Re: re: refusal and resistance

From: Katherine Goff (Katherine_Goff@ceo.cudenver.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 26 2001 - 06:17:14 PDT


Martin writes:
>I think I go beyond that. I think that people are resistors even though
>they themselves would not ascribe resistance to their own behaviour. That
>is why I would describe criminality as resistance. It is an act that goes
>outside the prevailing norms either by necessity or choice. I might
>wonder if one is "culturalised" into a "criminal culture" and would tend
>to learning zero in Batesonian terms that it is not "resistance".
>
>Maybe its the physicist in me but the opposing force needs no activator in
>itslef... but then Newton was no sociologist.

would it help to bring in Foucault?
didn't he argue that the creation of a power structure also creates its
resistence?
and that resistence never destroys the structure of power being resisted?
but what about transformative activities?
i see transformation (or transversal to use Jay's term) as different from
resistance, but not very clear on just how.
if the actions change the power structure, does that make it
transformative?
or do these questions mean something different when looking at the
activity from the rebel's perspective, from the oppressor's perspective,
and from the outsider's perspective? or when looking at the activity
system?

Bateson was no mechanist, either, when it came to living activity systems
(a.k.a. human behavior)
did he transform mainstream discourse? or resist the language of the
clock-work universe?

kathie
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Words are the thunders of the mind.
Words are the refinement of the flesh.
Words are the responses to the thousand curvaceous moments---
     we just manage it---
     sweet and electric, words flow from the brain
     and out the gate of the mouth.

We make books of them, out of hesitations and grammar.
We are slow, and choosy.
This is the world.
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                                            Mary Oliver - The Leaf and the
Cloud
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Katherine_Goff@ceo.cudenver.edu
http://ceo.cudenver.edu/~katherine_goff/index.html



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