To agree to your request Andy, would be to bury the contradiction, to abet the agent. We would suffer no change, not even enlightenment, and the story would go on. I **CAN** write about our situation without flaming, because I endeavor to use the lens of cultural historical activity theory, and with the interest of coming to a resolution that is not a simple omission from memory of recent past. Rather, what I have learned from Yrjö's development of the theory, is that the pattern of development, the history leading up to the trouble of the moment, must be revealed, and brought into the analysis.
If this is getting uncomfortable for you, then you can truely begin to empathize what it is like for me and others to see our non-marxist colleagues being subjected to a range of hostile actions.
The important point being that what I am discussing is not one incident, but MANY. What fits the pattern I see so far, and thus my hypothesis, is that the hostility has been directed towards those with non-marxist, or impurely-marxist, alignments. We can list the people who have been directly subjected, perhaps incompletely:
1) Judy,
2) Eva,
3) Diane,
4) Jay,
5) Mike,
6) myself.
This list, I hope, will dispell the misperception that the situation is only about the sole action of the accidental flaming of Mike, that this is not about a sole thought behind that action, but of a something more. It is a pattern. With the pattern, what emerges is a proclivity, perhaps an intention, and the potential for continuity of the pattern. This is a moment to pause, hence the "Whoa" in the subject line. Unless we simply wish things to go on as they have been, we must take this time to understand what is, and has been, happening to us. That includes you Paul.
Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
Lesley University (Effective September 5, 2000)
29 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
_______________________
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
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