Month: January 2016

From what I heard this week, our ASTU class been on the topic of trauma through an article by Judith Butler, “Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect”. I have not been in class this week because I have caught one of the worst infections I have ever experienced – STREP THROAT (search it up if you don’t know and AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS). If any of you guys know what this is, I will never take my throat for granted again because it is EXTREMELY PAINFUL to swallow even my own saliva (feels like your throat is being pricked with fish bones 24/7). Furthermore, I found out that I was allergic to the penicillin that they gave me for treatment, so I just started on a new medication.

Anyways, aside from my terrible week, I found the article by Butler to be confusing to understand and a little bit repetitive to read. But I thought her argument that the use of the human body as a “bounded kind of entity” (52) to be really interesting. She uses this point to emphasize how precarious the human life is, which also connects to her point of which human lives are deemed as valuable and which ones are not. Despite the fact that all human lives are precarious and fragile, “lives are divided into those representing …” many things such as state interventions or destruction (53). Her examples using the United States as a major player in invading and influencing other countries without provocation stood out to me because that is exactly what I am learning in history. The US has had a very unstable with its neighbour, Central and South America because it has deemed itself as a bringer of democracy to countries it deemed as illiberal and authoritarian. The US has achieved its influence through coup d’etats and by supplying certain groups that it believed would bring democracy to certain countries. For example, the coup in Guatemala of the 1930s was supported by the CIA in order to bring in a new government deemed better by the US. But during the process of all of these “liberations”, thousands of people lost their lives. This goes perfectly with that Butler says, “war is precisely an effort to minimize precariousness for some and to maximize it for others”(54).

In my opinion, as long as any war goes on, there is always going to be alternative sides that do not agree with each other and will use one another as supporting reasons as to why certain actions (such as attacking) should be taken and why they should not. Therefore, I do not really know what solution to offer than perhaps agree with what Butler keeps repeating in her article – the fact that all humans are peculiar. I feel that fact needs to be made extremely clear, because there are a lot of stigmas attached to different groups of people (female, minorities, from the developing world, etc) but ultimately, it links back again to the idea of the precarious human body.

Butler, Judith. “Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect”. Frames of war: when is life grievable?. Verso, 2009. 33-62. Print.

Hello and welcome back to my first blog of 2016! This semester started off with our ASTU class reading the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer – a book that focuses on the journey of a young boy named Oskar and his quest to find out about a key seemingly left by his father. The storyline is further complicated by the fact that his father, Thomas Jr., died in the 9/11 attack and the intertwining narratives of Oskar’s grandparents – grandma and grandpa (Thomas Sr.).

After reading this novel, I have to admit – I did not like the main character, Oskar. I found the way that he approached situations and ideas to be not really normal, and I mean that in the sense that he overcomplicates/twists the situation. For example, when he was meeting Abby Black, he was adamant about getting to know her better and having a strong need to enter house (pg. 91). He did so by making up lies and manipulating the conversation. To me, I just did not see how he could validate himself to do such actions. How does he think he has the right to do whatever he wanted? And why did he want to do such a thing (such as having the need to visit an absolute stranger’s house)?

But as I was thinking about this, I also noticed that Oskar had a lot of blunt and straightforward moments, such as Oskar’s various comments regarding different races. For example, on page 10, Oskar comments how “if you squinted your eyes like a Chinese person, it kind of looked like the word ‘fragile’.” Another instance where he makes a racial remark is on page 36, where he makes several comments about how he dislikes Arab people even though he is not racist.

The more I thought about how Oskar approached all these things in his life, I got the idea that perhaps by portraying the main character as a child narrator, it gave Foer the opportunity to express such blunt and weird thoughts that he wouldn’t otherwise to able to in an adult character. Like could an adult get away with saying racially sensitive remarks and making up lies to get into strangers’ houses? Most likely not. But a child saying these things and doing such a strange thing? More acceptable. And in a way, I think Foer did this because he wanted to express a sort of racial fear – especially regarding the fear/suspicion of Arabs after 9/11. The things Oskar said about Arabs were probably some of the thoughts thousands of Americans were thinking after the attack – but they couldn’t directly say it. The strange actions Oskar took to help heal himself after his father died were probably what some Americans wanted to do as well (after dealing with 9/11) – but they couldn’t because it was strange. So in that sense, Oskar could have been an outlet to express the thoughts and opinions  Americans might have had at that time.

However, there are certainly more questions to consider about Oskar and his weirdness, and even more questions to ask about the parallel to his grandparents’ narration. That is to say, those are just some more ideas that I’m interested in exploring in my next blog!