[iDC] FW: It Doesn't Just Get Better, This Is Political

[Simon Biggs]

Hi Margaret

Good points. If anyone was being reductivist in their arguments it was me.
But I don't wish to push a reductivist argument, so allow me to correct
myself.

I do think that socialisation involves differencing but this does not happen
along a single axis of differentiation. There are many. My main point,
previously, was that whilst this process of differencing continues and,
indeed, seems innate (just as it is in signification - we are signs too), we
nevertheless live in a more multi-polar world than we once did. "Othering"
still occurs but in a multi-polar rather than bi-polar world. Simplistic, I
guess, as the world was probably never that black and white.

In this respect I agree that constant pressure is both what we can hope for
and a valid activity. It is what has already changed the world. However, I
think the point I was making was that the counter-pressure to that might be
greater than can be tolerated, at least by some, and, at some point,
something has to give. I am currently wondering if that point is
approaching...

Best

Simon


On 15/12/2010 10:59, "Margaret Morse" <morse at ucsc.edu> wrote:

> Dear Simon,
> I've always liked your contributions to IDC.  I agree with you, except
> for this: you have explained that there is no perfect  state of
> socialization without othering (a reductive way of putting it,
> sorry).  Perhaps all we can hope for is continued pressure on the
> otherng process by the othered and allies, so that the process may be
> continuously adjusted, hopefully toward the more generous and
> inclusive.  Some recent reseeach claims that humans do have altruistic
> capacities that have immediate personal and long term social rewards.
> 
> So isn't this constant renogiation of socialization something we
> should expect?  After reading Derrida on language, for instance, for a
> while I operated without hope that I would ever understand or be
> understood in discourse.  I have since accepted a more Wittgensteinian
> and provisional view of language as more useful, without discarding
> the more cosmic standpoint of Derrida--mutatis mutandi Chomsky and
> Foucault-- while not ignoring his/ their feet of clay.
> 
> Warm greetings,
> Margaret


simon at littlepig.org.uk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/

s.biggs at eca.ac.uk
http://www.elmcip.net/
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/