Re: civility, passions

ENANGEL who-is-at cityu.edu.hk
Thu, 18 Apr 1996 16:54:52 +0800

This is a follow-up on a recent thread amidst the many threads of
discussion in xmca, which I'm still trying to catch up with...

I'm interested in following up on this thread of discussion as this is an
issue that I've been struggling with myself, and obviously without an
answer satisfactory to myself, either...

The traditional norms and standards for "appropriate" behaviour, discouses,
tones and styles are strong. A personal example: a fellow-student said
my thesis has been written in "too conversational" a style, which I, however,
deliberately adopted because I don't think the voices of teachers and
students (and also myself) can come out if I represent them using a so-called
"objective, scientific" writing style; an editor of a journal recently
asked me to rewrite my piece--to modify my tone; I've been critiquing the
public discourses regarding "the language problem" in Hong Kong and have
allowed myself to use a tone which is atypical of academic discourses.

Anyway, we live in a world where we are constantly asked to tame ourselves
or others--to tame our own voices or others' voices which we are
representing in our writings or presentations. I can see that there must
be some functions served by these strong social and institutional norms,
norms of civility... what are these functions?

Franscois once said in xmca that he's uncomfortable with activists who are
too passionate... I can perfectly understand his feelings... naturally we
want to avoid such a situation... but if someone has to put on a mask
before she/he can communicate with us, is this a problem in itself, too?

Obviously, I don't have a satisfactory middle ground to offer; I would
like to be able to (and to be allowed to) argue passionately, without
having to be interpreted as hurting or dis-respecting other people, however.
That's very difficult to accomplish.

To be woman, to be young, to be a non-native speaker of the dominant
variety of English... being the object of
domination and discrimination by others in the workplace
and in our daily life... all these everyday harsh realities of life have
stored up in me a lot of "anger"...
and yet, I cannot allow myself to voice this
anger... or to put it more accurately, I still haven't found "legitimate"
channels where I can express this without any expensive consequences to
myself and my job.

Well, even writing here about this may have consequences... and yet who
cares....

Writing amidst a busy working day...

Angel

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Angel Lin
E-mail: enangel who-is-at cityu.edu.hk