(oops to my last effort at a response here)
Diane Hodges writes:
>
"cultural-historical has always implied a critical-historical, because
historical perspectives are subsumed within culture,
but culture needs its own resources for reckoning with history - so each
particular cultural position is biased with its cultural tools,
thus positioned to reckon a particular relation to history, one that
affirms the cultural tool
in such a way that even a critical perspective can substantiate the
cultural values embedded in the work of critical analysis. "
pd asks:
>But what is history for you that it could be independent and therefor
>subsumable at all in cultural systems of representation and/or discourse?
> I
>can't seem to find that in what you've written.
i don't think i imply independence of either, but rather am suggesting a
different perspective on the ways culture/history are interactive
responses and perspectives: "historical perspectives are subsumed within
culture" refers to the ways a particular cultural group believes in heir
own history, as a relation to culture, as a mode of identifying cultural
privilege, for example, or cultural oppression: history is a particular
text that becomes a cultural narrative.
"..but culture needs its own resources for reckoning with history" -
histories are rich with contradictions, so integrity depends on particular
tools for making sense of the contradictions, for refining a history that
can affirm a culture, and not question it - tools for these activities are
often literacies, artifacts that represent any historical significance,
museums, religions, icons, canons, and so on.
"...so each
particular cultural position is biased with its cultural tools,
thus positioned to reckon a particular relation to history, one that
affirms the cultural tool
in such a way that even a critical perspective can substantiate the
cultural values embedded in the work of critical analysis. "
it's hard to be critical of one's own cultural history, when the dominant
tools are designed to affirm cultural integrity through historical
perspectives.
>
>And one other point; in what way are Palestine, Servia, Hungaria,
>Ethiopia,
>White South
>Afrikaans, or Black Zimbabwe, etc. cultures at all? Aren't these ethnic
>and
>political entities, or do you see an equivalence between ethnicity and
>culture, nationality and culture?
Palestine and Israel, for example, each depend upon particular
understandings of their history in order to affirm their cultural
integrity ... texts, language, re-interpretations of past events,
affiliations with particular beliefs, all of which affirm a cultural
perspective that can
remain consistent with a particular historical experience.
white Afrikaans and black Zimbabwe must, of necessity, enact similar kinds
of interpretations, reckon a history that will not contradict the cultural
differences,
and so on.
this extends to European relations with culture and history, - meaning our
particular engagements with any text invariably reflect our own need to
quell contradictions to our own beliefs - this works on an individual
level, and in wider venues of cultural activity, as in Middle Eastern
conflicts, or European perspectives on immigration, "who" is a refugee,
"who" is a native,
and so on, and as with the Americas and the struggles to assert
a history that reflects difference,
while still affirming particular cultural
realities/legitimacies/dominance, ---- what is the activity, here, is the
text that
acts as a representation of culture and history - the work of critical
analysis then
depends on something beyond the textual relations that are most familiar.
i'm suggesting we ask something different of ourselves in reading:
Jennifer and bill are right on track with this idea.
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
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