Great response! You're right. What matters more than belief is
practice. I still believe, however, that what "goes without saying"
underwrites such practices in exactly the way that grammar rules
underwrite and justify "correct usage" of a langauge. People of a
community can be relied upon to do the right thing (practices) from
the perspective of the community because a certain interpretation of
"the right thing", a certain sense of legitamite obligation and proper
restraint, goes without saying for all "decent people", decent people
being "us" from the perspective of the community. Knowing what the
right thing to do is and doing it is what being "decent people" means
within any community.
I was trying to use the word "commentary" in Foucault's special
sense of that word. One question I was asking was "this is what I
think Foucault means by "commentary", does this make sense or am I
somehow misreading Foucault?" I choose the example of a minstral show
put on by Duke and company trying to make it clear that by commentary
I meant a story about a community which would not be seen as at all
fair or accurate from the point of view of that community. A story
which did not serve the interests of that community but only the
interests of those who reject the members of that community.
I agree that flexibility is a pretty good measure of the health of
a community. As Rokeach pointed out, a belief system serves two broad
functions. One, it structurally couples the behavoir of the individual
to reality. Two, it insulates the individual from aspects of reality
which are too threatening to cope with. Rokeach defined persons as
being relatively open minded or close minded depending on the degree
to which this second function interfered with the first function. The
people whose belief systems operated more as a mechanism of denial
than as a mechanism of coping Rokeach labled as dogmatic. I would have
no problem with the idea that some communities are healther than
others in the sense that the communities shared belief system has more
to do with careing and coping than with denial. I would also expect
that the stories told about the other within a healthy community would
have less to do with "commentary". Commentary is precisely a story
about the other designed to deny validity to the others' perceptions
and experience. The members of a healthy community would probably not
be threatened enough by the other to feel the need to construct pure
commentary. Their stories about the other would be more guided by
healthy curiosity and a desire to deal fairly than by denial. But, I
would still argue that any story told be "us" about "them" will have
some aspect of commentary in what I take to be Foucault's sense. Even
a story about why gays should have rights told by an open minded
"straight but not narrow" academic will, I think, have an aspect of
commentary to the extent that it is a story about how "we" (straights)
should threat them. I can tell you from my own experience in class
that it's very hard not to fall into commentary when discussing any
person different in a way that would make that person "them" rather
than "one of us" from the point of view of the typical student.
Thanks for responding,
Tony Michael Roberts
---henry sholar <hwsholar@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> Well, I don't think a community is "defined by shared beliefs."
> I think a community is of a group which has shared cultural practices,
> some of which may be "beliefs" but most are practical skills that
> enable shared coping and caring (of the environment & of others) in
the
> community. Most are unarticulated, even transparent to the members of
> the community.
>
> To doubt, or even to challenge cultural practices most often does not
> "drain" the shared life of the community. Most often they are
ignored.
> Sometimes they are accepted and amalgamated-- interpreted by the
> culture. Works of art, political movements, and even consumer
products
> are simple ways that communities embrace new interps, ways they
change.
>
> These challenges (or simple cultural re-interpretations) reveal also
> that communities are not composed of fixed frameworks like
grammatical
> rules. The stability of communities is a much looser, intuited
> membership. Perhaps the ability to be flexible is one way of
measuring
> the health of a community, ie, those that are open and flexible are
> much healthier than those which call for rigid and alledgedly
> unalterable cultural practices.
>
> is this the kind of "commentary" you're looking for?
> kindest regards,
> henry sholar
>
>
> On Mon, 11 Jan 1999 07:38:54 -0800 (PST) Tony Roberts
> <fdrtikol@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Commentary works to drain the shared life of some community of
meaning
> > and reality. This community is defined by shared beliefs which are
> > deeper than assumptions in that they "go without saying" for
everyone
> > in the community. To doubt this belief is precisely to become
> > alienated from this community, is to stop constructing ones
immediate
> > lived experience exclusivly within the limits of this communitys
> > perspective. Alienation from a community is finally an ability to
see
> > the limits of that communitys' perspective. These beliefs which go
> > without saying are grammar rules which structure a shared space of
> > experience where many important meanings are fixed and stabilized.
> > Commentary works to unfix and destabilize this common sense or
> > conventional wisdom which "everybody knows" in the community by
> > bringing these contexting beliefs into question ,by telling an
> > alternative story about what's going on. This story claims to be the
> > "real truth" behind the delusion the poor benighted souls of the
> > community live, in their ignorance, as truth. Imagine a modern day
> > minstral show put on by David Duke and Company. Imagine it filmed
and
> > distributed through Dukes' website. This minstral show would bring
> > into question everything that must go without saying if being black
> > means what most black people feel the need to think it means in
order
> > to feel comfortable in their skins. To the extent that it
succeeded in
> > doing so, it would drain the black experience of all meaning and
> > reality. It would define the point of view of the black community as
> > delusion. Part of the neccessary ideological arsenal of any
community,
> > Jesse Jackson's or David Duke's, consists in commentaries which
> > convincingly define the perspective of the other as pathological
> > delusion. Power is finally the power to make ones' commentaries true
> > for the people they are about. Resistence is finally resistence to
the
> > commentary of the other. In the animal kingdom, the rule is eat or
be
> > eaten. In the human world, the rule is define or be defined. Power
is
> > the power to define, to make knowledge a dispersion of what goes
> > without saying from ones' own perspective and, at the same time, a
> > commentary defining the alterity of the other as delusion and
deviance.
> > Any Comments,
> > Tony Michael Roberts
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ==
> > "I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no
face. Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same:
leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are
in order." Michel Foucault
> >
> > _________________________________________________________
> > DO YOU YAHOO!?
> > Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
> >
>
> ----------------------
>
> henry sholar
> hwsholar@xxxxxxxx
>
>
==
"I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order." Michel Foucault
_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
practice. I still believe, however, that what "goes without saying"
underwrites such practices in exactly the way that grammar rules
underwrite and justify "correct usage" of a langauge. People of a
community can be relied upon to do the right thing (practices) from
the perspective of the community because a certain interpretation of
"the right thing", a certain sense of legitamite obligation and proper
restraint, goes without saying for all "decent people", decent people
being "us" from the perspective of the community. Knowing what the
right thing to do is and doing it is what being "decent people" means
within any community.
I was trying to use the word "commentary" in Foucault's special
sense of that word. One question I was asking was "this is what I
think Foucault means by "commentary", does this make sense or am I
somehow misreading Foucault?" I choose the example of a minstral show
put on by Duke and company trying to make it clear that by commentary
I meant a story about a community which would not be seen as at all
fair or accurate from the point of view of that community. A story
which did not serve the interests of that community but only the
interests of those who reject the members of that community.
I agree that flexibility is a pretty good measure of the health of
a community. As Rokeach pointed out, a belief system serves two broad
functions. One, it structurally couples the behavoir of the individual
to reality. Two, it insulates the individual from aspects of reality
which are too threatening to cope with. Rokeach defined persons as
being relatively open minded or close minded depending on the degree
to which this second function interfered with the first function. The
people whose belief systems operated more as a mechanism of denial
than as a mechanism of coping Rokeach labled as dogmatic. I would have
no problem with the idea that some communities are healther than
others in the sense that the communities shared belief system has more
to do with careing and coping than with denial. I would also expect
that the stories told about the other within a healthy community would
have less to do with "commentary". Commentary is precisely a story
about the other designed to deny validity to the others' perceptions
and experience. The members of a healthy community would probably not
be threatened enough by the other to feel the need to construct pure
commentary. Their stories about the other would be more guided by
healthy curiosity and a desire to deal fairly than by denial. But, I
would still argue that any story told be "us" about "them" will have
some aspect of commentary in what I take to be Foucault's sense. Even
a story about why gays should have rights told by an open minded
"straight but not narrow" academic will, I think, have an aspect of
commentary to the extent that it is a story about how "we" (straights)
should threat them. I can tell you from my own experience in class
that it's very hard not to fall into commentary when discussing any
person different in a way that would make that person "them" rather
than "one of us" from the point of view of the typical student.
Thanks for responding,
Tony Michael Roberts
---henry sholar <hwsholar@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> Well, I don't think a community is "defined by shared beliefs."
> I think a community is of a group which has shared cultural practices,
> some of which may be "beliefs" but most are practical skills that
> enable shared coping and caring (of the environment & of others) in
the
> community. Most are unarticulated, even transparent to the members of
> the community.
>
> To doubt, or even to challenge cultural practices most often does not
> "drain" the shared life of the community. Most often they are
ignored.
> Sometimes they are accepted and amalgamated-- interpreted by the
> culture. Works of art, political movements, and even consumer
products
> are simple ways that communities embrace new interps, ways they
change.
>
> These challenges (or simple cultural re-interpretations) reveal also
> that communities are not composed of fixed frameworks like
grammatical
> rules. The stability of communities is a much looser, intuited
> membership. Perhaps the ability to be flexible is one way of
measuring
> the health of a community, ie, those that are open and flexible are
> much healthier than those which call for rigid and alledgedly
> unalterable cultural practices.
>
> is this the kind of "commentary" you're looking for?
> kindest regards,
> henry sholar
>
>
> On Mon, 11 Jan 1999 07:38:54 -0800 (PST) Tony Roberts
> <fdrtikol@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Commentary works to drain the shared life of some community of
meaning
> > and reality. This community is defined by shared beliefs which are
> > deeper than assumptions in that they "go without saying" for
everyone
> > in the community. To doubt this belief is precisely to become
> > alienated from this community, is to stop constructing ones
immediate
> > lived experience exclusivly within the limits of this communitys
> > perspective. Alienation from a community is finally an ability to
see
> > the limits of that communitys' perspective. These beliefs which go
> > without saying are grammar rules which structure a shared space of
> > experience where many important meanings are fixed and stabilized.
> > Commentary works to unfix and destabilize this common sense or
> > conventional wisdom which "everybody knows" in the community by
> > bringing these contexting beliefs into question ,by telling an
> > alternative story about what's going on. This story claims to be the
> > "real truth" behind the delusion the poor benighted souls of the
> > community live, in their ignorance, as truth. Imagine a modern day
> > minstral show put on by David Duke and Company. Imagine it filmed
and
> > distributed through Dukes' website. This minstral show would bring
> > into question everything that must go without saying if being black
> > means what most black people feel the need to think it means in
order
> > to feel comfortable in their skins. To the extent that it
succeeded in
> > doing so, it would drain the black experience of all meaning and
> > reality. It would define the point of view of the black community as
> > delusion. Part of the neccessary ideological arsenal of any
community,
> > Jesse Jackson's or David Duke's, consists in commentaries which
> > convincingly define the perspective of the other as pathological
> > delusion. Power is finally the power to make ones' commentaries true
> > for the people they are about. Resistence is finally resistence to
the
> > commentary of the other. In the animal kingdom, the rule is eat or
be
> > eaten. In the human world, the rule is define or be defined. Power
is
> > the power to define, to make knowledge a dispersion of what goes
> > without saying from ones' own perspective and, at the same time, a
> > commentary defining the alterity of the other as delusion and
deviance.
> > Any Comments,
> > Tony Michael Roberts
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ==
> > "I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no
face. Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same:
leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are
in order." Michel Foucault
> >
> > _________________________________________________________
> > DO YOU YAHOO!?
> > Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
> >
>
> ----------------------
>
> henry sholar
> hwsholar@xxxxxxxx
>
>
==
"I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order." Michel Foucault
_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com