At 12:46 PM 1/26/2002 -0800, Mike wrote:
>I do not know what could be done to make Mary feel as if it were worth
>her time to participate in xmca. I value her work and contributions
>and have tried to demonstrate that in my public behavior. But I cannot
>avoid the apparently unforgivalbe circumstand of being a satraight,
>white male. I cannot control who contributes to this discussion.
Being a straight white male is not unforgivable. What I find unforgivable
is straight white males who are so unaware of their privileges as straight
white males that they cannot see how those privileges are maintained. This
sort of joke telling at the expense of others is one way privilege is
maintained. Being of aware of that and then trying to change one's own
personal contribution to the hegemony is all that can be asked of anyone.
>What interested you most about the Wenger discussion so far? To me
>what has seemed like an assist to my own development is Mary and Diane's
>emphasis on exclusionary practices that are the underside of every
>community crossing the Vann and Bowker discussion of the movement
>of COP from object to instrument in its change of context from
>critical social science theory to business op. Now it seems as if
>we cannot live with our differences.
Exclusionary practices, boundaries, peripheral participation vs. LEGITIMATE
peripheral participation and who gets to decide which is which...all this
interests me. And Mary and Diane have eloquently pointed out the difficulties.
Our current discussion of jokes is another thread in the conversation,
IMHO. On a list that is male-dominated and where few women rarely speak,
where eminent academic names regularly appear (and are almost always male),
jokes made by men about women serve as exclusionary practices. Women who
want to participate, even peripherally, can either suck it up or take it
up. And how does a peripheral participant ever take up such a problem
"legitimately" when who counts as a LEGITIMATE peripheral participant gets
decided by those on the inside, otherwise known as FULL participants? Maybe
Diane considers herself a full participant on the XMCA listserv, but it is
quite clear to me as a lurker that her posts tend to disrupt the direction,
tend to look different and address different topics. Her posts aren't like
the posts of other full participants. Yes, AT notes that conflict and
disturbance is a regular part of any activity system. But is that
disturbance caused by an insider (in which case it could be really
threatening) or an outsider (in which case, it might be annoying, like a
little gnat)?
Has anyone read Jacques Berlinerblau's account of the _Black Athena_
debate? He argues that Martin Bernal was able to upset so many classicists
(whereas the Afrocentrists just got ignored) because he was an insider; a
true full participant.
Thus, Mary, Diane, and I might be really irritating visitors or peripheral
participants, but not legitimate peripheral participants or full
participants, until we have demonstrated that we know what you know, can
talk like you talk, do what you do, find funny what you find funny? But
what if we don't find that epistemology or that mode of interaction
inviting or legitimate, but we still are interested in what AT has to
offer? Will the gatekeepers ever see us as full participants and will we
ever feel as though we are full participants? Will we ever even try to
become full participants (I know I rarely even try to be a peripheral
participant). Or must we, in order to participate fully and be recognized
as full participants, start our own listserv and name ourselves as the
judges and gatekeepers, the female full participants in the female AT
community of practice?
This is not a sarcastic question, I am trying to get at how people become
participants in communities of practice and what happens when they want to
participate but aren't willing to do so in officially sanctioned ways.
Elizabeth
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found
out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them."
~Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852
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