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Well, Dr. J., I'd have to say that I disagree with you when you say that we can really only "know" through knowledge. I don't think we can "know" at all! But I do think that we can arrive at rationally/socially justified belief, and that's what counts for me. I want to add the crucial point (for me) that it really doesn't matter that we can't know with Cartesian certainty. It's still worth aiming at. That means that we don't have to abandon the criteria by which we search for truth, the good, justice, beauty, or any other ideals; it just means that we aim at them because we've decided that they're worth aiming at. That's precisely why I feel that a liberatory pedagogy is worthwhile. I don't think I'll change the world. I doubt that what happens in my class will involve significant change for anyone but me. But in trying, I construct myself as the kind of person I've decided I weant to be--the kind of person who rages against the injustice inherent in capitalism's construction of us as good little worker bees who unflinchingly swallow everything that spews out of Rupert Murdoch's ideology machine.

Thanks for pointing me toward Giddens. I'm not familiar with his work, but it sounds like it's right up my alley. I've been reading Yagelski's Literacy Matters: Writing and Reading the Social Self, and he's pointed toward a fellow named Paul Smith. I've got my reading around the issues of identity and subjectivity cut out for me for a while!

Thank you, too, for letting me know that you found our conversation and my posting productive (destructive?). It's not often that professors let students know that their thought has had an effect. Lets keep this dialogue thing going everyone!

I've deleted the hiccup.

Peace to all.