Hey readers? How is reading so far? So this week, I have the luxury to be the class blogger and read some of the amazing and insightful post some of my classmates wrote. Here are of my thoughts and response to some of them.

Mariana’s blog focused on how the media changed the way we remember traumatic events. It discussed how our own private experience have slowly changed and evolved into a public event due to the media today. People would express their thought through the use of internet, an example would be those poem written about the 9/11. The internet became a platform to express one’s feelings; it became an outlet for people to release their anger for the world to see.  Mariana stated that ‘in the era of media and globalization there are no longer boundaries and the luxury to hide in one’s own shell becomes inaccessible’. I agree with her statement, the line between private lives and a public one is becoming blurry. One really does not have the luxury to hide themselves from public’s view if the majority of the population is interested with an event or story about you. I am saying this from experience, my aunt got into a horrible car accident, the incident is so shocking that it was on front page of multiple newspaper. While their stay in the hospital, they cannot stop reporters from taking pictures of them or rushing into their ward. This caused great distress and unconviencence not only to the victim but also to the family(me) around. The problem of weather one have the right to keep their own trauma out of public’s eye brought about another question, does one have to write about someone else’s trauma? My question can be tied into Kihan’s post on monuments and memorialization.

Kihan focused about how we commemorate war heroes, we went from 19th century pedestal-style monuments to critically minded contemporary monument. Kihan also suggested there to be another category of monument added, she called it “counter monument” . The monument does not only serve to commemorate an event or the dead but also “as a form/ genre/ structure to paradoxically critique the political and nationalistic implications implicit in the erection of monuments”. She later quotes Peter Meusburger, Michael Heffernan and Edgar Wunder ,“ monument act as…storage vessels of cultural identity and information; as educational and other communications media.’ And stated that “counter-monument” works to subvert the established national memory.”

Diego’s blog focused on the idea of finding one’s identity. He pointed out that most people that died in 9/11 were never identified. We often focused only on the Americans that died in that event but not people of other races. This brought out the current problem of euro centrism and racism, one race of people is often placed above another.

All the blog post I read is awesome and don’t hesitate to check them out!