Kathie says,
>is there some way we, as the hodge podge, patchwork community we are, can
negotiate some
>self-organizing practices that will be more inclusive and supportive of all
who we are?
Kathie's comment gets as close to a XCMA objective that we can hope for. I
think its an objective in an "ideal" motivating sense in that it is
something that must be continually negotiated. For example, the posting from
Eva awhile back pointed toward the need of multiple x-lists because the
discussions were often dominating and not a supportive or "developing" place
for all involved. My take on looking at some of the x-org messages was
that the multiple x-lists over time also contradicted the objective in
certain ways. I believe somewhere in the archives was a comment by Bruce
(webmaster) as to how the subgroups created a buffer of sorts from the
political issues involved. In some ways it reified the cultural,
insitutional, and paradigm boundries that XLCHC and XCMA were attempting to
overcome.
I guess what I'm saying is there is at times this sense of losing
something - but it seems that historically the objective has been a
continual and important struggle. That there is this "environment" or
"community" that in itself is inclusive and supportive to all is probally
less than realistic. We can take a "progressive" reading of the archives and
maybe conclude the xchc or xcma project has failed, but that ignores the
importance of the dialogue or re-negotiation of the object.
The emerging traditions of public / private are interesting. The tradition
when I first began XCMA was the discussions should be public and the private
messages detoured from the object of having a collective dialogue. Many, as
with the silence dialogue from awhile back, mentioned private messages of
what someone wrote were important messages of support and sometimes
facilitated confidence for later postings to the collective. There is of
course a dark side - a private message can be more blunt, attacking, and
violent than a collective one. There is a level of anonymity involved which
can give us a license to say things in private that we wouldn't say in
public. Now, like many others I have developed something that could be
referred to as friendship with members and like any friendship that develops
within a community it will extend from that community, like when my son
invites a child to sleep over night. What does not seem appropriate is
using private messages to communicate in a way that would be deemed
inappropriate in the collective community. We all hear how inappropriate it
is to humilate a child in public, lets say in a classroom setting, but
humiliation in a private setting is no less humiliating. The boundry of
private / public is less than clear cut, the private impacts the public and
vice versa in both positive and negative ways.
It might not be that bad of an idea to make an XCMA object, rules of
engagement, and sense of history more explicit in some way. Maybe we should
have some "shoulds" in that communities don't just happen, they are made.
Nate
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