Dear Teena,

The Other (with a capital) is the discourse position of a common other
(realised but virtual (having the virtues of the real)) that can be
experienced in a conversations with an actual other. That is, two people
are conversing. Each is the other for the other person. So there are two
others. In our conversation, I am your other and you are my other. The
proposition is that our simple othering can be experienced as a
transcendence inasmuch as we are both able to attend to the common Other.
This common Other does not have a gender nor is it gendered unless we
collapse the experience, wilfully, because we wish to institute gendering
to render the transcendence null. For example, one could say ³oh that¹s a
man¹s understanding of a conversation² and magically, the realised but
virtual common Other disappears and one of the others in the conversation
is deemed to be gendered as a male.

Interestingly, Simone de Beauvoir argued for the reality of such
transcendence (think intimacy) while Jean Paul Sartre argued that all we
could do was appropriate the other as they could only appropriate us as
their other (failed intimacy).

Do I know about the "gendered practices [that] manifest externally . . .
[and] impact in material ways on the individual body through institutional
discourses²? Yes, I experience such practices frequently as I am
manoeuvred as a male regularly in discourses that have no need for
gendering (as far as I am concerned).

I often have to ask people to stop treating me as a ³person². Why? Because
by ³person² they mean I am a white male heterosexual who has a car, owns
his own house, is married with children etc.

Why would I want to be attached to such discourse nonsense when we could
self-manage a transcendent conversation?

Lacan talks about such experiences but since I had observed and critiqued
these experiences long before reading Lacan, I have just stated my own
observations.

Christianity talks about such experiences - "where two or more are
gathered in my name, I am there" (Jesus as the Other).

Cheers

keith











On 27/1/17, 12:01 pm, "PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD
studies and related research in Design on behalf of Teena Clerke"
<[log in to unmask] on behalf of [log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Hi Keith,
>
>I am not entirely sure what you mean by Œself-governance¹ ­ are you
>suggesting that individuals can govern their own practices, or that a
>discipline can be self-governing? As in my last post, Foucault
>understands discipline as 'unauthored, anonymous. It is not owned by
>those it disciplines¹. It is instead, a set of discursive practices of
>power governing who can say what, when and where, and who responds and
>how. 
>
>My claim is that gendered practices manifest externally and impact in
>material ways on the individual body through institutional discourses
>that Foucault called (disciplinary) surveillance ­ ie. what it is
>acceptable to do, say, wear, signal, etc. in any given context ­ and
>internalised by individuals through self-surveillance (deciding whether
>to post, what to say, how to say it ­ read Eva Bendix-Pedersen¹s
>dissertation for a full explanation on academic writing, which she
>depicts through the metaphor of the finger hovering over the backspace
>key). Therefore gendered practices cannot be Œsuperior¹, they are
>produced and reproduced through disciplinary performances, yet
>experienced differently by different bodies. In my understanding of
>practices, there is no neutral because they are all exercises of power.
>
>And yes, because most institutional practices were established by certain
>kinds of men who exercise power, and maintained and reproduced by women
>as well as men, they are gendered.
>
>Note that I said gendered practices (plural) as there are many different
>forms ­ Joan Acker has a very useful 5-tier structure of institutional
>practices that enable the performance of Œgender¹ (which here is
>understood as a verb, not a noun or personal attribute).This means that
>people don¹t Œhave¹ a gender, they Œdo¹ gender, or perform (practice) in
>ways that are subject to discipline. These are all really tricky
>theoretical ideas not easily explained in a single post.
>
>I am not sure what you mean by transcendence. I said disruption. Given
>they need to be recited over time to survive, disciplinary discourses are
>unstable, which means they can be changed. In the case of gendering,
>heteronormative Western white masculine practices need to be disrupted
>(from reproduction) to incur change.
>
>What do you mean by Other other? Are you trying to be cute? To quote an
>infamous Australian, please explain. I can¹t begin to respond to the
>question of what is a rewritten Other without knowing what you mean here.
>
>all the best,
>teena
>
>
>>Dear Teena,
>>So, is self-governance folded into gendered practice? Is gendered
>>practice
>>prior to self-governance? Is it superior? What is the operational
>>relationship in any critique? Do I firstly dismiss any notion that
>>self-governance might be occurring in a neutral way and go straight to
>>gendered practices as the necessary condition of any and all discourse?
>>Is there no possibility of transcendance? Is the Other other already
>>male?
>>What is a rewritten Other?
>>Cheers
>>keith


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