Episode 14 Liza got hair: thwarting recognisability

How do you know if a social structure is having an impact on you? Have a look around and notice if there’s anything you recognise. If you’re using language to label the things in the room, for instance, you’re participating in a linguistic structure. A language structure is a social structure inasmuch as it is designed by and for the community that uses it. Also: how well do you recognise the people on the bus? If you can refer to ‘the old man’ or ‘the smelly woman’, you’re drawing upon a social structure that is organised around the qualities of age and smelliness.

Recognisability is limiting if it keeps us from even seeing those things that are not already part of the social structure. For me truly open, welcoming and progressive social structures would be dynamic, and they would organise themselves on those things that we can’t yet recognise. I’m on the lookout for social structures that allow for new possibilities that might emerge from the unrecognisable. Some of those new possibilities present themselves to me in the form of a 6-year-old boy speaking up for his big sister.