“Greetings loved ones, let’s take a journey” – Snoop Dogg
Hey there fellow ASTU enthusiasts, I had the privilege this weekend of reading some great blogs this week and it sounds like I’ve been mulling over the same issues as a lot of you guys. Before I jump in I just want to mention how much I appreciated reading all the different perspectives brought up about 9/11 this week in your blogs. I went to school in the US from the second grade on and so I’ve experienced the “post 9/11 world” quite a bit and I’ve been subjected to watching every 9/11 movie in existence all throughout my educational career in the US so hearing the different perspectives on a trauma that I used to feel was owned by the American people has been eye opening and I just want to thank you guys all for that!
So jumping in, a common question people tackled this week was how to weigh the value of a life and who gets to decide who lives, who dies, who succeeds, who fails etc. I think this question has been in the back of a lot of our minds after reading so many stories of trauma in class but I think Butler articulated what a lot of us couldn’t. Starting with Ina who admits what we’re all thinking, classifying people as “others” makes us uncomfortable and should make us uncomfortable but on the other hand it often feels unavoidable in modern discourse. Taylor really sums up well the questions that Butler wants us to consider after reading her introduction, “After analyzing both pieces of literature, I find that I am left with some questions: why do some deaths affect us more than others? Shouldn’t the fact that someone lost their life be enough to warrant grieving? How do you put a value on someone’s death? Is this desirable?”. Nicola optimistically wonders if maybe the admittance of Syrian refugees into Canada could be a sign that we’re moving towards a world that sees fewer boundaries between the “us” and “them”. Overall, both the blogs and the discussions we had in class can’t offer concrete answers to our questions but by asking these questions and rethinking how we, even just within our class, define ourselves is definitely what I think Butler would say is a step in the right direction.
Some of our classmates took Butler’s ideas on “us vs. them” and “the body” and applied them to the world we live in. Sania questioned how to apply Butlers ideas to the concept of global citizenship, “..how would a “global citizen” answer to such questions, would they add a label of who is worth how much in the society, or would everyone be of equal “value”, or is there a more “pragmatic” approach?” Tzur on the other hand took a more political approach by analyzing American relations with Saudi Arabia that are often problematic and not what Americans would typically identify with. He posits that, “I think because in a global context the primary factor for classifying someone as “us” or “them” is whether or not they help consolidate power for our side” which is a more pessimistic but also practical application of the “us vs. them” question. Finally, Kihan applies Butler’s work to the indigenous and specifically female indigenous population in Vancouver by question whether their lack of visibility and fight for respect is a product of being labeled as “the other”. This investigation really impacts out the consequences on entire populations of being labelled as an “other”. It seems like everyone was pretty clear on the idea that our bodies or selves are intertwined and interdependent with others but where people diverged more was on exploring the implications of that fluidity. Once we recognize how powerful defining ourselves can be it leads to some tough questions about the acts of our governments, families, friends and selves.
Despite how difficult the readings have been lately it seems like our class has an impressive grip on the type of questions and conversations Butler was trying to spark with her work. Now that we’ve all gotten past the initial intimidation of her work I think applying her “us vs. them” ideas to Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close could give us more insight into the characters. For example, who does Oskar align himself with and what are the consequences of that? How does some of racist rhetoric used by Oskar give us insight into who he’s been taught to define himself with?
Thanks for reading this rather long winded post and I hope you guys all had a great weekend!!