Hello Bloggers,

I hope everyone is doing well wherever they may be this reading break, whether it be tanning on the beach, slaying the slopes up in Whistler, or even resting in your own bed similar to Spahr’s poem. This last week, our class has been focusing on Poetry especially Juliana Spahr’s This Connection of Everyone with Lungs and a few other poems. Let’s get to it shall we?

Therese’s poem talked about the poem written on “September 1,1939” and how she did not feel that it associated with the remembrance of 9/11. I remember during our ASTU class when everyone was trying really hard to connect to it because we didn’t realize how it was not exactly the same trauma. From my memory, I remember reading it and initially thinking it was about 9/11 and the date was just some random title to throw us off about what the event actually was. Nonetheless, back to Therese, she argued that “they’re not experiencing the same things. They’re not feeling the same emotions.” which I had totally understood. To support her argument, she also argued that it wasn’t fair to only acknowledge one of the traumas but both the occurrence of Dresden as well and to “consider all victims”.

Moving onwards, a similarity that I found between two of the bloggers (Olivea and Kate) this week is the questioning if the poem “The Names” was actually written about 9/11. With Kate’s blog, she explained a comparison she had done on two poems, “Photograph from September 11” by Wislawa Szymborksa and “The Names” by Billy Collins. I personally thought it was really neat how she saw one through a positive light and the other through a negative. In addition, she saw noticed that one gave a more specific perception of the day of 9/11 whereas the other one was rather a review of the mourning and the post-trauma days. Similar to Therese, she argued that poems with violence “could easily be other traumas as well” therefore poems on 9/11 needed to be more specific or could be mistinterpreted.

Two other blogs that struck out to me were Clara’s and Joseph’s. Clara in her blog post was a little upset as to how she did not understand Spahr’s poem until she had digested it thoroughly. One line which perfectly described how I saw it as well was “This idea of connection is one that I think we as humans lose when we start to classify and to categorize people and things (essentially divide people)” In addition, I found it really interesting how she connected it back to Judith Butler’s essay on who is worth keeping with the question of who is more valuable to keep on this world and the theory around that. On the other hand, Joseph created his own poem from the similar perspective of Spahr of being in a bed which was when he wrote the poem as well. Moreover, he also attempted the mixture of creating a poem with both lyric and language poetry.

Connecting the whole bed aspect with Erin’s blog, Erin explained at how disappointed she was with the idea of Spahr being in bed and talking about the corrupt things going around her rather than doing something about it. She also further talks about the term “eyewitness”, but my question is, what is truly is an “eyewitness”? because throughout the poem, it allows an eyewitness to simply be a person gathering information from the news. However, isn’t a real eyewitness someone who needs to be physically there? Are we not going out of the bounds of this term by allowing people to be anywhere and be called an eyewitness? I guess this is where the first person and third person eyewitness comes to play……But continuing Erin’s blog, I really enjoyed how she ends questioning if Spahr is writing her poem through her bed because she’s implying that we should create the change then merely just doing nothing about it at home like she is in the poem.

Great blogs everyone & thanks for listening!

Have an amazing break!

-mel

Hello, everyone,

I feel like the time was elapse fast that is again for me to take on our class blogger.（You might never seen my previous blogs because I wasn’t in this class last term). In the past week, we had gone through the work “Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect” by Judith Butler, which sounds like a philosophical script when I tried to digest words from it. However, some of our classmates went back to our first week of reading on Foer’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” and comes out with some new perspective on the terrorist attack.

I believe every bloggers in our class have done a great job in each of your blog, but I didn’t have time to read through them one by one. First blog that draw my interest is Kennedy who comments on Butler’s question which ask for what does it means to be human? He then answer the question with a cosmopolitan view which I strongly agree that humanity is despite the border of nation-state, who don’t come from the same background doesn’t mean we can deny the fact he also a human. Through Butler’s lens, Kennedy also identified some actions the American government took that reveal the hypocrisy under the mask of freedom from their constitution. By also discuss on Butler, in Isaiah’s journal he takes a deeper look on the concept of “dehumanize” which basically claimed when you feeling threaten by someone, you will not perceive he as a human being . He  exemplified with the event of Holocaust, which is when Nazi Germany seems the genocide of Jewish as an statistic. This example, let me recall my history teacher while I was in high school once quotes a (in)famous sentence by Joseph Stalin, “The death of one men is a tragedy, but the death of millions is a statistic ”. When I rethinking this “dehumanizing” phrase, is kind of true when it applies to many historical artificial atrocities which reveals the brutal and cold-blooded (political/military) figures just like Stalin himself.

Two another people I had looked at are focusing on the novel “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”. One query arouse since I finished the novel is why the story doesn’t seems much relevance with 9/11 attack, and some of us do debate on their blogs. Erin argues that the experience of Oskar does not engage with public mourning after the attack happened. He is upset on his American identity because he discover more footages and facts from foreign websites them the domestic television channel. It suggests that many American media had modify the images that will eventually go to public views in order to promote the value of American exceptionalism and formed the wave of Islamophobia. Coming next, In Inneke’s blog, instead of dig down to the historical trauma of 9/11, she compares the movie played in 2012 with the actual novel. I felt similarly when I was watching that touching movie although it abandoned much of the grandparents part.However it does shown me the visual contexts that I couldn’t form by only reading the words which improve my understanding when I browsed the book later on.

In the end, I want to say that I had receive many unique insights about both the novel and Butler’s opaque essay after read all of the intellectual talks you made. During this blog posts, I saw lots of opinions that are resonate to me and hopefully I will see more amazing thinkings that will compelling me to read and comment in future.

Hey, global citizens.

It seems that your blogs this week reflected the weightiness of the topics we’ve been delving into surrounding the war on terror. Judith Butler’s laboriously articulated thoughts in Frames of War have undoubtedly pushed us all to think about the convoluted web of nigh impossible questions that are woven into the mess of how people construct identity. If I had to make a gist note on the entirety of this week’s musings, it would look something like: The war on “terror” is not impersonal, and as is always the case with war, it is a war on human beings. Yet this one sentence does not do justice to the wide variety of tortuous questions that ran rampant on the pages of this blog batch. Here’s a snapshot of some of the titles that you came up with:

“Who am I, who are we, and what is humanity?” –Kennedy’s Korner
“The difference between you and me” – Paolina
“Destiny: Coexistence or Fear?” – I$aiah
“Are all lives treated equally?” –Alex

And these are just titles!

I think that we’re beginning to get the point of this academia thing. Atleast I hope that I am. I would wager a guess that these are exactly the type of questions Dr. Luger wants us to think about, that it’s why we read the dizzying Judith Butler-esque things that we do. And I’d like to believe that we aren’t just mulling these questions over so that we can feel intellectually accomplished or open minded – but because they actually do matter in a tangible way. And despite how contentious the value of it is, I believe that -to some extent- a real answer exists under all the layers of constructs that have been painted over it. Us, them, “other”… Its obviously unclear, or we wouldn’t be spending all our time in class trying to figure it out (with the help of scholarly predecessors). If it were clear, this would be a colossal waste of our time. However, to disbelieve in the existence of an answer (of some tangible variety) and still spend our time doing what we are doing would, in my opinion, render us equally wasteful. Just a thought: maybe the “mutual reference point for humanity which does not exist” (check out Peter’s well argued blog) might actually exist. Maybe many of us ascribing to it in our writing this week. Maybe many of us are also deluded and idealistic. Maybe just optimistic?

That being said, these blogs, particularly the most recent ones, are a really cool way to explore that. I appreciate that we’ve come together as this band of meandering miscreants in the vast unknown of life. Or astu. Probably more of the latter.

-Joseph

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! Lately in ASTU we’ve been discussing articles written by Ilka Saal (“Regarding the Pain of Self and Other: Trauma Transfer and Framing in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close“) and Judith Butler (“Survivability, Vulnerability, and Affect”). Saal’s article consists of an analysis of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, and what Judith Butler’s interpretation of the novel would be. Butler’s article, on the other hand, covers a wide array of topics, such as the acknowledgement of ourselves through others and our tendency to view some lives as more grievable than others. Many of the blogs I’ve read this week focused more on Butler’s article, and the various interpretations that can be drawn from it.

Many discussed Butler’s extensive analysis into why we tend to perceive some lives as a loss, and others as hardly lives at all. Olivea mentioned the distinction between “us” and “them” and how Butler’s explanation that “I implicitly hold to the view that I am responsible only for those who are recognizable to me in some way” (36) further solidifies this acceptance of this idea in many societies. Kennedy analyzed how this distinction is often used to “justify the horrible atrocities that we would typically consider unjustifiable.” Although this may be the way things are, it is not the way things should be, as he says “…just because somebody comes from a different place than me, or looks different than me, or even fights against me, does not take away their inalienable right to be considered human.” Martin further analyzed “who is considered as an ally (the ‘we’) and who counts as the enemy.” He discusses how culture reflexes has led to many believing that some lives are more important than others in terms of race. He concludes with saying that we must alter this idea in order to rid of mourning for some lives but not others.

Others did not chose to discuss Butler, and instead opted to further discuss Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Magda mentions the theme of grief being present in the novel. She discusses how finding where the key belonged (although irrelevant to Oskar’s father) provided closure and allowed Oskar to rid of his “heavy boots.” Whereas Magda discusses theme, Inneke analyzes the personal connections within the novel. She relates the trauma of 9/11 to what her grandmother endured in Jakarta, Indonesia. Her grandmother lived through the 1998 tragedy as she moved from place to place to avoid the riots following severe economic problems.

The blogs this week were very intellectual and incredibly fascinating to read! The themes and ideas brought about by Foer, Saal, and Butler provide a great deal of interpretation and much to think about. Thank you for reading!

-Erin 🙂

Hello Readers!

It is a bittersweet return to university, leaving family behind (in Toronto for me), seeing your friends again and dealing with sad yet important material in class. We have begun our second term with a study of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. It tells the story of a young boy named Oskar Schell who discovers a key in his recently deceased father’s closet. He goes on a quest across the boroughs of New York searching for the lock the mysterious key will open. It is a heartbreaking story of loss, love and healing. Within the story, tragedies echo one another as Oskar’s grandparents narrate their trauma and loss following the Dresden fire bombings in WWII and Oskar narrates his life as he deals with his trauma following the death of his father in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. There were so many great blog posts and many diverse interpretations of Foer’s novel. If I could I would gladly explore all these themes and topics but I sadly do not have the time or space to do so in this class blog. Therefore I have chosen to focus on a couple student blogs that stood out to me, as well as focus on the grand theme of loss in this class blog post.

Image taken by me of p.303 of Foer’s novel. It depicts the key that Oskar found in his father’s closet. It is on a string and he carries it around his neck for most of the novel.

A blog post that really caught my attention was Joseph’s. He related the storyline of the novel to the Beatle song references within the novel. It was completely different than any of the other blogs I had read and dealt with a concept not previously addressed. He examined specific Beatle’s songs (and lyrics) mentioned in the novel as they “frame[d] the stages of the narrators’ development over the course of the book.” It was an analyses that really surprised me at first, but upon closer reading was well thought out, well presented and clever. At the end, he tied grandmother’s, grandfather’s, Oskar’s mom and Oskar’s grief and pain together with the modified lyrics “Remember to let [Mom, Grandma, Grandpa] into your heart, then you can start to make it better” from “Hey Jude.” It perfectly captures Oskar’s need and his grandparents need to let others into their life who have also known great loss. Oskar fiercely sees his loss as “mine” (Foer, 256) and therefore has trouble letting others in, especially his mother. His grandparents cannot seem to cope with the tragedies that have occurred in their lifetimes. They cannot let each other in and, as Mia talks about in her blog, they create “Nothing” and “Something” spaces to enable them to live together (Foer, 110).

While Joseph’s blog examined song lyrics, a large number of bloggers (including Ryan, Isaiah, Olivea, Paolina, Jackson, Alex, Kate, Elizabeth, Martin, Erin, Grace, Mia) discussed various aspects of the themes of loss, trauma, absence and coping with loss. Another blog post that stood out to me was Isaiah’s because of the eloquent way he expressed these themes. He focused on the coping mechanisms of Thomas Sr. (Oskar’s grandfather) and Oskar. Discussing grandfather’s loss of speech and Oskar’s desperate search for “some sort of closure.”

Image taken by me of p.262 from Foer’s novel. It is a visual representation of how Thomas Sr. uses daybooks to communicate when he loses his ability to speak. His use of “I’m sorry” (since it is repeated several times in the novel) demonstrates his pain and sorrow towards all those he lost. To me it seems as if he is sorry for having lost those he did and he is sorry for the life he has lived.

Other bloggers, such as Mia and Joseph also touched upon the various coping mechanisms of the characters, such as grandfather’s lack of speech, grandmother’s apparently “crummy” eyes (Foer, 307) and Oskar’s search, as well as his anxiety. Isaiah discussed grandfather’s defeat when faced with grief and tragedy. He “became the shell of a man and removed himself from the world emotionally.” I had not associated his coping with defeat before but when I read this blog it truly resonated with me. His life is such a tragedy and he lacked the will to live after he suffered the great loss of Anna and his unborn child in the Dresden fire bombings. This analyses made me think about the contrast created in the novel between Thomas Sr. and Oskar’s coping mechanisms. While Thomas Sr. is defeated, Oskar, even with all his grief and pain, still somehow continues to live. His life has changed: he has “heavy boots” (Foer, 2), appears to suffer from PTSD and has many fears, yet he still searches for the lock. He is still curious about the world and is present in his life. Life is not as it used to be before “the worst day” (Foer, 11) but at least Oskar still tries to live a life.

Joseph’s analysis of the Beatles songs, Isaiah’s (along with other bloggers) presentation of coping mechanisms and the bloggers’ personal reactions (in their analyses and opinions in most blog posts this week) to Foer’s novel demonstrate to me the connection that forms between people who have suffered great loss in their lives.Tragedy brings people together and together people may be able to find healing and find life again. As terrible as tragedy is, it makes you appreciate life so much more. As Isaiah puts it, “[y]ou can’t truly appreciate something special until you’ve lost something special” and as Elizabeth puts it, “we should always let the ones close to us know just how much we care about them” because death can “take away a loved one in a blink of an eye.”

Thank you for reading!

Sincerely,

Clara

References (not hyper-linked in the text)

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Hey Bloggers! Oh how I’ve missed you. I know you’ve been wondering, and yes, my break was awesome, and yes, I could’ve stayed home for about three weeks longer; but honestly, coming back here isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. Don’t look now, but I think I may enjoy being here. Haha. It’s nice to be back in the swing of things, and I was riding my high horse and happy on life, then I started reading Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Foer. That happiness quickly turned into sadness. Deep. Deeeep sadness. None the less it was easily one of the best books I’ve ever read. I felt connected to the story in ways that I didn’t think I could. Not having experienced the loss that Oskar has I didn’t think I’d be able to relate, but I consistently found myself tearing up. All in all this is an amazing book and an amazing story.

Our class spent some time reading Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and it’s a bit of a complicated read if you don’t know what going on. There’s a lot think about when reading this book and when I looked over some of our class’ bloggers a lot of the different themes in the book are illuminated. We talked a bit in class about how this book may be an example of American exceptionalism. I have to say, when reading Erin’s blog, I found myself agreeing. She writes, “Regardless of whether this American exceptionalism is accurate or verifiable, I don’t believe that this novel deals with this topic.” I also found that 9/11, while a big part of the story, isn’t there to show how because a tragedy happened in America is it different, but is instead used because there aren’t many tragedies as highly publicized and understood as 9/11 and Foer uses that tragedy to help the reader better understand Oskar and his family’s plight.

Erin’s blog made me think to myself that really any tragedy could’ve been used in place of 9/11, as long as the reader understood it. Then Ryan’s blog challenged that notion bringing up how Foer uses Dresden as a tragedy that the Grandfather had to live through. Ryan’s blog made me consider the parallels between the trauma’s experienced by Thomas Sr. and Oskar. Both lost loved ones, and really, both tried to cope with those lost ones in very desperate, but different ways. Oskar with his adventure the NYC and Thomas with trying to recreate Anna, his lost lover, with Oskar’s grandmother. We see how different people process these horrific events, and how they try to cope with the loss of loved ones.

In Isaiah’s blog we get to hear about the different methods that people use to cope, “Whether it be coping through silence or by desperately trying to search for closure on a journey that has no finish line”. The line, “no finish line” really rang true to me. Coping after all is dealing with whatever tragedy you have before you. It’s about understanding that there is a new reality and that’s difficult to do. I think that’s why the book was so tragic for me to read, because I, so much like Oskar, wanted there to be a finish line, and wanted to know that tomorrow everything would be back to normal. I think though that the book ends perfectly. It ends perfectly in the sense that coping isn’t necessarily happy or a big weight off your shoulders, it just is. I think the consensus when finishing this book was that of un-satisfaction, not that the book wasn’t a great read or fantastically written, but that there wasn’t this fairy tale ending that I’ve grown so accustomed to.  

Well that’ll about do it for me, honestly this was a bit more difficult to write than I thought it’d be but boy is it good to be back. There’s so many layers to this book and so many different themes that we can dissect and will dissect. It’s good to talk to you all again, and it’s been nice to read everybody’s blogs. Until I write to you again.

Kennedy

Hello readers!

Term 2 has started already, and we’ve already started buckling down in class. Recently, in my ASTU course, we’ve finished reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.

The book was intriguing to read, and a little different from what I am used to seeing. Many other students in my ASTU class has also found it an interesting experience, which led many to write about it in their blogs.

Joseph, has fascinatingly written about the use of Beatles’ songs and references throughout the book. He shows readers how song choices and their lyrics match the events in the novel, and the emotions felt at those times.

Others have focused on Oskar, a child and one of the narrators within the novel. Mostly, these people have explored how Oskar works to overcome his grief over his father’s death in the terrorist attack of 9/11. Isaiah examines Oskar’s attempts to seek closure by searching for the lock of the key he had found when going through his father’s things. Isaiah points out that Oskar’s journey to find the lock was an attempt “to stay close to his father just a little bit longer.” Indeed, Oskar acknowledges this within the novel, stating that looking for the lock “let [him] stay close to him” (304). In this way, we can see that Oskar’s journey could have been him seeking for a way to alleviate the grief he felt for his father’s death and absence in his life.

To extend this examination of Oskar seeking closure and trying to overcome his grief, Alex states that he believes that Oskar “serves as a motif or symbol for the thousands of people who lost friends and family” in the events of 9/11. Elizabeth examines the suddenness of death, and how deeply such tragedies can affect people in grief. She also makes note that during such times, there is a regret for not letting those lost know how much they mean to you. Characters within the novel are similar in this respect, because they wish to have let their loved ones know that they loved them before they died. Oskar and his grandmother are such examples. This aligns with Alex’s belief that Oskar represents the people who have lost their loved ones. It is common for those who lost someone to wish they had told their loved one what they mean to them. Oskar (and his grandmother) also wish to have been able to do that.

However, is Oskar only just representing those who are grieving for their losses after 9/11? What would happen if Oskar’s father had died in other circumstances? Ryan expands on this thought, looking into possible outcomes to Oskar’s father having died in an event like a car crash.

Despite this, it is still unclear if Oskar truly is a representation of those grieving in the aftermath of 9/11. Is the fact that the setting of this book was placed at such a time and that Oskar has such a personal connection to it what makes Oskar a representation of it? Or is Oskar, in parallel with his grandparents, meant to represent all who have lost loved ones in tragic events?

– Sandra Maglanque

Hello fellow readers!

It’s a new year and it’s my turn again to be the class blogger, one of the first five for this new term! How exciting! Being class blogger is my favorite part of this assignment because I got to read people’s ideas and perspectives on what is happening in our class this week or what are we currently discussing!

This week we are discussing a novel by Foer titled Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and it’s no surprise for me that almost all of you wrote about this in your blog this week. As most of you have explained, this novel is about a boy named Oskar who lost his father in the 9/11 tragedy and his quest to reveal hidden messages behind his father’s death.

In Kate‘s blog she mentioned a major theme in the book that our class discussed this week which is absence. We discussed a few of examples of absence but the absence of Oskar’s Father’s body is what hit her most till she came up with a brilliant question that keeps me thinking, “With such a tragic event, would knowing where the body of your loved one is make the coping process easier or simply be unbearable?”. In Oskar’s case knowing that the body of his father is absent, it makes him harder to move on and is the reason behind his quest all along, so he could reconnect with his father like what Melissa mentioned.

Some of you (Elizabeth and Martin) also talked about how this novel has touched you or has affected you personally. As we can see from Elizabeth’s blog’s title, “It can happen to you”, she shares her experience of losing someone she cares about, just like how Oskar lost his father. She mentioned that it can happened anytime in a blink of an eye, very unexpected things might happen and when its unexpected its harder to cope with the pain. This book has affected Martin quite differently than how it has affected Elizabeth, instead of telling his own personal experience about lost, he put himself in Oskar’s shoes by listening to the audiobook version of the book so he could really experience the loss Oskar felt.

While most of you only talked about Extremely loud and incredibly close novel, Maria and Magda saw some connection between the past novels that we’ve read in class with Foer’s novel. Like how Obasan, Persepolis and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close novels are very straightforward and honest about what they actually feel since they were told from a child’s point of view. All of the three novels are also talking about a child who tried to cope with trauma and how trauma has a big impact to a child’s life.

I was amazed after reading all of the blog posts you guys posted and how each and every one of you has something different to say and has different perspectives about one exact same novel that we are currently reading. I’m gonna end this blog post here, and if you guys have any thoughts or questions, don’t hesitate to leave comments down below.

– Inneke Soeyanto