'In', 'for', or 'with'?

[Mia Kalish]

I think it's not right to say, "fuck the labelers" on a discussion board
like this. 

People have their ideas, and they have a right to discuss them without being
assaulted. 

By restricting the opportunity for speech, for presentation and examination
of ideas, those who do it attempt to create their own particular centrism.
We see this in Education all the time, where references are all to the
science as developed in Europe, the ideas as developed in Europe, the
expectations as developed in Europe. 

People need to see things reflected in their own understandings. To force
one set of understandings on someone who is trying to get a clearer
understanding of their own is to destroy their learning path. We have seen
this happen over and over. And the children are the ones who are suffering
for it. 

As for "labels," everything that has a word has a label. So "love" is a
label. And what is "love" anyway? It is a complex concept that is comprised
of the layers of understandings in a culture. "Real" is a similar construct.
What is a "real" number: it's a number that is composed of a mantissa and an
exponent. What's "understanding"? Is it like, but certainly not exactly the
same, as "emotional empathy"? Is it the ability to grok "mantissa"?
Exponent? Is it the ability to recognize a word in a sentence? Is it the
ability to recognize the word and reproduce it orally, exactly? Is it the
ability to recognize the word and reproduce it orally in a different
sentence with a slightly different (polysemic) meaning? 

It is easy to talk about words that have physical or logical targets, like
rock and 4. It is not easy OR accurate to talk about concepts that are
integrations of cultural and individual metaphors, like "happiness," or
"caring" (See Valenzuela on this), or "pride" or "thoughtfulness" or "joy"
or "pleasure" or "shame" or "honor". All these things and more depend on the
cultural and individual values, mores, goals, understandings, perceptions,
emotional responses, and the sheer safety or danger of reproducing or
changing. 

In a postmodern, poststructuralist world, like ours, there are many opinions
and views, simply because of the recognition of complex integrations. In a
poststructural sense, things are always changing, including both our
understandings and our complex integrations, as we have more experiences and
modify what we think. 

In this PM, PS world, there is No One Right, and No One Wrong. There is no
discovery outside human perception; god didn't make the world as a game for
people to learn lessons and succeed. The world just is; what we know is what
we perceive and think. Our meaning is what we are able to conceptualize,
communicate and share with others (and no, "communication" and "sharing" are
not the same). 

So it would be nice if people realized that they shouldn't attack other
participants. :-) 

Thank you, 
Mia

 



-----Original Message-----
From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]
On Behalf Of annie ross
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2006 10:10 AM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ILAT] 'In', 'for', or 'with'?

news for today:

so.. "love" is the radical word.

i presented a series of prints and paintings at the CAA in seattle .  ithey
are about words,   meditationss, time (i.e;  love, peace, understanding). 
breaking down artificial human-made constructs.

in a world where normal human bodily functions,  fuck, shit, are the
expletives, no., 

war is the expletive.

if labeling makes you happy, then live in your labeled world.
if blaming makes you comfortable, then be comfortable.

love is the radical word

people are killed for saying 'peace'
peacepeacepeacepeace, ad infinitum

and as to the question of being so many people, depending on the context,
courage all!
be you.
i am who i am, to quote popeye, 
with my family, academia, community, conferences, wherever and with
whomever.	
that is called being real in the world.

real real real

and those who believe in sacred work, equalilty, and possibilities,  will
get it
and those who don't will spend their time guarding a non-existent gates in 
the 'perceptual prison their culture has erected for them', to	use the
words of johansen and grinde

and some say i am stupid
and some say i am ok
and they are both correct

so love peace, love love, 
fuck the labelers

annie



re:
 Being a simple computer person, my preference is for simple practical
> guidelines like those contained in (part of) Decolonizing Methodologies
> rather than high brow discussions of the need to re-radicalise the
> post-colonial agenda within the post-modern neo-liberal context (hmmm...
> can't help feeling that I ought to have included feminism in there
> somewhere...)
> Daniel


On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 10:36:36 -0000 ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I think there is something in this conversation that strikes to the
> heart of what we (or most of us I guess) are trying to achieve.
> 
> Annie Ross wrote about the artificiality of borders between people and
> that "...academic life likes to teach us academics that we
> are somehow different (smarter, more this or that), but we are not.  if
> we
> all knew that, there would be fewer problems. ... there is no 'insider'
> ther is no 'outsider'.  that is the big secret."
> 
> While I am entirely happy to accept that academics aren't smarter etc,
> (guess who spent 45 minutes walking around Bristol Airport car park in
> the rain in the dark on Sunday night because he hadn't thought to make a
> note of where he parked the car!) I really think that there are some
> important issues around the insider / outsider boundary. If we fail to
> recognise and manage these issues then at best our efforts will have no
> effect, and at worse will cause damage.
> 
> As an Englishman living and working in Wales and as a non-Welsh speaker
> (practically) working with the Welsh language, I recognise that I am
> 'outside' along several dimensions. Whilst I am happy to accept the
> label "incomer", hopefully I have managed to avoid being branded as an
> outright colonist.
> 
> No matter how long I live in Wales, or how good my Welsh becomes (I
> wish!) I cannot ever foresee a time in which I would actually BE Welsh -
> either in my own mind or the minds of others.
> 
> To my mind the best I can do is to recognise this and to try to identify
> appropriate ways of managing it.
> 
>
> 
> Be seeing you,
> Being a simple computer person, my preference is for simple practical
> guidelines like those contained in (part of) Decolonizing Methodologies
> rather than high brow discussions of the need to re-radicalise the
> post-colonial agenda within the post-modern neo-liberal context (hmmm...
> can't help feeling that I ought to have included feminism in there
> somewhere...)
> Daniel.
> 


annie g. ross
First Nations Studies
School for the Contemporary Arts
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive
Burnaby, British Columbia
V5A 1S6
annier at sfu.ca
Telephone:  604-291-3575  Facsimile:  604-291-5666