<snip>
>James/Dewey/Peirce/Mead/ juxtaposed/coordinated-with the feminist
>scholars you pointed Rachel at: what do they-all add up to (if
>add is the right word, multiplicative outcomes especially of
>interest).
>
>mike
I do think this would depend on a context, looking at, say, teacher
education, or curriculum development; or
understanding/comprehending/articulating a more progressive role for
schools in society -
what I have experienced in trying to bring together social theory with
feminist/queer/post-structural theory is the difficulty of articulation -
each theorist relies on specific sets of language practices which posess an
almost taken-for-granted meaning in its respective "schools" of thought;
On the other hand, to "borrow" ideas from one camp as a way of "informing"
the other camp is too superficial: as a hodge-podge text it lacks
responsivity and rather
meanders -
what feminism & queer theory provides, and Jay has pointed out here too, is
an accounting of diversities under conditions of oppression. By the same
token, however, the theorists who work exclusively in areas of "identities"
and "difference" lack pragmatic relevance, the discussions incresingly take
on esoteric tones which leave
that skinny kid in the schoolyard who is bullied and taunted ["faggot!"]
out of the analysis, and removed from any applicative effect of the
questions of difference.
Social theory, on the other hand, usefully describes social systems in
cultural and historical frames; however it lacks a responsible "peopling"
of theory, it is too much about generalizations and not enough about
complexities and exceptions; not enough
about material realities which daily undermine identity formations and
which often forcibly contain participation in the social sphere, reducing
an individual's contributions to confrontations and, eventually,
withdrawal.
Social theory lacks an accounting of social isolation; and theories of
marginal realities lacks an accounting of social relevance and pragmatic
responsibility.
Lave & Wenger's LPP, it seems to me, makes a useful move towards accounting
for, e.g., social isolation by explicitly articulating a theory of
identification through participation; that is, the language of "identity"
is theorized socioculturally -
but there lacks, by the same token, an accounting of difference.
Difference is most easily written in the ways we have been talking, that
is, historically; each body is historically constituted,
in relations to participation and association;
but a queer take on this, for me, needs to account for a Freudian notion of
identification through trauma, that all identifications occur through
traumatic losses, the ego compensates for its object-loss by assuming that
object's identity internally, and this, for better or worse, throughout our
lives;
If it is only through externalizing ourselves that we can reveal our
complex identities, however, it is also only though a compassionate
analysis that "others" can become more adept at understanding the
significance of the ways individuals "externalize" to the world through
speech, writing, gestures, tears, laughter, withdrawal, leadership, etc...
This, what Jay described as "empathy," signals an intersection of social
theory and theories of identity and difference.
I have tried to understand teacher education this way, that is, using
sociocultrual theory to describe the complexities of the context, and the
structures of participation; and this, through an analysis of
identificatory possibilities, that is, those moments in "time" when the
body's history actively participates in an those experiences of
difference-as-isolation;
but to no avail, as yet. The languages don't blend. While each seems to
offer a parallel perspective on a similar situation, the ways to describe
these invariably clash in incomprehensible spaces (is this social theory?
or identity theory?);
what I mean is, finding ways to usefully incorporate both perspectives
theoretically
would require first a lexicon, or a glossary of terms, at least.
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