story telling

When I was young, I was that kid. I was the kid who everybody hated, and who hated everybody, and enjoyed it. My peers singled me out from as early on as I can remember. Having very few friends, I developed a hobby, bolstered by an overactive imagination, of sensationalism and overreaction; some time around the fourth grade I decided I was an alien from outer space.

The story was elaborate: my alien parents had switched me with the real Rachael, and used the human child's DNA to make me an exact copy of her. My real self, the alien, had blue skin and eyes on long stalks, and seven fingers on each hand.

Soldiers in the Evolutionary War

“...and all the people that you made in your image

see them fighting in the street

'cause they can't make opinions meet

about God...”

~ Dear God, XTC

The Unconscious: A Neurobiologist's View

Paul Grobstein
30 October 2007
for Story Telling as Inquiry

Living a Life of Risk, and Why:
Encouraging Innovation in Individuals and Communities

Paul Grobstein
24 October 2007

From prior discussions

When we read Helene Cixous’ Laugh of the Medusa, I felt more inspired than I had in a very long time. Since then, I have been trying to figure out exactly what about her writing speaks to me so deeply. In a sense, I can see why I so strongly identify with the things she says; yet, at the same time, the more I manage to unravel, the more complex it all seems.

    In my previous paper I stated that the major issue I’d like to explore is how to balance race and gender, more specifically how to identify as a “Puerto Rican woman” and not “Puerto Rican” and then a “woman”.

According to most versions of his life story, the Titan Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and gave it to the first human men. For this and his other insurgent crimes, Prometheus' punishment is to be chained to a cliff with daily visits from an eagle who eats his regenerating liver from his body. This is my current model of textual creation and critique. The texts we write are our regenerating livers. When critiquing, we are the eagle. Don't be scared off by the gory metaphor. I am going explain my reasoning and later even offer a additional myth of critique from which I hope to fashion a more palatable model.

Science is a body of facts. From fifth grade Science to senior year AP Biology, teachers teach students exactly this. Students see science as a procedure with distinct boundaries between what is right and wrong (1). Science experiments had to meet certain expectations and create the "right" results. Science was all about structure.

But what is "right" anyway?