Silence

Here's the passage from the Adrienne Rich poem that I mentioned (and mis-quoted!) @ the end of our discussion today, about the "permanence" of our taking a stand (in barometer) or in writing (especially on-line). It's from "North American Time," and seems (to me) to have resonances for voice, silence and vision:

"Everything we write
will be used against us
or against those we love.
These are the terms,
take them or leave them.
Poetry never stood a chance
of standing outside history.
One line typed twenty years ago
can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint
glorify art as detachment
or torture of those we
did not love but also
did not want to kill

We move but our words stand
become responsible
and this is verbal privilege...."

Here is the facebook I made for the YASP Panel next week. RSVP, add me, and invite your friends!

https://www.facebook.com/events/351048734981604/

Hey everyone,

I'm not sure if everyone already knows about this event but wanted to let you know about a film screening tomorrow night that seems to connect quite nicely to what we've been discussing in class and also just looks rather interesting.  Description of it is below...

You'll notice this post is quite late. And I didn't forget. Maybe I did procrastinate a bit, but then when I sat down to write the post, I just couldn't do it. I was already somewhat overwhelmed by the small amount of the texts I had read, and feeling anxious about what I would write. I began scrolling through other posts, hoping to find something to which I could respond, but I found myself growing even more overwhelmed. The posts were great, and very insightful, but the sheer bredth of topics sent my mind and my thoughts in several different directions and I couldn't really follow any of them.

The Silenced dialogue:

As the course proceeding, I always see the word silence in noun or adjective form of silent. This time, it’s a silenced. The dialogue is somehow forced to be silent.

The article starts to talk about “The Black Issue”. It’s very interesting to author got complete different feedbacks and response from different groups of participants in the conversations. The while, or the main stream educator, insisted on pos their opinions about Black education. On the other hand, the Black participants stop disagreeing and seem to agree with their logic. They are very passionate talking about being left out from the conversation. It reminds me of many occasions when I tried to argue with my peers about Chinese history questions. I remember amot each one of us was told to don’ try to start conversation about religions, politics or other sensitive topics. Honestly, you cannot win.

While reading The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children, there was not a time where I did not find myself connecting to the concept she writes about.

I first began connecting with her text when she speaks of the difference between students of color and the white students in a classroom. Although it made me uncomfortable at times, specifically when she spoke about the difference between Black and White mothers (although I find it to be true), I loved the way she explained the standards needed to be met for the teacher to have authority between these groups. I loved it because I can completely see this taking place in my high school. I use teacher subs for example; there was not a student in my school that gave them authority. The subs simply sat there and took attendance – but that was is. I spoke to a friend of mine that attended a suburban school; she said that in her school this was nowhere near to be the case.

Representation for others seems to be an inescapable thing, both in language and in life. We are represented by others politically, academically and in media. When Beyoncé sings “Run the World (Girls)”, she sings “Work my 9 to 5/ better cut my check/ this goes out to all the women getting it in” in attempt to speak to working women; however she herself does not work a typical 9 to 5 job. Representation pervades our lives in a way that seems unavoidable. We as students are constantly being spoken for- many of the articles we have been reading about education speak for us and attempt to dissect and interpret the desires of students; our desires. Even if the point of the article is to say that students should not have to be constantly redefined into a representation; there is still a certain degree to which we are not only being spoken for but assumed as a unified category. “Students” itself feels simplified; there is so much diversity that is made invisible by this generalization. This seems to be one of the main problematic side effects of representation, in addition with misrepresentation and misinterpretation.  Even as I write this, I am aware of the implications of using “we” and “our” to refer to people on a general level, and that I myself am attempting to speak for others. My reference to Beyoncé is beginning to feel like a transgression in the sense that I assume a particular interpretation of her words and that I assume she does not work a 9 to 5 job. 

On Friday evening, I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Volshky Ukrainian Dance Ensemble’s performance at Goodhart Auditorium here at Bryn Mawr. I was impressed by their performance first and foremost because of their talent, but secondly because it reminded me very much of the work on silence we’ve done so far in this class. I haven’t been formally trained in dance – except some basics of ballroom – but I do understand the way dance is used as an outlet for expression. I find this particularly interesting because dance is such a visceral way of expressing oneself, but at the same time, it’s silent. At one point in the Volshky performance, a male and female dancer embraced on the stage – after dancing away from and around each other for much of the dance. A number of people in the audience (myself included) responded to the embrace with a resounding, “Aww!” The way a movement can evoke an emotional response in people showed me the way we can communicate silently.

In the interest of fostering our love for poetry, (This one's for you, Anne!) I wanted to share some of the blackout poetry that I've done. Dan mentioned this in class but I thought I'd give an example. Trying to reduce fact into art is an infuriatingly lovely process, and I recommend everybody try it out! 

I realize that they are both on their side and hard to read so I'll type them out here: 

They were dismantled, 

reduced. 

Critical and 

Emotional. 

I close around me 

rather than just watching the moment bloom 

amidst 

the world. 

-- 

Perhaps, 

the idea 

was part of the air. 

An elegant lightness, 

derived from the burdens upon them. 

Predictably, 

she asked it 

to dance. 

In Greg Dimitriadis' "Popular Culture, Pedagogy, and Urban Youth: Beyond Silenced Volices" I was intrigued his a sentence stating: "Accountability has become the watchword for policing what education can mean for youth in state-funded institutions" (233). I couldn't help but think about "Prisoners of a Hard Life" (a reading we did for our class on vision) and how the theme of over-policing: who has the power to police, and who and/or what are they policing, was prominant in many of the stories. 

In our first education class, we read a quote that said that the purpose of education was continually changing. I couldn't help but find this problematic, because I didn't understand why the PURPOSE of education needed to change/ be changed. I found myself contemplating both the reasons why the purpose of education would change as well as who had the power to make that call. Why is there a need to police education? I couldn't come up with an answer. All I could come up with was this notion that how we learn is dependent on individual ethnography, for ethnography is critical to understanding silenced voices (234), but I couldn't understand why individual ethnography could, at a policy level, alter what education means to the individual. In other words, why would my race, gender, or my urban upbringing affect what the purpose of education should be for me? Shouldn't the purpose of education be the same for everyone and the manner by which we arrive at that purpose or goal be different?