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by talking about it a great deal.8 How we talk about it is a way of controlling it. We delineate what can and can’t be said, what is appropriate behavior and what not, a knowledge, or science, a discourse on sexuality that exercises control over it and thus control over us. Talking about things is how science or discourses of knowledge categorize and understand them in order to control and regulate them. Now there is a lot of politics in Foucault and I could go on and on, but I think I’ve made his point for him: knowledge is power, power over the world, and so liberation or freedom comes from refuting and rejecting such systems of knowledge, systems that seek to control us but which are historically relative. The world can be otherwise.

On Beyond Metanarratives

We all live within boundaries. Geographically, we live in cities in states in countries on earth. With respect to the values by which we judge, value, and live our lives we also live within boundaries, conceptual boundaries. We have expectations and evaluations foisted on us as men or women, mothers or fathers, sons or daughters, expectations based on our faith traditions, conceptions of health, sexuality and gender, occupation, culture, and so on. Insofar as these values are constitutive of who we are and are important to our sense of self, we follow the instructions of doctors, teachers, lawyers, parents, priests, accountants, and society in general. We do so hoping that we will live a highly, or adequately, functioning life. All these boundaries serve the same purpose—they organize and categorize the world around us and thereby our lives.

To some these boundaries are comforting. They provide meaning and purpose. They are comforting because they provide security so long as we stay within their limits. Conrad can know everything in his world so long as he stays between A and Z. How nice to know everything, how safe. And he’ll be told he’s smart for knowing all there is to be known, and he’ll be rewarded when he says “A is for Ape.” He’ll never have to be uncertain, uncomfortable, or confused again. Boundaries let us know what we ought to do, and being told what to do is comforting and probably important at some level. Kids need boundaries in order to feel safe. But the purpose of making a child feel safe is so that they can feel secure while exploring and growing. So boundaries can be beneficial, but they aren’t impregnable. Once we have grown it’s time for us to explore, and that means going beyond Z, past our boundaries.

Conrad realizes the benefit of going beyond Z once the narrator drags him from his dull classroom into a limitless world. There will be challenges beyond Z. New things require new skills, and sometimes we’ll fail. Beyond Z lies Zatz, which is used to spell Zatz-it, and “If you try to drive one / You’ll certainly see / Why most people stop at the Z / But not me!” (Zebra). Conrad can’t know what a Zatz-it is, nor can he drive one. But his world is broader for having added Zatz to his alphabet, and zatz the point. Postmodernity shows the limits of our world so that we might transgress them. We see the boundaries so we know where we can go when we choose to venture out into the wilderness.

Lyotard discusses the border lands as the pagus, that place where the village ends, a place of boundaries, ceaseless negotiations and ruses.9 As pagans we recognize a multiplicity of justices and the justice of recognizing multiplicity. “Justice here does not consist merely of observance of the rule; as in all the games, it consists in working at the limits of what the rules permit, in order to invent new moves, perhaps new rules, and therefore new games.”10 Foucault makes this multiplicity real by showing us alternatives, or rather the fact that boundaries are traversable. Things could’ve been otherwise, so they still can be. So we should be incredulous when someone says this is the way it is and always has been, or this is the only way it should be. In the end isn’t this also why we read Dr. Seuss, and especially why we read him to children. We want our children