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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: October 28, 2004
Latest Update: October 28, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
Sex, Respect and Transforming Dominant DiscourseOk, kids, it had to happen. I just lectured in Women and Poverty on Catharine MacKinnon and Sexual Harassment in the Workplace, one of her classics, and Towards a Feminist Theory of the State. And on her commentary on Susan Brownmüller and legal prosecution of rape. Notes of that will go up on my lectures if I can manage that tonight, but they're just the theoretical background to my discussion of sexual innuendos, innocent or malevolent, on our listserv. That lecture just happened to be well-timed.
This lecture is more about a review of governance discourse, academic certification, and the creation and maintenance of a climate of learning that helps us manage the affect in our learning. Nick, I may be getting a little CJ academic here, so you're welcome to just go ahead and translate me into plain English.
The core of everything that I teach is the Transformation of Dominant Discourse across an academic/community bridge that empowers us to engage in governance discourse, to have a voice, a voice that can be heard, and that can grow in both intensity and geographic coverage through nothing but our awareness and our trust in one another in what is still presently a nation-state. I'm gonna try to say that in plain English. There's almost nowhere we go where people sit and seriously wonder and think about whether we should be at war; if so, with whom; what the reasons are for and against the war as alternative to other choices (for war is never a simple straight-forward choice); what that war means to our value system and our system of laws and governance. I really believe we have to talk about those things if we don't want to have an imperialist leader who decides what's best for us and denies us knowledge to determine to what extent he's right or wrong.
As I told you in the beginning, my goal has never been to alter the election results this November. That's way beyond our capabilities in a couple of state colleges. But it has been my goal to give us a safe place to practice awareness and our answerability within that awareness. The safe place is Naked Space. Within the naked space, we engage in illocutionary discourse, discourse designed to help us hear one another in good faith.
An example would be Ben's saying the other night that he was afraid of an actual attack on US soil, and my understanding, for the first time, that I was not. That took us seven weeks, or was it eight weeks, of developing naked space skills before I, who am trained to listen actively, finally heard what Ben was telling me. Now with close to 50 years of post-graduate training, did I really expect Ben to catch on to where I was coming from any sooner? This is deep stuff. You gotta wanta understand the Other. You gotta work at it. It's not easy. It's not easy because I've been thinking like me for 69 years, and now, all of a sudden, I should try thinking like Ben?
Yeah, I should. World peace depends on it. That's what the website and the Yahoo groups are about. They're safe spaces, naked spaces, where we can think together out loud and discover who we are. Since I understood what Ben was saying last night, I'm somebody else. I don't know who. I don't know how. I just know that I see Ben's arguments differently. I could understand my fervent need to test the authority of CNN against Ben's need to believe somebody out there. I could sense that we were asking the same questions, with similar, if not the same, fears, and that, not finding them, it was easier to see us as having opposing positions. That was a small step. But I'm glad I took it. Ben and I had been asking each other questions, trying to get at what we were seeing differntly, over the whole eight weeks. There are no simple questions to ask. There is a process of illocutionary discourse. That's what naked space is. I've got more trust in the world today, because I suddenly understand that I really can trust those who disagree with my conclusions about the present elections. That's ontological hope. That's also something I learned from Ben.
Now, that's why we're doing all this. So that we can all share together enough experiences to be able to trust one another and build a community that can be effectively self-governing, and shoo out all those imperialists I'm scared of, and all those attackers Ben's scared of.
I am unbelievably proud ( and I'll let Susan speak for herself here) that so many of you are telling each other your reactions to voting. Tranforming Dominant Discourse really belongs to you. You aren't waiting for me to step in and referee. Thank God. For a referee can be just one step away from one of those imperialists I'm scared of.
So now we come to SEX. I know, you know it when you see it, but what does it have to do with Transforming Dominant Discourse? A lot. It's part of the sexist environment in which dominant discourse reproduces itself. It's important. Sex produces kids (well, at least most of them, and it's always involved somehow), our future. Sex is fun. Even though some tell us it's sin, dominant discourse portrays it as fun, the best, what everyone wants, what you need a fancy car for, the source of most of our humor, and some of our presidential downfalls, which I think is how it got to Tranforming Dominant Discourse.
I'm not going to rehash the discussions that have already gone on. I realized I had to jump quickly to this when Andrea said something like, "now this is really enough." I second that, Andrea. I just want to remind everyone that the last post was a summary post of what had gone on. So most of the exchanges had already occurred, even before I got there Monday night when the tech left. I'd like to hope that the meat of the problem is now out there, and that future postings will refer to this document and to a governance discussion of the issues, rather than to the tenor of the original exchange.
I take responsibility for what happened. I should have seen it coming. We'd had a couple of exchanges in the classroom where I heard words like "how could you?," and most often I heard them from students who tend to be late or not to show up. I did discuss naked space and its meaning, illocutionary discourse, again. But sometimes those who need to hear aren't there. And sometimes people just get into a habit of thinking they know best. That's called dominant discourse, by the way. The country's so divided right now I should think that dominant discourse would recognize that nothing's dominant anymore, unless it's securely bought and paid for, but that seems not to have happened.
So all this seems to have started when one person, a male, said to another, a female, I "know;" what's wrong with you? That is the political shouting of rhetoric. It plays no part in naked space. It does not belong there. I ask that no one engage in such arrogance in the future, since now, at nine weeks, our naked space seems to have defined itself and reproduced itself well enough that the community in that space and time won't tolerate such discrespect and arrogance. I cannot tell you how proud I am of all of you who make up that community that I can say that.
I am not the thought police. I am not the rhetoric police. I'm here to provide you with as much information as I can get up for you, so that you can operate your naked space in the security of knowing that your information is as relatively trustworthy as information can be, given the time and space in which our infrastructure exists. I want you to insist upon and reproduce the integrity of your own naked space.
But I have to certify your learning with grades. Also, at this point, some of you are looking expectantly to me to lay out some theory and reason and help you define your alternatives. The theory that comes to mind for me is that answerability is an inalienable right of every human being. Answerability, not accountability. That means that your feelings and reactions to beliefs, ideas, and actions are valid as you experience them. I consider that a God-given right, what we sometimes call "natural law" that man (sic) cannot pull asunder.
BUT when people exercise their answerability, recall I've told you it is not an "epiphany." It's not something that I say: "You may now answer; you now have voice." There are skills in rhetoric, language, communication, all of which require learning and experience. That is why I define "good faith" as requiring more than just your willingness to hear. I define it as including a willingness to lend your own skills in rhetoric, language, and communication to help the Other vocie his/her validity claim.
And now I'm going to add one more component to good faith listening. Forgiveness. When first you try to express yourself, especially when getting those feelings across as you really feel and mean them matters to you a great deal, you're likely to misspeak or misstep. I am learning as I watch you reproduce and strengthen your own naked space that you have the skills to correct minor digressions of disrespect. I'd even like to go back and trace some of the first mentions of respect in naked space, and compare them to the most recent exchanges. Somebody want a research project?? But if we recognize that we are all learning to operate in naked space, and know that learning involves affect, and know that there's no such thing as one trial learning, then we need to learn some tolerance for mistakes.
That doesn't mean that disrespect is OK. It's not. Disrespect is absolutely intolerable for me. But how's our dominant discourse going to know what's disrespect for us until we mess with it enough that we at least know it when we see it? A little later on, we'll be able to define it and give examples, and then we can say "NEVER IN NAKED SPACE."
In this instance Catharine MacKinnon has defined several instances of disrespect in a naked space such as ours in her book on sexual harassment in the workplace. (I'll have to go find it before I can put up much. It's somewhere in the house.) The recent exchange on Transform will already let you define some rules. Then new members can avoid stepping over a line where disrespect will be seen and the group will move to end it.
As to certification (grades), now that we have had occasion to define sexually implicit exchanges on Transform and in the classroom, I will take this opportunity to say that, in the future, such use of language and or behavior will result in an F in the course, as behavior that violates every priniciple that I try to teach. I would suggest that only a darned good advocate arguing on the behalf of him/her who was so charged could change my mind on that.
Also in terms of certification, now that we have begun to operationally define disrespect, I will take this opportunity to say that disrespect in the classroom without a very good defense on behalf of him/her who was so charged, will result in a lowered grade, the actual result depending on the nature and degree of the disrespect. Again, I base this on the fact that to engage in disrespect in my classroom, once the disrespect has been clearly identified and remedies have been attempted, is to provide measurable evidence that the person in question has not learned what I am trying to teach.
Now, I'd like us to recognize how much our learning mistakes help us learn, forgive mistakes that were on the floor before we anticipated them, and move our discussion up to a technical level on how we can most effectively reproduce and maintain our naked space.
jeanne
You know, sometimes I'm just utterly amazed at where I end up when I follow you guys. Don't listen to anybody who says you're not serious, not trying, not making progress we can all be proud of.
