Disgrace #2

I’m running out of catchy titles. Maybe one will strike me at the end of this piece. I fear that I have too much or too little to talk about. There are a couple of problems I foresee in starting this piece. We had to read about one hundred pages, although very fascinating, very hard to concentrate into a blog entry of my intended length. Secondly, I feel that I have looked too hard, maybe found too much or created too much that may not truly fall into the structures of certain theories. Even though I took notes, it’s hard to remember the exact, exactly how, the exactness of my brain waves at that time. Using a flashlight I scoured the text looking for anything I thought would support our current theorists’ ideas.

I know that Fanon is mainly concerned about the identity of the black man. Are we aloud to use his ideas of identity outside the realm of skin color? For instance, and maybe this is more of a road built for Rubin, on page 157 Lucy says, “You are concerned for my sake, which I appreciate, you think you understand, but finally you don’t. Because you can’t”. I think she is trying to say that you can’t understand a rape victim (and we’re 90% sure that’s what happened). David doesn’t understand why she doesn’t tell the police about the heinous crime or even try to pursue the monsters. She defined as a rape victim because of a man. The black man is defined by a white man. A man has made her what she is. Now, using a feminist lense, how do I interpret this scene? I am a man. Can a man take on this type of critical perspective? What did the thieves get out of this? They went there because they knew she was there. Stealing came second. Where is the exchange of women here? Lucy thinks that because she is a woman, and because she puts herself int this kind of danger, she is subject to events like this. Is that the exchange? If you are going to put yourself out there expect consequences as a woman? If you want a life like this expect that? There is a stretch for you. Pg. 98 “There must be some niche in the system for women and what happens to them.”

I am not a huge fan of Sassure. The distaste derives from the lack of understanding I have about the whole sign, signifier, signified thingy. I understand a little, enough to realize when his theory is speaking up. David (71) is talking about how he gave a lecture on the word drink and the phrase drink up. He compares it to burned and burnt, and then says “I live, I have lived, I lived.”

He says that this is “signifying an action carried through to its conclusion.” If someone wanted to break that down for me I’d be most appreciative. What this has to do with the rest of the book is beyond me. It seems abstract to the whole purpose of the novel to stop, and look at the smallest unit of meaning, the word(s), to make sense out of anything. Everything becomes the same if we look at it too closely. David later talks about English not being the truth? Excuse me, he meant that it wasn’t a good medium for truth. Does he mean because they are in South Africa? There are a lot of words spelled oddly in the book, i.e. tyre. I’m sure I missed out on a lot truth in Sassure’s piece because it was translated from French.

I am sooo tired I can barely keep my eyes open. I had intentions of going further but I have to count sheep. That’s what sheep do. That is what they are worth. They don’t own their lives. I do. I count them and they exist for me to count. I am the repressive apparatus.