The recent messages on these perennial topics are very interesting...
Here're just some spontaneous responses/ questions:
(1) discourse = or =/= power? when and how?
(2) "rationality"... what is it? to the ordinary person in the street?
or in the school... or in the courthouse.... etc...
(3) "play"... what is it? to the ordingary person .... ?
(4) domination? what is it... to me and you and he/she/they/... etc.?
Coming back to Hong Kong and returning to the workplace where the culture
is more hierarchical than the rather idealistic grad. school culture poses
a radical change to me that I'm still trying to adapt to... theories seem
so remote and futile to me at times when you see so much social injustice,
favoritism, arbitrariness, .... etc.
around you at every level of the society and the political system...(and
the workplace...)
discourses are sometimes futile, but sometimes tools to maintain one's
privileged positions, or tools to do resistance; whereas I still would
like to see discourse more as ways to human connectedness and genuine
communication...
* * * * *
A new series of cartoons from Japan are captivating both Japanese and Hong
Kong youngsters... in these cartoon stories, the hierarchical
relationships of the adults are parodied, reversed, joked upon by a 5 year
old kindergarten boy... these cartoons have aroused much concern among
educationists in both Japan and Hong Kong... but in these stories, I see
artful play and resistance partially achieved through discourse... yet, i
also see the futility of doing resistance in that manner... there's no
material change of the hierarchy in any realistic sense... well, just some
off-head response... any response from you? :-)
Angel
--------
Angel Lin
E-Mail: ENANGEL who-is-at CITYU.EDU.HK