To follow up on our "uncontroversial" class discussion yesterday, I wanted to offer some thoughts that will hopefully lead to greater analytical synergy between the two majoritary viewpoints being expressed, namely, a) dominant systems of representation (of which language is one example) are exclusionary insofar as they prohibit the expression of positions (identitarian, political, etc.) that diverge from normative standards, versus b) systems of representations always reflects the proclivities of their agents (e.g., humans who use language) and therefore present deficiencies will necessarily

I wanted to further explore two interrelated strands of discussion from last class: on the one hand, the consequences of Atwood's rendering her dystopia with fidelity to certain internal currents of various socio-political developments in the 1980's (e.g., Reaganism, porn-burning feminism, the "breakdown" of the East-West Cold War-era binary, etc.); and on the other, the political implications of distinguishing between "reasonable" and "dogmatic" forms of an ideological system (a distinction which was invoked at least once in an attempt to explain the basis of 1980's "anti-feminist" backlash [