vague thought
Mar. 11th, 2009 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI think people saying 'there isn't x-ism in that text if you read the whole text' and people saying 'this person isn't x-ist really if you get to know them' are kind of saying the same thing. All a person's sayings = text of that person. This saying right here = tiny percentage of that text. Are both saying 'if you read/know whole text' then the most of it will not be x-ist.
They're also making the same mistake.
If someone is saying 'this saying can be read as x-ist', in both cases, since they've read it that way, they are correct.
some readers go from there to 'this x-ist saying is affecting this reader's interpretation of the whole text'.
Possibly also 'this x-ist saying trips my circuit breaker so I'm not going to read the whole text'.
They are also correct. They know their own interpretation and action.
Somewhere after that point things turn into a loud argument.
Possibly the somewhere exists between 'this reader finds in this text' and 'this text is'.
Thing is, I just ran 'racism' through this theory, and it crunched into something at the end there. I think the crunch was 'context'? Because a particular bit of text exists within language and within all this world we're living in. Like my black hole theory, existing structures are out there weighing people down and causing crunching. Structures of systematic inequality, x-isms, sort of thing. So, hmmm...
'this text within this structure of systematic inequality can be read as creating/promoting/containing inequality'? But the context is really a big bigger set of texts, yesno?
Ah... new theory:
'there isn't x-ism in that text if you read the whole text' relies on 'the whole text' being defined by paper and ink and the borders of the book, a somehow isolated text. But language doesn't work like that. 'the whole text' is not just this book here in front of you but every other book, in that genre, in that country, in that language, in this world. Big big context. And if you read that text, you find all the isms ever. So 'there isn't x-ism in that text if you read all of and only that text' is the, still mistaken, statement being made.
I think.
There's a discussion goes in here about if you *can* give accurate crit without reading 'the whole text'. But any chunk of text exists within a framework of language made from other texts, so 'whole' isn't achievable in human lifetimes, too much text. You can give crit based on different texts read by different readers. If you say how much text you have read then it is accurate crit. I think.
... I think my brain gave up on big thinking and this thought needs a *lot* more poking.
They're also making the same mistake.
If someone is saying 'this saying can be read as x-ist', in both cases, since they've read it that way, they are correct.
some readers go from there to 'this x-ist saying is affecting this reader's interpretation of the whole text'.
Possibly also 'this x-ist saying trips my circuit breaker so I'm not going to read the whole text'.
They are also correct. They know their own interpretation and action.
Somewhere after that point things turn into a loud argument.
Possibly the somewhere exists between 'this reader finds in this text' and 'this text is'.
Thing is, I just ran 'racism' through this theory, and it crunched into something at the end there. I think the crunch was 'context'? Because a particular bit of text exists within language and within all this world we're living in. Like my black hole theory, existing structures are out there weighing people down and causing crunching. Structures of systematic inequality, x-isms, sort of thing. So, hmmm...
'this text within this structure of systematic inequality can be read as creating/promoting/containing inequality'? But the context is really a big bigger set of texts, yesno?
Ah... new theory:
'there isn't x-ism in that text if you read the whole text' relies on 'the whole text' being defined by paper and ink and the borders of the book, a somehow isolated text. But language doesn't work like that. 'the whole text' is not just this book here in front of you but every other book, in that genre, in that country, in that language, in this world. Big big context. And if you read that text, you find all the isms ever. So 'there isn't x-ism in that text if you read all of and only that text' is the, still mistaken, statement being made.
I think.
There's a discussion goes in here about if you *can* give accurate crit without reading 'the whole text'. But any chunk of text exists within a framework of language made from other texts, so 'whole' isn't achievable in human lifetimes, too much text. You can give crit based on different texts read by different readers. If you say how much text you have read then it is accurate crit. I think.
... I think my brain gave up on big thinking and this thought needs a *lot* more poking.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-12 07:54 am (UTC)I think the argument comes from misunderstanding that difference.
And the 'I think' encompasses a huge divergence of personal experience and reasoning because people are very different from one another. So there is no objective right or wrong answer, just as there is no right or wrong list of experiences that everyone must have or brain chemistry that dictates how they reason. There is only the individual personal response, and cumulatively the non-democratically measured majority of responses that create social mores. How we choose to fit ourselves into the social mores is up to us.