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My name is Anne and I study you. I currently reside in Greater Lafayette, Indiana, living in sin with The Partner, two frisky felines, Cleo and Wilson, and one large cocker spaniel, George Proudhon.
I have a degree in sociology and gender studies but have not made formal use of it. As a non-affiliated academic, I spend a lot of my time researching the Internet and folks like you. Broadly, I’m interested in the construction of identity/social identity and the re/presentation of the self, and human interaction, via computer-mediated communication. I believe the Internet is and can continue to be a revolutionary medium for culture and society, as long as we allow it to be.
I also devour nonfiction (mixed with a little bit of fiction), take a lot of photos, sketch and watercolor paint rather horribly, drink copious amounts of cheap wine, and philosophize and wax political. I’m also a knitter.
One of these months I will get around to figuring out whether graduate school should be my next step. I love “enabling the majority to do great things through technology“ and am currently contemplating library and/or information science. I have not yet made a decision and am in no hurry to do so.
Educe Me, Don’t Seduce Me
The name educe me was inspired by Derrick Jensen, from his book, Walking on Water: Reading, Writing, and Revolution (2004).
The word education…comes from the Latin root e-ducere, meaning “to lead forth” or “to draw out.” Originally it was a midwife’s term meaning “to be present at the birth of.” I would contrast that with the root of the word seduce, which is closely related, but with a striking difference. To educe is to lead forth; to seduce is to lead astray. (p. 15, emphasis in original)
When I purchased this domain I was contemplating changing my major to Social Studies Education and this website was going to serve as a record of my experiences and be a general, education-related site. After going through the first block of education courses I decided to stay with my original major, turned my sights toward graduate school, and archived the site.
educe me is a new adventure, founded in April 2005 and (re)begun in September 2005. Older archives from previous versions and locations have been selectively imported.
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Paranoid/Technicalities
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Names, places, and other Identifying Characteristics will be changed when needed to protect everybody concerned. Yadda yadda yadda. Opinions expressed herein are often mine or belong to commentators. Anything that doesn’t originate from my head will be noted and credited accordingly. Feel free to contact me.
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One More Thing
Always question authority and power.
If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.
There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.
Today I saw a bumper sticker that said, “Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” I think that’s right, but it’s also only part of the story. I think that the judicial system is also what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. And the police. And what we are taught in school keeps the poor from murdering the rich. The stories we are taught at home from infancy are what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. The belief that it is acceptable to be rich is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. The desire to be like them keeps the poor from murdering the rich. None of this, of course, keeps the rich from murdering the poor.
Once you understand something about the history of a people, their heroes, their hardships and their sacrifices, it’s easier to struggle with them, to support their struggle. For a lot of people in this country, people who live in other places have no faces. And this is the way the u.s. government wants it to be. They figure that as long as the people have no faces and the country has no form, Amerikans will not protest when they send in the marines to wipe them out.
The point of public relations slogans like “Support our troops” is that they don’t mean anything. They mean as much as whether you support the people in Iowa. Of course, there was an issue. The issue was, Do you support our policy? But you don’t want people to think about that issue. That’s the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody’s going to be against, and everybody’s going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That’s the one you’re not allowed to talk about.
—Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, 2nd Edition (2002) (emphasis in original)
This Western culture of ours tends to sacrifice the full range of experience to a lower common denominator that’s acceptable to more people; we end up with McDonald’s instead of real food, Holiday Inn instead of homes, and USA Today instead of news and cultural analysis. And we do that with the rest of our lives.
Our spirits are full of possibilities, yet we tie ourselves down to socially-prescribed names and categories so we’re acceptable to more people. We take on identities that no one has to think about, and that’s probably how we become and why we remain men and women.
—Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us (1994)
Last revision: 03 June 2008
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