re: #423 Sharmuta

I took some books I didn’t want anymore to a used book shop I’ve done a little buying and selling with in the past, and he told me the saddest thing.

He said, “I’d just keep these if I were you. I can’t sell these and could only give you a few bucks. Nobody wants to learn things these days.”

No doubt this was a man speaking.

What he really meant was that “No one wants to learn to succumb to a phallocentric world of male-oriented knowledge.” Well he is right! We need to explore other-knowledge that leaves the Cartesian world of binary opposition systems and discover Otherness intrinsic to multi-valued knowledge systems.

My dissertation explores male oppression that we find in mathematics with the use of the number “1” (if “1” is not a phallus, what is?) and explores how math and computer science could be changed by eliminating use of this number. I construct a new framework for math where the idea of “right” and “wrong” answers are discarded - instead this framework explores how we can give voice to the neglected and silenced numbers like 3 and 8.