to reveal/to conceal

[meaning_making]

This weekend is a study in Michigan fall, from sunny t-shirt weather, planting a Mum in the front yard, to chilly and damp, nestling into my sweater and complicated system of coats. I am determined not to have a winter like last so am intentionally gaining weight, in the hope that it will keep me warm

Comments

[vermiciouskanid]

I remember feeling some of those ways in grad school...discomfort about the accessibility of theory, and weirdness about people who are "academics"...in social work school, we talked about DOING, and when I took extra Gender & Women's Studies classes, I had to get my brain into this whole other swimmy, swirly, intangible space. Now I've been able to take some of that stuff and realize how it informs what I do and how I want to work with people, but then it was harder to make that connection.

Have you read any disability theory? That was my favorite. It's much more down to earth than a lot of stuff I had to read.

[meaning_making]

Thanks for your comment, Lindsay. I have to keep reminding myself that "theory" is just a bunch of ideas that someone wrote down in flowery language. (If I hear the word hermeneutics again, I'm going to stab myself). I keep thinking...not very many people at Affirmations (or downriver) would understand these words. There's this fear...like if I talk theory I won't be able to communicate with them.

I'm definitely going to pick up some disability theory. Someone in my program is working in that area and it's obviously personally significant. I also keep thinking that I need to just write in the language that I know and will probably pick up some theory along the way and then use it to deconstruct itself.

[thisismycalmit]

Im a big believer in there is a time and place for everything.

I think most women know the right time to share an aspect of their being. If it doesnt feel right, I dont do it.

I consider myself reserved...but reserved for the right time. xo

[meaning_making]

That's a good point. I'm trying to explore the tensions between silence and speech. Silence has always been really awful for me but can be powerful if used consciously.

[stargyrrrl]

When I was at MSU, I took a graduate level feminist philosphy course. I carried around stacks of Butler and Foucault. A close friend commented one night, as I pored over a copy of "bodies that matter" that Judith Butler was elitist, her language not accessible.

I think it is more elitist to assume that there are people for whom it is not accessible.

[meaning_making]

Certainly, anyone can be taught how to unpack texts that are complicated, writing their meanings into them, interpreting them in relation to their lives. But learning to read particular types of discourse is just that, a learned thing.

I have been thinking in particular about the ways that some people who read theory use it as a maze, as a cloud, as a shield, their experiences invisible behind a wall of words. I am interested in reconsidering the need to privilege certain types of knowledge and ways of expressing it (what we call theory) over others (lived experience).

Because I experience both privilege and oppression as bodily things, it is important for me to stay connected to the feeling, as well as the idea. I hope to learn to use theory in ways that move through many worlds.