Month: January 2016

After reading and discussing Judith Butler’s article titled “Frames of War; When is Life Griviable?”  in my ASTU class, I have started to think a lot about the ways that I see things, and how that differs from everyone else.  Butler talks about the different “Frames” people look through when they remember trauma, but I have thought more about the frames that I look through in my everyday life. Just like from behind a window, I see the world through my own biases that are unfortunately unavoidable. Everyone hold biases, even if they don’t want to, and learning that has really changed my mindset around them. Instead of trying to eliminate bias from my own opinions, I have started to try and better understand the biases that I hold. In other words, I have stopped trying to get rid of my frames, in favour of identifying them.

So what are the different frames I look through? It’s very difficult to identify the biases that one’s self holds, because to us they just seem normal. In my own case, I know that I have come from a middle-class Canadian family, I am male, caucasian, I have had the privilege of education… the list goes on. All of these things affect the way that I perceive the world around me. Even if it’s subconscious, all my actions are influenced by the biases that I hold.

What this leads me to wonder is: who is benefiting from my biases, and more importantly, who is being negatively affected by them? I have been lucky to be able to look into these questions in my other Global Citizens classes. In sociology, learning about socialisation has helped me better understand how biases come into place. In political science, I have learned about group polarization and it’s role in supporting biases. Finally in Geography, I have started to learn about the changes that have happened and are happening in the way people and their biases. It has been really nice to have so many connecting ideas within the CAP Global Citizens program, and I look forward to exploring even more!

After reading and discussing the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close book by Jonathan Safran Foer in my ASTU class, I thought a lot about the different biases that people experience trauma through.

This book is about a young boy who loses his father traumatically in 9/11. Half the book is written from the perspective of this boy Oskar. The way he experiences and conveys this trauma to us is extremely different to the way one of the many other millions of people that have been affected by this event. His perspective even differs so much from his own families, as does everyone’s perspectives differ from each other. There are so many ways to tell the stories of trauma, and different ways to experience it too.

An excellent example of a different perspective is when Oskar says “A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don’t know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter” (Foer, 11). Firstly he say the “worst day” and is referencing the traumatic day of 9/11. Secondly, he says that writing letters making his boots lighter, referencing his happiness. labels like “the worst day” and phrases like “make my boots lighter” and expressive of how Oskar interoperates and experiences his trauma. It’s not just Oskar that sees this trauma in a very different way, it’s everyone.

No one is going to have the exact same perspective looking at a traumatic event, or any event for that matter. each person is going to experience the event with their own biases. This is not a bad thing, but it does make me question which parts of the trauma’s stories are being heard? Which biases are we listening and learning through? And who is not being heard?

I hope to look more into these questions by exploring different perspectives on trauma in my ASTU class