Monthly Archives: November 2015

In the aftermath of the Paris Attacks, the downing of a Russian Jetliner, and the bombing in Beirut, there has been widespread debate through social media, news agencies and among politicians about the fear such events cause. The intention of these terrorist attacks is publicity for ISIS and to generate fear. The other ISIS aim is to demonstrate retribution against the coalition countries. ISIS uses religion to justify attacks where non-Muslims are considered infidels. In other words, an infidel is anyone who does not agree with their principles and is in the Western world. By terrorizing people in the West, their aim is to change our way of life in the West or even alter our very own narratives; ISIS has altered an innumerable amount of narratives with their bloodlust.

The terrorist attacks created numerous deaths and fear among the population. If we succumb to such fear by changing our way of life we are letting the terrorist win. Franklin Roosevelt famously stated “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. ISIS wants our freedoms to not be enjoyed. ISIS considers what we do enjoy to be a sin or haram in Arabic. This is substantiated by the targets picked out for the November 12 attacks in Paris. The targets included in the Bataclan theatre, a restaurant and a soccer stadium. These are all places that people go to enjoy themselves and have a good time.

One of the attackers entered Europe through a route used by Syrian and Iraqi refugees. As a result, there is widespread concern in the West about taking in more refugees. In reality, the refugees are as afraid as we are. Countries that have pledged to help the refugees should not go back on their word because of fear. This picture illustrates vividly the plight of Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

The residents of Paris are not changing their way of life and are thereby providing a great example to the world. They are resolute and have been going out despite the fear created by the attacks. Social media and news are filled with examples of how Parisians helped one another during the attacks and are standing together in solidarity afterwards. A video created by Paris resident Antoine Leiris in memory of his wife is one such example. Furthermore, another good example came from a little boy and his father. In this video excerpt, the father helps his son understand that there is no need to change anything in life in order to be safe.

The two videos above help explain that being afraid is counterproductive. This is substantiated in the Globe and Mail newspaper article from Saturday, November 21, were the writer states “excessive fear of them (ISIS) is dangerous and counterproductive”. People need to stand up to the terrorists not with guns blazing but by carrying on with our lives and not changing anything. Necessary precautions must be taken but we must not give into fear. The Globe and Mail article states that “a fringe cult can’t harm our tolerant, liberal society – but our fear can. Terrorism is not powerful enough to defeat us. But if we are not careful we may be weak or foolish enough to hurt ourselves” (Keller para 2-3).

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Sources

In class we went over what type of life narrative rhetoric Cockeyed would fit into but I would like to bring in different aspects of how it does not exactly fit into a single narrative type. I will be accomplishing this by drawing from the book and from Signifying Bodies” by Thomas G. Couser.

I believe majority of those in my class settled on Cockeyed being an emancipatory life narrative which according to Couser “contests received attitudes about disability” (33). I agree with this but aspects of Cockeyed do not conform to the emancipatory narrative exactly despite many instances of the narrative within the pages of Cockeyed.  On the contrary of the emancipatory narrative, I believe Ryan Knighton also brings aspects of a narrative that is stigmatizing to the blind population; not intentionally but when he was learning to adapt to being blind. There were many instances in the book where Knighton in fact conforms to stereotypes about blindness carried by the normal (sighted) population.  This was exemplified in page 185 of Cockeyed where Knighton expresses his fear of blind people leading to my next point about what is it that makes people fear blindness?

This idea of fearing blindness is seen in Cockeyed when muggers approached Ryan Knighton and his girlfriend Jane asking “watcha got, man?” (91). So of course the muggers pressed Knighton to give in and give them something but it all changed once the muggers found out he was blind. Their reaction to finding out he was blind was game changing, the thieves became empathetic and ran off. From reading this passage in the book, I think what deterred the thieves from attacking Knighton (after finding out he was blind) was the fact that being sighted is what people associate with being human along with many other senses that we in fact take for granted. I would guess according to the thieves it would be dehumanizing for the thieves to mug a man robbed of what makes him human. I was able to substantiate this claim by reading an article from the National Federation of the Blind were author Seville Allen gets assistance moving from a young man who exclaims “Seeing you frightens me because I would be helpless if I couldn’t see.” (para. 4).

Knighton’s narrative has an incomplete foothold simply on emancipatory narrative as there is also the aspect of stigma from himself and others in the context of it. Even Knighton conforms to the stigma while trying to hone is skills in adaption.  Furthermore, it seems what is considered different makes the public fear it due to it being different from what is usual.

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Works Cited

Allen, S. (1997, November 1). Fear of Blindness. Retrieved November 9, 2015, from                  https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm97/bm971112.htm

Couser, G. (2009). Rhetoric and Self Representation in Disability Memoir. In Signifying bodies disability in contemporary life writing. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press.