The Individual Experience in a World of Categories :: Sociology Sociological Essays

The Individual Experience in a World of CategoriesLakoff and Johnson argue for an embodied mind, saying that our categories atomic number 18 based on how we experience the world through our bodies. According to this theory, as a result of their different anatomies, men and women would experience the world differently and their categories would be inherently different. Also, it would be expected that all women would share the same categories. Our class and our discussions have demonstrated a diversity of opinions and methods of categorization that refute this part of Lakoff and Johnsons argument. I think that Lakoff and Johnson were separate in saying that the categories we form are part of our experience (Lakoff and Johnson 19).However, what they neglected to factor into their analysis of the way human beings categorize is the differences of each individual experience. Categories and their lowlyings are based on an individuals personal knowledge of the world, and that is why no ca tegory means exactly the same thing for more than one individual. I loss to examine the categories of race and sexuality in Moraga and Delany to demonstrate the significance of the individual experience and its direct connection to categories. Also, I want to suggest that race as other is more problematic than sexuality to ones personal identity. Delanys Aversion/Perversion/Diversion presents us with a series of troubling tales. They all originate in spite of appearance Delanys life, but his reason for choosing these particular tales is precisely because they are atypical (Delany 125). Even within ones own individual experience, there is an uniqueness to events. The category braw doesnt mean that the individuals who identify themselves as part of it will share an understanding of all that it has meant for one person to claim this label for himself/herself. Delany acknowledges that the identification with others that categories create is in a way false, even the similarities are finally, to the extent they are living ones, a play of differences (Delany 131). He emphasizes that much of the sexual experience remains outside of language. No everything will be shared, not everything can be. An individuals journey to claiming his/her own identity is entrenched in the personal journey, in occurrences both characteristic and uncharacteristic. However, maybe these uncharacteristic tales are not as uncharacteristic to his experience as Delany believes. It is fact that they are indeed a part of Delanys experience as a gay man, and he says himself that there is no universal gay experience.