December 11, 2016 - 17:37
Anne Dalke writes that slipping is “often unconscious, form of resistance that I’m [Anne Dalke] calling “slipping”: an act of associative mis-speaking” (Anne Dalke, website version). In her work, she cites a few examples, a student hanging the confederate flag out of her window, a student opting out of a learning experience, and the hanging of Christmas lights in a common room. Dalke also quotes a former student, Emily Elstad, “these notions of “slip” posit a new state emerging from the act of slipping, a temporary loss of control that yields both a personal, subjective truth and a changed state that has moved away from “a standard” and into new thought and order. Instead of chastising people for “slipping,” for describing the way in which they honestly think about the world, perhaps we should consider the meaning behind words spoken in moments of “slipping” and really think about how they speak to our world” (Anne Dalke, website version). This explains slipping as a “temporary loss of control,” which leads to a “personal, subjective truth.” Slipping is an unconscious and unintentional slip of the tongue, releasing the what the person speaking believes to be the truth.
However, after rereading Slipping, Chapter 8 by Anne Dalke, there were a few points that were inconsistent with Dalke’s definition of slipping. While Dalke defines slipping as “a temporary loss of control” and “mis-speaking,” some of the examples, such as the student hanging a confederate flag from her window, seem to be intentional acts. The flag was hung intentionally next to an LGBTQ flag to express her pride of her identity, being from the South as well as being an LGBTQ identifying individual. This act created tension for staff and students, which is the purpose of slipping, however, because it was not an unintentional act, this instance would not be considered slipping by Dalke’s definition.
In As the World Burns by Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan, the three environmental activists meet to try to prevent the environmental destruction at the hands of the aliens. However, two of the activists are more concerned with the spreading of awareness rather than taking action. “Great! Over ten million people have sent our letter to the President! And we’ve raised over five million dollars for our organization! And we’ve got our petitions circulating.” (68, Jensen and McMillan). When the third activist tries to intervene, they simply ignore him or change the subject. “What about the trees?”, “What about them? We even have the names of some massive stars. MASSIVE! … The campaign is going great!” (68, Jensen and McMillan). The environmental activists don’t care at all about making a real impact and saving the earth, they would rather just sit back and only encourage passive action.
Kolbert’s article, Greening the Ghetto, activist Van Jones explains how he got $215,000 from the Nathan Cummings foundation and "at the end of the day, we had some great photographs, a couple of pamphlets, and not one job... it was a complete and utter failure" (6, Greening the Ghetto). Because just like in As the World Burns, these activists were only concerned with appearances. Making it appear as if they were making and encouraging change. And then, Van Jones went back to the organization asking for another $215,000 and he got it. "Then we wasted it all again ... because we still didn't know what we were doing" (6, Greening the Ghetto). Van Jones wasted $430,000 on pamphlets and pictures and even with all that money, didn’t create one job because he didn’t want to try new or different strategies.
Looking at As the World Burns and Greening the Ghetto, a new thought has developed and changed my thoughts about slipping. Dalke also writes:
“I’ve been learning how an unintentional “slip” might function, as Emily explains,to remind us that “there is something down there that needs to be cleaned up.” This making of messes, and then cleaning them up, never ends, but I also see how this process can function as an ongoing impetus not to settle in, a noting and questioning that can precipitate action, and change. Cleaning up is, also, not the only—sometimes not even the most useful—thing that can be done with a mess. What about exploring it? Painting with it? Surrounding it with silence? Meditating on it? Accepting it as the condition in which we live?” (Anne Dalke, website version).
This idea of slipping as making a mess and having to address the mess was very interesting. However, I then realized that all of these examples, rather than showing a slip of the tongue or a mis-speak, show avoidance. Instead of speaking the truth, they re-direct, changing the focus away from what they were uncomfortable with. Previously, Dalke said that: In class, she aims to make each person feel “equally” uncomfortable because in order to gain new insight and experience, it is important to step out of your comfort zone (Anne Dalke, first writing conference).
This information leads me to think about the six week projects as well as the contact zones versus comfort zones. While looking for slippage, instead, there was a very obvious lack of willingness to move away from convenience. Instead of moving into the contact zones, for example, going through the necessary steps to create more jobs or interacting with the president to prevent environmental destruction, in both situations, no one wanted to move out of their comfort zones. I realized that slippage and addressing the contact zone takes a lot of courage and many people, both real and fictional, may want to make a difference, they would ultimately rather stay in their comfort zone than address controversial topics and ideas.