Oppressed woman on airplane: responding to Curtis' blog

http://criticalpedagogies.blogspot.com/2011/04/woman-on-airplane.html

First off, I want to say that this post got me buzzing to find my own response to it. It's taken me awhile to post because I've had to wrangle with this a bit. I'm hoping that I haven't misunderstood Curtis' point, and that I'm presenting something of an addendum or an alternative to his perspective on how we are constructing power relations in an ongoing act of performance. If I fall into the pit of "the correct way to understand gender, class, or race (or other) oppression" so be it, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Yes, it is a pit, full of slimy snakes and mud and other assorted ugh.

I want to respond to Curtis' post and explore how interpretations of the Asian woman in the advertisement might change if we consider the woman as real and the situation itself as real. I'm imagining myself sitting in the plane several seats down watching this advertisement play out (NB: I've never tried business class and I have no intention of trying it).

I think that if the woman is real then 'NOT YES' is questionable. I would say that she is oppressed, but not by an oppressor, rather by her situation.

From this perspective it could be included that the man himself is oppressed by the situation: like the woman he is constricted by Gee's "interested" socialized discourse (presumably he would be unaware of it), and I think there is validity to this p.o.v (echoes of Paulo Friere and the need to include and free the 'oppressors' as well as the 'oppressed'), but that isn't what I mean at all. I would say that the "sexual overtones, the patriarchal alpha male, the submissive Asian woman ready to please him" do represent a situation in which the (real) woman has no real power to resist, no real power to express her voice. I would say that her "interested" socialized discourse is to deny her own discourse (and here I really am labeling the situation and her, I know, but I can hardly back out now can I? But how can we avoid labels? Whether we're aware of them or not, don't they just introduce more competing voices to the equation? Curtis used words like "defense mechanism" "flirting" "sexuality defense" "passivity" and to me they seem like solid jabs and hooks in a never ending boxing match for reality).

I don't accept that the (real) situation presents any meaningful way for her to resist being labeled. She is constrained by her need to behave successfully: if she fulfills the role expected of her she keeps her job and increases her chances of achieving success (Whoa! what is this thing success? Too big a question for this post). Completely powerless, no, quite powerless, yes...

This is a judgment I am making without access to most of the facts. I don't know what the particular circumstances of the woman are. I don't have any way to know for sure anything about why she responds the way she does. But I am making a judgment call because I think this is unavoidable and because it can be powerful.

In saying "yes, her situation is oppressive" I am hopefully conscious of the fact that not only am I reflecting "power relations in society" I am also trying "to create them as well". I'm not saying that it should be this way, I hope I'm saying it could be this way, and I think that's part of my responsibility as an entity responding to, informing and informed by, a struggle towards freedom. Likewise, it's a responsibility to resist the status quo by expressing an understanding of and opposition to the literacy/school myth.

If I were to share my interpretation with the Asian woman and she resented me for it, good! If she wants to resist my authoritarianism she has to use her own voice to dis-empower it. Power shift may not be static but it can be pretty darn slow. Power is voice: I think its the strongest medium through which an individual asserts their reality into/at/around others, it is p.o.v., it is inherently authoritarian. I remember saying something like this in last weeks class: "If you want power (for you) then you have speak" (I was mostly addressing the Korean students who I felt at the time, weren't taking as active and engaged a role as they should be). So power is always at play and we all want it... but do we know we want it? Not everyone is being productive.

Here I'm trying to confront Gee's/Plato's dilemma (Literacy and the Literacy Myth, p31): "if all interpretations (re-sayings) count, then none do, as the text then says everything and therefore nothing" (relativism)...vs. "if they cannot all count then someone has to say who does and who does not have the necessary credentials to interpret" (authoritarianism).

I'm trying to avoid the "normative" pit by acknowledging that I am making uninformed judgments, that all things are relative, but not equal, and here's my take on it. The act of performing is an act of judgment. Anyone pretending to have no claim to power is just hiding it (and/or hiding from it). Gee slips up when he uses the phrase "a genuine disinterested search for truth" (p 29). We're all interested in trying to shift reality somewhere. Where there is desire, there is a will to power to obtain satisfaction for that desire, and we all have heaps of desire (another over-generalization...groan...I can't seem to avoid them).

This war of interpretation belongs in any class room and it's the teacher that can let it happen. I guess going into battle for your interpretations is the easy part, encouraging a mental space that allows others to go into battle for theirs is the hard part.

Too neat...too primitive? I don't feel at all sure either way...maybe it is just a war of performances in which sometimes one side maybe knows a little more of whats at stake.
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*Literacy historically used to solidify social hierarchy, empower elites, and ensure that people lower on the hierarchy accept the values, norms, and beliefs of the elites (Gee, p36)

*Plato: attractive and hideous: His critique of writing: deterioration of human memory, no longer internalized, we know only what we can reflectively defend in face-to-face dialogue with someone else (Gee, p 27) but...authoritarian Utopian state: higher places in society based on in-born characteristics and various tests, wanting to restrict access and interpretation of his writing.