Cultural Theory in Everyday Practice

Chapter twelve

comics as everyday theory: the counterpublic world of taiwanese women fans of japanese homoerotic manga.

author: Frank Martin

This chapter was probably the most surprising of all chapters. I did NOT know that there were that much female fans of the homoerotic, BL and GL manga. When I go to the bookstore, being a girl, I just usually go to the romantic section where the ending is usually the guy or the girl ending up with the other main guy or girl. I have to admit, sometimes I do take the occasional violent fighting genres since I got tired of reading the same story plot line over and over again, but I never expected that that exact same reason led most women to grab comics from the erotic section. In fact, I didn’t even know that there was an erotic section for girls. Being born in a country where those type of things are not actually legal, this came came as a huge shock to me. I understood form the interviews that most women read these kind of mangas because it is a change to be part of the process of thinking about important elements of their own social experiences as young, feminine-gendered social and sexual subjects. Unlike in usual gay comics, which is not the same as BL mangas, the main characters which are male, declares not to be a homosexual. In contrast with straight romance manga, BL represent gender and sexual ambiguity. Interviewees admit that they don’t like powerless girl characters in straight mangas and prefer BL since it seems more realistic when the boy victims are able to fight back. At first, I have always assumed that the goal behind BL, GL and homoerotic mangas was only to satisfy peoples different sexual desires. But now that I know ever straight people like to read BL and GL manga, I’m beginning to understand that maybe those mangas aren’t only set out to fulfill others desires. They are there to break the hegemonic plot lines. To define what people think is the ‘normal’ way. I guess genre critiques can only lie on even the most unexpected ways, which in this case, comes in the form of erotic gender bending mangas. What these mangas are saying is that people should not put limitations of conventional genres of girl-directed pop culture. Though I might not be and will not be reading these kind of mangas, I believe that they’re cause is putting out a say to the world.

Cultural Theory in Everyday Practice

Chapter four

no peace without war, no war without peace: deconstructing war

author: Nick Mansfield

The goal of this chapter is to look at war and peace in relation to a binary opposition, which is defining things in terms of opposing pairs; such as war and peace. According to Derrida, the two belong together and need one another to define each one individually, they determine and require one another. No one can define what peace is without war and vice versa. What seemed so confusing at first to me slowly made sense. It’s just like gender, there would be no masculine people if there weren’t any feminine ones. Or there wouldn’t be any beautiful people without those unfortunate hideous ones. According to Thomas Hobbes, war is the natural state of humanity while peace is the interruption of our natural violence. This was perhaps one of the easiest thing this chapter mentions. It wasn’t hard to understand that mankind is naturally violence which makes the idea of war being our natural state acceptable. Peace is merely a rest, a pit stop, to take a bit of a break from what we are so that we would be prepared for the next (war). However, according to Emmannuel Levinas, war is the interruption, “War is the clash that happens within the ferment of identities and values that define the social world”. Somehow I took Levinas explanation to be connected with the idea that war is the solution or at least the action taken whenever there is a social contradiction among man. But then again, I might be wrong. Others might perceive it in another way. But what this chapter has succeed to convey was the message of the relationship between peace and war. One cannot exist without the other even though the relationship between the two will always be unstable and problematic. Though many hope that some day, peace might be the only existing one, i believe what this chapter is trying to tell them is that they should give up those hopes. Because once again, they cannot live individually. Where peace goes, war will follow, it is inevitable. People who are still trying to fight for the other one (peace) should realize that in doing so, they are unknowingly acting the one thing they are trying to destroy (war). This on going cycle is predicted by many philosophers such as Levinas, Hobbe and Derrida to be unbreakable.

Cultural Theory in Everyday Practice

Chapter six

Tattooing: the bio-political inscription of bodies and selves

author: Nikki Sullivan

In Chapter six of “Cultural Theory of Everyday Practice”, the author talks about tattooing as the bio-political inscription of bodies and selves that the deployment of power is directly connected to the body. The statement that I most agree with form the chapter is “it is often regarded as a performative act of symbolic rebellion” (Sullivan, 82) I believe that tattooing is an act of rebellion, an act that most subculture groups take pride in as it distinct them from the dominant groups as well as being seen as a form of counter-cultural resistance that suggests how the body is inscribed as the commodified stuff of self-actualization. A tattoo articulates ones interiority and community membership, emphasizing ones feeling of belonging. Furthermore, a tattoo also tells an individual’s “identification with counter-hegemonic discourses, practices, and lifestyles” (Sullivan, 82) such as feminism. But there is also another viewpoint that certain groups of people have on tattooing such as Christians. In the Christian religion, tattooing is established as a deviant practice since it involves the contamination of God’s temple, the human body. Being born into a Christian household, it was mandatory that I shun upon these deviance including the people that have them. My family would often frown upon other family members that ignore this belief and decide to get a tattoo themselves. Though to some extent I believe that tattooing is an act of one’s rebellious pursuit to a certain entity, I do not believe that it is an act of sin. Personally, I believe that tattooing is merely an act of arrogance and pride that involves defying the dominant culture to establish one’s own position in society. People who are overwhelmingly insecure about themselves in terms of appearance and who they are as a person would tend to deviate the focus on a particular object that they posses, such as a tattoo.

Cultural Theory in Everyday Practice

Chapter Five

Eating the other: deconstructing the ‘ethics’ of cannibalism

author: Nicole Anderson

In chapter five of “Cultural Theory of Everyday Practice”, the author talks about cannibalism as being more than merely an act of the consumption of human flesh done by another human being. The author at some point refers cannibalism in the more symbolic term which was originally a theory developed by Jacques Derrida in which it is considered as the act of mimicking others, appropriation, ownership, desiring and repletion of people in society (Anderson, 69). But to be considered as cannibalism, there must be a subject that is being consumed in which the author describes as someone who is autonomous, an individual who posses’ an essential personality, identity and the desire of self-preservation. There is also the other theory of cannibalism in being a form of love and lust. The example that the book provides is of a German and Japanese man. There was the Japanese man who ate the women he loved when she rejected him. He claimed that the reason behind his cannibalistic actions was because he wanted to be one with his loved one and that he has always wanted to eat a beautiful woman. To this man, eating isn’t merely the form of consuming transformed products of living creatures as pure nutritive products, but it is an act of love. Then there is Armin Meiwes, a German technician who was arrested for the cannibalism of Bernd Brandes. When brought to court, the prosecution argues that Meiwes’ act of murder was for the purpose of sexual gratification because after having sex with Brandes, Meiwes preceded with Brande’s consent, videotaping the killing and eating of him. Both men acted upon their lustful feelings when they were in the process of what society today views as cannibalism. However, coming back to Derrida’s theory, some people question whether this was truly an act of cannibalism since Brandes was not considered by some as being autonomous because he lack the human desire of self-preservation. Personally, I think that despite Derrida’s theory, I still consider this as an act of cannibalism. I have always thought of cannibalism as an act of consuming the same species in the form of a person who literally consumes the other persons flesh and body parts. However, this chapter has introduced me to new meanings of the theory of cannibalism including symbolic cannibalism.

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