> On cooins as tools of reflection: Note the conditions under which
>you can see two sides of the coin at once. The obvious way is to see
>the edge and one side. But that is the coin seen held at a distance.
>
>What if you bring the coin, vertically, as if standing on a table,
>up close to your nose, right between your eyes. YYou will find there is
>a moment when you can see the "two sides" but when this happen, the
>edge side goes out of focus.
>
>Hmmmmm.
>mike
while heeding Naoki's suggestion that the coin-metaphor is not
especially appropriate, I still can't resist
giving this a go...
I admit I love a good puzzle. This reminds me of Merleau-Ponty's
reflections on a similar limitation, looking at a lamp,
I recall was his example - we can "know" the lamp has a "darkened" side,
the side turned away from us, but if we see the darkened
side, (the side not visible from the lighted side,)
we invariably lose sight of the lighted side of the lamp...
so that we can, perceptually, not actually see the depths
of objects/persons; however, as cultural creatures, we are
organized to "imagine' the other side.
Indeed, this very notion of "imagining" the Other side
is an echo of Pedro's observations about
imperialism, that "what" gets imagined is culturally-defined,
so white imperialism imagines a very different "side"
from, say, a marxist guerilla organization, or a black family
in south-side Chicago -
which suggests, perhaps, that there is no "true" side to any object,
whether a coin or a lamp. The desire to see all the sides at the same time,
is perhaps more illuminating than the darkened side of the lamp...
in that, at what point can we admit that we can't see everything,
can't know everything, can't understand the depth of things
just by looking at them; but that we must engage with the tool,
learn how others use the tool,
and so on.
I'd still suggest that in North America white culture, the two-sided
coin has been maneuvered socially into a game for overcoming
the limitations of the two-sided coin,
and that "tossing a coin" is an example of how the _limitations_ are
transformed into _possibilities_
(two-out-of-three tosses, for example, transforms the two-sides of the coin
into combinations of possible outcomes)
We "know" there are many sides to things which we cannot see,
in this case,
i think perhaps the best way to see three sides of
the coin is to look at it with someone else,
and cultivate a collected interpreation. Socially-design the absent images.
huh.
this stuff reminds me of my philosophy student days, puzzling over
Heideggar's "thingliness of things" for hours...heh heh.
"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right." Ani Difranco
*********************************************
diane celia hodges
faculty of education, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction,
university of british columbia
vancouver, bc canada
snailmail: 3519 Hull Street
Vancouver, BC, Canada V5N 4R8