tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14733404.post114735952098857492..comments2024-01-08T05:50:04.098-05:00Comments on baxter sez: Jemima and the GritsAlison Piepmeierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17972854288403934814noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14733404.post-1147574356089628082006-05-13T21:39:00.000-05:002006-05-13T21:39:00.000-05:00kenneth and deandra:i was re-reading your comments...kenneth and deandra:<BR/><BR/>i was re-reading your comments here and thought i would post the conclusion of that thesis paper for you:<BR/><BR/>conclusion:<BR/><BR/>I have spent my life on what I’ve come to determine is a teleological journey. Although unaware of it at the time, I entered graduate school with this journey in mind. I’ve discovered, at this point along the way, that I’m interested in undoing the systems of oppression and privilege of which I am an integral part. As such a person (and like many other interventionist practitioners), I have become disenchanted with, have no real interest in, and do not believe in the validity of a prescription for behavior, or the academic, formal presentation of dogmatic systems I believe only serve to further this privilege. These considerations haunted me from the beginning of this project to its end. They continue to haunt me now, here at the end of this writing.<BR/>My art, quite by accident, entered the delicate territory of activism. The presence of that activism conjures the specter of privilege even as I try to divest of it. My education itself, while helping me to better recognize the part I play within the systems I want to disrupt, is always already a part of this same system. This very thesis is rife with jargon and explications that only serve to undercut my own strategy for the alignment of process and theory. <BR/><BR/>It is difficult to reason one’s way out of this.<BR/><BR/>I know that this attempt at academic writing, here at the end of my graduate career, serves a valuable purpose. It is a shorthand method for comprehending large and complicated ideas, and I hope it ultimately serves a good purpose. But for me—to return to that idea of process and theory, the disruption of systems, and my own teleological journey—it is, perhaps, a suspect mode of expression. I have found that this kind of shorthand is a method for the laying out of rules. It is cold and analytical. It is, in short, an instruction book for a particular practice. It is not the practice itself. <BR/>Because of this, I have included an extended addendum of sorts. It is a much longer, more rambling and unclear piece of writing that attempts to take up emotionally where this paper leaves off analytically. It is personal and autobiographical. It is of little formal academic value, but for me, it represents a sort of alignment of process and theory—the actual practice of what I have tried to describe above.Alison Piepmeierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17972854288403934814noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14733404.post-1147545838952780572006-05-13T13:43:00.000-05:002006-05-13T13:43:00.000-05:00Your description of I'On reminds me of the book I...Your description of I'On reminds me of the book I just read--The Tortilla Curtain--it parallels two very different lives, that of a man/family (liberal humanist environmentalist) who lives in a gated community in California and that of an illegal immigrant/wife who live illegally in a State Park in the same community. It's less about capital A art than capital A attitudes. Interesting book, if depressing. <BR/><BR/>I wholeheartedly agree with Kenneth about the unnessacery nominalizations of academiprose. And the pointlessness of it. Clarity is highly underrated. <BR/>-DeandraAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14733404.post-1147467381163435892006-05-12T15:56:00.000-05:002006-05-12T15:56:00.000-05:00Yes, sometimes in academics jargon is its own end....Yes, sometimes in academics jargon is its own end. That's one of the main reasons I got out. I couldn't write any way but plainly.Kenneth Burnshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15252529691032736458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14733404.post-1147456570510916262006-05-12T12:56:00.000-05:002006-05-12T12:56:00.000-05:00excellent editing, sir burns. your talents are be...excellent editing, sir burns. your talents are being squandered in the food review bidness. only thing is, i don't think your version would have achieved that level of incomprehensibility so desired by my sole dissenting committee member. <BR/><BR/>(the other guys were cool with "privilege is fuckin' stuff up.")Alison Piepmeierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17972854288403934814noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14733404.post-1147453393293312072006-05-12T12:03:00.000-05:002006-05-12T12:03:00.000-05:00One way to clean up academese -- and many sorts of...One way to clean up academese -- and many sorts of writing -- is to turn nouns into verbs. This can help get rid of some clutter.<BR/><BR/>I edited the first sentence of your excerpt and changed <I>seeing</I> to <I>saw,</I> <I>refutation</I> to <I>refutes,</I> <I>reinstatement</I> to <I>reinstates</I>. I came up with this:<BR/><BR/><I>Although I found only the most critically aware of these citizens seeing past my evident contradiction, Conscientização, nonetheless, enters into an active, simultaneous refutation and reinstatement of privilege.</I><BR/><BR/>I turned this into:<BR/><BR/><I>Only the most critically aware citizens saw past my evident contradiction, but nonetheless Conscientização refutes and reinstates privilege, actively and simultaneously.</I><BR/><BR/>Is that better?Kenneth Burnshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15252529691032736458noreply@blogger.com