Nicolo at UBC (ASTU)

Hello readers! Err, perhaps more for fittingly, “beloveds” or “yous”.

This week, my ASTU 100 class at the University of British Columbia embarked on another journey: poetry! We moved from engaging in the powerful notion of 9/11 Exceptionalism portrayed in Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close to an equal heavyweight in its own right, Juliana Spahr’s book of poems entitled This Connection of Everyone with Lungs. As we read and discussed this book in class there were several key themes that caught my attention and what I wish to expand on in this blog. These motifs include: lungs, skins, and beds.

Right from the get-go, we begin to feel a sense of togetherness, but also vulnerability. As each new line begins, another premise is added to what is already kept in tact. This collectiveness, “as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room…in and out” (Spahr 8) and, “How connected we are with everyone” (9) reminds me of our good friend Judith Butler. By referring to the precariousness of life and our bodies as a social construct, whereby vulnerable to the interpretation of others (Butler 33), we see this echoed in Spahr’s writing. Because of our interdependence on one another, we are therefore vulnerable to the toxicity of others. As everyone with lungs breaths the spaces, we also susceptible to bacteria, negativity, sulfuric acid, and silicon particles. “How lovely and how doomed this connection of everyone with lungs” (Spahr 9-10).

Further, we see the popular theme of skins rise to the forefront pages later. Ultimately, I interpreted skins quite contrastingly. Personally, skin is what separates us from other bodies, but also unites us through touch. With the skin being the largest organ in the body, it not only keeps all of our organs inside of us, protects from outside substances, but also grants us special privileges. Fittingly, in our Sociology 100 class we have been discussing race, ethnic and ancestry. More recently, racism being linked to four key elements: racialization, prejudice, discrimination, and power. By analyzing “The Construction of Whiteness” and “The Privilege of Whiteness” in class, it opened new doors to interpretation. This topic is becoming ever more important with the heightened “New Jim Crow Laws” revolving the mass incarceration of African Americans and the problematic dangers of saying #AllLivesMatter. “I speak of the separations that define this world and the separations that define us…” (Spahr 19). However, as the next line in the poem writes, skin also intimately connects us together, “…even as we like to press our skins against one another in the night” (19). These intimate connections are what makes the skin such a gateway for creation and destruction.

Lastly, I want to look at beds, but more specifically, agency. Spahr’s lines on page 24, “As it happens every night, beloveds, while we turned in the night sleeping uneasily the world went on without us” and “beloveds, we do not know how to live our lives with any agency outside our bed” (26) are the lines that really stuck out to me. The notion of local-global is something we have touched on both in our Geography 122 and ASTU 100 classes. In particular, as Spahr speaks of all of the events and tragedies that occurred all over the world in a different time zone, she does so from Hawaii in her bed and with a laptop at hand – “while we turned sleeping…” (24). – this is one perspective of local-global. Interestingly, this is in contrast with Joe Sacco in Safe Area Gorazde, who fought to report the real truth. A widely contested debate has spurred between the effectiveness of real first-person journalism vs. the power of internet activism. This fight for real truth is what separates good reporters from great ones. On the other hand, however, I can see another argument placed for internet activism in that it raises awareness by the numbers. I want to turn it to “yous”, the reader. Do you see internet activism as an effective method to raise awareness, or does it harmfully dislocate our perspective from the real upfront truth?

Cheers,

Nico Jimenez