Thanks for all your great comments this week. I'd like to briefly respond here to Jen's comment (and thanks for putting Footloose in my head all day dude!). I think Jen is right, and the idea of having multiple identities that you pull out of the bag for different situations is not necessarily the same as the idea of Discourse communities, but for me the two go hand in hand.
What is the authentic self then? Well for me, and without wishing to sound insane, all of my identities are authentic. I'm not acting on a stage, I merely (and without conscious thought or effort) am channeling different parts of myself depending on the Discourse community I'm taking part in.
Since the moment we're born, society teaches us that there are rules and regulations, and different kinds of language, that have to be followed in different social environments, or Discourse communities. For instance, you wouldn't greet your professor the same way you would your husband or friend. Or, if this blog entry makes you want to sing Footloose at the top of your lungs, then you can type it out, but you'd be unlikely to do it in class (go on, I dare you). So I don't believe that people can transcend Discourse communities to always be and act in one way. Should they be able to? Well that's a different question. Lots of our blog entries these days seem to revolve around constraints put on us by others, constraints from society about how we should act in different Discourse communities, constraints on how and what we can teach our students, and constraints on how we can utilise our vast array of literacies within the academy. Doesn't it all just make you want to go to an abandoned warehouse and dance?
Interesting observation about how many of the blogs are about the constraints that exist in our worlds. Once we acknowledge all these different Discourse communities and the different identities we have in them, what are we supposed to do with that knowledge? Simply say, "yup, this is how the world works and these are the different roles I embody." Where do we go from here?
ReplyDeleteIn thinking about how to pull all this back into our course, Tyson’s book could be a place to work from. It presents us with shifts in consciousness from structuralist ideologies and to post-modern ideologies, which makes me wonder if using these lenses might be a means to reflect on, critique, and challenge all the richness of Discourse communities and identities? I mean these ways of looking at the world evolved as a result of certain individuals questioning systems and ways of doing. But, you’re right…all this does make me want to run away to an abandoned warehouse. Let's go!! Everybody cut, everybody cut, everybody cut, everybody cut footlooooose...
I totally agree with you Jen; becoming aware of all these things is simply the first step. Only when we have our eyes open to different lenses, literacies, and the social world around us can we try and change things - if we decide that's what's to be done. In order to be fully informed we need to make ourselves aware of as many different opinions and perspectives as possible and then synthesize them based upon our own individual and unique perspectives on the world.
ReplyDelete