retracking steps

From: Diane Hodges (dhodges@ceo.cudenver.edu)
Date: Tue Apr 18 2000 - 06:46:21 PDT


at the risk of incurring another set of disciplinary discourses,
i wanted to retrace the steps here back to "sense" and "meaning" -

as i tried to perform in the enactment of everyday idioms,
people "make sense" of what things mean,
suggesting that meanings pre-exist the ways we "make sense" and i would
reckon that "sense" here is some form of subjective coherence -

an example: reading a recent copy of Foreign Policy, i read there is a
glut of oil in the world's geographies, and that it costs approx $5-$10 a
barrel to acquire
with new geological technologies, new mining and refining technologies,
so the recent raising of oil prices has nothing to do with the
availability of oil
but everything to do with the suits who control which countries' oil may
be made available -

i understand what this means, but it cannot make sense of it. it is not
textual
confusion, or codification work, but a work of cultivating a personal
coherence
out of something that means people freeze because of gov't policies.

the everday idioms, i find, making sense of what something means,
"i know what you mean but it doesn't make sense"

i think, speak more to the ways we seek coherence in chaos
than to the work of negotiating "meaning" as pliable - in this culture,
meanings tend of reified in the traditional dominance of language,
and the sense that everyday folk try to make of it is a work of personal
coherence -

if this has all been said before, then i apologize for being redundant,
but i love shakespeare, and understand what it means,
but often struggle with how to make sense of it, in relation to the rest
of the play,
characters, and plots, and so on.

coherence. sense. making meanings is elusive to me. perhaps someone can
explain what making-meanings means in relation to making sense/coherence?

diane

   **********************************************************************
                                        :point where everything listens.
and i slow down, learning how to
enter - implicate and unspoken (still) heart-of-the-world.

(Daphne Marlatt, "Coming to you")
***********************************************************************

diane celia hodges

 university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
==================== ==================== =======================
 university of colorado, denver, school of education

Diane_Hodges@ceo.cudenver.edu



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