Mirror Sites:
CSUDH Habermas UWP

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: April 30, 2001
Latest update: April 30, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org

This week a number of things happened in school that made me fear for our lost faith in each other. Not the absolute kind of despair one reads of so often in the media, but a kind of mother-ache. "Weltschmerz" sounds better, but it is a term from so long ago. Do take a moment to look it up, please. The first prick of motherly conscience came when my theory class registered up front and personal just how difficult it is to argue about religion, even in a theory class. But everyone know that's hard, so I just hugged several people, and put the hurts I registered aside to think about later.

Then, this evening Teresa Mason wrote about her alert to the dangers of tampons and dioxin. She said a simple thanks for putting her message out there. She expressed severe concern about the increase in feminine health problems, which is certainly justified, and then she added:

"P.S. I don't have faith in the honesty of regulatory agencies like the FDA.

That did it. I wanted to hug you all and assure you that it's OK. I know I can't do that; it will only be OK when we all make it OK by bringing all these fears into awareness and not allowing ourselves to be intimidated by them and made complicit in their denial.

My first reaction was to assure Teresa that the e-mail about the dioxin scare was a hoax. But even as I wrote, I recalled that Teresa had been in the Women and Crime Class, and had studied the effects of corporate crime against women in the US. I figured she might not be convinced by the FDA's responding article, and she was not.

Once again, I thought, Trust is not easy to come by. So I set out to put together this teaching essay and then I wrote to the FDA. In the process I came across a new article on Drug-Induced Liver Toxicity on the FDA Site, and put it up. It is a new and very apparent danger we all need to be alert to. And as I stopped to put this article up on Week 13 for you, I realized how intensely crazy our world is becoming. As I try to explain why we mustn't give up on the FDA, and sympathize with your concerns, and feel anger over what has been done to women, I am at one and the same time grateful for the FDA information. Schizoid 2001. How on earth can I make you feel safe within your own knowledge, and yet guard against your angry dismissal of some sources as untrustworthy?

Well, first I wrote to the FDA, to Rosario Quintanilla Vior (949) 798-7607, rvior@ora.fda.gov Los Angeles Disstrict Office, Food and Drug Administration:

Hi, I'm a professor at California State University, Dominquez Hills, and I teach issues of social justice and law. Recently a student made the statement: "I don't have faith in the honesty of regulatory agencies like the FDA." I would like to know if someone from the FDA locally could come in and speak to my students on the dilemmas faced by the FDA and how it attempts to hold onto integrity in the face of those dilemmas.

The incident which triggered the statement is up on our teaching site at: http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/alert02.htm and http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/tchessay49.htm.

I can be reached at Cal State at 310-243-3831.

Thank you,

Jeanne Curran, Ph.D., Esq.

Maybe we'll hear from Rosario Quintanilla Vior. I hope so. But meanwhile I want to tell you about my weltschmerz and see if I can help relieve yours at all. We first encounter this pain last semester in Distributive Justice Class. There it came through racial issues. We found that we needed to talk about these issues, to make each other aware of things we rarely talk about, our feelings about what we're learning.

I am presently reading Rudolf Arnheim's Visual Thinking, 1969, 13th printing, University of California Press. ISBN: 0-520-01871-0 (pbk). for our work in art as interpretation. Arnheim makes clear that perception and thinking are inextricably interwoven in our thinking. And that is the view I am taking here, even though there are those who cling to a view of reasoning as superior. I'll put up more on Arnheim soon, but for now, this will give you a sense of where I'm coming from.

When we react with our senses, perception, we can sometimes draw what we feel. I did so in my painting of what the Reno conference was like. Arnheim reports a number of exercises such as mine, based on drawing the past, present, and future. I chose to draw the past, present, and future of one event: our sessions in Reno. Thus, you see the confusion and nervousness of preparation as we all worked intensely on getting ready. Then the intensity of the sessions themselves, red and black with the intensity we have learned to expect in Basquiat. And the sessions were intense. Then the unwinding and coming to relax in the calmer but happy pink. And finally, the clouds of aqua snow falling like a snow drift upstairs and layering the grounds all around the casino. Naturally the students and Arnold had a snow ball fight. jeanne and Susan were too tired for snow fights, though one snow ball did get thrown right in the elegant restaurant in which some of us lingered. Gee, we're glad the Nugget didn't get too impatient with us. (Arnheim, Chapter 7: Concepts Take Shape, pp. 116-134.)