Author: alexa fordy

ASTU has put history and trauma into an academic dance for me, by helping me curate an outlook on literature, its association with history and trauma, and how to analyse it critically. The genres in which we studied acted as the show, or the production; each genre must appeal and excite its own proper audience with its own beat and style. The sounds of trauma, the voices heard create a smooth beat to which hundreds follow and react to, while the silencing of victims is found in the breaks in the music, when no one is dancing, and the audience does not acknowledge its existence. The performance consists of a delicate assembly of individual and shared experiences, the knowledge, trauma and memories that surround events for both a nation and an individual. The dancers move with uncertainty and haze because the events can often be confusing, complex and hard to articulate. They intertwine with one another to create a cluster of individual beings sharing a mutual feeling or memory. The dancers are each in its own, but together they form a whole, like the humans walking this earth, each of us, whether an audience member or a dancer is an individual with its own sentiments and memories. The literature creates an outlet in which humans can express, understand or communicate these traumas, it is also a place in which stories can be told, and some can be forgotten. The entirety of the performance, from its audience, the dancers and to its sound illustrates for me the concepts and analysis that ASTU has covered.

American Sniper is a strong representation of memory, trauma, history and envelops the conversation about trauma. The film illustrates how traumatic events can severely harm mental health and wellbeing. It also reinforces Western representation and the popular distinction seen in media and literature of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. I now understand these distinctions to a further extent due to the critical analysis of literature that we have done in class. It allowed me to question ‘American Sniper’ for its uncommon sense and its addition to the patterns we see in popular culture.

Unlike poetry in the past, I have particularly enjoyed the work we have began with poetry. Instead of searching for rhymes and metaphors, these poems transcend into the ongoing struggles that the globalizing world faced. By reaching beyond the classic lyric poem thats flooded with emotion about lovers and gardens, the poetry we have taken stance with proves as a provoking and pleasant literature. Furthermore, the poetry that we have chosen speaks to real traumas and implications that the human race faces today. As it highlights an ongoing, contemporary issue, the poetry taken up in ASTU has particularly spiked my interest. By conceptualizing globalization, traumatic events, and individualism through art and rhythm, poetry allows me to connect different abstractions and patterns through a new lens.

Building off of our ideas of connectedness, precarity, and unity, I particularly enjoy Spahr’s pieces. While they were lengthy and at times repetitive, she managed to provoke my interests and help me to take further interest in poetry as I have in the past. I took particular interest in Thursday’s  discussion regarding skin and the tropes found in her works, and found in an intriguing and realistic metaphor to the greater separations found in our international network. Spahr’s first poem, and her connections to the biological foundations that all living beings share furthered my understanding of race and distinction as solely a social construct formulated by opinion and ignorance.

After discussing today, the idea of language poetry, I began to search in words and sentences a specific sound and rythym as a way to familiarize myself with the concept of words as the meaning themselves, instead of a representation of another idea. I began to read a couple of works by Micheal Palmer, Ron Silliman and Bob Perleman to find an idea of what these poems achieved through sound and articulation. I was personally intrigued by one of Perlemans works, titled Chronic Meanings due to its fragmented sentences that simultaneously connected. While there was no constant flow of ideas, the back to back lines flowed through one another. Each sentence cut off just prior to giving us full information, so it kept me reading into the next line even if the theme didn’t continue. I have left the link below for readers to enjoy as well!

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/%7Eafilreis/88v/chronic-meanings.html

I strolled casually into the Museum of Anthropology with my headphones pulsating in my ears only to be transported into the intriguing and appealing depiction of international cultures. I was immediately pulled into the both sad and surreal reality that indigenous Amazonian people face. Not only are their materials a polar reflection of those that western civilsations rely on, but the general lifestyle and capability difference is particularly interesting. The attention and care that was used in the creation of Amazonian baskets, headdresses, weapons and household objects portrays the appreciation of hard work and impressive tactile abilities. When Western lifestyle of large buildings and 20 minute traffic faces the creative, simple and resourceful Amazonian lifestyle there is a remarkably distinct division in social standards, and human relationship with nature.

A day in the life of a Western teenager, in comparison to that of a young Amazonian would have an entirely contradictory lifestyle. With Brazil bring the nation in which Amazonian people are located it is home to more than 80 uncontacted indiginous groups, and with that, a more primary and animalistic structure. Instead of ordering ‘skip the dishes,’ or phoning their local pizza place, native Amazonians survive entirely off of hunting, gathering and untilizing their surrounding crops and animals. As Western consumerism seeps into the roots of Amazonian people, we find both new artefacts like the blow gun from the native hunting group, Yerba Masā. Unlike Western food consumption, where quanitity is more significant than quality, and equality; Amazonian hunting style included the use of entire plants for remedies and teas, understanding of animals and their wellbeing, and a specified knowledge regarding the area and ecology.

Though the values and traditions of Amazonians don’t necessarily compare to those of advanced, westernized countries, there is an interesting correlation to heirachy of land. For Amazonians, land is their life and they must respect one anothers proper area. In these vulnerable areas, where they face the loss of land, many Amazonian groups are dying and suffering at the hands of outside explorers and tourists. For Vancouver, there has been a steady climb on the pricing of housing, driving many local Vancouverites out of their hometowns. Though there is not a direct correlation between the two, the inability for the general public to thrive and inhabit a constant, reliable shelter is continually an issue that both socieites face.

 

Silence is equally as powerful as noise. The absence of conversation in regards to trauma perpetuates as deeply as a million books. When victims become silenced, stories and experiences that are pivotal to the creation of a history are left behind. The lack of genuine and vivid memories curated by victims leads to a lack of understanding of the true extents of these traumas. Without half the story, how can someone truly re explain an event. Not only is an entire part of the story missing, an entire reality is taken away. The experiences and hardships that these victims faced are their own memories and have helped them developed their reality and understanding of the outer world. Silenced victims bring to the table stories of pain, suffering, and trauma, which are the most important in reflecting upon acts of horror or evil. In omitting the emotional context of an emotional event, how can we really begin to understand their personal story. Darkness can be equally as powerful as light, and silence can say as many things as a story can, you just have to listen closer.

We see throughout all forms of trauma the ongoing issue of silenced victims, whether it regards the masses who suffer trauma from Japanese internment, or victims of bullying and sexual harassment. As we study the portrayal memory and trauma in out ASTU class, we also explore the greater issue of silencing those who remember their traumas. Both pieces that we have analysed thus far in class have raised major questions for me and how victims come to be silenced in both micro and macro scenarios. Whether victims experience peer silencing through social media or social norms, or entire epidemics are hushed by reducing or discounting their traumatic stories there is an ongoing trend. Being able to experience the Kogawa fonds allowed the class to interpret and visualized the scrutinity that went into Kogawas works and publications. Her multiple drafts indicate the lengthy processes and her resilience in publishing her works, and it is clear that Kogawa implied suggested edits and changes that people had made. Moreover, the letters written to Kogawa demonstrate that her writing is profound and impactful to those that have been silenced from their own trauma. With other Canadians writing about the impact Kogawa’s writings had on them, it is clear that there are citizens who are curious to hear her melodic stories and experiences of trauma.

The fonds also shine light on victim silencing at an institutional level, and how Kogawa took extra measures to ensure that her story could be heard across the nation. In British Columbia schools, our secret and dark past is not told in classrooms, yet kept quiet for students to uncover in the future. Kogawa pushed past many different editors to share her story and ensure that Canadians were being taught what the institution was keeping from them. It is a powerful concept to have the ability to silence or provoke a story, and it is important to choose the right ones to hear.

Many scholars argue that portraying memory through social media and the phenomenon of “selfies” is not only offside, but downright disrespectful. When analysing the context in which people are taking selfies and other pictures at historical preservations, it is apparent that millennials are using social media as a way to connect themselves to the horrors and mishaps that have occurred throughout history.  In the modern era of technology and virtual connections, I feel as though adolescents and young adults see no other way to connect themselves to the sentiments of historical artifacts than to express themselves in a narcissistic and electronic form. As a changing society, where in these times it is more common to see two people facetiming, than having a regular conversation; it is only logical that the upcoming generations are and will be expressing themselves through electronic means. As communication segues from handwriting from texting, “teens .. engage with new media and explore changing cultural norms for practicing life narrative” (Douglas, 2017) that will morph into new genres and expressions. The selfie, a increasingly popular “genre [that] has emerged as the limit figure in the politics of visuality online, invoking the moral censure of the public,” (Ibrahim, 2016) especially in sensitive environments. Whether this means tweeting their condolences, posting a selfie to remember, or republishing a VSCO photo in remembrance, it glorifies trauma; the disaster selfie, as it has been coined “mediates this duality of death while being alive in a place of carnage exclaiming, ‘I’m alive where others have been sacrificed.’” (Ibrahim, 2016). In perspective, the teenagers of today are appealing themselves to their own audience, their peers. The audience that they are presenting their ideas to communicates in a casual, quick and unprofessional manner; providing a platform for teenagers to share their experiences in the same manner, casual and short.  Adolescents exchanging information will not feel inclined to write a letter, or produce a piece of art but rather use an expressive emoji to show their affiliations with the event, or compose a profound caption to emphasize their condolences. As communication and conversation transitions from scholarly articles to Facebook posts it is important to comprehend that this transition entails a change in expression of emotion and compassion.

 

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14682753.2015.1116755

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1750698017714838