• Biopolitical Power Might Explain Shift to Societies of Social Control

  • Patricia Acone wrote on Tuesday, August 3, 2004:

    "I do think that this new premise does explains how people can immerse themselves in the dominant thinking and have themselves convinced that it was their idea from its conception. Example: couldn't this explain the misplaced patriotism and the rush for us to become a "kill society"?"

  • jeanne wrote on Wednesday, August 4, 2004:

    "I don't know enough about this yet to confirm that this paradigmatic shift of power theory is accurate or predictive. But we certainly need to consider this new path of taking into account the extent to which dominant discourse is interdependently changing us, our bodies, our minds, to the point that we reproduce the control and further impose that control. These are not answers we will discover in one semester with a class of 60 students. These are answers we must pursue in our interdependent learning that goes way beyond school."

  • jeanne wrote on Thursday, August 5, 2004:

    Hi, Pat,

    Just talked to susan about the deplorably inept use of the computer and the Web in our schools. We're working on the mentoring files for computer literacy that our kids will need. I called the Help desk to ask where our kids could find help with e-mailing if they're not used to using computers. Duh! I thought of trying the Class Project, but you know how that worked out last year. So Susan and I are planning to enlist peers to help each other through a quasi-formal tutoring program that we'll personally stay on top of the first few weeks of school.

    Susan and I complained that our campus doesn't do a good enough job of promoting friendship and peership for students that need help to find it, even when it's academically sanctioned. That reminded Susan that Betita and Gunder are more comfortable with paper, too, and I felt angry that in all this time our society hasn't made any effective efforts at getting friends to help younger and older friends access the information on computers, even if they don't regularly use computers.

    As I yelped, I realized that that whole situation is exascerbating the gap between the "elite" and the "ones left behind." I was so tired it came out that "they" were making the "wap gealth" worse. And as we laughed it dawned on both of us that there's a partial explanation of "biopolitical power." By providing technology staffs and up-to-date technological equipment at wealthy and more elite schools and universities, those of us left struggling with whatever we can forage in our state schools are falling further and further behind.

    Here's a classic example. Susan and I, in addition to everything else we do, are now trying to provide for and mentor in computer literacy. And so we are even more tired, and have even less time for the deep reading and writing we need to do. And they aren't making us do it. We know the kids need this knowledge and these skills. We have internalized (the "bio") and in the process of trying to help the kids, we can't possibly do as well as a paid staff, and yet the university can then claim that the kids are provided for. We are reproducing the damned inequities, and making it even harder for our kids by giving them a little bit of something for which they should have access to the whole megillah.

    Now, I'll have to think on whether this explanation relates to the whole deal with the "white liberal."

    More when I'm not too tired to think. love and peace, jeanne