Well this becomes considerably more confusing the more you delve into it.
Metaphors can be damaging if they get out of hand. If a certain language usurps the prevailing discourse of an issue, that language will define the issue. This language, however, is external to its issue and is observable for everyone (already with complicated phenomenology...). Thus if a whole bunch of dumb metaphors start to dominate the discourse on adoption, there is a probability that the general public will be saturated with these metaphors, and the concept which the metaphor seeks to describe will basically become those metaphors. Lakoff and others get into this, what the metonymy and everything. I think this is the main problem with metaphors, to which I should be more careful to heed.
Here was another part of my comment on that post:
Do I know what it is for you? No. Adoption is a process, a condition, a mentality, not just some political and economic function external to individuals. So you can’t really reduce it to a one liner and say “what it is”. That’s speaking for everyone. I don’t think about my biological family. It wasn’t really a family anyway. Just a mother. Or will you say you know what my definition of a family is too? It’s all too complicated to grasp with one line.
At first you'd think I was instantly contradicting myself, saying that adoption is different for everyone, then saying that "adoption is". But there is a key epistemological difference. We can say what adoption is when it is a process external to the individual. You might say it's "objective" that way. But when we're speaking of the internal, psychological process and condition of adoption, you can never really say what it "is", because it will always differ between individuals. We are able to say what adoption is only as a social, political and economic function because these criteria are what bind us together in the category "adoptee", a category that is external to the individual. To say otherwise would be a horrid essentialist argument. However, when we arrive at the psychological realm, I think there will always be different experiences.
Before, I had said that this blog had an unfortunate academic flavor. I maintain that opinion. People usually scoff at things overly-academic. It's kind of a shame on both sides of the table, but I think this is important enough to discuss, hopefully without getting to rallied up as to cloud our visions.
\a box of cookies if you can detect all thirty-six instances of hypocrisy in this post
That was interesting.
ReplyDeleteHere is what I didn't like about the usage of the metaphor that the book was based on - it is overly simplistic and in terms of adoption it makes it seem like the "child" had a choice in his/her transracial/international adoptive placement. It's another version of fate, only worse (to me) because in reality a child has no agency and it is others who make that decision (good or bad) on behalf of the child.
I took your metaphor to be suggesting that "rootlessness" is a more "enlightened" way of being, and maybe that's what you meant and maybe not, but I get cranky when that is mentioned (in the same way I get cranky about the idea of "colorblindness") because in an "ideal" world yes, it would be great if people were not discriminated on color, it would be awesome if transracial adoption did not end up being about the white adoptive parent erasing their child's racial/cultural identity. And perhaps for a small population of transracial adoptive families it can be that way - I just don't want adoptive parents to think that they can just raise their kids to think race/racism won't impact them.
Anyway, you've given me food for thought.
@Jae Ran: I'm glad my rambling was of use to you! At any rate, my emphasis was on the community, not the individual.
ReplyDeleteA good deal of sociology studies how social issues are "individualized". By that, sociologists mean how the public and other sources of influence can make broad, sweeping social problems seem like they are really individual problems, and that if the individual only did such and such better, or did more of this and that, then the problem would go away. They try and transform public issues into private problems. This is not a useful analytic paradigm at all, in fact, it's entirely untrue a lot of the time.
The metaphor that book uses does focus on the individual. Its references to gardens are pretty irrelevant in this respect. My metaphor used "gardens" not merely as communities but as entire cultural frameworks of discourse and meaning in which individuals and communities are situated. Or...at least that's what I was aiming for.
I don't know if I really like essentialism either, except when I think about something quickly.
ReplyDeleteOne plant isn't a garden. Two plants, maybe. Lots of plants together (and lots of different plants in the same location), yes, that is a garden for me.
A child - if and when she is old enough - can refuse to be adopted, or otherwise not want to be. She can show this through her words or her behaviour. But then the other children wouldn't have agency either.
Enraciation is so very important, at least if you follow the ideas of Levi-Strauss and Mead and maybe Simone Weil. It's how your roots build you into a racial structure, for example. Maybe, cultural too.
I prefer to go with Montaigne: 'Nothing human is foreign to me'. What happens if 'foreign' and 'human' are metaphors, and don't represent one thing/person, as essentialism would have them do?
I think a sharp academic language adds to my understanding of a subject or process.
The .xml is a good idea. Will keep following your blog as and when time permits.
Another example of a metaphor in adoption is: 'Toddler adoption: the weaver's craft'. Who is the weaver here? What is the warp and what is the woof?