no manure, no magic...
disclaimer: i spent two hours on this post about the akri conference. i'm warning you. it's long, dense, and probably non-sensical psychobabble. chances are i will be talking about this event in my life for a couple of months. link to brochure here check it out.
***
i came home this evening after having spent 12 hours downtown at the a.k. rice institute group relations conference, "embracing a world of difference: a working group relations conference on exploring and transforming authority relations," which is arguably one of the most intense learning processes i have ever experienced. i'm not even sure i can do justice to the events of the day, but i feel compelled to get something down in print before the tingly ambivalence evaporates.
having spent the wee hours of the morning working on a paper, i had overslept, but thought that i would be able to discreetly sneak in and hide myself in the back of the first event. my plan was based on the (incorrect) assumption that a couple of hundred people would be participating and that someone would be presenting/talking when i arrived. i was wrong on both counts. there were only 70 participants and, when i arrived, the room was palpably silent, which wasn't too surprising. one of the exercises people who study group dynamics engage in is sitting around in complete silence, allowing the invisible but powerful forces of identity, power, authority, projection, etc., to play out, until someone feels pressured to speak on behalf of the group who have projected authority for a leader to take up (for example). thus you can observe how certain people take on roles based on what groups need and the person's propensity to receive and take up projections. things like that (n.b. i'm oversimplifying). i had read of some examples of these activities, and our professor had also prepared us on what we should expect to experience, so i was primed for what would have been a bizarre scenario for many.
what i was not prepared for, however, was the strange language that would be spoken during the day by our conference consultants and managers. i'm not talking psychobabble, which i have become familiar with, but cryptic, vague, and sometimes inciting comments that were meant to guide us through the "tasks" and discussions. i put tasks in quotations marks because it remained unclear during the day what our specific tasks were, which was a source of much frustration in working together as a group, large and small. to give an example of the weird things that were said, in one of our smaller groups, a tension emerged between a black member and a white member of the group over an issue of oppression. i stepped in to offer my interpretation of the dynamic, after which the moderator/consultant for our group stated: "if the black and white members of our group fight, at least there are enough asians for a war not to break out." the response was a lot of furrowed browns and confused looks exchanged. i believe, now, that what our consultant was getting at is that, as an asian, i take up a certain role within the group, as a mediator, perhaps, since i am not personally, or by virtue of my identity as an asian female, embroiled in the black/white race conflict that was playing itself out in my small group.
moving then to an observation about our large group setting, entitled "matrix of realities experience" or MORE, which involved all of us sitting in chairs arranged in no particular order around a room. coming together, we spent a lot of time talking about the arrangement of the chairs, and how we should consider moving them, and how it facilitated or dampened our group discussions. we were fixated on the chairs, and skirted around a lot about the issue of why we weren't talking about the "here and now" and the roles of "authority" that we might be feeling anxiety about. i am not exaggerating when i say that we spent a good hour talking about whether or not the chairs should be moved, until one person, presumably carrying the frustration of the group, finally said: "i'm tired of talking about the chairs." then another person, in hopes of channelling the conversation in a different direction, stated that he felt that we were "impregnated" with ideas, and that would soon "give birth to something great" to which a consultant responded, "i do not see the angel gabriel descending upon this group. without intercourse, there will be no birth" (???)
probably most provocative, for me, was when we were charged with breaking into smaller groups out of our larger group setting for the purposes of creating a "world event" (WE--the acronyms are so cute). we were to decide on themes and gather groups of 2 or more individuals to work on discussing and developing these communities of thought. one participant in the event, karl, took it upon himself to lead the group to come to a consensus about what the groups would be and who would participate in what group. now, this is a group of about 60 participants, and literature tells us that consensus is a virtual impossibility. at this point, i had already conspired with a member from my small group to start a discussion around the theme of hegemony and oppression in our society, and how we acquiese to authority in our everyday lives (i know, quite lofty, no?). i felt myself getting angry at karl for assuming that he was the voice of the people, and also quite annoyed that the conversation had moved from being about the task (which was to form groups) to being about the labels of the groups, alliances between groups, and implied membership of groups. having already spent an hour talking about chairs, i had a moment of obstinant boldness and walked up to the board and put my group's name down. my crony, then, went up and wrote a room number. meanwhile, the groups were still discussing this and that and we had already selected a meeting place and a theme.
what i didn't realize until later was that, interestingly enough, by virtue of reacting to karl's oppression and his taking up of authority that i had not felt i had authorized him to do, i had authorized myself to act in way that might have de-authorized not only karl, but a number of other people. i had, in my reaction to oppression, oppressed others. this is an interesting conundrum, and extremely ironic, given that my group theme was about hegemony. but i have certain mixed and amorphous emotions about this, particularly since, on the way home, british carl f. and i discussed the implications of my actions. when i marched up to the board to assert my authority against karl's authority, he felt relieved in that he also felt de-authorized by karl. but, at the same time he also felt a certain amount of resistance, if not disgust, with my actions. i really see this is as a textbook case of projective identification; carl f. experienced ambivalence with holding a frustration with karl's leadership along with his positive feelings about the group process, split off the negative feelings, and i took up that negativity and asserted myself on behalf of carl f. and others who might have felt similarly. hence, while carl f. can related with me because i am carrying part of him, he is also disgusted with me because i am carrying what he has rejected in himself. (whoa). but more importantly, i find it interesting that what carl f. split off and what i took up was, for all intents and purposes, his own empowerment and authority.
which leads me to my next observation. all throughout the event, it was repeated over and over that we were co-collaborators or co-creators, and we should discuss what we were creating in the here and now. no real, tangible guidance was offered in what exactly that that entity was that we were producing, only that we should talk about it and not around it. everyone was confused (which is why i think we spent so much time talking about chairs, and when we didn't talk about chairs, we talked about why we were talking so much about the chairs, and round and round we go). the clues or "data" (the consultants referred to information as data... and would only muse: "there is data here, i think.") that were given revolved around our reaction to authority and how our process might be stunted by our inability to get over the authority of the consultants in our group process. for one fleeting moment, the latent rebel in me (which i didn't really know existed with such fervor before this conference), thought, "well, we should ask the consultants to leave then!" and in my mind, i imagined what that might feel like, to have the consultants leave and the room govern itself. in a small group setting, when the consultant left, the conversation seemed safer and richer, but interestingly, the thought of letting go of the authority--as embodied by the consultants--in a large group created a lot of anxiety in me. i felt fear that, by virtue of suggesting that the consultants leave, i would be called on to be the authority in their place, or that someone i didn't trust would be an authority figure. there was a lot of ambiguity that surrounded the departure of the consultants that i was not prepared to face. in reflecting upon that, i wonder if what prevented me was the fear of actually authorizing myself.
in thinking about it myself, i'm challenged a lot about my actions today. it makes me think of this time, in high school, when i found myself on stage during a hypnotist show. i think i was trying too hard to be hypnotized so it didn't work, and i didn't want to be sent back into the crowd for having failed, so i faked it. i went through the entire show and just pretended, and acted out exactly what the hypnotist requested, and knew that there would be no repercussions because, no matter how much of a fool i made myself, i knew that i could fall back on the line: "well, i didn't know what i was doing, i was hynotized." i say this now, because i feel that, because i felt i was in an isolated moment, outside of the real world in which i usually operate, i might have been empowered to act in certain ways and take up certain roles that i don't usually take up. the act of rebellion is a prime example of that. rarely, in large groups, do i take it upon myself to make such a public gesture of insolence and to go against an established group norm, as i did. what makes me really dwell on it is that, after doing so, i am confronted with a number of challenging questions: how do i feel knowing that certain people disapprove of what i did? where does this need for approval come from and how does it play out in my life? how do i reconcile that with myself outside of the conference setting? how much of people's disapproval comes from certain conceptions of what an asian female should be authorized to do? how much of what i did had to do with how i felt i had to act because of perceptions of me as an asian female? why do i feel shame and how does my feelings of shame inform my actions on a day-to-day basis? as a filipino female, what sorts of emotions am i carrying on behalf of my family, my culture, and my country and how does that affect my valency for certain projections?
to enlarge my scope a little bit, i'm definitely thinking a lot to what these means in our social context. in particular, what does this mean for people who engage in social change? now, the class i recently took on critical theory informs my discourse a great deal, and i felt that the last 24 hours has really cemented the ideology of hegemony in my mind. if we consider ourselves to live in society wherein we embrace our oppression, where we acquiese to authority in the belief that we are bearing a greater good for society, the challenge is, "can we truly own our own authority? if so, how?" at least, that is what i have been thinking throughout the day, today. the large issue that comes out of observing the group dynamics is how resistant we are, as humans to authorizing ourselves, and how perfectly content we are to function within a system without challenging the constructed authority of that system, no matter how uncomfortable or disconcerted we feel. in fact, there is an apparent discomfort to confront the authority within ourselves. it might appear we split it off and project it, with the hope that someone will carry it for us... and when they do, we feel both relief and disgust. we long for authority, but we hate it at the same time. why is this? what exactly are we afraid of?
john l. my co-conspirator in forming the theme group said during our MORE session that talking about birth, as we had been, was the wrong end of the mythology. "in order to have new life, we have to die first." in another session he articulated that, when it comes to social change, he often felt that he wished that "it could be changed, but not me." but, can the system change if the individuals don't change? can one be an agent of change without transforming themselves into something else?
***
note: i should mention that these musings have emerged from only one day of the conference. i still have two more days to go. already i feel something shifting, and i'm both excited and fearful as to what exactly it is. the feeling is as if i'm wiping away layers of paint from a wall to uncover a mural beneath. i had been forwarned before that this conference would be intense and that i should refrain from making impulsive life decisions afterwards... so i came to the table with some expectations and certainly some skepticism, but trite as it may seem, something transformative is happening and i just can't nail it down yet. i'm worried that at the end of two days i won't have wrapped my mind around it. i'm worried what will happen if i do discover something. i feel comfortable in my life right now, but there is something alluring about the discomfort i feel... and it was often discussed today that it is only in our discomfort that we really challenge ourselves to see. very interesting. more to come.
***
another conundrum is, even if you confront something within yourself, you do not necessarily rid yourself of whatever that demon is. even if i identify that i need approval, i have not expunged that from my intrapersonal discourse, and it becomes something that i have a constant awareness of everyday. will that awareness really help me or will it haunt me? is this why we fear authority?
***
good lord. does this make sense???
***
i came home this evening after having spent 12 hours downtown at the a.k. rice institute group relations conference, "embracing a world of difference: a working group relations conference on exploring and transforming authority relations," which is arguably one of the most intense learning processes i have ever experienced. i'm not even sure i can do justice to the events of the day, but i feel compelled to get something down in print before the tingly ambivalence evaporates.
having spent the wee hours of the morning working on a paper, i had overslept, but thought that i would be able to discreetly sneak in and hide myself in the back of the first event. my plan was based on the (incorrect) assumption that a couple of hundred people would be participating and that someone would be presenting/talking when i arrived. i was wrong on both counts. there were only 70 participants and, when i arrived, the room was palpably silent, which wasn't too surprising. one of the exercises people who study group dynamics engage in is sitting around in complete silence, allowing the invisible but powerful forces of identity, power, authority, projection, etc., to play out, until someone feels pressured to speak on behalf of the group who have projected authority for a leader to take up (for example). thus you can observe how certain people take on roles based on what groups need and the person's propensity to receive and take up projections. things like that (n.b. i'm oversimplifying). i had read of some examples of these activities, and our professor had also prepared us on what we should expect to experience, so i was primed for what would have been a bizarre scenario for many.
what i was not prepared for, however, was the strange language that would be spoken during the day by our conference consultants and managers. i'm not talking psychobabble, which i have become familiar with, but cryptic, vague, and sometimes inciting comments that were meant to guide us through the "tasks" and discussions. i put tasks in quotations marks because it remained unclear during the day what our specific tasks were, which was a source of much frustration in working together as a group, large and small. to give an example of the weird things that were said, in one of our smaller groups, a tension emerged between a black member and a white member of the group over an issue of oppression. i stepped in to offer my interpretation of the dynamic, after which the moderator/consultant for our group stated: "if the black and white members of our group fight, at least there are enough asians for a war not to break out." the response was a lot of furrowed browns and confused looks exchanged. i believe, now, that what our consultant was getting at is that, as an asian, i take up a certain role within the group, as a mediator, perhaps, since i am not personally, or by virtue of my identity as an asian female, embroiled in the black/white race conflict that was playing itself out in my small group.
moving then to an observation about our large group setting, entitled "matrix of realities experience" or MORE, which involved all of us sitting in chairs arranged in no particular order around a room. coming together, we spent a lot of time talking about the arrangement of the chairs, and how we should consider moving them, and how it facilitated or dampened our group discussions. we were fixated on the chairs, and skirted around a lot about the issue of why we weren't talking about the "here and now" and the roles of "authority" that we might be feeling anxiety about. i am not exaggerating when i say that we spent a good hour talking about whether or not the chairs should be moved, until one person, presumably carrying the frustration of the group, finally said: "i'm tired of talking about the chairs." then another person, in hopes of channelling the conversation in a different direction, stated that he felt that we were "impregnated" with ideas, and that would soon "give birth to something great" to which a consultant responded, "i do not see the angel gabriel descending upon this group. without intercourse, there will be no birth" (???)
probably most provocative, for me, was when we were charged with breaking into smaller groups out of our larger group setting for the purposes of creating a "world event" (WE--the acronyms are so cute). we were to decide on themes and gather groups of 2 or more individuals to work on discussing and developing these communities of thought. one participant in the event, karl, took it upon himself to lead the group to come to a consensus about what the groups would be and who would participate in what group. now, this is a group of about 60 participants, and literature tells us that consensus is a virtual impossibility. at this point, i had already conspired with a member from my small group to start a discussion around the theme of hegemony and oppression in our society, and how we acquiese to authority in our everyday lives (i know, quite lofty, no?). i felt myself getting angry at karl for assuming that he was the voice of the people, and also quite annoyed that the conversation had moved from being about the task (which was to form groups) to being about the labels of the groups, alliances between groups, and implied membership of groups. having already spent an hour talking about chairs, i had a moment of obstinant boldness and walked up to the board and put my group's name down. my crony, then, went up and wrote a room number. meanwhile, the groups were still discussing this and that and we had already selected a meeting place and a theme.
what i didn't realize until later was that, interestingly enough, by virtue of reacting to karl's oppression and his taking up of authority that i had not felt i had authorized him to do, i had authorized myself to act in way that might have de-authorized not only karl, but a number of other people. i had, in my reaction to oppression, oppressed others. this is an interesting conundrum, and extremely ironic, given that my group theme was about hegemony. but i have certain mixed and amorphous emotions about this, particularly since, on the way home, british carl f. and i discussed the implications of my actions. when i marched up to the board to assert my authority against karl's authority, he felt relieved in that he also felt de-authorized by karl. but, at the same time he also felt a certain amount of resistance, if not disgust, with my actions. i really see this is as a textbook case of projective identification; carl f. experienced ambivalence with holding a frustration with karl's leadership along with his positive feelings about the group process, split off the negative feelings, and i took up that negativity and asserted myself on behalf of carl f. and others who might have felt similarly. hence, while carl f. can related with me because i am carrying part of him, he is also disgusted with me because i am carrying what he has rejected in himself. (whoa). but more importantly, i find it interesting that what carl f. split off and what i took up was, for all intents and purposes, his own empowerment and authority.
which leads me to my next observation. all throughout the event, it was repeated over and over that we were co-collaborators or co-creators, and we should discuss what we were creating in the here and now. no real, tangible guidance was offered in what exactly that that entity was that we were producing, only that we should talk about it and not around it. everyone was confused (which is why i think we spent so much time talking about chairs, and when we didn't talk about chairs, we talked about why we were talking so much about the chairs, and round and round we go). the clues or "data" (the consultants referred to information as data... and would only muse: "there is data here, i think.") that were given revolved around our reaction to authority and how our process might be stunted by our inability to get over the authority of the consultants in our group process. for one fleeting moment, the latent rebel in me (which i didn't really know existed with such fervor before this conference), thought, "well, we should ask the consultants to leave then!" and in my mind, i imagined what that might feel like, to have the consultants leave and the room govern itself. in a small group setting, when the consultant left, the conversation seemed safer and richer, but interestingly, the thought of letting go of the authority--as embodied by the consultants--in a large group created a lot of anxiety in me. i felt fear that, by virtue of suggesting that the consultants leave, i would be called on to be the authority in their place, or that someone i didn't trust would be an authority figure. there was a lot of ambiguity that surrounded the departure of the consultants that i was not prepared to face. in reflecting upon that, i wonder if what prevented me was the fear of actually authorizing myself.
in thinking about it myself, i'm challenged a lot about my actions today. it makes me think of this time, in high school, when i found myself on stage during a hypnotist show. i think i was trying too hard to be hypnotized so it didn't work, and i didn't want to be sent back into the crowd for having failed, so i faked it. i went through the entire show and just pretended, and acted out exactly what the hypnotist requested, and knew that there would be no repercussions because, no matter how much of a fool i made myself, i knew that i could fall back on the line: "well, i didn't know what i was doing, i was hynotized." i say this now, because i feel that, because i felt i was in an isolated moment, outside of the real world in which i usually operate, i might have been empowered to act in certain ways and take up certain roles that i don't usually take up. the act of rebellion is a prime example of that. rarely, in large groups, do i take it upon myself to make such a public gesture of insolence and to go against an established group norm, as i did. what makes me really dwell on it is that, after doing so, i am confronted with a number of challenging questions: how do i feel knowing that certain people disapprove of what i did? where does this need for approval come from and how does it play out in my life? how do i reconcile that with myself outside of the conference setting? how much of people's disapproval comes from certain conceptions of what an asian female should be authorized to do? how much of what i did had to do with how i felt i had to act because of perceptions of me as an asian female? why do i feel shame and how does my feelings of shame inform my actions on a day-to-day basis? as a filipino female, what sorts of emotions am i carrying on behalf of my family, my culture, and my country and how does that affect my valency for certain projections?
to enlarge my scope a little bit, i'm definitely thinking a lot to what these means in our social context. in particular, what does this mean for people who engage in social change? now, the class i recently took on critical theory informs my discourse a great deal, and i felt that the last 24 hours has really cemented the ideology of hegemony in my mind. if we consider ourselves to live in society wherein we embrace our oppression, where we acquiese to authority in the belief that we are bearing a greater good for society, the challenge is, "can we truly own our own authority? if so, how?" at least, that is what i have been thinking throughout the day, today. the large issue that comes out of observing the group dynamics is how resistant we are, as humans to authorizing ourselves, and how perfectly content we are to function within a system without challenging the constructed authority of that system, no matter how uncomfortable or disconcerted we feel. in fact, there is an apparent discomfort to confront the authority within ourselves. it might appear we split it off and project it, with the hope that someone will carry it for us... and when they do, we feel both relief and disgust. we long for authority, but we hate it at the same time. why is this? what exactly are we afraid of?
john l. my co-conspirator in forming the theme group said during our MORE session that talking about birth, as we had been, was the wrong end of the mythology. "in order to have new life, we have to die first." in another session he articulated that, when it comes to social change, he often felt that he wished that "it could be changed, but not me." but, can the system change if the individuals don't change? can one be an agent of change without transforming themselves into something else?
***
note: i should mention that these musings have emerged from only one day of the conference. i still have two more days to go. already i feel something shifting, and i'm both excited and fearful as to what exactly it is. the feeling is as if i'm wiping away layers of paint from a wall to uncover a mural beneath. i had been forwarned before that this conference would be intense and that i should refrain from making impulsive life decisions afterwards... so i came to the table with some expectations and certainly some skepticism, but trite as it may seem, something transformative is happening and i just can't nail it down yet. i'm worried that at the end of two days i won't have wrapped my mind around it. i'm worried what will happen if i do discover something. i feel comfortable in my life right now, but there is something alluring about the discomfort i feel... and it was often discussed today that it is only in our discomfort that we really challenge ourselves to see. very interesting. more to come.
***
another conundrum is, even if you confront something within yourself, you do not necessarily rid yourself of whatever that demon is. even if i identify that i need approval, i have not expunged that from my intrapersonal discourse, and it becomes something that i have a constant awareness of everyday. will that awareness really help me or will it haunt me? is this why we fear authority?
***
good lord. does this make sense???
posted by cheeky monkey at 11:00 PM
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