Kennedy's Korner

Helllllooooo readers, today we went over some Judith Butler, and anytime I read any piece of philosophical writing it really wakes up my mind. It allows me to view problems in ways I haven’t before, and forces me open up my mind to the potential “Real Truths” of the world.

Now I took a lot away from the Butler excerpt that we read, not necessarily a lot of answers (which philosophy has never really given me) but a lot of questions; the main one being, “what does it mean to be human?” Which then in turn makes me wonder “who am I”, “ho are we” and a whole plethora of questions. Butler really opened pandora’s box for me.

I think in this blog post i’m going to try and answer some of those questions. Now this isn’t the “correct” answer, as I’m not sure there is one, but it is what it means to me, as of now, on this Tuesday afternoon. What does it mean to be human? Now theres a big question, your interpretation of this really is a foundation for how you conduct yourself in life.(Whether as an individual, or a country) The area in Butler’s reading that made me consider this question was, “Why the ego? After all, if my survivability depends on a relation to others, to a “you” or a set of “yous” without whom I cannot exist, then my existence is not mine alone, but is to be found outside myself, in this set of relations that precede and exceed the boundaries of who I am.” (44) Now, I’m sure my interpretation of this is up for debate (as it is just an interpretation), but what it means to me was that without everybody else around me, there is no me. That without the other “yous” in the world there is no “I” and that really resonated with me. Butler made it clear to me that humans are only human because of others, and I like to think of it (in political science terms) kind of like the nation-state, vs a globalized world. I think that our current predicament is that we view “each other”, or (maybe how Butler would put it) “ourselves” as our own particular country, and sometimes even less than that. Sort of a me vs the world. That limits our view on who we view as human and who’s lives we deem valuable. Because we can so easily view other countries’ civilians, or even people who just look different than us, as not us (maybe subhuman) that allows us to justify the horrible atrocities that we would typically consider unjustifiable. So what that little excerpt from Butler meant to me was that humanity transcends the nation-state and really we are all one. Just because somebody comes from another place than me, or looks different from me, or even fights against me, does not take away their inalienable right to be considered human. So I think my views would tend to align with what I think Butler is articulating.

As the Declaration of Independance says, “all men are created equal”, to me, that means that, well, at the end of the day everybody is equal, and sometimes it just makes me think about the hypocrisy of the United States government and the people of the United States who believe so vehemently that the constitution is a doctrine that should be treated as the absolute truth, and will defend the 2nd amendment (the right to bear arms) with all their hearts, yet have such a skewed view on what it means to be human. Now I can understand some of the actions committed by the government, and maybe even some of the narrow minded beliefs that some of my fellow Americans hold. The world we live in is scary, but only because of the view that we have of “me vs. the world”. Its that dangerous cyclical style of thought that perpetuates the wars that humanity constantly seems to find themselves in. To break that cycle (I believe) takes some serious thought on the part of every “individual” out there. Not just the United States. I believe that we can and are changing this cycle of war, maybe not tomorrow, but one day sooner than some would like us to think. Theres hope, I hope. Wow, this got a bit preachy, but welcome to my mind readers. Thank you for reading this little glimpse into the deep dark “Korner” that is my mind. Also, don’t think i’m crazy, cause I’m not, i think. Hopefully you’ll come back next week, I promise i’ll be less preachy :). Until then.

-Kennedy

Hey Bloggers! Oh how I’ve missed you. I know you’ve been wondering, and yes, my break was awesome, and yes, I could’ve stayed home for about three weeks longer; but honestly, coming back here isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. Don’t look now, but I think I may enjoy being here. Haha. It’s nice to be back in the swing of things, and I was riding my high horse and happy on life, then I started reading Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Foer. That happiness quickly turned into sadness. Deep. Deeeep sadness. None the less it was easily one of the best books I’ve ever read. I felt connected to the story in ways that I didn’t think I could. Not having experienced the loss that Oskar has I didn’t think I’d be able to relate, but I consistently found myself tearing up. All in all this is an amazing book and an amazing story.

Our class spent some time reading Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and it’s a bit of a complicated read if you don’t know what going on. There’s a lot think about when reading this book and when I looked over some of our class’ bloggers a lot of the different themes in the book are illuminated. We talked a bit in class about how this book may be an example of American exceptionalism. I have to say, when reading Erin’s blog, I found myself agreeing. She writes, “Regardless of whether this American exceptionalism is accurate or verifiable, I don’t believe that this novel deals with this topic.” I also found that 9/11, while a big part of the story, isn’t there to show how because a tragedy happened in America is it different, but is instead used because there aren’t many tragedies as highly publicized and understood as 9/11 and Foer uses that tragedy to help the reader better understand Oskar and his family’s plight.

Erin’s blog made me think to myself that really any tragedy could’ve been used in place of 9/11, as long as the reader understood it. Then Ryan’s blog challenged that notion bringing up how Foer uses Dresden as a tragedy that the Grandfather had to live through. Ryan’s blog made me consider the parallels between the trauma’s experienced by Thomas Sr. and Oskar. Both lost loved ones, and really, both tried to cope with those lost ones in very desperate, but different ways. Oskar with his adventure the NYC and Thomas with trying to recreate Anna, his lost lover, with Oskar’s grandmother. We see how different people process these horrific events, and how they try to cope with the loss of loved ones.

In Isaiah’s blog we get to hear about the different methods that people use to cope, “Whether it be coping through silence or by desperately trying to search for closure on a journey that has no finish line”. The line, “no finish line” really rang true to me. Coping after all is dealing with whatever tragedy you have before you. It’s about understanding that there is a new reality and that’s difficult to do. I think that’s why the book was so tragic for me to read, because I, so much like Oskar, wanted there to be a finish line, and wanted to know that tomorrow everything would be back to normal. I think though that the book ends perfectly. It ends perfectly in the sense that coping isn’t necessarily happy or a big weight off your shoulders, it just is. I think the consensus when finishing this book was that of un-satisfaction, not that the book wasn’t a great read or fantastically written, but that there wasn’t this fairy tale ending that I’ve grown so accustomed to.  

Well that’ll about do it for me, honestly this was a bit more difficult to write than I thought it’d be but boy is it good to be back. There’s so many layers to this book and so many different themes that we can dissect and will dissect. It’s good to talk to you all again, and it’s been nice to read everybody’s blogs. Until I write to you again.

Kennedy

Hello again fellow humans! Hope all is well, we finally got that god forsaken poli sci paper in, and man it’s never felt so good to turn in a bad paper. However, I’m not here to talk about the struggles I have with writing about globalization and the nation-state, what I’m going to talk about today is the archives that we visited.

Ok, well to start off I’ll be perfectly honest, when I heard about this field trip I was not super stoked about it. I mean, lets go look at achieves? That doesn’t exactly scream excitement. Once we got there though it only took about ten minutes for me to eat my words. It was so cool. I was like stepping into a time capsule, I mean that’s exactly what it is, an organized time capsule and the main focus of that time capsule is everything you’re learning about and interested in.

First of all, that lady who was teaching us about the time capsules was so nice, not just nice, the so is a very necessary component of her niceness. She showed us how to look things up, where to go, but the coolest was obviously when we opened up the archives. I mean you see things in there that you never even think about. I saw letters to and from Joy Kagawa, saw rejection letters, some risqué poems, and really just a jaw dropping amount of material. I had no idea how much really goes into writing a book.

I found the archives really so fascinating that I had to go back Tuesday. I was rummaging through box 13-3 (of like a million) and I found this really neat piece of history. At least I like to think of it as history. But what I found a letter by Joy Kagawa to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau the letter looked liked this:

Now this was super cool to me. This is a private letter to a one of the most powerful people in the world, it amazes me just how far words in a book can travel and the potential impact they may have. What’s even cooler though is that he responded! I looked and looked for that letter though but I couldn’t find it. What I took away from this field trip though is that we have so many research options at our disposal and we have such an awesome opportunity being here. I’m really excited and grateful to have these archives and can’t wait to start taking advantage of them. Thanks for reading my blog guys, and until next time!

• Kennedy

P.S. I found a lot of really cool artifacts in these boxes and could write about all of them, but for times sake I might just save it for next time. But here’s a gallery of some of he cooler things I found.

Hey readers, I’m back and I’m really excited to share my thoughts with you all. This week we’ve covered a lot of material, we’ve begun talking about Obasan and just finished up reading Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde. This entire book was really interesting, it gave me unique perspectives on the conflict during that time, made me think critically about what it means to be the enemy, what it means to be a victim of war, and what it means to be human, as well as the book being written in a non-conventional genre. What really caught my interest though was the motif, the “Real Truth”, and what that concept means.

What made Safe Area Gorazde such an enlightening book was the fact the Joe Sacco didn’t just write about whatever the common narrative during that time was, but instead immerged himself as best he could into a culture and society, and then wrote about his experience. Sacco himself deals with the question as to what truth is and how he can best show the world the “Real Truth”. I think though in Sacco’s mind, or at least mine for sure, the “Real Truth”, in terms of political culture is very difficult to define as there are always thousands if not millions of individuals within a political culture who are being affected in different ways. I guess you can say that the “truth” is what happened, thousands of Bosnians died during their civil war, that is the truth. How that differs from the “Real Truth” though is something I found very difficult to think about.

What I understood “Real Truth” to mean (in context of the book) is that the “Real Truth” is a bunch of different perspectives, ideally all, but in Sacco’s case as many as he could, and mashing those different perspectives, backgrounds, trails and tribulations into the story. The story wouldn’t be the “Real Truth” had it been from one perspective because the way the world unfolds isn’t from one person’s view.  My understanding of what Sacco meant with the term “Real Truth” is that truth isn’t this one concrete fact, the “Real Truth” isn’t that all these people trapped in Gorzade aren’t still people, and he tried his best to illuminate that for us.

The “Real Truth” is something that I think will stick with me for a while if not the rest of my life. It’s something that I’ve always been excited about, learning about the world, different people, their lives and their culture, it doesn’t get much more interesting than that. After reading this book I think it’s important to keep asking yourself, “Is what I’m hearing the Real Truth?” and always always listen to other people’s stories, because everybody has a story, it’s what makes us human and we need to remember that at the end of the day we are all human, and we need to start acting like it. Thank you for reading this, I’ll be back next week, sorry this is late for all of you faithful readers, I was bed ridden last week, but no worries as I’m better now and am finally able to enjoy that beautiful Vancouver rain. Until next time!

-Kennedy

Blog Post #2

Hey readers, Kennedy checking in again! It’s been too long, so much has happened in past two weeks. Our class finished the book Persepolis, we got to write an in class summary, and so much more. What I want to focus on though is the book Persepolis and how it changed my view on the way books are written and how authors may manipulate, or take advantage of the genre of their books to more effectively convey a message. Marjane Satrapi wrote Persepolis in the form of a comic book, which I was stoked about. The illustrations made it easier to not want to kill myself while reading, and she kept me engaged throughout the book. It was so neat to see how she was able to put so much emotion into her graphics and the more I thought about each picture the more meaning I uncovered.

The book itself was riveting, there were points when I couldn’t even put it down. It was the story of a young girl who was thrust into a dangerous and corrupt world. I got to hear her account of the Islamic revolution, and to see a first person perspective really opened my eyes to the type of cruelty and harshness that people in other parts of the world are subjected to. I come from a background where I never feared for my life, I didn’t think twice about what I was going to wear outside, and I never worried about my family being arrested. The world that Marji lived in is something that I had been sheltered from. The fact that Marji was a young adult, such as myself, and going through the same self discovery process that I have gone through and continue to go through made the book all that more relatable.

A lot of Marjane’s art work is very graphic, her depictions provide a “wow factor” that words alone have difficulty doing.

This is a depiction of what Marji imagines to be the execution of man, he is cut up into pieces. When I turned to page 52 this is the first thing I saw, and it honestly took me by surprise. While there is no blood, no gore, or anything like that, the picture is still a startling one. It speaks to the youth and imagination that Marji has, and shows the creativity of Marjane. This book was a really an eye opening experience for me not only in the sense that I was able to learn about the Iranian revolution through the eyes of a young girl, but I was also taught about how genres can be an effective method in communicating a message. I wish I had more time to talk to you guys, but I’ll be back! Thanks for reading, and until next time.

-Kennedy

Guys we’re actually doing it! Another week in uni down and I’m getting more and more comfortable each and everyday. I don’t know about you but I just feel more confident, I’ve talked with professors after classes and raised my hand much more than I thought I would. I’m really enjoying the new atmosphere here and I’m starting to see things as “Interpretive Communities”, and I’m starting to see the roles that these new professors play in my life. I don’t remember exactly what things teachers did in my life to influence them, but now that I’m surrounded by an entirely new batch of people I can definitely see my bias’s. Teachers have had an immense role on my life, they’ve always been this symbol of responsibility, knowledge, and power really. The role that I think a lot of these new professors will play in my interpretive community are the role of examples and sources of knowledge. I don’t not think that these teachers will necessarily be the “care takers” that we had is high school, because I think that the professors here are going to trust us as adults rather than children.

We also learned a lot about growing up fast in the book Persepolis. This young woman Marjane is growing up in this world that is not suitable for human life. I know some of my classmates were able to find her life of turbulence of governmental unrest relatable but that was simply not the case for me. This was extremely eye opening, it gave me a glimpse into what it was like to live the life of one of these refugees. I felt the fear along side her when the bombs first hit, and I also felt her heart break when she left home. I found the first person “Graphic narrative” such an interesting style to write with. It allowed me to connect to the book in new ways. I can definitely see myself reading another one of these, maybe Maus is on the horizon who knows??? Until next time!

-Kennedy