Map -- Week 7 (Ethan)
Posts
Post-class discussion: Phelan & Taylor
Simi asked, and I also struggled for, a concrete example of invisibility as a choice of power. I really like the way Misty put it, instead of fighting for or being denied a seat at the table, not wanting to be a part of the table at all. I think this metaphor captures how someone or some performance would not want to be part of the system of representation while others are pushing for greater visibility. It also illustrates the bind. If you don’t sit at the table, where do you sit? What if everybody who controls certain resources is at that table? Who decided we would sit at the table in the first place? One example that has come to mind of someone who chooses not to be visible, in the mode of not being represented, is Kate Bornstein . She is a writer, performance artist, and activist who identifies as neither man nor woman. In one section of her book, HelloCruel World , she frames the binaries as a form of bullying. She sees the either/or choices of man or woman, black or whit...
Post Class Discussion--Butler
Are we performing gender in a new way? If gender is created through our performances, how would we do it in a new way? I mean, if gender doesn’t exist until the repeated performances/acts create the idea of it, how can we say or determine that we’re doing it in a “new” way? In one sense, this is a very esoteric question about definitions, but in another sense, it’s an attempt to live out the hope for freedom that Butler points to in her article. How can we live out the radically different understanding of identity, one that might even refuse an “I” that acts? Much of the conversation focused on different marginalized groups and different examples of oppression or resistance. But to talk about these groups as things is to continue to believe in something which is only an expediency. My problem is that the most immediate, concrete examples of subversion of the dominant gender performances seem to reinforce belief in those dominant gender performances. For example, for a whil...
Post class response(been trying to figure out photo-thanks Josiah)
I liked the discussion about language near the end of last class. Since language constructs our realities— it is interesting that the english language has strategically separated gender into the binary “man” and “woman.” While many other cultures and languages have accepted the REALITY that gender is not a binary. Our linguistic constructions can be dangerous and a total “prison house” that Butler and other poststructuralists are interested in complicating. It’s interesting to think that the language we have been taught to use in formal education is violent in many ways. Sweden’s gender neutral schools seem like a great way to start deconstructing oppressive language. But what do we do now? Especially where we are. I still gender people and it feels deeply programmed in me. Over summer I was looking at photos from childhood. In most of the photos I look like a dirty little boy with a dress on and a bow on top of my head. My mom forced them onto my body. I rem...
