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Created: April 16, 2003
Latest Update: April 16, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Restructuring Berthena Kemp's Thesis

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, April 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

April 16, 2003: Berthena, sorry about the administrative delays that threw us behind. I received the following from you this week:

I am wondering if my desire to to have an affinity with women in Africa would involve delving into my apperceptive mass.

Yes, of course it would. As Herbart describes the apperceptive mass it is the collection of all of our experiences, both in and out of awarenes, over a life time. Remember, I've described it as a giant stew pot where everything that we ever experience goes in, and according to how you reach in and stir it up to pull out memories, you get different flavors, different bits and pieces, and so interact differently with the situatedness in which you find yourself. So delving into your apperceptive mass would mean, in this case, exploring different memories, different moments, when something that bears on Africa has moved you in unexpected ways that you will then want to describe in words, in pictures, in quiet contemplation.

I do believe that a gaze with retrospect to my past would provide an insightful meaning to my paper and my desires to leave a legacy. I have been searching for The Gaze by Foucault per your suggestion. I have yet to find it. I am sure it would offer more insight toward what I am trying to say. Please tell where I can find it.

I think you're interpreting gaze a little differently, but once you read some of his work, we'll talk about that. Why don't you start by reading and thinking about Notes on Reading Foucault'sThe Birth of the Clinic by Lois Shawver, 05/16/98.

Helen K. Black book Old Souls: Aged Women, Poverty, and the Experience of God reveals the value of teling our stories in older age is manifold. She writes "[b]y recounting life events and retrospectively imbuing them with meaning. Respondents weave their lives into a meaningful whole. In this the past is measured through the lens of the present. " ( Page 209)

Sounds like a good source. I don't know it. but I like the idea of retrospectively reviewing life events. I'd like to know more about her book. It sounds like it would fit well into your thesis.

I do take issue with Dorothy Smith, the feminist who believes that woman's inability to know herself because she has only the male gaze to rely upon. Would it be expedient for me to address that concept in my paper?

Depends on how you delimit your paper. But I think it's an important aspect of giving meaning to retrospectively considered life events. What Dorothy Smith is saying is that part of that "giving of meaning" reflects your interdependence with a structural context in which men have controlling authority. That authority, although you may reject or refuse to accept it, because it exists in the real world is in fact a part of the structural context with which you must deal. For example, she might say that your disagreement may reflect a denial that consequently affects other vestiges of denial in your self image. If you want to follow these ideas, they should fit in your thesis.

But you'll have to decide whether you want your thesis to lean towards a theoretical piece, or towards a practical connection with African women. You can't do it all in one M.A. thesis. Honest.

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