Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in mahf's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Wednesday, July 4th, 2007
9:13 pm	Interview meme from prester_scott:   ( Read more... ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 7th, 2007
1:11 am	Link: On Political Theology So I just found the Faith and Theology blog of Benjamin Myers. Its pretty good stuff. Definitely worth your reading. This guy Kim Fabricius posts there on various theological topics in the form of "Ten Propositions On: some topic". He makes propositions and fleshes them out, as I guess you coud infer from the form of the title. Anyway I came across a post of his I really liked entitled "Ten Propositions On Political Theology" where he talks quite a bit about what that should look like. Proposition 1: the ascension is the basis of all political theology, 2: God is political. But my favorite parts have to be proposition 3: "it is legitimate to speak of an “epistemological privilege” of the excluded and oppressed" and the "Post 9/11 Postscript" where he mentions a comparison of American intellectuals' response to 9/11 and German intellectuals' response to the Kaiser after the outbreak of WWI. Very interesting and telling, I think. What, you don't want to read it? You know if you don't read this you'll probably read something that will make you dumber. You've probably been thinking about putting a little critical theological thought into those hours you spend in front of the screen. So read it. You look hungry. I shlepp, you read. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
10:15 pm	Another audio link Here's another really cool sermon. This one was preached at Duke University's chapel. He talks about Jesus and the rich young ruler and shows how inadequate the typical interpretation is. You know, the "it doesn't mean you have to be poor, you just have to put God before money" business that manages not to have the same effect on rich people in churches that Jesus' words had on the rich young man he was talking to. Anyway check it out! Its only like 25 minutes and its really good. (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 25th, 2007
8:14 pm	Nothing original here, just an annotated audiography. Two really good things to listen to. I know they're long, but you have mp3 players, you have ipods, you drive places, you sit at computers for hours at a time. Check them out! MP3 Link #1: "Women, Gifts, and the Body of Christ" by Mike Cope This guy Mike Cope preaches at Highland Church of Christ in Abilene, Texas and teaches freshman bible classes at ACU. In this sermon he gets up at a Church of Christ and explains and defends the decision of Highland's leadership to have women participate more visibly in the service, praying, reading scripture, and even (gasp!) leading communion thoughts. I'm really happy they're doing this, and he articulates really well a lot of things I feel. He argues pretty well that this is actually a *better* understanding of Scripture than that typical face-value reading of these scriptures. I'm sick of people talking as if its obvious and accepted truth that the Bible is misogynistic, and this is why. For more on this, read NT Wright's take here. Its a little ironic to me that the popular tactic among critics of Christianity today is to take the most face-value, simplistic, fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible as the best interpretation, and then argue with that. Anyway, check out the sermon, its good stuff. MP3 Link #2: "One" by Don Miller Don Miller, author of several books, including Blue Like Jazz, gave a talk (sermon?) at the Imago Dei congregation in Portland. What I like here is his discussion of what has brought him to Christianity. A lot of people take as a given that anybody interested in "evidence" has to reject Christianity, but I think this is an unsophisticated understanding of the epistemologies at play. Hopefully this can serve as an explanation of what kind of evidence leads intellectual people to Christianity, and demonstrate the way in which Christianity makes sense of the vastness of human experience. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 23rd, 2006
9:55 pm	Posing As A Physics Teacher They took a pic of me teaching for the yearbook. I kinda like it so here it is. (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 3rd, 2006
5:03 pm	Once again, its been a long time Seems like all I do is update once every couple months or so, but I suppose that's ok. Life has been so packed with new things. Since my last entry I got married and started teaching high school physics and physical science. The wedding was perfect, and married life has been wonderful. People have asked how I've been able to manage two big life transitions at once, and the truth is, I don't think I'd have made it through the last four weeks of teaching if I hadn't gotten married first. Johannah helps me so much more than I could ever ask. Which brings me to the next point. Teaching is hard!! Holy crap. Its a lot of work and there are a lot of skills you need as a teacher that apparently you pretty much learn the hard way. Thankfully there are some things I'm good at and some things I really enjoy about teaching. I'm also realizing that I have a lot of emotional growing up to do. Its hard for me just to get used to this amount of work, and the fact that I havae to be ready to go again 5 days a week (hurray for Labor Day!). It takes a toll, and coming out of college I'm just not used to it. So that's growing up I guess. I keep telling myself that, but it still sucks. Everyone tells me that no one enjoys it their first year. The first year is pretty much just really hard, and you screw up a lot, and you pay for your screw ups all  year long, and if you survive then good. It certainly is hard for me to imagine how I'll get through 8 more months of this. But I suppose I can't think about it that way. All I can think about it is getting through tomorrow, and maybe the rest of the week. I suppose I can make it through another week. The other thing they say is, don't decide whether you like it or not after one year, because your second year will inevitably be so much better than your first. My plan is still to pursue graduate study in theology next fall, but I certainly want to teach in some capacity. One thing I know is that if I ever became a professor, no college class could ever scare me after having taught lower-performing 11th graders. At least, I don't think so. I'm just going to keep showing up, and doing my best to do my best, and accepting that a lot of the time it just isn't going to feel good, and that's ok. I have to be grateful for the satisfaction I do find, which is significant, and know that the only path to real satisfaction in a craft is through hard work and time becoming good at it. Anyway, as I said, I love being married. As much as I can't really envision how I'll get through 8 more months of this "being a first year teacher" thing, I really can see (as much as is possible at 23) another 60 years of this being a husband thing. I feel very blessed in that respect. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 7th, 2006
12:33 am	What's new So I'm officially done working at Panera, and not a day too soon. Its not in me to work somewhere where the focus is so much on making money, especially when the way you make that money is to convince people your focus is on quality. In any case, I will be teaching Physics and Physical Science at Westport High School in Ocala. Its about a 40 minute drive, mostly down I-75 into what seems to be a very nice area of Ocala, and its a beautiful school. I'm really excited and really nervous. I was expecting to have to settle for teaching middle school science or math, so finding an actual physics position is pretty cool. And by the way, since when does high school start at 9:20AM?? Crazy, but I like it. Oh yeah, and less than a month till the wedding!! Things are coming together and I can't wait! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, June 12th, 2006
6:31 pm	Update So I got a summer job at Panera as a prepper. I've been there about a little more than a month now. Its been interesting, and very good for me physically. My shifts are 6AM to 2PM, which has actually amounted to more consistent sleep and much better use of time, and I spend pretty much the whole time moving around and doing work. So that's been good. Sometimes I really hate it, but its mainly because I'm lazy and out of shape. On the other hand, this has confirmed to me that going to college was the right idea for me. Eventually someone will pay me to do something intellectually stimulating. I've got plenty of thoughts and observations on the way places like Panera are run and the kinds of people that end up working there and why etc. but I think I'll save that for later. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 6th, 2006
9:54 am	I have been tagged Once you are tagged you MUST write a blog about your 6 weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next six people to be tagged and list their names. 1) If I'm remembering a conversation I had with someone, I sometimes actually mouth the words I said and make hand motions and everything. Thankfully this is mostly when no one is watching, but when someone catched me I feel really stupid. 2) Similar to Mike, if I have an exam coming up, I generally don't shave or get haircuts or anything like that. When I lived on campus I sometimes didn't even shower, I just went straight there from getting out of bed, probably putting on deodorant and brushing my teeth. Back then I used to wear a hat in those cases. 3) If I am in an extended conversation that takes place in one location, I (completely subconsciously) play with whatever is available. If I'm in the car, that means I fiddle with the vents. If there's a pen, I'll fiddle with that. It doesn't matter what it is. My hands just seem to have a need to be occupied. 4) Similarly, I pace when I talk on the phone. This is especially amusing in my tiny studio apartment. I walk from the computer to the kitchen, then back, then fiddle with the computer (check my email, see who has updated their profile on facebook, etc.), and do it all over again, and check the *same* sites without even really paying attention. 5) I am always reading like 4 or 5 books at any given time. There's generally one sitting on top of the toilet, one or two in my backpack, one on the table... 6) I am convinced that ketchup does not need to be refrigerated (at least on the timescale that it gets used by me). Tagging: terryostrich, essius, pixiedust314, turtlebem, wanderoff, prester_scott (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 21st, 2006
9:33 pm	Some (more) thoughts on God and Suffering My friend recently raised the question of why God let the Israelites suffer in slavery for 400 years before rescuing them. God did tell Abraham basically what would happen, but I don't think that means there were no other reasons. My immediate suggestion would be that the text indicates that the Israelites didn't cry out to God till then, since it says when they cried out he heard them and answered. But that's sort of skirting the issue, because there are plenty of times in scripture where an explanation like that isn't available. So I wanted to suggest some reasons why sometimes God lets stuff happen that seems really really crappy to us. One is to bring his people back to Him. I suppose there's a sense in which this could sound narcissistic, but I don't think so. I think that creating people who could choose him or not was the most selfless thing a loving God could do, and then to pursue them after they had rebelled and try to win them back, knowing what he created them for and what is good and not good for them, once again seems selfless to me. There are plenty of times in Israel's history that God allowed Israel to go through hardships in hopes that they would cry out to him. It is clear enough that this wasn't the way God wanted things to be; ultimately he wanted know him and understand what is good and bad and desire to obey rather than returning to God when they were in trouble. But you have to start somewhere. This leads me to an extended analogy. It seems to me that we can understand a lot of this in terms of a relationship between good parents and several children. I want to make several suggestions along these lines. First, good parents have to set up boundaries and discipline their children to teach them to be able to function in a world where consequences for simply doing what you feel like can be much more deadly than a spanking. In the same way, it makes sense to me to understand that God, knowing that there are ultimately worse fates than slavery and worse fates than death. In general the difference in perspective between parents and children leads to a lot of perceived injustice. For example, when there is an argument between two children and the parents become involved, they parents are generally more concerned with mending the children's relationship and teaching them to treat each other right than they are with figuring out the details of who was right and who was wrong. The parents know that the kids' relationships with each other are far more important in the long run than whose turn it really was to sit in the front or push the button the elevator. The children perceive this as grossly unjust because they simply don't have the perspective to understand. In the same way, I can imagine that a God with eternity as his perspective sometimes has a different perspective on justice and what would be best for us. Good parents generally love the offending child much more and in a much different way than any of the other children can understand. We have to remember that God loves the worst of us more than we can know. Sometimes it seems like a perfect God judged by *us* would mete out justice a lot more quickly, but it seems to me that if that were the case then none of us would be here. Last, the Scriptures claim that God's justice can operate on an eternal timescale. Clearly not everything will be punished in this life, but just as clearly, God is ultimately just. So that's my response. Please don't take this as a claim that any reason I suggested is why any particular even happened. I just want to suggest a way of looking at these things that perhaps answer the question that most interests me, which is what kind of faith and understanding must a people have had to worship a God who had allowed their people to live in slavery for so long? I think the answers are concrete and must be lived to be understood, but I think we can see a glimpse of them along these lines of understanding God as father and ourselves as his children. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006
6:36 pm	Here's an update First, an interesting meme. What do you think of me? http://kevan.org/johari?name=dmahf Next,( career stuff. ) In other news, my parents decided to give me my mom's old car (which they've been keeping for me, but they decided to pay my insurance for the rest of the year) as an early graduation present. Woo hoo!! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 16th, 2006
11:25 am	So yeah... So for all interested here's the story. Its not very elaborate or anything so don't get your hopes up. Anyway, here goes...( Read more... )Woohoo!!! I'm ridiculously happy about it, and I really am grateful for all of your congratulations and kind words. It means a lot to me. Current Mood: happy Current Music: jack johnson (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 14th, 2006
7:42 am	Woohoo!! Well, I don't have time to say a whole lot right now, but I figure I owe those of you who read here this much: she said yes!! I'll post details later on today :) (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 13th, 2006
1:27 pm	News! I can write about this now because Johannah doesn't read this (and won't have a chance to anyway) and everything's set... This weekend I had two new experiences: I picked up the most expensive gift I've ever bought anyone and I asked a man for his permission/blessing to ask his daughter to marry me. I feel like I have crossed into new territory. Thinking about this for so long is one thing, but physically *having* the ring (I think its beautiful by the way, don't you?) and talking to her dad about it make it much more real... I'm so excited I can barely think about anything else... And tonight I'm going to ask her to marry me... Goodness I can barely stand it... I love this girl so much... Wish me luck!So I can write about this now because Johannah doesn't read this and everything's set... This weekend I had two new experiences: I picked up the most expensive gift I've ever bought anyone and I asked a man for his permission/blessing to ask his daughter to marry me. I feel like I have crossed into new territory. Thinking about this for so long is one thing, but physically *having* the ring (its beautiful by the way) and talking to her dad about it make it much more real... I'm so excited I can barely think about anything else. And tonight I'm going to ask her to marry me... Goodness I can barely stand it... I love this girl so much... Wish me luck! (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 7th, 2006
9:31 pm	What to do with myself... your thoughts? These days I feel more and more pulled in the direction of doing graduate study in theology, and moving in a direction that involves writing, reading, and teaching about that rather than science. I have always had the thought of going to seminary in the back of my head, and for various reasons kept pushing it aside. Perhaps partly because if I decided to go to seminary I would have had a much harder time feeling motivated to work hard in my physics classes or do good work in my lab. But now the question is much more important and I can't avoid thinking about it any longer. Earlier this year the thought of graduate school in materials science started to give me knots in my stomach. So I thought about that. I thought about what else I could do and what else I'd even want to do and what reasons I'd have for doing whatever it is I do. And I've realized a number of things. First, there is no question that theology and its applications are my biggest passion. Its what I read about when I'm not doing homework, its what I think about, what I talk about, and when I write its what I write about. I have done and continue to do a fair amount of reading and not just light stuff. Second, I have realized that I really do enjoy writing and I think I am pretty good at it, and I think I can get a whole lot better at it with practice and intentionality. Even more than enjoying it, I feel called towards writing. To sum up these two points: no matter what happens I'm going to be reading and thinking and writing about theology and what it means for life and what it has to say to our culture and the way we think. Third, I am becoming more and more convinced that if I stopped studying science I would only miss it in the nostalgic sense, and I would be quite content to read a pop science book every so often, do internet reading when I'm curious. These things have led me to consider that maybe God is calling me in the direction of seminary. This is stuff I really do want to learn about, and its important enough to me that no matter what I end up doing this kind of study would help inform my vocation. On the other hand: I am aware that I am only at the beginning stages of studying theology/writing/etc. I mostly know these as passions, things I can do when I want because I want. Science, on the other hand, I know as work: it can be mundane, it can be boring, sometimes you just don't feel like doing it, and no matter how you feel there are some things that are just really crappy to do. I know intellectually that these things are true of theology, teaching, and writing. I even have an accurate picture of how they play out, but I must admit I don't know them very well experientially. I am very wary of fooling myself into subconsciously expecting a change in direction as far as academic study goes to fill some other void or give me a shortcut through some of the hard work of growing up and earning a living. Also, I am trying to figure out what it means to be called in a certain direction and how I might go about figuring what direction I might be called in. I don't want to make a selfish decision. There are certainly ways in which studying theology could be a lot more selfish than doing engineering. There is a sense in which neither is a "higher" calling. There is a sense in which my call is exactly the same either way. All I know to do do so far is pray and meditate, which I have done a fair bit of but still have a lot more to do. You can probably tell which way I'm leaning but there seems to me to be a fair bit of ambiguity and some really good reasons not to be sure of myself. Anyway, I appreciated all the comments to my other post, so I'd like to hear your thoughts/advice/warnings/encouragement/whatever-you-want-to-say based on what you know about me and what you know about any of the topics I brought up here. I thank you in advance. Current Mood: contemplative (3 Comments |Comment on this)
1:28 am	Reflections while doing some work So I'm sitting here working on this lab report that was due last week. The lab was "Low Temperature Transport" which basically means studying how things conduct at low temperatures. I feel very little motivation to do this. But I need to prove to myself that I can (which is to say I need to learn how to...) do even things that are really crappy for the right reasons. Everyone has to do this. This is a large part of what it means to be a mature adult. This is what is necessary for me to be able to make meaningful commitments at all, whether it be to God, to a wife and children, to a church, to a discipline, to a career, or to myself. I accept that I cannot avoid this no matter what I choose to do in life. So no matter what else I feel this is useful and I must devote myself to doing it to the best of my ability. And it is done! Thanks for listening. Current Mood: determined (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 4th, 2006
6:07 pm	Short Post in Request of Patience Hi. I know I haven't blogged in awhile. So I want to try to explain that, and maybe why it might be a little while longer before I start blogging fullspeed again, which I fully intend to, by the way. Lately I've been devoting a lot of mental energy to a few things that aren't writing. I'm graduating in May with a B.S. in physics after 5 years of working towards it. That's pretty exciting. It also means that this coming fall with be the first fall in 5 years that I'm going to be doing something besides working towards a degree in physics. I have to decide what that's going to be, and I also have to work out all the details. That's taken up a lot of the time and energy and been the subject of many prayers and conversations. And it might have been something I wrote about except I don't know exactly what to say about it yet because it has been very disorienting and at times really stressful and sometimes I deal with that by avoiding reality for awhile either in video games or the pointless surfing of the internet, and some other things less innocuous. Writing for me is no escape, but a confrontation with reality. It forces me to face reality in an honest and careful way, because if I do any less then the writing comes out like crap. Anyway I have been unable, or perhaps too lazy, to wrangle my thoughts into a form that makes sense here up to this point. I don't want to settle for that for much longer. As someone once said, the first key to writing is to write. So this is a step in the right direction. But there are still a few major life changes in the making and a few decisions to be made before I will be able to devote the energy I want to (and indeed, used to) devote to this blog. So it might be a little while longer before I'm going full steam. So please, if you've found reading this stuff worthwhile, don't give up on me. Check back here every so often, or just leave me on your list of RSS feeds or your friends page or whatever. I will do my best to make it worth your while very soon. And while I'm making requests, if you pray, please pray that God makes his call very clear to me and that I listen enough to hear it. I will appreciate it very much. (16 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 31st, 2005
3:31 pm	Obligatory End of Year Entry Hi everyone! I know its been awhile. Man the end of the semester got really busy there, and then I went home. I ended up with an A, two B's and a C+. I felt pretty good about that. One more semester as an undergraduate! Woohoo!! I spent the winter break driving back and forth between Ocala, Gainsville, and Orlando so Johannah and I could both see each other as well as each other's families. And we went to Disney. Overall it was a very good Christmas. I got a few much needed shirts and some much needed money, and a Calvin and Hobbes book and a book putting C.S. Lewis and Freud in conversation on the topic of God based on the lives and their writings. Should be interesting. My younger siblings got computer games, computer upgrades, an ipod, stuff like that, but I'm too old for all that stuff. Phooey. So I'm pretty much finished with my application for graduate school, and I'm completely finished with my application for an NSF graduate fellowship. Now its all about waiting to hear back about what kind of money people will give me to sit around and learn about materials science. So we'll see how all that goes... Anyway, now that I'm back in town I should have some time to sit down and do some good writing on here and my other blog. Some reflections are definitely in order. Hopefully I'll get to that soon. Anyway, Happy New Year everyone!! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, September 26th, 2005
8:45 pm	LJ Interests Meme LJ Interests meme results c.s. lewis: Clive Staples Lewis was a professor of medieval literature at Oxford and atheist-turned-Christian apologist. He was close friends with J.R.R. Tolkien and wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, as well as works on medieval literature and on Christianity, such as Mere Christianity, in which he tries to explain the essentials of Christian doctrine while avoiding the inessentials, such as specific doctrinal differences within Christianity. christianity: Christianity is the religion centered around the person of Jesus Christ. It claims roots in Judiasm, and claims to worship the same God. Specifically, Christians generally believe that man is fallen and thus in need of salvation, and that salvation is provided through Jesus' death and resurrection. Christianity asserts that Jesus was the incarnation of God, and thus was able to provide salvation through his sacrifice. guitar: The guitar is a stringed musical instument. Sound is produced by vibrating strings plucked with the fingers or with a pic. Notes are changed by holding the strings down at different lengths, thus changed the frequency of vibration. Guitars can be acoustic (sound is amplified using resonance inside the hollow body of the guitar) or electric (sound is amplified by an electric amplifier). The guitar figures heavily in rock music, but is an incredibly versatile instrument, and plays beautifully in many styles. lord of the rings: The Lord of the Rings is a fantasy story by J.R.R. Tolkien. Sequel to The Hobbitt. Adapted to film by Peter Jackson. A beautiful story of perseverance through adversity inspired by a love for one's fellows and one's country (literally). music: From Wikipedia: "Music is a natural intuitive phenomenon operating in the three worlds of time, pitch, energy, and under the three distinct and interrelated organization structures of rhythm, harmony, and melody." I like music that expresses emotion well. physics: Physics is the study of matter, energy, and the fundamental laws that govern their interactions. It is the most fundamental of the sciences in the sense that in theory, all other sciences should be able to be derived from physics, if we understood it perfectly. I'll just leave it at that for now. role-playing games: From Wikipedia: "A role-playing game (RPG) is a type of game in which players assume the roles of fictional characters via role-playing. In fact, many non-athletic games involve some aspect of role-playing; however, role-playing games tend to focus on this aspect of behaviour." I consider games like D&D essentially like writing a story together. Video game RPG's I would consider more like writing a story with the developers of the game, although this tends to be much more limited. star wars: Series of films by George Lucas. Two Trilogies, six movies altogether. I consider it in the genre of myth/fantasy. Lucas was heavily influenced by Joseph Cambpell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces. A powerful story of heroism, the complexity of the world, the tragedy of a fall and ultimately, the hope of redemption. theology: Theology is reasoned discourse concerning God. Or more simply: Theo=God logos=words/logic, so theology=God words. I am particularly interested in Christian theology, which has several subdivisions including but not limited to: Christology--the relationship between the human and the divine in Christ, Soteriology--the nature and means of salvation, Eccelsiology--doctrine concerning the nature and structure of the church, Eschatology--doctrine concerning "the last things" or the end/purpose of man/time/the universe, Anthropology--doctrine concerning the nature of man, Theology Proper--the nature and characteristics of God, Apologetics--reasoned defense of theism and Christianity against criticisms. But that's all formal stuff. I think I have a pretty interesting world-view when all is said and done. video games: I mean both computer games and video games. Technically, a computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players may interact with in order to achieve a goal (or set of goals). A video game is a computer game where a video display is the primary feedback device. Anyway, I like 'em. Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list. (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 22nd, 2005
12:46 pm	Response Paper on Feminism This is a paper I wrote for my class, "Christianity and the Modern Mind" edited in a few places from the original version I handed in. It is in response to Linda Alcott's paper, "Cultural Feminism vs. Post-Structuralism." In this class we are asked to write response papers to the readings. The response papers are bsaically supposed to spend one or two paragraphs outlining the central argument of the reading and then one or two paragraphs responding to those arguments, either with questions, challenges or ways in which our own thinking has been enriched. I'll probably be posting any of these that I write and feel proud of, which only excludes my response to Nietszche's Twilight of the Idols so far. Maybe I'll rewrite the ones I don't feel proud of and post them here. Anyway, here goes. In her Essay "Cultural Feminism vs. Post-Structuralism" Linda Alcoff outlines two strands within feminism, which she calls cultural feminism and post-structuralism, pointing out what she sees as the strengths and weaknesses of each theory and suggesting that a theory be developed that avoids the weaknesses of either while retaining the strengths of both. She defines cultural feminism as the attempt of feminists to criticize the traditional, misogynist and sexist definitions of woman given to them by partriarchal society and replace them with more positive and accurate definitions give by the feminists themselves. Alcoff's criticism of this position is that it still attempts to define women, and as such is still limiting and thus oppressive. The post-structuralist position she defines as the attempt to remove the concept of woman completely, in an attempt to allow women (whatever that would mean) to be totally free of societal and political expectations or limitations based on their gender. Alcoff accurately perceives the weaknesses of this position, since it leads to nowhere. Biddy Martin puts this problem quite well when she says that post-structuralism "could make the question of women's oppression obsolete." Alcoff does a very good job outlining these ideas and their weaknesses, but without seeing where this thought leads her, I have to doubt the possibility of choosing something new. I don't see how she can choose anything that doesn't either contain "woman means something" or "woman doesn't mean anything." I don't believe this question can be transcended, at least not by new theory. I would suggest that not all freedom is good freedom; specifically that it is not an evil for society to help us define ourselves. I think it is wiser to settle on the concept of woman being real while admitting that our understanding of that concept is inevitably flawed and contextualized historically and culturally. Thus we must always be very careful and open in how we deal with individual people, much more so than our society is now. In this way, we retain a measure of flexibility and freedom and a position from which to criticize oppression, as well as a safe ground from which society can help women (as well as men) know who they are. (5 Comments |Comment on this)