>. We are always part of history and of our own
>biographies, we are always part of our communities, but there are moments
>when suddently history becomes a part of us, when our life projects intrude
>critically now, when the community-scale phenomena (even 'mass hysterias')
>take over the individual-scale activity.
>
I have been writing recently about the idea that our bodies can be "read"
as historical - that it is necessary to read the self critically and
historically
before we can even begin to read the "texts"/"bodies" of "others" and the
"outside" events which engage persons/
...before we
can even conceptualize "historicity", we need to untangle our own selves
as a work of foregrounding "multiplicities"-in-practice: that is,
not just saying it, but doing it.
these "time-scales" and this idea of "mesogenesis" seem interested in
something similiar,
making cross-sections of history visible, where "history" is understood as
you describe, Jay, as biographically inscribed,
institutionally-organized (we are all institutionalized, after all);
and for me, crucially, as 'evidence' of complicity; and as a method for
raising 'accountability' into a practice, and not an ethical crisis.
this work of "scaling" - I sense a doubled-process here. One is the work
of scaling (quantifying) and the second step is one of
analysing these concurrent scales through/as historical interactions -
but I'm going to poke around these ideas a bit, I think, that is,
"read" more about it - y'all seem to already know what you mean,
and I don't want to keep insisting that folks backtrack for my understanding.
I dare say I don't know what I think right now.
diane
"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right."
Ani Difranco
*********************************
diane celia hodges
faculty of education
university of british columbia
vancouver, bc canada
tel: (604)-253-4807
email: dchodges who-is-at interchange.ubc.ca