The Sex of Knowing

One Sunday afternoon not too long ago I was walking in to the UW Library (because I needed a walk and I needed a book) and I overheard a couple walking towards me in the direction of the Perimeter Institute. The conversation went something like this:

He: ...
She: Well, I would argue there is no such thing as a feminist physics.
He: ...

That's all I caught. They were moving quite fast. Maybe they were particle physicists. Anyway, when I got to the library and was browsing the catalog and couldn't think of anything to read (since everything bored me), I remembered the library had gotten Michele Le Doeuff's The Sex of Knowing and I had never gotten around to checking it out. And partly the recollection was prompted by Isabella's Notebook Project, because the notebook covers the early nineties and this is when we were reading Hipparchia's Choice: An Essay Concerning Women, Philosophy, etc. There is a page of the notebook where Isabella records visiting the library at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and discovering that Hipparchia's Choice, a book of philosophy, had been cataloged as sociology!

The Sex of Knowing is about women and knowledge, and comes down on the side of "She" above, and against what she calls the "feminists of difference".

We are assured that "women's way of knowing" requires an affectionate, attentive rapport with the object of knowledge or an involvement typical of the closest emotional relationships, a kind of empathy whose effect would be either to classify Marie and Irene Curie as honorary great men or to erase them entirely from the discussion.

and

My learned women friends are often irritated to the point of anger, as if this form of feminism undermined their morale at least as much as -- if not more than -- the ambient misogyny in which they work

and

To put it as bluntly as possible: I differentiate between sciences said to have been founded by men alone, and sciences managed by men who refuse entry to anyone but men.

But that's by no means the principal target.

De Maistre did not invent the telescope himself, nor did he write the Illiad; but, when he affirms that the "masterpiece" is always a masculine product, he can imagine for an instant that algebra is almost his own creation.

And here's something I've been thinking about:

Utopia is not a crazy dream. It is a laboratory where, in the space of a page where a discourse displays its premises, ideas are reflected and test their coherence. Many ideas that were thus elaborated have passed into the realm of facts.

And I don't know where to stop. I'll stop here.

From the Lighthouse

Spent last week as Assistant Lighthouse Keepers at Cabot Head Lighthouse on the Bruce Peninsula. As the lighthouse is no longer operational, duties were light. (There is a fully automated and solar-powered beacon on a tower next to the original lighthouse.) Essentially we were living in and helping to look after the museum. This amounted to sweeping the stairs and putting out the sign. Also, I signed a paper for the fire inspector. And I shooed some tourists out of the gift-shop (in the lighthouse keeper's house, not shown) which was closed for the day while the keepers were away. And we counted the tourists -- maybe 15-20 a day. Otherwise, blessed silence and solitude.
Don't think I've every actually watched birds before, but found the cormorants, loons, terns and the cedar waxwings who congregated in a dead tree, quite absorbing. (I mean, it was just the waxwings in the dead tree, not the whole lot of them.) Isabella saw a bald eagle over Wingfield Basin from the tower one morning. Splendid vista of Georgian Bay from the tower and once in the middle of the night I went into the tower and the sky was glorious. (Don't especially like that word, glorious, but I've already used splendid.)
The week started cool but by the end it was hot and the bugs were jumping, making walks on the rocky beach short and nasty. How is it that in a strong wind a deer-fly can still hover in your face? When I put up my hoodie I felt like monk. When we parted the keeper told Isabella "I don't know if we can have you back, you make too much noise!" We were like hermits. Sometimes I wish I liked people. I mean I do but ... once last year when I was going through a bout of insomnia, Isabella said, "Imagine you are on a beach." and I said, "No, I couldn't, there might be people there."

Storytelling, etc.

To the Latitudes Storyteller Festival yesterday morning principally because I wanted to see the short piece MTSpace developed for a recent conference on the employment problems of immigrants, Me Here, Me Happy. Also saw the African Women's Alliance of Waterloo Region storytellers (including shy teenage dancers) and Isabel Cisterna, who told a story and also talked about arpillera, which are kind of story-telling quiltlets. She also runs Cafe Cabaret which will be in Victoria Park in a tent next to the clock tower, June 17.

And coming up, Legion of Memory, "a site-specific performance exploring war memorial and the displacement of war refugees who have come to live in the Kitchener-Waterloo region from the former Yugoslavia." June 16-25, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

A Rat

Last night I got into bed and heard the footsteps of what I took to be a heavy-footed mouse -- very heavy-footed -- in fact at first I took it to be our long-dead cat Popescu -- and if I were a rational creature I should have bolted from my bed and gotten a flashlight and a broom and started heaving boxes around (because the archives are in my bedroom too) -- but I have unparalled powers of wishful thinking and I managed to convince myself it was a mouse, albeit one that had eaten rather heavily (not surprising in our house where generations of mice have socked away dry cat food from the bowl of our cat, long senile before he died). And after I had fallen asleep I was awoken by groans and murmurs that suggested either some mammal was in the throes of amourous embrace or else giving birth -- but as I say -- wishful thinking -- it must have been a mouse.

But today I returned from work and saw the unmistable hindquarters of a large brown furry creature disappear under Isabella's computer table. Perhaps -- an opossum? What to do? Isabella is at her life drawing class -- no help there. I called the brother and asked about the Live Animal Trap. The brother said it would very likely be among our father's effects, in my mother's garage or basement. But he didn't volunteer to take care of the mammal problem himself. Damn. So I called the sister-in-law -- phone busy -- answering machine -- teenage nephew very likely on the phone. I left a message on the machine and waited. From under the computer desk, low whimpering. Not possibly a rat! Rats don't whimper! They squeak! Could it be that species of friendly South American desert mammal that had infested Globe Studios? These creatures know no natural enemy and are extremely friendly. Oh please, let it be!

No response from the sister-in-law, so I walked over to their house. They are very outdoorsy people -- the niece and nephew do wolf calls and my sister-in-law can listen and say "No, that's not right, it's winter." They will know what to do. We consulted. The whimpering very possibly indicated a juvenile animal of some kind -- maybe a young racoon? A guinea pig? ( I suppressed the image of its tail.) The sister-in-law made me supper while the niece gave me a detailed synopsis of a young adult novel about fugitive Jews in Vichy France. Meanwhile the brother-in-law collected various fish nets. We dropped in on my mom to pick up the Live Animal Trap.

And I was still looking for a flashlight when the brother-in-law poked under the computer table with a fish net and said "It's a rat" in his phlegmatic voice and adroitly scooped it up while I not quite gagged. He took it outside and dumped it down a drain. An odd thing to do but I suppose it was fitting.

So I am finishing a bottle of wine here trying to get over my scunner at the idea of a rat in the house. It's almost done.

pat...

Pat the Dog was successfully launched with T-shirts and buttons bearing the image of Pat. Pictures of inebriated playwrights duly to appear on web site (and since I am one of them we will not attempt to link to it, scroll down if you are curious, I'm sure you'll find it somewhere.) Our leaderess Lisa O'Connell to whom we are so grateful for so many things will be having a reading of her play Ellie at Theatre & Company this Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 I believe but you may want to check with the box office on that since I am an inebriated playwright and as for the link, again, you are on your own.

Pat, if you must know, is Mackenzie King's dog, or rather the name of the corporate dog -- what am I saying here -- Pat is like the Pope, or Dr. Who, it is rather a title held by serial manifestations of the same entity than a proper name, and we chose it as a local reference, since Mackenzie King went to school here, and in fact a bronze statue of his youthful self can be seen sitting on the front lawn of Kitchener Collegiate Institute unless it's been stolen to sell for scrap as has happened to so many fine equestrian statues in the United Kingdom due to the high price of bronze. Good night. And so to bed ...