My work
> is therefore concerned with destabilising binaries. However this is done
> strategically and in my case, the strategy is directed at challenging the
> inequality of oppressed groups not at increasing inequality by promoting
> the always already powerful."
>
> I'm not sure if capitalization helps an argument, but it seems here you
> reiterate the idea that you will choose, strategically I suppose, what is
> critical and what is not. I still don't see a proof or logic in what you
> claim. Why could I, for example, not claim (without capitalization) that
> it is critical for disability studies and the disability movement that we
> not focus on a binary disabled/non-disabled but on a continuum which
> emphasizes how different the concept of disability is from other very
> binary-oriented identities like male/female, black/white, gay/straight.
> (Parenthetically, those binaries themselves are crumbling in the face of
> transgender and deconlonization theory and activism.)
There is a double negative in this passage that may be confusing me. I
think I hear you saying that a continuum is different to a 'binary'. I see a
continuum as being a line (rational) between two polar opposites along
which lie positions which are relative to both poles. Thus any two
positions along a continuum are necessarily binary (specially when
looking at two positions). If this analysis of the notion of continuum is
reasonable, then I ask, "is there another word which symbolises an array
of possibilities or contingencies?" Does the word 'spectrum' do it for
anyone? Is it an 'Isomorph'?
I recall a lecture on Foucault where the speaker talked about language
and meaning and epistemes. He gave an example (from Foucault) of how
in ancient China, people categorised dogs; not as we do these days in
western cultures by breed and size and colour etc but by concepts such
as "those that are painted by a fine camel hair brush" and "those that from
a distance, look like flies" and similar bizarre interpretations.
Now I've forgotten why I mentioned that in the first place. C'est la vie.
Best regards
Laurence Bathurst
School of Occupation and Leisure Sciences
Faculty of Health Sciences
University of Sydney
P.O. Box 170
Lidcombe NSW 2141
Australia
Phone: (62 1) 9351 9509
Fax: (62 1) 9351 9166
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Please visit the School's interim web site at
http://www.ot.cchs.usyd.edu.au
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Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious
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