Anne Dalke's blog

Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street

* gender politics in alliance w/ that of other precarious peoples
* expand the "we"

Kaye and I had designed our class tonight in search of the "right relationship" between theory and action, in which we were nudging you all repeatedly to think about the ways in which the intra-active thinking of Barad, Butler, Humbach and Welch might help us construct a concrete activist agenda or political response.

By the end of our discussion, though, we both realized that we'd activated a much more insistent dynamic than that of theory and action: that of reason and emotion--perhaps particularly because we'd chosen to structure the class around the repetitive exercise of reading passages aloud, passages that, in their evocative echoes, evoked a range of strong emotional responses. Our action in the world might well be guided by theory (as Butler has been saying). But it is also clearly always motivated by other sources, those of experience and emotion. As Humbach observes in his thinking "Towards a Natural Justice of Right Relationships,"the results of reason alone never directly determine the specifics of people's actions...we can be reflective, but we can never hope to exert rational control over the selection of things that we reflect about."

I don't generally like David Brooks' column (he grew up one block from where I raised my children, and much of what he says bothers me, which makes me wonder what I was doing in that neighborhood for all those years....). Anyhow! take a look @ his recent spoof, "The Inequality Map." It's a pointed pointing-to what sorts of discrimination we find good (as in "discriminating") and what sorts we don't (as in "discriminating against"). Food for thought this Saturday morning.....

I was one very happy woman during Karen Barad's visit to campus this week. As I said in my introduction, I've been talking w/ her (in my head) and thinking with her (in classes and publications) for 5 years now, so it was just a delight to have the time to share supper with her and other colleagues interested in science and justice, to welcome her afterwards to a class full of philosophy and gender studies students, with whom she explored what it might mean to "ma(r)k time," and then to have a "processing-it-all" drive back into the city together afterwards.

To prevent myself from lecturing you all @ length, I'm noting here what were for me the sweetest--because potentially most generative--moments in her talk:
* "we are part of that nature we seek to understand"
* "there are no fish-killers without fish"  (or: the intra-action of an organism
and its environment is a phenomenon that cannot be separated out)
* the "self" I am is the result of specific intra-actions
*  identity is undone @ the heart of matter itself (=the queerness of the quantum)
* setting ourselves to linear time causes great pain
* how is all this related to gender studies?

As alice.in.wonderland so wisely observes below, the "spectacle" that was Judy Butler's appearance here meant that all of those in the audience in Goodhart were "in the dark" = unable to take notes. Here's the residue of what I tried to write while being unable to see what I was recording. I was happiest during the Q&A, when the lights went up and Butler was responding so fully to each of the questions--really hearing them, I thought, and working hard to speak to what she was asked.

In SAT Wars,  Joseph A. Soares (a sociology professor at Wake Forest and author of The Power of Privilege, an in-depth look at the history of admissions at Yale University) writes that the nation would be a better place without the big, bad tests that have long dominated the admissions world: “Our world is not best served by a test-score social Darwinism in support of a collegiate caste system" (from The Rigors and Rewards of Going Test-Optional, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 4, 2011).

Syracuse's Slide and Syracuse, Selectivity, and ‘Old Measures' are just two in a series of fascinating, relevant articles recently published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, which describe how Syracuse University has sought to provide more opportunities for the town of Syracuse and for disadvantaged students--and as a result is falling in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of national universities: "Behold the power of the P word. The more applicants a college rejects, the more prestigious a college must be...how long can the citizens of academe go on thinking this way?"

And while I'm here, a coupla' more relevant pieces:
Are elite colleges worth it?  (by Pamela Haag in The Chronicle Review, 10/30/11: "The pleasures of rarity chafe against the democratic soul....") and Are Elite Colleges Worth It? Cornell economics professor weighs the value of higher education (by Joseph Murtaugh, Ithaca Times, February 23, 2011).

Another example of drawing the line between "natural" and "artificial" that lgleysteen describes below?

Women's University to Reconsider Hard Line on Transgender Students. The Chronicle of Higher Education. October 28, 2011.

From 2-3:15 on Friday, Nov 11, we'll be conducting an on-campus workshop in Rhoads Dining Hall. Jomaira, Sarah, Jody and Anne have come up w/ a "script" that involves an opening exercise, "mapping class on this campus," and a closing event, "looking forward." We've imagined opening by asking all participants to get into the spaces where we do our work, then asking them:
* where do you feel most yourself?
* how does this campus make you comfortable?
* what makes you feel that you belong?
* what space would you like to enter, that feels closed to you?

We've imagined closing by thinking forward:
* what space would you like here, that would make you more comfortable?
* what things could we do as individuals and as an institution to move forward w/ these ideas?

We heard in class on Thursday some of your responses to this proposal. Given what we've learned here so far, in our classes together, what (or what else) do you think we should do in this workshop we are hosting for others about  issues of class and education on campus? Please post your further thoughts about the workshop: feel free to put out your own ideas, and/or to respond to others; this is really where conversation happens (reminding ourselves here that we said we want to talk more w/ one another on-line!).

I had many afterthoughts, following our rich conversation last night about the contexts of choice and the privilege of choosing; thanks to all for participating!

One thought was, what happened to diability studies? The "easy" (?) distinction I heard made between abortions for "medical" and for "social" reasons seemed to me to elide the ways in which disability activists have challenged the separability of those categories. To learn a little more about how this conversation is playing out @ the other end of life, see the website for the disability rights organization Not Dead Yet, which leads w/ this statement: "though often described as compassionate, legalized medical killing is really about a deadly double standard for people with severe disabilities."