In the first few weeks of Term 2, our ASTU class has been focusing on understanding different theories of memory noted by various scholars, including Psychologist William James and Sigmund Freud. We have also spent classes analyzing how characters from Hemingway and Mrs. Dalloway showed connections with the views that the above scholars had on consciousness and trauma. I found it interesting to read my classmates’ blog posts and realized that some linkages could be made between them.

Patrick’s blog focuses on James’ view on “stream of consciousness,” in which the scholar, later on, compares it to a “bird’s life” due to the transitive and substantive thoughts we present in daily life (178). He also realized that both James and Freud supports the idea that dreams are created not from instincts, but because our conscious brain is still processing information when we are asleep. Similarly, Tessa draws connections between the views of the two scholars on consciousness and trauma and finds that their opinions complement each other. For instance, James describes consciousness in a way that applies to Freud’s explanation on how trauma leads to people’s experience of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), or in other words, “Shell Shock.” Another point I found interesting in her blog was her extended thoughts towards sociology on whether such repetitive actions are based on free will or uncontrollable in one’s life.

The discussion of PTSD was also mentioned in other classmate’s blogs, where Moha and Aleksei both precisely explained the symptoms of this disorder to aid our understanding when relating it with characters in Hemingway and Mrs. Dalloway. Our class has been talking about PTSD post World War I, and Kriveena successfully links this to war and her thoughts. In specific, the character Septimus Warren Smith in Mrs. Dalloway, who was a war veteran in WWI, faces PTSD after the war ended. Kriveena was aware that Septimus suffered from severe hallucinations after his friend Evans died during the war. The trauma affected Septimus’ emotions and prevented him from controlling his thoughts, which thus led to his experience in PTSD. She also sees his case in a broader view, explaining that PTSD and other mental disorders are seen as a threat in modern society.

In the linkage from the past and present society, Isabel has done a great job in explaining how mental health is being treated in Canada nowadays. It is clear that people’s attention to mental disorders has increased, and that “Bell Let’s Talk” day has been effective in encouraging people “to end the stigma and start a conversation.” Despite mentioning about how mental health is treated in our current country, Isabel also shares her own experience in dealing with stress and encourages her classmates to seek help when they are feeling “low.”

In relation to the “Theory of Omission” discussed in class, Etana emphasizes that concepts learned could apply to both literary works and our daily life. She explains that people do not often fully express themselves and leaves room for other’s interpretation. With regard to her personal experience, she reflects on how those who care, especially her close friends, would spend extra effort to understand the meaning of her words and discover such mysterious message deep inside her.

The discussion of consciousness and trauma is never neglectable in our lives, and it does affect us in different ways. As a student who is highly interested in Psychology, I found such concepts very thought-provoking. The way our class examines memory by referring to PTSD and other mental health issues, as well as its correlation to literary works and modern society, inspires me in pursuing my career as a Psychologist. Thus, I would like to once again remind us of the importance of seeking help when needed in university to prevent ourselves from becoming another Septimus!

P.S. The blogs done by our classmates this week were really fascinating and unique, it would be great if you take a look of what they wrote during your free time!!!

Citations:

James, William. “The Stream of Consciousness.” Psychology., pp. 151–175., doi:10.1037/11060-011.

In today’s media, “fake news” is propagated for an audience to conform to an author’s biased interests. These interests may illustrate people, places, or events from a particular viewpoint, one that is often negative and misleading. A historical example of such propaganda would be Adolf Hitler taking advantage of his charisma to convince the people of Nazi Germany that they were of the master race and that Jews should be abolished. In the modern day, varying forms of media, such as books, do the same thing to different degrees. For instance, Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist revolves around a Pakistani man, Changez, who narrates his life as a young adult struggling with a new love and occupation in America. Throughout the novel, Changez’s character appears to shift from one that proudly embodied the American identity to one that seemingly resented the former. With that, he occasionally depicted America from a negative standpoint. It is evident that some of Changez’s anti-American beliefs are biased as he was part of a visible minority living in a nation that was recently terrorized by people who appear to be of similar descent. Changez’s development demonstrates that things may be viewed differently depending on the way in which they are defined by their “master narratives.”

Master narratives may construct prejudices around topics for better or for worse. One of the concepts that The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s master narrative embodies is the notion of “us vs. them,” as Tessa points out. Underwood Samson, the company which Changez works for, is a key symbol of this concept as they implicitly operate on the upper-class and capitalist thought that if they do not prosper as a company, others will. While working at this company, Changez gains a personal sense of “us vs. them” when he faces discrimination for having dark skin and a beard, the socially derived attributes of a terrorist. From then on, his perspective of America subtly takes a negative turn. For example, he begins to critique the United States for being a nation that is susceptible to a “dangerous nostalgia,” presenting him with a greater sense that he is a foreigner (p. 115). Through the interpretation that America is subject to both social and physical vulnerabilities—a physical vulnerability being something like the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centers in 2001—some of the country’s imperfections feed into the societal belief that America is often in the position of a victim. As Suvi suggests, events in the United States seem to receive excessive attention that they may not always deserve. This generates a paradox as a manifestation of Hamid’s novel is to add more attention to the existing scrutiny that the United States faces, precisely by highlighting some of its vulnerabilities through the outlook of a foreigner.

When stories are recounted, it may be easy for the narrator to alter a message based on their interpretations. However, it may be even easier for their audience to understand the story from an inaccurate perspective, especially if the storyteller intentionally modifies the meaning behind their words. For instance, how truthful were the 9/11 news reports that Changez and his colleagues witnessed while working in Manila? May Hamid have written his novel with a bias that favours Pakistani culture and traditions? As Aleksei identifies, “…these conservative and paranoid viewpoints are represented so much more loudly than others that they are very easy for a common, uninformed person to adopt.” I, for one, am an example of the “uninformed person” as I grew up indoctrinated with beliefs that favoured certain groups of people over others. In recent years, I have matured from those assumptions, allowing myself to recognize and challenge my own reasoning from broader perspectives. However, there are undeniably individuals who have not yet grown out of such close-mindedness, such as the gentleman who harassed Changez in a parking lot (p. 117). This ultimately begs the question of whether or not people will ever move on from divided societies and perspectives.

References:
Hamid, M. (2008). The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Anchor Canada.

As most of our classmates have chosen to take the route of applying the master narrative of, “The Reluctant Fundamentalists” to their individual lives, it was easy to identify the overlapping themes in each blog. Common threads such as the “Us vs. them” rhetoric, the strong influence of media, and ultimately the culture of fear appeared recurrently and were woven together. These ideas sprouted from the novella, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” which draws upon the proceedings and aftermath of 9/11 from the perspective of a Pakistani “turned” American. As the storyline moves along, readers are able to reflect on the protagonist’s (Changez) altering attitude as a result of the large cultural shift post 9/11.

Although the majority of us were just a few years old, many of the blogs tied their subjective experiences with growing up with the repercussions of 9/11. For example Tracy, who grew up in the United States, recalls her public school’s yearly presentation solely showing a small 24 hour slice of the complex 9/11 incident. She drew upon her friends biases against those of Middle Eastern descent, much like Isabel whose peers even reminded her of her “death wish” travelling to Iran. President George W. Bush, one of pivotal influencers in the “Us vs. Them” rhetoric, fuelled the fire regarding the culture of fear. Growing up in the aftermath of 9/11 instead of seeing it happen before our eyes and forming our own ideas on the situation, much of our opinions were derived from stories passed down to us, powerful political influencers, and the media we were exposed to.

I found Tessa’s blog exceptionally interesting as she provided a CNN-Anti-Muslim hate crime graph which revealed the number of victims of anti-Islamic hate crimes skyrocketing in the year 2001 and never returning to the initial numbers years prior. I suspect this is due to a multitude of factors, with media influence being a major contributor. Time and time again, we learn about how strongly the media influences our perspective of the world. For example, we’ve learned in our sociology discussion that 6 media giants: GE, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS control 90% of what Americans read, watch, and listen to (Lutz, 2012). Because we are constantly exposed to these stories, it is near impossible to escape from the stories that are hand-selected by a niche group of powerful companies. However, in regards to 9/11, there seems to be a consensus amongst my classmates that media has heavily associated our common enemy to Muslims or groups of individuals from Middle Eastern descent. Perhaps Cherisse best describes the injustice against Muslims when saying, “Suddenly, the loyalty of entire ethnic groups was called into question.”

As these destructive stereotypes still affect many individuals worldwide, we must resist the norm of categorizing people of color as “threats”. It’s truly unfortunate how society can group entire nations as perilous and even further as terrorists. The age-old saying, “don’t judge a book by its cover” still pertains today and should be a continuous reminder that not everyone you see will fit the stereotype you associate them with. I’m glad to see my classmates and I recognize these injustices and are aware of the ways which these stereotypes contort our perception of people. I end this blog with the hope and faith our generation will be the one to break free from these constricts and produce a better more accepting world.

Citations:

Hamid, Mohsin. (2008) The reluctant fundamentalist /Orlando : Harcourt,

https://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6

Hello everyone, I had an amazing time reading everyone’s blog posts!

For this week’s ASTU blogs, I noticed that a large number of my classmates wrote about a theme we have been exploring throughout this semester in our ASTU  100 class: the “master narrative”.  As my classmate Aleksei defines it, master narratives are “versions of a story that are particularly prevalent in a society”. Suvi simplifies master narratives as “basically what ends up on Wikipedia”.

Master narratives are often crafted by the powerful group to propagate negative ideas about the weaker group in order to justify its oppression and demonize it. We have been discussing this topic in our class lately in the context of 9/11 and in relation with two books, Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a monologue of a Pakistani man, Changez, who goes to the US at the age of 18 and lives a successful life there only to have his relationship with America be strained by Islamophobia and prejudice which were the aftermath of 9/11. Persepolis, on the other hand, is a graphic memoir that tells the story from the perspective of a younger version of the author called Marji. The story follows Marji as she grows up during the Islamic Revolution under the fundamentalist regime in Iran while the war and the violence are exacerbated by America’s military actions in the Middle East after 9/11. Both these books address the “Us vs. Them” narrative which was constructed under the presidency of George Bush, “Us” being the Americans and “Them” being the enemy, which basically included all people of Muslim and Arab origins.

This had dangerous consequences in terms of heightened Islamophobia and the creation of a culture of fear and mistrust around Muslims and Arabs, which still persists. Globally, this led to the launch of the “War on Terror” by President Bush on Iraq. As my classmate Diego points out, this was intensely glorified through American media. Because of the constant showing of all Muslims as “evil”, that is what they became in the public eye. And because of the preponderant position of American movies and TV shows worldwide, this highly generalized and artificial image of all Muslims being terrorists spread across the globe.  This was used to justify America’s invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and brought unjust destruction and ruin to the Middle East, taking millions of innocent lives. My classmate Tracy recounts her experience of believing that the reason the US was involved in wars in the Middle East was “because of 9/11”. This ultimately led to explicit discrimination towards anyone perceived to be Muslim in America, ranging from racial slurs being hurled at them to taking them aside at airports for extra checking and interrogation without satisfactory reasons.

Master narratives are often loud and convincing because they do not let stories that challenge them to be heard. In Aleksei’s experience, when he moved to America at the age of 10, this master narrative of Islamophobia made him develop “unexplainable animosity” towards Muslims despite him never having an unpleasant experience with a Muslim. Similarly, Tracy describes how her school would make them watch documentaries on 9/11 every year, but they would only show the victims from an American, and essentially white, perspective and completely ignore the other sides of the story. She also talks about how the talk about 9/11 was limited to that one, singular day and how its aftermath and the reasons that led up to it were mostly taken off the public eye. Suvi further adds to this by raising the question of why it is that only the American victims get to be commemorated in her blog. She expresses her concerns about how the victims of the retaliatory American violence in the Middle East are often forgotten.

Remembering these silenced victims is exactly what The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Persepolis aim to do. They seek to provide a counter-narrative to the American master narrative. A counter-narrative is the story of the minority group that challenges the majority’s version of the story. Both Persepolis and The Reluctant Fundamentalist provide a counter-narrative by asking the readers to consider the impact 9/11 had on Muslims, those living within the US as well as those living in the Middle East, and to essentially illustrate to the world that terrorism should not be associated with a religion or an ethnicity. A great example of how a counter-narrative works is seen in Aleksei’s blog where he talks about how his prejudiced beliefs about Islam were shattered when his father pointed out to him that many of their family-friends were Muslims and did not carry the physical or the personality attributes that Aleksei had associated with Muslims at all.

I myself grew up with a very stereotypical and negative notion about Islam, associating it with oppression, conservatism, and terrorism. Like America, mistrust and paranoia surrounding Muslims is an issue in India too because of its rivalry with Pakistan and the historic animosity between the Hindus and the Muslims. Therefore, most of these prejudices were fed to me by the media and the adults around me. It was only when I began to form my opinions through reading a lot of counter-narratives and learning more about Islam through my best friend, who is a Muslim and who I met when I was 15 that I realized how wrong and biased my opinions were. In fact, Islam is not at all about oppression and fundamentalism.

Books like Persepolis and The Reluctant Fundamentalist force the readers to consider the alternatives to the master narrative and challenge them to question how much of their perception of a situation is based on the master narrative. A large part of what we know, believe, and consume is heavily dictated by the master narrative, especially when it comes to our notions about minority groups. This is why it is so important that we actively seek out counter-narratives, to explore the origins of our beliefs, and make our opinions as well-informed as possible.

Over the past few weeks, our ASTU class read “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, a novella by Mohsin Hamid. In short, this book is about a man from Pakistan, Changez, that met an American in Lahore, Pakistan. Changez is talking to the American about his experience when he was living in the United States. What makes this book really interesting is that we get to see how Changez’s life changed in the United States after the 9/11 incident. Before this event, Changez had studied in Princeton, had a crush on a Western woman, Erica, and got a job at Underwood Samson. You could say that he loved America. However, after the terrorist attack, we can see how Changez’s “relationship” with the United States changes completely, up to a point that he decided to go back to Pakistan.

In class we were focusing on the Master and Counter Narratives and the impact they have on us. The master narrative is the “version of the story” that the majority of the people know and remember. In his blog, Diego states that we get to know the master narrative (from the U.S. point of view) through movies from Hollywood and video games. Tracy, coming from the United States, comments her experience on how they remember the 9/11 in her high school. She says that they only focus on the specific day of 9/11, her school never got to mention the aftermath and/or the reasons of the terrorist attack. Aleksei was also “victimized” by the master narrative: when he went to the United States when he was younger, he began to have the “common ideas” post 9/11. However, his father later reminded him that he had Muslim friends, and that they were not like the media claimed they were.

On the other hand, we have the counter narrative. In her blog, Mirella describes this term as “a perspective that has been silenced”. In some way, Suvi agrees with her, since she develops the idea that the story of minorities (such as Muslims, Arabs and people of color) never seem to get told or they never appear in the global media. Azumi communicates clear examples of this. She mentions how events such as the 9/11 and the attacks from Paris 3 years ago get to be commemorated, however, people in the Middle East die every day and the media doesn’t seem to notice these tragic events.

My conclusion will be very similar to the one I had in my last blog, since I mentioned the harshness in which the media targets some countries. I believe that we have to start looking for different perspectives and points of view, so we don’t get carried away by the news and their often exaggerations. Also, to be more informed about what is going on in other countries. This book really had an impact on me, since it was really clear how stereotypes can change our lives completely. The thing is that this change is not in our power completely, it is instead in the majorities’ points of view.

P.S. I really encourage you to read the blogs from your classmates this week, they were very interesting.

“Life isn’t black and white. It’s a million gray areas, don’t you find?”

— Ridley Scott

After reading the student blogs from this month, I found that an overwhelming number of my classmates wrote about Marjane Satrapi’s graphic narrative, “Persepolis.” As suggested by Amanda, although this book is illustrated in black and white, history and memories themselves are not distinct, thus leaving room for many grey areas. 

MEMORY VS HISTORY

The way in which stories are told are highlighted in Meghan, Moha, and Joline’s blogs. All three of them focus on the idea of personal truths. As mentioned in our ASTU class, history and memory are often entangled with one another, yet many individuals believe that history is black and white because they are perceived as more factual or reliable. However, we can learn from Satrapi’s “Perseplis” and several of our classmates, that this is not the case. There is no clear cut line between history and memory. As Joline suggests, “the political story [in “Persepolis,” is] … based on [Marji’s] experience. There is this overlap between history and cultural memory, because what Marji experienced as a child is her version of the Islamic Revolution, and is therefore her history. We can further relate this concept to the reading we did by Maria Sturken. Sturken argues that “cultural memory can be distinct from history yet … it is essential to its construction.” Memory and history are not two separate entities, instead, they shape and give meaning to one another. For example, a history textbook cannot be formed without the memories of those who lived in the past. What we read in a textbook is someone else’s interpretation of the past, which explains why a textbook published in China on the Second World War will be different from one that is published in Japan. 

RELIGION

Religion is not as “black and white” as many people perceive. Satrapi does a wonderful job in revealing to her audience that religion is personal, and perspectives change depending on the individual. Moha mentions her blog that“Marji has her own conception of religion which differs quite significantly from that of the regime.” Often, our understanding of a religion comes from surface level observations and stereotypes that do not leave much room for a greater interpretation. Suvi points out that stereotypes are a slippery slope that can lead us to labeling large groups of people as one thing. Consequently, this mentality can lead us to believing that a certain religion is corrupt or a “source of terrorism,” as Suvi describes, based on a few extremists. 

OURSELVES

There are also grey areas within ourselves, or as Kirveena phrases it, “the darkness and light of one’s self [that shapes] our identity.” In “Persepolis,” the colours black and white are used to depict characters and their characteristics. Amanda suggests that “Satrapi uses black to represent sadness, suppression and violence [and] white to show pure, heroic objects.” However, the way in which we decide whether something is “good” or “bad” is all up to the individual’s interpretation of the scenario. For a fundamentalist, the actions they are committing are considered good or even holy in their own eyes. Therefore, if it was a fundamentalist who wrote “Persepolis,” the colours would reverse, and those in power would be the ones dressed in white. Whether something is good or bad is subjective. Humans are complex beings, and their characteristics cannot be classified as either fully black or fully white, yet we often classify people into these two distinct groups.

 “No person is completely wicked, just as no person is perfect. We are all grey”

– Shinde Sweety

THE GREY AREA

Most if not all individuals tend to enjoy categorizing and separating things into groups. We perceive things as either black or white. However, as several of our classmates and Satrapi reveals, groups are all interconnected and overlap in various ways. Most things in life are not black or white, instead, they are grey.

One of the most important motifs that we are investigating in our ASTU class is the theme of identity. “Who we are” or in this case “Who is Marjane” and even “Who/What is Iran?” is an integral assumption and consideration that we must first make. The blogs that my fellow classmates have written provide an extremely broad scope on the large amounts of perspectives and stances they’ve taken in regards to their opinion on Persepolis The three that I’ve chosen, represents in my opinion three extremely important considerations that one should take in understanding the identity of Marjane and Iranian society: Balanced unpacking of prior knowledge, Contextual historical-based reflection, and psychological age-based perspective.

While prior knowledge can be an useful instrument in understanding works of literature such as Persepolis that are deeply imbedded in history, they can be a great impediment in a balanced academic inquiry due to the prior formation of biases. Alexis provides an excellent insight into this through self-reflection of the Western perspective of Russian people which he describes as “violent, drunken, backwards, militaristic, secretive, [and] cold-hearted”. He makes the astute observation that even though the Cold War is long over, Russian soldiers are still the most common kind of adversities in first player shooter games, especially American ones.

Likewise, Iranians have also been subject to similar bias in American media, being referred to as a part of the “Axis of evil” by George H.W. Bush. This has a large probability of colouring our view of both Marjane and the Iranian population as a whole. It should be also be mentioned that while this probably isn’t purposeful, Marjane’s portrayal of Iranian society other than the family and close friends is largely negative. Thus it is important to keep an open mind while considering the “identity” of Iran and remembering that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard doesn’t make up the vast majority of Iran.

That being said, it is also important to place Iran into its postcolonial context. The aftermath and implications of colonial rule had an extremely large impact on Iranian society and thus also on Marjane’s upbringing. Cherisse makes an extremely good point that I will quote directly to avoid butchering it, “Marji represents the discourse between Eastern and Western influences through her negotiation of her identity within the binaries of her culture”. This binary aspect of her culture is largely an result of colonial rule over Iran, as she didn’t go to traditional schools in Iran such as Maktabs and Madrassas but rather international schools that were likely installed after the implementation of the Shah when British and Soviet forces deposed of the previous ruler in 1941.

Additionally, we need to also consider the implications that arose in response to colonialism. The backlash that eventually became the Islamic Republic was in large part a result of repressed anger at Western interference in Iran after the policy nationalisation of Iranian oil was derailed by foreign interference through a coup. If we were to consider that the formation of Iraq was also a product of the Sykes–Picot Agreement and thus colonialism as well, then almost all of the major events in Persepolis ranging from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Iran-Iraq war were either a direct or indirect result of colonialism.

Lastly, Jessie states in her blog the importance of Marjane’s age in affecting her perspective of the events that transpired in Persepolis. Many of the violent and graphic descriptions in the graphic novel were accompanied by pitch black panels. While its important to have a balanced perspective and consider the possibility that Satrapi simply didn’t want to draw those imagines, we can also think of it as her simply being unable to comprehend it as a child. This latter perspective is backed up as she laments why her father never went through such hardships, showing her naive and inability to understand the true severity of the issue of torture.

In addition, we must consider that Marjane was still a teenager during this time and thus her descriptions of events other than this cannot be considered completely objective. For example, her depiction of the Cinema Rex fire is…. a controversial subject to say the least. In a more narrow interpretation, the Shah did not have troops blocking the cinema, but in a broader  view, her portrayal of public opinion was largely correct. This doesn’t just apply to age based bias, but also experience base ones. Her family was closely related/affiliated with other western sympathising intellectuals and thus were natural enemies of the Islamic regime. Thus her depictions of the people in frequent conflict with the Islamic government, while faithful in spirit, cannot be taken as an impartial view of the Iranian people during this time.

In this weeks ASTU class, most of my classmates blog posts were about the latest novel we read, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. This graphic memoir centers around the childhood of Marjane growing up in Iran during the 1980’s. There were several themes my peers decided to write about, including the role of religion in the novel, the difference between the media and the reality of Iran, the concept of a personal story or a testimony of peoples, and the impact of one’s culture on experiences.

Moha writes about the significance of the veil as a symbol of silence. She compares Marji’s personal relationship with God, to the public concept of oppressive islam. On one hand Satrapi criticizes the use of religion to control the public, limit individuality and eliminate western culture.  On the other hand, she shows us that her own relationship with religion contributed to her identity. Moha reminds us that as a kid Marji thought she would be a prophet, this is a use of religion that contributes to her individuality. Diego also takes a stance on the purpose of religion in the book, he suggests that Satrapi wants to start a conversation about the effects of the oppressive islamic regime. Although the novel takes place in the 80’s, extreme islam is still a very current topic and begs for debate in west, especially America.

The concept of religion in Iran is often portrayed in a particular light in media. Several of my classmates suggested that the act of Writing Persepolis is a direct challenge to the popular media’s view of islam and iranians. Isabel centered her blog around the differences she experienced between the negative media coverage of Iran and her personal visit to the country in 2015. She concludes that Satrapi’s purpose is to debunk the myth that all Iranians are part of the so-called “axis of evil”. She thinks that people should be more critical of the media. Suvi agrees that Persepolis intends to challenge stereotypes of iranians and islam. She sees that there is an issue in the west of equating people in the middle east to terrorists and religious extremists.

According to Satrapi, Persepolis is  “a story of a childhood” but some people argued that she was speaking for a community of people. Suvi and Isabel say that Satrapi intended to challenge the media, but this means that she is not only trying to show that herself doesn’t follow stereotypes, but that there is a larger group of people that are not terrorist and extremists. She is speaking on behalf of more Iranians than just herself. Meghan builds on the idea of a personal account vs testimony. She argues that it is impossible to tell a single story without bringing in other voices. I think it is interesting that Megan also says that it doesn’t matter who is telling the story, that the intrinsic value a story offers is important and needs to be heard regardless.

A related question is; does the background of the reader matter in terms of understanding a story? A couple classmates stated that they had a hard time relating to Marji’s story. Suvi, Diego and Daniel stated that they had problems walking in Marji’s shoes because they could never understand the climate she grew up in. Interestingly, Moha was able to connect her own experience moving from India to Canada to certain themes of Persepolis. She did not see the difference in culture as an obstacle. Daniel argues that there will always be cultural gaps and that should not deter people from reading stories. Although it may help to relate to a book, we should acknowledge our limitations of understanding and do our best anyway.

Hello ASTU G02! I had an incredible experience in reading everyone’s first blog posts!

Although I am a class blogger, I also had the opportunity to visit the Museum of Anthropology and the exhibit, the Arts of Resistance, curated by Dr. Laura Osorio Sunnucks, an expert in Mesoamerican art and heritage. While I formed my own interpretations and reflections on the artifacts and art pieces, reading my fellow classmates’ posts opened up new perspectives for me through the sharing of their personal connections in relation to the exhibition we were tasked with exploring.

I particularly found my classmate Aleksei’s personal connection to the exhibit to be very unique in the topic of foreign influence in his blog, especially that of the United States. He mentions many other political battles in Latin American countries, such as “Brazil’s far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro” in order to provoke a sense of commonalities in the global scale of political turmoil. He shares his interpretation of an art piece depicting American influence with the Peruvian government of the killings of Peruvian natives, and his expression of dissatisfaction with those actions taken, while also relating to how it connected to his family, in particular to that to his uncle. He was able to express a strong bias against the American colonial tendencies but also criticizes it, because of the possible biases that his memories are influenced by, particular because of his personal connection to it. Another one of my classmates also made a personal connection with Latin American politics in her blog post, as she came from a Latin American country herself.  Mirella was able to create a sense of solidarity in terms of the cultural representations of the “political realities” in Latin America.

Relating back to the ASTU course theme on the intricacies of memory, both Aleksei and Mirella, and among other blog posts, incorporated “different performances of self towards different audiences”, and personal memory in relation to the exhibit, and from the exhibit, to a film that we focused on, Stories We Tell. Many of the artworks created were based on the subjectivity of the artist’s own memory, as Kriveen had suggested in her post, such as one from a child who had made a drawing of helicopters shooting at Salvadoran people. Suggesting that “As the audience, we have to interpret the truth from the art.” and whose memory we draw from to find that truth.

I found that many of my fellow classmates took particular interest in one display, understandably  named, The Defence of Maize. Besides the economic implications of the intervention of maize modifications by GMOs, Moha had an interesting reflection on the exhibit, bringing in the cultural importance of maize. She initially explains that because of state intervention on maize, the lowered price of transgenic crops causes “the market and making non-transgenic maize production too unprofitable to continue”, and therefore, threatening the “cultural significance of many Mayan traditions and legends”. Similarly, Tracy also recognizes the historical value of the maize to the Indigenous groups, and the economic impediment farmers and loss of “historical ownership” are the results of the actions to takeover maize cultivation by the state. Interestingly, Tracy notes the canvas in which the exhibit was created on through the use of graffiti stencils, which is also a form of resistance in itself. She inquires further, that there is incentive to resist state oppression with graffiti, “painted on colonial walls” as a form of art and expression. Another classmate brings the layout of the exhibit as a important factor as well into her blog, Venus describes the graffiti stencils with 3 layers of components, placing importance on “the artist, the audience and the (meaning of) artwork.” Many blog posts reflected on the same exhibit, with many similarities regarding economic issues and cultural importance of the maize, along with their own interpretation of how those issues were represented.

As a class, we also had the amazing opportunity to talk with the curator Laura herself, during the CAP joint lecture on October 3rd. Laura went into very specific details on her thought process while she was bringing in authentic pieces for the exhibit. The idea of representation that she emphasized during her presentation allowed us to understand the importance of giving her privilege to speak, to the marginalized people who could not, through this exhibit. Women from Latin America got the opportunity to represent themselves, by telling their own stories and painting the murals.

By reading the blog posts, I was able to see common themes of political oppression, representation of memory and historical accounts based on memory, and resistance through cultural art. Even if I was unable to visit the museum, the interpretations of the displays, and reflection of personal connections would have allowed me to understand the importance of resisting political oppression in Latin America with powerful and vibrant art. Although the focus of the exhibit was about Latin America, cultural art can be a powerful political statement, regardless of where it is on the globe. In my own conclusion, I believe that our theme of memory in our ASTU class was demonstrated by how our classmates all had a slightly perspective and focus on the exhibit, through how they recalled their own memory and reflections of the displays while they wrote their blogs, and their own unique personal relationships to it. 

It was definitely a fun experience to write a blog like this! Until next time!

-Jessie Y.

Hello, my fellow classmates!

Over the past month, our ASTU class has been exploring the theme of memory and identity through group discussions about the autobiographical documentary, Stories We Tell directed by Sarah Polley. The documentary explores the concepts of identity in relation to other people and their perceptions of the truth based on memory. I personally thought the documentary was a helpful introduction to literature and memory as it gave me a grasp of what it means to be a Global Citizen.

Self-taken photograph

We were given the task to visit the “Arts of Resistance” exhibition curated by Dr. Laura Osorio Sunnucks. The exhibition was held in the Museum of Anthropology since May 17^th, 2018. “Arts of Resistance” focused on the theme of inclusion of native marginalized communities through the artifacts shown in the exhibition. According to Dr. Laura, its purpose was to strategically enhance, develop and expand Latin American objects. She selectively chose artifacts based on their ancestral history, rituals, performances and how they each narrate a story to answer the question, “what is tradition?”.

Within our class blogosphere, I was significantly drawn to a handful of blogs which stood out to me as they each focused on an artifact within the exhibition and incorporated their own interpretations of how it connected to our central theme of “memory” during their visit to the museum. A majority of the blogs I read were heavily focused on the narration of historical stories told by the marginalized communities and political situations faced at the time. For instance; Kriveena questioned the child’s memory of the event as a “version of the truth”. Through her eyes, she was able to see what the child saw and experienced. Interestingly, when I walked past the sketches of memories these children drew of what they experienced, I could instantly relate to what Kriveena said. It’s like the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words” because we didn’t have to hear a narration of the story, it was illustrated through the drawing. This brought me back to our discussions about Sarah Polley’s documentary where we wondered how memories were being preserved in cultural artifacts. This made me think, who gets to choose what gets to be remembered and what gets to be forgotten? I would say that this is dependent upon each individual on whether someone is willing and prepared to share their traumatic experiences.

Ideas of differences in story-telling and experiences as an individual or a group were evident in the blog posts I read. Azumi, Kriveena, Venus, and Jodie made comments on the intentions of the artifacts as not only an individual experience but how it was experienced by a group of people. They referred to the “sociological imagination” and “considers the interconnections between the social history and individual biography”. Jodie mentions how having similarities of sharing a traumatic experience between Salvadorians can act as a “source of liberation” knowing they’re not facing it alone. She acknowledges the power history has to “shape our identity, while a common history also creates a building block for relationships to form”. In connection to our modern society, I think it’s especially important to acknowledge the tragic and traumatic experiences that have occurred in the past in order for communities to reconnect and be inclusive of one another.

The reflections translated through the artifacts was an approach which some of the class bloggers used to solidify their anchor. Venus indicates that “The Defence of Maize” reflects “the opportunity given to them on their attitude towards life” as they are able to depict the “political reality of Latin America, such as the experience of people who were escaping during the Salvadorian Civil War”. Focusing on the same installation, Joline recognized that it “reflected on the oppression of indigenous societies and issues of poverty in Mexico….” I thought that noticing these reflections of what was translated brought out Dr. Laura’s intentions of filling in the gaps of ancestral knowledge and colonialism. It brought out the pure version of the cultures because they are profuse with cultural meaning. However, during the Skype call with Dr. Laura in our CAP joint lecture, she raises the question about aesthetic power. Whether or not something was beautiful, how it played a role in impacting people’s interests and how it directed their attention towards certain artifacts. I tied the two concepts of aesthetic power and reflections translated because as viewers of the exhibition, I felt like it was our responsibility to be understanding and open-minded about other people’s cultures, ancestral history and the relationship between art and culture.

To sum it all up, the “Arts of Resistance” exhibition has presented different ways that Latin American communities represent themselves. This related to our discussions in ASTU class about viewing multiple perspectives and how each person told their story either individually or as a collective group. Dr. Laura’s interests when curating artifacts in this exhibition were heritage management, languages that disappeared and how people in the marginalized communities didn’t have a global platform to express their ancestral history.

In class, we often questioned the reliability of these stories as sometimes, there were different versions of the truth. I felt that going to the exhibition broadened my knowledge about the minority populations worldwide and First Nations. Before stepping foot into Canada, I was unaware of the First Nations and didn’t focus on uncovering public issues or acts of resistance as I felt like it wasn’t my primary concern. Being a third-culture student who moved around quite often, it was quite challenging to bury my head deep into understanding the ancestral history and solidifying my political views of each city I inhabited. However, after our discussions and lectures in my CAP classes, I have learned so much about the ancestral history of not only Canada but Latin America as well. It is eye-opening to be able to identify these public issues, listen to other people’s stories of their lives and what they remembered. Now, I understand the importance of making connections between the content I learn in my ASTU, Sociology and Political Science class.

After being the class blogger, it was nice to see my classmates incorporate theories and concepts we have learned from our other classes (ex. Mills’ sociological imagination and Anderson’s imagined communities). I look forward to seeing how each of us grow and develop to becoming and further embracing our identity as a global citizen.