í Assignments

We all have emotions and Sarah Ahmed in the article “Affective Economies” discusses how these emotions affects us as people and individuals. She examines how different emotions and feelings occur and how they make us do or think different things that sometimes can lead to unpleasant conclusion. On the other hand, good feelings and emotions can lead to resolution of some problems we face every day. Although, Sara Ahmed begins her article with a description of how the emotion of “hate” occurs towards people who are different. She says that hatred occurs not because someone thinks that the other one is different but because it threatens one’s stability in life. We as readers understand that Ahmed is making a parallel to a modern day problem in society of a certain country. She adds that these emotions lead to loathing and it becomes unstoppable because after a certain point this conviction that someone is bad cannot be changed.

Ahmed talks about immigrants also, she discusses that white people fell a certain negative emotion because immigrants come to their country and they take away their jobs and threaten their “purity” in a way. However, from the immigrants stand point, they probably don’t share “white people” opinion because they have their own problems to solve and threatening people is not in their agenda. Ahmed then goes to discuss the feeling of fear and that it always leads to some thoughtless actions. Thus, different emotions can make one’s life either better or worse. And, we as people are driven by emotions every single day. Our feelings and beliefs make us  create examples of caricatures of what is considered bad or good. So, we create images of a bad immigrant or a dangerous convict. It’s all in our head and it is hard to think logically and not be driven by emotions.

Sara Ahmed discusses in her article “Affective Economies,” her own explanation to emotions and how people create them. She also discusses how the littlest outside factors can effect ones emotions about something. She begins by stating different examples of “hate” that are common in the United States like a white man scowling at a mixed race couple or a farmer furious that the government loans billions of dollars to foreigners when he can’t get a loan to save his farm and she names this love. This gives a perfect example of what she explains in her article, which is that hate is not really hate. The hate is not based on the subject but it comes from within the person that expresses it. That because they love something so much, whatever interferes with what they love they express anger towards them. This anger can be effected by other smaller problems that build up to hate and soon enough anyone that even comes close to what they hate for example being the same race, having similar looks, religion, or even names become a part of it. Sara Ahmed tells that hate is made from within the person and move outwards onto people, things, places, or anything. She similarly addressed her explanation to fear. Fear is not actually being afraid of something but it is a way of avoiding something much bigger that the person themselves might not really notice. Fear of a certain object is supposed to be the symptom of what you actually fear. For example she includes that Hans had a fear of horses which is actually replacing his fear of castration (125). For the fears replacing the real fear can be managed but is kept because their real fear can’t be managed. Ahmed argues that emotions are all within ourselves and the subject of our emotions is not the problem but only the victim.

Sara Ahmed discusses emotion and its significance to human connection in her article, “Affective Economics”. When analyzing the concept of hate and love, Ahmed shows how much of the tension and political uproar we see in America today against migrants, is not necessarily due to hatred. She says how hatred is never the core emotion, but that it is concocted thru feelings of endangerment for the things we love. When it comes to migrants, white nationalists don’t hate them for who they are, but hate how the things they love (their idea of a perfect nation, jobs, and society) feel threatened. It almost seems that hatred is a key effect of fear of change. Ahmed discusses how this is a significant problem among many white people and their collective passionate hate against threats to nationalistic ideas. Many share a strong love for their society, nation, and shared whiteness, and any intimidations to such cause combined chaos amongst them. Ahmed also notes how many people don’t have significant rights against accusations associated with this hatred. For example, many can be accused of terrorism and detained even if their connection to terrorist groups are very weak (like similarity in names, race or residences) with no real rights to fight against such detainment without prominent cause. I think Ahmed is trying to note how these false accusations and detainments are in a large way the effects of irrational hatred. She also explains how people concoct impressions of entire racial groups, for example middle eastern people are painted as terrorists; and how this can cause unnecessary fear on all sides of the equation. When discussing “grounds” Ahmed notes how unsupported racist evidence such as a person being middle eastern with a similar name to a terrorist could very well be the grounds for detainment today and how this is unacceptable.

Alfie Corteza

Professor Bullock

Assignment #13

In Sara Ahmed’s article, “Affective Economies,” she explains that the people who have a hatred aren’t necessarily hating others due to a specific cause, preferably they have a significant love for something and do not want that thing to be affected and decline in quality. Also, her referral to the individual’s feelings in regards to a person, place or thing is not necessarily a start or end point, but instead it is a flow in a demographic of some social economy.
For anxiety, there could be a large body of people or things to make one fear for a specific group. An example would be in regards to the refugee crisis, and a politician’s use of words on the matter. The methods of particular terms, and words that convey a specific mindset when it comes to displaying an image. An example would be the former leader of the British Conservative club who used particularly anxious and worrying terms when it came to accepting asylum refugees into the country. Also, Sara also points out specific terms are supposedly used to differ between bogus, and genuine asylum seekers, however, how can one differentiate the two? She also compares the refugee example to an individual who I in prison for killing a 16-year-old burglar trying to burgle his home. Here they made the individual who is defending himself the criminal, and the burglar a victim rather than the other way around. Ahmed compares the asylum seekers to the burglar, and the murderer to the body of people, and the house as the countries’ values, and that the asylum seekers are trying to take it away from the rightful owners. Thus the wording can change the image of an individual of that is rightfully guilty as a victim, and the innocent as the criminal, such as the improper imprisonment of the one who was defending his home.

Due Sunday, December 3rd by midnight. Word count, at least 300 words. You may include a brief quotation, but be sure this is followed by your interpretation of the text and include the proper citation (either MLA or APA). Late assignments will be accepted for partial credit if they are submitted no later than one week after the original deadline.

In Sara Ahmed’s article, “Affective Economies,” she considers the work that attends to emotions within a narrative structure. Using details from the text to explain what you mean, consider how this emotional work relates to the “rights” and “ground” often connected to the subject and nation.

In ” Do Muslim women really need saving? anthropological reflections on cultural relativism and its others”, Lila Abu-Lugnod discusses the involvement of US in Afghanistan. She starts by  mentioning how the attacks on Sep. 11, 2011 everything changed for them too. Americans started to look for almost an excuse to go into their country and start a “war against terrorism”. To the people there, it was clear that the attention  was focused on all the wrong places to try to look for something to fix. She takes first lady, Bush, to show how American troops were there and ‘liberating’ them from terrorism and supposedly from the Taliban. Instead of studying the history of the situation the country was in, they came in to ‘save’ women from the wrong factors. She criticizes that instead of getting to know their culture, the Americans came in trying to change the way they were treated to almost the same as it was in America. Here the liberation women have is different from that of women in Afghanistan. As the government announced in the first few months of the ‘war against terrorism’, women had gained some minor liberties like being able to listen to music, yet they left out things that women had been fighting against for such a long time. As she said there “was the blurring of the very separate causes in Afghanistan of women’s continuing malnutrition, poverty, and ill health, and their more recent exclusion under the Taliban from employment, schooling, and the joys of wearing nail polish”(Abu-Lugnod,784). To Americans it was communicated that these women were being saved in some way, but they did not addressed the real issues that they needed to. Maybe it might had been because they did not analyze their cultural struggles before coming in to fight a war. These women did not need the type of saving the Americans were trying to offer them.

In this article Lila Abu-Lughod discusses the way the image of the oppressed Afghan women and her victimized femininity were mobilized in efforts to justify the U.S post 9/11 wars in the middle east. She analyzes two major moments in media where this can be clearly seen: One was her interview with a PBS reporter and the other was Laura Bush’s radio address.  In her interview with the PBS reporter she discusses the way culture, women’s roles and Islam were evoked as a way to explain terrorism. Instead of analyzing the way U.S involvement created much of the instability in the region prior to the events on 9/11, the media chose to focus on Muslims and middle eastern culture to try to make sense of the attacks. The veil was evoked as a symbol of female oppression and a clear example of the “backwardness” and “barbarism” of Islam and middle eastern culture. In turn, the war was presented as necessary to “free” oppressed and victimized Afghani women. In Laura Bush’s radio address her manner of speech conflates the Taliban and the terrorists while framing the western world as the benevolent entity that would save the “women of cover.” This approach to Muslim women’s identities, their perceived oppression and victimization under the veil is problematic in different ways. Not only does It help mobilize the west to see themselves as more “civilized” and therefore superior, it also ignores Muslim women’s agency within their own cultural and religious tradition. While women face oppression and disenfranchisement in Afghanistan they fight their hardships by drawing on philosophy that makes sense in their context and through reinterpreting religious doctrine. Ignoring the way Muslim women carve out their own unique brand of feminism is an instrument that maintains the “war on terror” running by gaining support for western countries in the name of freeing middle eastern women from middle eastern men.

In the essay ” Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving”, Lila Abu-Lughod criticizes Westerners how they tried to “Liberate” Muslim women who they think they do not have freedom. After the 911 attack Laura Bush suddenly brings up Muslim women’s right which they never had before. She first mentions “War on Terrorism” which is about the Middle Eastern occupation of the United States. She also criticizes they justification Westerner made which America can occupy the area because they attacked America. She also criticize the logic since they are evil, we can beat them even though it was actually for economic benefit.  America went to War in Afghanistan against Taliban who controlled Afghan, and took the control of the country. Laura Bush said the Muslim woman is free after the invention. Women in Afghan wore burqas when Taliban control the region, and they were not allowed to go out side without it. If women in Afghan does not cover themselves they would be punished or harmed. Westerner thought it is a violence to the Muslim women right. However, even after United States took control of the country, they were still wearing them. Furthermore, she criticizes how  Laura Bush says they had been successful and that the invention of that country is helping Afghan people especially women. However, women are still oppressed in Afghanistan. I think saying something like “liberate” the area is actually looking down on people and their culture. Therefore, the way America did was totally against their will and it barely changed anything. People there have their own culture and if some outsider says something about this or forcing, I think it is really difficult for them to change suddenly. They have lived their lives with the culture, so instead of forcing to change, their regional power has to do something to it little by little.

Lila Abu-Lughod argues in her article, “Do Muslim Woman Really Need Saving” that people need to stop trying to “save Muslim woman” from their culture, and learn to appreciate their cultural and historical differences. She says that this idea to save others has a tone of dominance and would lead to unnecessary violence. For example, Afghan culture does not necessarily look at the burqa as a symbol of oppression but as a socially acceptable form of attire. Yet, western culture has a strong opinion that such dressing is subservient and in no way liberating. This mindset led Americans to justify bombing and intervening in Afghanistan affairs, because it would “save the woman”. I think the problem Abu-Lughod has with this is that Muslim woman were so important to this “war on terror”, yet were not considered in any other political conflicts. This cultural mode of explanation used them to tell the public why the war was happening, and symbolized the oppression that America was trying to liberate. I think this leads to a lot of today’s problems concerning discrimination in America. People still view Muslim traditional dress as a symbol of oppression and connection to terrorism. What I find really interesting about this all, is how many white American men, shame Muslim woman for dressing too modestly, yet also shame woman for dressing to revealing. Why do men feel the need to control and shame woman based on their dress, and with concern to Lila Abu-Loghod’s argument, why must Americans associate cultural dress with political problems as if they have anything to do with each other. Maybe woman dress in certain ways because they simply want to, without any other motives or symbolic message behind the threads. A lot of violence and death could be avoided if we simply (like Lughod noted) accepted one another’s cultures, and diversity, and didn’t use them to provoke and justify political decisions.

Abu-Lughod’s essay “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving,” questions why Americans think that “Muslim women” in Afghanistan need to be rescued from their society and country. She characterizes this premise as being a method of rejecting cultural differences, and states that this has become the West’s main focus following the events of September 11, 2001, and the beginning of the “War on Terror”. Abu-Lughod argues that countries in the West should analyze their contribution to living conditions in countries like Afghanistan. Furthermore, according to Abu-Lughod, the West trying to save “Muslim woman”,  recreates past events that took place in the 19^th Century by Christian missionary woman who attempted to save “Muslim women” and attempted to impose their dominance onto their society.

Abu-Lughod’s discusses that following the beginning of “War of Terror”, culture and religious practices became the focus in understanding the events of September 11, 2001. She further argues that by studying the culture, the West switched and moved away from the more important issue, namely, the political and historical reasons for men and woman enduring hardships in the Middle East. Moreover, Abu-Lugod cites Laura Bush’s speech, which discussed the plight of the “Muslim woman”. She refers to Bush’s speech as the “cultural mode of explanation” because it discusses the importance of saving “Muslim women”. Abu-Lughod argues that the speech served as a way to support and defend America’s “War on Terrorism”, and the destruction that came along to Muslim countries.

Abu-Lughod states that the religious and cultural practices of woman, including “wearing a veil” is something that has been practiced for centuries. It is a symbol of “modesty and respectability”, and is not the product and explanation for the events of September 11, 2001. She further states that if the mandatory “burqas” were no longer enforced, woman would choose another method of “veiling”. The veil is not the problem, but according to Abu-Lughod it represents the West’s problem of accepting differences in others, and dealing with the true problems that causing the Middle East severe hardships and suffering.