a(stereo)typical

either or

Today, on the second day of my holiday, i decided to devote some time to my new area of research interest, social and educational research. The course does not start until September, but the resources are out there and so is my intention and curiosity. I printed a couple of articles from the online library on self-stereotyping, a topic that had been on my list for a while, for professional and personal reasons. In this very limited bibliography i read that one attributes ingroup characteristics to the self or one may generalize self-characteristics to the ingroup. In the first case, "i am like my group" and in the second, "my group is like me." Obviously, the directionality issue is crucial in determining self-stereotyping; the authors concluded that both processes are at play and prevalence of one over the other depends on the relative status of the group one belongs to. I read the article, i followed the argument and understood the conclusion; i do not possess the knowledge and the skills to critique this type of research. But it left me wondering how i would define my ingroup, in my current social setting, and whether i use a deduction-to-the-self or induction-to-the-ingroup process of self-stereotyping. I concluded that i could very well be an ingroup of one, were i to factor in differentiations that could break up the starting ingroup of, for example, women. In other words, i am my group.

neither here nor there

It struck me as a sad and dangerous conclusion, sad because it sounded lonely and dangerous because it sounded schizophrenic. I discussed it with my better half and i pondered; i mulled it over and i lamented the fuzziness of it all. And i concluded that if i am indeed my group, it is an advantageous position, offering me a perspective that better people might envy. Lack of an ingroup entails a lack of loyalty that binds and deductively or inductively, stereotypes. Maybe this came, very conveniently, after a discussion i had this morning whose subtext read as, yet again, a binary opposition that can be resolved only in hierarchical terms, only after a certain power and status struggle is involved. Native or non-native, X or Y, black or white, with us or against us. Mental constructs or constructed reality? False perception or self-serving representation? Binaries, i believe, serve a very basic interpretational purpose that educators should strive to steer away from. If our students are to be open-minded, reflective, caring, knowledgeable communicators and thinkers, we should be aware of the plurality and diversity of ingroups, as well as the possibility of emerging ingroups or, potentially, groups of one or two. Shifting ingroups, as well as the variability and versatility of ingroups depending on context. This will develop their "sympathies to other selves, other domains, other dreams, other words, other territories of concern" as Susan Sontag described her own engagement with literature.

so what?

As a group of one, i am the other. A departure point and a destination, in my book.