Hey guys,

It’s my turn for class blogger, and I have to say most topics were very similar. All the blogs discussed Judith Butler’s excerpt “Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect” apart from three bloggers (Clara, Kate, Inneke) that reverted to Jonathan Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.  The most prominent theme was the idea of “we” and “them”, or the “grievable” and the “ungrievable”, so that is what I will be focussing on.

First up is Kennedy, that brought up an interesting point relating to political science. He likened the “us” and “them” to the nation-state versus a globalized world. I believe this idea of nationalism that Kennedy brought up goes hand in hand with what Butler is arguing. After all, Butler states that we feel responsible to a community we identify with on the basis of nation, territory, language, and culture. Some of these characteristics directly relate to the nation-state.

Peter’s blog focused more on “frames”, but his last point dealt with this division between “us” and “them” that resonated with me. It sounded to me like Peter thinks this notion of “we are all just humans” is impossible, since our frames have been forged over our lifetime, as have others’. Peter claims it would require a mutual reference point for humanity which simply does not exist. Therefore, this division of “us” and “them” is inevitable, or that is how I interpreted anyways. This is very interesting, and I would almost agree. The present world seems to be so divided that it truly does not look like this split between “us” and “them” frames could ever become coherent.

Martin discussed Butler’s “we” as well, but challenged it. When he read what Butler believed about shared community, he questioned it since racism and marginalization in general occurs within countries or even streets that are otherwise part of this identifiable community. Martin questions whether non-white communities that are affected by racism are considered a part of this “we”. I thought this to be interesting and want to respond with a potential answer. Obviously it is not all of the white community that have these prejudiced thoughts, so the ones that are racist have a different frame in which individuals unlike themselves are not considered to be a part of their “we” (which is very wrong in my opinion).

Mia went along the theme of the “grievable” and “ungrievable”. She believes (with Butler’s help) that we mourn the people of which we can hear their cries. The flip-side is that the media picks and chooses the cries that are heard, and the ones that are heard are the people “like us”. Mia thinks this is a big problem that needs to be addressed; except that it is not possible, as Butler states, to “singularize every life destroyed in war” (39). However, Butler does say that there are surely ways of registering the populations injured/destroyed. In order to take a step closer to a more global frame –like Mia says– this problem of a biased media needs to be addressed.

I must say the last three class readings have really brought out a positive cosmopolitan view in everyone. I just want to take a moment, as I realize from all of these blog posts, to say how much CAP has opened our minds. It truly seems like we are all developing into global citizens.

Until next time… blogging off,

Ryan