>
> Like your friend Kamal I think I've come to terms with this "symbolic
> weapon" ...
> though it started out as a weapon, I think it doesn't always need to be
> so, and can and should be a way to human connectedness...
Angel, I hear occasionally about "an old Chinese curse" to the effect
of "may you live in interesting time." I don't know if it's authentic,
or even if it's really Chinese (input here?), but it speaks to our
situation, don't you think?
I agree totally that we can either give in to the weapons that have been
used against us or we can use them as "tools" for good, for teaching
each other new ways of living in the world, for example.
As a young professional woman, about 20 years ago, I experienced extreme
disillusion, grief, then pain, then rage, when I realized the patriotic
grammar school teachings I'd taken at face value--"everyone's equal,"
"land of opportunity," etc.-- hadn't been intended to include me. It's a
betrayal I'm still reeling from. I spent a lot of time raging at the
white male power structure, and I can still get pretty ticked off at
times, but I've come to see our "interesting" era as one big collaborative
learning experience, as multiple overlapping zpd's in which we're all
gradually learning from each other--whether we want to or not.
The "interesting" thing to me is that because global consciousness is
shifting so rapidly, but along different dimensions in different pockets
of global space, the group socialization processes we go through at
earlier points in our lives prepare many of us (and here I must identify
myself as a member of both oppressed and oppressor groups) to have trouble
rather than ease understanding and accepting our new, expanding world
community and accepting gracefully the new sensitivities what we're
exposed to (that are required of us) later in time.
I just hate that so much pain gets caused along the way, and it's ironic
that so much of it seems to be perpetuated by people who're not even evil
or particularly ill-intentioned, just (relatively) unaware and of course,
when confronted, quite defensive at times. Now I know there are those who
marshall the world's resources with the goal of perpetuating inequalities.
But there's also a way in which I've come to see people and even their
unjust behaviors (this is the struggle, in my classroom and in the world)
as "innocent."
What I struggle with, when simple lack of awareness perpetuates dominance
that causes me or others pain, is how to stay focused on this vision of
their (all of our) "innocence." It helps me to frame the discussion of
oppressive behavior in terms of learning. As with student language
"errors," if I can frame "bad" behavior in terms of what learners don't
YET understand or can't YET do-- rather than in terms of bad and good,
right and wrong, it gives me new strategies for dealing with them.
Even when people, those in power, resist or work against increased
equality, increased sensitivity, I'm trying to frame that in terms of
resistance to learning. It keeps me from becoming so oppositional myself
in response. (This is all stuff I learned from the collaborative
teacher-research analyses I wrote about yesterday).
I'd be interested in how you and others on this list see these issues.
How you "understand" oppression and resistance to opprression personally
(vis a vis your own feelings and experience) and theoretically. And how
all of this relates to socially and/or linguistically (visually, etc.)
mediated learning. When we step back and look at dominance, pain,
racism, structural inequities, etc. through our theoretical learning
perspective, what do we see?
And what are the ethical implications of all this?
I've talked far too long. I'll get off now and listen for a few weeks.
Marie