Fuck!
Fuck!
It's just as Alix Olson says, "Sometimes it's just Fuck [you!]
I am lying here wedged between a sleeping body a popple and my own brain and yet I feel so alone.
It's amazing how much Pain can make a person feel alone.
"I will tie us together and then everything they do to you they will have to do to me to make you not feel so alone."
I don't want to be going through this-but I know that I have to-It will hopefully be over soon so I can resume making snarky remarks, quick rebuttals, sassy comments and the like. My life is not over-but I definitely do not feel like myself.
I write things that I just do not think I would write. They aren't in MY voice-if I really have one to begin with. I just don't remember it sounding and looking so fuzzy. That's not me that's no what I usually sound like. I sound smarter usually. I sound like I care. I sound like I write with passion and a desire to change the world-not this fuzzy wishy washy bull shit. I write like something bigger than myself matters.
Right now the shooting pain through my uterus is what I feel. That's what I am writing from. That fucking pain that won't go away. It lingers in my back sweeping through my entire body. Mostly my feet-my pain always seems to land itself in my feet after hurting in the local sites of pain. It always seem to find a home embedded in the muscles of my feet-sometimes my shoulders. Then I can walk on my pain feel it anytime I go anywhere.
I dislike the niceties that come along with experiencing pain. No one knows what to do for it. There is nothing anyone can do. There is little I can do and even less that anyone else can do. Anything that makes me more comfortable I generally have to do for myself and it involves taking more drugs which, knock me out, or make me doped up to the point of entering the land of my subconcious, turning the heat up on my heatin pad, taking a bath, or sleeping. Back and foot rubs are the only thing I can't do very well that relieve some o the pain for a while. I appreciate the gesture I just feel bad when I have no concrete answers to give.
And that's the fuck part! There is nothing to be done until I can schedule my surgery. Until then I just pop the pills they tell me to, and work on my lamaze breathing techniques and try not to do anything to make it worse-which can't always be avoided either.
And I wish I could connect the pain to larger issues of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia-but right now I can't. I can only feel only write from that space of only sort of caring about life but mostly care about it being over so I can get on with making those connections to other things. Things in my thesis project, things in my class projects, things in my daily life. But fuck! This is my daily life right now. This is it. Boiled down to the roots of being in the exact moment. I wouldn't mind boiling my internal organs right now get them hot enough they would stop cramping.
And I am going through this because I am a Woman right? Whatever that means. I have a Gynecologist working through a special women's health clinic performing my procedure looking at my lady parts and assessing them. This is all because I have reproductive organs I don't plan on producing anything with. If I don't plan on using them can I just lose them and get all of this shit over with? If I lose them am I no longer a woman-if I don't produce anything with my reproducing organs? I don't think I would mind losing that label if it meant losing the pain. I would give up that title-if I did would it make my parts (previously known as lady parts) hurt less? I would hope so.
Fuck!
I just want it over and done!
Sometimes it really is just Fuck!
Monday, May 12, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Why should I go to the Northwestern Performance Institute this Summer?
I am applying to go to this amazing Performance Institute this summer at Northwestern University and I am so excited and I hav to write this letter about myself and the work I am doing or want to do. And I don't know how to start-so I turn to this Blog as I do with most things performance related to give me some inspiration or at least a jump-start.
Who am I? And Why do I deserve to be invited? I don't know answers both sufficiently and yet completely insufficiently at the same moment in time. I can tell you things I do-things I believe in very strongly-those might give you the best insights into both of those questions.
I am an M.A. student or more likely I perform the identity and role of graduate student on a daily basis. This graduate student also performs critical race consciousness, queerness, gender-rebel, class distortionist, preschool teacher, mother, lover, friend, and a multiplicity of other identities throughout the course of a day.
Why performance studies? There are so many reasons-but here are a few. Number one, I have never met a discipline that resonated so much with me before. I don't understand how someone who cares about social justice, who really cares and feels committed to human beings and is a scholar can not study performance. It is the discipline I see synonomously with social justice-although many other disciplines attempt to do this and succeed to an extent (Women's Studies, African/African American Studies etc) these disciplines privilege identities and to display them as a somewhat fixed and unifying thing. Instead, performance studies places the performance of a multiplicity of intersecting identities, daily negotiations, social justice, critical consciousness, reflexivity, reciprocity, accountability, and stake in a multiple and fractured menagerie to work together to produce analysis. In my mind this just makes a lot of sense. Instead of privileging an identity maybe we should instead think about performing those identities, communicating them to others? I don't know but this is something I am playing around with right now.
I will be going into my second year of M.A. work where I will be proposing my thesis topic in order to begin researching and writing it as well as applying to PhD programs. I am currently hoping to research a queer feminist theatre group that I have seen perform (well I actually saw the youth theatre version and am hoping to actually see them perform soon). I am curious to see how performance becomes a vehicle for social transformation and how a resistive group can both work through performance but also more individually between members of the cast. I think that these interpersonal actions on a daily basis can create smaller level social change for those involved while trying to make an even larger cultural impact on those who they perform for. I am very excited to work on a project that explores ideas of performance, intersectionality, queerness, etc in a theatre setting. I also think this has the potential of being an amazing space for my own reflexive participation-although I do not consider myself a performer I feel that mostly I will benefit from being involved in such a project while possibly being able to offer something (publicity, webhelp etc...)
In performance it helps to be committed and have a stake int he projects we decide to take on and to the peple we are interacting with. In this sense I love many pieces of what this group does and I want to be a part of it in someway anyway and I think their radical voices and stories need to be told as Thomas King says, "So that we may live our lives differently."
So these are the things that I do-sort of, I guess more of what I want to do someday. I do not know who I am or why I deserve to go except that I think it could be very helpful in getting more grounding for my thesis and what direction t take it in. I think this specific summit that is focusing on resistive performances and social justice will very much play into how to focus my work and I am excited to meet and interact with people who are working on similar topics with unique perspectives. In the end I don't deserve to go, I only hope that I will chosen so that I may learn ad grow as an academic and human being.
Who am I? And Why do I deserve to be invited? I don't know answers both sufficiently and yet completely insufficiently at the same moment in time. I can tell you things I do-things I believe in very strongly-those might give you the best insights into both of those questions.
I am an M.A. student or more likely I perform the identity and role of graduate student on a daily basis. This graduate student also performs critical race consciousness, queerness, gender-rebel, class distortionist, preschool teacher, mother, lover, friend, and a multiplicity of other identities throughout the course of a day.
Why performance studies? There are so many reasons-but here are a few. Number one, I have never met a discipline that resonated so much with me before. I don't understand how someone who cares about social justice, who really cares and feels committed to human beings and is a scholar can not study performance. It is the discipline I see synonomously with social justice-although many other disciplines attempt to do this and succeed to an extent (Women's Studies, African/African American Studies etc) these disciplines privilege identities and to display them as a somewhat fixed and unifying thing. Instead, performance studies places the performance of a multiplicity of intersecting identities, daily negotiations, social justice, critical consciousness, reflexivity, reciprocity, accountability, and stake in a multiple and fractured menagerie to work together to produce analysis. In my mind this just makes a lot of sense. Instead of privileging an identity maybe we should instead think about performing those identities, communicating them to others? I don't know but this is something I am playing around with right now.
I will be going into my second year of M.A. work where I will be proposing my thesis topic in order to begin researching and writing it as well as applying to PhD programs. I am currently hoping to research a queer feminist theatre group that I have seen perform (well I actually saw the youth theatre version and am hoping to actually see them perform soon). I am curious to see how performance becomes a vehicle for social transformation and how a resistive group can both work through performance but also more individually between members of the cast. I think that these interpersonal actions on a daily basis can create smaller level social change for those involved while trying to make an even larger cultural impact on those who they perform for. I am very excited to work on a project that explores ideas of performance, intersectionality, queerness, etc in a theatre setting. I also think this has the potential of being an amazing space for my own reflexive participation-although I do not consider myself a performer I feel that mostly I will benefit from being involved in such a project while possibly being able to offer something (publicity, webhelp etc...)
In performance it helps to be committed and have a stake int he projects we decide to take on and to the peple we are interacting with. In this sense I love many pieces of what this group does and I want to be a part of it in someway anyway and I think their radical voices and stories need to be told as Thomas King says, "So that we may live our lives differently."
So these are the things that I do-sort of, I guess more of what I want to do someday. I do not know who I am or why I deserve to go except that I think it could be very helpful in getting more grounding for my thesis and what direction t take it in. I think this specific summit that is focusing on resistive performances and social justice will very much play into how to focus my work and I am excited to meet and interact with people who are working on similar topics with unique perspectives. In the end I don't deserve to go, I only hope that I will chosen so that I may learn ad grow as an academic and human being.
Monday, April 28, 2008
How am I supposed to forget
when I can't really remember
what happened?
Maybe it felt good
and I liked it
for a while
maybe I was too young
to even know what
liking it
meant
How am I supposed to remember
when all I want to do is forget
what happened?
I learn about bodies
write about bodies
theorize about bodies
and what they know
because they know the things
we want to remember
things we want
to forget
even if we don't want them
bodies remember
how am I supposed to live in a body
that has been hurt so many times
taken advantage of
so many times
and you may not believe me
you may not care
but it isn't about you
that's what you always said
and I was supposed to find healing
supposed to find peace
meditate
meditate on what?
a memory
of what was
what could have been
I was supposed to heal
with those black chains on my wrists
with late night talks
and kisses
but healing has to start within
not with kisses
or hugs
or chains
maybe I don't need saving
anyway
I want to remember what happened
but
I am
Dying
to forget
when I can't really remember
what happened?
Maybe it felt good
and I liked it
for a while
maybe I was too young
to even know what
liking it
meant
How am I supposed to remember
when all I want to do is forget
what happened?
I learn about bodies
write about bodies
theorize about bodies
and what they know
because they know the things
we want to remember
things we want
to forget
even if we don't want them
bodies remember
how am I supposed to live in a body
that has been hurt so many times
taken advantage of
so many times
and you may not believe me
you may not care
but it isn't about you
that's what you always said
and I was supposed to find healing
supposed to find peace
meditate
meditate on what?
a memory
of what was
what could have been
I was supposed to heal
with those black chains on my wrists
with late night talks
and kisses
but healing has to start within
not with kisses
or hugs
or chains
maybe I don't need saving
anyway
I want to remember what happened
but
I am
Dying
to forget
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Estes Park Sings-really sings
Last night I attended a real piece of work-Estes Park Sings Around the World. I always find shows like this a little disturbing because they tend to overly essentialize and mock people from other countries but this my friends was the most terrible...
The performance begins in of course the small Mountain Town of Estes Park-the perfect place that it supposedly is. A straight white couple is sitting in "their living room" when they receive a phone call from their Dolly Parton-esque daughter who is going to be performing on a cruise ship going around the world. I honestly did not know that this was the premise for the show and I have been to some chorale performances etc that actually treat multiculturalism pretty well. They have to pay homage to the culture, sing along with their songs not appropriate them for their own use etc...
I knew this was not going to be pretty when the first "stop" on the tour was Jamaica. A whole bunch of white guys from the Rotary club (the sponsors of the show) dressed in shorts and their nerdy floral print shirts or t-shirts with Jamaica on them sporting Rasta hats with fake dread locks. They then proceeded to sing the song Day-O complete with Jamaica percussion in the background. Personally I do not see how this is much different from a white person painting black face and doing a "minstrel" show. I was mortified. When I said kind of loudly "Oh my goddess this is so racist. This is awful." My friend responded, "What did you expect?" I guess I didn't expect such a blatant form of racism to be pervading my consciousness right at that moment.
I recently read an article about schools' attempts to integrate multicultural education into the curriculum. The author recalled his own school's attempts as a child by having a multiplicity of dinners all themed from a different culture. He distinctly recalled "Taco Night" and how looking back on it was extremely problematic. This dinner was an attempt to learn about "Mexican culture" as though there is only one and that equates everything about it to "tacos." This is really problematic because (and I can't rememer how he phrased it) it essentialize all people of Latin/Spanish/Central American heritage down to Tacos-which, is an Americanized version of all of those cultures. It implies a whole bunch of people eat Tacos, when they probably don't and that this could stand in for their entire cultural being would be like saying some sort of food could stand in as a replacement for all the people in the U.S.A. Ridiculous yes-but people do it and this is exactly what was going on at the EPS concert. All the "Jamaican" people were whittled down to Dreadlocks, Rasta culture minus drugs, and a lazy attitude.
Besides the small town politics of "Oh this is a song this person knows so we need to incorporate it" all of the different or othered countries were extremely mocked. I mean every country and culture was mocked-Japan was whittled down to a bunch of quiet meek Geisha-like girls, Germany a large woman with long blonde braids under a helmet with horns drinking beer, and in Africa a whole bunch of again white guys dressed up in Safari like clothes singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." There was little respect paid to other cultures, no working with their traditional songs and doing them in a resprectful tone/way that honors them but instead it was all seeming to make fun. And this was my problem-using other cultures, especially "othered" cultures to get laughs is racist and colonialist and this is a problem. And this mockery besides being essentializing also further others these cultures by making them incredibly different from all of us. By portraying all people from Japan as meek little girls and dressing in traditional Kimonos seems to imply that this is what Japanese means. When most of the people currently in Japan dress like Americans and vice versa because of the globalized market economy we have going on. We are not that different looking or acting anymore and people from other countries (at least not all of them) don't walk around all day in their traditional dress. It would be like Americans being portrayed in their church best on stage. And this would imply everyone owns church best, goes to church at all, etc. They don't and as Americans we wouldn't want to be homogenized in this way so we shouldn't do it to others either.
But besides my obvious big critique being the racist/colonialist implications of such a concert and such performances are just so offensive is that not only do the performers think it is ok to put on such a performance but everyone in the audience (for the most part) laughs at them. They all think it is appropriate to laugh at white people pretending and mocking "blackness" and "brownness." But then when a Swedish performance of ABBA comes on stage no one laughs and no one gets it. It isn't funny to people because either they don't think it's funny to see a bunch of white people attempt to dance (at all) and especially dance and sing to ABBA, or they don't think it is that far fetched-at least far fetched enough from reality to be funny. Maybe it was so many of the people there's actual culture it just wasn't funny to them it was their 70's reality, or they just didn't get it because it was mocking whiteness and to them it wasn't funny. Other options here? I don't know what exactly the reason was behind not laughing at this-but meanwhile I am cracking up laughing at this whole mockery of white people. But this was the case with all the things that made fun of white people the audience (white upperclass hets) didn't get, whereas all the stuff making fun of brown or black people caused a huge roar/applause from the audience.
It was so problematic and I guarantee I would have felt this way despite taking my intercultural comm class but in light of all the reading about ethnicity, race, and culture it does give me some new ways to think about all of these things that I saw. New ways to theorize, new reasons to be upset.
The performance begins in of course the small Mountain Town of Estes Park-the perfect place that it supposedly is. A straight white couple is sitting in "their living room" when they receive a phone call from their Dolly Parton-esque daughter who is going to be performing on a cruise ship going around the world. I honestly did not know that this was the premise for the show and I have been to some chorale performances etc that actually treat multiculturalism pretty well. They have to pay homage to the culture, sing along with their songs not appropriate them for their own use etc...
I knew this was not going to be pretty when the first "stop" on the tour was Jamaica. A whole bunch of white guys from the Rotary club (the sponsors of the show) dressed in shorts and their nerdy floral print shirts or t-shirts with Jamaica on them sporting Rasta hats with fake dread locks. They then proceeded to sing the song Day-O complete with Jamaica percussion in the background. Personally I do not see how this is much different from a white person painting black face and doing a "minstrel" show. I was mortified. When I said kind of loudly "Oh my goddess this is so racist. This is awful." My friend responded, "What did you expect?" I guess I didn't expect such a blatant form of racism to be pervading my consciousness right at that moment.
I recently read an article about schools' attempts to integrate multicultural education into the curriculum. The author recalled his own school's attempts as a child by having a multiplicity of dinners all themed from a different culture. He distinctly recalled "Taco Night" and how looking back on it was extremely problematic. This dinner was an attempt to learn about "Mexican culture" as though there is only one and that equates everything about it to "tacos." This is really problematic because (and I can't rememer how he phrased it) it essentialize all people of Latin/Spanish/Central American heritage down to Tacos-which, is an Americanized version of all of those cultures. It implies a whole bunch of people eat Tacos, when they probably don't and that this could stand in for their entire cultural being would be like saying some sort of food could stand in as a replacement for all the people in the U.S.A. Ridiculous yes-but people do it and this is exactly what was going on at the EPS concert. All the "Jamaican" people were whittled down to Dreadlocks, Rasta culture minus drugs, and a lazy attitude.
Besides the small town politics of "Oh this is a song this person knows so we need to incorporate it" all of the different or othered countries were extremely mocked. I mean every country and culture was mocked-Japan was whittled down to a bunch of quiet meek Geisha-like girls, Germany a large woman with long blonde braids under a helmet with horns drinking beer, and in Africa a whole bunch of again white guys dressed up in Safari like clothes singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." There was little respect paid to other cultures, no working with their traditional songs and doing them in a resprectful tone/way that honors them but instead it was all seeming to make fun. And this was my problem-using other cultures, especially "othered" cultures to get laughs is racist and colonialist and this is a problem. And this mockery besides being essentializing also further others these cultures by making them incredibly different from all of us. By portraying all people from Japan as meek little girls and dressing in traditional Kimonos seems to imply that this is what Japanese means. When most of the people currently in Japan dress like Americans and vice versa because of the globalized market economy we have going on. We are not that different looking or acting anymore and people from other countries (at least not all of them) don't walk around all day in their traditional dress. It would be like Americans being portrayed in their church best on stage. And this would imply everyone owns church best, goes to church at all, etc. They don't and as Americans we wouldn't want to be homogenized in this way so we shouldn't do it to others either.
But besides my obvious big critique being the racist/colonialist implications of such a concert and such performances are just so offensive is that not only do the performers think it is ok to put on such a performance but everyone in the audience (for the most part) laughs at them. They all think it is appropriate to laugh at white people pretending and mocking "blackness" and "brownness." But then when a Swedish performance of ABBA comes on stage no one laughs and no one gets it. It isn't funny to people because either they don't think it's funny to see a bunch of white people attempt to dance (at all) and especially dance and sing to ABBA, or they don't think it is that far fetched-at least far fetched enough from reality to be funny. Maybe it was so many of the people there's actual culture it just wasn't funny to them it was their 70's reality, or they just didn't get it because it was mocking whiteness and to them it wasn't funny. Other options here? I don't know what exactly the reason was behind not laughing at this-but meanwhile I am cracking up laughing at this whole mockery of white people. But this was the case with all the things that made fun of white people the audience (white upperclass hets) didn't get, whereas all the stuff making fun of brown or black people caused a huge roar/applause from the audience.
It was so problematic and I guarantee I would have felt this way despite taking my intercultural comm class but in light of all the reading about ethnicity, race, and culture it does give me some new ways to think about all of these things that I saw. New ways to theorize, new reasons to be upset.
Monday, March 31, 2008
I am writing tonight to update my blog for my new academic endeavors. Because I am starting a new quarter I of course have new classes. Thank the goddess I am finished with the Methods sequence of my M.A. program. Although I highly enjoyed and learned a lot from them I am excited to be continuing along in my concentration of Culture and Communication. This quarter I am involved in a lower level grad/undergrad class on Intercultural Communication as well as a rhetoric class on Public Deliberation which is also grad/undergrad but at a highly theoretical and philisophical level to a point that I often find myself going huh? I don't get it. For my Interultural class I have to make an e-portfolio using the program Keep Toolkit, which like my public deliberation class makes me go huh? I wish I could just use this Blog.
Anyway, I am writing because I am finding myself to be deeply challenged by my Intercultural Class, not because of the material but because it is somewhat simplistic and the people in it seem to have no understanding of race, class, gender, sexuality and their intersections. The readings are interesting but we are broken up into small home groups for discussion what seems like pretty much everyday. I do not want to write this to sound completely arrogant, or rude and because I truly care about implementing critical feminist pedagogy but it just doesn't work if the other people in the room are not willing t critically engage the material.
For example today we were discussing bell hook's article, Homeplace: A Site of Resistance and my group members were having a hard time understanding the article because they could not relate to it because they all but one are white privileged het girls. The other grad student who happens to be from Afghanistan and I were trying to explain that resistance works in opposition to the dominant modes of society and that people who are oppressed need a place to regroup after tiring days of being strong, staying tough, and surviving the harsh conditions of life. Now I have no idea what it is like to walk through this life as a person of color but I am completely empathetic to the fact that I do not know and can only try to be as supportive and helpful as I possibly can to people of color. I have seen the devastating effects of racism of someone who is Indian being asked what tribe they are from and their response being "dot not feather" (you idiot mumbled under their breath.) I have seen black students and faculty be racially profiled in the town where I went to college. Of course I do not have a first-hand account-I can never know what it is like to be read as a person of color-to walk through life having people judge me as inferior based on the color of my skin, I don't know what it is like to not have my narrative in the normative forms of media that others who are white are bombarded with on a daily basis. But I don't have to be a person of color to be accountable for my actions, to be empathetic, or to see my privilege, to see my dominance, and the power I have in situations simply because I am white.
While I can never connect on this level I have provided a sense of homeplace for people of color because people of color's situations are not homogenous and not all people of color only feel at home with other people of color. Specifically my ex-girlfriend who is multi-racial was raised in whiteness and feels at home with white people. Although she does share a bond with people of color sometimes it is not always the case. I do not want to be presumptuous but I do know that many times she came to me and not only because we were partners but because we were friends and I was supposedly a person who "got it" that she was able to feel most at home with me. Of course as a queer person I do understand being othered to an extent although completely different but connected. Oppressions are connected, the manifestations of oppressions and inequality are not the same. Although my queerness does not exempt me from my participation in the domination of whiteness I am able to connect through otherness often with people of color.
My largest and most interesting thing that happened was that during class we were introducing ourselves and against my better judgement I came out as queer/lesbian whatever. But we also were discussing the articles and the focused on race, I was trying to be helpful in discussing issues of race since everyone in my group that is an undergrad is a whitey whiterson. They apprently could not connect to the article because they had never had to resist anything and then relayed that this was the case because they were fortunate. As though by their good luck they were born white and hetero and middle class and they had never experienced discrimination based on their female-ness. WTF?!?! They have never resisted and they can't connect and thus understand because they see themselves as so different. So to give an example of homeplace I talked about the Apartment which, I have written about a few times in this Blog. I discussed facing oppressiona nd discrimination based on sexual orientation but even more so for those who do not conform to normative modes of gender presentation. This they could completely understand. It made complete sense. Again..>WTF?!! Now I know this is not performative and Bernadette would chastise me for not being very compassionate to the students in the class but I couldn't believe it. No one else in the group is openly queer and most openly identify as heterosexual so how can there be understanding in relation to queerness and no relation to understanding the same principal but for the concept of race.
I have to think it is somehow fashionable to have gay friends but the stigmas for people of color run so deeply that people do not feel they can find comonality in any way. And maybe it is the histories of both of these groups of people and the guilt (King) people feel for the enslavement and genocide of people of color. And while the gays are discriminated against it is not in the form of making gays slaves or servants. And the truth is that most gay people especially gay men have/make more money then people of color allowing them to blend into mainstream society in the way that a person of color cannot. i don't know but I am so astounded that I could barely speak and knew that I just needed to write.
I know that I need my goal to be to reach people pedagogically to allow for personal experiences and ways of knowing enter the conversation but I have a hard time just letting the conversation flow if no one is willing to think critically about issues. And I shouldn't say no one because the Afghani grad student I know is thinking critically but as she told me after class, "Thank you for saying what you say and the comments you make. Otherwise I am always come off as the angry brown woman and since I am usually the only one in the room I am the only one advocating for this position. So thank you." So she doesn't always speak, which I understand but want to change because her voice needs to be there telling her narrative. Without it the group will truly miss out because it is a voice often shunned and degraded. I am hoping to do my part but I find myself really just searching for more. I know that I have a chance to reach some people in this class but in other ways I just want to be like really-this is my responsibility? but I know that as a member of the dominant and oppressive group that "gets it" it is indeed my responsibility and unfortunately because of my privilege maybe someone will listen to me. Argh...
Anyway, I am writing because I am finding myself to be deeply challenged by my Intercultural Class, not because of the material but because it is somewhat simplistic and the people in it seem to have no understanding of race, class, gender, sexuality and their intersections. The readings are interesting but we are broken up into small home groups for discussion what seems like pretty much everyday. I do not want to write this to sound completely arrogant, or rude and because I truly care about implementing critical feminist pedagogy but it just doesn't work if the other people in the room are not willing t critically engage the material.
For example today we were discussing bell hook's article, Homeplace: A Site of Resistance and my group members were having a hard time understanding the article because they could not relate to it because they all but one are white privileged het girls. The other grad student who happens to be from Afghanistan and I were trying to explain that resistance works in opposition to the dominant modes of society and that people who are oppressed need a place to regroup after tiring days of being strong, staying tough, and surviving the harsh conditions of life. Now I have no idea what it is like to walk through this life as a person of color but I am completely empathetic to the fact that I do not know and can only try to be as supportive and helpful as I possibly can to people of color. I have seen the devastating effects of racism of someone who is Indian being asked what tribe they are from and their response being "dot not feather" (you idiot mumbled under their breath.) I have seen black students and faculty be racially profiled in the town where I went to college. Of course I do not have a first-hand account-I can never know what it is like to be read as a person of color-to walk through life having people judge me as inferior based on the color of my skin, I don't know what it is like to not have my narrative in the normative forms of media that others who are white are bombarded with on a daily basis. But I don't have to be a person of color to be accountable for my actions, to be empathetic, or to see my privilege, to see my dominance, and the power I have in situations simply because I am white.
While I can never connect on this level I have provided a sense of homeplace for people of color because people of color's situations are not homogenous and not all people of color only feel at home with other people of color. Specifically my ex-girlfriend who is multi-racial was raised in whiteness and feels at home with white people. Although she does share a bond with people of color sometimes it is not always the case. I do not want to be presumptuous but I do know that many times she came to me and not only because we were partners but because we were friends and I was supposedly a person who "got it" that she was able to feel most at home with me. Of course as a queer person I do understand being othered to an extent although completely different but connected. Oppressions are connected, the manifestations of oppressions and inequality are not the same. Although my queerness does not exempt me from my participation in the domination of whiteness I am able to connect through otherness often with people of color.
My largest and most interesting thing that happened was that during class we were introducing ourselves and against my better judgement I came out as queer/lesbian whatever. But we also were discussing the articles and the focused on race, I was trying to be helpful in discussing issues of race since everyone in my group that is an undergrad is a whitey whiterson. They apprently could not connect to the article because they had never had to resist anything and then relayed that this was the case because they were fortunate. As though by their good luck they were born white and hetero and middle class and they had never experienced discrimination based on their female-ness. WTF?!?! They have never resisted and they can't connect and thus understand because they see themselves as so different. So to give an example of homeplace I talked about the Apartment which, I have written about a few times in this Blog. I discussed facing oppressiona nd discrimination based on sexual orientation but even more so for those who do not conform to normative modes of gender presentation. This they could completely understand. It made complete sense. Again..>WTF?!! Now I know this is not performative and Bernadette would chastise me for not being very compassionate to the students in the class but I couldn't believe it. No one else in the group is openly queer and most openly identify as heterosexual so how can there be understanding in relation to queerness and no relation to understanding the same principal but for the concept of race.
I have to think it is somehow fashionable to have gay friends but the stigmas for people of color run so deeply that people do not feel they can find comonality in any way. And maybe it is the histories of both of these groups of people and the guilt (King) people feel for the enslavement and genocide of people of color. And while the gays are discriminated against it is not in the form of making gays slaves or servants. And the truth is that most gay people especially gay men have/make more money then people of color allowing them to blend into mainstream society in the way that a person of color cannot. i don't know but I am so astounded that I could barely speak and knew that I just needed to write.
I know that I need my goal to be to reach people pedagogically to allow for personal experiences and ways of knowing enter the conversation but I have a hard time just letting the conversation flow if no one is willing to think critically about issues. And I shouldn't say no one because the Afghani grad student I know is thinking critically but as she told me after class, "Thank you for saying what you say and the comments you make. Otherwise I am always come off as the angry brown woman and since I am usually the only one in the room I am the only one advocating for this position. So thank you." So she doesn't always speak, which I understand but want to change because her voice needs to be there telling her narrative. Without it the group will truly miss out because it is a voice often shunned and degraded. I am hoping to do my part but I find myself really just searching for more. I know that I have a chance to reach some people in this class but in other ways I just want to be like really-this is my responsibility? but I know that as a member of the dominant and oppressive group that "gets it" it is indeed my responsibility and unfortunately because of my privilege maybe someone will listen to me. Argh...
Friday, March 21, 2008
Performance of Identity and Consumerism
http://liminalities.net/4-1/16thstreet.htm
check it out, it is my qualitative methods professor and one of the doctoral students in my program at DU and it is all about downtown Denver. Is a very interesting read on consumerism culture and identity as performed on the 16th St. Mall.
Shout out to them!
check it out, it is my qualitative methods professor and one of the doctoral students in my program at DU and it is all about downtown Denver. Is a very interesting read on consumerism culture and identity as performed on the 16th St. Mall.
Shout out to them!
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Personal Narrative as Political Praxis...
Dear Performance Studies,
This might be a silly way to start out my concluding remarks about my Performance Ethnography class, however, after many attempts at trying to write about it, this is the only way that makes sense in my brain, my hands, my heart. First of all I would like to thank you. You have done a lot for me in a short amount of time. I'm not exactly sure what I would have done without you, especially in the field of Human Communication Studies.
But I must regress because I feel like you need a little background, a little personal narrative, something that can maybe help you understand where I have been and where I am going, and how I need you to be in my life in order to do the kind of work I want to do. Langellier's () idea of using personal narrative as political praxis to illustrate that personal stories matter in terms of self-definition especially juxtaposed with what Corey () terms the master narrative that conveys ideology of the dominant discourse. Corey tells us that these stories need to be told in order to empower the teller, but also in order to evoke something in the reader or listener and possibly even implicate them into the story. This calls writers/tellers, and listeners/hearers to be accountable for their participation in perpetuating ideologies of domination and asks them to disrupt these normative ideas in some way. This is my story that needs to be told about why I need performance studies in my life in order for me to do the kind of work I want to do.
When I first started the Human Communication program at DU I was extremely nervous. I didn't know how or where I would fit into the space. My background was always in cultural studies and specifically in women's and gender studies and I didn't know if there was room for a person with such progressive and at times radical politics in a discipline like communication studies. During the opening orientation process I was excited to see students interested in queer theory and interesting cultural communication topics, some of the professors seemed to be doing interesting and valuable work but I just didn't know how I would transition.
I'm not a huge fan of "women's studies" in the way it is normally conceived as it tends to place gender and woman at the center of a matrix or the top of an ill-conceived hierarchy as though that is the most important part of a person's identity. I found this to be problematic because I don't feel that gender above race, class, gender or sexuality is more important to understanding one's experiences in the world. I instead believe all identities inform other aspects of identities although they do not always hold the same weight at every moment in someone's life. I believe in a process of intersectional analysis and find that this is most helpful when trying to understand someone's experiences.
I was also resentful of women's studies especially at the graduate level because all of the great things I had learned about activism and giving voice to the voiceless, consciousness raising, and queering were all left behind at the door to the academy I was becoming a part of. Instead everything was replaced with theory especially that of dead white guys. Derrida, Foucault, Freud, Lacan, "the great theorists of the world." I was confused what these guys were saying and why I needed to know it in terms of feminist theory-it just wasn't what I expected. I see now that this did prepare me and provide me with some background theory knowledge that is helpful and useful and if nothing else helpful in that it taught me to "learn to read [theory] better" But I was distraught that all of my passion and dedication to justice and liberation was being eaten away at by theory, and that I was beginning to lose my sense of purpose.
When I first began my course work in communication studies which was not so long ago, I began to see that I was in a minority of people who considered themselves to be feminists, and who had actually read works by feminist and queer scholars. This is not so much a judgment on the other students in my class as much as it is an observation of the differences in our interests and educational backgrounds. I also think I may be the only actual gay person who came in with this specific class, at least I am the only one who has ever talked about it. Instead I am generally in contact with people who are married and have children, or folks with heterosexual boyfriends and girlfriends. I felt sort of alone. Not that it was better where I was before, as I have come to realize that just because people are feminists does not mean they have the same common goals, interests, or personalities. They are just as different as any other group of people. It had been awhile since I had found a place where I felt like I fit.
I was also going through one of the most hellacious times of my life because my female partner of three years and I were going through what can only be described as a divorce. She and I were no longer just girlfriends but we were intimately a part of each other's lives and she had become like a part of my family. I know people have gone through divorces in our cohort, but when societally your love is not really recognized as significant in the first place, it is hard to explain to people what you are going through when significant queer relationships end. I wrote one of my Qualitative Methods One papers about this trying time in my life and my inability to focus on anything else. While I received a certain amount of sympathy I definitely got the impression that I should not write about this again, so I didn't.
I was supposed to write autoethnographic sections about my experience at the preschool, my joys, humors, and frustrations-that is what would be really interesting. But I was frustrated because no one at work knew what I was going through, so I suffered through it alone. The kids became somewhat my release, their unconditional love giving me the strength to keep going, to keep coming into work everyday. There shiny, smily, happy faces made me feel joy I wasn't feeling from many other places and I felt in debt to them for giving me something to do everyday to forget about the pain I was going through. Children respond much better to happiness and joy, than saddness and depression. These were my emotions in the site, not that I was really shocked by the fact that the boys didn't want to eat off a pink and purple place mat. When I would share my progress reports in class about my site I often had to fend off tears and having to excuse and collect myself.
I was also going through a major life shift. I had moved back home after being away for five years because my great-grandmother who had raised me had become extremely ill. I thought I would be coming home to attend her funeral, but the few times I had made the journey from the Midwest home, she never died. I would enter her hospital room and immediately burst out into tears. This was my great grandmother but in many ways she was my mother or at least a mother. She looked so small and frail lying in this medical bed with the adjustable head and foot. My mother who was also raised by my great grandmother began massaging her muscles with a strong menthol scented lotion because of her constant pain. We wanted to get her blood flowing through her body and so we rubbed. In my mind I remembered learning about healing touch in an embodiment movement class from college, I imagine planets circulating around each other and her organs become a solar system that is just a bit stagnant. Her body is not able to go through it's normal rotation on its own any longer, we are there to help with the flow. The next day the hospital found she was ok to go home, and I have always thought it was because of the work of my mother and myself that saved her that time. Although she continues to have issues with her inner ear and often becomes dizzy and in turn has fallen, her heart and lungs continue to be strong. They continue to pump and move involuntarily, despite the fact that she often talks about wanting to die.
Moving home meant moving to the mountains in order to save money by living with my parents. My great-grandmother also lives with us as does my thirteen year old adopted Latina sister. My mother also takes care of my brother's children between three and five days/nights per week. In any given time we have 8 people in our house ranging from one to 93 years old with all ages in between. We are far from a typical nuclear family structure and we are most definitely dysfunctional but I began to settle into living in a new place, settle into my new job. I felt myself getting healthier and stronger and falling in love with living so close to a natural space. I had been so far removed from the land for so long, being next to a clear flowing river had the tendency to lift my spirits. Needless to say my living situation also worked makes it challenging for me to be connected to the place where I am trying to achieve scholastically. I do not have the same stake in the University that others have or that I might wish to have some day. When I would drive down the mountain canyon for class I rarely felt connected to a lot of the material I was reading let alone the people I was in classes with. I wanted to write about my life, my family, my new friends I was making, mountain culture, and bluegrass but I didn't feel that there was room for my stories in "True" scholarly work.
People in my cohort, critical scholars doing work on performance and performativity, race, class, gender and sexuality told me to wait it out that it would get better that I would take classes more oriented toward culture and that I would feel more satisfied. When I started my second quarter classes and had Performance Ethnography, within the first couple of days reading Conquergood I realized that there was something different in this idea of performance studies. It seemed to incorporate feminism, queer theory, personal narrative, commitment to self and other, all adding to the emphasis on social justice work created by performing this type of scholarship.
I fianlly found a place where it was ok to be personal, to talk about my narratives and my life. This class gave me the freedom to explore my own connections to dominant ideologies and my own implication in them. The journal especially gave me a chance to not only make the theoretical connections with my life stories but also gave me the chance to write my own stories through autobiographical performative writing, which Gingrich-Philbrook believes has always connected private life to political sectors. I was finally able to engage in dialog with myself, to really reflect on my own otherness and yet be reflexive in this thought process that I am not always other, but that I am privileged in certain situations and marginalized in others and often times both simultaneously. As Conquergood (1985) writes, "Dialogical performance is a way of having intimate conversations with other people and cultures. Instead of speaking about them, one speaks to and with them…"(178). I felt like this class helped me to know myself better so that I can engage in dialogic performances with others and be more reflexive and accountable.
Although we read no queer female performance scholars' work I felt myself able to connect with those people who wrote about the differences they experience on a daily basis. Fox, Alexander, Calafell, Cory, all used personal experiences with racism, homophobia/heterosexism, classism, and sexism to inform their work and I felt connected to their work because of the dialog around difference created and performed in their pieces. I also feel that queer female voices are needed in this field of study and I look forward to hopefully making some sort of contribution to this type of scholarship by adding my voice to the body of literature in performance studies. In many ways I cannot see myself doing any other sort of work because I don't think I could do the kind of work I want to do in talking about domination, oppression, marginalization, and social justice without engaging in work that has a history of being committed to talking about these things. I feel that this is the only way I can be sane and still do scholarly work and so I am excited to continue learning and growing in this line of inquiry.
This might be a silly way to start out my concluding remarks about my Performance Ethnography class, however, after many attempts at trying to write about it, this is the only way that makes sense in my brain, my hands, my heart. First of all I would like to thank you. You have done a lot for me in a short amount of time. I'm not exactly sure what I would have done without you, especially in the field of Human Communication Studies.
But I must regress because I feel like you need a little background, a little personal narrative, something that can maybe help you understand where I have been and where I am going, and how I need you to be in my life in order to do the kind of work I want to do. Langellier's () idea of using personal narrative as political praxis to illustrate that personal stories matter in terms of self-definition especially juxtaposed with what Corey () terms the master narrative that conveys ideology of the dominant discourse. Corey tells us that these stories need to be told in order to empower the teller, but also in order to evoke something in the reader or listener and possibly even implicate them into the story. This calls writers/tellers, and listeners/hearers to be accountable for their participation in perpetuating ideologies of domination and asks them to disrupt these normative ideas in some way. This is my story that needs to be told about why I need performance studies in my life in order for me to do the kind of work I want to do.
When I first started the Human Communication program at DU I was extremely nervous. I didn't know how or where I would fit into the space. My background was always in cultural studies and specifically in women's and gender studies and I didn't know if there was room for a person with such progressive and at times radical politics in a discipline like communication studies. During the opening orientation process I was excited to see students interested in queer theory and interesting cultural communication topics, some of the professors seemed to be doing interesting and valuable work but I just didn't know how I would transition.
I'm not a huge fan of "women's studies" in the way it is normally conceived as it tends to place gender and woman at the center of a matrix or the top of an ill-conceived hierarchy as though that is the most important part of a person's identity. I found this to be problematic because I don't feel that gender above race, class, gender or sexuality is more important to understanding one's experiences in the world. I instead believe all identities inform other aspects of identities although they do not always hold the same weight at every moment in someone's life. I believe in a process of intersectional analysis and find that this is most helpful when trying to understand someone's experiences.
I was also resentful of women's studies especially at the graduate level because all of the great things I had learned about activism and giving voice to the voiceless, consciousness raising, and queering were all left behind at the door to the academy I was becoming a part of. Instead everything was replaced with theory especially that of dead white guys. Derrida, Foucault, Freud, Lacan, "the great theorists of the world." I was confused what these guys were saying and why I needed to know it in terms of feminist theory-it just wasn't what I expected. I see now that this did prepare me and provide me with some background theory knowledge that is helpful and useful and if nothing else helpful in that it taught me to "learn to read [theory] better" But I was distraught that all of my passion and dedication to justice and liberation was being eaten away at by theory, and that I was beginning to lose my sense of purpose.
When I first began my course work in communication studies which was not so long ago, I began to see that I was in a minority of people who considered themselves to be feminists, and who had actually read works by feminist and queer scholars. This is not so much a judgment on the other students in my class as much as it is an observation of the differences in our interests and educational backgrounds. I also think I may be the only actual gay person who came in with this specific class, at least I am the only one who has ever talked about it. Instead I am generally in contact with people who are married and have children, or folks with heterosexual boyfriends and girlfriends. I felt sort of alone. Not that it was better where I was before, as I have come to realize that just because people are feminists does not mean they have the same common goals, interests, or personalities. They are just as different as any other group of people. It had been awhile since I had found a place where I felt like I fit.
I was also going through one of the most hellacious times of my life because my female partner of three years and I were going through what can only be described as a divorce. She and I were no longer just girlfriends but we were intimately a part of each other's lives and she had become like a part of my family. I know people have gone through divorces in our cohort, but when societally your love is not really recognized as significant in the first place, it is hard to explain to people what you are going through when significant queer relationships end. I wrote one of my Qualitative Methods One papers about this trying time in my life and my inability to focus on anything else. While I received a certain amount of sympathy I definitely got the impression that I should not write about this again, so I didn't.
I was supposed to write autoethnographic sections about my experience at the preschool, my joys, humors, and frustrations-that is what would be really interesting. But I was frustrated because no one at work knew what I was going through, so I suffered through it alone. The kids became somewhat my release, their unconditional love giving me the strength to keep going, to keep coming into work everyday. There shiny, smily, happy faces made me feel joy I wasn't feeling from many other places and I felt in debt to them for giving me something to do everyday to forget about the pain I was going through. Children respond much better to happiness and joy, than saddness and depression. These were my emotions in the site, not that I was really shocked by the fact that the boys didn't want to eat off a pink and purple place mat. When I would share my progress reports in class about my site I often had to fend off tears and having to excuse and collect myself.
I was also going through a major life shift. I had moved back home after being away for five years because my great-grandmother who had raised me had become extremely ill. I thought I would be coming home to attend her funeral, but the few times I had made the journey from the Midwest home, she never died. I would enter her hospital room and immediately burst out into tears. This was my great grandmother but in many ways she was my mother or at least a mother. She looked so small and frail lying in this medical bed with the adjustable head and foot. My mother who was also raised by my great grandmother began massaging her muscles with a strong menthol scented lotion because of her constant pain. We wanted to get her blood flowing through her body and so we rubbed. In my mind I remembered learning about healing touch in an embodiment movement class from college, I imagine planets circulating around each other and her organs become a solar system that is just a bit stagnant. Her body is not able to go through it's normal rotation on its own any longer, we are there to help with the flow. The next day the hospital found she was ok to go home, and I have always thought it was because of the work of my mother and myself that saved her that time. Although she continues to have issues with her inner ear and often becomes dizzy and in turn has fallen, her heart and lungs continue to be strong. They continue to pump and move involuntarily, despite the fact that she often talks about wanting to die.
Moving home meant moving to the mountains in order to save money by living with my parents. My great-grandmother also lives with us as does my thirteen year old adopted Latina sister. My mother also takes care of my brother's children between three and five days/nights per week. In any given time we have 8 people in our house ranging from one to 93 years old with all ages in between. We are far from a typical nuclear family structure and we are most definitely dysfunctional but I began to settle into living in a new place, settle into my new job. I felt myself getting healthier and stronger and falling in love with living so close to a natural space. I had been so far removed from the land for so long, being next to a clear flowing river had the tendency to lift my spirits. Needless to say my living situation also worked makes it challenging for me to be connected to the place where I am trying to achieve scholastically. I do not have the same stake in the University that others have or that I might wish to have some day. When I would drive down the mountain canyon for class I rarely felt connected to a lot of the material I was reading let alone the people I was in classes with. I wanted to write about my life, my family, my new friends I was making, mountain culture, and bluegrass but I didn't feel that there was room for my stories in "True" scholarly work.
People in my cohort, critical scholars doing work on performance and performativity, race, class, gender and sexuality told me to wait it out that it would get better that I would take classes more oriented toward culture and that I would feel more satisfied. When I started my second quarter classes and had Performance Ethnography, within the first couple of days reading Conquergood I realized that there was something different in this idea of performance studies. It seemed to incorporate feminism, queer theory, personal narrative, commitment to self and other, all adding to the emphasis on social justice work created by performing this type of scholarship.
I fianlly found a place where it was ok to be personal, to talk about my narratives and my life. This class gave me the freedom to explore my own connections to dominant ideologies and my own implication in them. The journal especially gave me a chance to not only make the theoretical connections with my life stories but also gave me the chance to write my own stories through autobiographical performative writing, which Gingrich-Philbrook believes has always connected private life to political sectors. I was finally able to engage in dialog with myself, to really reflect on my own otherness and yet be reflexive in this thought process that I am not always other, but that I am privileged in certain situations and marginalized in others and often times both simultaneously. As Conquergood (1985) writes, "Dialogical performance is a way of having intimate conversations with other people and cultures. Instead of speaking about them, one speaks to and with them…"(178). I felt like this class helped me to know myself better so that I can engage in dialogic performances with others and be more reflexive and accountable.
Although we read no queer female performance scholars' work I felt myself able to connect with those people who wrote about the differences they experience on a daily basis. Fox, Alexander, Calafell, Cory, all used personal experiences with racism, homophobia/heterosexism, classism, and sexism to inform their work and I felt connected to their work because of the dialog around difference created and performed in their pieces. I also feel that queer female voices are needed in this field of study and I look forward to hopefully making some sort of contribution to this type of scholarship by adding my voice to the body of literature in performance studies. In many ways I cannot see myself doing any other sort of work because I don't think I could do the kind of work I want to do in talking about domination, oppression, marginalization, and social justice without engaging in work that has a history of being committed to talking about these things. I feel that this is the only way I can be sane and still do scholarly work and so I am excited to continue learning and growing in this line of inquiry.
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