Olivia’s more recent blog post provided some very thought provoking questions inspired by Judith Butler. When Butler first introduced me to the idea that lives we do not mourn are lives that we never really acknowledged in the first place, I was very frazzled. To be completely honest, I felt like a terrible person. However, I then realized that my lack of mourning over people I have never met or have no connection to makes me human. I believe that it is our human instinct to form allies, thus, creating a difference in who we are capable of mourning. Just because we, in Canada, do not mourn all the deaths in the Middle East does not mean that we never acknowledged them as lives; we just didn’t connect with them the same way that we do with other Canadians. Butler proposes a very ideal situation in which we are all able to connect and interact with each other, although I do not see that happening anytime soon.

I really enjoyed reading Olivia’s post!

Devon Coady

Hi Class,

In Harnoor’s blog post “De-Framing Frames of War” she discusses Butler’s theory that we are influenced by the frames that surround us. She then applies this to the migrant crisis, and discusses how we can become prejudice due to our “frames”. I think she brings up an interesting point, but I wonder, how can we change these frames? While a “frame” picked up by the media may be easy to brush off, a “frame” or opinion passed down by one’s family many not be so. How can we manipulate our frames to avoid the formation of an “us” and a “them”? Is that even possible? Harnoor also writes about how she believes that improper representation of a group in one’s “frame” can lead to detachment, making violence seem fine. I agree with this, and also think that it’s difficult for us to relate to other people when we don’t know them personally or don’t seem to be directly affected by the trauma.

What are your thoughts on the frames through which you interpret current events?

–Olivia Richardson

Ben’s blog this week touched on a very key idea presented in Judith Buttler’s essay pertaining to the questing who is regarded as “we” in society or what “we” do we as individuals belong to? Ben goes on to focus on the self centred attitude that “we” as North Americans hold when it comes to trauma on home soil. When terrible instances like school shootings or terrorist attacks happen in North America we will mourn the individuals affected extensively and cover the tragedy on the media for weeks. But very rarely does the West mourn the lives being taken from innocent civilians in the middle east who are being oppressed by ISIS to a much worse degree. These ideas that Ben discussed caused me to reflect back to a section of Buttler’s essay where she briefly speaks on the medias role in creating a self-focused “we” in the West. She talks about how the media is so powerful that it has the ability to instil a specific lens to the public opinion that makes the country behave the way it does. An attitude that says nothing should ever happen to the United States because we’re so great and proper and anything the United States does is reasonable and for everyones best interest, but really it just creates a blindness to outside tragedies around the world.

Welcome back everyone,

I hope everyone has had a nice break over the holidays and truly treated them selves to well deserved treats. With a new year comes a new set of narratives and historical contexts to analyze trauma. The reference point in which we are working from this term is the war on terror, and we begin this very contemporary narrative of trauma from its most infamous catalyst, being the attacks of September 11th. As we could all see on the first day of class, we all had something to say, a story of where we were, a story of how the communities around us reacted and how we feel about the attack on the world trade centres currently. All of this aside, as a class we have been learning how nefarious and truly tragic trauma can be reflected in literature, even when words can neither quantify nor qualify the haunting feelings that linger.

We have been reading “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” which tells the story of a boy searching for a lock to a key that his dad left him after perishing in one of the World Trade Centre. As a class, we unanimously wrote about this book despite all of the other readings we could have written on last semester. As a large group of people completed a textual analysis about the purpose and implications of the book a small minority looked at the still present fear culture and Islamophobia that manifested after the 911 attacks.

Fellow classmate Devon Coady talks about fear after 9/11 in a general context but discusses how the attacks and more predominately the fear after those attacks affected her life. Devon’s mom is a flight attendant. For Devon, having a mom who flew around the world was “cool” and a source of “pride” for her, however, after the attacks of 911 in which planes were used to strike down iconic building across the United States, her moms career suddenly became a source of worry for the family. Her “brothers clearly worry” and father is “adamant about her mom calling him once she lands.” It seems as though for Devon the attacks added on a new dimension of fear to her mothers career, but a fear that does not belong in our society or her family, a fear that has no place in determining her life actions. For Devon she sees fear as something that “limits our actions and segregate us from the world.”

Moving deeper into fear, Naima Mansuri starts us off with a truly brilliant definition of Islamophobia as she states that Islamophobia is not just the outward of hatred of Muslim people but can also serve as an internalized fear of everyday Muslims. She goes on to say that its spectrum ranges from every “Demand of Donald Trump… to every look that a brown person receives no matter where he is.” Naima then discusses a very personal account about how Islamophobia has affected her. Naima describes an episode where her cousin faced blatant Islamophobia in Canada. In his workplace he was forced to stop his work after a fellow employee told superiors that he thought he had seen a bomb in her cousins pocket. He was asked to leave by this man and “Go back to [his] county,” despite being born in Canada. Which surprised me even more was what he said after, “Canada has and always will be a white country first and foremost, no matter how many Syrian refugees Justin fucking Trudeau lets in.” While acknowledging much social progression in recent year, Naima calls for more social progressive thinking and understanding to minorities. With this she rejects the fear mongering that has developed in contemporary times.

Robert Bernheim also discusses Islamophobia that has developed since September 11th. Robert goes into incredible depth regarding the trends of attitudes towards Muslim people since the attacks on 911 and ultimately inquires if “The spread of Islamophobia is also aided by the constant reoccurrence of terrorist attacks from Muslims in the “global north.” I am extremely interested in his questioning of recent attacks and growing Islamophobia because I think there is a discussion there. He offers some valid evidence of the only the most recent attacks in the Western world. Robert mentions the Bataclan and widespread attack on Paris and the mass sexual assault committed by mainly Arab asylum seekers. Besides this, Robert also touches on the fact the minority does not represent the whole. He shows that like every socially constructed group have radical dissidents that do act out to support their own rhetoric. Like the KKK in Christianity and Buddhist extremists in Myanmar, every group has factions that by no means represent the values of the whole. Ultimately, Robert concludes on a very similar note to Devon and Naima, saying that the “dehumanization of the worlds second largest religion is unjustified as only a small portion of the religion belongs to radical groups such as Al-Qaeda or ISIS,” and “that news organizations the world over [are] only showing the bad side of the religion people have a very negative view towards.”

These fellow peers of ours all agree to some extent that fear can be debilitating and contradictory to the values in which our society is built on. From what I have seen throughout the academic year, as a class I believe that our whole entire CAP stream can agree that fear of the other and fear of the enemy ultimately hurts us more than them and fear offers no benefit to the fabric of an ever increasing global society. I do want to however, question these bloggers and our whole class whether fear has a role in our future? Is and can there be a balance between fear and trust? And what is stopping us from living in a world where we fear isn’t inflated around certain topics. More and more I do not think it is enough to blame Donald Trump and the media for fear.

All the best GC2,

Michael Twamley

To start us off on this term’s focus of trauma and the “War on Terror,” our ASTU class has begun to discuss Jonathan Foer’s novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. This novel brings in multiple perspectives through alternating narrators, as well as visual aids to tell the story of 9/11, while also painting a complex narrative of trauma (e.g. Dresden bombings, Hiroshima, the Holocaust) in the background. This layering effect gives much for the reader to dissect, and as Andrea beautifully writes, this story “hits close to home and continues to ring loud in our memories.”

The blog posts this week touched on some central talking points such as, absence as an expression of trauma, fear culture, and finding closure after loss. Your thoughtful perspectives accompanied with personal anecdotes made it a pleasure to read.

Symbols of absence and missed connections are reoccurring in this novel, ranging from emotional disconnects such as Grandpa’s inability to connect with his son or Oskar’s distancing from his mother, to the more physical loss of the twin towers and loved ones. In Foer’s novel, Grandpa and Grandma exemplify a state of disconnect in their lost touch with the present, due to their haunting pasts. Amy had a personal take-away from reading about the traumatized characters of this book. By looking at their missed opportunities she reflected on her own life, and suggested the need to “seize the day,” so as to not live in a similar state of regret. Rowan brought up an excellent point in her post when she acknowledged all of the successful connections that were the product of Oskar’s trauma. I like this observation, because although absence and missed connections are definite themes of this text, there is an equally noticeable theme of unification. This conversation steers us into the direction of what English scholar, Ilka Saal, describes as the universal feeling of suffering and grievance that can connect us, in her close reading of this text.

Islamophobia, and the resulting fear culture, were discussed by a number of classmates, given the traces of it in our text as well as its presence in the forefront of our modern times. Robert looked critically into media portrayals of extremism and the cultivation of fear culture, stating: “despite the fact that the news organizations should be reporting the news they are in fact the leading contributor in the spread of Islamophobia.” Devon shared a similar discontent with the growing fear culture, and stated that we are unlikely to progress as a society, “if we allow this fear to stay so deeply rooted inside us.” To connect this sentiment to the broader messages in our CAP stream, another result of this media portrayal is the sort of “moral panic” that we discussed in our Sociology class. With this chronic fear, often comes an overstep in the nature of the retaliatory actions taken. Furthermore, the rhetoric of “us” vs. “them” can begin to slip into the daily vernacular of the victims, thereby serving as a twisted justification for further violence.

-Lauren

Welcome back everyone! Hope you all had a relaxing, well-deserved break.

As we’ve only had a few classes, most blogs this week focused on the novel we are currently discussing, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, 9/11, and islamaphobia. These blogs were very interesting to read, as most of them contained a personal element or experience.

In Ben’s blog The Necessity of Trauma, he discusses how trauma makes Oskar mature in a sense. His heightened maturity is not only because his father told him to never act his age (Foer, 13), but also because of the loss, confusion, and shock he experienced by losing one of the most important people in his life. But he also asks an important question; do we only grow through tragedy? I would argue that we grow through experience, traumatic or not. Trauma tends to warp people in a way, you rarely hear someone growing for the better through a traumatic experience. Oskar displays this in that after he looses his father he is afraid of crowds, public transportation, tall buildings, elevators, and so on. Ben also discusses Marji from Perseoplis and Naomi from Obasan and how trauma affected their lives. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you perceive the outcome) I think we can all say we have experienced a traumatic experience and been changed by it, for better or worse.

Benny also discusses Marji in comparison to Oskar in her blog “Why me?”. She examines their difference in perception of traumatic event, while Marji is more focused on why people are acting a certain way, Oskar focuses more why such horrible events happened to himself. She brings up an interesting and truthful point, that sometimes it’s hard for people to realize that others are going through difficult times when dealing with their own troubles.

Finally, one of the most personal blogs I’ve ever read was Naima’s “Islamaphobia in the Modern World”. Naima writes about her family’s experience with islamaphobia, for example her cousin being told he was not Canadian because Canada is a “white man’s country”. She also brings up an interesting point, that though people view the world as “progressive” because of it’s dwindling racism towards black people, specifically in the US, and the rise of feminism it really isn’t. The world is only progressive in that people are “progressing” to new prejudices.

Keep up the good work guys!

–Olivia Richardson

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: Encountering Trauma through Literature

As this weeks class blogger, I compiled a blog post to summarize and connect your key themes and arguments. Every post uses the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”, as the focal point of their conclusions and musings; however this did not lead to a conformity of ideas or a lack of originality. I found the opposite to be true. Each blog was unique in perspective, posed different and challenging questions to the reader, and interpreted Foer’s work personally and insightfully. My post seeks to connect the varying observations about the topic of trauma and the role it plays in shaping individuals and shaping society so as to spark further dialogue about the impacts that trauma can have on our thinking and subsequently on our behaviour.

Trauma is one of the most prominent themes in “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”. Not only is trauma central to the experiences of Oskar and those directly affected by the 9/11 attacks, but, as my fellow classmates mentioned, it is central to those affected by other horrific events in the novel, such as the Dresden bombings and Hiroshima. A few blogs touch on how different people internalize trauma and react differently to traumatic experiences. These insights are exemplified in the novel at hand, and can also be connected to other literary works, such as Persepolis. Central to the plot of the novel is Oskar’s own struggle with the loss of his father. Heavily laden with sadness Oskar’s embarks on a journey to find a lock matching a key he found in his father’s cabinet. Fiona Tse interprets this journey as bringing him closure, despite an anticlimactic ending. Similarly, in the post, “What are we missing?”, my peer Amy Main presents the journey as a method by which Oskar “confronts” his trauma. These perspectives cause me to think that perhaps Oskar might be using the lock and key as means to remove himself from or cope with the trauma of 9//11, replacing his feelings of pain and confusion with the familiarity of being in the middle of one of his fathers games. Ben adds to this conversation on the complexities of trauma by presenting Oskar’s experiences at a catalyst for growth. He discusses how he changes throughout the course of the novel and suggests that trauma, however large or small, can play an integral role in the shaping of our identities.

Robert Bernheim’s post, “The Rise Of Islamophobia After The 9/11 Attacks”, examines at the novel and its themes from an alternative vantage point, and as such, I have chosen to discuss it further and attempt to connect his insights to those made by other classmates and myself. His post hones in on the contagion of islamophobia and its rapid diffusion following the events of 9/11. Robert observes that this fear can seem innocent at first, such as Oskar’s skittishness around Muslim people or those wearing turbans, but that these types of thought can, and often do, manifest into harsh generalizations with devastating repercussions. I took particular interest in the part of Robert’s post where he says that despite calling the attackers “Muslim extremists” the public exercises selective hearing and only hears the word “Muslim”. Perhaps, trauma is partially to blame for this. Trauma, as the aforementioned posts point out, takes root in different forms for different people, however it is my observation that it almost always takes root by implanting fear, at least for a time. Maybe it it is only when we become aware of this fear and begin to understand it that we are able to use trauma for positive growth.

In her blog ”The Importance of Visuals”, Georgia discusses the novel in a more tangible sense. She discusses the power of the visual elements of the novel and how it is a “key part of memory which is what this book relies on…[which] adds a reality to the story that very few other books can compete with”. My experiences and impressions of the novel leave me in agreement with Georgia; the visual aspect of the novel along with that Persepolis and Safe Area greats a powerful story and expresses memory in a way many novels fail to. I suggest that there may be a connection between the visual nature of the story and the reader’s vicarious encounter with trauma, as it allows the reader to insert themselves more wholly in the story and thus have the opportunity to walk through Oskar’s grieving process along with their own.

Thanks for reading,

Chase T-R

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone is energized from winter break and is ready to jump into the second term. Last week, we read and discussed Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”, which explores the narrative of a young boy named Oskar who loses his father to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre. The blogs this week picked up on a variety of aspects in Foer’s narrative ranging from the raw emotions you feel when reading Oskar’s story, to the complicated layered format of the novel.

In Mariana’s blog post, “9/11: When the world stood watching”, she wrote about the emotions that I believe many of us feel when thinking about 9/11. Mariana’s imagery of the world “freezing” at the moment of the attack accurately represents the helplessness and shock that results from any horrific trauma. I think Mariana’s blog title perfectly embodies Oskar’s reaction to his father’s voicemails, as in that moment Oskar represented the paralyzing nature of fear. What can you do in a situation like that where you have absolutely no control? Well, like Oskar, and I’m sure like many real life victims and families affected by 9/11, you have no choice but to stop and watch the chaos ensue around you.

In Benny’s blog post, “Why Me?”, she compared and contrasted Oskar’s narrative with Marji’s narrative in Persepolis. Benny notices that although both protagonists are young children in the midst of confusing and horrific personal trauma, they differ in their outlooks on why they find themselves in that position. Benny says on one hand, Oskar questions “why me”, while Marji questions “why are people are acting this way?”. This difference in perspective really struck me as it reminded me of something I learned in my psychology course, where societies of different cultural contexts have different views on their roles in society. For instance, Western cultures typically strive towards the actions and progress of the individual, while Eastern cultures are more concerned with group cooperation and harmony. I agree with Benny when she points out these differences, in that in Foer’s novel, the reader is explicitly aware of who is good and bad through the lense of the narrator, while Persepolis documents the shaping and growth of Marji’s opinion through her questioning and group experiences. Similar to Benny, in Ben’s post, “The Necessity of Trauma”, he notes that Marji, Oskar, and also Naomi in “Obasan”, were all innocent children, who as a result of tragedy, are quickly forced to attain “an elevated sense of maturity”. I think this idea of a ‘forced’ coming of age is an important theme in all of our ASTU texts, and highlights the reality of the horrific damage to children around the world as a result of adult driven phenomena such as wars and terrorist attacks.

In A.J’s blog post, “New Year New Blogs”, he talked about the differences in Foer’s novel and its movie adaptation starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. Like A.J., I watched the movie and quite enjoyed it; however, thought it lacked the same dynamic and complex nature found in the novel, since it only focused on Oskar’s story. Although, I already got teary eyed with just Oskar’s story so depicting the other characters might have be too much to handle. I agree with A.J. that the intertwining and layering of narratives in the novel provides a much more interesting view as it allows you to connect different personal traumas with each other, and discover Foer’s intended deeper meaning in the novel. For instance, in Rowan’s blog, she highlighted that through the connections that Oskar makes during his search, in addition to the narratives of Oskar’s grandparents, Foer deliberately displays how “people are reunited by their shared experiences and losses”. And even though Oskar suffers numerous ‘missed connections’, his journey towards finding the significance of the key proves to be a much more important to Oskar’s narrative.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to reading your future blogs!

-Harnoor Sidhu

Hey!

The subject of forgetting was definitely one of my favorite ones so far, and I think your post captured why quite wonderfully! Your personal contribution in exemplifying the struggle Marji has in adapting to new surroundings is very relatable, as an immigrant, I know exactly what its like and I feel like you worded a lot of the struggles we can often face quite nicely. The excerpts you used were awesome too as the graphic contribution to your post drew a very nice picture (pun intended 🙂 ) of how often we are challenged by community members, family in particular, before a change of sorts, to not forget the past.

Your concluding paragraph actually interested me the most and id love to hear more from you on the manner, as society changing you into a version of yourself you are not is definitely a prominent struggle in modernity I think. Globalisation, Immigration, Cosmopolitanism, all factors that contribute to this conversation, yet, personal testimony is what, arguably, truly adds value to this matter as it contextualizes the arguments and produce a solid foundation on which such concepts can be based!

A collaborative work between several of our classmates, as their are plenty of people not raised in Canada, would possibly provide a great way for us to explore those theories through the perspective of testimony and I would be happy to take part in such an investigation!

Love the post!

-Ramon

I really enjoyed reading your post Lauren! I too found the organisation of the Fond interesting. I loved how you could piece together Kogawa’s drafts and rough work to see how her novel progressed. I particularly liked the part of your post about the poem. I found that seeing little things like that can give a unique perspective on Kogawa’s larger creative possess. Reading your post made me think about an article I read a few years about how J.K Rowling was bored on a delayed train when ideas for Harry Potter came to her and she madly scribbled them down on a few napkins. Reading that came to me as a complete shock to me. I find that it is pretty cool to see how the way writers create famous books isn’t as ‘cut and dry’ as we think.

-Chase T-R