A Justice Site
Mirror Sites:
CSUDH - Habermas - UWP
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan, Transcend Art and Peace
Created: November 29, 2001
Latest Update: November 29, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org
Understanding what the OtherJournal entry by jeanne
Copyright: Jeanne Curran, Susan R. Takata, and Olivier Urbain: November 2001.
and Individual Authors. "Fair Use" encouraged.
This has been a difficult semester. Ours are classes in sociology, and a war is a sociological event. Many social changes occur during a war. Dominant discourse shifts, sometimes predicatably, sometimes unpredictably. Following a bitterly contested election, with accusations of major illegalities, including racism, we have had to reconstruct a dominant discourse that will work for us in a time of war such as we have never known.I know that diverting our attention to current events has made this semester more difficult. But the very events that one day people will study as our history cannot be ignored for the convenience of the traditional. These are not traditional times. They are turbulent times. You will just need to tolerate a little more ambiguity than you might have otherwise.
When you write a letter condemning someone else, you often tell more about yourself than you do about the person you thought to condemn. When you call another a pejorative name, you often tell more about yourself than the person you denigrated. When you ask a question, you also reveal much to an alert listener.
I'm glad you're asking. I'm frustrated that you waited so long to ask, so long to talk to me. But I do recognize that dominant discourse creates the expectation that you won't talk to me. That you'll just be another number in a large class.
I won't stand for that. I demand to know about your learning. There are lots of you. And I am old and tired, and the asthma really slowed me down this semester. I know we're all discombobulated by terrorism and its whole aftermath. So we need not to get into my yelping that "your questions tell me you don't know how to use the site." And your yelping that "yes you do. You've been reading the current issue." That's affect. I'm tired and frustrated that you aren't hearing me say that you have to come see me and let me show you if you don't know what I'm talking about. And your're tired and frustrated and can't see why I'm not satisfied with what you've done. And we're all angry and frustrated that our school won't make a computer available on which I could at least demonstrate the site in the classroom. But . . . .
Well, if you don't use the site properly, I probably won't know what you've done. That's a YELP! Talk to me!
Myeshia's request for help is a good example. I'm glad she wrote. That's why I fuss when you don't write. Only when you communicate with me can I assess where you are in your learning and guide you to what I'm trying to teach you.
I really did have to stop and rethink when signing off with "love and peace" I wasn't feeling very loving just then. But that's because I was tired and feeling sorry for myself. I'm going to be tired. It's the end of the semester. You're tired, too. But remember than when we communicate with each other these problems are present all the time. The best way to surmount them is to learn that communication entails affect. Affect is normal. And it's personal, and that's OK. And respect means that we realize that each of our apperceptive masses (Herbart) has a different life space (Kurt Lewin), different valences, so we hear things differently. How's that for mixing theories? (You'll find a teaching essay at Oppression and Revolution, but the file isn't completely formatted into paragraphs yet. It's readable. It's just one long paragraph. Sorry. Soon.)
You're not the only ones who have to learn to love and respect and care about Others. We all have to learn it. I work at it every day. If Habermas is right about communicative action, it might just work. We might one day have peace. jeanne
On Friday, November 29, 2001, Myeshia Leverett wrote:
Subject: QuestionJeanne when you told me to study the conceptual linking, what linking are you talking about? I went on the site but I didn't know which one you were talking about. Please help me, thank you.
On Friday evening, November 29, 2001, jeanne responded:
Myeshia, this is why you need to come and talk to me. It's much harder to write what to do than to show you in my office.Now, I went through the last month's issues and found the following. That was your job. Had you come to talk to me, it would have been much better for both of us.
Look at: Conceptual Linking. Did you even look at Frequently Asked Questions??? Please note that that index went up a month ago! Or did you look at FAQS 03 Conceptual Linking 1 Conceptual Linking 2 and Conceptual Linking 3?
What this tells me so far is that you haven't taken the time to figure out how to use the site. I think you should convince me very soon that you have learned that. The site is not a series of handouts. It really does contain the resources that will help you. But they can't help if you don't explore enough to know they're there.
love and peace.
I had to rethink being calm about this. I'm not mad at you. You just asked a question that tells me a lot about what you haven't done. And I've worked very hard to provide all the materials you needed this semester. I feel relatively deprived, that I had to figure out how to make the site intuitive for you, and that some of you wouldn't take the time to learn to use it. That was one of the very first assignments, remember? CATCH UP and TALK TO ME! jeanne