One other thing that occurs to me here and then I think I'll bow out
for a while, is the
not surprising double-edgedness of institutions, a characteristic
shared by all categorization in that by definition it both includes
and excludes. Some of you may know that I have had a longstanding
interest in the the study of poems in English on the subject of live
childbirth: a subject which came into English poetry
in the twentieth century. In trying to identify the many factors
which enabled this
fundamental human experience to become a subject for poetry, it seemed
to me that an important factor was the institution of hospitalized
childbirth. Public hospitals literally publicized childbirth and to
some extent also published it. When I examined the diction of poems
about childbirth I noticed the vital presence of
medical terminology: which had provided names for things and shapes
for experiences: public medicine had disciplined the subject of
childbirth brutally but also provided a communal vocabulary and set of
images which contributed to already existing vocabularies and images,
e.g., Christian doctrine and iconography, to produce language and
metaphors for this poetry. This is just a possible example of how
institutions enable articulation, while at the same time controlling
it. What poets then do with these windfalls of language speaks to the
ingenuity of poets & poetry.
Mairead

On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 09:17:51 -0800 (PST), [log in to unmask]
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> I certainly don't find what you say irrelevant Lawrence, i find it far too
> relevant if anything because the whole issue-complex of institutional power
> comes into play and as you hint, there is no dividing line. I was a primary
> school teacher for many years - a special needs teacher in the years before
> I had to get out - and what you say regarding your own experience in FE is
> exactly mine, exactly. I find it hard explaining to anyone about that
> experience. I happen to believe though that my experience is important and
> that it has lead me to ask the kind of questions that should be asked about
> the nature of the interface between bureaucratic self-serving systems and
> the human activities that they have an imperative to control.
>