Link to What's New This Week. Issue No, 3 for Week of September 10, 2006

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The Little Garden at Leckie School

Backup of photo of memory garden at Madeleine V. Leckie Elementary School in southwest Washington.
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Remembering September 11, 2001

Andrea Doctor, whose husband, Johnnie, was killed in the assault on the Pentagon,
sitting in a memorial garden at the elementary school.

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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: August 30, 2006
Latest Update: September 11, 2006
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Topic of the Week:

Finding the Focal Things and
Making Celebrations That Highlight Them

After NYT photo of flags by Robert Stolarik, September 11, 2006, color added by jeanne.

After NYT black and white photo of flags by Robert Stolarik, September 11, 2006. Color and abstraction by jeanne.
I liked the way the flags were drawing into the center, into an apex, heaven towards. jeanne

Now for the image I chose to represent this difficult and messy topic: The fish/bomb. First of all the fish is a Christian symbol, so it brings in the concept of religion as an icon of Christianity. Second, the fish I chose could be mistaken for a bomb. And particularly that shape of bomb, at least in my head, is an icon for the bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagsaki, symbols of the unleashing of the ultimate violence on humans by humans. So I chose to use a symbol that could be read in more than one way, just as equality and authority can be read in more than one way.

The icon of the fish represents for me love and peace and caring for one another; the icon of the bomb represents for me pure violence that man turns agains man. (man in generic sense) There is great tension between these two interpretations of this one iconic shape. And there are no simple or immediate solutions as to how we can resolve that tension.

In a week or so, I'm going to summarize some of Seyla Benhabib's writing (Situating Oneself) on "public space," but for now, just trust me, lots of philosophers and political scientists and sociologists and others are giving this a lot of thought. President Bush is the only one I know of who thinks he knows the answers. (Well, I mean if you don't cont Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, which I don't.) Most of us are struggling like mad for deeper understanding. Prof. Benhabib, of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, speaks of the importance of public space, a space, not necessarily really public, it might be in somebody's church or mosque or club or home. But public in the sense that there one is freein that space to ponder, to puzzle, to express, to talk about all one's quandaries about how on earth we can live in peace together with all our differences. She means more than just figuring out a fair and just way to distribute limited resources. She means how do we disagree about really fundamental things like the God we believe in or don't believe in, when that matters a lot in how we relate to each other.

Benhabib speacks of several versions of public space, that we will consider, but mostly, I'd like you to think on this: lots of versions of public space say that the space needs to allow people to say whatever they need to say to make their claims and needs to allow them to argue and try to persuade one another. That's called "agonistic" public space, and it leads to lots of affect and sometimes even chaos. Hannah Arendt, the philosopher believed in that kind of public space. But Prof. Benhabib reminds us that

Concepts:

  • ascribed status - status received based on who you are, not what you do. For a teacher to even think of you as "an A student" is to ascribe you a status that carries over to all the tasks you undertake for that teacher, and gives you a privilege over other students the teacher does not think of as "A students."

  • achieved status - status received based on a paragraph you wrote, or a problem you solved, or a contribution you made to a discussion. Something you did, not just who you are, and what the teacher knows you could do if you tried.

  • status expectations - status received based on what we expect you to do, rather than what you actually did. Sometimes we mistake what people do because of the expectations we have. women often complain that if they say "we ought to look at the denominator;" no one listens or seems to notic. Five minutes later a man says "we ought to look at the denominator;" and everyone thinks that's a great idea.

  • good faith listening - an honest attempt to understand the other by attentive listening and empathy, which include asking questions that might clarify understanding for yourself and others. Lyotard called this "tiotoling."

  • "tiotoling" - . . . shorthand for saying "talking-in-order-to-listen". Talking-in-order-to-listen is opposed to "listening-in-order-to-talk", such as when a person is trying to figure out how to get a point across and is only listening with that purpose in mind, or when a person is already convinced the speaker is a bad person and is only listening with the purpose of pointing out what they are doing that is bad.

    Taken from Lois Shawver's Postmodern Therapies List. Term comes from Lyotard, a postmodernist.

  • power, disciplinary Power Goes to School: Teachers, Students, and Discipline, by John Covaleski - external site
    Definitions of disciplinary and sovereign power, with explanation of difficulty of recognizing disciplinary power because of the process through which it operates. In first section of paper under Forms of Power.

References:

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Current Events Discussion Topics:

Visual Sociology

    Backup copy of phot of praying mantis and mate by Catherine Chalmers, in NYT, September 5, 2006, Science Times section, p. D1.
    Photo by Catherine Chalmers

    The Approach
    Mantises prepare to mate. With luck the female may not be hungry.

  • This Can't Be Love By Carl Zimmer. New York Times, Tuesday, September 5, 2006, at p. D1. Backup Here's an example of how science, like every other authority, must keep searching, keep thinking, remain open to new information. The scientists thought the praying mantis ate her mate because she needed the food to produce her young. The late Dr. Jay Gould of Harvard, pointed out that we try to hard to explain everything by evolution; maybe the male mantis doesn't altruistically offer himself for food as a way to insuring the survival of his species; maybe the female is very near-sighted and mistakes the poor male for prey.(ibid, at. p. D1). Read the article. It's a tad gruesome, but I've highlighted sections that remind us of our need to keep an open mind about, well, about almost everything. jeanne

    Backup copy of phot of praying mantis and mate by Catherine Chalmers, in NYT, September 5, 2006, Science Times section, p. D1.
    Photo by Catherine Chalmers

    A Leap of Faith
    Risking all, the male jumps onto the female's back.

    I know this is a gruesome topic. There's the female praying mantis, praying for a male to reproduce here species, or for dinner? And there he is landed on top of her, risking his life. But the photographs, taken together, say something beautiful in the apparent harmony of the two mantises, in the gesture of their forelegs, which to us symbolizes prayer, in the delicacy and soft coloring of their bodies. Albert Borgmann, a philosopher of technology, I think would suggest that it is in moments like this that we are able to see the "focality," the "spirituality" of nature and reality that show us the path toward building our lives around that beauty and sprituality, and using technology to support such lives of living and loving. (Hans Achterhuis, ed. American Philosophy of Technology: The Empirical Turn, Indiana University Press, Bloomington. 2001. ISBN: 0-253-21449-1 (paper). Chapter 1: Albert Borgmann: Technology and the Character of Everyday Life, by Pieter Tijmes, pp. 11-36.)

    Albert Borgmann Regents Professor of Philosophy, University of Montana.

    I started playing with the colors. But I'm not sure where this is going. They're beginning to remind me of dancers. Maybe that was what attracted me at first. Try playing withthe photo yourself.

    jeanne playing with colors and shape.

  • Jeanne's Jags

    jeanne's jaguars, imaginary, of course.

  • Story coming. jeanne

SquiggleA Range of Sources on Global Info

Left/Right Perspectives - Cursor - New York Times - The National Review
Arts and Letters Daily - The Economist - The Sierra Club - The Guardian
Wall Street Journal - The Weekly Standard - The Nation - The Cato Institute (Libertarian)
BBC NEWS | Americas - truthout - Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles
Los Angeles Times - Chicago Tribune - La Opinion - The Washington Post
Cursor's Al Jazeera Archive - Ha'aretz - Palestine Monitor - Palestine Report
The American Prospect

Memorandum, Political Web - Diggs - College Network of New York Times - New York Times Learning Network

The American Enterprise Institute

Indymedia - Mother Jones - BBC News - New Profile - KPFK Progressive Radio
Progressive Sociologists Network Environmental Working Group - Mirror of Justice

Theory, Policy, Practice of a Career by jeanne and Susan.
Digital Dissertations, with abstracts online. Has search mechanism with keywords, author, etc.
Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Online articles.
Evangelical Philosophical Society
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)

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