Theorizing Practice, Visualizing Theory, and Playing by the Rules

Sally Gomaa

continued . . .

Conclusion

I hope that this reading of social space as a social product, flexible and negotiable, is "in the true." As Foucault says one could always "speak the truth in a void," but one would only be in the true "if one obeyed the rules of some discursive 'policy' which would have to be reactivated every time one spoke" ("Discourse" 224). A discourse, thus, is "the action of an identity taking the form of a permanent reactivation of the rules." If we agree with Foucault that rules in themselves are not good or bad because power does not "exclude" or "repress," then perhaps playing by the rules may (literally) de-construct the (super/infra) structures of power.

This play requires a theory, which is a super-code or a code of codes, capable of reading the social relations recorded everywhere. In "Reading the World: Literary Studies in the Eighties," Spivak tells the story of a student at the Riyadh University Center for Girls who asks her: "It's all very well to try to live like a book; but what if no one else is prepared to read? What if you are dismissed as an irresponsible dreamer?" (93). Spivak finds in this incident "a question also of questioning the separation between the world of action and the world of the disciplines" (93). The purpose of this paper was to study exactly what happens in the space between these two worlds. Those who are not prepared to read it are not "in the true."

— Sally Gomaa

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