Job Qualifications?

In the first paragraph Haraway says “At the center of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg” which left me in utter confusion.  I understand the context of the rest of the essay, but this line troubles me.  Yes, if we are believers in the cyborg theory then we should realize all of the tools we have before us and accept what we are, but I sense sarcasm in that line.  If this is the faith that she holds dear, why is she so cynical.  I could be reading it wrong, but it seems as though Haraway has left us no other choice; no way out.  Is that her faith that is blasphemy ironic?   What is blasphemy?  It is the deliberate insult or disrespect of God.  Is her blasphemy that of a English scholars blasphemy and not of a Godly sense.  In that as English Scholars are we supposed to identify with one genre of theory?  Theories are metaphors for Godly figures; ideological apparatuses.  Why can’t I be a Christian-Jew-Muslim-Taoist?  It seems like an Althussarian (made up word) solution to the problem.  How do we as English scholars succumb to the alienation of our own labor?  Postmodernism would have to produce postmodernism.  So, when we become so involved and studying one theory we become alienated from our true identity or labor that is to question everything.   There must be a loop hole.  Does Haraway’s theory encompass freedom of choice?  In that, should we be able to randomly pair up other theories supposing that they harmonize with each other?  For instance, how would one pair up Fanon and Rubin?  Fanon, who is largely concerned with the state of being of the black man and Rubin who is largely concerned with the eradication of the gender identity (particularly male) seem like opposites to me.  I understand that we can take each of their primary examples out of context to make Haraway’s theory work.  For instance, they both have the same necessary goal; to uplift a dominated group through the eradication of what is assigning them their identity.  How far can we take the main idea of the original theorist out of context without losing meaning?  I guess as far as we can prove it.  If theorists believe their theories to be know all and explain all they must be open to application.  Where all others fail the compilation of all others will succeed.  Cyborgs lack human emotion, ending endurance, hunger, conscience making them perfect for certain jobs.       

The Sign Has Gone Too Far

Well, I wonder if anyone else out there is feeling the way I do about this reading.  Maybe I’ll start off with “what I know” and “what I think I know” and see how much it progresses into “that which I have no idea what I’m talking about”. 

I really thought Baudrillard was going to separate his argument into dissimulation vs simulation.  Dissimulaion is pretending that something doesn’t exist when it actually does?  So, would that be like going to the Bahamas because you hear it’s a beautiful place to be and then ignoring all of the poor people?  Meaning that you are pretending it’s this utopian place because you’re on vacation so that the starving children don’t bother you (poverty doesn’t exist).  Simulation is pretending that something exists, when it actually doesn’t?  So, would that mean that when you go to Vegas you can do whatever it is you do in Vegas because that kind of evil only exists there?   Meaning that evil only is found there, in Vegas, while actually it is in you wherever you go.  Vegas is just the scapegoat.  Vegas signifies evil before it exists.  Me gusta Vegas, no te preocupes. 

His example of the reduplication of the discourse of illness as well as Christianity threw me off (1734-35).  I felt the humming of Althusser and Foucault, but lost it as soon as it came.  Religion- I used to go to these Christian youth group thingies a real long time ago.  Once a year we’d go on this all nite trip and somehow end up at what is now the Times Union building.  There would be a series of speakers and to my left and right every now and then I see someone become “overcome” with the Holy Spirit.  I would only witness this sort of thing at this kind of event.  Pepsi Arena= Holy Spirit?  I shouldn’t mock, but… It was like that scene from Borat.  Maybe it really happened.  Maybe this example has nothing to do with Baudrillard.

Baudrillard talks about dreaming; the ultimate simulation.  Is a dream not real?  The dream itself is real, but what is represented as real in this circumstance has no substance.  What does the dream signify if a dream is a simulation?  And then, how has the dream replace what was first signified?  I really feel like I am not making any sense here but what about credit cards?   A credit card represents money, but a distorted form of it.  You don’t necessarily have money, but your dreams of having money can come true with it.  Credit debt has replaced actually having money.  

Max and Theo

The more and more I think about this piece the more cynical I find it.  The idea behind creating something of quality is to greater the good of society, right?  When we reflect on literature or art or a movie we know whether or not we’re dumber for experiencing it.   That would be something of low quality.  We take something away when the product when it is of high quality.  So, now that we are in this postmodern era have we honed in on the value of producing what is good art?  Money became smarter.  It can now generate itself from every aspect of life.  According to Max and Theo we are confused as to what is considered good art nowadays.  We have fallen victim to the “culture industry”.  They state “Movies and Radio need no longer to pretend to be art.  The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce” meaning hey it’s  okay, I know this is the same shit, but it sold before why not sell it again – you’ll buy it (1224).  Where did all the hard work go?  Furthermore, our authors go on to say that we are “stamped with sameness” because of this culture industry (1227).

I don’t get if they are siding with Derrida or not.  The opening line says that the theories supporting “cultural chaos” are disproved everyday (1223).   Derrida was destruction of the structure guy, right?  Wouldn’t they opposite of structure be chaos?  So, these guys are anti-chaos, what is their label for the unity we have today?  Gluttony, Cob-jobism, Cultural-Industrialism, stupid-consumerism, I need a label!       

Magarita Cho

Well, this wasn’t what I was expecting. I was more than pleasantly surprised. Cho was hilarious. Lots of vagina talk…interesting. She made very salient points and watching it with two other women was educational. Watching them laugh during certain segments was entertaining. We are a prude nation. We blush.

I think that one of my favorite parts was when Cho was talking about Slut Pride Week. She wasn’t gay or straight, she was slutty. Being slutty is a state of being. Her mother’s response was that she always knew she had a dyke baby. Her mother knew lots of gays, just not Korean gays.

“Fag Hags are the backbone of the gay community….women close the gay bars”. Cho said that she was more comfortable hanging out with gay men than straight men. She claimed to be heterophobic. Men close bars. This is a case where a woman is taking on the typical gender role of a man. Men are scared of women and sometimes say the dumbest shit to try and get in their pants. Their tactics don’t work and therefore they are left to close the bar. In Cho’s case she was scared to talk to men. She would use the line “hey stick it in” because she was uncomfortable talking with members of her own sexuality. I think this may relate to what Butler was saying about the performance of gender roles.

Butler says “the body is always under siege, suffering destruction by the very terms of history. And history is the creation of values and meanings by a signifying practice that requires the subjection of the body” which reminded me of what Cho was doing to her body to gain acceptance (2493). The reporter asked Cho “Isn’t it true that the network asked you to lose weight to play yourself on your own show?” and in response her manager said that there was no truth in the matter. Rather than claim the responsibility of having a negative impact, or sending a negative message, the network tried to push it on Cho. It was natural. It was implied that it was her decision. Society is the greater evil, but who is fueling society?

Doug Butler’s sister

This is a post class post about the ideas behind ‘Gender Trouble’.  My question is how does someone not act gender?  How do you unperform?  I don’t fully understand Butler so my argument may seem loosely constructed. 

In class I think we were having trouble finding the answer or the hope in what Butler had to say.  It was said that it is the recognition of the controlling force; that which imposes the gender identities or performances on us unconsciously and daily.  Maybe parenting is an example.  The choice parents have to give boys toy trucks instead of dolls and dressing them in blue, to leaving them to cry to curve their emotions and to naming them are all part of gender engineering.  Naming my boy Sally would achieve the same goal as participating in a drag show?   I’m showing that the gender naming system exists.   The controlling force is ‘compulsory heterosexuality’, but if I’m heterosexual why would I not want the same for my kid?  Does that admit that I feel that the “Other” is wrong? 

Althusser would say that heterosexual parents are the ISA’s and they are trying to reproduce themselves.  The reproduction of production is the ongoing cycle that secures genealogy.  By making our children work towards claiming a gender identity we are alienating them from experience which would be the profits of their labor.  Is that what Butler is trying to say?  We must identify, if we have to identify, as a ‘being’ of experience?  We would all be the same (according to gender identity).  It proves the point that I think that identity is based on gender.  I am part of the system.  There are no words that can truly describe experience (not yet)… you’d have to be like a Care Bear that shoots emotion out of you.  Now I feel like I’m going down Sassure’s road and the necessity to create a new language in order to rectify the problem.

What does it mean to be a black man?  Fanon’s theory of a black man as a ‘being’, that which is defined in terms of the white man’s definition.  A homosexual is defined by the straight man.  Not straight.  What does it mean to be a homosexual?  How do you assert your identity?  Rape a woman, have a kid and proclaim him the first biological son of a homosexual?  Or, artificial insemination… it reminds me of the Lion King when Mufasa holds Simba up over the animal kingdom.

Undisputed nasty piece of garbage amen. 

La Symposium

This past Thursday I attended the second half of the poetry readings and caught the five o’clock Alumni/Faculty reading. I wished I could have seen more. Everything was very entertaining and it was nice to see so many of my classmates up there enjoying themselves.

That said, here comes the juice. I’m not having any break through here. I’m not finding much that I want to write about in this post. Althusser’s theory sticks out, but I don’t want to write about him because I think that the comparison is too clear, and then too vague. Let me try to make sense of this…i.e. at the Alumni reading there was only one reader. The coordinator said that there must have been some sort of confusion in the arrangement amongst the faculty members that were supposed to participate. The ISA failed. I thought that was funny, but I can’t go any further.

The young woman named Brenda that spoke at the Alumni reading had a great story. She called it an “I Remember Anaphora”. Her parents sent her to Brigham Young University in Utah. Brenda said that she remembered not ever have tasting alcohol and feeling like a stranger at church. She said that west coast Mormons were like the ‘Brady Bunch’. She said that if you drank ‘expresso’ (not espresso) that you would be excommunicated. She remembered having to see a psychologist because she got caught smoking in her dorm. The last thing she remembered was transferring to a different college.

Her story reminded me of Foucault’s sexuality theory, even though it had nothing really to do with sex. Foucault said that by forming the boundaries of sex we made plans to explore them (1665). In a religious university the ability to resist temptations is talked about frequently. Foucault said “It may be well that we talk about sex more than any thing else” and in a broader sense it can be said that we talk about temptation more than anything else (1657). Foucault also states “sexual irregularity was annexed to mental illness” kind of like how Brenda’s smoking habit sent her to the brain doctor (1659).

The point I’m trying to make is that every time society sets up a red button and tells us not to push it, we push it. Alcohol, nicotine, sex, music, language, and censorship in the media are all example of restriction gone wrong. The United States was formed from a bunch of people that didn’t want to do what other people were telling them to do. Law breaking and loop hole finding is in our blood. The problem I have is similar to the problem of the Fanon. Can I apply Foucault’s construction of the discourse of sex to other discourses? I mean that I would follow the same pattern and arrive at a similar result. Or, does his work only apply to sex?