Helen Beetham (H.Beetham@plymouth.ac.uk)
Wed, 6 Oct 1999 12:32:13 +1300
From: Helen Beetham <H.Beetham@plymouth.ac.uk> Subject: Their country, their culture Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 12:32:13 +1300
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I've dipped out of the debate for a while and I'm interested to find
apparently the same argument going on under a different name (see
'predictability' ibid). Marc Pembroke's eloquent contribution does a
good job of arguing that very different societies and interest groups
have very different ideas of what is 'useful'. This was never at issue.
Unfortunately, though, these same societies and interest groups have
very different ideas of what is 'true'. Pitting one's own (e.g. liberal,
secular, humanist, empiricist) version of 'truth' against others' version
of usefulness is never going to get us very far.
The only part if Marc's argument I can disagree with is his conclusion:
>Once we agree that there are no standards, have to concede that standards
>should be decided at the convenience of the most powerful observer.
This seems very odd. We can agree that there are no absolute standards but
that some standards are worth defending. This puts us outside the clinical
world in which we can make those we disagree with simply wrong. It means
getting our hands dirty in the human world of politics and struggle. In the
UK, the last government introduced a poll tax in accordance with
the obvious truth that everyone ought to contribute something towards
the maintenance of their local services. A fairly large number of us took
to the streets to defend the (to us obvious) truth that poor people should
not have to pay the same as rich people for those services. The ensuing
battles in the public spaces of our culture, including Trafalgar Square,
led fairly directly to the downfall of Margaret Thatcher as leader of the
Conservative Party. This is a relatively trivial example:
all important political progress has been made through conflict and
almost all those conflicts have been represented at some level as struggles
over meaning and truth - even if only retrospectively.
Against the 'most powerful observer', Donna Harraway suggests we adopt
the position of the 'modest witness'. This does not mean abdicating
responsibility for the truths one defends, and which one's own community
or chosen affiliative group ascribes to. One must 'witness' those truths or
(put another way) one must position oneself somewhere in order to look at the
world. Most theorists would argue that in fact we adopt multiple positions
and identities. But 'modesty' requires us to accept that those positions
are not the only ones, that they have been socially and historically produced
in conflict with other possible positions, that they are also occupied by
relations of power (which we may not as individuals consciously subscribe
to). Modesty prevents us imposing our positions upon others as of right,
and insists we examine how they are articulated with relations of power
and abuse, but does not absolve us from arguing passionately or from taking
sides.
I find Harraway's formulations a bit individualistic, but I wonder if
they point to a way out of the relativity/absolutism empasse?
Helen
'Thought is more imperishable than ever; it is volatile, irresistible,
and indestructible. It pervades the air...
Now she is a flock of birds, flies abroad to all the four winds of
heaven, and occupies at once all the points of air and of space...'
Victor Hugo, on the invention of printing.
Helen Beetham
Senior Lecturer
Educational Development
University of Plymouth
Drake Circus
Plymouth PL4 8AA
tel: +44 1752 232346
fax: +44 1742 232330
email: hbeetham@plymouth.ac.uk
http://sh.plym.ac.uk/eds/elt/
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