Please converse away! My request was really aimed at asking posters to
remember that women and students are reading these posts, at least enough
to determine whether to keep reading. At a minimum, changing the subject
line would be a way to continue discussing this important topic without
repeating negative language about women.
On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 3:51 AM Johann van der Merwe <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This is a long post.
>
> Keith and all
>
> I read an interview and a review of Manne’s book, and this gem stands out:
>
> “The ‘naive conception’ also renders misogyny ‘politically marginal’. If
> the litmus test asks whether a given man hates all women, we will find very
> little misogyny in the world. Most men have mothers, sisters, daughters,
> wives. For once, Manne argues, we should put individual men to the side.
> Misogyny is ‘a social and political phenomenon with psychological,
> structural, and institutional manifestations’. And we should evaluate those
> manifestations from the perspectives of its victims.”
>
>
> This correlates with what Keith wrote: “Manne resists sticking it to
> individuals, as such. Why? Because it is more advantageous, politically and
> intellectually, to find the evil everywhere rather than just in bad
> apples.”
>
>
> I am very much in favour of women’s rights, or should I say, I don’t
> believe in women’s rights at all, for the simple reason that I have never
> been able to fathom why there should be a difference between the rights of
> women and men. All people have the same rights (whatever they might be).
> However, in today’s world #MeToo becomes not only necessary but “about
> bl---dy time, mate!”
>
>
> Women are people too. Let me declare my position: I have never liked men
> much, because I haven’t been able to understand them fully; I like women
> much better, and had a very good role model in my mother, who had a strong
> character and who wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody, including
> overbearing bosses. So, of course sexism and misogyny exists, and of course
> it seems to be rampant in some circles, as the news media are highlighting
> at the moment. And – undoubtedly it also exists in academia, where it
> should not have taken root in the first place.
>
>
> Like Keith I would like to resist the awful approach of tarring with the
> same brush: it is not just in this case (Manne’s book and some of the
> reviews) that “it is more advantageous, politically and intellectually, to
> find the evil everywhere” because it is happening at the moment with my
> language. Afrikaans medium schools are under attack (both figuratively, by
> the MEC for Education in Gauteng, and literally, by thugs who threaten the
> kids & their parents outside the school gates) for denying non-Afrikaans
> speaking pupils (55 of them) places in the school (despite the fact that
> two nearby English medium schools have places). Afrikaans as a language is
> under attack because “it is more advantageous, politically and
> intellectually, to find the evil everywhere”.
>
>
> Second example: during one particular year at my institution the powers
> that be decided to jack up the teaching aspects of the whole university
> (too chicken to tackle the bad apples directly), and for that they sent
> round this awful woman who preached at us, with her hands in her pockets,
> slouching in her chair, glaring at us (I am not exaggerating), and telling
> us what bad lecturers we were. She had never been to our Faculty, did not
> know the first thing about our staff, but had the temerity to tar us with
> someone else’s brush. At some point I had had enough, stood up and said,
> “You are alienating the hell out of me with your approach” – she was
> furious and wanted the Dean to throw me out of the meeting.
>
>
> Which brings me to a point on which I must strongly agree with Manne’s
> position, and it has to do with design education, from first year up to
> doctoral level. Manne posted this comment: “On election night, I wasn’t
> shocked, but it hurts to know that the most incompetent, morally bankrupt,
> and ignorant white man can be elected over a woman about whom reasonable
> people can disagree, but who was obviously more qualified than Trump.” The
> key word / term is ‘reasonable’, and in her thesis she speaks of “the
> emphasis on reasons with a capital-R in moral philosophy was more a product
> of it being a masculine-coded concept”. Keith’s students with their reasons
> why they should not fail fall into this category … so why would this be an
> exclusive ‘masculine-coded concept’? Because it mostly serves men, and
> therefore we forget that women also use this excuse for their position.
>
>
> What I agree with in Manne’s work is that she argues against (aspects of)
> the internalism of reasons (the ‘masculine-coded concept’), and in light of
> this from plato.stanford.edu: “It is important to clarify that reasons
> internalism is a thesis about *normative* (or *justifying*) reasons, not
> about *motivating* (or *explanatory*) reasons. A normative reason is a
> consideration that counts in favor of or against doing something, whereas a
> motivating reason is an answer to the question, ‘why did she do it?’”.
>
> I hate to admit it, and seem to be arguing against myself, but given that
> this internalism is at the heart of Manne’s position (and thus her book),
> does she not have a point in moving the focus from individuals to a (social
> / cultural / normative) system?
>
>
> It is undoubtedly true that “it is more advantageous, politically and
> intellectually, to find the evil everywhere”, and in SA we have become used
> to this tarring, but, the old nationalist government did the same thing! I
> would have to read the whole of Manne’s book before being able to state
> categorically that this is her position.
>
> The reason for this line of argumentation is that I believe strongly
> (personally and in design education) in the “power of reason” (Steven
> Toulmin) and in “reasonableness”, and what Jacques Maritain called “logic”:
>
>
> (from my thesis) If we wish to take the idea of a cybernetically designed
> conversation seriously, and offer a *reasonable *approach to the process of
> setting up such a conversation, the very foundation on which this process
> rests must be derived from the logic of, not *ideal *theories of social
> conduct, but a living logic to be found “not in the pseudo-logic of clear
> ideas, not in the logic of knowledge and demonstration, but in the working
> logic of every day [social reality], eternally mysterious and disturbing
> [in its complexity], the logic of the structure of the living thing”
> (Maritain 1939:52).
>
>
> (from my thesis): We are responsible for our work and we are not, in the
> sense that the worth of the work we produce must be judged over and against
> the reasonableness the work finds in the lives, and therefore the
> similar-to-our-own co-ontogenic developments, of others.
>
> We need the self to produce the self, and therefore we need to give new
> form to the old self by becoming our own information-structure projected
> into and onto the future, and the best way for design students to learn how
> to learn in this complex way, is via a design cybernetic conversation using
> gramma/topology as lens. The engine driving this self-focusing deformation
> can be compared to an electro-magnetic induction coil, a low-power source
> that can produce a high-power output when ‘the penny drops’ and we see
> something that wasn‘t there before: this is an argument for abductive
> reasoning, in that the self is led away from itself towards itself, Dasein
> is abducted by its own autopoietic reasoning towards Being. We use the
> switching between analysis and creativity, the switching between self and
> other, and above all, the switching between rationality and reasonableness
> to arrive at a position where the distinctions have been made and the
> answers available in this new space are acceptable to both the I and the
> Thou, a most reasonable position, since “I require a You to become [me],
> becoming I, I say You. All actual life is encounter” (Buber, in Bloch and
> Nordstrom, 2007:17).
>
>
>
> I think, therefore I need You in order to become me. That is why I cannot
> see any difference between men and women; we are both people, and,
> hopefully, reasonable people.
>
>
>
> I have also had confrontations in my office with students and / or their
> siblings/parents. Mostly they came on their own, and three examples that
> stand out were male students: the one’s sister tried to bribe me, the
> second tried to involve the HOD from his former institution to discredit me
> (it failed), and the third tried strong-arm tactics to intimidate me. Nada,
> sorry for you. The one female example I remember is a student who cried in
> my office, but I managed to reason with her (she had plagiarised a research
> report due to pressure of work), and despite her setback (it’s only one
> assignment) she flourished after that …
>
>
>
> Last remarks: my answer to Keith’s academic student problems … all our
> assessments (my field of design theory aka the old Art & Design History)
> from 1st year to 3rd year were always based on “research reports” that
> resembled the research projects of 4th years (honours) and 5th years
> (masters). You got marks for *Proposal Structure, *Essay Structure =
> Development of Argument (identity / persuasiveness / ‘visual’), Flow of
> Text (storyline, use of grammar), Use of Sources (textual integration), and
> Referencing (in-text & Bibliography).
>
>
>
> As Keith stated, explain this at length and there are no or very few
> comebacks.
>
>
>
> To return to Manne’s book: “Misogyny is ‘a social and political phenomenon
> with psychological, structural, and institutional manifestations’. And we
> should evaluate those manifestations from the perspectives of its
> victims.” This
> reminds me of Maturana’s changing of observational stance / position: he
> (with Varela) was researching how pigeons saw colours & shapes, and their
> observational position was right next to the pigeons, looking at the world
> of form & colour. That changed to an observational position from the world
> of form & colour, and asking a different question: what does a pigeon need
> in order to observe form & colour?
>
>
>
> What happens (in the world) that imposes feelings of misogyny on women?
> What do women need in order not to feel they are victims of misogyny? That
> would require a different take on the subject, and a move from focusing on
> individuals to focusing on “the world” of misogynistic men (and, let us not
> forget, women who actively support this 'normative' attitude) . That is
> what is at stake, and this observational position, while necessary, can
> also be abused, which is what I think Keith fears might happen too easily,
> and I share that concern, while having to agree to the reasonableness of
> the overall argument against all forms of misogyny.
>
> Johann
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Johann van der Merwe
> Independent Design Researcher
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
> Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
--
Colleen M. Seifert
Arthur F. Thurnau Professor
Dept. of Psychology
3042 East Hall
530 Church St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043
(734) 763-0210
[log in to unmask]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
