Hello everyone,
Hope everyone is having a great reading week so far!
There was a whole range of responses this week in regards to what we learned in ASTU for past few weeks, ranging from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Foer to the discussion of monuments of war and art of 9/11 to poetry of Juliana Spahr in This Connection of Everyone with Lungs.
Many students decided to focus on the poetry by Juliana Spahr, written in response to the event of 9/11. Jacqueline wrote about the physical effect of Spahr’s “Poem written after September 11/2001” and how the structure of her poem forces the readers to breathe in a way similar to mediation in yoga. This physical connection of Spahr’s work is distinctly tied to Butler’s concept of “the body” and its interconnectedness to other individuals and events around the world. Similarly, this point is also picked up by Nico, who elaborates that it is because of our interdependence on one another and the precariousness of life through our perishable bodies is why we are interconnected.
Yet this idea of connectedness is challenged by Raphael, who questions whether “it is too optimistic or idealistic” in the fact that we can generalize all human beings as connected. Which is a very true statement to make, because in a sense, we are divided by many social boundaries such as class and wealth. I agree with Raphael in that matter because there is the question of how exactly is this connection between one another the same – especially considering the social, economic and political factors that goes into the creation of human connections. I can see a sense of disconnection through Mariana’s post about the bed analogy in Spahr’s poems, how it is a place of privacy and comfort that is protected by geological locations. Therefore, those who are safe in a bed in one area of the world is not fully or truly connected to other human beings who are not in the same situation as that individual.
This leads me into Rachel’s blog post, in which she talks about her experience as the 3rd generation of war survivors. When Raphael questioned this connection between humans around the world, I felt like Rachel’s connection with other humans regarding war/trauma would not be the same as her grandparents’ connection – which further emphasizes the point that the connections of people cannot be generalized to the mere fact that we breath that therefore we are connected.
On the other hand, Isabelle and Kihan focused on a more architectural and artistic rendition to the event of 9/11 and its aftermath. Isabelle focused on a sculpture created as a result of 9/11, the “Tumbling Woman” by Eric Fischl. The controversy of this sculpture was surrounded around how it was perceived, as a woman hitting the ground at high impact rather than the supposed graceful dancer. Isabelle noted that because the sculpture was not hung in the air, it portrayed a whole different meaning than what it could have meant if it were hung. How a public representation of (a) trauma through a physical structure is also critiqued by Kihan, who focuses on the transition of monuments – from the pedestal-styled glorified war heroes to an interactive and inclusive contemporary monuments that commemorates the “elusive collective”.
The term of the “elusive collective” is also seen in Diego’s post, in which he questions the identities of those who died in the 9/11 attack. He implies that it isn’t just “white” Americans who passed away in this attack, but also people who were of the same race as the terrorists and other minorities. Therefore it poses the question of “who has the right to say that they suffered more or less?” because ultimately, everyone suffered as a collective whole from 9/11.
That is to say, the topics and discussions of ASTU in the past few weeks really opened my eyes to ideas and concepts that I never experienced before. Never would I have thought poetry could control me physically nor have I ever thought about monuments in different perspectives. But I am curious about just how really connected are we and the validity of that connection – especially with the ongoing development of technology and communications – and perhaps we shouldn’t use the same standards of judging and interpreting these connections as times continue to change. That aside, there were so many other great blogs I couldn’t get to this week but I would definitely recommend you guys to take a look!
Keep writing and keeping enjoying your reading break!
– Peijia Ding