Please read the quote by Trin Min-ha on page 40. What do you think about this method of discussion? Do you feel this form of dialogue which is essentially bobbing and weaving around the issue until by some chance you hit on it can be utilized in the academic setting effectively? How does addressing issues this way affect the people involved in the discussion? Would it bring more people in?
Sitas calls for a ?sociology that is in dialogue with communities and their cultural formations? (41). Can this be achieved? Is this type of dialogue apart of your field? How can we apply this idea of dialogue to our own fields of study? How do you feel you can utilize this option in your own work? Sitas talks about how the relationship between producers of knowledge and ?ordinary folks? needs to be problematised in the South African case (41). How do you feel your relationship with ?ordinary folks? has been problematised? Do you see yourself as a separate, educated entity or do you see your relationship more as Sitas discusses later when he talks about the University no longer being the sole producer of knowledge (45)? How does this relate to our discussion last week of post-modernism? Sitas discusses the ?pressure to identify your position or positionality? (44) in terms of emancipatory discourse of apartheid. How do you struggle with the pressure to identify a position at Macalester? At home with family and friends? ?Much of the sustenance it brings cheap-cheap from the hills and towers of knowledge, made of coal or rubber, or the real thing, has in its womb the distortions of power: its skills, its professionalized commodified form of knowledge embody the most cynical trade between the academy and the poor? (49) How have you or objects which hold meaning to you been commodified? How do you think your own experience can help you create dialogue with communities? How do we keep people?s stories individual while utilizing them for discussion? (we sort of talked about this the week before last so try and think back) How do you choose to create dialogue? How do you create dialogue and utilize the individual voice while not marginalizing other voices? Sitas says that parables are a humble part of the knowledge generating process (50). What parables have been passed on to you? How have they affected your thinking or reasoning process? How do you use them in dialogue with others? _______________________________________________ Mellon Myers Undegraduate Fellowship Program at Macalester (http://macmmuf.org) [email protected] http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html http://macmmuf.org/mailman/listinfo/list_macmmuf.org
