Embodied Permeations: Learning While Living Theory & Art

Erica RogersUniversity of Nebraska

Fall 2011

The (Dis)Order of Things

Growing up in the 1970s and ‘80s, writers like Judy Blume in her books, Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret and Wifey illuminated for me the very physical experience of being a girl and young woman in the United States. Humorist Erma Bombeck helped me to laugh about married life and the demands of housewifery in the years following second wave feminism.

I did not follow the order of things.

Theory IS Praxis

• Michel Foucault (Philosophy) in Discipline and Punish (1979) asserts there is a panoptic arrangement of power in mass culture, and that power is centralized. This centralization of power elites creates “docile bodies” – subjects to centralized power.

Center

Fringe

Center

Theory IS Praxis

• Chelas Sandoval (Philosophy), in Methodology of the Oppressed (2000), asks for an inversion of the panoptic so that those on the fringe become the center in order to critique and observe those central powers. She also asks us to deconstruct the hierarchal (top-down) power dynamic and to place it on a horizontal plane.

Fringe

Center

(Re)Thinking Power

The significance of this horizontal shift is that we can then observe the way power is transferred – the way it moves back and forth. This means that we are often powerful and powerless, depending on the context of the site of engagement with an other.

Theory IS Praxis

• Krista Ratcliffe (Rhetoric & Composition, Women & Gender Studies) builds on both of these conceptualizations of power in her book, Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness (2005)

• She asks us to reconsider the hierarchal power structure of speaking versus listening. Speaking/writing has been privileged in Rhetoric Studies as the site of theoretical and practical scholarship. Ratcliffe asks us to explore the role listening/reading can play when we invert this power dynamic.

“Rhetorical Listening”

Key questions to ask a text as an active listener:

•Who’s (not) speaking?•Who’s (not) represented?•Who’s (not) powerful?

Theory IS Praxis

• Ann Berthoff (Composition) simplifies several Classic Rhetoric concepts and contemporary philosophies by explaining and exploring the “dialectic triangle.”

Message

Speaker/Writer Listener/reader

Theory IS Praxis

• Edward Soja (Geography and Architecture) in his book, THIRDSPACE: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (1996) builds on the ideas of interpretation (the dialectic triadic), power (Foucault, Sandoval), and the ways humans respond to geographical/spatial phenomenon.

• He identifies a way we interpret the world around us as “critical thirding” and its potential to foster critical awareness in his field and beyond.

Theory IS Praxis

According to Soja, we use a triadic as we experience civic and architectural spaces. This “thirding” can also help us to contemplate our own order of things.

Constructed Lived

Perceived

Theory IS Praxis“Displacement”

• Psychology: A defense mechanism – as emotion, affect, and/or/also desire shift from one subjectivity to another

• Physics: The movement (or magnitude) of a vector from an initial position to a subsequent position

• Chemistry: A reaction as an atom, molecule or radical replaces another in a compound

• Geology: Movement between the two sides of a fault

• Fencing: When one steps off “piste” – the area of engagement – to disengage with an opponent

Praxis IS Theory: Reading

• Who, what, when, where, and how we read can illuminate our own practices and ideologies

• Our critical engagement (not mere skepticism) reflects our sociopolitical location within culture

• Theories can help us to develop imagination, critical consciousness, and intellectual resources

Reading Activity

Read “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia PlathConsider these questions about the text:• Does the “speaker” in the poem challenge panoptic

power? Is the “speaker” a “docile body”?• Can you name the central power(s), the cultural

“normative” assertion the “speaker” challenges?• Does the “speaker” in the poem invert social “norms”?

If so, which ones?• Who is “the speaker” in this text, and who is the

“listener”? What is the message?

Reading Activity Consider these questions about the reader (that’s you):

• In what ways are you displaced while considering the text? Does the genre demand something of you?

• If you think of the poem as a space, what constructed, perceived, and lived experiences are brought to light? For example, does your perception of “poetry” influence your reading of the poet’s construction (form) of the poem? What do you note is the displacement between her poem and your reception?

• Think of Ratcliffe’s questions: “Who’s (not) powerful?” “Who’s (not) speaking?” “Who’s (not) represented?” in this text?

• Which of your own ideologies are challenged by the poem? What parts of your identity are challenged/engaged by her constructed identity (speaker)?

Praxis IS Theory

My own experiences with theory as praxis have made me (re)think about geographies and my relationships with them.

Praxis IS Theory My resistance to power as a “fringe” body has made me

take risks, such as painting.

Praxis IS Theory I’ve taken what I know about spatial theory and used it to

improve my neighborhood.

Praxis IS TheoryI’ve used what I’ve learned in literature and poetry courses to

shape how I perform and embody my female self.

Praxis IS TheoryI’ve looked for opportunities to bring my family into my “work”

and education.

Praxis IS TheoryAnd what I’ve learned is that I can find beauty and difficulty

when looking through my lenses.