Ahhhhhhh! Wonderful, Keith! This time you come up with a piece I
understand, straightly meaningful to me: the three stances in human
identity. And no doubt, when we go the 'creative' mode in designing, the
output is inevitably made out of each of those identity adopted by the
designer, either in whole or in part. It is matter of personal inclination,
born out of personal perception and sensation, instant or an accumulated..

But there is another approach that also exists, not often mentioned on the
list. Perhaps in this approach, those gendered issues won't be that much
acute to our sensation and perception (and indignation!): away from
personal identity stances of the designer, away from personal accounts that
we all can come up with.  This other approach would be that of focus rather
on identities of those for whom we design artifacts. There, a designer,
through designed artifacts, would knowingly and purposefully, rightly or
reprehensibly, either reinforce one or another of the three  personal
identities of users, or 'rectify' it. The designer would thus contribute to
shape, in a sense or in another  a certain identity of the user.
Ultimately, for the designer, a matter of professional orientation and
responsible choice,

Another and much simpler way to put it: would it be possible to design
non-gendered, non-discriminatory artifacts? Or, aren't there occasions when
gendered/discriminating artifacts are desirable and appropriate?

​Francois
Kigali​


On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 5:08 AM, Keith Russell <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Red Wheel Barrows and Three Literary Identities
>
> Much of what has been discussed in terms of oppression and discrimination
> on the list, recently, can be usefully viewed through the triple
> understanding of identity that traditional literary analytical genre
> categories offer.
>
> 1) Dramatic Identity.
>
> This identity is determined in a bodily fashion. I wake up in the morning;
> how do I know who I am? I find myself in the body I went to sleep in. This
> identity has a colour, a gender, an age, a physical memory of events
> (scars, deformities) etc. as a result of cause and effect. If I were to
> have a leg severed in an accident, my identity would now, to everyone, be
> Keith who lost a leg. Yesterday, someone reminded me that I am Keith who
> had open heart surgery more than five years ago. It startled me that they
> wished to see me as in recovery and in need of their solicitations. Some
> people who find out I have had open heart surgery demand to see the scar
> because my body image, to them, does not match having experienced major
> life changing surgery. After seeing the scar, they still don't believe. For
> them, there maybe a cause, but there is no obvious effect. Each of us has
> obvious bodily identity features and each has less obvious. Civility
> requires that we take nothing for granted and presume that life, for all
> humans, is always complex.
>
> All of the complaints I have read so far of the group relate to this kind
> of identity. The shop keeper cannot help but see me as a foreigner, in
> Germany, because my accent is weird and so she chased me out of her shop
> with a broom. In the USA, coloured shop keepers in a coloured part of a
> Southern city, were extremely nervous with my family until we spoke with
> broad Australian accents and suddenly we were kangaroos and we had a great
> time and bought lots of great clothes that white folks in that city would
> not normally wear. I still have one of these shirts from 20 years ago.
>
> One can readily reflect that society, as a lived experience, is a kind of
> drama. We go into the market place and find ourselves categorised
> immediately by our bodies (Katharsis). This kind of identity is SPACE based.
>
> 2) Epic Identity
>
> This identity is determined by the events that we associate with as
> forming our lives in memory. That is, I wake up in the morning and
> re-member myself. I am a teacher and I must go to work today. These
> assorted memory events change according to our situations. Like going
> through a photo album, we re-associate with events and dis-associate with
> events according to situations. We even invent new combinations and add the
> experiences of others to our lives - we fabricate (see below).
>
> When I provided examples above of my being discriminated for and against
> according to dramatic receptions of my bodily self, I was using Epic
> Identity accounts to do so. That is, what happens to me becomes a series of
> stories that add up to me as a biography.
>
> On the list, the response that people have made to bodily identity
> situations have been, mostly, like mine, biographical accounts. This
> happened to me and that happened to me.
>
> This kind of identity is structured as the unity of a manifold. That is, a
> manifold has several parts contributing to its structure but it is
> ultimately resolved as a single thing. I stitch together (fabricate) the
> shirt of this Epic Self and ask that others acknowledge this shirt of ME.
>
> In a novel, at the end, we can sense that we now KNOW the character
> (Kairosis). We have seen them travail. We have stitched together their
> shirt/blouse by association. We feel for this Epic self and we imagine
> ourselves in such situations. Their lives could have been different and
> that would have made them different.
>
> This kind of identity is TIME based. One hopes, over time, that
> opportunities will arise to mitigate the consequences of Space.
>
> 3) Lyric Identity
>
> This identity is described by a number of philosophers as available but
> stupid. Who would determine an identity based on the constellation of
> sensations immediately present to consciousness? I find myself in a field
> of flowers and I am absorbed by this sensory experience such that my
> Dramatic Identity and my Epic Identity become subordinated to the
> overwhelming impact of smells and colours and textures and tastes. This is
> decadent. i am the flowers. This is my ultimate identity. I want for
> nothing. I am complete.
>
> Much of the activity of artists can be determined in such an identity
> state. Artists are discriminated against because they give themselves over
> to such decadence. Equally, many wretched artists become addicted to such
> an identity and take drugs in an effort to stay in this la la land.
>
> So, I find myself as an atmosphere, as a mode, as an inclination, as a
> constellation of sensations. This kind of identity is Identity-based
> inasmuch as its total structure is manifested as the sense of a self as the
> senses the self is experiencing (think of it as a critique of identity).
> Locked up in a cell, one can still determine this Lyric Self through an
> imaginative engagement with whatever. It is primarily a negative identity
> because it reduces the Epic and the Dramatic identity understandings to
> loss (kenosis).
>
> None of the accounts of discrimination, on the list, have called on this
> understanding of identity. Why? Perhaps because this state is transcendent
> and hence it is a happy place to be no matter how you got there. It's often
> not a nice experience to be forced to leave - watch children in the park.
> It is also not readily available as a political or ideological
> understanding. No culture I know of really cares very much about people who
> can make themselves content by simply being. How can they sell me an iPhone
> with a camera when I can already not just see the flowers but be with the
> flowers or chickens.
>
> The Red Wheelbarrow
> William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963
>
> so much depends
> upon
>
> a red wheel
> barrow
>
> glazed with rain
> water
>
> beside the white
> chickens.
>
>
> ... Off with his head?
>
> keith
>
>


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