To: <s-acc@yahoogroups.com>
From: "Andrew Phelps" <starfish@northcoast.com>
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2011 08:38:11 -0800
Subject: [s-acc] behavior objects, or people?
Lmn wrote:
Elsewhere I have written about deconstructing the them/us (indeed all oppositional dialogue) whilst recognizing the historic necessity of the them/us as the first place to stand when one has been subject6ed to oppressive power relationships. I work towards a vision in which the them/us is socially redundant as this curbs too strong an investment in the problem we seek to change.
This is what I was trying to get at when I posted about Jean Quan's "walk to the mayor's role" - as will occur today.
In 1968 I reached the conclusion that client/survivors (not my term then, but it's what I meant) were people but that we were treated as "behavior objects." I met Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party in a social setting. In Fall 1968 Eldridge Cleaver made a political splash in Berkeley. I felt that the argument that "black people are people" was of central social import for bringing my insight to people's attention.
However Eldridge had an "iffy" relationship with the radical left in Berkeley. When Jean Quan Winter 1969 brought the Asian-American advocacy into the TWLF fold, that engaged the Afro-American advocacy and the Chicano advocacy, engaged the labor advocacy on campus, and it also gave me a path for my advocacy.
Spring 1968 I'd registered a student organization called "Students for a Dadaist Alternative." But dadaism did not take at a sufficiently deep level politically, alas. Da da
Ultimately Jean's advocacy brought the Asian-American advocacy "into the fold." But not that of the client/survivors. We were still, as Lmn puts it, caught in "them v. us." I have a lifetime of exposing that "social redundance" where slowly the particulars of social relations have been altered - "transformed" is today's ideation there.
We still face the "high problem" of getting our voicing past the "voice management" system that has today developed. My feeling was that Jean's FURTHER success can rebound in our favor, and I'm hoping that "new social roles" can begin to obtain.
We have work to do.
Andrew
CGIS
This for me means being willing to give up a sense of identity based on negative othering. Yet I apppreciate this is the majority case at the level of social action. We need to be able to operate at all these levels to move things on?
Lmn