Lots of thinking in this post. Mostly it is becoming a drafting space for the paper idea. Right now it is really unfocused:
The Way, the Witch and the Web-master: myth, magic and the re-instantiation of information in the re-membered and material-mattering body.
The main thing I want to explore in this paper is the concept of unauthorized knowledges.
I want to put Feminist matristic thought
that argues that “creation is literal, the energy of thought is integrally related
to the creation of matter” (Orenstein 20) in conversation with the posthuman conversation.
Both areas of thought are making the same argument that information and matter are inextricably linked but ultimately separate entities. The difference is that in Hayles it is clear that information and matter are placed in a dominant and subordinate relationship. In Feminist matristic thought, there is no reason to separate them or give them different worth. They are two halves of a whole.
Authorized knowledge systems keep bringing us back to the machine or techne' as the metaphor for how the human world works. That insistence on mechanistic mediation dis-empowers ways of knowing that are traditionally associated with women (or with Indigenous peoples-- as a scholar I know eco-feminism, but nothing of indigenous rhetorics or ways of knowing), and perpetuates a "power over" rather than "power with" paradigm. It is a paradigm of separateness-es, separation, estrangement.
Both areas of thought are making the same argument that information and matter are inextricably linked but ultimately separate entities. The difference is that in Hayles it is clear that information and matter are placed in a dominant and subordinate relationship. In Feminist matristic thought, there is no reason to separate them or give them different worth. They are two halves of a whole.
Authorized knowledge systems keep bringing us back to the machine or techne' as the metaphor for how the human world works. That insistence on mechanistic mediation dis-empowers ways of knowing that are traditionally associated with women (or with Indigenous peoples-- as a scholar I know eco-feminism, but nothing of indigenous rhetorics or ways of knowing), and perpetuates a "power over" rather than "power with" paradigm. It is a paradigm of separateness-es, separation, estrangement.
Hayles writes, “Though over-determined, the disembodiment of information
was not inevitable, anymore than it is inevitable we continue to accept the
idea that we are essentially
information patterns” (22). She suggests that
what keeps us from changing this perception of "inevitability" is the story we tell about it: “The heart that
keeps this circulatory system flowing is narrative—narratives about culture,
narrative within culture, narratives about science, narratives within science”
(22). Our over-arching world cultural
narratives (as studied by Joseph Campbell) are by and large only about the masculine journey.
Hayles wants to “replace a teleology of disembodiment” with
competing narratives such literary
texts, scientific narratives that challenge the abstractions of disembodiment"
(22), but I think we need to be re-membering a different (older) cultural myth. One that re-members rather than dis-members the body of myth prior to patriarchy (the work of Merlin Stone, Marija Gimbutas, Carolyn Merchant, Starhawk, Charlene Spretnak, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gloria Ornstein, Riane Eisler etc.).
The feminist movement in my life-time has provided me more economic agency, but it has done nothing to privilege the ways in which I prefer to know and be in the world. Those ways are actually less valued now than they were in the 1970's and 80's. The thought-forms that guide my sense of what is possible are deeply entrenched in patriarchal myths and constructions of reality.
Gregory Bateson said that "information is any difference that makes a
difference" (Mind and Nature), so what I gather from what little difference the Goddess culture scholarship made is that it had no fertile vessel to grow in--and without material instantiation it can't (hasn't really) survive(d). So perhaps rather than re-hashing old territory, I need to look at what we are left with when we have information that is "conceptually distinct from the markers
that embody it" (Hayles 25). In other words, what does disem-humanbodied
(machine-embodied) information look like, and how does it function as compared to human-embodied information?
Perhaps it looks the Digital Doula. http://www.peggyomara.com/2013/12/16/digital-doula/
So, perhaps I will look at what a woman would get from her Digital Doula compared to an embodied one. Not sure yet what this will entail.............. But my over-arching point would be that there are some major things that mothers can't get from a web-site--things that they can only get from human care-givers. But the bottom line I would keep returning to is: Who benefits from the privileging of information over matter? What is the perceived benefit? (Because It's not a benefit to anyone to destroy life forces or to ignore them into non-existence.) But why do people buy that it is? (Yikes.)
So the class Wednesday was awesome and exhausting. It went past 6:00 p.m.
The feedback I got was to try and anchor my thinking in a digital text (like a TV show). That's where I got the idea of the digital doula thing. But I don't know................
I started wondering about the magic thing when I was grappling with the concept of material instantiation, power and privilege (and Goddessess). Magic has interested me since I was a graduate student in the 1980's (the question of is it or is it not rhetoric). But prior to being able to answer the question of whether magic is rhetoric (and I know Covino did this and so has Miles, but I have a different spin on it), magic has to be defined. I think Covino and Miles don't do a good job of defining it because they are dealing with it as an abstraction rather than as an embodied understanding.
The definition of magic (at least what I can distill from the sources I have consulted) is that it is essentially culturally unauthorized information, and the lack of cultural authorization makes it suspect (at the very least), or considered dangerous (at the very most). According to management professor Chris Miles (Persuasion, marketing communication, and the metaphor of magic), "There is no agreed upon definition of magic, or magic's relation to religion or science" (Miles 2005).
Although, having said this, Miles does site sources that indicate that magic, despite the fact that it is "a conceptual mess," (2005) tends to be seen as a contrast term to science and religion (2005). The fact that magic is commonly defined in contrast to science and religion (Ward; de Romilly), supports the thesis that the only difference between magical thinking and scientific or sacred thinking (since those two appear on the surface to be worlds apart), is that, for whatever cultural reasons exist at the time, magic is the realm of unsanctioned knowledge. This is true from what I have read over the years (Frazer and the Golden Bough; Malinowski) who have identified magical cultures and labeled the belief systems as erroneous. I have no doubt they labeled the cultures as magical too (meaning the cultures themselves probably didn't claim their beliefs were erroneous or stood outside of a paradigm of sanctioned information)--but perhaps from Frazer and Malinowski's point of view, a way of knowing that they did not understand could only be wrong.
According to Starhawk, Magic is information manipulated to alter perception; in other words, it is the act or art of changing consciousness at will (13). (Starhawk doesn't define magic perjoratively.)
From what I understand, in order for magic to work, it has to be "downloaded" into a material instantiation. (Because all information has to be instantiated in order to manifest anything.) The first material instantiation magic requires is language.
Ultimately, magic has less to do with what the information is and more to do with who or what instantiates it. It is all about who has the authority to create and manipulate reality. That interests me; but that doesn't help me focus :-)
The feedback I got was to try and anchor my thinking in a digital text (like a TV show). That's where I got the idea of the digital doula thing. But I don't know................
I started wondering about the magic thing when I was grappling with the concept of material instantiation, power and privilege (and Goddessess). Magic has interested me since I was a graduate student in the 1980's (the question of is it or is it not rhetoric). But prior to being able to answer the question of whether magic is rhetoric (and I know Covino did this and so has Miles, but I have a different spin on it), magic has to be defined. I think Covino and Miles don't do a good job of defining it because they are dealing with it as an abstraction rather than as an embodied understanding.
The definition of magic (at least what I can distill from the sources I have consulted) is that it is essentially culturally unauthorized information, and the lack of cultural authorization makes it suspect (at the very least), or considered dangerous (at the very most). According to management professor Chris Miles (Persuasion, marketing communication, and the metaphor of magic), "There is no agreed upon definition of magic, or magic's relation to religion or science" (Miles 2005).
Although, having said this, Miles does site sources that indicate that magic, despite the fact that it is "a conceptual mess," (2005) tends to be seen as a contrast term to science and religion (2005). The fact that magic is commonly defined in contrast to science and religion (Ward; de Romilly), supports the thesis that the only difference between magical thinking and scientific or sacred thinking (since those two appear on the surface to be worlds apart), is that, for whatever cultural reasons exist at the time, magic is the realm of unsanctioned knowledge. This is true from what I have read over the years (Frazer and the Golden Bough; Malinowski) who have identified magical cultures and labeled the belief systems as erroneous. I have no doubt they labeled the cultures as magical too (meaning the cultures themselves probably didn't claim their beliefs were erroneous or stood outside of a paradigm of sanctioned information)--but perhaps from Frazer and Malinowski's point of view, a way of knowing that they did not understand could only be wrong.
According to Starhawk, Magic is information manipulated to alter perception; in other words, it is the act or art of changing consciousness at will (13). (Starhawk doesn't define magic perjoratively.)
From what I understand, in order for magic to work, it has to be "downloaded" into a material instantiation. (Because all information has to be instantiated in order to manifest anything.) The first material instantiation magic requires is language.
Ultimately, magic has less to do with what the information is and more to do with who or what instantiates it. It is all about who has the authority to create and manipulate reality. That interests me; but that doesn't help me focus :-)
Here is a focused thought: the paradigm of power that values information over its material instantiation (the person who communicates that information, if not the technology that instantiates it), is what shapes public schooling (really any state schooling). Grades are how teachers exert power over and control student learning. The one place that grades are dangerous is in language acquisition. As Frankie Condon reminded us, "Language is a shared resource." It is not a scarce resource (in that way it is like love), and so we don't need to control it within a competitive system. Holding power over a student's (person's) experience learning to use language well ensures that the resource (literacy) is restricted. That's why the Writing Center is such an important place. It is a commons for communication. It has nothing to do with evaluating student work and everything to do with expanding it. Power-over depends on compliance.
So as writing teachers we are acting in a contradictory posture when we grade student writing. On the one hand we are offering to expand student power (empower them with the skills to use the technology of writing well), but on the other we are controlling that acquisition with a system of rewards and punishments more aligned with training dogs. The solution for me to this is simple: i evaluate my students as students and I respond to their writing as a separate enterprise. In other words, in order for the system of education to run smoothly there have to be some areas of organized compliance: come to class, come on time, do the work, turn it in on time; be respectful; be awake. I grade based on your ability to demonstrate a discipline to the role of student. But as a writer, I will only offer you encouragement. I will give good observational feedback and experienced guidance for improvement, but I will only label your performance as a competitor when you are ready to enter the ring. This isn't new information. I am not the first person to instantiate this practice, but it is a practice that is important to our field (limiting the "control over" postures in the classroom).
Anyway, in terms of SRTOL, it is not their own language that students have a right to, it is a right to voice their own experience without being punished for it (like with a "C" or "D" grade or a sliced tongue or a wrap on the knuckles. They are all behaviors of domination). Ultimately we don't seek for students to stay stuck in a limited repertoire of language use, we seek to liberate them to their highest potential by showing them they have a right to information in any and all language, but you have to know a lot of language to be able to access as much information as possible. Plus there is no "their own" in language, if it is a shared resource.
So as writing teachers we are acting in a contradictory posture when we grade student writing. On the one hand we are offering to expand student power (empower them with the skills to use the technology of writing well), but on the other we are controlling that acquisition with a system of rewards and punishments more aligned with training dogs. The solution for me to this is simple: i evaluate my students as students and I respond to their writing as a separate enterprise. In other words, in order for the system of education to run smoothly there have to be some areas of organized compliance: come to class, come on time, do the work, turn it in on time; be respectful; be awake. I grade based on your ability to demonstrate a discipline to the role of student. But as a writer, I will only offer you encouragement. I will give good observational feedback and experienced guidance for improvement, but I will only label your performance as a competitor when you are ready to enter the ring. This isn't new information. I am not the first person to instantiate this practice, but it is a practice that is important to our field (limiting the "control over" postures in the classroom).
Anyway, in terms of SRTOL, it is not their own language that students have a right to, it is a right to voice their own experience without being punished for it (like with a "C" or "D" grade or a sliced tongue or a wrap on the knuckles. They are all behaviors of domination). Ultimately we don't seek for students to stay stuck in a limited repertoire of language use, we seek to liberate them to their highest potential by showing them they have a right to information in any and all language, but you have to know a lot of language to be able to access as much information as possible. Plus there is no "their own" in language, if it is a shared resource.
Lisa
The problem isn’t with the tool, it is with the power
paradigm
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