From: Vunch-AT-aol.com Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1998 02:04:10 EDT Subject: Re: Foucault and the body In a message dated 8/19/98 6:53:38 PM Eastern Daylight Time, dhenwood-AT-panix.com writes: << Never heard of an ideology that didn't require participation. And just how overt is the convention around a modest little word like, say, "I"? >> Well, if we take the most benign of ideological institutions, schools, I suppose you could say that students "participate." But, they only participate according to their so-called position in the classroom or cohort and depending upon their 'assessed' abilities. Much the same as in being selected for admission into a nursery school, a private school, a high school, a college, a graduate school, etc. I don't believe that this is really voluntary in an absolute sense, it is a cultural practice, a legal norm to a certain extent, a social system. People are socialized into reality, the world, their culture, etc... Ways of being, thinking, speaking, etc. are learned and considered natural, second nature, and so on. The way each person is from a dispositional or personality or characterological viewpoint has been determined by a myriad of circumstances that they had no choice in determining. People are socialized into an ideology but they do not participate in the ideology!, rather they participate in the cultural practices unknowing of any such thing as ideology. I don't mean to say that all ideologies are false consciousness, just belief systems that often have a pejorative (or worse) connotation. There are historical motives for enacting a purposeful life which can only truly be owned through a critical reflection and which would probably require a significant personal crisis. Often, during socialization, the rule system unfolds and the rules of the cultural practices slowly becomes known. I suppose that participation in the ideology of education may occur in a genuine voluntary manner but probably not with a full knowledge of how the system works, what the consequences are, why the structure is thus and so, etc. But, eventually, a pretty thorough knowledge can be formed. I don't believe this is the case in some belief systems, namely criminal enterprises, religious institutions, and political treatises. The nonnormative foundations of criminal enterprises clearly marks any justification for participation as ignorance, and hence covert, as in unknown to the individual. The lack of empirical or logical foundations for religions clearly mark them as fronts for economic and social status groupings. The problem of disorder and enforcement underlying any political system, as well as the problems of consensus and difference clearly mark them as covert demands for conformity. Feeling the brunt of a social system's security operations or police is hardly considered participation in my view. It is a matter of the better of two evils, but I do believe that discursive formations involves an autonomous decision or choice to participate that ideologies do not permit. As for the ideological underpinnings of language, like a Sapir-Whorf kind of outlook is impossible to effect. Even if it is the case, there is no way to change the language in any significant manner. Perhaps, individuals can become linguists and learn to understand their language or language in general more directly and so less unconsciously, but obviously there are limits. All words have multiple meanings, there is no escaping from it. Developing our metaphysical knowledge is the only practical solution to becoming better informed and more sensitive, but too many humans are encumbered by their genetic dispositions and their heredity! At this point, whichever way I go: hope for the future or doomsday, I am at an ideological limit in which I do not care to participate any further :)
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