Mariana Drok

“Replace fear of the unknown with curiosity.”

― Penelope Ward, Jake Understood

This year in our ASTU class we have been discussing a lot of relevant issues of today’s modernized and globalized world. The topics varied from collective, cultural, national memory and forgetting to more specific ideas connected in particular to the events of 9/11 such as trauma transfer, collective responsibility, vulnerability and others. The whole ASTU course has been an overwhelming and thought provoking adventure for me. I can definitely say that the readings and discussions we had broadened my mind a lot. I also received a different perspective on things I usually didn’t think about or had a very limited representation of. I have spent a while thinking about the “aha” moments I had throughout the course and I realized that everything we learned had those small and big moments, so it was hard to choose a particular topic or idea that attracted my attention the most. However, I decided to focus this post on something that stood out to me recently and is still fresh in my memory. The novel by Mohsin Hamid The Reluctant Fundamentalist was one of those books that always hold a reader in a tension and give them a space for interpretation. The idea of the stereotypes and false representation of a particular nation or culture seems so obsolete, but it is still a common corner stone for a lot of people and even nations. This idea became a background of the novel.

When we look at people who are different from us what do we see? Do we make an effort to get to know the person, or do we tend to generalize them as ‘Middle Eastern’, ‘Eastern European’, ‘Chinese’ or ‘American’? Do we have a right to do that? The idea behind all of these questions is to keep ourselves alert on whether we are dividing a society on ‘us’ and ‘them’ or do we accept the diversity around and replace the fear with curiosity to actually learn more about a person, nation, religion or culture.

The physical appearance can fool people and make them hate each other just because of the differences they have. But isn’t it the difference that makes each personality unique and more interesting? The small box of the stereotypes people tend to put themselves in does not only make their lives more dull, but also prevents them from the boundless opportunities the diverse world can offer. One of them is the ability to accept – accept the diversity and people around. This leads to the erosion of the fear that is advertised by the fear culture that rose after 9/11.

Recently I watched the TED talk by the Muslim scholar Dalia Mogahed, who talks about stereotyping and fear the West has toward the East. She also destroys these false ideas by the examples from her life. I feel like this video can be a nice contribution to our discussion of the post 9/11 emergence of the fear culture.

Our class has been a source of inspiration and curiosity for me. It opened my eyes to the questions that are worth being talked about and solved both on the local and global levels. Something that keeps echoing in mind are the words from the first book we read in class – Persapolis by Marjane Satrapi : “I believe that the entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists”. So, let’s stay opened to the diversity around us and be inspired by it.

Picture retrieved from : https://www.pinterest.com/pin/393994667382057247/

“Beloveds, we do not know how to live our lives with any agency outside our bed.”

– Juliana Spahr

This week our ASTU class has been reading poems by American poet Juliana Spahr. Her book This connection of everyone with lungs was written as a reply to the events of 9/11. However, it doesn’t exclusively focus on this trauma, otherwise it touches more than just one specific event. In this manner Spahr introduces a reader to a question: ‘where my experience ends and your begins?’ In this post I would like to write about a comfort zone everyone has and the way people choose to stay there because of the fear of vulnerability.

Everyone has their own place where the world stays out of their side and the only focus they have is their private, personal, individual. Spahr uses the analogy with bed, as a place where people recover their energy, feel secure and isolated from the troubles of the day. For some people their bed is a place they live in all the time. There are thousands of them all over the world.

The linear thinking leads to the concept of living one’s own life without any interest in what is happening in the world. However, in the era of media and globalization there are no longer boundaries and the luxury to hide in one’s own shell becomes inaccessible. It is important to understand that our lives are not separate parallels, but parts of a circle. People are vulnerable no matter where they are. The illusion of security that exists in our beds is so faint and fragile that it can barely protect us. Only by accepting the connection we all have with each other we can start thinking about the ways we in which we can make this world a better place to live in. It doesn’t require everyone becoming presidents and prime ministers, but the change of a mindset can already be a small step toward a better future.

This week our class has been reading the scholarly article by the literary theorist Judith Butler. She argues that we, as human beings, are interdependent and responsible for each other. According to Butler this responsibility comes from the mutual understanding of vulnerability we possess. Butler builds her theory around the example of bodies imposed to the external world. She argues that such factors as nationality, culture and territory shouldn’t be things that separate humanity and create different groups of people fighting with each other.

This article made me think about the value of people’s lives and the way we distinguish between valuable and invaluable lives. From my own experience I know how easy it is to be sympathetic to the problems one’s own country is facing and stay indifferent to the others. Two years ago the revolution happened in Ukraine. A lot of people lost their lives fighting for their rights and democracy. The whole nation was grieving and mourning over the enormous loss the country experienced. After these events the war with Russia made everyone concentrate on the conflict happening in the East of the country.  A lot of people look at current events as at something that happened just in Ukraine and nowhere else. However, the ability to relate to the similar invasions elsewhere in the world might make the suffering easier and create the connection with others experiencing the same problem.

In addition, these events added more nationalistic moods in society. People tend not to talk a lot about problems the world is facing. They prefer to stay indifferent to the “vulnerability” of others. I am pretty sure that there a lot of people who share the same point of view and make a choice to concentrate on their domestic issues solely. This is not the problem of one or another nation. It is rather a challenge for each individual to leave their comfort zone and see the interconnection with other people regardless of their nationality, race or culture.

Body is an organism that consists of different parts. People or humanity can also be seen as a body. We can all be different, possess different goals and values and speak different languages. However, the body can function properly when its different parts work together. Each nation or culture can be seen as a part of a body. Understanding this connection with each other allows an individual to value their own lives and lives of those around them in a different way.

Picture retrived from : https://www.pinterest.com/pin/394698354822859364/

My ASTU class has been focusing on the topic of trauma for the last 5 months and as a new term begins we continue obtaining new perspectives on this issue. This time our attention was drown to the Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremly Loud and Incredibly Close. This is the story of tragedy and loss shared not just within one family or a country, but within the whole world.

Events of the 9/11 shook the world with the incredible force. When four planes crashed into the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania people were terrified all over the planet. However, not everyone could relate to the events as to something personal. Foer’s novel helps understand the tragedy from the perspective of a nine-year-old, Oskar, who lost his dad. In this post I would like to focus on the topic of 9/11 exceptionalism and the way it is portrayed in Foer’s novel.

The concept of 9/11 exceptionalism seems to be something new for me, as I grew up in Ukraine and learned about the tragic events from the TV. I don’t think that Ukrainian media covered this topic enough. In addition I was pretty small to understand completely what had happened. However, right now learning and exploring more facts on this event, I can understand why people treat it as a starting point of a new history, history of War on Terror. As terrorist attack took place in one of the most crowded places in New York it spread the feeling of insecurity and instability all over the USA and the rest of the world. The security measures taken after 9/11 continue to exist and create even more control. The global order of things was forever changed and 9/11 might continue to influence the way people travel, spend their free time, work and live in general.

However, are the attacks of 9/11 actually exceptional? Terrorist attacks were happening and continue to happen now. People experience trauma all over the world. The way Foer emphasizes the existence of similarly between different traumatic events is through the story of Oskar’s grandparents, who experienced bombing in Dresden, seemingly a safe city during the WW2. People can feel unspeakable trauma and it connects them with others, who faced war or terror attack. Events like these are not supposed to set borders between people. On the contrary they can unite people and make them understand each other more.

Every trauma is exceptional and every personal experience is special. However, sometimes it is better to look at a bigger picture and connect pieces of puzzles. We all go our saparate ways in the same way Oskar did, but by making connections with other people’s stories he was able to understand himself and the world arund him better.

Last week our ASTU class visited the Rare Books and Special Collections Library (RBSC), where we had an amazing opportunity to explore archives. Archives ‘mainly consist of primary sources and are received by a person or organization’. The most exciting and precious feature of archives is their integrity. The fact that archives do not contain any outside analysis and interpretation gives a person more space for exploration and does not limit their research. As our class is currently reading Joy Kogawa’s novel Obasan, the main purpose of our visit to RBSC was to learn more about the process of writing the book by looking at primary sources given to the library by the author. Looking through Joy Kogawa’s archives made me think about a choice she made – to share her memories with others. In this post, I want to discuss the connection between a public and private archive, the way one’s memories can become a property of a society.

People make a choice to save some things and throw others away. By doing so, they deliberately choose to forget some events and to remember others. The connection between things (artifacts) and particular events is obvious. These artifacts preserve the memories and keep them alive in people’s hearts and minds. For example, families tend to store their pictures and other items that remind them of a special event or a period of time so that they can remember it. “Things that belong to yesterday”(Kogawa, 62) are not just materialistic belongings, but memory holders. Why is it important to remember? The answer lies in the words of one of the Obasan’s characters – Aunt Emily: ‘the past is the future’ (Kogawa, 60).         Remembering family’s history is necessary to maintain the feeling of belonging. This topic is widely discussed in Obasan. Naomi, who is Sansei (the third generation of the Japanese-born immigrants) is in the conflict inside. The lack of knowledge makes her experience displacement and uncertainty. However, by rediscovering information about her family’s past makes Naomi understand herself better and provides her with a background she always needed.

The significance of private archives is undeniable. However, private archives are accessible only to a particular group of people within one family, or another social group, while public archives are there to enrich minds of the whole society. When a private archive becomes public it reevaluates the memory. It is obvious, that not every private archive can have a value in the eyes of a society. The artifacts placed for public must be the ones that tell the story of something relevant for the whole society. A public archive as an institution of a social memory can be a place of learning more about one’s culture and even redefining one’s personality through looking at a more global scale.

I was greatly impressed by Joy Kogawa’s documents, letters, and pictures. For me, as for an international student, it was very interesting and in some ways surprising to reveal a more shady side of the Canadian history not just through reading Obasan, but through getting acquainted with personal belongings of the author. This experience brought more reality to the story of Obasan. Even though the book is a work of fiction, it is based on real events and definitely has something to share with a reader. It ruins a silence kept for a long time within a Canadian society. Thus, archives can be more than just collections of things, they can tell stories of lives and connect past with the present.

Photo retrieved from http://rbsc.library.ubc.ca/news/featured-room-mackenzie-seminar-room/

Works cited: Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1981. Print.

“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.”

― John Maeda

This week our ASTU class continued reading Marjane Satrapi’s book – ‘Persepolis’. With new perspectives and topics coming up in our discussions, I would like to talk more about the format and style of this graphic narrative in the following post. I used the article written by a scholar and critic, Hillary Chute as a source of my inspiration. In her work she analyses verbal and visual techniques used by Satrapi.

Usually people have a set of stereotypes about the genre of comic books. Mine was narrowed to the idea of comics being books for teenagers, who do not want to spend their time on reading ‘normal’ literature. However, having read ‘Persepolis’, I realized how much mistaken I was. This genre can not only be used in educative purposes, but it also enriches one’s mind by providing an uncommon perspective at usual things.

‘Persepolis’ is a unique and authentic piece of art. As the majority of people tend to judge a book by its cover, it is essential to tell that the cover of ‘Persepolis. The story of a Childhood’ is the most colorful part of the book. The bright red background attracts a reader and scares them at the same time. The aggressiveness it holds serves as a pre-introduction to the story. It is followed by the panels, which are depicted in a violent but simple way. The events described in the book are serious and traumatic. This combination of trauma and a naïve perspective of a child are contradicting, but thanks to them a special, even more realistic setting appears before a reader. In such a way, the design and colors work to reflect author’s attitude towards the tragedy happening in her country. Another thing to consider is the use of traditions of Persian art in Persepolis. As Chute argues these avant-garde patterns ‘call attention to the horror of history’. The same techniques Satrapi uses in her book were used in German Expressionism. ‘German Expressionism is an artistic genre that originated in Europe in the 1920s, and is broadly defined as the rejection of Western conventions, and the depiction of reality that is widely distorted for emotional effect.’

Minimalism is an outstanding feature of ‘Persepolis’ that creates a particular atmosphere of the story.
The use of black and white makes the representation of the events more accurate. It has a strong influence on the way a reader perceives the story. Satrapi explains: ‘Violence today has become something normal, so banal – that is to say everybody thinks it’s normal. But it’s not normal. To draw it and put it in color – the color of flesh and the red of the blood, and so forth – reduces it by making it realistic’ (Hajdu 2004,35).

The form of telling a story is as significant as the content is. Putting the story of one’s life into small black and white boxes takes courage, especially if it is your own story. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that such a way of story telling is a shortcoming. Minimalism can be used in graphic narrative as a tool providing a space for the undistorted representation of events.

Works cited:

Chute, Hillary. “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.” Project Muse – WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly – Volume 36, Numbers 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2008. Project Muse, n.d. Web. 15 Oct. 2015.

Hajdu, David. “Persian Miniatures.” Articles by David Hajdu. BookForum, 2011. Web. 15 Oct. 2015.

‘I believe that the entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists ‘

This week our class was discussing Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic memoir ‘Persepolis’. In this book Satrapi is sharing her experience of growing up during the fundamentalist revolution and Arabic invasion in Iraq in 1980-ies. In the introduction to the memoir Satrpi claims that people don’t have a moral right to draw conclusions about a nation relying solely on mistakes of a few members of their society. The author stands firm in defending her country through the whole story, even though she doesn’t deny the hard political situation it is facing. This way of telling country’s history is informal and it doesn’t include all the important facts and chronologies. However, it provides a reader with another perspective, giving them opportunity to understand what it feels like to be a child in the place, where joy is sinful and people are deprived of freedom.

To what extend should political news affect the way one looks at a nation? Everyday news about wars and conflicts spread all over the world. Consciously or not people tend to make assumptions and shape a particular attitude towards the subject even without sufficient evidence. Unfortunately, hasty generalizations is a common phenomenon nowadays. When people hear about Iran Islamic revolution in 1979 they usually think about extremists and put this tag on the whole nation. Data presented by media is usually accessible. Numbers of victims shown on TV don’t include their names, backgrounds, families or any kind of personal information. Thus it is very easy to get used to the idea of war and become judgemental of the whole population of a country, or a particular group of people, who share the same culture or religion.

So, how can one representative of a nation change the way majorities look at their country? Satrapi is one of those people who decided to take a stand and show the rest of the world that ‘Iranians were not an abstract concept but rather human beings for whom the words pride, dignity, patriotism and life mean exactly the same thing as they do to Americans’. ‘Persepolis’ awakens reader’s empathy and awareness of the reality Iranians live in. It changes people’s attitude to the nation as a whole by broadening their horizons and getting rid of stereotypes they keep in their heads.

Works cited:

• Satrapi, Marjane, and Marjane Satrapi. 2007. The complete Persepolis. New York: Pantheon Books.
• Satrapi, Marjane. ‘Defending My Own Country’. The New York Times 28 November 2005

For the last two weeks our ASTU class has been discussing topics related to literature and memory. We looked at the ways they interact and supplement each other. The discussions dealt with the phenomenon of collective remembering and learning, which is widely described in Farhat Shahzad’s article ‘The role of Interpretive Communities in Remembering and Learning’. I find this theme relevant and worth being a part of a global dialogue because of the educational contribution that can be made with a better understanding of interpretive communities and the process of collective remembering. In this post I would like to look closer at such a powerful technology of memory as storytelling.

The significance of the interpretive communities in the First Nations’ history cannot be overlooked. UBC is located on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Musqueam people. This nation was present on the territory of British Columbia for thousands of years. However, Musqueam people were forced to leave their land because of the development of the metropolitan city. This, of course, greatly affected the way they organized their lives. In addition to that, the whole Musqueam culture as well as their language were put under the threat of extinction. Only by means of a collective memory Mosqueam people were able to save their traditions and cultural heritage. The Museum of Anthropology provides a wide range of information and exhibitions on the history of the first nations. One of the most impressive parts of the museum is a small kitchen room with a table in the middle of it. This piece of art symbolizes the process of collective remembering and learning. For Mosqueam people a narrative is the most efficient and common way to share information with others, as it involves both personal emotions and their identity. According to Wertsch, collective remembering in interpretive communities allows to tie past to the present. History, on contrary, excludes personal experience and ‘aspires to provide accurate account of the past, even if it means we must give up favored and often self-served narratives’.

Information is a powerful tool of manipulation in the 21^st century. When it is being distorted the only way to learn the truth is by listening to people, who have experienced a particular event themselves. Not only does storytelling clarify data, but also makes it easier to be remembered.

Photo retrieved from: http://moa.ubc.ca/collections/