You are all going to be in some major trouble if you don't start posting here. You are laxing on your programs and the class. I don't see an A in sight at this point for any of you. Pull it together and put in the effort. This is a major opportunity.
I find the second point in this article particularly ineresting, in that the authors emphasis is placed on the importance of movement. Issues of Power and empowerment are directly linked into movement, who does and does not have have mobility, and how much. Movement is not simply physical travel, but also the movement of ideas and culture through time and space, and the internet (which is discussed later). The fifth point also discusses travel and movement.
The third point is very clear and establishes a solid understanding of why "transnational," and that (contrary to my understanding of the previous articles) the term implies a destabilization and questioning of "boundaries of nation, race, and gender."
The authors go on to state, "In fact, there IS NO SUCH THING as a feminism free of asymmetrical power relations. Rather, transnational feminist practices, as we call them, involve forms of alliance, subversion, and complicity within which asymmetries and inequalities can be critiqued." From here, the authers acknowledge and offer the complicacies of nation, gender, and race-- especially when viewed through feminist and/or postcolonial lenses-- and furthermore then complicate each of those respective terms and disciplines. Examples here include eurocentric women travelers, women from Islamic countries as refugees in the US, and the relationship of nationalism and feminism.
The authors clearly ellucidate the main goals of teachers and students of feminism/postcolonialism within the academy: "since recent scholarship has shown us that gender, class, religion, and sexuality produce different kinds of women in relation to different kinds of patriarchies, we must design classes that present a more complex view of how women become "women" (or other kinds of gendered subjects) around the world. In addition, we need to tech about the impact of global forces such as colonialism, modernization, and development on specific and historicized gendering practices that create inequalities and asymmetries."
Throughout the article, the authors highlight complexities and incongruities as being of real interest and importance-- valuing each real woman and real struggle in each real situation. And though there my be similarities, there are far more (and far more interesting) complexities, all of which must be considered and examined in an attempt to understand the big picture; the big picture, being of course, a composite of endless smaller ones.
When reading the final paragraph in relationship to Robert JC Young's passage posted on a previous entry, one can easily see the interdependence that both disciplines (feminism and postcolonialism) share. This relationship is important, in that though they are seperate disciplines, in order to use one as a lens, one must also don the other. Bifocals, perhaps?
I don't want to repeat what Jessica has said but in different words. But I guess that is the point of school.
Grewal & Kaplan are pretty grate when it comes to acknowledging and (coming to accept) the almost inevitable pitfalls of an academic discipline striving for some sort of tangible change--as well as the probable unintelligibility of 'a postmodern goal'
jexcesso writes:
"Throughout the article, the authors highlight complexities and incongruities as being of real interest and importance-- valuing each real woman and real struggle in each real situation. And though there my be similarities, there are far more (and far more interesting) complexities, all of which must be considered and examined in an attempt to understand the big picture; the big picture, being of course, a composite of endless smaller ones."
The sum of the parts!?! The sum of the parts!!
This response of yours prompted me to pull up Donna Haraway's "The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective", because I like the way she writes and I think it's still an extremely relevant work for the "what do we doooo?" questions we have following the debates surrounding "our" Materialist Duties (The Women! The real women!") and representational politics ("no no, not as the Other, Third World Women!")
What do we do with these "complexities" or "localities" so that they don't become what Haraway writes as "..a theory of innocent powers to represent the world, where language and bodies both fall into the bliss of organic symbiosis" ?(1988: 579) (oh yes it is Donna Haraway!)
She continues: "We need the power of modern critical theories of how meanings and bodies get made, not in order to deny meanings and bodies, but in order to build meanings and bodies that have a chance at life." (580)
I dunno, maybe the intrinsic problems of building/producing these "meanings and bodies" (and histories, and realities) are a compromise--or consequence--of wanting to counteract hegemonic ways of seeing with such blurry tools.
I am so confused now but at least we have eye analogies!
From all of this rhetoric (regurgitated, misunderstood, innapropriately appropriated, or otherwise), it is still quite hard to get to the jus/ juste of what it is we're trying to understand and examine. Is it possible that the goal is chaos? Could the goal really be to deconstruct to the point of realizing that even from afar, we're still more human than the constructs we've/they've invented to define ourselves/us? Could gestalt REALLY be the answer? Is hope at the end of it all? I'd like to think these authors may say so (at least on the most manic of days).
I have found that the very real possibility of a universal hope, (the potential for Love in a time of militarism?) is very powerful, and personally, something ever-present and influential in my work as an "artist." Though I know there's no time for it within the paramaters of this class, I think it would be pretty interesting to explore the products of culture (music, dance, folk traditions, films, literature, poetry, etc.) in relationship to narrative issues of love, escape, etc. through a postcolonial/transnational feminist lens. Though I didn't know where Tila fit in to all of this, I think this might be where: hope. And of course, Newhouse curriculum.
For now though, I'd be happy with a pair of (rose-colored) bifocular binoculars.
****I also can't knowingly evoke the lens metaphor without properly crediting the very important Prof. Chadra Talpade Mohanty, who has changed the way I, and countless others, see things.
Taking a shot is about hope in the face of uncertainty, and tequila is very much about trial and error within a ritual. (The ritual of A Drink in general, or the real/imagined ritual of taking tequila with lemon & salt)
Reading feminist theory seems to be at least partly about remembering, historicizing, re-historicizing, and ritualizing.
Tila's life spectacle as part of/represented by/in the NYtimes, myspace, wikipedia, MTV, etc. is also about trial and error within multiple "ritualized realities" of diasporic experience and media spectacle.
So Tila Tequila the phenomenon = a dream site of departure for postcolonial feminism to theorize upon and dress up once again... to produce an authenticity that might validate a Larger Struggle.
Another reason to actually read Society of the Spectacle and give it back to you. It's looking at me.. right..... now.
"So Tila Tequila the phenomenon = a dream site of departure for postcolonial feminism to theorize upon and dress up once again... to produce an authenticity that might validate a Larger Struggle."
Perhaps . . . but she also offers in a larger realm justifications for neoliberalism. As spectacle she makes a myth visible, where everyone can make it in the technological and transnational age regardless of class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc. Individualism takes center stage and "a Larger Struggle" then has less meaning. And as Jessica points out, this does have to do with "hope". But is it a romantic hope or hope as a ruse and an opiate, as Marx might say?
7 comments:
You are all going to be in some major trouble if you don't start posting here. You are laxing on your programs and the class. I don't see an A in sight at this point for any of you. Pull it together and put in the effort. This is a major opportunity.
And I should add, I think you are all brilliant, so I want to see you all shine!
I find the second point in this article particularly ineresting, in that the authors emphasis is placed on the importance of movement. Issues of Power and empowerment are directly linked into movement, who does and does not have have mobility, and how much. Movement is not simply physical travel, but also the movement of ideas and culture through time and space, and the internet (which is discussed later). The fifth point also discusses travel and movement.
The third point is very clear and establishes a solid understanding of why "transnational," and that (contrary to my understanding of the previous articles) the term implies a destabilization and questioning of "boundaries of nation, race, and gender."
The authors go on to state, "In fact, there IS NO SUCH THING as a feminism free of asymmetrical power relations. Rather, transnational feminist practices, as we call them, involve forms of alliance, subversion, and complicity within which asymmetries and inequalities can be critiqued." From here, the authers acknowledge and offer the complicacies of nation, gender, and race-- especially when viewed through feminist and/or postcolonial lenses-- and furthermore then complicate each of those respective terms and disciplines. Examples here include eurocentric women travelers, women from Islamic countries as refugees in the US, and the relationship of nationalism and feminism.
The authors clearly ellucidate the main goals of teachers and students of feminism/postcolonialism within the academy: "since recent scholarship has shown us that gender, class, religion, and sexuality produce different kinds of women in relation to different kinds of patriarchies, we must design classes that present a more complex view of how women become "women" (or other kinds of gendered subjects) around the world. In addition, we need to tech about the impact of global forces such as colonialism, modernization, and development on specific and historicized gendering practices that create inequalities and asymmetries."
Throughout the article, the authors highlight complexities and incongruities as being of real interest and importance-- valuing each real woman and real struggle in each real situation. And though there my be similarities, there are far more (and far more interesting) complexities, all of which must be considered and examined in an attempt to understand the big picture; the big picture, being of course, a composite of endless smaller ones.
When reading the final paragraph in relationship to Robert JC Young's passage posted on a previous entry, one can easily see the interdependence that both disciplines (feminism and postcolonialism) share. This relationship is important, in that though they are seperate disciplines, in order to use one as a lens, one must also don the other. Bifocals, perhaps?
Jessica
Oh goodness gracious, THE LENS!!
I don't want to repeat what Jessica has said but in different words.
But I guess that is the point of school.
Grewal & Kaplan are pretty grate when it comes to acknowledging and (coming to accept) the almost inevitable pitfalls of an academic discipline striving for some sort of tangible change--as well as the probable unintelligibility of 'a postmodern goal'
jexcesso writes:
"Throughout the article, the authors highlight complexities and incongruities as being of real interest and importance-- valuing each real woman and real struggle in each real situation. And though there my be similarities, there are far more (and far more interesting) complexities, all of which must be considered and examined in an attempt to understand the big picture; the big picture, being of course, a composite of endless smaller ones."
The sum of the parts!?! The sum of the parts!!
This response of yours prompted me to pull up Donna Haraway's "The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective", because I like the way she writes and I think it's still an extremely relevant work for the "what do we doooo?" questions we have following the debates surrounding "our" Materialist Duties (The Women! The real women!") and representational politics ("no no, not as the Other, Third World Women!")
What do we do with these "complexities" or "localities" so that they don't become what Haraway writes as "..a theory of innocent powers to represent the world, where language and bodies both fall into the bliss of organic symbiosis" ?(1988: 579) (oh yes it is Donna Haraway!)
She continues: "We need the power of modern critical theories of how meanings and bodies get made, not in order to deny meanings and bodies, but in order to build meanings and bodies that have a chance at life." (580)
I dunno, maybe the intrinsic problems of building/producing these "meanings and bodies" (and histories, and realities) are a compromise--or consequence--of wanting to counteract hegemonic ways of seeing with such blurry tools.
I am so confused now but at least we have eye analogies!
From all of this rhetoric (regurgitated, misunderstood, innapropriately appropriated, or otherwise), it is still quite hard to get to the jus/ juste of what it is we're trying to understand and examine. Is it possible that the goal is chaos? Could the goal really be to deconstruct to the point of realizing that even from afar, we're still more human than the constructs we've/they've invented to define ourselves/us? Could gestalt REALLY be the answer? Is hope at the end of it all? I'd like to think these authors may say so (at least on the most manic of days).
I have found that the very real possibility of a universal hope, (the potential for Love in a time of militarism?) is very powerful, and personally, something ever-present and influential in my work as an "artist." Though I know there's no time for it within the paramaters of this class, I think it would be pretty interesting to explore the products of culture (music, dance, folk traditions, films, literature, poetry, etc.) in relationship to narrative issues of love, escape, etc. through a postcolonial/transnational feminist lens. Though I didn't know where Tila fit in to all of this, I think this might be where: hope. And of course, Newhouse curriculum.
For now though, I'd be happy with a pair of (rose-colored) bifocular binoculars.
****I also can't knowingly evoke the lens metaphor without properly crediting the very important Prof. Chadra Talpade Mohanty, who has changed the way I, and countless others, see things.
Ok, I'm going to take this step by step.
She wants a Shot at Love:
Taking a shot is about hope in the face of uncertainty, and tequila is very much about trial and error within a ritual. (The ritual of A Drink in general, or the real/imagined ritual of taking tequila with lemon & salt)
Reading feminist theory seems to be at least partly about remembering, historicizing, re-historicizing, and ritualizing.
Tila's life spectacle as part of/represented by/in the NYtimes, myspace, wikipedia, MTV, etc. is also about trial and error within multiple "ritualized realities" of diasporic experience and media spectacle.
So Tila Tequila the phenomenon = a dream site of departure for postcolonial feminism to theorize upon and dress up once again... to produce an authenticity that might validate a Larger Struggle.
Another reason to actually read Society of the Spectacle and give it back to you. It's looking at me.. right..... now.
"So Tila Tequila the phenomenon = a dream site of departure for postcolonial feminism to theorize upon and dress up once again... to produce an authenticity that might validate a Larger Struggle."
Perhaps . . . but she also offers in a larger realm justifications for neoliberalism. As spectacle she makes a myth visible, where everyone can make it in the technological and transnational age regardless of class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc. Individualism takes center stage and "a Larger Struggle" then has less meaning. And as Jessica points out, this does have to do with "hope". But is it a romantic hope or hope as a ruse and an opiate, as Marx might say?
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