virtual spaces are not lack of reality, they are merely a different version of another reality.
Thanks Dene, for all of these provocative & productive ideas. Access to me is a concept, a practice, & an approach. The word comes, at least minimally, from the Latin word accessus [an approach]. On the conceptual level then, access brings about presence & provides the ability to put information to use & set social justice in action. Most often, with access come agency & subjectivity. Literacy scholar Jacqueline Jones Royster defines literacy as having access to information that then can be put to use in order to solve complex problems over an extended period of time (book: Traces of A Stream-Literacy & Social Change Among African American Women). Access is social and cultural advocacy that leaves behind capitalism's snare of forcing us to believe there is never enough of everything. Access is an abundance theory. And however hard I wish to not universalize the term, the nature of concepts is that I must.
I want to ask: When we talk about access--what are we talking about--access TO WHAT? Information, economic, social, & cultural capital? Physical spaces? Technology, knowledge, history?
1 comment:
Great Thoughts Zosha, if you think back to that conversation we had when we did that group presentation in Steve's class, about using a disability framework to critically address concepts like 'broken english'... my response is greatly influenced by some of those ideas.
if access is a practice or an approach, accessibility seems like it should mean the ability to practice or approach.
So something can be marked as accessible when one has the ability to approach . Asking access to what, it seems access to engagement in an approach or practice could be what we're talking about.
if a lecture is inaccessible, students wouldn't be as able to engage in the discussion or the course materials afterwords. Or at least their engagement would be limited to specific approaches or practices, ie engagement becomes possible when activist activities are limited by the time required (the practices required) for such engagement in lecture.
so in this sense, we are also talking about access to a greater range of potentials, of practices, of approaches. Also, in this conception, it seems that the issue of accessibility can be useful in opening up a disability framework to mapping out social exclusion or limitations of all kinds.
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