Elizabeth has proposed dialogism and dialectic as alternative models of
xmca interaction that could be made explicit and chosen between and the
choice subscribed to with informed consent, so to speak.
That may be the step out -- the informed consent process (which is itself
asymmetrical and not necessarily responsive to historical change) -- but
it seems to me that we have been at this offering of alternatives before,
not so very long ago, in the "discussion" of agonism that essentially
ended with "but debate is how we do things".
I posted the Bourdieu excerpt because it seems to me that it accounts for
that strange contradiction that happens when one realizes that a
relationship is exploitative and yet somehow one can't imagine it any
other way. Gentle violence, through the language of honour, may be
perhaps a condition for any relationship at all; there is ALWAYS gentle
violence here, and it is what keeps the group going at all, even in the
face of more overt violence (and an overt protest feels all the more
violent because of its challenge to the gentle violence that we thought,
apparently erroneously, was fulfilling its function).
--Alena
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