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

Hey fellow bloggers, this week it is my turn to take on the role of one of the class bloggers!

I was pretty certain what the forecast of topics would look like for this week, as we recently unpacked Hillary Chute’s “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis”, as well as Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.  Indeed, it was a downpour of Persepolis with a chance of Hillary Chute, as every single person’s blog this week had something to say about Satrapi’s graphic narrative depicting her childhood in Iran, and a large majority connected it to Chute’s scholarly essay.

The biggest theme this week had to be the style in which Satrapi draws in that Chute discussed quite thoroughly in her essay, which just about everyone touched on in their blogs.  Alex rephrases one of Chute’s points, “because all of the illustrations are in black and white, a lot of the violence depicted in Satrapi’s work becomes abstract due to how colourfully destructive violence normally is in the media”.  Gabriel writes about the normalization of violence as well by quoting Therese that also wrote about this subject.  Therese puts it a little differently, saying that the simplistic drawing style allows the readers to focus more on what Satrapi is saying, therefore intensifying the content.  Satrapi is really sending a message in her book about the normalization of violence, as she is completely opposed to it, which I think is in part due to the fact that she has witnessed this kind of traumatic violence first hand.

Joseph talked about black and white as well, but really put an abstract spin on it.  The black and white used by Satrapi sparked in Joseph a lot of creative thinking, where black and white represented good and evil, truth and lies.  Two different people might see their own views as the truth, but the other’s view as wrong, so there is no real black and white, just the grey in between.  How Joseph connected it back to our class was by stating that the genre of testimony resides in this grey area.  I would highly recommend taking a look at his blog for a something quite different, and to get more detail on this subject.

Clara’s blog was another of the very few that strayed from Chute’s essay.  Clara takes a personal outlook on culture, as she has two dominant cultures in her family.  In this era of constantly increasing globalization, there will be a need to deal with other cultures that may conflict with your own.  It is within the tradition of Clara’s Korean side of the family to take their shoes off upon entering a house, showing respect and cleanliness for most furniture is at ground level in Korea; while her French side of the family don’t usually take their shoes off, as in French culture (just as in most European or Western) furniture is typically raised above the ground, and they would find it offensive, for example, if a party host asked them to remove their shoes.  “How can we reconcile cultural differences?” Clara asks.  Her family’s answer to this question is by compromising.  For instance, her French grandmother will bring an “inside” pair of shoes to wear while in the house, to respect both cultures within the family.  This relates back to Persepolis, as the Islamic fundamentalists find it wrong for Marji to be wearing Nike sneakers, and Michael Jackson pins.  The Islamic state imposes their views onto the Iranian population with no compromise, thus sparking much conflict.

In conclusion, it seems that most agree with the idea that the monochromatic tone of Satrapi’s Persepolis conveys trauma even stronger since people view violence as normal.  Paolina asks: “what would have happened if Persepolis was a colored book?”.  Or think about what Kate says: “Would more complex drawings display trauma in a more effective way than the simplistic line drawings?”.  What about if Persepolis was written as a novel, without any visual representation?  Would the message of the story be stronger or weaker?  And my last question for this post: how can we as diverse people, live together while still preserving our own traditions?  Let these questions provoke some thought, and please let me know what you think!

Blogging off (I’m trade-marking that),

Ryan.