xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>Tatiana translates: (and beautifully, i think)
>>"We don't have the power to hear
>> Our words echoing in other minds and souls, --
>
kathie responds:
>
>but don't we have to act as if we did?
>how compatible is this perception (one i share, by the way)
>with a belief in socially constructed knowledge? or activity theory?
socially constructed, to me, often comes in the contexts of shared
conversations,
not how we hear other's words in our thoughts,
but how we listen to what others are trying to communicate to us...
>
>
>if i don't speak up, contradict, disillusion someone
>when they tell me what "we" are doing, or why, or what the "truth" is,
>it seems that i am supporting not only the statement that i might disagree
>with,
>but the speaker's belief that others share this perception of truth.
this idea that we can share a perception of truth is perplexing to me,
since it is such an intimate variable in everyone's lives:
there are common spaces of shared meaning, but the speaker's beliefs
can be that all she is doing is trying to communicate her self through
words, not transmit meanings,
but participate in the work of understanding.
>
>
>so, i come back to silence
>as a response
>as a kind of complicity (but, oh! there are dangerous echoes there!)
silence means different things for different people: for me, it is what
keeps gays and queers
trapped outside, beaten up, it is what enables incest and hate crimes,
what permits the adults of the world to fondle and molest young shildren
with the threat "don't tell" -
ti think silence is complicated, more than a response it is a punishment,
often connected to shame, humiliation, fear, and damaged feelings.
perhaps we need to expect / accept differences as part of these systems of
shame and fear,
within ourselves and from each other?
diane
>
>
>what i am hoping for is some alternate route
>than through the narrow, churning waters between the rock and the hard
>place . . .
>
**********************************************************************
:point where everything listens.
and i slow down, learning how to
enter - implicate and unspoken (still) heart-of-the-world.
(Daphne Marlatt, "Coming to you")
***********************************************************************
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
==================== ==================== =======================
university of colorado, denver, school of education
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