Hi Naveen,
I might regret posting this, because I do tend to avoid confrontational situations, and this could end up being one. At any rate, when I read the following, as a woman and a rhetor, I saw some problems that maybe I can help with.
Another form of this phenomenon is also seen when the oppressor
demands to be educated in knowledge presented by the oppressed, without
taking the efforts to be educated. Case in point: When Teena raised the
issue of gender, the male profs / researchers demanded her to establish the
connection between gender and design research. So that the discussion can
be edible to them. If as researchers, researching the present and emerging
relations between objects and things and people you do not understand the
role of gender, then please go and do your homework before demanding from a
woman to take time off her day work to summarize to you in couple of
paragraphs how gender is related to design and design research. (Emphasis mine)
My field is focused on how to make convincing arguments. I get that you’re frustrated, but convincing arguments do not emerge by saying that I didn’t have time to make them—or that my research interests should become your research interests, because that does not help your argument. If I’ve been immersed in studying the history of oppression, and someone is interested enough to want to know more, in this case the connection between gender and design research, my superior knowledge means that it is on me to set up my post to anticipate and address that curiosity. If my sense of this oppression lives at the level of felt difficulty, to use Dewey’s term, and the connections are not yet available, that is fine, but the claim needs to fit the proof.
Let’s say that I’m the oppressor. My guess is that I have been both oppressor and oppressed. I am a woman, but I am also an American. As the oppressor, if I ask, or to put it in the language of the post, demand to know more, you have such a beautiful opportunity to educate me, making qualified claims that have reasons and evidence. Unfortunately, unqualified claims, with language like “the oppressor” often serve to either “attack the wo(man)” (a logical fallacy) or try to turn the tables, making you the oppressor as you chide your “student.” But those approaches less often help the field add to its knowledge.
And if someone does call you “a rabble rouser,” if you want to create change (rather than just be right), explore that counter-argument and then offer the rebuttal. In what way can you see where they are coming from (the counter-argument), and then what are the reasons why rabble rousing, or its variant, are actually useful as you seek to create change in the world, or more specifically, in design.
Maybe those qualities are in every other post you’ve ever written, and I’m just cherry picking. But still, I don’t see them here, and the not having doesn’t to my way of thinking help your case. From my vantage point, it sings only to the choir, when what I think you want is to bring more people into the building.
So it goes (Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five [1969]. Not to take anything away from Adams. I like him too.)
Susan
Susan M. Hagan Ph.D., MDes | Carnegie Mellon University Qatar
On Jan 29, 2017, at 6:21 AM, Naveen Bagalkot <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Hello listers,
Its time for me to say goodbye from this list.
The space has become toxic, noxious, and the last straw has broken for me.
But before I hit the unsubscribe button, I will briefly outline why I am
leaving.
A pattern has emerged and is fixed. A pattern where any young/female/PoC
dissenting voice is disciplined by usually old/white/male voices.
Disciplined by terming the dissenting voices as rabble rousing, badly
behaved, (uncouth?).
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