fFelix has 16 post(s)

Hello, Should it all be in our own words like the weekly writing assignments, meaning no quotes?

Prof. Bullock’s response,

Feel free to include quotes but make sure that the length of the quote is appropriate and that you provide sufficient explanation pertaining to its inclusion and relevance. See the rubric if you have questions about how quotes will be evaluated.

I think that I have a good sense of what I will be writing for questions 1 and 3. Can you please elaborate a bit more on what you mean by “understanding the politics of human subjectivity”? I feel like I understand it but am having a difficult articulating it.

For question 3, I planned to use Davis, with Collins and hooks. I just wasn’t sure if you wanted one reading per one of the works?

Also am I correct in saying that you did not want any outside sources because it’s more of an opinionated essay?

Prof Bullock response:

Question 1: When I talk about a politics of human subjectivity, I am highlighting a limitation for our understanding of power and resistance that is affiliated with the nation-state. This follows the arc we traced in moving from Collins’s work to other authors more concerned about oppression as it is experienced by persons who are not necessarily protected by the law, like those who immigrate but are unable to obtain the rights of citizenship. I hope this helps.

Question 2: For this question, you should choose to address either Davis, Federici, or Foucault. Then choose an additional 2/3 readings from the list of works provided (this list includes material we addressed after the midterm exam). From what you’ve indicated above, it looks like you are on the right track.

Question 3: I encourage students to stick to the works we’ve read in class because the primary goal of this exercise is to demonstrate your knowledge of the works we have covered. If you decide to include any outside sources, make sure you attention to these pieces does not preclude your attending to this primary goal.

Let me know if you have additional questions!

Emotions of love, hate, and fear are extremely powerful and are the root to some of the most tragic stories of American history. In her article,”Affective Economies”, Sara Ahmed draws from these tragic examples and explains how love and hate are interrelated and misunderstood, between victims and their perpetrators. Her beginning excerpt from the Aryan Nations web site begins her explanation and position of how some people only see hate, however the individual or individuals act out of love. It is as if she wants the reader to have a sense of compassion for the perpetrator because for them it was done out of love and for a purpose to preserver this love. The terrorist from the 9/11 attacks in New York City, acted out of love of their religion and God, of which they believed they had the rights and grounds to do so. For Americans however, these acts were hateful and done without grounds and definitely had no rights, Sara explains how fear is the root to these emotions. Former president George W. Bush, had addressed saying how the future of America would not be one of fear or terror, rather by using the love American’s have for their country it is grounds to preserver and move along without fear or terror. Then he declared war and the this fear and terror was projected towards American citizens so that could feel that they had the rights and grounds to go to war. I think that there was a lot more to this than Americans tend to believe. The media used this fear from the terror attacks to keep Americans afraid of anyone who was affiliated with the ethnicity or religion. The media introduced a new color system that used red, orange, yellow, blue, and green which was intended to alert the intensity of terror, basically it showed how afraid Americans were supposed to be, with red being the highest and then lowering respectively. Again demonstrating how emotions are relative to the rights and grounds of the nation and how fear was used to deter from the fact that the country was at war.

In the reading, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others” written by Lila Abu-Lughod, she argues the views of other American journalist and former first lady, Laura Bush. To be completely honest, I found this reading to be super hypocritical of Lila Abu-Lughod. She argues why they would ask her to be interviewed after the September 11th terror attack in New York City, and why they would ask about religion and culture versus looking at the history of the Taliban. I think that after the attack everyone wanted to understand why the terrorist Taliban group would attack Americans, and in order to understand you would need to look at their culture and religion which is incorporated into their history. And I mean why not interview a well educated women who is Muslim and an Anthropologist, whose interest is in within the history, religion, and culture of Muslim women. Lila goes on to say that even after the Taliban eased the rule of women wearing veils, they continued to wear them and critizied former first lady for saying that the Muslim women needed saving. The Muslim women wear the veil because of oppression and continued to wear them because of oppression, and it would be silly to think that the lift from wearing the veil was actually real, but then ask why anthropologist and journalist would question the purpose of the veil. She even quotes one of her favorite books, was about Christian missionaries helping Muslim women by telling their story, and also goes to a reception with a photography exhibit of Muslim women in burkas in which she writes,”Please join us in helping to lift the veil”, but then questions the purpose of lifting the veil. Maybe I read it incorrectly but for me she was completely facetious in tone and hypocritical with the point she was trying to argue.

Cuba and the Dominican Republic are both poor countries that rely on tourism as their main source of revenue. The citizens of these countries understand the value of tourism and its purpose and attempt to utilize it to benefit their family and individual needs. It has become a way of life to lure tourist into temptations of sexual pleasure and relationships. Using their exotic demeanor and sexuality as a way to manipulate men into helping them with money and goods has become the way of life for Cuban and Dominican women. It is the only way for these women to provide for their family and it is a risk that they are willing to take. Although it is an illegal practice to seduce or have sex with men for money and the government is well aware of the women’s need to do so, the government is still harsh and strict when it comes to persecuting the women. Often giving women jail time, fines, and taking them away from their families knowing that there was no other viable option for these women. Some women claim that the do it so that they can find romance or love but the reality is that really want a way out. Race also takes a major role in the sexualization of women, in Cuba if a dark skinned women is seen with a group of foreigners she is automatically seen as a sex worker, yet if a white Cuban woman is seen with foreigners, she is not considered one.

In the article “Global Care Crisis: A Problem of Capital, Care Chains, or Commons?” , behavioral scientist Arlie Hochschild, Lise Widding Isaksen, and Sambasivan Uma Devi discuss the migrant mother’s from Southern countries like the Philippines, who migrate to the countries in the north like the United States of America. These women migrate to other countries as a means to make money to support their families. They add human capital to their family income by becoming wet nurses, housekeepers, and caregivers in other countries, making up to four or five times the amount of what they would make being teachers, or clerical workers in their own country. The care chain runs globally, where mothers leave their children in the care of family to then care for other families children in different countries. The “commons” the writers of the article write about refers to the community of families everyone individually belongs to, within the care chain. This network creates a tight-knit environment where everyone relies on one another for support, by working and giving. The argument arises when these mothers leave their own children to care for other children. The kids left behind are left with fathers or grandparents yet miss the opportunity of having an authentic mother child relationships, and more often become depressed. Keeping the capital of all countries in mind the writers believe that extending the workers permits to allow children to be with their mothers would potentially improve the behaviors of the children and mother’s, allowing the mother’s to make more money, and making everyone happy. However as the mothers migrate it is creating a void for care in their own countries and along with the favor exchange within commons creates an unequal balance that is felt ultimately felt by the children, leaving them sad and distressed. Perhaps it is too far fetched an idea to have the children tag along with their mothers to jobs in other countries. Though it would help the cost of care that is being sent to the mothers homes, the cost of caring for the child in a different country would be greater.

I have struggled with and have felt like an outsider most all of my life. As a gay Hispanic male I struggled with self acceptance and looked everywhere outside of myself to fill the voids I have felt. Society has dictated through the media that all homosexuals are flamboyant, have high pitched voices with a lisp, and are overly feminine. I did not understand that being gay was not set by these characteristics, that in fact it went beyond these stereotypes. Yet once I was able to become more self accepting and made gay friends, I found myself still struggling because for some gay men, I just was not gay enough. Adding to the complexity of finding my way, was my Puerto Rican and Spanish ethnicity. I am the oldest of my four siblings and it is goes unspoken that the eldest son of a single mom family takes on that father figure role. I grew up in my culture speaking Spanish fluently, yet never fit in with the gay Hispanics. Apparently because my skin is fairer and I do not have an accent, I was not thought of as a Spanish person by anyone. My family moved to Pennsylvania into a very white country town where we were one of 5 ethnically different, non white families. It was a complete shock and as Collin’s mentions the oppression I felt, I began to feel was better if I just blended. Eventually they would call me “whitey” and it carried with me far into adulthood even within the gay Hispanic community, as a way of keeping me on the outside of my own culture and heritage. And it even today when I go to my local Dominican family-owned bodega I am on the outside looking in. There will be a line, where the people in front of me will have full Spanish conversations with the owner, and when it comes my turn to checkout, the owner goes back to speaking English, even after I start the conversation in Spanish. No matter that I have told him over and over that I am Spanish he will always respond to me in English. I suppose as Patricia Collins writes in her essay, that I have used this to my advantage even though I did not realize it. It has given me different perspectives of the differences in Hispanic and gay culture, allowing me to become more accepting and more aware of myself.

Foucault discusses three different technologies of sex in Part 4, Chapter 4: Periodization which how the discourse of sex changed in the 19th century. Moving away from the repressive cycle Foucault attempts to find the origin of sexuality through genealogy and saw two major breaks of its line. First was that sexuality was limited to marriage, and not letting sexuality be exposed by the body, the second break was in the 19th century as these limitations began to loosen up and sexuality was being explored. He argues that there were three technologies that changed the relationships or ideals people had about sex. The sexuality of children, medicine and economics where changed ideals repressed by the church, which Foucault argues were no longer of self interest but were social interest that were exposed and surveilled by the state and society. The technological application of medicine was used to separate sex from the body as a way of being controlled with political intention. The idea that medicine of sex could create a perfect society, free of disease, and with a pure bloodline, was used by the bourgeois as a model to design their society and by the government to regulate marriages, childbirth and population. Also sexuality in psychiatry was used by way of surveillance agencies, like child protective services, to socially control perverse and dangerous children, which ultimately led to racism. Foucault makes another argument that though sexuality is a social construct that was used to censor and repress the lower class and enforced by the elite, it was the elite themselves that practiced the same idealization for a different reason. The bourgeois wanted to maximize their lives by allowing sexuality to empower their social class. These thoughts on sexuality became the hegemonic infrastructure for the bourgeois.

According to Foucault, sexuality is the principle focus of our modern society, that has been repressed behind medicine and institutions of religions. The truth of sexuality as he sees it is hidden within the context of pleasure one receives when practicing these interest. Scientia sexualis is a scientific approach to the study of sex used by the western civilization compared to the ars erotica, the perception that sex is explained as a form art. He emphasises that ars erotica was not completely taken out of the western views on sexuality because it is still relevant through religious expression. Sexuality and dominant erotica is cloaked by path to love and God by virtue of spiritual connection and pleasure. Being possessed was the guise of sexual fulfillment instated by the Catholic church as a means to subdue and contain any discourse of sexuality by its followers. In Christianity God the father is the path to enlightenment, and the source of pleasure. Confession was another metaphoric representation of how sex and sexuality were part of the ars erotica. The entire act is sexaualized from the kneeling, to the asking for forgiveness. Cleansing the souls impurities while becoming exposed and submissive to the priest as he signs the cross gently on the forehead. Foucault attempts to tie together the idea that scientia sexualis has not been as successful at defining sex as an art form or ars erotica, instead it has created its own identity of pleasure. Using that pleasure to determine other pleasures and uncover new truths to the new specific pleasures.

Even by only reading the first few chapters, I can say that this whole book is deep and rich with meaning and it seems to be interpreted many different ways and most definitely a lot to process.

Foucault used the words pleasure and truth throughout the,” History of Sexuality”. What is does he mean by truth and pleasure? How and why are these concepts relevant to sexuality?

While reading the first page of bell hooks’s essay, my eyes crossed and my brain froze. I had no idea what she was trying to say and I realized that I need to work on my vocabulary. And to be honest, I had to read over the first few pages of the essay before I could kind of understand what she was trying to convey. My first thought was that the Other she speaks of, was about sex and only sex. Then I started to understand her message more clearly, well at least my interpretation was that the “Other”, is a generalized word to describe people of color. Hook believes that there is a sensualization attached to people of color because their skin color and culture are different than white people. This difference of the Other is what white people find attractive and crave to explore. The media uses the Other by reinforcing this message through commercial ads and movies. bell used the movie, HAIRSPRAY, as an example of how segregation made white people more curious about black people and their culture. They desired what was against the social norm as a way to assert their own whiteness and cross personal boundaries (hook,378). There are some white people that view the Other as a sexual notch on their belt that needs to be conquered, to which hook believes is a way that white supremacy can grow. Hook also has the ideology that this Otherness should be used in a productive way to give black youth a voice, rather than continually be exploited for product placement and ticket sales. She argues that the ongoing desire of the Other will keep white people wanting more until the entire black culture is consumed and in danger of being eradicated unless the exploitations is closely watched and questioned.