Hello everyone,

I hope you all had a good weekend and are now ready for this new week!

In the  lecture last week, we had an amazing discussion about Judith Butler’s article. We focused on  her argument that our lives are precarious, therefore we depend on other people’s actions in order for us to stay alive. We then entered into the argument of, who’s life is worth saving and whose is not?  This, specifically, made me think of the death penalty and if it should be considered just, since is still legal in some countries.

Micheal‘s blog touches on really good points about Butler’s article. His argument is that we are who we are because of the people that surround us, therefore we should be able to understand each other and not fight one another. He also brings up the song about the Pan Am games that Dr. Luger made us listen to during her lecture. This song talked about humanity being united as one entity, however some fellow classmates made us all notice how this song included sections where violence was considered part of being “united” but against something.

On the other hand, AJ‘s blog touched on another section of Butler’s article, the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay and the poems that they wrote. I agree with his argument on how these poems made him look at the prisoners with a more human perspective. Many times our judgement of prisoners depends on what side they stand for. Therefore, if they are considered the enemy, we then have the tendency not to look at them as people just like us.

Another blog post that caught my attention was Andrea‘s. She connected our class discussion about the study conducted by Saal on Foer’s noel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. She compares two very important traumatic events, the 9/11 attack and the Holocaust. What I found really interesting about her argument is that Foer’s novel impacted her memory of this traumatic event and the feelings related to it. Through the use of feelings she was able to connect 9/11 and the Holocaust to the Syrian refugees and how peoples’ opinions have such a strong impact on how we perceive these refugees.

It was amazing reading all of your blogs; everyone had good arguments and very interesting  perspectives on viewing the material covered in class. Please keep up with this amazing work, and I will see you next time.

Benedetta Franzini.