A Justice Site
Mirror Sites:
CSUDH - Habermas - UWP - Archives
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: September 15, 2004
Latest Update: September 15, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
Lecture Notes, September 15, 2004We spoke yesterday of how one comes to expect rejection when one has experienced it often enough. We were talking about my asking for help with my computer at school. I asked, and asked, and asked, and still ended up with no constructive help. If I had figured out the right channels, filled out all the right papers, not encountered anyone who chose to stop me, and been lucky, I probably could have gotten help. But somewhere along the way I decided the system was hostile, and I just stopped trying. Too many doors slammed in your face, and you decide you're either unlucky, or they're right and you really don't deserve it. You close the doors in your pscyhological life space and you don't ever open them again.Problem is, not everyone in the system is out to get you. There are some nice people there. And if you never try that closed door, then you'll never know. Kurt Lewin, the psychologist, called theat your "psychological life space," and said that we suffer more behing that closed door in our psychological life space than we do behind the real slammed doors.
Yesterday, a young woman named Sabrina, was kind enough to take one of my local computer problems and actually tell me how to get my csudh mail. It was such a small thing. But I quieted down enough with my justifiable paranoia to tell her one of my problems, and she fixed it. Maybe if I'd opened my door in that old psychological life space I could have gotten help sooner. We DO have agency. It's just that sometimes it's hard to keep exercising that agency in the face of even institutional discrimination.
Further reading: Structural Violence Lewin's theory about our giving up on opening the door is related to structural violence in that no one is specifically doing anything to us; the rules, and the occasional person who does some minor thing to stop us is enough to produce the harm of structural violence and block our hope. That's why Freire says that hope is ontological. We need it for our very being to survive.
The Future of White Men and Other Diversity Dilemmas - actually on homophobia, gays and lesbians. Author was on KPFK tonight. jeanne. LEFT perspective.
Networking to Renew the Assault Weapons Ban Posted Aug 31, 2004, 6:00 AM ET by Judith Meskill.
Outgunned: the Holes in America's Assaut Weapons Laws Los Angeles Times on Assault Weapons. Link suggested by Corey McElroy.
New Curbs on Homeless Supported Los Angeles Times, the Homeless. Link suggested by Sawson Mansour.
