On Wednesday, April 26, 2000 6:16 PM, mary bryson [SMTP:brys@unixg.ubc.ca]
wrote:
> Nate wrote:
> <While I am a tad bit concerned about
> Foucault's desire for objectivity - reasoning or discourse freed from the
> question of who does it beneifit etc>
>
> I am confused (as usual)....i read this a bunch of times, and it still
> strikes me that Foucault precisely is the writer who, for me, asks the
> question about "who benefits" better and louder than anyone else....
Where
> does this come from Nate?
>
> mary
Perhaps he realises that if anyone is to take his ideas seriously, he has
to make some sort of claim that they're true (or at least truer than anyone
else's).
On Diane and Nate's point: if it's right that activity merely reproduces
ideology, how come anything ever changes? (How come ideology changes for
that matter?) Activity provides us with the means to transcend ideology by
changing the world, or at least showing in practice why dominant ideologies
are wrong. If anyone doubts this, let's look at how and why the dominant
ideologies in regards to race and gender have changed over the last 40
years. I find it very frustrating that this point just gets repeated
without anyone ever thinking about its implications.
Bruce
> --
> Dr. Mary Bryson, Associate Professor, Education, UBC
> GenTech Project http://www.shecan.com
> Curriculum Vitae http://www.educ.ubc.ca/faculty/bryson/cv.html
>
>
> In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life
> presents itself as an immense accumulation of "spectacles". Everything
that
> was directly lived has moved away into representation.
> - Guy Debord, "The Society of the Spectacle" c 1967
>
> ----------
> >From: "Nate" <schmolze@students.wisc.edu>
> >To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> >Subject: RE: activity/reproduction/power
> >Date: Sat, Apr 22, 2000, 6:25 AM
> >
>
> > Diane,
> >
> > Positive relations is from M Foucault to contrast a notion of power as
> > soverign or repression. At one point he states those things we
characterize
> > as soverign are merely byproducts. While I am a tad bit concerned about
> > Foucault's desire for objectivity - reasoning or discourse freed from
the
> > question of who does it beneifit etc, I do think the notion of positive
> > relations is a useful one.
> >
> > So, I would not read "positive" so much as in a binary of good and bad,
but
> > an attempt to analyze power utilized at various sites. The way I used
it
> > was similar to practice or "lived experience" in that dominant
Discourse
> > does not merely repress but produce.
> >
> > In rereading your discussion of ideology I think it points toward the
> > positive element of power as when you state,
> >
> > "we are discussing it in an ideological context of "academic meanings,"
> > meaning that ideology is "out there" but not "in here" where we are
> > practicing and reproducing the very structures that
> > are relied upon for maintaining the kinds of shared dominance that
makes
> > ideology ideological in the first place - a paradox of activity,
indeed."
> >
> > Nate
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Nate Schmolze
> > http://www.geocities.com/nate_schmolze/
> > schmolze@students.wisc.edu
> >
> >
> >
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****
> > ****************
> > "Overcoming the naturalistic concept of mental development calls for a
> > radically new approach
> > to the interrelation between child and society. We have been led to
this
> > conclusion by a
> > special investigation of the historical emergence of role-playing. In
> > contrast to the view
> > that role playing is an eternal extra-historical phenomenon, we
hypothesized
> > that role playing emerged at a specific stage of social development, as
the
> > child's position in society changed
> > in the course of history. role-playing is an activity that is social in
> > origin and,
> > consequently, social in content."
> >
> > D. B. El'konin
> >
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****
> > ****************
> >
> >
>
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