To those who work full-time and go to school full-time (not to mention those who do that AND are parents) while maintaining some semblance of a decent life: ginormous kudos to you, my friend. I don't know how you do it. My hat is so far off to you that I'm like Mary Tyler Moore, walking down Nicollet Avenue.
ANYYYYYWAY...
Other than just being a post about how I'm not sure what's going to happen with posting, I also wanted to share something that struck me just now in one of my readings, English and the discourses of Colonialism by Alastair Pennycook:
"...the issue is not so much the truth and falsity of facts but the truth effects of discourse...As I discussed in Chapter 1, the issue for Indigenous Australians cannot merely be through 'positive' representations of themselves. Such representations have already been reappropriated by an exoticizing, Orientalist discourse that turns Indigenous people into primitive beings in touch with the earth, a sort of New Age nomad doing dreamtime and painting the desert...such an exotified view of Aboriginal people already denies the history of colonialism that has inflicted such suffering..."
The phrase "'positive' representations" reminded me of USian gay rights organizations like the Mattachine Society, the Human Rights Campaign, and the current marriage equality movements, which sought and seek to normalize gay people as "just like everyone else."The passage could easily be rewritten:
"...the issue is not so much the truth and falsity of facts but the truth effects of discourse...As I discussed in Chapter 1, the issue for LGBT people cannot merely be through 'positive' representations of themselves. Such representations have already been reapprpriated by an exoticizing, heterosexist and gender essentialist discourse that turns LGBT people into hypersexualized beings in touch with their artistic sides, a sort of court jester providing comic relief for heterosexual and gender insecurity...such an exotified view of LGBT people already denies the history of heterosexism and gender essentialism that has inflicted such suffering..."This kind of attempt to de-Other is understandable, but as Pennycook points out, it attempts to state facts rather than addressing the root of the problem: the existing discourse (oh, Foucault, you tricky bastard you) is the problem and that's what needs to change.
As Pennycook also points out, this is an uphill battle and much harder to do, especially since so much of contemporary discourse is covert rather than overt. (Much like Pennycook's own repeated assertions thoughout the book, I offer all this not as a criticism of politics/people, but rather as a different way to frame the debate.)
Thoughts?
