Critical Discourse Analysis

I've been reading van Dijk's description of CDA (Critical Discourse Analysis), a form of "politically committed" linguistic research, aimed at "resisting social inequality". I'm realising that academics who "do" CDA are also performing a particular identity, one that is imbued with moral rectitude, and are attached to self-identifying as "dissident" (van Dijk's own word).

I find this kinda problematic because I don't want to be forever "dissident", I actually want the world to change in the direction of my ideological commitments. Despite declaring "solidarity and cooperation with dominated groups", CDA analysts are paradoxically complicit in reifying the position of the "dominated," and their own position as the "good" supporters of the dominated.

Perhaps I don't have a sufficiently convincing argument on this point, perhaps I have merely a collection of anecdotes and reflections. But one telling point is a footnote: "Space limitations prevent discussion of ... how dominated groups discursively challenge or resist the control of powerful groups." ... Ah, yes those perpetual "space limitations" that mean that "dominated groups", as always, are not accorded discursive space. That, surely, is perpetuating the problem?? As Said (quoting Marx) put it so well in Orientalism: "They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented." CDA continues this veritable tradition of constructing oneself as benevolent, well-disposed towards those "dominated groups" while continuing to take up space - which is itself a form of "domination"!

language, polysemy and disambiguation

So, I've been reading Richard Dyer's brilliant book White. He writes so much that is useful to what I'm doing, but what I want to flag here is his idea (contra my most recent post) that race has historically been constructed as "the conflation of body and temperament" (1997:18) - that is, it hasn't just been understood as a physicality, it has been imbued with meaning in regards to personal qualities too. I think my taxonomy still holds, though, it's just that today, we are encouraged to talk about "cultural diversity" as a euphemism for race, and this is meant, somehow, to be colour-blind.

Anyway, the other thing that's been on my mind is the way in which so many of the words I want to use specifically to disambiguate between physicality and personality are actually polysemously related to both. E.g:
(i) pathological: I wanted to refer to mental distress as being constructed as biological (by Beyond Blue and co.), and thus removed from any sense of personal failure. I wanted to use the term "de-pathologized" to mean that mentally distressed people are (re)defined as ill rather than personally flawed. I mean, for example, the way the term pathological is used in phrases like "pathological liar" or "pathologically late". Well, then, I examined the term pathological and realised it is used in a medical sense to describe disease - that is, pathology is inherently about biology! AAARGH! This ambiguity that I want to draw attention to is embedded in the very polysemic nature (ie multiple meanings) of the word pathological - it can refer to both biology and personality, albeit in different contexts.
(ii) similarly, I am still seeking a word to contrast with physicality in my 4-way grid. I've considered personality, temperament, disposition, character, affiliation ... the problem is largely that I want a word that makes sense both for individual personal traits and collective affiliational traits. I thought maybe temperament could be a good option, since that's what Dyer used in the quote above. But then, Wiki tells me this:
Temperament is defined as that part of the personality which is genetically based. Along with character, and those aspects acquired through learning, the two together are said to constitute personality. (from entry on Temperament, accessed today)
I keep finding terms that have been used by psychology or psychiatry or medicine in ways that biologise concepts that are also commonly understood in other ways.

Ok, that's all for now :>

re-evaluating non-normative behaviour/identities

OK, so it's been forever since I wrote, but there has been some progress!

I'm working through an idea about categories of stigma (or devalued difference, or non-normativity), based on Erving Goffman's seminal work Stigma (1963).

My theory is that different types of stigma can be categorized, as being one of:
*individual-physical (e.g. depression, if it's understood as chemical imbalance in the brain)
*individual-dispositional (e.g. criminal behaviour, if it's understood as bad behaviour)
*collective-physical (e.g. "racial" characteristics, or congenital deafness)
*collective-dispositional (e.g. political beliefs, religious affiliations, cultural affiliations)
So, I arrange this in a 4-way grid (which I can't construct on this blog, but you get the idea)

My theory is that advocates for particular "devalued identity groups" (for want of a better term) try to "position" behaviours/identities in either the individual-physical quadrant, or in the collective-dispositional quadrant. These two quadrants, I argue are where positive valuation of an identity/behaviour is most often attributable, and I call this a form of "rehabilitation" of particular identities.

So, for example, we get anti-stigma campaigns around mental illness (e.g. Beyond Blue) arguing that depression is an illness, a chemical imbalance in the brain (and therefore individual-physical). This understanding contrasts with Goffman, for whom mental illness was categorizable as a "blemish of individual character" (and therefore individual-dispositional). Argualy, there's still the potential today for depressive behaviour to be understood as dispositional (e.g. someone is just 'lazy', 'grumpy', 'selfish', 'unmotivated', etc). I interpret contemporary anti-stigma campaigns as pro-actively countering such a potential understanding, and (re)positioning depression in the individual-physical domain.

Conversely, discourses of "cultural diversity" position "race" within discourses of "culture",. This arguably (re)positions what could be understood as a biological/physical characteristic, as a dispositional characteristic. (In my interpretation of Goffman, he positions race as collective-physical).

Contemporary understandings of homosexuality are interesting because it is sometimes biologized (e.g. the gay gene), and hence located as individual-physical, and sometimes politically/collectively understood (e.g. the woman-identified woman of lesbian feminism, the socially constructed non-normative sexualities of queer theory). Arguably, these latter conceptions are collective-dispositional. Goffman's understanding of homosexuality , like mental illness, would be described as individual-dispositional; in his time it was both criminal and pathological.

And here's where I see the most interesting link to today: there are forms of deviant behaviour that still today understandable as individual-dispositional - prototypically due to either bad character (as evidenced by criminality or other anti-social behaviour or psychopathological irrationality, and I mean here pathological not in the technical sense of disease, but in the folk sense of "bad in the head"). Now of course, there are intellectual/political understandings that challenge these characterisations (e.g. esp. in the field of criminology!), but I strongly believe that these two categories are the prototypical examples of what I call "unrehabilitated" identity.

The texts that I am looking at often distance their particular, "rehabilitable" identity from these categories, e.g.
-asylum seekers are described as "not criminal"
-depression is described as biological (and hence not "pathologically bad")

Conversely, a behaviour/identity can be discredited by (re)positioning it as individual-dispositional e.g. the G20 protesters are framed as (individual) criminals, rather than political dissidents acting collectively. Finally, there are also some dissenters/outsiders who valorize their individual-dispositional "badness" e.g. the "outlaw", the "queer radical," etc.

What do you think??

Who is the Other?

I just realised now that the Other as a concept can be prominalised as either "you" or "them." This differential pronominalisation has massive consequences for the ethical relationship between the Self and Other.

If the relationship is "you and me/us," then there is a connection, a dialogue, arguably an ethical relationship. This is a relationship between two subjectivities.

By contrast, if the relationship is "them and me/us," this is an objectifying relationship, one that does not entail dialogue, relationship or connection.

I read the following passage in an article I was reading for my thesis (Riggins, 'The rhetoric of Othering'): "Self and external Other may be understood as unique individuals (I and You) or as collectives that are thought to share similar characteristics (We and They)." I think Riggins here is trying to contrast the idea of individuals vs collectives (singular vs plural), but in shifting from the singular to the plural, he also changed person - from second to third. This slippage seems remarkable to me, but is perhaps common.

I wonder if this has a relationship with how people perceive Others - like you know how prejudiced people sometimes individualise the specific Others that they know, in contrast to the amorphous Them? So for example, you get sentiments like "I don't like Asians, I know Michael is Asian, but he's different to the rest of them" or "Homosexuals are such and such, but Jane is OK."

I've been thinking for a while now that part of the process of de-Othering is establishing relationships of dialogue, changing "us/them" relationships into "us/you."

timetabling my life

For the past fortnight, I've been time-tabling my time on study days (Monday-Friday). It was something I've known for a while would help to increase my productivity, but at a cost of sponteneity and a sense of freedom. I used to do it in the later years of high school, and it worked well, but meant that I wasn't very spontaneous or social. So for several months I resisted the idea of getting back into that way of being. But I realised that a lack of structure also had its own associated stresses for me - ironically, I was increasingly coming to feel like I had no control over my time, because every minute could be thesis time! And, my notes and texts and forms were all getting jumbled on my desk, and it was all seeming to get more and more out of control.

I think the main problem is that I LOVE to read, and I LOVE to garden, and I LOVE to make things, and I LOVE to hang out with my loved ones, ... well the point here is that there are many things that I love, and they could theoretically fill all my time. But doing a Phd also involves things that are less fun, like writing up my notes (way less interesting than reading new material), organising my materials (again, less interesting than other stuff), etc. So, some things simply weren't getting done - there was always something more fun to do.

I was getting stressed, though, cos these "unfinished" things were all mentally filed away somewhere in my head as "things I should have done." It's like that some people can work quite happily like that, either getting through with a degree of disorganisation, or just knowing how to work things out for themselves. But it was driving me nuts!

So I've been experimenting with making lists every morning (what a treat! I LOVE making lists! ticking things off is such a delight!), dividing up my time, usually with a few hours of unstructured time (before 9, around lunch and early evening) to do whatever I please. That allows me a degree of sponteneity, and if something comes up during "work" time, I have some flexibility to shift time around. And, I take notes at the end of each day on how my timetabling worked out in practice (e.g. "Need a full half-hour to get ready for and then get to pilates;" "needed two-hour block, not one-hour block, for writing", etc).

It's working so far. I feel like I have MORE time to do what I want. Which is cool. We'll see if after a while it feels draconian or imprisoning. But I'm definitely getting more work done and my stress levels are way better, so that's it's thumbs up so far.

territorial propriety

Rey Chow, an American cultural theorist with roots in Hong Kong, writes that she speaks from a position as someone who does "not have claims to territorial propriety or cultural centrality." I'd never really thought about the spatial nature of cultural marginality before.

But when I think about it, I recognise this in myself as a queer, and in the context of disability too. For example, one of my texts claims "this is our community" referring to disabled people; but in doing so, the text reflects the fact that this could be doubted; it's kinda like John Howard (was it?) declaring to a room of Greek-Australians that "I see before me Australians". Like anyone else present doubted this??

Historically, disabled people have been socially excluded spatially, like non-Anglos have been, internally contained in institutions, and prevented from entering the country through immigration policies (that continue to this day to specifically exclude disabled people as potential migrants).

It's less clear how queers are spatially excluded. As a queer, I read in the papers today that Howard continues to assert that people in same-sex relationships should not have equal rights as de facto heteros; Romana the queer officer at UMPA wrote a great article in the recent UMPA mag about how queers are excluded on campus through the heteronormativity of the environment- that is, even where homophobia isn't as overt as Howard wishes it were, there is an exclusion through a lack of visibility, or overt inclusion.

By the way, as a complete aside, one of the women in a reading group I'm in said yesterday that the Vietnamese expression for "Vietnamese-Australian" is "Australian with roots in Vietnam". Isn't that interesting? I think it conveys a relationship with Vietnam and Vietnamese identity that is quite different from the essentialising expression "Vietnamese-Australian."

-isms and -centrisms

I've been thinking about how there's no word for "disablism" comparable to sexism, racism and homophobia. But, there is a concept-word ableism (comparable to androcentrism, ethnocentrism/Eurocentrism/Anglocentrism, and heterocentrism). And yet, the texts that I have been collecting for my thesis that theoretically challenge "disablism" don't challenge ablism, in fact they tend to reproduce it. I think that's likely to be one of the observations that I explore - the fact that challenging the "-ism" often takes the form of reinforcing the "-centrism".
So, for example, there's this poster I've been analysing (you might have seen it around, especially at train stations, it's pretty common). It has two men-of-colour standing next to each other in a train, with their faces visible, and two separate white women sitting with their faces turned away or heavily cropped. The text says "We're working for our future. Just like you." I'm arguing that this text creates an (objectified) "us," who is coloured, and a (subjectified) "you" (the viewer) who is white; the poster tries to combat racism - stigmatisation of coloured people - by saying they are the same as white people. This reinforces the centrality and even the "normality" of whiteness. It also serves to erase any distinctiveness of people of colour (as either a group, or as many different groups. In fact, I'd argue that the grouping of the two men together (with quite visible "racial" differences) contrasts with the separateness of the two white women - suggesting a sense of "them" (coloured people) being a homogenous group, while white people are allowed to be individuals). The text reinforces Anglo-centrism, while trying to challenge racism.

Another poster (it's less common and it took me ages to find one I could photograph) has the icon for a disabled person, but holding a tennis racquet. The main text says "See the person, not the disability" while much smaller text says "Disability means possibility" Again, while this text is obviously trying to combat "disablism" - stigmatisation of disabled people - it does so by reproducing ableism. It does this in several ways. It objectifies disabled people (who are the person seen, not the person seeing), while subjectifying non-disabled people (because those with disabilities don't just see disability, they experience/live it!). It also tells the viewer to ignore any distinctiveness associated with disability, erasing disability culture(s), disabled experiences and disabled perspectives on the world. And, the word "possibility" to me is like Yooralla's "People helping people achieve" - what is "possible" seems to be things commonly associated with ability - like playing tennis. It reminds me of something I read that suggested the internet was created by people on the aspergers-autism spectrum, to meet their needs (intellectual and communicative). What this idea opened up for me was the idea that people with disabilities aren't just impaired able-bodies, who are able to do things that able-bodied people do, but not so well (unless they are super-crips, as Eli Clare calls them) - disability is a mode of inhabiting the world that has various limitations and various possibilities - possibilities that aren't immediately obvious to people whose main experience of disability is ableism. I believe that the experiences of disabled people are a necessary part of an elaborated understanding what disability can mean.

maxim of relevance?

I've been thinking about a particular element of thesis lately - the idea that when you state something, you invoke its opposite. So, for example, when you say something like "Disability no barrier to artistic ability" (as one of my texts does), this invokes the suggestion that "disability is a barrier to artistic ability" or perhaps something like "some people think that disability is a barrier to artistic ability". I just realised that one way of explaining this is with recourse to Grice's maxim of relevance.

OK, quick crash course in pragmatics. A guy called Paul Grice suggested (in 1975) that people basically tend the follow these rules in normal conversations:
(i) Maxim of Quality: do not say what you believe to be false or what you lack evidence for;
(ii) Maxim of Quantity: be as informative as required (but neither more or less so);
(iii) Maxim of Relevance: be relevant
(iv) Maxim of Manner: avoid obscurity, ambiguity, prolixity, etc. be orderly.
He argued that people don't always follow these maxims, but when they do, they can be understood as "violating" one (or more). So, for example, if you do say something that is apparently irrelevant, the hearer assumes that there is some reason for this - eg. that the statement is actually relevant (somehow), or that the speaker is intending something else to be understood.

Anyway, I've been thinking that the statement "Disability no barrier to artistic ability" is interpretable as consistent with the maxim or relevance only in a context where there is a prior assumption that "some people think that disablity is a barrier" ...

anyway, Jan's pestering me (in a lovely way) to walk Jessie with her, so I'll leave it there ...

eugnics and emancipation

I've been reading SO many of those "Introducing ..." books in the past month or so. I'm just finishing postmodernism today. Well "finishing postmodernism" is perhaps a slightly misleading phrasing - after all, I'm actually just finishing a picture book with few words that briefly presents basic ideas in postmodernist writings. Anyway, I'm really inspired by bits of postmodernist theory, mainly the scepticism towards metanarratives - in some ways, its similar to what I called "political agnosticism" in my previous post. I like to remain open to new ways of understanding the world (some of you may remember that was part of the thinking behind "Grey").

I'm also realising that my thesis is basically arguing that eugenicist and emancipatory ideologies have more in common than they would like to admit. It's a bit Hage-esque - Hage argues that tolerant cosmopolitans and intolerant racists are united in their sense of (Foucaultian) governmentality - or entitlement to control. This is despite the fact that tolerant cosmopolitans like to understand themselves as fundamentally opposed to intolerant racists (in fact, arguably their identity is constructed oppositionally to "racists"). I'm arguing that both eugenicist and emancipatory (or progressive) ideologies are predicated on similar beliefs:
(i) the ontological existence of categories of people,
(ii) extant hierarchies between them, (although, of course they are opposed in their ethical appraisal of these hierarchies);
(iii) that they have a governmental right to control this hierarchy (Hage's central idea);
(iv) and a fundamental sense of identity related to engaging in this control.

I'm not arguing a moral or ethical equivalence (or course), for one is horrific, the other is tolerable. But I disagree with premise (iii), and in fact, I think that those who engage in "defending the Other" are often profounding misguided and destructive. It's especially problematic when many of the arguments used by progressives to respond to existing hierarchies [ie. (ii) in my list above] arguments like "queers aren't really any different to straights", or "disabled people need pity and help from non-disabled people" silence the Other and serve more to construct the identity of the progressive as Good than to do anything "for" the Other.

Of course, this is all complicated by the discourses produced by the Other themselves, which often parallel those that I am critiquing. See, on the one hand, I valorise "self-definition", but on the other I privilege my own definitions!

political agnosticism

i've been thinking lately about political identities. in lots of ways, i'm a lefty. but i resist being a lefty in the sense that it is an inherenly oppositional identity, one that makes sense only in opposition to conservatives/right-wingers.

Barack Obama said something that really struck a chord with me:
"I'm considered a progressive Democrat. But if a Republican or conservative or libertarian or free-marketeer has a better idea, I am happy to steal ideas from anybody - and in that sense I'm agnostic."

Certainly, inasmuch as political identity is ascribed, I'm a lefty. Inasmuch as political identity is tribal, I'm a lefty with some hesitations ... I really like Obama's idea of agnosticism.

nerd pride

i've been tossing ideas in my head for the past few days for new t-shirt ideas. i've just gotten into making my own t-shirts. the first one says "curls just wanna have fun" and has a gorgeous image of curls.

anyway, so this one is going to say "NERD PRIDE", and will be made from material sewn on to a t-shirt. the thinking behind it all is that i've identified as a nerd for a really long time - first in high school when i gave up being a rebel in year 8. i discovered this bunch of people who had fun without graffi-ing, smoking and who actually did their homework. apparently i delightedly identified us all as nerds, although noone else delighted in the label (thanks allie for bringing that repressed memory back up!).

then for several years i lapsed, or rather was a nerd but without self-identifying as such. but now that i'm doing my thesis, i'm reclaiming the label. i had forgotten about my earlier identification with it, but now that the connection has been made, it's feeling like a reclamation of my own past.

but there's an added layer of amusement for me. one of the central parts of my thesis is the idea that declaring something positive about a group in fact simultaneously declares its negation. so, when one says "nerd pride", this intrinsically suggests that nerds are not something to be proud of. in my data for my thesis, there's a line from a disability charity poster that says "because this is our community." the very act of declaring this evokes the idea that this might not be "their" community. typically, these posters assume a pre-existing rejection and are sincerely trying to oppose that rejection. but, i'm arguing, it's not that simple. anyway, before i go too far into my thesis in this post, i am amused that this t-shirt references my thesis and in so doing proves my nerd pride :>

Derrida and undecidability (or the stranger)

OK, so i've been foraying into Derrida's ideas. At the moment, I'm getting my head around the idea of the "undecidables", those elements that disrupt binary categories (e.g. trans/intersex/androgynes "between" the categories of male and female), and how these undecidables undermine conceptual stability. Well, in the case of trans and intersex experiences, there's often an effort to assign categorical membership to resolve the "undecidability", so that a person is assigned (or actively participates in the assignment of) a sex/gender.

Anyway, a line that intrigued me was "between friends and enemies, the stranger".

I am interested in this idea of the "stranger" - one who is irreconcilably different to oneself, but with no sense of hostility. The reason for my interest is that I think this is a useful way of approaching socio-cultural diversity - how does one coexist with strangers? I think that often those who are different to the hegemonic norm (e.g. queers, people of color, disabled people) are often either framed as enemies or friends (or perhaps not in the case of disabled people who are infantilised and perhaps beyond this binary?). I mean specifically the rhetoric of well-meaning progressives who frame those who are different as friends, in the sense that they are "like us". This negates "their" differences from "us" as essentially meaningless. I am interested in how one can ethically recognise that another is (potentially) a stranger and coexist. I say potentially a stranger because some people do seek to assimilate into the hegemonic norms, and don't identify themselves as existing beyond those norms. I think radical queers often take pleasure in declaring their "enemy" status to the hegemonic norms, partly just for the pleasure of the act of rebellion, partly in order to carve a space for themselves that works for their desires, and partly challenging the power of the norms. I get it, and live my life partly as a radical queer, and I also live my life partly as an assimilationist, eager to carve a space that is not founded on perpetual struggle; but I strive to understand how to welcome the grey, how to relate to others without reducing their differences (from me) and assuming they are "just like me" and without hostility. How to be with the stranger.

vulnerability

just read an email that describes children in public hospitals as "the most vulnerable in our society". There's a link between (perceptions of) vulnerability and paternalism - the word clearly comes from the idea of "fathering", today has elements of treating someone as if they need protection. i was thinking about the links between "Muslim women" and "Aboriginal women and children" and "disabled people" and "children dying of AIDS in Africa" in the progressive imagination. I think they are united in vulnerability, and a sense that "we" can "help" "them", even that "they" "need" "our" "help". Of course, it isn't just progressives who frame these Others in this way, it's fairly common for the enlightened privileged, but I want to problematise how we (privileged progressives) do this framing, because I think we don't get that we are colonising and degrading.

ungrounded

last week i met up with an academic (sara wills, australia centre) whose academic approach was so similar to mine (or perhaps overlapping) that she invited me to a reading group she is in. i was so terribly chuffed at the time, and today i just got an email with suggestions for readings the group might like to undertake.

WOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWW!!!!!

oh my goddess this is like the most exciting thing for a nerd like me. so, anyway, yes, 10 minutes ago i was feeling all grounded and stuff, but this is like totally exciting!

i think i might work on my "nerd" t-shirt idea tonight as a celebration. :>

I books for beginners

i've been reading a few of those books "Introducing ..." and "(so-and-so) for beginners" lately.

even though i've basically done 2 arts degrees (and half a law degree), there are enormous gaps in my understanding of what i would consider "fundamentals." i've been filling in (the enormous) gaps in my understanding of Foucault, Butler, Derrida, concepts like "the gaze", postcolonial theory, critical race studies, ... there are a lot of things I've done some reading in, but not enough to say i know even basics of the area.

as an aside, it's funny that i even structure the world like this - into "fundamentals" and other stuff. in many ways it's so elitist and hierarchical and often putting dead white men (or someone similar) up on pedastools, as if their thoughts are more valuable ... and yet all of those i am devouring at the moment are radically anti-establishment; in some ways they are the establishment of the "counter establishment." i think it's deeply ironic and anti-democratic, but yet i am nourishing my intellectual appetite.

the personal irony for me here is that when i first enrolled in uni, i wanted to study "the fundamentals" but i was very oriented towards the establishment's values - i studied Classics (Latin), Pure Mathematics, Philosophy, English literature (Shakespeare, of course, with some Modern classics too), and chemistry (it's not Physics, but it was what i excelled at). Pretty quickly, my foundations were shaken and I realised that English lit was full of postmodernism (which I couldn't get my head around until several years later), I took a linguistics course (in order to learn better grammar so I could understand Latin - and by second year I had added Ancient Greek and Old English to my repertoire), but instead of being told what's right and wrong, linguistics opened up a whole new, critical, world. then I got beaten up by cops at a protest, fell in lust with chicks and gradually realised that the establishment is boring, got involved in activism, later got burnt by activism, ...

anyway, here i am returning to my roots in some ways. because i do thrive on rigorous intellectual engagement. in some ways i miss maths and chem, the part of me that delights in brilliance, whether i myself am involved, or whether it's vicarious (like reading other people's brilliant ideas). but today my intellectual engagement is intrinsically coupled with an ethical awareness and commitment. At the heart of my ethical values is diversity, and here's where I am challenged - for many of the ideas that i am enthralled by are elitist ... my flash of inspiration in this thought has just fled me and i am left groping for coherence ... i think this all has something to do with class, which i confess i don't have much insight into. i am profoundly middle class in my orientation, passions (classical music anyone?), aesthetics, ambitions, ...

anyway, i have (physical) pain that i need to go deal with now. thanks for reading :>

a long absence

dear blog follower(s)

it's been a while. over a month. in breaking news, i just did a night of facebooking (mainly stalking exes, I confess). I managed to get my own birthday wrong (well facebook did that) ... it was fun though, i recommend it.

in other news, today i began reading derrida. i think i was expecting it to be dense and difficult and somehow a "ta da!" moment. but it wasn't. it was good - an essay that i already knew was going to be relevant to my work. he was talking about hospitality and forgiveness (separately); basically arguing that they depend on a paradox, that forgiveness is really only forgiveness when it is unconditional, forgiving what is really "unforgivable". in terms of my study, it's relevant cos i'm challenging the "tolerance" of liberals, who so often argue for tolerance on the basis that particular groups really "aren't different", when for me the challenge is to work out how to respond ethically to difference without erasing it, exotising it, or whatever else so often happens. Hmmm i suspect this is rambling late at night. what i meant to say was that i read butler, foucault and derrida all in the same day. it made me laugh, cos it all feels so performative, this whole "being a student" thing. i mean, i really am doing it.

anyway, this is really just a place-filler. i will get back to writing again :>

creativity vs politics

while a somewhat simplistic dichotomy, i want to explore the binary of creativity vs politics

specifically, i'm thinking about the difference between a poster that argues (politically) for the "inclusion" of disabled people. or something similar; and the creative agency of disabled people. [something to do with representation?] I was thinking how much more I'd like to see billboards with poems by disabled people, like the many spoken word pieces i've read/viewed.

the political slogans that are typically on billboards are reductionistic, didactic and essentialising. poetry, by contrast, is exploratory, subtle, open. importantly, poetry is an expression of agency, whereas political slogans in many ways replace agency with representation (Marx's famous "They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented", the quote with which Said opens Orientalism).

One of the wonderful crip texts i'm reading at the moment explores some "alternative" narratives of disability, focusing on sexuality and community. Arguably, these too are about creativity, agency, desire. I think there's something critical here - politics is too often the opposite of creativity. I don't mean all politics, for the most engaging politics, in my experience, is driven by love, rage, engagement, community and creativity. but, there is something about organised politics that erases the immediacy of human subjectivity. hmmm.

ok, so i'm holding back something critical to understanding all this. my own experience is that i was involved in student politics for a few years, and in hindsight, i think it was strangling my own creativity. i think i systematically internally erased my own individual desires and ideas for some imagined consensus-derived idea of what should be. this is really hard to ariculate, and even now i am sensing an opposition to this idea from the imagined "others in the group" - which is *exactly* my point. politics in some ways is about pinning down what "should be" and i think i have spent many many years trying to discipline myself into being what i should be. i think in many ways i internalised this way more than many people involved in student politics, and i'm not arguing that this is the fault of student politics, rather, it's also to do with my own personality, a form of profound perfectionism.

anyway, i want to keep exploring this idea, because there's something here that is ringing bells inside my body, startlingly beautiful bells, resonating loudly.

my experience of political engagment has been a fusion, or perhaps a borderline, between "radical" and "down-to-earth." i mean radical in the sense of pushing deeper towards the roots of an issue, and down-to-earth, in the sense of rejecting an exclusively "radicool" agenda that is scornful of the people in my life who don't live their lives according to the radicool agenda. some would call this latter part "moderate", and certainly, the people i worked with politically were considered between the ALP and the more "radical" elements like socialists or radical queers.

student politics caused me enormous heart-ache. i wasn't able to exist in a world where everything mattered to me, but wasn't done in ways that accorded with my political visions. working with people from various political stripes, constantly having to argue my politics, endeavouring, usually unsuccessfully to persuade people of my conclusions, based on political reasoning, killed my spirit. yes, it was in a huge part my personality, a huge idealist, stubborn, opinionated, bright, defensive, argumentative, etc. but i think there's something in the nature of political organisations that kills creativity.

i burnt out. i fled to my garden and chickens and sewing and partner and local park and circus and home-cooking and home-making and general anti-socialness. i have no doubt that the massive outpouring of creativity that i am undergoing is a response to a feeling of repressed creativity during my student politics days. it's as if my creativity is never wrong, is never open to suggestion or improvement or compromise or watering down. it can be as outrageous, or beautiful, or whimsical, and HONEST as i feel like being.

anyway, returning to the idea of billboards with poems on them. the more i read about "diversity" and "stigma management" and "marginalisation", the more i am inspired by the personal acts of creation, of resistance, or self-definition as THE ANSWER to stigma and marginalisation. there's a line from a danica lani song that comes to mind here "who gives a fuck about objectivity, i want to hear your truth, sista" anything else is reductionistic.

but i'm not arguing for individualism per se. what i find really powerful is when you get a bunch of people in a room together, all putting forward their own stories and feeling the commonality. yeah, feminism consciousness raising groups, or a dyke spoken word night, or the multicultural queer conference. speaking from the personal grounds the political.

i don't really know what happens next though. i know that feminism went through a phase of consciousness raising, and then kinda moved on, formulating platitudes based on CR insights. but then they kinda froze. it's like PC stuff. political correctness is often originally grounded in personal experience, but then it ossifies.

anyway, i'll end there.

displaying diversity

so, here's a chapter.

comparing the poster children/disability charities
with
multicultural celebrations
with
Midsumma/Mardi Gras

arguably, these are the dominant ways in which each of these forms of diversity is "displayed" for public consumption.

um, does anyone else get the feeling that this is actually not "a chapter" but "a thesis"? (funny question, i know, becuase it is predicated on the assumption that anyone else is even reading this :>)

whose community?

Yooralla ad claims on behalf of disabled people "this is our community" - is an example of mainstreaming and a denial of disability community/culture!

c.f. Cheryl Marie Wade, an awesome performance artist, whose work is represented in Vital Signs: Crip culture talks back (so the name alone tells you that a crip culture is being asserted):
"My primary audience is always my community and I hope always to do work where my community can go "yeah!" But I want it to be such good work that I get places where they normally wouldn't let a gimp in. You know what I'm saying here?"

I think the erasure of disability community/culture is also an erasure of the support that disabled people give each other.

Earlier in the video, Carol Gill argues:
"I believe very firmly in disability culture and if we didn't have it, we should, because, I think, ... as a psychologist, I've looked at members of minority groups, I've worked with members of minority groups who are dealing with oppression on a daily basis who need to survive it, both physically and emotionally. And I see that what works for other minority groups is to have a recognized body of values, of symbols, including language, of rituals that bring people together."

There is a blurring of "community" and "culture".

Elsewhere in the video, Harlan Hahn argues for the existence of "disability culture" by arguing that disabled people have a food, fast-food. His evidence is his own vox pop at a conference, where everyone in the room said they go to drive-thrus because impaired mobility makes this easier than going inside a restaurant. This is, at best, tenuous, and at worst, ridiculous, patently untrue, and exclusive. I think that it does point to a commonality of experience, but I know a lot of disabled people who either (a) can't afford to eat out (the disability pension is often stretched just to cover basic life stuff, especially for those I know who have large medical/adaptive expenses) or (b) hate fast food for ethical reasons.

Gill's call for symbols and rituals bothers me, because it brings back memories for me of Lesfest (a lesbian, trans-exclusive gathering), which I attended a few years back. Lesfest had been cancelled because it had sought and been denied an exemption from equal opportunity legislation (they wanted to be allowed to exclude trans women). The gathering was held anyway, but was by-invitation-only, and secretive. I remember that on the first day, we all sat in a circle, each in turn offering symbols of our community, in an effort to prove to ourselves that we did indeed have a community. We didn't just argue a common political commitment - to an understanding of our common lesbian experience as being predicated on an experience of growing up gendered female (a reasonable basis, I think for the community's cohesion). Instead, symbols wer invoked that included hair style, colours, ways of dressing, music, etc. I remember feeling alienated at the time - I was one of only a handfull of young women there, and I had long hair, in dread-locks, with pretty colours woven through - I felt "unacceptably" feminine. In so many ways, I conform to the lesbian feminist stereotype, but yet I felt somehow unwelcome. It didn't help that I had already been policed/verbally abused for allegedly inviting a bisexual to the lesbian-only gathering. The allegation was unfounded (it was based on a misunderstanding) but did inform my whole experience of the gathering. It was interesting, because I actually respected the community's boundaries at that point in time, but because I wasn't yet a "trusted part of the community", I was suspected of disloyalty. At the time, I wrote a letter to Lesbian Network (the community's magazine, which I helped edit for a while), arguing that while I agreed with any community's right to self-define, I opposed the suspicious internal policing that inevitably arises when you police the borders (I think I drew on Hage's writings!)

In hindsight, I think I was somewhat naive - now I would argue that policing the borders is indefensible. I wish the Lesfest community had simply been clear about what we want and are interested in (e.g. lesbian feminist politics), and allowed people to self-select their involvement. My experience of transfolk is that there may have been trans people attending, in an effort to affirm their lesbian-female identity, there may not. But declare war on trans-identity and transfolk will come out in force. Trans-identity is currently incredibly defensive, which is understandable, since many trans people have to fight every day of their lives to affirm their identity.

Anyway, the lesbian community is still reeling from the "sex wars" of the 1980s, that this is all just the latest chapter in a long war. It's a war that scares me cos I am on both sides and neither. I'm scared because I can see battle lines drawn right down my own body, my own history, dividing one lover from another, one joy from another. I want no part in a defensively defined community.

On a completely different note, here's a very recent and remarkably stereotypical response from a gay man involved in Equal Love (to get same-sex relationship recognition):

"We see that the first priority is swaying the general population toward the idea of same-sex marriage by countering the arguments against, talking to community groups about the injustice and generally getting the message across that we too are "normal" tax paying citizens that don't have 2 heads and deserve consideration as well."

Wow! Um, what about those of us who are not "normal", who avoid paying taxes wherever possible or who live below the poverty line and so don't pay taxes, or whose bodies do not conform to the invoked normality (maybe not 2 heads, but how about no arms, like Mary Duffy in Vital Signs?) ... do we deserve "consideration" as well?

Tragic conference experience

i am presenting at a conference tomorrow and i just read jan my prepared talk. alas, half-way through it was blatantly obvious that my 20 minute talk was going to take at least 45 minutes. so i cut it, well we cut it together. it was tragic, difficult and kinda easy too. we started at midnight (my deadline for finishing) and cut for 12 minutes. i think cos it was the middle of the night, it was easier to be brutal (i have sleep as a reward).

it's brilliant though. i'm so proud of it.

if i hadn't read it to jan, i'm not sure how i would have coped tomorrow.

anyway, bed now. just thought i didn't want to let this pass without a blog entry!