power in patterns

There's a certain comfort in routine, because routine *is* essentially certainty. It's a place we exist, on multiple levels or conceptualization of "place" -- place as geography, social circles, schedule, etc. Routine is recognized patterns. It is "low cognitive load," to use some of the terminology that David Feldon used yesterday, or "crystalized intelligence." In routine, we don't have to draw as much on high-load "adaptive intelligence." And since we are generally a lazy species (meaning "smart enough to not waste body energy with unneeded action"), we spend a lot of our energy trying to routinize things.

Because routine is easier, it's a very big part of administration, and with the onslaught of students into public schools when child labor was outlawed, it became a big part of traditional schooling (how do we *deal with* all these kids?). And learning the ropes (routines) is very much needed in order to be socialized within in a Discourse. Unfortunately the Latin root of "routine" is "rut" (I'm making this up), and once a person gets "caught in a rut" it's hard to get out. So it is with learning. It's nice, and important, to learn the Discourse of formal schooling, or close friends, or a significant other, but if learned too well, or generally exclusive of other perspectives, it becomes very difficult to break out and learn a different Discourse. Everything is approached through the lens of the routine, and translated relative to its "standards". This can be a problem.

A colleague (gently) chided me for using Foucault's normativity and deviance and Judith Butler's performativity in the Discourse Bending section of my Tuesday's Research Agenda presentation without mentioning the main points that their theories addressed -- respectively power and gender. I suggested that, as a white male, I'd be more effective (and yes, "safer" -- I like to avoid conflict) looking at the overarching structural aspects shared by issues of race, class, and gender. So, ideally, In critically examing the "safeguards" that Discourses use (ostensibly) to "protect" themselves, I can show how they also limit the development of the Discourse, and also come up with ways to "bend" (not break) open the edges of the Discourse in order to allow it to reshape and develop, and learn from other Discourses -- and with that, come to better understand, accept, appreciate, (etc.) those other Discourses, so that the entire concept of "the other" becomes less exoticised, and more "neighborized", so we can stop over and borrow (or lend) a cup of sugar instead of spending our sugar dollars on reinforcing the fences between us.