>Diane, That is a good idea about the spring reading. perhaps some
>excerpts from Rich's prose as well, On Lies, Secrets and Silences?
Yes, I hear your meaning about self-silencing. I do include that in active
silencing, too, although of a different sort (along the lines of our
appropriation discussion).
For me, I continue to work within many of the forms that try to silence
difference. As difficult as it is, in the long term I keep returning to
explore the tensions and contradictions. Sometimes they even help me be
creative. I guess for me it's not a monolithic thing, but something I keep
re-deciding all the time...and then other times, you just need to escape
and put your feet up.
I think many of the questions you are asking are ancient, mysteries and
passions that take a lifetime to explore. thanks for staying with these
spaces.
Leigh
>couldn't *this* be a spring reading too? i am personally being drawn more
>and more
>to poetry and fiction as source for "thinking" beyond the boundaries of
>academic genres,
>not to think with these, but to think _within_ these as valuable resources,
>particularly with regard to the historical contributions women/queers have
>made to
>alternative ways of "languaging" - ?
> >
> >I think the idea of silence(ing) as active is very important -- making
> >what
> >you are or what you think or do unspeakable IS an active process. Often
> >(as we have discussed here) the silencing activity itself is made
> >invisible
> >when it intercalates with the taken-for-granted, the central silent
> >power.
>
>i admit i have trouble with this concept - while i can appreciate it on an
>abstract
>level, i also have experienced silences as profoundly (self)destructive -
>what we don't say
>or more importantly for academics, what we don't write, as acts of
>silence, are also
>acts of self-censorship - and this is something women have lived in for
>too long -
>
>indeed, perkins' "the yellow wallpaper" chronicles the institutional
>advice to
>'keept quiet' when one's thoughts are too disturbing... it is an active
>process, but
>
>isn't it particularly manifested in kinds of
>self-denial/conformity/contorting into the normalizing
>structures of what is means to say the "unspeakable"? ...that what "i"
>might choose
>to (not) say is precisely what ought to be said?
>silence - as - power strikes me as a masculine privilege that women
>inadvertently co-opt
>as modes of self-protection. it is not safe to say many things,
>and safe to say very little.
> >
> >One place I have sometimes experienced it is in dismissal of qualitative
> >research by fundamentalist quantifiers -- "oh, that's just
> >impressionistic." "Oh, you're doing micro-sociology." "But what about the
> >big picture?"
>
>indeed, i am one of those who cannot see the trees for the forest,
>but to express this as a value to social "scientists" (hahahahaaaa) is
>incomprehensible.
>am re-reading henri bergson's "creative evolution" as a way to figure
>virginia woolf's fiction,
>and am struck by the radical concepts of early 20th century departures,
>and how these have been absorbed by dominant conceptions of legitimacy.
>
>silence = death. still. can't find my way around that, just as absences
>are irretrievably forms of adapting to the culture of denial (i.e.
>appealing to Legitimacy),
>the folks who refuse to speak are invariably the ones who have the most to
>contribute.
> >
> >Absence is like a current running below this. I am absent from
> >mainstream
> >sociology journals because I no longer bother sending my stuff to them
> >(Michael Burowoy recently resigned from a major sociology journal as a
> >protest of the silencing of qualitative research, among other
> >things). Absence I think can come prior to or after silencing.
>
>i remember well my experience with disconnection from mainstream academics
>- at AERA two(?) years ago,
>i presented in the cross-dress of a white-male-intellectual (suit &
>Harvard tie) and effectively
>called everyone a fascist - and elicited laughs of sheer delight, the
>masochism as celebratory pleasure,
>yes yes how "awful" we are!! ha ha ha -
>please.
>i decided to never present at another conference.
>
>writing for MCA, as well, induced a feeling of alienation, in the ways the
>genre of acceptability
>dictated so much of the writing - as a poet at heart, i recognized the
>ways the accepted genre silenced
>much of my thinking,
>and so i decided, when the article was accepted & published, that i would
>never write
>for that genre again.
>
>in my acts of silencing and absencing, however, i have punished myself.
>so.
>
>what do those who have no recognized status do when these politics
>overwhelm
>the desired vernacular? ought all those who are different simply choose
>silence?
>or absence?
>
>had i been less ridiculous, i would have quit - but i persist because i
>believe that the genre of difference
>has yet to be comprehended, let alone written. if i choose silence, how do
>i speak from the position of being
>silenced by dominant genres. practices, discourses and so on?
>how can change occur if those who are truly inside/outside the regime of
>oppression choose to withdraw?
>is there no legacy for difference?
> >
>Leigh, _many_ thanks for re-opening this through adrienne rich - she is a
>queen of difference
>and deserves some consideration, as do the queer politics of silence in
>the university.
>gracie bella
>
>diane
>
>
> ' 'We have destroyed something by our presence,' said Bernard, 'a
>world perhaps.'
> (Virginia Woolf, "The Waves")
>
>+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
>diane celia hodges
>university of british columbia, vancouver / university of colorado, denver
>
>Diane_Hodges@ceo.cudenver.edu
______________________________________________
Susan Leigh Star, Professor
Department of Communication
9500 Gilman Drive
University of California at San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093-0503
lstar@ucsd.edu http://weber.ucsd.edu/~lstar/
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