(no subject)

I dashed out to Woodman's (our local 24 hour less-expensive grocery store out by the highway) to get stuff for my brother James Allen. He seems to have strep, poor man. I needed pizza anyway, so I bought some of that, and some heat-and-eat Indian food that was really cheap being on sale and with coupons too. In fact, maybe I should have bought more at a dollar each. Oh well.

I'm slightly concerned that I will be sick for Capricon this weekend. But the last two times that my household had nasty illnesses, I never actually got sick at all, so I'm hoping that continues.

I got through most of my reading for tomorrow. This semester, I find myself making notes along with any reading I'm doing. I think I'm being influenced by the fact that Lisa Hunter bought me some of the pens I really like in both black and blue and I kind of want to use them. *laughs* I might settle on notes from class in black and notes from reading in blue. But I also like the idea of just alternating colors based on day or subject or some other system.

But for now, I have to get to bed. G'night world. I do have more stuff I want to write about. Really! *yawns*

(no subject)

It's a little difficult reading sociological theory-oriented text when I haven't actually taken the classes for either anthropological theory *or* sociological theory. I'm reading an article from '88 in the journal "Feminist Studies" and as well as being heavy with post-modernism, it references a lot of other phrases I'm unfamiliar with. I'm going to be nice and cozy with Google tonight.

(no subject)

This text reminds me, a little bit, of a conversation elsewhere on Facebook today. It makes me think, too, of the holistic, comparative perspective that my professor has stressed is so very important in anthropology. It's from the piece I mentioned reading earlier, writing by Donna Haraway. She's talking about feminist critiques of science. It's important, she argues, to realize that knowledge that can be called to account, that's justifiable as knowledge, must come from a position of incompleteness. It's not possible to see a thing from every point of view; you must realize that other points of view exist and collaborate. That points of view are always constructed; they don't spring fully-formed into perfect objectivity. Yet to find something that you can argue *is* objective, they must be examined and combined.

"The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and *therefore* able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another. Here is the promise of ojbectivity: a scientific knower seeks the subject position, not of identity, but of objectivity, that is, partial connection."

(no subject)

I'm glad I read that today instead of waiting 'till Sunday. I didn't expect a 24 page journal article to take three-plus hours to get through. One of Haraway's critics, as noted on Wikipedia, describes her language as "noticeably opaque", and I'll admit that it was pretty dense and frequently somewhat puzzling. But I made a bunch of notes, and I think she's saying some really interesting things. In fact, I'd like to read more of her work, once I have a more thorough grounding in the theory she's referencing.

Now for a shower, and more reading.