Hello all,

In out ASTU class this week we began with a discussion of Saal’s article on Johnathan Safran Foer’s novel “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”. From here we moved on to discuss Judith Butler’s novel “Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?” which is the main theoretical lens which Saal uses in her unpacking of Foer’s text. Not surprisingly, the blogs this week were in discussion of the questions raised by both Saal and Butler, and their applications in our community and our world.

In all the blogs this week, there was one strong motif of “us” vs “them” which really stood out. This idea of “us” vs “them” stems from Butler’s argument against our socially developed, western, mono-narrative understanding of the grievability of some lives over others. To quickly explain; Butler argues that due to our physical bodies vulnerability to destruction we are socially conditioned into fearing others that we do not see ourselves in (due to culture, values, media, etc.). These people’s lives, however similar to us in their own vulnerability, we see as “ungrieveable” due to our specific frames of “us” and “them” developed by our social nature. We see their lives as “that [which] cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as a life at all” (38). Throughout the blogs this thinking is taken apart in many different social circumstances to evaluate the problem and complications associated with this type of thinking, and how we may come to be more cosmopolitan in how we understand our place in the world.

If that made no sense to you, check out Nicola’s blog, her explanation of Saal and Butler is great, and she goes on to expand this idea of the “other” to language. She argues that how we speak about, and convey this “other” (or “them”) is reminiscent of our specific frame of thinking and therefore solidifies our separation of their humanity from ours. To help break out of this dichotomy of us and them, we must think about how and what we are saying, and what message this reinforces. Similarly, Kaveel in his blog talks about the connection of Butler’s argument of different “Frames” to Shazad’s article on interpretive communities. He says that these communities, being created through social interaction also act as ways in which Butler’s “frames” are shaped. These in turn shape our understanding of “them” and affect the ways that we act.

While the two blogs above discuss the frames (and the creation of these frames) used to shape Butler’s idea of “us” and “them”, I’d like to move to two blogs which present examples of this type of thinking in our community and internationally. Kihan, in her blog applies Butler’s lens to that of the c̓əsnaʔəm Musqueam burial ground incident in 2012. She argues that perhaps, there is a “mainstream Canadian view of Indigenous lives as “ungreivable””, which was present in the mistreatment of Musqueam burial ground, and still is in Canadian society. She also provides another example of this distinction of “them” in her community: The 26^th Annual February 14^th Women’s Memorial March for the missing and murdered women of the downtown eastside. Kihan argues that events such as this, and the 100 day vigil following the c̓əsnaʔəm Musqueam burial ground incident in 2012 are examples of social events that work to break down the barriers set up by our frames of grievability inside our community, city and our country.

While the classes’ blogs were mostly focused on the negative aspect of creating a “them”, Tzurs blog takes the discussion of Butler’s frame type thinking in a unique direction. While Kihan’s blog focused on two examples of “them”, and one example of the “us” type thinking (South Memorial Cemetery) in commentary with the “them”, Tzurs blog focuses on the negative results of including some people, or nation-states in this “us” type thinking. He argues that America’s foreign policy of mutual alliance with Saudi Arabia (which he says means including them in the “us” category) is negative in this thinking of “us” and “them”, as the Saudi’s long history of continuing human rights abuses do not fit with Americas values, and therefore it is dangerous to include them as part of who we frame as “us”. He justifies Americas decision to include them because “the primary factor for classifying someone as “us” or “them” is whether or not they consolidate power for our side.” A number of questions pop into my head following this example, which I think is a controversial, but also a creative flipping of situations that Butler might find intriguing.

To make these questions of “whose life is grievable?” even more confusing and complex, I’d like to apply this thinking to something we discussed in Human Geography in order to think about the message of these blogs as a whole. In my discussion for Human Geography, we talked about social inequality of sweatshops in terms of global wealth distribution and how we should live inside this western, relatively rich frame with that issue in mind. Should we buy products produced in sweatshops, even if it seems everything is produced by them now? I think this issue can easily be viewed from Butler’s idea of “us” and “them” discussed I the blogs. Ignoring arguments that sweatshops improve people in certain situations lives, I would like to be able to give an ultimatum of saying no, and include them in a cosmopolitan understanding of people around the world. However, as Ina says in her blog, in our daily lives that idea of “us” and “them” is present everywhere, from our relationships with family and social circles, to those distinctions we make in an international context. So realistically, I think those people working in sweatshops we ignorantly and even unconsciously distinguish as in the “them” category, by buying things in massive quantities produced by their pain, for our material gain. With this in mind, how do we change our frame of mind if it is unconscious, and built into the very system we live in and are socialized to? How do we break out of this distinction of “us” and “them”? This is what Butler writes a whole book on, and so many of the blog this week were about, so I don’t have a definitive answer quite yet. However, like Nicola and Kaveel suggest, through the way we think, speak and interact with others this distinction is created. Therefore, we must break out of our ignorant and unconscious actions within this frame, and take on a conscious state of mind in which we analyze the way we act all the time to determine our actions effect on how we view others. This in its essence is the cosmopolite existence which Butler strives for, but which is intricately hidden within our daily social lives by the cloudy frames that have been placed in our minds and that we view the world through. To conclude, I’d like to leave you all with a quote from Booker T. Washington:

In our last ASTU class we were discussing this topic – the creation of fonds and the writing process in relation to our global citizens program. The question was asked: how has your understanding of the writing process changed throughout the semester? By visiting the RBSC library I definitely gained a greater understanding of an author’s writing process. The outlines, drafts, research is not all that unlike my own, just with a longer writing process spread out over time. I think what we talked about in class connects really well to the ideas that you bring up in your blog, Kihan. It does seem to me, that although Joy Kogawa’s work is fictional, we can see aspects of her life scattered throughout the pages. After reading your blog, I reflected on something I saw at the RBSC library that made me think more in depth about this idea. One of the fonds that I was looking at showed a rejection letter by Oberon press. The letter was writing to Joy Kogawa, informing her, that they thought she was using her book more “As a vehicle to describe that period of history than to tell a story”, “the reader isn’t really ever aware of a story” and that “there is not enough emphasis on key elements that constitute a novel”. While this may be true in a way, (she does include several historical texts showing the role of the Canadian government in the Japanese peoples oppression) her novel, as you mention in your blog is reminiscent of her own life. As such I would disagree with the people at Oberon press. Since the book is about opening up the conversation on Japanese oppression in Canada, it must have a historical element to be able to create conversation. That being said, her novel also connects to her own life in many ways (like the example you give) through this historical content. The addition of Joy Kogawa’s imagination in creating a work of fiction (as we see in the fonds) shows that her book is more than historical. It embodies her own experience as well, forming a narrative of memory that is fictional, but that deals with important historical issues. To answer to your question, Kihan, as to whether her authority would change if she had not been a victim herself, I would say yes. Not only that, but her whole writing process would have changed, and the fonds she would have collected would have been totally different, resulting In a book (as you put it) that would offer a different glimpse into a different mind.

Here is the letter that I mentioned:                               

Hey Carolina, cool blog post! I like how you brought Sacco’s somewhat recent work into the context of our class, and I think it strongly adds to the discussion we were having about whether Sacco’s book was feminist or sexist. About the image you included in your blog, I realize now that my last blog post was totally off topic as I completely forgot to write about the assigned topic (whoops! I’m sorry Dr. Luger!), but it just so happens that it connects to what I did write about, so I will continue. In my last blog post I talked about Professor Erickson’s rant and the connections it made to Joy Kogawa’s themes of fear and discrimination in her book Obasan. I would be really interested to see what Erickson would have to say about Joe Sacco’s work, specifically the comic that you included as it portrays our rush to generalize everything in this day and age, and how we are not so different in our world view than the terrorists. I love your line: “the Eurocentric-tinted glasses will fog up everything”. I think this is so true, and that it may even fog up our glasses so much that we cannot see what we are doing anymore, especially when we blindly follow the media’s message that ‘Islam promotes violence’, or something similar. The last image on Sacco’s comic page speaks volumes about this situation we find ourselves in. His line “certainly something was deeply wrong with the killers – then let us drive them from their homes and into the sea… For that is going to be far easier than sorting out how we fit in each other’s world” for me represents these glasses that you talk about. I think they fog up everything, because they don’t allow us to see ourselves from an objective perspective anymore. The interesting question for me is: how do we take them off? For as Sacco has pointed out, it certainly won’t be the acts of terrorists that do it, and (ironically) for that matter it won’t be ourselves either. We must then find some way to wipe off these glasses, to de-fog them, before we even attempt to take them off. I think that you might have keyed into how Sacco was using his comic works to show the women of Gorazde, as not less than men, but as humans, and therefore start to wipe off these old, foggy glasses that we are wearing.

Hey Jaqueline, I really enjoyed reading your blog, and thought you brought some great points to the table in the way that we read Sacco’s graphic novel. While your ideas of Sacco’s attempt to humanize the people of Gorazde through US cultural hegemony really resonated with me, I disagree that he chose this in a stylistic sense in order to humanize them. I think that the problem of looking at the Gorazdian situation through a cultural relativist perspective, while ideal, is not realistic. I understand that your argument here is purely theoretical and does not say that Sacco should or shouldn’t have written his book the way that he did. I also don’t want people to think that I support a US or Eurocentric hegemonic view of other cultures or nation to nation conflicts, but I think that for the Gorazdians, it is sometimes not possible to view them from a subaltern viewpoint. Their culture is being attacked and persecuted with hatred, and it can be hard for them to associate pride with their culture because of that. While I don’t doubt that they have pride for their religion and culture (and this is shown in his book), it is not hard to see why they attach themselves so closely to the American values and forces that are their only lifeline for support, and the only thing that is keeping themselves, and their culture alive. I think that while you are right in saying that Sacco’s portrayal of this leads to interesting and troublesome effects of cultural hegemony, he also cannot portray them as human without insinuating the profound effect that the west has on these people, even if it does take away somewhat from the sense of their individuality that you get from the graphic novel.

Hello fellow students, I’m Sam and I’ll be summarizing this week’s blogs for ASTU 100. There is so much I want to write about in this post, because all of your blogs were so interesting and seemingly purposefully connected that there is a lot to sum up. I’ll try and capture all your ideas as best I can, for as I read through the separate blogs I kept thinking back to what I wrote about in my first post, how we as a community are developing or own interpretive community of learning. I think exploring this community through class blogging is important, but I’m sorry if I ramble on.

I sat down to start writing this after reading all of your blogs, and I put on some Miles Davis to concentrate while I was writing, and it made me think of the chapter we are reading in Sociology right now on culture. The graphic novel we are reading right now: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is very much based around this idea of culture, and how it connects to memory and the authors own personal narrative growing up in Iran during the revolution. Culture encompasses the ideas, values, practices, and material objects that allow a group of people, even an entire society to carry out their lives in relative order and harmony (Ritzer, Guppy 2014). Let’s take Iran and America (or the west) for instance. The two cultures associated with those countries are very different and as I will discuss later, Satrapi uses her personal narrative told through an abstract medium, to convey how her story sheds light on previous assumptions and shows us a greater truth to our cultural differences.

Another important part of a culture and country is memory. Nicola’s blog focuses on the culture of family inside Iran vs. that of the Western world and how it passes on memory. As we see in Persepolis, the idea of memory and lenses of memory are linked to Satrapi’s personal narrative, as well as the culture of Iran. Both Carolina and Kendall both discuss this idea. Carolina shows how age and memory are fused as one, and gives the example of the lenses that Satrapi uses to convey her story. She writes from her own point of view living in Iran as a child, but her story is narrated by a much older self. I ask myself, how does this affect her telling of what happened historically? Kendall’s blog focuses on this, and she believes that “memory is arguably the most authentic way to record history” and I agree. I also think Satrapi realizes this as well. History cannot cover every view point, but smears them all together to get the gist of the cultural, political and social aspects of what happens over time. Kaveel points out in his blog the fact that there really is no specific time-frame to Satrapi’s work and says that this is not necessarily a bad thing. While a personal narrative naturally comes with bias, or a certain “perspective”, it is this perspective that gives us a unique view of one specific thread that contributes to the rope that is history. Satrapi’s Personal Narrative cuts through the generalizations of culture and memory to open the reader’s eyes to the connection we have as human beings.

After reading Kaveel’s blog I was drawn to Satrapi’s narrative and the meaning that it holds. It is very descriptive as a comic, but why did she choose to write it as a graphic novel? In my grade 12 AP English class, we read a book called Fugitive Pieces which discusses the same themes (memory, written history, culture) as in Persepolis, but is about an orphaned Jewish child in the wake of the Nazi agenda. The book is extremely descriptive but is described through text. Why would Satrapi use an abstract form like a graphic novel to portray an extremely controversial, important and personal life narrative? Jennifer’s blog includes a video link at the end of her post to a trailer for the film version of Persepolis, which uses the same art style. That led me to watch a clip of “Making of Persepolis” where Satrapi talks about her use of graphic narrative in the telling of her story. In it, she answers our question by saying: “Drawings have an abstract quality, if we used real images…it would be an ethnic film, it becomes the problem of those people who live over there and are crazy about God. Drawings with their abstract quality emphasize the universal.” (3:08)

This conversation on the use of graphic narrative in respect to meaning, memory and popular culture opened a wide array of views from the class. In Rachel’s blog she points out that comic narrative affects the feel of the person reading it, and how it conveys even horrible topic in a personal way. With text, we relate our own ideas of what the sentences and concepts in a text mean or look like as images in our head, and base our understanding from our interpretation of the text. In a graphic narrative, the author gives you these images and you interpret the significance of the concepts and themes through the drawings. To give an example as to how this makes for an accessible, but also powerful medium we can look at what Kihan discusses. She points out that when an author uses a medium like popular art it widens the scope to a mass media level. But Kihan argues, in Satrapi’s case this does not lead to trivialization of the graphic narrative as say, a comic book would. Instead it “creates something powerful for everyone to experience.”

This begs the question: why in Satrapi’s case it is a powerful medium? How does this graphic narrative change the readers view on the subject? In both Jaqueline and Imaan’s blogs they answer these questions. Jaqueline compares Persepolis to Stephan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday in the way that both authors counter previous mainstream stereotypes about their experiences through their personal narratives. She illuminates the fact that Marji is powerless to create change as a child living in Iran at the time, but as an adult she uses her personal narrative of living through such an event to “give power to her once over looked voice”. In Imaan’s blog points out how a powerful narrative like this can change our views on a subject that have developed over time. She connects Satrapi’s narrative to that of a child who experienced the Residential School system. In Canada we are slowly changing our views on the assimilation of Aboriginals into western culture by the government, through these personal narratives of Aboriginals who experienced this and are sharing their stories. In Satrapi’s case, she uses her narrative to bring about a positive change in the way the west views Iran because of the Revolution. Her narrative and its universal presentation breaks down the generalizations of mass media and culture to bring people a first-hand story narrated though a personal lense. Through this presentation, she creates a meaningful change in the way people view the events she lived through. Satrapi breaks through barriers of culture, memory and history with her personal narrative to focus on the simple connection we have as humans living on this planet.

Apologies for making this so long, you guys had a lot to say!

Thanks again for reading, see you all next class

-Sam Tuck