>diane,
>Your description of interaction appeals to me, but I am unclear how the
>assumptions and manifestations of power are viewed in the process you
>describe. What control is not "presumptive," and how do you give it
>over when the other person believes it's your responsibility to wield
>it? Isn't disrupting the expected flow of an interaction by giving over
>presumptive control a judgement that some kinds of control are better
>than others? I also struggle with doubts about the morality of imposing
>tolerance or what seems to be an injustice on an/other, which is what I
>hear in jay's questions.
>
>Kathie
>
Hi Kathie - You've asked a tough question. Thanks!! (heh) I think I'll take
a cue from Eva here, and try to respond with a story. It's a long story.
I've been quite fascinated with the notion and workings of a
community-of-practice for some years now; interested in how it might work,
that is, in a way which enables difference, diversity, and autonomy in
practice.
I have also struggled - quite desperately at times - with the constraints
of institutionalized research methodologies. How to do research without
re-inventing the
university?
Taking a cue from Mary Bryson and Suzanne deCastell's exemplary
work with gender and technologies, and their interest in "learning to make
a difference", I finally decided I needed to start in my own backyard, so
to speak,
and do something that had a material value, that gave something to a
community...
In this context, then, I found a way to set-in-motion a project wherein I could
use my privileges as an white/middle-class
intellectual, and still give up control over the "outcomes" of the project.
To this end, I focussed on my neighbourhood (low income) and the problem of
creeping gentrification, the "beautification" (colonization) of a
community where specific groups of people are repeatedly, and relentlessly
EXcluded from participation - specifically, a grass-roots drop-in/service
centre for people who identify as
mental health consumers, and a grass-roots drop-in/service centre for
lesbians.
What I wanted to do was find ways to connect these two groups with each other,
and with other community organizations; I also wanted to use my privileges to
provide something
of value, something which might make it possible for these groups to make a
difference
in the community where they live.
I focussed on art-activism, emphasizing the visual arts
(painting, drawing, design, photography, video, multimedia, etc)
so that we might connect
somehow outside the limitations and barriers of language.
So the project is now coming to fruition - there are local women artists
who are excited to facilitate workshops which explore the questions
of representation; we are committed to a two-year
investment of the time and
resources needed to genuinely involve everyone -
the participants, the artists, the local community - with the project;
part of this includes a rotating public art gallery, where works created
in the contexts of the workshops are displayed along the main
street of this community, communicating various perspectives of
identity, representation, community, belonging, and so on, to the
dominant community;
we are planning public art events, where, we hope,
community residents will come to an event where the participants and artists
can show what they've been doing, talk about what they have been doing, and
so on.
Also, again using my access to the resources I have
through the university, video-documentation will
accompany this two-year project, where participants will be given cameras
to film whatever they choose - interview each other, videotape a workshop,
interview themselves, write a story and film a movie, and so on.
Those who want, can donate their videos to a final project where we will
all engage in the post-production work, editing, soundtracks, titling, effects,
and so on, to produce a multiply-authored documentary which we will distribute
to other communities, as an example of a community-of-practice where
difference is foregrounded, and negotiations of practice are enabled.
I have used my powers as an intellectual/researcher
to organize this, yes; I have used my experiences as a graduate student
to write the proposals to get funding from public sources (no university
money);
I have attended the many many many meetings with various groups
to communicate the project's ambitions, and to emphasize the open-endedness
of the workshops.
(The artists in the project are not producing artworks, but are
providing the tools and skills/training/experience which will, we hope,
make the production of art desirable; (we even found professional framing
kits, so that
participants will choose and frame their own productions for the rotating
public art gallery)...
My role in this is to get the money ; speak at meetings (using my experience
again as a researcher who presents her ideas/etc. to various audiences);
using my experience in business to coordinate this into a non-profit
community-arts
intervention; to do the bookkeeping and to secure the funding needing to
buy the materials and pay the artists for their participation.
The workshops, scheduled the begin in January '98, are a process which the
artists and the participants will negotiate (when to meet, what to do, what
to focus on, etc);
... there are many dimensions of this project which I've left out, actually, but
of course there is much I do not know, concerning what will happen - I don't
know how this will go, what will happen, who will participate, how many,
the difficulties of negotiating participation, and so on.
This, I think, is a space where I give up control of the project. I can use my
privileges and the power embedded in those
to put the possibilities in place, but I can also step back
and let the details and the processes of particpation
be the responsibility of the participants; what they
do with the time and resources is theirs. What they produce is theirs (in terms
of ownership); if they want to sell their works, that is their option; hold
an art auction at the public art events - their option;
So, I have made certain assumptions, indeed, in putting this together;
and I have exercised a lot of "control" in organizing this project; but I also
think that there is a point where I let it go and accept that the participants
take control of what will happen over the next two years. I can help where i am
needed, obviously, but I emphazise, again and again, that once this starts
my primary role is completed and I will be, for the most part,
a bookkeeper. I'll answer to the bureaucracies because I can "do" that
sort of languaging... am I making moral judgements here, by
privileging certain minorities? Yes. I am proud of that. The inter-relations
between mental health and women, and women and mental health, between
marginalized groups and homophobia, and lesbian & gay members of homophobic
groups, these are crucial aspects of community which both groups have
indicated
as valuable to their participation.
In the language of COPs, the participants are apprentice artists,
their mentors are the artists who facilitate the workshops;
however, that can change, as many participants are
more artistic than others, and will participated differently from those
less sure of their skills with the materials; in many ways
the artists are apprenticing to the experiences and needs of the
participants,... in many ways the artists
are apprentices to me, as a mentor, in organizing this,
in securing public money when moeny is so hard
to find; in shifting the focus of art&communities to
the community's needs and desires (this is a significant
difference in artist & community projects, where the artist
is ordinarily given a lump sum to produce
a work of art)
It is possible, of course, that I am deluding myself about the issues of
where I give up control of the project -
but I have decided that activism has more value to the questions
of ontology and epistemology which (allegedly) guide university research than
any specific methodology.
In this way, I think I have given up a certain amount of control,
by abandoning any data-gathering paradigm, in favour of just doing
something that can make a difference
to people I care about, people with whom I identify on a variety of levels,
and people who haven't yet had the kinds of opportunities that this project
is making available.
I don't know if this responds to your question, but it is what I have in
mind when I speak about interactions, and giving up control so that
autonomy
can emerge; and giving up power so that the outcomes
are unpredictable - it's a measure of give and take, knwoing when
to use privilege responsibly, and knowing when to step back and
let things happen, let others take control of what might happen,
and so on. Idealistic? Perhaps. I know I have much to learn.
This has been too long a response, I think, but it's the only way
I can think to ground the questions in something tangible and
fleshy, ...
diane
>diane writes:
>> the unpredictable; chaos; freedom; all those dangerous radical notions
>>that are so antithetical to education and traditionalist concepts of
>>"interaction"... these are what interest me about interactions; giving
>>over any presumptive control of the interaction so that some sort of
>>autonomous action can take place; give the back-and-forth of
>>interactions a
>>wider berth, so to speak, so that not only are the outcomes
>>unpredictable,
>>but so that sometimes you might have to actually run to catch up, or you
>>might have to react spontaneously to something
>>unexpected - what a concept!
>
> jay writes:
>If individual power were equal, and all unequal institutional power
>freely delegated and revocable, the dilemmas would vanish at the level
>of individual action. But they do not
>because many of us have power accumulated, or delegated, under social
>arrangements we don't consider just. If we use our power for moral ends
>as
>we see them, and outside of substantial social consensus, can we weigh
>the
>justice we dispense to some against the injustice that inevitably
>accrues
>to others? Have we the right?
>
>******************************************************
>\\\\\\\\\\\\\You live you learn
>\\\\\\\\\\\You love you learn
>\\\\\\\\\You cry you learn
>\\\\\\\You lose you learn
>\\\\\You bleed you learn
>\\\You scream you learn////////alanis morissette:jagged little pill
>
>******************************************************
>Katherine_Goff who-is-at ceo.cudenver.edu
>http://ouray.cudenver.edu/~kegoff/index.html
"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right"
(Ani Difranco)
*********************************************
diane celia hodges
faculty of graduate studies
(604) 253-4807 centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
university of british columbia,
vancouver, british
columbia, canada V6T 1Z4
dchodges who-is-at interchg.ubc.ca