This book starts and ends as a story told by a man named Marlow. History is basically about imperialism, civilization, and a man with a great reputation named Kurtz. I might not have been too careful in reading but it seems like a confusing book. It has so many things going on. I am not so sure what Joseph Conrad is trying to imply through this story yet. But one thing that I do not like about this book is about how Europeans break into Africa, take over their land saying that they are helping them to be “civilized”. Were Africans actually getting helped by the Europeans? It just seems like a joke. They were just treated as slaves fulfilling their desires to expand their territories. What is the point of shouting for equality of all human beings while oppressing others? I am just not so fond of this book since the story just automatically makes me think about Korean history. I don’t want to bring this up all the time but I just hate the feeling that I get when it comes to colonialism, imperialism,,, etc. Well… I have never experienced WW2, Japanese Colonization, or the Korean War, but I have learned since young age through stories that my grandparents told or through history classes in Korea. Korea may have been a developed country, but I know how “Western cultures” are taken as a superior being in my country. I don’t want to be too detailed or personal. But overall, I didn’t like this book, it is too disturbing and disgusting.
Category Archives: ArtsOne
The Second Sex
Thomas Paine-Rights of Man
Rights of Man is a powerful and revolutionary book that deals with rights of all people. How class systems should be destroyed and that people in power are just people with certain position to look after its people. This book feels familiar somehow but I don’t quite remember it. I should find out if he was the first person to claim equality of all people. Rights of man seems like a boring book by its cover but it is actually easy to follow since it is written right to the point. Although this book is written decades ago and although many countries have freedom today, it is ironic how people still claim for equalities of people. It still seems as if ideas of Burke and Paine still remains in the society.
Rewriting the Soul
Rewriting the Soul
As Hacking deals with multiple personalities in Rewriting the Soul, do people have multiple personalities? People do act differently in different situations and towards different people but isn’t it one of the ways people trying to socialize? Or maybe in order to survive? I mean, personalities do change over time because of past experiences or environments people live in. But does that mean people have multiple personalities? What if it is not multiple but personalities that change through lifetime through different experiences? Hacking also says that people are made up. A person changes by other’s description. If this is so, then how does this relate with multiple personalities?
define me
Apologies for the lateness!
Sexuality is a fickle thing. Honestly, I’ve got a blog on tumblr and I see daily posts speaking of sexuality, cisgendered and transgendered people, rights and needs for proper health care and the end of discrimination – the list goes on and it never goes away. Society has changed so much since Foucault’s time and I have to agree with the observation that we are once again talking about sex and sexuality all the time. But are we doing it in the right ways?
Sexuality for Foucault seems to be related to and centered around several societal factors. Admittedly less societal than Fanon and more influenced by the scientific community. These external influences, how we shape each other, are important in the progressions of our cultures. I remember reading a quote once that said that we love to measure everything, things always have to be categorized, a value must be placed, etc. From what Foucault is saying it is quite obvious that sexuality has become a sort of slave to this human practice.
I noticed that the word “bourgeois” comes up as Foucault talks of the Victorian age of repression. I remember “bourgeois” also being mentioned in Fanon (read: I’m too tired to look up the page) and it reminded me of the similarities between the presences of sexuality and racism and their prominence (or lack thereof) in society. The Victorian age of repression and silence made me think of a sort of “sleep” mode on a computer. Foucault speaks of sexuality being an open and accepted before the Victorian era and then it became taboo and controlled. It changed as history moved on after that, but it didn’t exactly return to the way it was before.
Although, perhaps I’ve confused sexual acts and sexuality here? Are they separate to Foucault? Should they be? I should probably keep an eye out for that since some of the things Foucault talks about concern sex or sexual acts as part of a type of sexuality, but not as an interchangeable term for sexuality.
I think I just confused myself. What just happened there?
Defining sexuality is such a complicated thing. I give Foucault an A+ for effort. I’ll let you know if I understood him after I finish the book.
Black Skin, White Masks
Psychology, history, and dehumanization are the main keywords that are expressed in Black Skin, White Masks. As a non-caucasian and as a Korean, this book is very interesting and easily understandable in some parts. Many topics such as post colonialism, racism, and stereotypes can be related with historical facts about my country, how Koreans once lost their identity during Japanese colonization and how we are still living under the post colonial state under the United States after the independence. How is it possible that all men are equal?