This week we get to write about all the things many of us wanted to talk about for hours—maybe over beer: the faith-science wars; Christian Texas Patriots; bleeding mystics (and cute teenagers); indubitable 'selves,' reason (and faith), hypnotized away warts, and the entire mind-body split.
What we've been calling the 'Cartesian Moment' (Descartes' successfully elevating REASON to the center of all knowledge, and banishing the BODY and all its attributes) changed everything. Anne Fausto-Sterling starts her deeply political work on science, sex, bodies and lives by calling the 'Cartesian' split (a 'dualism') into question on many grounds.
We claimed that we were all 'Cartesians' even if we'd never read a word of his or even heard his name.
Fair enough. So now what?
Well, for starters, let's try to make 'common sense' of the idea that we're sort of trapped by the ways we see the world, and have trouble imagining things any other way. The idea that the world is 'framed' by certain 'paradigms' or 'world views'—ours being pretty 'Cartesian.'
Explain how Descartes 'inhabits' Steven Pinker (or Louis Menand), or the National Geographic producers, or Dr. George Buchanan, or people loving Blessed Teresa (or some of us thinking 'she faked it'), or sexologists who think there are 'six types of people' (…body, 11), or the guys writing the DSM, or the Founding Fathers, or, or, or. Find a good example to read closely—ours are fine; so are yours if you've got one. Whatever works.
Then suggest how this all plays out—theoretically, scientifically, ethically, historically, whatever. Work with our readings. How are we bamboozled and how might we get un-bamboozled? Alternatively: how does our 'reason,' rightly used, steer us right? How do we need to think in order to see more clearly? If you want a model, it's Anne Faust Sterling; her book is a passionate polemic about why seeing sex and gender wrongly (or confusedly) has made life harder for all of us.
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