AN INTERIOR DIALOGUE.
" Oh, no! It's happened again! My favourite listserv is collapsing yet again
around the politics of hegemony. And just because that idiot has no sense of
his social context (I wonder what happens when he goes to parties?)"
" Don't blame him. All he did was make visible the contradictions that
already existed. He didn't MAKE the context. It was already there. It's
already everywhere. You've known that since 1963. In any event you know
better than to get involved. You are a white male. There is absolutely
nothing you can legitimately say about how women experience this list. To
try to do so is simply to prove Elizabeth Wardle's point."
" I COULD say that Eric is more marginalised on this site than anyone else
of either gender."
" On what basis could you say that? Don't be stupid - keep out of it and
save yourself grief. Anyway, he almost certainly did it on purpose to get
the result he's getting. He's no fool on that level. All you are is a
subject in his personal experiment. An unethical experiment, to be sure, but
them's the breaks in communities like this."
" I just find it hard to sit back and watch the 1994 story all over again
without trying to do something."
" Sometimes doing nothing is the best way to help. Anyway, what exactly is
it you would be trying to help happen? The maintenance of a community in
which you are already privileged?"
" I think that it just as much a hegemony of the American academic community
as it is of white males. When I'm feeling especially sour I sometimes feel
it is just one set of steps in the delicate dance of American tenure. AND an
English language hegemony that doesn't tolerate second language stumblings.
So I can accept I'm privileged in one category, but not in other hegemonic
categories. Remember all those people we met in Helsinki last October? Told
us that they always read xmca but never contribute because it is too risky.
Males AND females - but what they had in common was that they were all
Finns. Isn't that a common characteristic of all hegemonies? In any
community a dominant hegemony is blind to the character of its own
dominance? Isn't that what Yrjo means by invisibility?"
" Well, that is EXACTLY why you can't say anything as a white male. And
anyway, you know where you always get with that American hegemony line. The
same thing that happens to diane. Lots of sympathetic mutterings and
absolutely no change in practice. The ones who really care start talking to
you privately outside xmca. I wonder if that is diane's experience as well.
It's all about er.... the plane of action versus the plane of activity."
" Well I could try to give a bit of data to inform the conversation. I've
just realised why I want to say something - if THIS community can't handle
multivoicedness and the impulse to hegemony, then what hope is there? As for
that last point - where else would I be able to discover those people?"
" So that's your motive sorted. But what do you mean by data?"
" Er.. well. I've signed on for the Wenger Communities of Practice workshop,
and there are 23 women and 19 men."
" What does that tell anyone?"
" Not much, I suppose. Hang on, I've got a thought. Wait a
minute.............. Here we are. xmca archives.
September 1995 (that's the first month back up after the 1994-95 gender
hegemony collapse).
Male postings 106. Male posters 25. (Mike Cole - 34 postings)
Female postings 53. Female posters 14.
December 2001.
Male postings 115. Male posters 21. (Mike Cole - 41 postings).
Female postings 47. Female posters 11."
" If anything that supports the white, male hegemony case. But it's pretty
indeterminate either way. Look - you're not going to anything stupid like
press the send button on this are you? Are you? AAAaaargghhh............"
Phillip Capper,
Centre for Research on Work, Education and Business Ltd. (WEB Research),
Level 9
142 Featherston Street
(PO Box 2855)
WELLINGTON
New Zealand
Ph: +64 4 499 8140
Fx: +64 4 499 8395
Mb: +64 021 519 741
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 11 2002 - 09:22:33 PST