Wednesday, May 30, 2007

different types of stigma

today i started re-reading Goffman's absolute classic text "Stigma: notes on the management of spoiled identity". It's one of those books that is simultaneoulsy hopelessly outdated and incredibly relevant.

OK, so the bit I wanted to share is where he outlines what he sees as the 3 different bases for an individual being stigmatized (Goffman, by the way, focusses exclusively, and problematically, on stigma as an individual phenomenon, rather than involving groups, but let's ignore that for the time being).

Goffman's 3 types of stigma:
(i) "abominations of the body": various physical deformities.
(ii) "blemishes of individual character perceived as weak will, domineering of unnatural passions, treacherous and rigid beliefs, and dishonesty, these being inferred from a known record of, for example, mental disorder, imprisonment, addiction, alcoholism, homosexuality, unemployment, suicidal attempts, and radical political behaviour."
(iii) tribal stigma of race, nation and religion; that "equally contaminate all members of a family"

OK, so Goffman was writing in 1963, but I think that these days only some types of prejudice are socially acceptable, while others are taboo. I think that "abominations of the body" (i) and "tribal stigmas" (iii) are unacceptable bases for prejudice, but "blemishes of individual character" (ii) are an entirely acceptable basis.

So, often people try to argue that a particular stigmatised feature is of type (ii) if they wish to vilify the individual/group and conversely that the feature is actually not of type (ii) if they wish to defend the individual/group. For example, people who wish to vilify Islam frame it as "radical political behaviour", or use the blurry term "culture". Those who wish to defend it frame it as merely a religion. Similarly, some who wish to defend homos argue that it is biologically based, while some who wish to vilify us frame it in terms of the "gay lifestyle." Mental health stuff is similar, in that we are portrayed as having agency over our stigmatised behaviours by those who want to vilify us, but we are presented as having an "illness" comparable to a bodily "disorder" by those who wish to defend us.

Then, we come to those who valorise the middle category - largely queers but also gimps, crips and mad folk. For example, the self-identified "sex radicals" who are organising "Camp Betty" (a sex-radical gathering) write stuff like:
"Let's show her [Betty, aka the Queen] what this great nation was built on - criminals, perverts and stolen land. So poofters, sheilas, reffos, squatters, deviants and outsiders - your time is now."

Interesting stuff. I'm pretty excited. Thanks Erving Goff-man!

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Perlocution revisited

Remember I wrote a few weeks ago about my readings on perlocution (Austin, Searle, etc)? Well, I was suggesting that maybe one function of discourse is to anounce the subject position of the author, to show that they are a good liberal or nice to disabled people, or whatever. Anyway, so today I discovered that Foucault already writes about what I was trying to articulate - in the idea of "enunciative modalities" that he explored in The Archaelogy of Knowledge. I must confess it was SO exciting to read that Foucault had expressed exactly the idea that i was toying with. anyway, Fairclough also writes about it, so I guess Fairclough might just end up being more useful than i had felt.

learning skills unit visit

so, i went to the learning skills unit yesterday cos i decided it was time to review how I do things. in some ways the visit was completely useless, cos it really didn't sort out the problems i've been having, but i think actually it was good, cos i already know what my problems are, and the advisor really told me what i already knew.

basically my problems are this:
(1) i don't spend enough time each day on my thesis. i work in spurts and some days i'll be really productive and get heaps done in terms of reading, processing and writing up, but other days i spend a LOT more time in the garden and doing stuff around the house than i spend studying. basically, i know the solution. (i) be self-disciplined, be that by timetabling my time at home, or any other way to make myself sit at my desk and get through the work. OR (ii) decide that working at home isn't working and study somewhere else. So, i've decided, i'm on probation. i either have to convince myself that studying at home is possible or i'm not allowed to do it any more.
(2) i have heaps of books on my shelves and the pile seems to grow bigger, and i feel overwhelmed by the sheer size of it. i have a mental list also of all these books i want to read, and i find that stressful, knowing that i'm not finding the time to keep up with what i want to be reading. solution? ironically, it's not to read more, but to write more. she reckons that i need to start writing more, so that my reading needs will become clearer. the other thing she suggested was that i should put my photocopied articles into piles, according to how central they are to my research. one pile (the biggest) is "I need to know about these articles"; the next (middle sized) is "i need to understand these articles" and the other (smallest) is "I need to know these articles inside and out." I think i've been mentally putting everything into the last pile, when most of them in truth could sit in the first or second pile.

oh and in terms of writing, she suggested i take blog entries and expand them - i thought that was a good way to get something on the page. i mean, i've tried to write a few times - i open a microsoft word document and look at the blank page and my mind suddenly mirrors its blankness.

ps i haven't written much for a while cos i've had stomach troubles. it's been kinda painful. the pain killers i got the other day are marvellous though. marvellous.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

who gets to make pronouncements

been thinking a bit about the paradoxical nature of good intentioned statements. Making the statement, paradoxically, casts doubt on the proposition (if it wasn't there already).

What??

Ok, some examples, Yooralla's "This is our community", said about disabled people, only really makes sense if there was doubt. I believe that it conjures up its negation (this train of thought is pretty new and fragile, so be kind).

How about some more examples? My circus trainer last year, Francesca, said something that irked me but at the time I couldn't express why. She was promoting a performance by some young people she was working with who were insitutionalised for mental health reasons. She said "They're really lovely" in a way that seemed to me that it implied a preface like "You wouldn't really think it, but ..." In some ways statements like these imply even more, something like "I know that people like you and I don't usually have much experience with these people, and that we tend to think that they are not lovely, but I am a good person who does good things for these poor people and I can authoritatively tell you that people like you and I should think that they are lovely."

Similarly, I recently read Jonathon Welch's comments on members of the Choir of Hard Knocks (which he conducts): "If I had a higher purpose for this [the Choir of Hard Knocks] it would be to change government policy for funding for all these sorts of projects. I hope people will see that these people are not just homeless, they are human beings, and they have value and worth and they have the right to dignity and self respect just like any other human being does." Really? Wow. They are human? You know, I always wondered if they were just really big rats. ... In this example, I just love the juxtaposition between the first people (who are the subject of "will see") and the second people (specifically, these people, the object that is seen) - the first seems to exclude the homeless people, who probably don't actually doubt the fact that they are human. It's like Jonathon is simultaneously (overtly) acknowledging their humanity, while (covertly) denying them inclusion in the category of "people."

This is one of the central patterns I want to explore in my thesis.

I'm wondering at this point if these observations are me bringing extra-linguistic (real-world) knowledge into my interpretation, or if this is inherent in the linguistic encoding. Michael Power, a friend of mine, suggested the latter to me several months ago (before I started my thesis), and recommended I read Searle's Expression and Meaning. I'll get back to you if I become any wiser on this matter.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

political correctness

i've been reading a bit today about political correctness. it's an interesting expression, because in my understanding it is predominantly used to silence those who feel that it's not OK to be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc, and who are sensitive to more subtle forms of unintended prejudice. Something like that.

Jan said something interesting a few weeks ago, though. She said "political correctness is all about what language white people can use, e.g. multiculturalism". I realised that it is about creating a comfortable language, rather than facing discomfort. jan uses "women of colour" partly because of the discomfort it induces in white women - we are forced to confront privilege, and we are excluded.

quite a bit of what i read is written by people who think that political correctness equals the right language. i get so pissed with "right on" language. what interests me so much more with language is its use, its fluidity, its context-based meaning. that is, people use language to communicate, and we communicate a lot more than what a dictionary can possible capture.

when jan calls herself a woman of colour, she's not just describing her gender and skin colour, or her ethnic background, (in what I understand) she's claiming solidarity with other women of colour, naming "colouredness" as a grounds for shared experience, in contrast with women who are white, as well as naming woman-of-colour-edness as a grounds for shared experience. she's rejecting the framing of her identity within categories that are constructed in ways that fail to capture her experience of the world. she is choosing her own frame, one that is not controlled by the white patriarchy, or white feminists, or any status-quo lovers; one that does not carry a normalising burden, or a set of images; one that she brings from her American upbringing, into a new context, offering it, but not imposing it (partly through an inability to impose her definitions on anyone, but primarily through no desire to define anyone else). woman of colour seems to be working for jan in creating some community to inhabit where her gendered and racialised experiences of the world are validated, discussed, shared, contrasted, made meaning of.

the other day, another of the trainees at WIRE argued with Jan that she doesn't see Jan as coloured, that she sees Jan as white like her. this is exactly the sort of experience where calling herself a "woman of colour" is useful. it's a conscious, self-loving, self-defining label.

she retains control of the label, well, actually she shares it with other self-identifying women of colour.

hey jan. tell me if i'm missing something, or if i am understanding you properly. xx

and another section heading

ooow ooow ooow

oh and another idea for a section:
privilege
It would be so worthwhile to discuss privilege in a section
*Hage's discussion in White Nation about parallels between cosmo-multiculturalists and exclusionary nationalists
*Clare and Elliott's wonderful discussion of "rednecks" - the displacement of prejudice onto rural, working class people
*discussion of Whiteness, white theory
*privilege vs centricity (e.g. heterocentricity, ablism)
*my experience of discussing whether multiculturalism is a useful term or not, where Millsom said she thinks it's redeemable, c.f. Jan's experience of it being used by white people, and her preference for working within a "women of colour" framework (and then my realisation that my opinion on the topic does matter, I'm just not there to be the chief organiser)
*my article that got used by SALP on privilege and volunteering

Chapters in my thesis

I've started thinking about how my thesis could be structured.

here are some ideas for chapters [the bits in square brackets could be omitted]:
*Being welcome [in the community]
*The object(ive) of pity
*Being tolerant
*Displaying "our" diversity

OK, so for some more fleshing out of these ideas:
Displaying our diversity:
*Clare traces the history of the "freak show," which historically displayed people from colonised countries, disabled people and other people who were physically unusual according to the standards of the viewers.
*Hevey (writing about disability imagery) and Clare both discuss charities through the concept of "Pity Festivals"
*Hage discusses multiculturalism as "zoology"
*Mardi Gras?
*Statements by public figures in the context of Midsumma about how Midsumma is exciting, but seems to be "for queers" in the most limited sense (c.f. the idea that queer is intended to move beyond essentialist categories of "gay" and "straight" and to be participatory)
*Statements by public figures in the context of Celebrate our Cultural Diversity Week, and perhaps Harmony Day, where multiculturalism is again "exciting"
*Bring in ideas from Corker, about how the internet may have been developed by autistics to have communicative devices that suit their purposes
*Merinda's cartoon about her applying for a job.
*Why Yooralla Week?

This section alone seems pretty much to be my thesis!

OK, so I'm going back to study now. xx

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Perlocution

OK, so today I read some Austin and Searle, which means nothing to most people, unless they are into the philosophy of language (or discourse or pragmatics). Anyway, these two write about what people DO with words. Blah. Not going to explain it all here except suffice to say they are pretty cool and have stimulated my thoughts :>

Anyway, I was thinking about my work while I was reading, and I was wondering how my ideas fit into the traditional structure as outlined by Austin and Searle of locution/illocution/perlocution.

Basically, the locution is the actual words of an utterance, the literal meaning; the illocution is the intended "meaning" and the perlocution is the intended effect on the hearer. So, e.g. "It's cold in here" has a literal meaning (an observation about the temperature) and it can be intended to function as a request (the illocution), and the speaker hopes the hearer will act on this request (perhaps by shutting the window that is open next to them, the perlocution). That's the text-book case, anyway.

Now, what I'm looking at is texts/utterances that function (amongst many other things) to exhibit the good intentions of the speaker and to position them as an advocate for a marginalised group. That is, the utterance has an effect on the public identity of the speaker.

Hmmm. Is this making sense to anyone but me? I'll give an example. Yooralla (a disability charity) said on a billboard: "Why Yooralla Week? Because this is our community" I think that in stating this "is our community", Yooralla is positioning itself as an advocate for disabled people, a good charity (perhaps one you should give money to). Moreover, it positions Yooralla as having what Hage calls "governmental belonging" - Yooralla presents itself as being in a position to claim and bestow belonging. Maybe this would be clearer if I compared Yooralla with an actor who clearly lacks this kind of belonging. For example, people who are currently detained in detention centres in Australia are not able to say "this is our community" with the same effect. It's very easy for people in power to refute this and say "no it's not, go back to where you came from/belong". The same may be true for Yooralla if there were bigots out there who disagreed in the social integration of disabled people, but Yooralla is claiming a position of authority in regards to conferring belonging.

On another note, ironically, in saying "this is our community", it becomes clear that disabled people have experienced the opposite - they have felt excluded from "the community". The statement vividly evokes the converse - that disabled people are unwelcome in the broader community. One only needs to declare the welcome of those whose welcome is questionable.

In White Nation, Hage brilliantly explores how White people construct themselves as being in the position to welcome/not welcome non-White people into the Australian community. He argues that even (especially) "tolerant multiculturalists" imagine themselves as having the power to decide who is welcome and under what conditions they are welcome. I think Hage's discussion is relevant to this text by Yooralla - Yooralla presents itself as welcoming disabled people, albeit this is somewhat ambiguous way (the blurry use of "our", which seems to equate Yooralla and disabled people, Yooralla constructs itself as simultaneoulsy working in the interests of disabled people, and as being one with disabled people.)

Wonder Ragz at Monash

On Monday I had some C.T.A. work out at Monash, so while I was there I dropped off some pads at Wholefoods. Someone emailed me back the next day and was really positive about them, and commented on the display case which is really exciting cos that was a baby of mine. I'm really happy with the whole new display arrangements. They look so much better.

I'm doing a market on Saturday with Allie; Nel and Bec and Monster Jen may well be coming too. And I got an email from the site today, so it all feels like it's all go again! YAY!

My new fitness regime

So i've been feeling tired and unfit for a few months now. I recently was inspired by one of my housemates, nellie, who has started skipping every night after work. the best exercise i've done in the past few years was a circuit class i was doing before circus last term (alas, the circuit class got cut)

So, I do
*2 mins warm up run around the garden
*2 or 3 headstands (each time splitting then lowering my legs and using my tummy muscles to raise them again)
*10 handstands
*7 minutes stretching (focussing especially on stretching so I can do the splits one day)

Then I do 2 minutes each of:
*squats
*shuttle run
*push ups
*skipping
*lunges
*shuttle run
*tricep dips
*sit ups

Then, finally, I do 5 minutes of a circus skill. Both times so far, I've done juggling, but I think I'll also give myself the option of hula hooping or poi. And maybe I'll think of more things too :>

It's been fun so far - it's pretty minimal in terms of time and commitment, but still feels good afterwards. We'll see how long it lasts :>

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

welcome molly cocoa and pearl

alice (the chook) seemed so lonely without her buddy betty, who seems to have left us for hopefully another happy home. so last weekend jan and i drove out to macclesfield (aka woop woop) and picked up two new chookens.

one is quite pale and has white spots on her neck, and her name is pearl. the other is quite dark, her name is molly cocoa. they were both 18 weeks when we got them.

i thought at first that pearl was going to be the bottom of the pecking order (alice was inevitably going to be the head chook), but it seems that molly isn't exactly the full quid, and she seems to be the bottom.

we clipped their wings straight away, but molly was keen to fly out of the coop (maybe she's not so silly, actually). i found her perched on top of the coop wall, with jess barking up at her. hmmm. scary first day.

anyway, so i worked on finally putting a roof on the coop. no more stress that they'll decide to fly away. i was really keen for it not to look like a cage - repress that truth - and i wanted them to have some shelter and some sun. so i scrounged around the yard and found a huge piece of shade cloth and some chicken wire. i went down to bunnings and got myself some more chicken wire and spent a day hammering and piecing bits together. jan helped with the tricky bits. it looks great - i'm real proud of it. the girls seem happy enough too.

today we spent about 3 hours together in the garden - me reading, them pecking around. they are starting to act as a flock, rather than as a brazen lone chicken and two scared little chooks.

i timed it well, cos it's now pouring with rain again. i spent some time during my lunch break planting endive, kale and coriander. the seedlings will love being rained in properly :>

left and right wing family values

an idea that i keep circling around is the idea of the family in politics.

i come at it from two angles - firstly "love makes a family" and "we are family" (a la Mardi Gras) in queer community. i certainly call jan and jessie (and the chooks) my family. against us are those who preclude us from their "family values"

the second is George Lakoff's book "Don't think of an elephant", which argues that conservatives and progressives each frame the world in terms of different images of the ideal family - conservatives imagine a scary world with a patriarch protecting the family; progressives trust children and nurture them.

i've been reading Hage's White Nation (which is absolutely f*cking brilliant, if you ask me, i'm so excited by it). he talks about White nationalism, and argues that there are more similarities than differences between exclusionary nationalism (like Pauline Hanson) and tolerant multiculturalism. He argues that both enact a fantasy of White managerial control over the nation - "you can live here, they can be there, but we don't want them over there." It's a brilliant argument, and I find myself almost highlighting whole pages - the detail is so thorough.

anyway, so these two ideas are starting to come together in my head. i think that those who think in a family metaphor (ie progressives and conservatives) are those who see it as their business to control the nation - paternal and maternal figures of different varieties. both believing that it is their duty/right to control.

then i started thinking about all the different forms of parental control (none of these are meant to be devaluing observations, I'm just trying to understand the dynamics) - feminists who want to enact stricter laws in the areas of pornography or prostitution, charity workers who want to help the "starving children of Africa", strong leaders who "protect" us from terrorism, leaders who endeavour to protect us from censorship ... and not just these, also progressives who argue that we should speak in a particular way about particular issues (we need guidance) ...

anyway, and then i got thinking about consumer/carer politics (e.g. in mental health groups, carer lobbyists are predominantly fathers of schizophrenics), and the literal and symbolic parental dynamics there (ie carers have typically fought for better services, consumers for a voice).

Something that Hage argues that is striking a very loud chord in my head at the moment, is the idea that those who wish to manage multiculturalism (or arguably any other form of diversity) silence those they are managing, objectifying them. This resonates really loudly for me, and links up with some writing I've done on the politics of volunteering. ... anyway, it's study time for this bug.