A Justice Site
Mirror Sites:
CSUDH - Habermas - UWP - Archives
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: October 16, 2004
Reviewed:
Latest Update: October 16, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
Walk a Crooked Mile* * *
- I wanted to walk a crooked mile with this crooked cat when he moved right in to live with us. He has made no obvious attempt to take over King Tut's place. He's a very different cat. But I find him in the most improbable situations and positions. This crooked mile took off when Arnold came home from dinner with our children last week and tried to open his Jack Daniels. He twisted. He turned. He grumpled. He gruffed. He left only when he could think of no other alternative than to go fetch another bottle. He left the poor Jack Daniels like this.
- For me this crooked cat and crooked bottle created a memory when I saw them together like that. As I recall they were never on the kitchen table at the same time together. My memory put them there. And though LA County Museum won't want to exhibit this painting, it creates for me the memory of a clebration with our children and Arnold's mellow, happy mood afterwords, reinforced by the crazy crooked cat and the bottle that joined it. The painting reminds me of all the people involved in it. I'd like you to try to see that, and take back your childhood tendencies to capture your memories on paper, as collages, as paintings, as poems, as whatever moves you.
- shared reading: Up later.
- Excerpt - enough to give the flavor of the work, and to let us see if we agree with your conclusions. Stick to a relatively short portion of the work. Two or three pages at most.
- Up later.
Conceptual Linking to Substantive Courses:
- Agencies:
Sample linking: Up later in all classes.
- Criminal Justice:
Sample linking: Ways in which some groups are underrepresented in the unstated assumptions of our theories. How does this reading serve to illustrate adversarialism, mutuality, retribution, revenge, illocutionary understanding, the definition and operation of the criminal justice system?
- Law:
Sample linking: Extent to which laws are made on the assumption that we are all essentially assimilated to the dominant culture. How does this reading help us see the need for contextual readings in law? How does it relate to our natural instincts to seek some kind of natural law? What facts and principles does the reading offer for discourse that could clarify for Others validity claims presented by an Obscure Other?
- Moot Court:
Sample linking: Ways in which to make validty claims of harm understood by those who have never experienced many of the world's different perspectives. How can this reading enlighten our praxis in terms of different kinds of discourse, like instrumental, illocutionary, governance?
- Women in Poverty:
Sample linking: The culture of poverty and assimilation. How does the reading deal with our underlying assumptions about poverty, especially poverty of the exploited, the NOT- male? What does the reading suggest of the interrelationship between our society and its children, generally cared for by women, often poor?
- Race, Gender, Class:
Sample linking: The extent to which silence has been imposed by these affiliations so that domination and discrimination have entered our unstated assumptions in interpersonal relations and the structural context arising from them. What does the reading tell us about exploitation and alternative ways to deal with one another? What does it tell us about institutionalized -isms and our denial of complicity? What does it tell us about our common humanity?
- Religion:
Sample linking: The spiritual component. Humans are spiritual creatures, creatures that recognize moments that go beyond ourselves to God, Allah, Isis, Gaia, the Universe, or a deep sense of responsibility to create our own meanng. How does the reading fit into our ability, our need to create such meaning in life?
- Love !A:
Sample linking: What's the aesthetic link in this reading? How does it bring us closer to one another as humans? What does it tell us about our need for love, unconditional love, not rewards for doing well or being well, but caring and acceptance for being who we are?
