Everyday Life

Non-Reductive Conceptions of Difference

“If ‘everyday life’ is going to provide a re-imagining of the study of culture…then it might need to put on hold the automatic explanatory value placed on accepted cultural differences. If cultural differences, such as gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity and so on, are going to be useful for the understanding of everyday life (and I assume that they would be) then there usefulness cannot be just presumed or taken for granted”(2). I am drawn to this quotation because of the conversation that occurred in our small group about whether or not Highmore wants to do away with the notion of difference in favor of commonality. From this quotation I take away the idea that Highmore places a high value on differences between people, that differences are “useful for the understanding of everyday life.” In addition Highmore adds that the identity categories normally used to “classify” people should not be assumed to mean the same thing to each person that may characterize or be characterized by these identity categories. In other words these identities black, brown, white, lesbian, upper-class etc should not be essentialized and fixed as having the same meaning in all contexts for all people. However, while writing these words I see myself alluding to a more nuanced version of differences, as opposed to contemplating his idea of commonality. However, on the next page Highmore suggests that it is the “negotiation” between differences and commonalities that is necessary. So that while we may visibly see, and viscerally feel differences, in our selves, and between ourselves and others, that these differences may not have to be divisive. This may indeed sound a bit “cum-by-ah,” but I do think that we often tend to solely focus on differences, without being at all considerate of ways we might be similar (not the same) as someone else. However, I also think that in order to find commonalities people must be willing to see the things that may mark our bodies as different and be self-reflexive in understanding how power and privilege work in everyday interactions. I think this idea touches on much of what Judith Hamera is saying when she states her second thesis: “Reductive conceptions of everyday practices ignore the social, historical, and political realities that enable or constrain communication”(14). I believe Hamera is echoing Highmore’s sentiments that people’s lived realities are more rich and complex then the labeling of differences can account for. While she is not specifically calling for an examination of commonalities, she is also not set on simply identifying differences, but on examining their layers. Like Highmore, Hamera wants to look at the rich complexities of everyday practices, which, reductive accounts of everyday-ness ignore. Hamera definitely wants differences to be a component of analyses of “the everyday”, however, like Highmore; Hamera is interested in a non-reductive view of the everyday but a more generative approach. I think that this can prove to be a useful too for examining the everyday, one that accounts for difference, but doesn’t settle for it to be simply “the way things are” without the potentiality for things to grow, change, and challenge the status quo.

Performance and the Everyday

Performance and the Everyday

I am very interested in making the connection between the “everyday” and “performance.” I feel that performance has the potential to inform the study of everyday life mainly through tactics of resistance to the reiterative practices we perform everyday often without even thinking about them. As Judith Hamera says: “Central to all such readings are aesthetics, the animating principles of art’s social lives. These principles emerge in the objects and events that aesthetic practice leaves behind, and in the routine transactions of those for whom art making is, and happens in, a neighborhood, a set of corporeal possibilities, comforts and constraints linking private self- and object-fashioning to community practice”(47). Hamera is invoking Dwight Conquergood’s notion to “To move [performance] outside of Aesthetics and situate it at the center of lived experience”(Hamera 46). This positions performance as not solely something that occurs on a stage with an audience but as something that happens in the everyday. It also insinuates that these everyday actions can be artful, beautiful, and aesthetically pleasing. Performance then becomes the way in which we enact in our everyday lives. However, performance isn’t simple, we don’t have endless performances available at our disposal, we only have performances that position us within the discourse as negotiated within society, culture, and history. Hamera allows us to see the ballet studio, ritualized Native American performances, and others as aesthetic performances that are grounded in the everyday, mainly through the body. Our bodies do have constraints within the everyday; we position ourselves and are positioned in culture through our bodies. But I have to believe that to some little extent my body in not devoid of agency but can instead choose to enact a very micro, yet resistive performance. This performance may not be as extravagant as some of the cultural performances Hamera shows us, but they are aesthetic performances that occur in the everyday. I am thinking of Tiffany’s example f being a person of color and nodding at another person of color while waiting for public transportation. This may not seem grandiose, but to me this is an aesthetic person. Although it is not performed on a stage there is some ritualistic element to it, one that says, “I may be the only person to offer this to you today, but I see you, I recognize your humanity,” There is an art form to this, something beautiful in that human connection. Of course I have not had this experience, I can never fully understand it, but I can empathize with it and recognize how it can function as a mode of resistance to dominant ideologies. Sometimes these small processes are what are truly resistive and yet aesthetic at the same time. As Highmore suggests, “If the everyday is that which is most recognizable, then what happens when the world is disturbed and disrupted by the unfamiliar”(Figuring the Everyday)? The unfamiliar becomes those performances that disrupt and challenge the everyday-ness of everyday practices. Sometimes these are grand bodily performances like practicing and performing ballet, sometimes it is a more simplistic head, nod but both performances allow us to have agency in the everyday. I am going to post a link to a video that Arianna posted last year that relates somewhat to what I am writing about but is just a really cool understanding of disruption of the everyday. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EYAUazLI9k&hl=en&fs=1&]XX

Surveillance and the Black Female Body

From taking this class as well as the “Voices of Women of Color” class I am interested in surveillance of the Black female body both historically and in the present day. While we think of surveillance in terms of technology, I think it is also important to examine surveillance through a historical lens, to not forget the ways we as a culture have come to see the Black female body. I come at this as a white, queer, woman, and thus, not a place of authority, but as a space where, there still remain sites of overlapping and interlocking oppressions that Black women face because of the surveillance of their bodies, and how this does vary from the way white people’s bodies are surveilled and how this surveillance creates a barrier for social justice to prevail. This is an idea I am still working through and I do not have the logic worked out. David Lyon argues that “Surveillance is just one aspect of this mediated world…Surveillance does also raise questions about power, citizenship, and technological development, and about information policy, regulation and resistance”(243). He goes on to say that, “The body has steadily disappeared from these relationships [relations mediated through surveillance methods]”(244). While I do agree that face-to-face interactions have diminished, our culture continues to view Black women’s bodies as commodities on display for all to see, whether through, the slave auction block, Facebook, or MTV music videos. These mediated forms of surveillance are linked to the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and capitalist enterprises. As Patricia Hill Collins argues, “Not only are commodification and exploitation linked, patterns of exploiting Black women’s sexuality have taken many forms…For example, slave auctions brokered the commodified bodies of both Black women and men”(143). Unfortunately surveillance, commodification, and exploitation, all work together to target Black women’s bodies. Lyon suggests, “Surveillance as understood here exists on a long continuum along which data is collected and processed for a range of purposes from policing and security to consumption and entertainment”(250). Although we now think of surveillance in terms of what computer sites we visit, what banks we use, and our discount cards, if we are to believe Lyon, we must recognize the ways in which data has been collected on Black women’s bodies throughout time. Sarah Bartmann’s (the Hottentot Venus’s) body was used for entertainment purposes and watched by upper class white people in order to see the irregularities of Black women’s bodies for entertainment value. Similarly, slave purchases took place on a block where, bodies were surveilled and sold for purchase. Surveillance has played an important role in the commodification and exploitation of Black women’s bodies. In popular culture Black women’s bodies are used for spectatorship, reduced down to “booties,” and are hypersexualized. But while this is happening our culture is using these images, collected through surveillance, to monitor things like the reproductive rights of Black women. Forcing sterilization against the will of a Black woman is not uncommon, and it is no surprise given the way that surveillance has been and is used to condemn and police Black women’s bodies into a white paradigm of behavior. There is not necessarily a specific conclusion to be gained, but it is very interesting to look at the way surveillance intersects with commodification, and exploitation to discipline Black women’s bodies into conformity. This allows the dominant culture to gain and hold privilege while marginalized Black women suffer from this surveillance. I am adding the new Beyonce video in order to sort of demonstrate the ways that we now surveil, commodify, and exploit Black women's bodies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mVEGfH4s5g

Walking in the City, Space, and Resistance

“Escaping the imaginary totalizations produced by the eye, the everyday has a certain strangeness that does not surface, or whose surface is only its upper limit, outlining itself against the visible. Within this ensemble, I shall try to locate the practices that are foreign to the ‘geometrical’ or ‘geographical’ space of visual, panoptic, or theoretical constructions”(Michel de Certeau 93). We talked about this quotation a lot in class and discussed the ways that there is no totalizing theory of the everyday. What I find really fascinating about de Certeau’s theorization of the everyday is the concept of “strangeness” and foreign practices within a laid out geographical space. What I take from this portion of the book is that the disruptions of everyday places, the negotiation of space, is not necessarily where resistance occurs, but it is where we see the negotiations of power within the everyday, and where we see the interesting facets of the everyday in general. I was recently told about the MTV Video Music Awards and Kanye West’s disruptive performance, in attempting to usurp Taylor Swift’s win for her video. I feel like this is an interesting site of understanding disruptions of spaces. While this may not be a “common man’s” everyday space, this is an everyday “pop cultural” space that the public is privy to. So this display caused a lot of controversy and Kanye West was referred to as a jerk for stating his opinion and disrupting the space of the Video Music Awards. I do not necessarily want to place a value judgment on this situation because what I found most interesting in this moment were the power relations that were playing out in this disruptive moment not my own opinion on the situation. At a surface level Kanye West appeared to just be a jerk that ruined Taylor Swift’s moment of glory. However, going beneath the surface level we can see the power relations at play between a semi-powerful black man and a young white woman. While Kanye was advocating for Beyoncé, a black woman, it was not Beyoncé asserting her power upon Taylor Swift. How interesting to think about the intersections of race and gender in this situation. While Kanye is male he is also black and thus, seen as a threat and marginalized. Taylor Swift while white, is also female. In the historical relationships between black men and white women black men are seen as the ultimate threat to white women and their sexuality. Thus, Swift was portrayed as a victim of black male violence. While an unfair characterization of West, he definitely seemed to hold power by being able to speak his mind, while Swift seemed stunned, small, and voice-less. Kanye was not thrown off stage (the fact he made it onstage seemed strange to me), and while some booed him, others cheered him on. But by the very nature of her whiteness and normative, Swift was not powerless, or a simple victim. What also is interesting about this situation, especially in a de Certeauian sense, is that in this moment we can see below the visible to see the disruptions of the everyday. While there is some panoptic surveillance happening in this situation, there is no one theory or one way to view this moment. It is disorderly and thus a moment in the everyday. It was a moment of improvisation that complicated the everyday. It may have been a moment of resistance but really it was a negotiation of power, thus, making it an interesting site of meaning making. Here is the video http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/435995/taylor-swift-wins-best-female-video.jhtml

Interviews, Power, and Change

I have really been thinking about whom to interview for class and how to make this project meaningful, yet not necessarily have it be the pinnacle of my doctoral program, or necessarily include it for further research. I think it is possible to do a project in this way and think of it as a practice run for learning how to do interviewing and oral history and looking at it in terms of stories. As Thomas King writes, “The truth about stories is that’s all we are.” When I read this I have a very visceral reaction, and though I digress, I read parts of this book at my great grandmother’s funeral because I remember her as a storyteller. While I cannot interview her, I am interested in hearing someone’s stories just to hear the words of someone else in order to learn about their everyday. And King’s words ring true, we are our stories, and our stories make us. They tell us how to behave in the world but they also make up our world. They show the differentials of power in the ways they are told as well as the messages they convey. It may seem silly but the person I want to interview, although I am not sure if I will, is the woman who threads my eyebrows. She is an Indian woman who has been threading eyebrows since she was a small child. While we had a short conversation the first time while she was doing my eyebrows I would like to get to know her more formally and talk about her life. Threading eyebrows is a traditional Indian practice of hair removal, where a cotton thread is used to remove hairs. The process is less abrasive than waxing, and helps to shape eyebrows in a more natural and less dramatic way. I feel that this woman, Priyah is her name, is situated in the theoretical lens of the everyday and at the very least is a part of my everyday. While I feel that it may be a stereotypical role (the beauty/service industry,) and I would in no way want to exploit her, I think she may have interesting stories. She deals with mostly white, middle class women on a daily basis, taking part in this ancient Indian ritual. It would be virtually impossible to not see some of the power relations, but I see much more her agency in the situation. She is the one with this somewhat subjugated knowledge imparting it on me, giving me a lecture on how I need to let my eyebrows be more natural and how she can help me with that but how I need to trust her to let them grow. She has power in this situation although it might not always be seen as such. Anyway, I think she might be very interesting and I think she might have important stories to share and ways to speak to knowledges of the mundane and everyday. But of course I have the important first step of asking her and the dynamic has the potential to be awkward but we’ll see. To be continued… [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIeHYNt-rl4&hl=en&fs=1&]

Queer Public Cultures

I really love Ann Cvetkovich. When I read her book on Lesbian Public Cultures and trauma, I swear my life was changed. At first when reading this article, I was afraid because she announced that her current project on public feeling was taking the place of some of her early work on trauma. I thought her work on trauma theory and sexuality was quite prolific and was worried that she might have toned down her politics. However, in the end, I was able to really see how she is not only negotiating public feeling but how those often come into being because of traumatic events—both public and private. But it is really the way in which, she queers affect, which demonstrates her contribution to the study of affect more broadly—which, is I think, quite a political standpoint. Emotions are not only not private, but they are also always sexualized, making emotions publically sexual. There is something so radical in this because sexuality is still taboo and people, as general rules do not want to think of the sexuality that might play out in traumatic situations or within their own emotions. As confused as I am about sexuality, the even more confused and yet intrigued I am by affect and their connections together. As Cvetkovich writes, “The embrace of affect within queer studies has also enabled new forms of personal voice in academic work, including criticism based in memoir, public intellectual work that seeks a general audience, or overt declarations of love and other investments in our intellectual projects”(463). I find this to be one of the most compelling pieces of Cvetkovich, as it relates to my work. I find that the concept of affect, which, I interpret as meaning public feeling, is very useful especially in understandings of new ideas of queer theory. Whereas queer theory used to be white centered, incorporating new and performative voices, especially those of queer people of color actually end up utilizing a different affective process. In this sense these new voices, these personal voices not only used a different form of affect but they also created new affects with the personal voices of scholars of color. The voices of queer people of color have changed, and richened, queer projects calling academics to continue doing queer work but in a more responsible, and what I would call, intersectional way. In my mind I am drawn to performance artists like Carmelita Tropicana, who is a subversive queer Chicana, who performs a very outward sexuality, while being a lesbian. She draws on elements of camp and drag to make her performances lively, while, always critiquing, dominant structures. I recall a video of hers where she is imprisoned with a bunch of other women. The subtext of the performance was their queerness. In the end the women perform a subversive song together in the jail cell, singing about their lost loves, like lipstick (potentially a metaphor for another woman.) Anyway, these women, including Tropicana, all do a very public, very visual performance of feeling their sexuality. I think with affect, that one thing I have to always keep in mind, is that it isn’t just about public feeling, but the ways those public feelings are performed and used, and where the power is located in public feeling. In the end I am wondering if there is no moment or emotion left unmediated by the social and cultural world in which, we live? I am really excited to discuss this topic and to keep reading materials along these lines.

Affective Narrative

"Everyone knows there's something not quite right about suburban sprawl: the deserts of plywood spreading over hayfields; the kids getting fat eating potato chips in front of the TV; the creeping lure of the affordable dream house that comes in the same four basic plans no matter where you are. But the houses are big, beautiful, white, more than you ever expected to have. More than you can resist”(49). If affects are public feelings I wonder why if everyone feels there is “something not quite right about suburban sprawl,” then why do so many people buy into it? Why is it still happening everywhere, under our noses, even when we may detest it? This weekend my girlfriend and I got lost between Longmont and Denver. We were attempting to return to my house in Denver after visiting my grandmother. There is road construction EVERYWHERE, so inevitably we end up taking a detour. The detour takes us through Erie, we look around and for miles and miles around us we see houses. Houses that are big, maybe to some people beautiful, but to us our own version of personal Hell. As they sing at the beginning of the television show Weeds, “Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky. Little boxes on the hillside. Little boxes all the same.” Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W6dOEdEAAQ&feature=related She and I do not fit in with the master plan of gated communities. They aren’t made for families who can’t procreate or at least don’t want to. We turn and stare, not only are the communities marked by huge stone signs, distinguishing the various ones, but some by elaborate landscaping and artistry. We laugh because one community is surrounded by metal buffalo sculptures (I hesitate to use that term and feel buffalo spectacle might be a better word for it. “The suburbs,” I say, “The place where they kill off the buffalo and make hideous visual representations of them.” We both laugh, frightened because we know how true this joke is. We don’t live in places like this—we refuse to. In the mountains we have the privilege of escaping the suburban sprawl. We don’t need a place with a 24-hour pharmacy, or chain restaurants, or, the same stores repeated over and over. But some people like those amenities. My brother for example would never consider living someplace without a Target. Where would he and his wife go if they needed something late at night? I tell them they would probably save money because they wouldn’t be able to run out and pick up a movie at ten o’clock. I explain that sometimes those luxuries are unnecessary but that we utilize them simply because we can. We use them uncritically. We forget to look at who cannot use them. We forget to look at who is not allowed to live in gated communities, who doesn't fit in at the local Chiles. If we all feel there is something not right about this then why is it happening everywhere? Why is there also a sense of comfort in this sort of repetition? How do our interactions become standardized? Just because a restaurant maybe displays a local high school’s memorabilia does not mean it has any ties to the community of which it is a part. Instead it is a way to “fake the customer out.” Fake them into thinking that a huge chain restaurant cares. Create a sense of feeling that this “cog in the wheel” really desires to be different—that they appear to be interested in the community. They don't. They just want to look like they do. But even the other restaurants are competing to convey that they do not abide by these standards. Thus, a customer comes to believe that at a non-chain restaurant they are getting a more authentic experience, which, may in fact be just as constructed, just in a totally different way. We provide real food from real people, or real animals? But this real-ness just creates a new affect. We can be connected through the authentic even if authenticity is created out of a feeling and not somethings actual authenticity. It is circuitous just as affect is. We still leave people out. Those who cannot afford this kind of food. How does race factor in-certainly whiteness is re-centered in these communities. People of color usually aren't invited with open arms into these communities. I wonder how affect and power work together? If affect is “public feeling”(Stewart 2) then who benefits from the affect created by gated communities and who does not? How do standardized communities promote consumerism and a certain level of class privilege? And how is consumption in and of itself both problematic and yet necessary? I laugh at the buffalo, yet know I cannot live in the mountains forever—I have to negotiate my way through the “master plan” of gated communities and suburban sprawl. I have no answers just feelings. Feelings of ickiness, of confusion. Is there any authenticity? Should there be?

Humour

Humor: The Mind, The Body, and Affect

I am very interested in the corporeal aspects of humor and how this relates to the affective subject.

As Simon Critchley writes:
Let me go back to the body. If humour is, as I suggested, the return of the physical into the metaphysical, then it is important to point out that the human being remains an ineluctably metaphysical entity…if the bodily dimension of the comic takes place in the gap between being and having, between our souls and arseholes, then this hole cannot be plugged or bunged up. We cannot simultaneously be what we have. The critical distance with regard to the world and nature that opens up in the incongruities of humour is testified to in the alienation we experience with regard to our bodies. This is why the experience of the body in pain is so oddly analogous to the pleasures of laughter—which is why it can hurt when you laugh(50).

Firstly I do not know what this means. Not wholly. But I felt here are a few key ideas that I would like to work through and to a degree “flesh out.” Critchley defines humor in terms of a gap between the physical body and the metaphysical self and the returning of those two dimensions to one another. I frame this in my own mind—humor is a reconciliation of the supposed mind/body dichotomy or split. Humor affects not only the body in the form of something physically happening, but we can only make sense of this humor through the logos of the mind, of realizing that whatever funny thing just happened, broke with logic of the mind. And I think maybe this is what Critchley is getting at—that humor is not located solely in the body or in the mind. Humor is located at the intersections of both body and mind.

But there is a place I think that humor works that is maybe not even in the realm of just a simple mind/body split, but that instead humor exists in its next affective nature. Humor exists somewhat in its public nature, in its ability to affect people in public scenarios. Humor wouldn’t necessarily be funny if someone else wasn’t around not to witness it. Thus, humour is both in the mind, in the body and in the affective gaps between, around, and underneath, these temporal and spatial locations.

Incongruency is key here. Humor is all about incongruency and the complexities of non-sense making. The things that are funny are so in part because they are unexpected and do not meet normative expectations. I am reminded of Margaret Cho, an Asian-American bisexual comedian and some of her skits. There is one part in a skit where she takes on the identity of an old “Washer Woman” named Gwen. When you would expect to her to be coming around asking to take in work like laundry, or ironing (as is stereotypical Asian women’swork) she instead pretends to be going around using the line “Hi, my name is Gwen and I’M HERE TO WARSH YER VAGIIIIIIIIINA!!!!!!!!” It’s funny because it is unexpected and really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But I laugh because I find it humorous that an Asian woman, supposedly old, a/de sexualized is walking around asking women if she can warsh their vaginas. It does not make sense but we cans see the connection of the mind and body while simultaneously sublimating them. The body is necessary but the mind is also. In the scenario as an audience we are affected by the consequences of stereotyping of Asian women and ways to de normalize those stereotypes.

I don’t have any answers, but I do think that humor is not as simple as we sometimes assume it to be. It is not just that some things are funny and others are not. There are gaps where humor occurs, spaces between bodies and minds. And even then, humor is not simple; it is a complex set of relations, practices, and performances of bodies and the affects of these performances on others. Is there ever an original place of humor, or something’s inherent funny-ness? I don’t think so, which is why I think it is important to think of the humor in terms of the mind, the, body, and affect.

I am writing this because I am the white girl

the one with the privilege to write

But you probably already know this

you can see me so much better than I see you

I live both in center and on margins

simultaneously

living in a queered body

but a white body

how do I make sense of myself?

how do i make sense of you?

how do I make sense of us?

Nietzsche Blog

 

“The Truth is Out There”

 

“The judgment ‘good’ does not derive from those to whom ‘goodness’ is shown!  Rather the ‘good’ themselves—that is, the noble, the powerful, the superior, and the high-minded were the ones who felt themselves and their actions to be good—that is, as of first rank—and posited them as such in contrast to everything low, low-minded, common, and plebian”(12).

 

In this statement Nietzsche lays out his poststructuralist argument that there are no essential morals or “good” people and “evil” or bad people only interpretations of these terms as constructed by people.  There are no essences to these terms or these people instead they are given meaning through historical and cultural connotations—connotations derived from power.  In the above quotation it is obvious too that Nietzsche believes that those in power have the ability to construct these meanings in their favor so that they define themselves as “good” or “moral” people because of their positions of power.  Nietzsche also asserts on the next page (13) that the power to name those who are “bad” is held by those who have the power to define themselves as “good” and “moral” people. 

 

Nietzsche uses a genealogical method in order to trace how the connotations of “good” and “bad,” “moral,” and evil have changed depending on cultural and political circumstances.  In doing this Nietzsche details the fact that there is no inherent truth in the meaning of “good” and “bad” but that the truth is constructed depending on the circumstance.  Prior to reading this I had only skimmed over a bit of Nietzschean philosophy never understanding its purpose.  Now I see how Nietzsche is a pivotal text for French post-structuralism.  Post-structuralism’s basis lies at the idea that there is no inherent truth or essences within human beings, but that we are instead products of both discourse and bodily positionality (as I think Nietzsche alludes to in the idea of “slave mentality.)  Bodies are positioned within discourse and language and the ways in which these bodies are constructed determines whether they are imbued with power or are marginalized and lack power.  But there is no truth of these bodies; instead they are constructed as true, as good, or as evil and bad.   

 

This may be a trite example because it does not necessarily deal with marginalization of bodily positionalities--but instead marginalization of ideas—and the ways in which truth becomes constructed as Truth or allows for a multiplicity of truths. This example looks at how true is/are Truth/truths.   The television show the X-Files is a prime example of how truth is constructed and posits that there may be many versions of truths to be uncovered.  The show focuses on the characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully as two FBI agents faced with a list of unsolved cases known as the X-Files-the secret files, or the files nobody else is interested in dealing with.  Mulder believes in the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, that new-aged monsters exist, and that some people possess super human powers-things that cannot be explained through any conventional means.  He is obsessed with uncovering the Truth of these matters, in fact a poster in his office reads, “I Want To Believe,” with a flying saucer in the background.  Mulder wants to believe that there is something out there to believe in other than what he or anyone else has been told. Scully is assigned to be Mulder’s partner because she is a medical doctor and she is supposed to disprove all of Mulder’s findings through positivist medical science.  Scully believes that science can prove the Truth in any situation that there are always, Always, ALWAYS scientific reasons for the things they encounter.  Until she begins to experience some inexplicable phenomena of her own, experiences, which cannot be explained through positivistic science. 

 

Along with Nietzsche, Mulder believes that the people in power, mainly in the government, have possessed the power to construct the truth, the reality that we believe in everyday.  He believes that the government is in secret possession of proof of alien life forms and other conspiracies that have harmed the American people.  In this sense those in power try to retain an image of “goodness” or “morality” while making Mulder look like a fraud or someone who is bad or at least doing “bad” and unnecessary work.  While Mulder does not believe in the precise method of truth that science can uncover he does believe that there is a Truth lying in the Department of Defense, Roswell, the sky.  Somewhere there is Truth among the lies.  There is Good or Light among the Evil or the Darkness.  To Nietzsche there is no Truth, only interpretations of experiences and bodies through discourse and language.  There is no Truth lying in a building (the Pentagon) or even in someone’s head (Cigarette Smoking Man) because those truths can only be understood through our interpretations of them.

 

I too agree with Nietzsche that there is not one Truth but many variations of truths, that truth is influenced by society, culture, and politics, and history.  There is no one Truth to search for and uncover but many truths, many experiences, many interpretations that are valid and important to know about.  Morality, goodness and evil like truth also have various interpretations depending on who is in the power to construct these terms.  If we associate morality with Truth than we assume that only those experiences deemed “good” or “moral” are True-leaving out a variety of other experiences.  For communication researchers it is important to recognize that Truth may not exist, that we may never “get to the bottom” of something completely-especially not with numbers or science.  Instead we have to listen to the diverse and varied stories of experiences, whether they are of UFOs or marginalized subject positions in order to uncover truths-truths that are subjective yet potentially shared among groups of people sharing similar experiences. 

 

I include this clip just to give a sort of synopsis of the show.  There is also a very interesting quote in the middle where a sort of philosopher-scientist says, “Truth is as subjective as reality,” and I feel that this really helps to sum up at least a bit of what Nietzsche’s poststructuralist argument is.

 

Class Blog #5

Agamben

--

The Pleasure of Organizing Community

I am building on my own question posed in class, “What does organizing under the principles of non-identity look like?”  I have a personal investment in this because I do believe in the power of political organizing not around essentialized identities but still taking into account the difference of marked and marginalized bodies.

I believe Agamben offers us a useful tool for thinking about new and different ways of creating social movements.  As Agamben writes, “Whatever singularities cannot form a societas because they do not possess any identity to vindicate nor any bond of belonging for which to seek recognition.  In final instance the State can recognize any claim for identity—even that of a State identity within the State…What the State cannot tolerate in any way, however, is that the singularities form a community without affirming an identity that humans co-belong without any representable condition of belonging”(85).   

Agamben is challenging us to defy the State’s way of making people intelligible through identities. Agamben suggests to us that the State can only understand humans through their classifications so the only way to create social change is to disrupt the categorizations, the fixidity of identity categories. This is much in line with radical queer politics, which attempt to organize not under essentialized identity categories (woman, gay, black etc…) but instead organize around political issues like health care and poverty.  Unfortunately radical queer politics while preaching a non-identity based politics has unfortunately created a non-identity “identity” based politics, which continues to locate sexuality as a primary focus.  Queer politics as it was originally conceived tended to put queer at the forefront foregoing differences within its population.  I think Agamben offers us a solution to this problem through the concepts of singularity within community. 

Agamben discusses singularity as “neither universal nor an individual included in a series but rather ‘singularity insofar as it is whatever singularity.’ In this conception, such-and-such being is reclaimed from its having this or that property, which identifies it as belonging to this or that set, to this or that class”(1).  In this sense singularity is something that is a part of a larger group while still maintaining a sense of individuality.  This holds true for the possibilities of organizing social movements where groups made up of somewhat unique individuals gather together for political issues despite their identifications.  For example having people who do not identify as necessarily feminist or women organize for reproductive rights, despite the fact they may not possess the ability or desire to reproduce at all.  These groups also do not have to go about organizing in traditional means either but may instead use non-traditional methods of resistance-those methods not recognized by the State not organized protests where there are barriers and police officers lining the march/rally route.  Instead it may be more beneficial to hold group dinners at someone’s house raising consciousness for reproductive rights for all people (those of color, women and men dealing with forced sterilization, comprehensive sexual education complete with access to information on birth control, informed decisions, as well as information on those questioning their normative sexuality.)  Then maybe through a deliberative process the group could come to some decisions and then bring the issues to the State-all people individuals yet in a group come together to support the differences within their group all while advocating an issue.

I am open to this idea-I do think we need to be careful of identity based politics as Butler argues.  They lead to the potential alienation and exclusion of people not identified with that group.  As Ricki Wilchins  a gender and queer theorist notes "Movements and organizations become stronger when they welcome people as members instead of allies."  In this sense a movement becomes composed of people focusing on an issue together as opposed to a group which needs allies because the group is comprised of common identity excluding those who vary from it. 

However, I think it is naïve to think that people will not feel some sort of bond with those people who seem to have a similar experiences and positionalities.  Sometimes it is only in the groups we feel identified with that we feel "at home." Maybe this is a social and cultural construction but for people who face oppression because of their marked and marginalized bodies it doesn't seem to matter because these constructed identities connect them.  Maybe it is a connection of oppression as opposed to identity and I feel this is reasonable 

I think we need a balance of both kinds of activism noting the need for spaces for groups of similar conceptions of their identities yet also be open to a non-identity based politics where we come together over issues and not identities.  There is space for both of these types of organizing each with a different political agenda in mind. 

Class Blog #5

Butler

--

Troubling Gender

I deal with sex, gender, and desire everyday, every hour, every minute.  I have to assume that they matter because they matter to me.  But do gender, sex, and desire really matter?  Does identity matter?  How can we understand desire without understanding sex and/or gender?  Do my identities located at the intersections as a white, middle class, femme, lesbian, woman and the other multiplicity of categories and identifications matter?  Does my body matter?

I begin with something near and dear to my heart-“drag, cross-dressing, and the sexual stylization of butch and femme identities”(187) or what Butler terms subversive bodily acts.  While I want to go into this subversive performance by offering a selection of a narrative piece I am working on-I want to contextualize the subversion of these bodily performance through Judith Butler’s work on sex/gender/desire. 

Butler aims to denaturalize the connection we associate with sex/gender/and desire saying that they produce one another that they are rooted in a place of discourse, culture, social construction, and history.  We often understand or are told that sex is biological, determined by one’s genitalia and their chromosomes.  It is “only natural” to classify a person as male or a female-to make people intelligible.  A common assumption is that this essentialized understanding of sex leads to the cultural inscriptions of masculine or feminine practices upon a sexed body.  Then based on the notions of male/female, masculine/feminine we can decipher normative sexuality.  The dichotomous bodies “belong” together-they “complete” each other.  Anything other than that is considered deviant, abnormal, or at the very least non-normative.  This is what Butler considers the “heterosexual matrix,” or the “respective internal coherence of sex, gender, and desire”(31). 

If we eradicate the naturalization and the stability of the categories of sex and gender then how can we understand desire?  We attempt to categorize sexual practice based on whether or not they are engaged in by “same” or “different” sexed people.  But what if our attempts to gender and sex people are a matter of making them fit into a pattern of heteronormativity?  Then the politics of the body of sex/gender/and desire cannot be said to create one another but are instead produced through one another. 

But these categories of sex/gender/desire have to be important-they have to matter because bodies live them everyday.  All bodies to some degree, but especially those bodies, which make a point of defying the heterosexual matrix, are implicated in structures of power, which, condemn them and attempt to re-discipline their bodies back into normative conceptions of gender/sex/and desire.  But what about those people who choose not to conform despite the pressures?  Are their subversions actually subversive- are they resistant? Again I have to believe they are because I experience the effects of people’s non-conformity everyday both positive and negative.

I am going to offer a short passage from a paper I will be presenting at NCA on a narrative performance panel.  My paper is something like “Femme Drag: Subversive Performances of Female Same-Sex Desire.” 

 *****

I wake up in the morning and I put on my gender and sexuality identity.  Everything I do in the morning while habitual is done with intent.[1]  The eyeliner I put on my top lid, lining it with careful precision, the grey ankle boots I place on my feet-they are intentional choices.  How am I going to put on my white, femme, lesbian, self today?  You see I need my eyeliner and boots in this crazy world we live in because for a femme lesbian they are both my resistance and my protection.  They are my subversion, my empowerment, and my survival.  You see they are my resistance-something that makes me feel my queer-ness, something that while everyday and mundane, set me apart from all of those people who “subconsciously” perform femininity and masculinity according to the way society has told them to.  But they are also my armor against being called a dyke and queer (and not in that good way.)   

And isn’t that just a little bit radical?  Maybe I am laughing at my own joke here but isn’t it a little bit queer to perform femininity and do it for the purpose— no not the purpose— the desire of other women-preferably those already lesbian (but that’s always negotiable.) And what about performing it for women who don’t look like women at all?  I like my girls to look like boys.  I say eff the patriarchy—the system that tells me my eyeliner and my boots can’t be my resistance— that these things normalize instead of queer me.

 Because my queerness…I want it to stand on it’s own.

 My femme drag performance should be— no it is enough to cast me in the role of lesbian, of queer, of gender norm defying queer lesbian.

 *****

So I include this here to sort of take Butler up on her notions of subversive bodily performances, but also to problematize her the notion that these resistive practices are taken up solely by those defying the “heterosexual matrix.”  

Butler writes, “If the anatomy of the performer is already distinct from the gender of the performance, then the performance suggests a dissonance not only between sex and performance, but sex and gender, and gender and performance.  As much as drag creates a unified picture of a ‘woman’…it also reveals the distinctness of those aspects of gendered experience which falsely naturalized as a unity through regulatory fiction of heterosexual coherence”(187). 

I am indebted to these performances of a gender that doe not cohere with its sex -I am in a relationship based off of butch/femme performance.  I am indebted to the way these performances stand out and actually mark my own body as a lesbian or a queer.  These are the performances which, on a daily basis are marked as “different” performances, performances that categorize people as others.  These are the bodies that walk around constantly scrutinized and marginalized.  They are the gender-queer bodies the ones usually seen as fragmented, unfixed, “fluid.”  These are not the bodies in “happy limbo of non-identity” (Butler 143) as assumed by Foucault; they are the bodies on trial.  But I want to suggest that the performances need not be solely based on those who do not conform their gender to their sex but those who make choices to either conform or not in the little everyday practices.  I believe femme drag is a subversive performance because it also defies the heterosexual matrix, through the everyday practice of putting on eyeliner and strapping on boots.  The femme in drag is not a unified subject but a subject full of inconsistency, fragmentation, and multiplicity.  While maybe the gender and sex are coherent in the femme lesbian performance, the connection to desire is anything but.  And if we believe that sex/gender/desire operate under some naturalized connection instead of as an entangled process of production and performance than a woman performing femininity but desiring women blows that connection apart.  It proves Butler's theory correct there is no cohesive subject, no subject that just because she is female who performs femininity-and should for all intensive purposes be heterosexual-is not. There is no sex and gender which is beyond desire, nor desire beyond sex and gender, however, there are ways to resist the normative ideas of all three.  Femme drag is one way I see this subversive performance occurring through fragmenting the performance of femininity with same-sex female desire-same-sex butch desire.  While the femme in drag is fraught with constraints of identity categories, categories that inform her ability to perform her femininity, racial and class constraints, identities that do "indeed" matter, this performance is subversive because it is never fixed as one thing.  Always changing, sometimes in corsets, sometimes times in business suits, and other times simply a form of becoming, of consciousness, of desiring.  Of changing desires, of changing identities, all while maintaining the consciousness the constraint of femininity.  It is complicated, it is complex, it is performance, it is conscious choice, it is limited choice, it is an existence unlike any other.      

All bodies to some degree are on trial.  All of our bodies are implicated in a system, which is quite rigid in its categorization.

But we have ways to create subversive bodily performances, while limited to exist within the discourse as nothing can intelligible can exist in this abject space, we have ways to resist.  These performances may involve only a certain level of heightened consciousness, others, are put into practice.  These little moments of resistance, of defying a gender norm (not shaving legs or allowing oneself to cry), of practicing same-sex desire while being identified as a femme, these practices do carry weight.  While they may not be the large social movements of our time, they are the mini revolutions within the everyday.  And they matter, because I can work with preschoolers as a femme lesbian and be a good teacher, a role-model, and a leader, not a pedophile or molester as some would claim.  I see my girlfriend-a butch- in a Speedo swimsuit with a mohawk teaching swimming lessons at the pool where she works, simply giving children and adults the insight into non-normative gender performances-ones they may not see anywhere else during their day.  Raising new consciousness, changing people on a micro-level, forcing them to deal with the queers, the people they may reject.  I see these performances as subversive, see them working in covert ways, creating resistance and promoting social change and awareness simply to other non-normative ways of being.

These things have to matter. 

Identities have to matter

Queering Identity has to matter 

Theorizing desire has to matter 

I have to believe it matters.   

Class Blog #4

De Certeau

--

Writing the Body Into Being

“There is no law that is not inscribed on bodies.  Every law has a hold on the body.  Through all sorts of initiations…it transforms  them into tables of the law, into living tableaux of rules and customs, into actors in the drama organized by social order…It makes its book out of them.  These writings carry out two complementary operations: through them, living beings are ‘packed into a text’…and on the other, the reason…of a society ‘becomes flesh’(140). 

I quote de Certeau at length here because I feel that this passage illustrates a way to reconcile text and the body-of bringing the body into being-of writing the body into being (Conquergood, Madison, Pollock et al).   In this passage de Certeau lays out the problematics of simply writing the body as though the body were simply a text.  When we think of the body solely as a text to be analyzed we forget its human-ness and the politics associated with its everyday experience.  In textual analysis we tend to examine the body as something to read to interpret, while forgetting that it is a living being, constantly in motion, constantly fluxuating its position. 

Performance theory is one way to reconcile the textualism that the academy privileges while also writing about the body as living, breathing, moving being.  De Certeau has been taken up (in fact the aforementioned passage specifically) in performance studies as a way to account for texts but also for performances—both staged and as everyday practice.  As Dwight Conquergood notes, “The hegemony of textualism needs to be exposed and undermined.  Transcription is not a transparent or politically innocent for conceptualizing or engaging the world”(147).  The body is more than a text, it is a product of historical, political, social, economic, and cultural circumstances. 

De Certeau is a good jumping point for thinking about the politics or “the laws” that become inscribed on bodies.  We embody the practices of the law, “Sit-down, be quiet, pay attention!”  These are not laws, which are written by lawmakers and voted on by those in charge, but are instead hegemonic practices ordering people to conform.  In this same respect institutions also attempt to conform to hegemonic white, male, heterosexual, middle-class ways of being—ways that ignore other potentialities of being. However texts in their more traditional form do inscribe laws onto bodies, when sodomy laws were in place restricting the practice of same-sex desire, creating a barrier of access to reproductive rights by creating parental consent laws, and as Conquer good notes, the bureaucratic paperwork presented to immigrants (also discussed by Richard in class).  These laws, which are written, try to control and restrain bodies, especially the bodies of whom we conceive of as oppressed.

Foucault expresses the concept of “subjugated knowledges”  or the ‘knowledges at the bottom of the hierarchy.”(Conquergood, 147) as the ways that those marginalized people’s experiences and voices are often invalidated.  Often times it is these knowledges that are resistive to dominant discourses and dominant performances of power.  These “subjugated knowledges make the body central to resistance.  This is what Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga describe as, “theories of the flesh” or theories of the body as key and central to writing about human subjects—especially in regards to the modes of power created by the racializing, classing, queering, and gendering, of bodies.  In this way we can never separate the body from the politics, which, govern it, but we do have agency and the power to resist.  When a person at the bottom of the hierarchy chooses to not sit when told, or protest against a war incited for pitiful fallacies and is physically arrested, those other ways of knowing and being gain some power.  They break the inscription of law on the body.

I think de Certeau would agree with Conquergood—who has also influenced my understanding--that we should not rid the world of texts, but that we must think also of the bodies and performances alongside them.  We must look at and critique textuality as the assumed norm for scholarship, which, often simply looks at the body as text, as a book (even when used metaphorically) and think of and depict the ways that bodies in their humanity, in their very existence can never be truly captured and represented in a text.  Through the intervention of performance however, and the re-centering of the body, we may be able to do a better job describing the practices of everyday lives of ordinary people where their knowledges become pertinent to furthering new knowledges.  In this process marginalized people not only are able to tell their experiences but in the telling and accepting may be able to heal.

Class Blog #3

Deleuze and Guattari

--

“Every State Line”

So this week to me so far has definitely been the most challenging because Deleuze and Guattari

offer very obscure examples, which our colleague Brian assures me is the point.  He told me that

if I think that Deleuze and Guattari are trying to create a concrete way of being or even 

understanding then it will never make sense because they are actually talking about a process of

“doing.”  I think this gets at the concept of “Being” versus “becoming.”  If we are something (are

as a conjugate of the word to be) then that is all that we are, if we are in process of becoming 

something then we have the potential to change who and what it is we are based on what we are

doing.   Confusingdefinitely, but in this abstract way sort of makes sense.  If Nomadology and 

the War Machine are constantly in flux then we escape the ideas that we are in fact something, 

that we have essences.  Instead we are always a process of movement, I don’t really like the 

word fluid, but maybe as Christina said, it is an idea of water, ocean, of liquid.  Maybe we ebb 

and flow back and forth sometimes between the War Machine and resistance and the State.  In 

contrast to Nomadology is the idea of the State, which tries to discipline people and bodies into 

certain accepted norms.  In the State bodies are policed in ways that they are forced into 

understandings of “Being,” making it easier for the State to deal with a discipline.

While Deleuze and Guattari would probably not approve of the next part of my blog for me it is 

relevant.  I am going to offer a contemporary albeit imperfect example of the ways that 

Nomadology and the State work together.   This was inspired while driving home on Monday 

and feeling emotionally exhausted and having NO clue what I was going to write about.  

Luckily my IPod was on shuffle and this song came on

and finally some of this theory of Nomadology made some sense to me.  A caveat as I stated 

before is that this is not a perfect example, but for me helped me to grapple with the text and 

make it applicable to me.I heard the song “Every State Line” by Ani DiFranco.  I am going to 

post the lyrics and a clip from the song and then talk about how I see it making sense and how I 

see it as flawed also.

Every State Line: Ani DiFranco

I got pulled over in west Texas


so they could look inside my car


he said are you an american citizen


I said
yes sir
so far


they made sure I wasn't smuggling


someone in from Mexico


someone willing to settle for america


cause there's nowhere else to go


(chorus)

and every state line


there's a new set of laws


and every police man


comes equipped with extended claws


there's a thousand shades of white


and a thousand shades of black


but the same rule always applies


smile pretty, and watch your back


I broke down in Louisiana


and I had to thumb a ride

got in the first car that pulled over


you can't be picky in the middle of the night


he said


baby, do you like to fool around


baby, do you like to be touched


I said


maybe some other time


fuck you very much


(chorus)

I'm in the middle of alabama


they stare at me where ever I go


I don't think they like my haircut


I don't think they like my clothes


I can't wait to get back to New York City


where at least when I walk down the street


nobody ever hesitates


to tell me exactly what they think of me


(chorus)


a little town in pennsylvania


there was snow on the ground


a parked in an empty lot


where there was no one else around


but I guess I was taking up too much space


as I was trying to get some sleep


'cause an officer came by anyway


and told me I had to leave


(chorus)

--

Every State Line Video Clip

--I see this song as a way that someone may negotiate the constraints of the War Machine, and the

State.  In this song DiFranco is a trope for “nomad” she is constantly moving from place to place

and in every new state that she enters (as in United state of America) she is faced with different

mechanisms of policing by the State.  Deleuze and Guattari use the examples of chess and Go to 

explain the ways that the State and the War Machine operate (3-

4).  

As in the game of Chess there are only certain moves that certain pieces can make, DiFranco is 

not free to be in “perpetual movement”(4) as is characteristic of the game Go.  Every time 

DiFranco gets “going” in her nonnormative directions she is stopped by the State or the police 

and the rules set in place for that specific state do not allow or her freedom of movement.  As 

Deleuze and Guattari articulate the state is “quite perfect, quite complete”(14). There are only 

certain ways to move in these states or the State, not with immigrants, not hitchhiking, not 

appearing different. In these State apparatuses there is already a completed structure in place to 

discipline behavior.  She is not supposed to park in an empty lot, not supposed to speed, she 

doesn’t fit in with her haircut and clothes-

the parts of her that may be more in line with the war machine.  However, as they also clarify 

Nomadology is not solely defined by movement but the ability to hold ground, is territorial over 

their space.  In some instances I think she does this quite well, as in her response to the man who

wants to pick her up from hitchhiking.

Deleuze and Guattari also use the metaphor of the root and the rhizome, which, I think Richard 

articulated very well in class: that the root is something that is grounded in one place.  Rhizomes

on the other hand, are plants that have shoots sprouting from them in different directions. The 

State is something —

something that only allows for movement in one a specific direction.  For DiFranco the State are

the states that she enters and is prevented from engaging her nonnormative somewhat nomadic 

behaviors. New York City on the other hand is the rhizome a place that may have some sort of 

permanence but also has random shoots where she feels a sense of the ability to move (walk 

down the street).  Her nomadic performance can permeate the State through the rhizome .  She 

may have roots in a State or the State, but a rhizome like a potato is able to spread in all different

directions and not into one specific location.  Thus DiFranco is able to be different in a place, 

which, may still be a State in the sense of maintaining a norm and where she maintains roots but

where she feels she is more accepted and able to move about somewhat freely.  Although in 

New York City she may still be disciplined, it is a different sort of discipline not hegemonic 

implied norms, but norms spoken allowed, named and thus, able to be grappled with.

And this is not a perfect example because as Deleuze and Guattari suggest nomads do indeed 

occupy space outside of the State, although I think that the State and War Machine constantly 

influence one another.  They suggest that nomads occupy smooth spaces and change the spaces 

that they occupy but that “smooth space is controlled by these two flanks [the forest and 

agriculture] thus, showing the constraints of nomadic smooth space.  So the song isn’t perfect 

but I think it can be useful.

So what—

you may be asking me?  What does it mean to understand this theory in terms of the song or on 

its own?In terms of the song I think it is an interesting example of how to conceptualize the 

somewhat nomadic identity of a person negotiating the State.  And I think it is important because

in this sense it refers to identities and how States attempt to discipline identities into certain 

norms and patterns of behavior.  The War Machine (while constrained) offers a way to be 

resistive to the State regime.  While we may not have infinite possibilities for resistance the War

Machine allows us some ability to find liminal spaces outside the State, where resistive 

identifications or “disidentifications” may be performed.  The War Machine limits DiFranco, 

she does not have total freedom, because even in the game Go there is a purpose whether it is 

strategy or not.  So this theory may not give us a prescriptive way to be and act but offers a 

process of negotiation or strategy to deal with the constraints of the State and constraints of theWar Machine so that we may ebb and flow between them in a way that allows us to be engaged in a constant process of doing of becoming

Class Blog #2

I found Monday night’s class discussion so helpful and useful-especially in terms of discussing DeBord’s use of the term “spectacle” to theorize about a global media economy. I found it very interesting to talk about what can enable access to the spectacle and whether or not everyone has the same access or can avoid or resist the spectacle altogether. I felt much of this conversation we were trying to determine whether or not we consciously participate in the spectacle and in what degree are we conscious or participatory? Part of me really wants to take that route and do a very theoretical discussion parsing out my ideas on these matters. However, for the sake of “fun” and “play” I am going to wrestle with these ideas via DeBords notion of “celebrity.” My previous reading of Debord was really in the context of visual representation and I find his notions of spectacle to be applied not only to the banal and mundane but also to those who take up a spectacular lifestyle through celebrity. I find this especially poignant and amusing in cases of reality television.

Although my translation is different, I found that DeBord identifies the spectacle in thesis 10, as, “Affirmation of appearance and affirmation of all human life, namely social life, as mere appearance.” If the spectacle is appearance, is image, is representation and the affirmation of these images, we can see this being performed so plainly in so many places. In the context of celebrity, we can see how images are affirmed, especially through their repetitive use and for the desire of others in the spectacle to mimic celebrities. As a professor at my undergraduate institution once said, “Celebrities are celebrities because they are celebrities, they are famous for fame’s sake.” Celebrities are not only a part of the spectacle, they are spectacle themselves—performing a spectacular image of what it means to be a celebrity whether it be the multiple attempts in rehab, excessive spending, or adopting children from foreign nations. As DeBord notes in thesis 60, “The celebrity, the spectacular representation of a living being, embodies this banality by embodying the image of a possible role…Celebrities exist to act out various styles of living and viewing society —unfettered, free to express themselves globally (emphasis original). What I notice from this is exactly what my professor noted, celebrities are not celebrities because of their acting, singing, or dancing ability but because they give us, the little people, models of the ways we should desire to live.

As a society we are presented with a character like Paris Hilton, who has no direct connection to being a celebrity, no specific talent (although some will argue that modeling was her talent and that she was a celebrity for that,) yet becomes famous for her spectacular lifestyle — mainly the fact that she is an heiress to a fortune. The recognition of Paris as a celebrity makes it possible for her to later launch an acting and singing career and even more ironically her “reality” show, The Simple Life. In this “reality” show, Paris and one of her friends are transplanted into different situations far removed from their Hollywood lifestyle, usually into small towns with common people, and everyone voyeuristically watches to see if she will in fact stick her hand into the cow’s rectum on the dairy farm while wearing her Prada dress. The fact that the show is even called The Simple Life alludes to the fact that these girls are actually the opposite of simple, but high maintenance, big spenders, causing a scene with the town’s local boys no matter where they are. The connection between the spectacle, celebrity, and capitalism becomes quite clear that they are all in fact contingent upon one another for success of propagating “the spectacle.” But it is also important to return to the question of our participation in the spectacle and whether or not we are conscious in our participation. I provide a clip of Ellen, in which, she becomes Paris Hilton's new BFF (also based off of a reality television show) and in turn partly because she is a comedian, but also because she is at least somewhat of a social critic, makes fun of the Paris Hilton enterprise.
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While Ellen may be poking fun at Paris Hilton's spectacle celebrity lifestyle, commenting on all of her pictures, driving her around in the Smart Car, and dancing in "the club" on the stripper pole, in a sense Ellen simply creates a different celebrity lifestyle of which to potentially mimic. We also begin to see the ways that Paris's lifestyle is taken up in shows like MTV’s Made, Cribs, Sweet 16 and others, which, generally turn ordinary people into celebrities by giving them a make-over, buying them a new car, or showing them living in an extravagant house. While we may think that a Smart Car may be resistive to the spectacle as opposed to driving a "pimped out" SUV it actually creates a new spectacle based on a different celebrity with a different lifestyle. In turn as we discussed in class I do not think DeBord would be more fond of Ellen's commentary on Paris's life since she makes money from her show and resisting the spectacle can not necessarily be done in terms of using capitalistic means, but I did feel that it could illustrate nicely two different examples of celebrity spectacles, different, yet the same. However, I wonder as we also talked about in class is it possible to as Audre Lorde writes, "Dismantle the master's house with the master's tools?" Is it possible to use the spectacle, as a mediated form of communication as a "celebrity" in order to change the existing spectacle?

I do not think that there are many examples of this out there but one that immediately came to mind from reading José Esteban Muñoz’s Disidentifications, was Pedro Zamora, a man/character on MTV’s the Real World: San Francisco. A gay Latino man living with HIV/AIDS, Muñoz claims that Zamora used the medium of the Real World and television to enrich the world with gay Latino visibility as well as AIDS activism. Through his work as a “televisual activist”(143), Zamora was able to use the spectacle of reality television to engage social justice work and reach a large group of people as evidenced through the thousands of letters a week that he received. Zamora was very conscious of his participation in the spectacle from the time he submitted his audition tape but knew that in order to reach a large range of people he would have to use the spectacle to sort of set his own agenda. He accomplished this, by becoming a focal point of the show giving a human face to homosexuals of color living with AIDS. He died soon after the show finished taping and thus, never experienced he kind of celebrity that “reality” television stars are often afforded now. And although there are historical, political, social, racial, gendered, sexualized differences between Hilton and Zamora, we can see how the spectacle may be used for purposes of social justice and not solely spectacle or celebrity.
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Not to conclude too sharply but I do believe we are all caught up in the spectacle at different levels, with different amounts of consciousness. There are certain parts of the spectacle (certain celebrities) we identify with and others we resist. Our choices are limited but the spectacle is not all bad as Gladys pointed out in class Monday night. The spectacle does allow us the medium to transmit messages and access information otherwise denied to us. I leave with another clip of Zamora, maybe a certain type of spectacle or celebrity himself, but one who was conscious enough to know how to use the spectacle to engage the work of resistance and social justice.