it had nothing to do with who we are _here_... Now. I'm
not w/ you, though, re: ideology as a paradox of activity. Is this from
nate's previous message? Or is yr notion of activity in fact in
contradiction to a notion of ideology??

Judith Diamondstone (732) 932-7496 Ext. 352
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183



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