'If you're going through hell, keep going.'
-Winston Churchill
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Junior year...(& resurrection of the blog..)
is going well so far. I'm feeling good, generally.
My favorite class right now is this seminar called "Race: The Tangled History of a Biological Concept." And um, I've never read such racist science before in my life.
Science's reflection of social values rather than the Truth just keeps popping up in all my classes now...that concerns me....
But anyway, the most frightening thing we learned is without a doubt the story of Sarah Baartman. She was a "hottentot", "bushwoman", what have you, but pretty much she was taken from her native village somewhere in sub-saharan Africa and paraded around London as a freak show exhibition. Scientists were absolutely obsessed with her body, specifically her large buttocks, massive lips, and outward-jutting jaw. They would come in and poke around at her, trying to get her to remove her clothes so they could examine her genitalia, although she was always "too modest to allow them."
Scientists finally waited until she died and then examined/measured/dissected her vagina. She was used as scientific evidence (there are published papers on her examination) of black inferiority, racial difference (races as different species), African animal-like sexuality, and Africans' as the closest biological relation to primates, etc. Her brain and genitalia were on display in museums (since the mid 1800's), as well as castings of her body until 1974.
In 1994, Nelson Mandela asked for her remains to be returned to Africa. France complied in 2002...yeah.
But there is one positive thing to be gleaned from all this. This was an example of science using its social power and influence for something awful--to perpetuate 'scientific' racial ideologies that today, we see has no validity at all. But it had that power, that power to influence society and its values, and it still does. Therefore, can't it also use that same power for positive social change instead? (hint hint gay gene research?)
Here's a picture of her--you guys can be the judge: http://icarusfilms.com/new99/hottento.html
My favorite class right now is this seminar called "Race: The Tangled History of a Biological Concept." And um, I've never read such racist science before in my life.
Science's reflection of social values rather than the Truth just keeps popping up in all my classes now...that concerns me....
But anyway, the most frightening thing we learned is without a doubt the story of Sarah Baartman. She was a "hottentot", "bushwoman", what have you, but pretty much she was taken from her native village somewhere in sub-saharan Africa and paraded around London as a freak show exhibition. Scientists were absolutely obsessed with her body, specifically her large buttocks, massive lips, and outward-jutting jaw. They would come in and poke around at her, trying to get her to remove her clothes so they could examine her genitalia, although she was always "too modest to allow them."
Scientists finally waited until she died and then examined/measured/dissected her vagina. She was used as scientific evidence (there are published papers on her examination) of black inferiority, racial difference (races as different species), African animal-like sexuality, and Africans' as the closest biological relation to primates, etc. Her brain and genitalia were on display in museums (since the mid 1800's), as well as castings of her body until 1974.
In 1994, Nelson Mandela asked for her remains to be returned to Africa. France complied in 2002...yeah.
But there is one positive thing to be gleaned from all this. This was an example of science using its social power and influence for something awful--to perpetuate 'scientific' racial ideologies that today, we see has no validity at all. But it had that power, that power to influence society and its values, and it still does. Therefore, can't it also use that same power for positive social change instead? (hint hint gay gene research?)
Here's a picture of her--you guys can be the judge: http://icarusfilms.com/new99/hottento.html
Friday, March 27, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
while reading mill for midterms
i just had to quote this one--it's like looking into a philosophical mirror...a much more intelligent, eloquent, and impassioned mirror:
"[Society/government] practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression....it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.....there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own..."
and one more...this one's long, props to you if you actually read it:
"Who can compute what the world loses in the multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not follow out any bold, vigorous, independent train of thought, lest it should land them in something which would admit of being considered irreligious or immoral? Among them we may occasionally see some man of deep conscientiousness, and subtle and refined understanding, who spends a life in sophisticating with an intellect which he cannot silence, and exhausts the resources of ingenuity in attempting to reconcile the promptings of his conscience and reason with orthodoxy, which yet he does not, perhaps, to the end succeed in doing. No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think...."
how incredibly sad is the 'man of deep conscientiousness'? all from the fear of using his own understanding..
"[Society/government] practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression....it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.....there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own..."
and one more...this one's long, props to you if you actually read it:
"Who can compute what the world loses in the multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not follow out any bold, vigorous, independent train of thought, lest it should land them in something which would admit of being considered irreligious or immoral? Among them we may occasionally see some man of deep conscientiousness, and subtle and refined understanding, who spends a life in sophisticating with an intellect which he cannot silence, and exhausts the resources of ingenuity in attempting to reconcile the promptings of his conscience and reason with orthodoxy, which yet he does not, perhaps, to the end succeed in doing. No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think...."
how incredibly sad is the 'man of deep conscientiousness'? all from the fear of using his own understanding..
Monday, March 2, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
On tolerance & understanding
I wanted to post an excerpt from one of my anthro. readings. Just some background info--the anthropologist's name is Paul Rabinow, and this ethnography is based on his fieldwork in a Moroccan village (in other words, he wants to get "inside" Moroccan village culture, to learn about it for what it is to the Moroccan villager)...in this excerpt, he talks about a man who at first refused to be his informant, but then became good friends out of a realization of mutual respect and understanding:
"...Through mutual confrontation of our own situations we did establish contact. But this also highlighted our fundamental Otherness. What separated us was fundamentally our past. I could understanding ben Mohammed only to the extent that he could understand me--that is to say, partially. He did not live in a crystalline world of immutable Otherness any more than I did. He grew up in an historical situation which provided him with meaningful but only partially satisfactory interpretations of his world, as did I. Our Otherness was not an ineffable essence, but rather the sum of different historical experiences. Different webs of signification separated us, but these webs were now at least partially intertwined. But a dialogue was only possible when we recognized our differences, when we remained critically loyal to the symbols which our traditions had given us. By doing so, we began a process of change."
Whether you're an immigrant, American, religious, atheist, gay, straight, black, white, conservative, liberal, traditional, untraditional, rich, poor, nymph, prude--it doesn't matter! Each is fundamentally different, and neither is "better" or more right than another. We will never absolutely understand the historical and cultural shaping of an Other. So just because I understand my point of views, my beliefs, my rationality--this means shit to anyone else! My beliefs can be so crystal clear to me, and it won't matter. I'm not right to anyone else but myself. I can't impart my beliefs or views on others. Something could seem so clear to me, yet mean something entirely different to someone else---and neither opinion is more valid.
This idea makes the last bit of that passage most poignant. We are all of different worlds, "different webs of signification separate us"; but once we are able to recognize these differences, we can begin a dialogue....and begin "a process of change."
These groups are so abrasive towards each other. Differences are the reasons for so much hate, death, violence, anger. It's absurd!!! A parent might disown a child. Someone's prejudices might push them to kill another. Entire wars erupt over these differences, genocide even. The fact that people even DIE because of this boggles my mind. (but then again, MY mind.)
The point is to understand that these differences exist (JUST to acknowledge them--we don't even have to understand why they are fundamentally different), in order to communicate and affect change--to reduce hate, violence. We live in an era of mass communication. My hope is that we globalize, globalize, globalize, and empathize, empathize, empathize. It's hard to tell, but I might even say that we live in a time where humanity is the MOST understanding it has ever been, because of things like mass communication, the internet, and whatever else. These things have made the world smaller. The Other isn't so different or Other-y anymore. We can learn about who He is, what He goes through, what happens to Him. We can opt to learn these things. Your tiny world doesn't just feed you its tiny world information anymore.
"...Through mutual confrontation of our own situations we did establish contact. But this also highlighted our fundamental Otherness. What separated us was fundamentally our past. I could understanding ben Mohammed only to the extent that he could understand me--that is to say, partially. He did not live in a crystalline world of immutable Otherness any more than I did. He grew up in an historical situation which provided him with meaningful but only partially satisfactory interpretations of his world, as did I. Our Otherness was not an ineffable essence, but rather the sum of different historical experiences. Different webs of signification separated us, but these webs were now at least partially intertwined. But a dialogue was only possible when we recognized our differences, when we remained critically loyal to the symbols which our traditions had given us. By doing so, we began a process of change."
Whether you're an immigrant, American, religious, atheist, gay, straight, black, white, conservative, liberal, traditional, untraditional, rich, poor, nymph, prude--it doesn't matter! Each is fundamentally different, and neither is "better" or more right than another. We will never absolutely understand the historical and cultural shaping of an Other. So just because I understand my point of views, my beliefs, my rationality--this means shit to anyone else! My beliefs can be so crystal clear to me, and it won't matter. I'm not right to anyone else but myself. I can't impart my beliefs or views on others. Something could seem so clear to me, yet mean something entirely different to someone else---and neither opinion is more valid.
This idea makes the last bit of that passage most poignant. We are all of different worlds, "different webs of signification separate us"; but once we are able to recognize these differences, we can begin a dialogue....and begin "a process of change."
These groups are so abrasive towards each other. Differences are the reasons for so much hate, death, violence, anger. It's absurd!!! A parent might disown a child. Someone's prejudices might push them to kill another. Entire wars erupt over these differences, genocide even. The fact that people even DIE because of this boggles my mind. (but then again, MY mind.)
The point is to understand that these differences exist (JUST to acknowledge them--we don't even have to understand why they are fundamentally different), in order to communicate and affect change--to reduce hate, violence. We live in an era of mass communication. My hope is that we globalize, globalize, globalize, and empathize, empathize, empathize. It's hard to tell, but I might even say that we live in a time where humanity is the MOST understanding it has ever been, because of things like mass communication, the internet, and whatever else. These things have made the world smaller. The Other isn't so different or Other-y anymore. We can learn about who He is, what He goes through, what happens to Him. We can opt to learn these things. Your tiny world doesn't just feed you its tiny world information anymore.
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