Re(2): Re(2): Individual activity?-questions questions

From: Diane Hodges (dhodges@ceo.cudenver.edu)
Date: Wed Apr 18 2001 - 23:54:21 PDT


bill the brain baroway asks
>Perhaps the dialectical development of the individual and collective can
>be thought to be subsumed by the development of work practices in some
>sense? No, perhaps not. While work practices are idiosyncratic to what
>individuals and institutions constitute them,

>do not both of the latter also, in general, extend outside of the former
>in cultural, historical, and geographic ways?

YES.
..HOWEVER (oh cursed caveat!!)

...it's all well and fine to _not_ talk about difference and institutional
ideology, but that's not to say these influences don't participate in
individual and social activities,.

i hate to introduce the obvious, but
"ya know us queer folks live in a very different world from youse
heterosexual folks" -

the very assumption that sexuality or gender is not relevant speaks
volumes about
institutional affirmation of the masculine/male ideal of performance.

(ah, come on. don't make me go there. )

i mean, help me assume that as intellectuals, you are all also well aware
of the differences between smart women and canonical men?

it's not a question of saying "BARBARA ROGOFF" or "JEAN LAVE"

but more to the heart of this, you have all confessed to your canons,
truths composed by
particular men,

...doesn't that characterize your theoretical world views? your language?
your sentence structures? syntax?

aren't activities gendered in terms of value?
 would we study boys who sew with the same passion as we study women
engineers?
 can boys bake a souffle? or can girls rebuild a carburetor, and
what has more value?
research? women - ethnography -
theory - men - reading ...

the activity is, invariably, valued in relation to a gender dominance -
OR,
please prove me wrong, and tell me of an activity that is valuable
in-itself,
and is not particularly gendered, or historically sexed ( women weave
carpets, etc)

... know what i mean? let's focus on a specific activity that can
address the differences - 5thD is great for those few involved, but can we
pursue metaphors across our practices, perhaps?

bill's question deserves deliberation,

or

i think. "where da wimmin at?"

diane, as usual, spitting in the wind.
:) cheerfully so!!! ha haaaaaa!!!

CAVEAT:
i am questioning the idea of an individual, accepting the idea of an
activity (institutiuon - please prove me wrong here, but so far my
understanding is that an activity IS an institution)
so,

is an individual as aspect of that institution? an expression of that...?
a reinvention of that...?

what is an individual in relation to the institutions? we discussed the
ideal of the social, i mean, but the material reality is that every
"social" belongs to an institution...???
or is
that only
something
women see?

ah gender. sex. what _pollutants_!!!

:) cheers eh?
diane



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