On Jun 4, 2008, at 9:55 PM, shag wrote:
>
The old poem about the blind men and the elephant said it all
already. The problem is not the indescribability of elephants--it is
our blindness.
> The social constructionist position is pretty simple (but mind,
> Butler is
> +criticizing_ social con here). Mars exists. It's materiality is not
> in
> doubt. But what Mars means to us is something we, as a society,
> culture
> create and this has varied historically. The red planet, Barsoom,
> the stuff
> of mythic stories or science fiction, home of ETs, an object
> consulted in
> astrological forecasts, the object of scientific investigation, a
> future
> home for those fleaing a dying planet earth, etc.
>
> All those ways of thinking of mars, more or less shaped by it's
> physical
> properties and how we perceived them, will matter as to our attitude
> toward, thinking about, concern with, etc. this planet. Some would
> counter
> that we can break through the mythological, ill-founded beliefs
> about Mars
> that have dominated the past. We do that, they say, via science. But
> someone like Butler is arguing that even science, shot through as it
> is
> with relations of power shaped by capitlist social relations, is
> going to
> present to us a mars that is not simply the mars of some neutral
> descriptive observation language, but through a language which, by
> its very
> operations, encourages us to see it as, for instance, a planet
> devoid of
> human life to, therefore, be exploited for resource, to be colonized
> for
> human use, etc. and whatever.
>
> Where the social constructinist break from others is with the idea
> that, if
> we just keep trying harder and honing our tools, we can eventually
> tear off
> the veil of ideology and get at the +real+ mars lying the to be
> grasped by
> us, unmediated by power. That what we call mars will, someday, be
> described
> and perceived by us as what it really is, without us bringing any
> *interests* to the understanding. We would be, like Spock, observing
> phenom
> and cooly announcing, "interesting."
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things...it consents and does not consent to be called Zeus."
Herakleitos of Ephesos