Ryan's ASTU Blog

This is it bloggers, I can’t believe this is the last blog ever. So to end off the year of blogs, I will be talking about Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

I absolutely love symbolism and allegorical means of telling a story, because it really makes me think. Sometimes I ponder the possibilities of what a certain symbol could mean, even if I go too far off on a tangent. I love the process of deciphering a symbol: this equals this, so therefore this symbol could represent this idea. For example, the doorknobs in Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close all appear in grandpa’s chapters. If it is just showing the doorknob, it inclines me to think the door is closed. What else is “closed”? Grandpa is “closed”. He has lost the ability to speak because of his trauma that he is trying to “unlock” throughout the story (this is a sneak peak to my essay).

Naturally, I was intrigued in the idea of Erica and Underwood Samson being symbols for America. America had quite the infamous reputation during the Cold War for trying to “help” countries become democratic. The brief period between the denouement of the Cold War and 9/11, the US actually became fairly inactive, only advising and supporting wars. And once again after 9/11, Bush and his neo-conservative policies plunged the US back years in terms of international relations. This is key, as this is precisely what Peter Morey and even Ilka Saal bring up in their essays. Morey looks at Erica being a symbol, as she has the potential relationship with Changez, possibly the symbol for America’s change. This potential relationship between East and West is looming, but Am(Erica) disappears into the “dangerous nostalgia”, rejecting the opportunity to concretely establish a relationship with this foreigner (Changez or Pakistan). Similarly, Saal argues, “the US forfeited the opportunity to reflect on injury…” (454) after 9/11. This can also be seen in Hamid’s novel by the US deciding not to intervene when Pakistan is threatened by India. This is the key symbol in Erica that I hadn’t even connected while reading the book. After reading Morey’s article, it was such a pivotal moment in my understanding of the story. It truly made me question whether or not any of the story was meant to exist or if it was all an allegory to criticize the US. This is exactly the type of symbolism I love to encounter, speculating the allegories, though I find it more satisfying knowing the author truly intended it instead of making possibly-irrational things up. If you’d like to do your monthly comment on my blog, I’d be interested in hearing what you thought about these symbols: was it too much? Did they serve their purpose?

Finally, to wrap up the last ASTU 100 blog ever, I’d like to thank every one of my fellow bloggers and Dr. Luger. It was a pleasure to be a global citizen among you, and I look forward to seeing what academic futures are in store for us!

As always, blogging off!

Ryan

P.S. The title is an obvious symbol for finishing the ‘race’ that is ASTU.

Hey bloggers,

Due to our CAP joint lecture today about Black Lives Matter I thought I would talk about subjects in each class that overlap in a few ways. In our discussion regardless of the discipline there were definitely some recurring themes. I believe the biggest idea was that of identity.

In ASTU we refer to Judith Butler and her distinctions between “us” and “them”. According to Butler, we feel responsible to a community to which we feel a belonging on the basis of nation, territory, language, or culture. Her argument is that we do not grieve people that we do not identify with, as we are not responsible for them. When discussing the issue of institutionalized racism in class today, it seems as though this would not apply to any of us, especially in a program such as Global Citizen (or am I naïve to think that?). So in America’s case, it seems there is a large population that fits Butler’s theory, as we can see in the amount of Trump supporters. However, how can we break those views of “us” and “them”? After all, black people live among white people speaking the same language, sharing the same territory.

In Geography during our Nationalism chapter we talked about assimilation in contrast to multi-culturalism. We came to the conclusion that assimilation creates resistance, as people being integrated feel oppressed. On the other hand, we thought of our own city, Vancouver, and how multi-culturalism has affected it. As we saw in lecture, there are areas created that are primarily of one ethnicity. Richmond is of majority Chinese while North Surrey is South Asian and Indian. Toronto was used as an example as well, where Markham and Brampton are primarily Chinese and South Asian respectively. These divides in the community are dangerous in the sense that it divides the population and could potentially encourage racism, but on the other hand creates more of a sense of belonging for people that identify with the majority. Vancouver can definitely be called multi-cultural, yet it is quite segregated. In the case of black lives, it isn’t the culture that is a problem since most American black people were assimilated long ago, but it is this institutionalized racism that is the issue. Nevertheless, the idea of identity and division relates.

Sociology talks about socially constructed barriers and therefore encompasses all of these identity issues with race, gender, culture, class, you name it. The argument here is slightly different, however, as the belief is that these social barriers were created by elites of society, usually in the past but have stood the test of time. According to sociology, race is socially constructed and is a remnant of our history. This brings me to wonder: Is the only solution time alongside awareness? Since race was socially constructed long ago by elites, is the solution to have elites of today’s society redefine society? How is this possible?

My biggest question which troubles me deeply is how to get rid of these distinctions that divides us. What are the steps necessary to become a global society? Is it possible? Is this even desirable? Please let me know what you think, I’d be interested in knowing your opinions.

Until next time, blogging off…

Ryan