Alan's ASTU Blog

Hello all, in our ASTU class we have covered one of the most thought provoking anthology I have read in recent memory: Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak, edited by Marc Falkoff. The anthology is a collection of poems from detainees expressing their feelings towards their individual situations, and provides a small account of how the detainee came to Guantanamo. Reading about Guantanamo bay from the news is very bias and impersonal. The prisoners are labeled as the most dangerous people on earth, and are treated as such, however, after reading the anthology, I am inclined to feel sympathy for these people, sometimes wrongly detained.

Figure 1: Detainees are subjected to ‘sensory deprivation’ as they are transported and forcefully bound

Today I would like to discuss the ethical issues of torture, using Falkoff’s anthology as a reference. The sympathetic tone of the anthology is bias in itself and I would want to approach the subject without any favoritism.

The detention camp is notorious for attracting public and media attention because of alleged human rights violations. I fail to understand how Gitmo is able to continue operating, even though a majority of testimonies given by detainees tell of how they have been tortured by the US military. One of the reasons for this, I have come across is that post 9/11 Americans could care less about the detainees and some would encourage the use of torture. I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that many reading this would disagree with my generalization and I am sure that many of you would agree that torture should be banned.

Another issue that plagues Gitmo is the force-feeding of detainees. Since 2002, a number of detainees have been on hunger strike in an attempt to protest their innocence. This has led to detainees being restrained in a chair and force-fed, and must remain until the food is digested to avoid induced vomiting. Force-feeding has been declared a form of torture and following the ‘World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Tokyo of 1975 [it] prohibits a medical doctor’s participation in torture, whether actively, passively, or through the use of medical knowledge.’(Olshansky and Gutierrez, 5) This produces another issue of nurses being forced, to force-feed the detainees.

Works Cited:

Falkoff, Marc. Poems from Guantánamo the Detainees Speak. Iowa City: U of Iowa, 2007. Print.

Olshansky, Barbara and Gutierrez, Gitanjali (2005-09-08). “The Guantánamo Prisoner Hunger      Strikes & Protests: February 2002 – August 2005” Retrieved 2015-02-12.

One of the largest and most influential institutions on Earth is the media. The media provides a theoretical lens through which we view a certain event or object, and through this lens we form our own opinions and beliefs. Because of the media’s influence I’m sure we are all in agreement that its integrity should be beyond reproach, and we should be able to expect an unbiased and honorable report on the occurrences on our globe. Unfortunately, this is not the case, we live in a world where twelve French civilians are killed and the whole world rises up in support of the French against the Jihadists, where as almost 2000 people are killed in Nigeria (known as the Baga massacre), and the world simply clicks away.

This blatant inequity in response is somewhat attributed to the lack of media coverage by leading newspaper articles/websites. The Charlie Hebdo attack was featured as a top story on almost every major news channel and website in the world such as CNN, Forbes, BBC, to name a few. Whereas, the Baga massacre featured as a sub-heading in said news websites/channels. The question of ‘Why Charlie Hebdo Gets More Attention Than Boko Haram’

Dear All, I hope everyone had an excellent break. Mine was incredibly relaxing and one of the highlights of my break was reading the masterpiece that is: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Johnathan Safran Foer. It is a critically acclaimed book that follows the protagonist: Oskar Schell as he tries to uncover the mystery of a key he found in his deceased fathers room, who was killed in the attack on the World Trade Center. What really captivated me, and forced me to keep reading was how Oskar goes on to look for all the people named ‘Black’ in the whole of New York City and in his travels he discovers the stories of people lost in a crowd of 8.4 million people.

Although we have not discussed the word in our ASTU class, I came across the word ‘Sonder’ at the same time that I was reading the book, and for the longest time I was convinced that it appeared in the book because of how well it correlates nicely with the theme of ‘identity’ in the novel. Oskar uncovers extremely interesting backgrounds through his travels, for example when he visits the Empire State Building and meets Ruth Black and she tells him how she lives in the structure. What I took away from this scene is how ordinary people are living very interesting lives without a second glance from anyone.

Another aspect to identity is when Oskar is constantly told that some of his actions remind others of his father and inexplicably Oskar does not enjoy being similar to his father, even though he idolized him while he was alive. I am inclined to believe that Oskar does not want to remember his father because of the trauma that he experienced after his death. However, he does explicitly mention that one of the reasons that he continues to look for the key is to keep his fathers memory alive.

The past two weeks of ASTU have been very captivating considering the texts we have covered. Following on from reading Satrapi’s graphic narrative: Persepolis, we studied a follow up article written by an American literary scholar and an expert on comics and graphic narratives: Hilary Chute, who discusses the various styles that Satrapi uses in her narrative that can convey many different messages and have very special effects in contrast to novels and regular comic books.

The main theme of Persepolis and, by extension, Chute’s essay is the graphic narrative style used by Satrapi. In each section of Chute’s essay, the basis is the use of graphic style and the various messages it sends. A point in Chute’s essay that I want to expand on is ‘violence and the ordinary’. Satrapi effectively conveys the trauma that she went through with a very blunt tone, however I question whether this tone is more effective than dramatizing her life events when trying to have an emotional impact on the reader.

While conducting research for this blog I stumbled across another blog that fits in perfectly with our discussion: http://goo.gl/9LJnZG. This blog discusses Persepolis in relation to Chute’s essay. This blog raises some excellent points about whether Satrapi’s graphic narrative fully captures the terror and trauma that befell Iran and the effect that it had on the country and the people. It is accurate to say that Persepolis seems simplistic however Satrapi does touch on traumas in a forthright manner, which is the probable cause of the argument.

I would like to digress from Chute’s essay and discuss a topic that was surprisingly not mentioned in the essay; the role that religion and faith plays in Persepolis. We witness how Marji’s faith is tested with each death and trauma that she experiences also how she finds comfort in God’s presence, however when her uncle Anoosh dies, the use of graphic narrative helps the reader to understand how Marji feels and how her detachment from God left her feeling empty.

I must confess that I have found this blog post particularly hard to write because I find myself analyzing Satrapi’s Persepolis instead of Chute’s essay, so by definition I am analyzing an analysis.

References

“Hillary Chute.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., date last updated (16 September 2014. Web. Date accessed (09 October 2014). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Chute Jensen, M. (2013). Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis – by Sarah MacGregor Group A. [online] writingwomendotorg. Available at: http://writingwomen.org/2013/11/21/retracing-in-marjane-satrapis-persepolis-by-sarah-macgregor-group-a/ [Accessed 10 Oct. 2014].

Alan Ouya

September 18th 2014

ASTU – Luger

What is a “Global Citizen”? In a sentence it can be described as someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community’s values and practices, (Israel, 2013).

Farhat Shazad writes about “The Role of Interpretive Communities in Remembering and Learning” and I was particularly fascinated by the idea of how an individual builds memories and perceives them based on their interpretative community. 9/11 was last week, today, and the former White House Press Secretary for U.S. President George W. Bush, Ari Fleischer posted to CNN, his account of what happened on that day. (http://goo.gl/QGm6Jv) This particular article is interesting in its style of writing, and also in the way that it appears to be raw data from a primary source. However, one has to take into account that the information came through the media, which begs the question: Is this account unadulterated?

This view of what happened on 9/11 gives us a new perspective on the events that took place on 9/11 and therefore adds to the collective memory of that day. In correlation with Shazad’s essay, this article shows us another “technology of memory” used that reshapes the way that information travels and is perceived from the media.

Shazad aims to improve the relation between student and teacher by helping the teachers understand the impact of interpretative communities on their students, therefore allowing them to adapt their teaching style to accommodate for the children’s education.

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