Diane,
Positive relations is from M Foucault to contrast a notion of power as
soverign or repression. At one point he states those things we characterize
as soverign are merely byproducts. While I am a tad bit concerned about
Foucault's desire for objectivity - reasoning or discourse freed from the
question of who does it beneifit etc, I do think the notion of positive
relations is a useful one.
So, I would not read "positive" so much as in a binary of good and bad, but
an attempt to analyze power utilized at various sites. The way I used it
was similar to practice or "lived experience" in that dominant Discourse
does not merely repress but produce.
In rereading your discussion of ideology I think it points toward the
positive element of power as when you state,
"we are discussing it in an ideological context of "academic meanings,"
meaning that ideology is "out there" but not "in here" where we are
practicing and reproducing the very structures that
are relied upon for maintaining the kinds of shared dominance that makes
ideology ideological in the first place - a paradox of activity, indeed."
Nate
Nate Schmolze
http://www.geocities.com/nate_schmolze/
schmolze@students.wisc.edu
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"Overcoming the naturalistic concept of mental development calls for a
radically new approach
to the interrelation between child and society. We have been led to this
conclusion by a
special investigation of the historical emergence of role-playing. In
contrast to the view
that role playing is an eternal extra-historical phenomenon, we hypothesized
that role playing emerged at a specific stage of social development, as the
child's position in society changed
in the course of history. role-playing is an activity that is social in
origin and,
consequently, social in content."
D. B. El'konin
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