An interesting incident of race & technology @ Google, relating to their "yellow badge" workers:
" Most of them are people of color and are supposedly involved in the labor of digitizing information. I’m interested in issues of class, race, and labor, and so out of general curiosity I wanted to ask these workers about their jobs. "
http://www.andrewnormanwilson.com/portfolios/70411-workers-leaving-the-googleplex
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
My Proposal: From Cyborg Culture to a Culture of Cyborgs
The Cyborg Manifesto provides rich possibilities for intervention in a technological realm built upon the logical and mythological foundations of Western Enlightenment epistemology. Our readings from the past week, notably Digitizing the Racialized Body, complicate the position of existing technologies of internet visuality in terms of their complicity in digital race. It is easy to fall into the belief that technologies of anonymous communication and digital self-identification will make race disappear; but as Hansen points out, though perhaps we are all “passing” in cyberspace, technological access and agency are not uniformly distributed.
Because cyberspace changes the conditions under which seeing and writing---the preeminent cyborg technology---take place, and indeed makes possible new models of communication previously impractical or unthinkable, race in cyberspace is not entirely congruent to race in biospace. However, it is precisely the ways in which cyberspace estranges race while allowing it to remain a force that make it so interesting. What avenues are open for constructive action in digital worlds? The endurance (or, ironically, the enduring effacement) of race in digital culture makes clear that we are developing new worlds with potentially new race-functions.
Understanding and critiquing these often-ambivalent developments of digital race will only become more important as we become, as a species, more and more cyborgian. How can we direct digital race to be productive, rather than destructive or complicit or compromised? And how can our individual cyberspace existences take part in this project? I envision considering Hansen’s arguments about online passing, the nature of online identity, mimicry, and performance from the position of ironic, cultural-mythological creation that Haraway takes as a productive model for feminist theory and action in the digital age.
Because cyberspace changes the conditions under which seeing and writing---the preeminent cyborg technology---take place, and indeed makes possible new models of communication previously impractical or unthinkable, race in cyberspace is not entirely congruent to race in biospace. However, it is precisely the ways in which cyberspace estranges race while allowing it to remain a force that make it so interesting. What avenues are open for constructive action in digital worlds? The endurance (or, ironically, the enduring effacement) of race in digital culture makes clear that we are developing new worlds with potentially new race-functions.
Understanding and critiquing these often-ambivalent developments of digital race will only become more important as we become, as a species, more and more cyborgian. How can we direct digital race to be productive, rather than destructive or complicit or compromised? And how can our individual cyberspace existences take part in this project? I envision considering Hansen’s arguments about online passing, the nature of online identity, mimicry, and performance from the position of ironic, cultural-mythological creation that Haraway takes as a productive model for feminist theory and action in the digital age.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
My Final Paper Topic
For my final paper I want to expand on the conversations from last week and further explore the ideas of the human persona that is created within technological worlds. Using Kelly Dobson’s talk in conjunction with Jennifer Gonzalez’ “The Face and the Public” and “Morphologies” along with Mark Hansen’s “Digitizing the Racialized Body” and Gilles Deleuze’s “Postscript on the Societies of Control,” I want to write about the socio-political ways in which someone can (re)create their virtual selves. How do these “bodies” take on technology as a race? How can the created avatars of real people fully embody the human it is supposed to represent? Is it even made to represent the human who created it? On the other hand, how can technologic bodies (computer/robot) take on the façade of the human? When does this boundary become so blurred that the human has to prove his humanity? On the more socio-political side of this discussion, I want to go into such topics as new frontiers that the Internet can provide; however, are these frontiers legal/why are they not? To answer these questions I will use Obidake’s Blackness project and things like “rape” in Second Life and stalking both online, maybe moving into reality. I’m also fascinated by questions such as: when is it appropriate to “friend” or “poke” someone on Facebook, admit to “stalking” them and how many photos back can we say that we saw? What can we do online that we can do in life appropriately, and what do we that crosses these boundaries? I want to answer how the Internet and Internet relations have changed/challenged conventional ideas of friendship and how humans communicate as it forces us to ask new of ourselves, who we are in life and especially who we are/want to be online.
Haunting and the Black Subject's Spectral and Repetive Presence
I find Morrison’s notion of the shadow particularly interesting. That the black subject marks its presence on the imagination of American white writers, and finds expression in their fiction, through a vocabulary "designed to disguise the subject’. But this seems to indicate two conflicting notions of embodiment: the black subject marked by the physicality of their difference, physically haunted, but their ontological, cultural, and social significance resonates only in the imaginary planes of the white subject’s mind. The spectral haunting of the black or othered on American fiction and white consciousness and its intrinsic accompaniment to the white subject engages notions of memory, repetition, and the act of forgetting.
While it seems unclear how exactly you could exactly identify and codify a way of identifying this spectral presence, I wonder in which way this presence, either spectral or ‘ornamental’ could be subversive: what kind of agency does, the black subject in shadow, or the ghost in the machine, have, with no material weight to disrupt the system it inhabits?
Also what would it mean to explode this ghostly presence, existing between the lines? Morrison is exploring the condition of hauntedness in this essas, but seems to anchor her argument to the textual and metaphysical, when I think the solution is specifically temporal. Haunting seems to indicate an oscillation or a tension between memory tied to the act of forgetting. In comparing this to American fiction writers, and the ‘Africanist’ hauntedness, we could characterize their writing, the textual inclusion and erasure of the black subject, perhaps as a technology of memory.
In considering memory and ghost, two statements come to mind: First, Deleuze’s “forgetting is the impossibility of return and memory is the necessity of renewal” and second, Derrida’s “Repetition and first time: this is perhaps the question of the event as question of the ghost”
Haven’t exactly worked at the implication of those two statements.
In addition, I’m considering Kristeva’s discussion of the abject and memory: the abject stands in opposition to I (helping to constitute the subject) but remains in proximity, haunting the subject. The white writer, the subject, is in a state of perpetually remembering the abject, the black subject, but it is a memory inarticulated, and can never be recalled. It is interesting to consider the difference between an articulate memory, something like the cliché, and an indiscernible one, the abject, and how both notions of reminiscence can inform conceptions of racial otherness.
Moreover memory, whether discernible or inarticulate, indicates some type of repetition; in the act of remembering we attempt to bring back what has past, inducing a form of repetition (Fanon’s closed circuit of colonial memory?) In Race and Technology, Coleman posited black repetition as a sign of pure embodiment and rendering of difference—it differs from itself with no other meaning than this differing. Repetition, can be understood as a process of differing, moving further away from the original….
I’m not sure where I am going with this, but this notion of haunting, memory, the difference between recollection and repetition, and their implication on race all work together in some way. Going to figure it out.
tarot
Avatar and Children of Men each perfectly fit the mold of "science fiction" as discussed during our Haraway week: these films are not about accurately projecting a hypothetical future, but rather, they are mediums to show the frustrations of our present. Both offer commentaries on contemporary society, and are lenses through which we can observe the symptoms of our current relationships with race. Sci-Fi cinema is a tarot - our imagined futures allow us to understand our present.
Ethan's post deliberates on colorblindness, and raises important questions through Children of Men's tarot lens. Ethan draws out a question we've reached numerous times throughout the semester: what is at stake in putting a person of difference (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc) on screen? If we try to pursue Gilroy's ideal of going "against race," don't we disavow the common senses that still linger, and wind up quietly re-presenting racialized others as colonized cliche? On the other hand, if we directly affirm that race still marginalizes, then what? Simply showing positive multicultural images does not break Fanon's hellish loop - that only makes the racialized other "feel better" temporarily. My vote goes to the motion in Keeling's explosion, Harraway's ironic cyborg, and Dobson's playful therapy.
Somewhat unrelated... here is a tenuous read:
In Children of Men, can we consider Britain as a melancholic ego structured through a lost object? But what is the object? Is it race? Human history? All other civilizations have collapsed, history is losing significance, and the broader world population is veering toward a multicultural melting pot. Are these not the tensions against which we define Children of Men's Britain? How does the moment of the baby crying play into this? Does that explode a common sense maintaining Britain as ego?
I'd also be game to talk about Avatar, passing, and racial tourism. It seems like there is a lot to explore, and I think it could be worth parsing out the popular reads that declare the film as latently racist
Ethan's post deliberates on colorblindness, and raises important questions through Children of Men's tarot lens. Ethan draws out a question we've reached numerous times throughout the semester: what is at stake in putting a person of difference (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc) on screen? If we try to pursue Gilroy's ideal of going "against race," don't we disavow the common senses that still linger, and wind up quietly re-presenting racialized others as colonized cliche? On the other hand, if we directly affirm that race still marginalizes, then what? Simply showing positive multicultural images does not break Fanon's hellish loop - that only makes the racialized other "feel better" temporarily. My vote goes to the motion in Keeling's explosion, Harraway's ironic cyborg, and Dobson's playful therapy.
Somewhat unrelated... here is a tenuous read:
In Children of Men, can we consider Britain as a melancholic ego structured through a lost object? But what is the object? Is it race? Human history? All other civilizations have collapsed, history is losing significance, and the broader world population is veering toward a multicultural melting pot. Are these not the tensions against which we define Children of Men's Britain? How does the moment of the baby crying play into this? Does that explode a common sense maintaining Britain as ego?
I'd also be game to talk about Avatar, passing, and racial tourism. It seems like there is a lot to explore, and I think it could be worth parsing out the popular reads that declare the film as latently racist
Oh, Avatar - and your Racial Markers
When I first saw Avatar in theaters, I distinctly remember my family expressing extreme annoyance towards the movie's portrayal of the Na'vi. Although it is pretty clear the Na'vi are alien, their culture and racial markers don't stray too far from ones used in other media. The blue skin and cat-like features were enough to signify "other", but we can still see some recognizable cultures similar to those of Native American or African tribes. examples: the beads, feathers, clothes and the bows&arrows of the Na'vi.
Morrison describes black characters in American literature as ornamental, used "for a bout of jungle fever, or a bout of local color ... to supply a needed moral gesture, humor or a bit of pathos" (15). Although the Na'vi are not black characters, they are the "other", and represent a lot of racial markers that resonate with the black identity. While the film does move toward an idea of a "new world", through its liberation of the Na'vi - the people will still be marked as other.
I can recall my family wishing that James Cameron was creative enough to create a culture that was unrecognizable and not so easily linked to cultures of Africa or Native Americans. Even the Na'vi language borrows elements from the Ethiopian language, Amharic. The actors who portray the Na'vi, interestingly enough, are Dominican, Native American or African.
Side note - there is a scene which I thought was really interesting. When the primary antagonist, Colonel Miles Quaritch, is pumping up mercenaries for killing some Na'vi they were predominantly made up of people of color. I always think that's an interesting scene and kind of want to talk about that image.
Morrison describes black characters in American literature as ornamental, used "for a bout of jungle fever, or a bout of local color ... to supply a needed moral gesture, humor or a bit of pathos" (15). Although the Na'vi are not black characters, they are the "other", and represent a lot of racial markers that resonate with the black identity. While the film does move toward an idea of a "new world", through its liberation of the Na'vi - the people will still be marked as other.
I can recall my family wishing that James Cameron was creative enough to create a culture that was unrecognizable and not so easily linked to cultures of Africa or Native Americans. Even the Na'vi language borrows elements from the Ethiopian language, Amharic. The actors who portray the Na'vi, interestingly enough, are Dominican, Native American or African.
Side note - there is a scene which I thought was really interesting. When the primary antagonist, Colonel Miles Quaritch, is pumping up mercenaries for killing some Na'vi they were predominantly made up of people of color. I always think that's an interesting scene and kind of want to talk about that image.
children of men
I was surprised at first by the idea of refugee camps in Children of Men. I wouldn’t have made the connection between the end of mankind and a surging politics of nationalism. I think it would be more expected (more mainstream Hollywood, perhaps) to think of the end of humanity in terms of coming together. Perhaps, however, this dystopia is more realistic. If we can think of science fiction as presenting the anxieties of the present, then we might say that our present is fixated on a fear of not going far enough with science—of encountering a disease of our own creation (of the body) that is nonetheless beyond our control (and invisible). Pregnancy is correlated with the visible and the body, like in the scene where Kee shows Theo her pregnant belly—this can only be communicated visually, and there is a tendency in the film to privilege visual over verbal communication. Meanwhile infertility is aligned with the invisible—this kind of invisible, unknowable disease that exists because something (a baby, a future) is absent. Kee’s race, then, is a visual symbol of fertility—man’s origin in Africa, the origin of the future. Is this the rupture for a new future? Starting with a new, African Eden? Of course, Theo is very much presented as the Joseph to Kee’s Mary. A hybrid, bastardized future.
There also were many reminders of the Holocaust—the prevalence of German-speaking refugees, the gates of the camps, the song “Arbeit Macht Frei.” I can’t help but think of the strange juxtaposition of concentration camps with infertility, and the idea of genomics. It’s interesting that Kee’s travels end with her deliverance into the hands of science—science here being an a-political entity, literally floating apart from the nation-state.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
toni morrisson would have a field day
Some more points from Avatar:
-The tension between Science and the Military, both in the service of Business, but with Science’s appropriation/infiltration of (in the immediate physical sense)/and consequent identification with the indigenous body, and eventual rebellion. (At least one person in the military does this too, though through association with the Scientists).
-The white man leads the indigenous revolution from the outside of the colony, rather than sabotaging it from the inside, or even merely offering up the information at his disposal - this information as tactical knowledge is not the only reason he is useful. He becomes the leader by placing himself literally at the top of the food chain, by conquering the biggest and highest flying hunter from above.
-’Natural cyborgs’ - the process by which the blue folks become one with the animals they ride is still a process of domination followed by immediate domestication. The contrast between this and the human cyborg process of creating a mechanical body (or an Avatar in a vat) and interfacing with it.
-The planet as a sentient ecology and central character in the narrative. Its multiple roles, two of which are: ‘taking sides’ in the final conflict despite itself because the human colony is against life, and mediating the final transference of the white subject to the indigenous body.
-The final defeat of the human colony, by the planet, and by the individual heroic action of the white man with some human weapons (taking down the bomber and command ship). The female character’s important role is to save him, once he’s already saved the planet.
-We close with the white man’s mind being transported from the crippled white body to the otherwise-mentally-flaccid yet physically powerful, human-constructed, avatar body-of-color.
-Our villains are one dimensional charicatures that apparently embody systemic processes (business, militarized violence, and to some extent the Scientist), rather than agents that 'use and are used by' these processes. To a certain degree we end up missing the point.
-The tension between Science and the Military, both in the service of Business, but with Science’s appropriation/infiltration of (in the immediate physical sense)/and consequent identification with the indigenous body, and eventual rebellion. (At least one person in the military does this too, though through association with the Scientists).
-The white man leads the indigenous revolution from the outside of the colony, rather than sabotaging it from the inside, or even merely offering up the information at his disposal - this information as tactical knowledge is not the only reason he is useful. He becomes the leader by placing himself literally at the top of the food chain, by conquering the biggest and highest flying hunter from above.
-’Natural cyborgs’ - the process by which the blue folks become one with the animals they ride is still a process of domination followed by immediate domestication. The contrast between this and the human cyborg process of creating a mechanical body (or an Avatar in a vat) and interfacing with it.
-The planet as a sentient ecology and central character in the narrative. Its multiple roles, two of which are: ‘taking sides’ in the final conflict despite itself because the human colony is against life, and mediating the final transference of the white subject to the indigenous body.
-The final defeat of the human colony, by the planet, and by the individual heroic action of the white man with some human weapons (taking down the bomber and command ship). The female character’s important role is to save him, once he’s already saved the planet.
-We close with the white man’s mind being transported from the crippled white body to the otherwise-mentally-flaccid yet physically powerful, human-constructed, avatar body-of-color.
-Our villains are one dimensional charicatures that apparently embody systemic processes (business, militarized violence, and to some extent the Scientist), rather than agents that 'use and are used by' these processes. To a certain degree we end up missing the point.
Children of Men
For the sake of generating discussion, let me outline my thoughts concerning Children of Men, in light of Erik and Yeon's critiques of the movie.
I'd like to begin with the same question Erik considers: how does the film portray Kee? It seems reasonably fair to say that she's not the most dynamic character. Nor is she a paragon of strong femininity. This is perhaps troubling, given that she's a black woman. The entire question of African Americans in American cinema is one that we've considered a great deal, and I'm sure the various issues are fresh in our minds, so I'll be brief in summarizing what I see to be the most relevant:
There is a desire to see black people in cinema portraying strong individuals. But there is also the desire for it to not matter what roles black people play. These two desires are in tension. That is, ultimately, it should not matter that there are black people in movies playing really stupid characters, just as doesn't matter that there are white people playing really stupid characters. This is the same for women and questions of sexism. In the ideal, racism and sexism free world, it would be marvelous to see (in light of the history of cinema) a black woman playing a really weak character, precisely because their success or failure need not be considered emblematic of their entire gender's or race's success or failure. This is how it is with white men. When a white man does an awful job, we don't say - "Oh, gosh, what a shame - what will people think of whites now?" - so, ideally, it would be it be for all actors of whatever color or gender.
But, alas, we do not live in such a world, and so our criticism must take into account these very questions which become frustrating and difficult. Difficult, that is, to feel one is addressing the question properly - doing justice to all those involved. It is within this light that we consider the question of Kee, as well as the other questions brought up by Children of Men. What does the film do with race?
I'll say that the question of race was far from my mind, even despite its relevant importance to the overall politics of the imagined dystopia. Sure, the British are miraculously the only bastion of order in a world of chaos. We see that the immigrants are primarily of other races. And the strongest characters in the movie are white. But I don't really see the problem here. Would the movie be racio-politically more 'correct' if it was set in, say, Japan, if it praised Japanese people for their unique moral resolve which allows them to survive above all other races? No, obviously. So, given that the movie has a particular setting with which we cannot find fault, how does the movie portray race?
The largest role race plays in the movie is when we learn that Kee is running from the government because she is a racialized other unfit to have a baby. The Government will snatch her baby, so she has to run. But when it comes down to it in that last lovely scene in the movie, Theo and Kee are able to walk straight through a firefight, past people of all races who drop what they're doing in awe of the new baby. That it is a black baby is utterly irrelevant to them. This is a little black Jesus who is in fact just a Jesus; that is to say, his symbolic value needn't be couched in the terms of his race. Think about it - everything is coming to an end, humans can no longer procreate. In this moment of rebirth, Cuaron shows us that people, at their hearts, don't see race.
I'd like to begin with the same question Erik considers: how does the film portray Kee? It seems reasonably fair to say that she's not the most dynamic character. Nor is she a paragon of strong femininity. This is perhaps troubling, given that she's a black woman. The entire question of African Americans in American cinema is one that we've considered a great deal, and I'm sure the various issues are fresh in our minds, so I'll be brief in summarizing what I see to be the most relevant:
There is a desire to see black people in cinema portraying strong individuals. But there is also the desire for it to not matter what roles black people play. These two desires are in tension. That is, ultimately, it should not matter that there are black people in movies playing really stupid characters, just as doesn't matter that there are white people playing really stupid characters. This is the same for women and questions of sexism. In the ideal, racism and sexism free world, it would be marvelous to see (in light of the history of cinema) a black woman playing a really weak character, precisely because their success or failure need not be considered emblematic of their entire gender's or race's success or failure. This is how it is with white men. When a white man does an awful job, we don't say - "Oh, gosh, what a shame - what will people think of whites now?" - so, ideally, it would be it be for all actors of whatever color or gender.
But, alas, we do not live in such a world, and so our criticism must take into account these very questions which become frustrating and difficult. Difficult, that is, to feel one is addressing the question properly - doing justice to all those involved. It is within this light that we consider the question of Kee, as well as the other questions brought up by Children of Men. What does the film do with race?
I'll say that the question of race was far from my mind, even despite its relevant importance to the overall politics of the imagined dystopia. Sure, the British are miraculously the only bastion of order in a world of chaos. We see that the immigrants are primarily of other races. And the strongest characters in the movie are white. But I don't really see the problem here. Would the movie be racio-politically more 'correct' if it was set in, say, Japan, if it praised Japanese people for their unique moral resolve which allows them to survive above all other races? No, obviously. So, given that the movie has a particular setting with which we cannot find fault, how does the movie portray race?
The largest role race plays in the movie is when we learn that Kee is running from the government because she is a racialized other unfit to have a baby. The Government will snatch her baby, so she has to run. But when it comes down to it in that last lovely scene in the movie, Theo and Kee are able to walk straight through a firefight, past people of all races who drop what they're doing in awe of the new baby. That it is a black baby is utterly irrelevant to them. This is a little black Jesus who is in fact just a Jesus; that is to say, his symbolic value needn't be couched in the terms of his race. Think about it - everything is coming to an end, humans can no longer procreate. In this moment of rebirth, Cuaron shows us that people, at their hearts, don't see race.
thoughts on Children of Men
I came across the following quote on a blog about film:
"the infertility and social upheaval in Faron’s world is not a pretext for an ‘adventure’ or ‘cathartic journey’ that the classical hero would be expected to have. On the contrary, it is the fate of this individual anti-hero which serves as a prism through which the background is seen more sharply. Specifically, Žižek states that the oppressive social dimension of the story can only be experienced on a level that is beyond the superficiality of the cause-and-effect first impression if it remains in the background. He calls this Cuarón’s “true art”: that he is able to achieve the communication of catharsis in an oblique fashion—one that is necessarily subtle and essentially ambiguous." (http://philosophyoffilm.blogspot.com/2009/05/children-of-men-and-richard-kearneys.html)
I think the first part of the quote can be worked in with our previous discussion of the Public sphere in which the ontology, or lived experience (that structures one's current state of being) of one's self is put aside in favor of metaphorical space where only one's utterances create one's identity. It is interesting to note that the power in the film, that is, the fact that it is able to elude to contemporary social and raced issues (thus necessarily abstractly?) is due to a "prism" that focuses the fundamentally unnmappable totality of human society/interaction in a way we can experience. It is interesting to see the world of "cause-and-effect" word as superficial because I feel like we've been taught, through scientific method and celebration of the Enlightenment, to treat that as the deepest level of understanding. This lends well to our discussion of the power and use of affect in world which is still Modernist (as opposed to modern) in many ways.
"the infertility and social upheaval in Faron’s world is not a pretext for an ‘adventure’ or ‘cathartic journey’ that the classical hero would be expected to have. On the contrary, it is the fate of this individual anti-hero which serves as a prism through which the background is seen more sharply. Specifically, Žižek states that the oppressive social dimension of the story can only be experienced on a level that is beyond the superficiality of the cause-and-effect first impression if it remains in the background. He calls this Cuarón’s “true art”: that he is able to achieve the communication of catharsis in an oblique fashion—one that is necessarily subtle and essentially ambiguous." (http://philosophyoffilm.blogspot.com/2009/05/children-of-men-and-richard-kearneys.html)
I think the first part of the quote can be worked in with our previous discussion of the Public sphere in which the ontology, or lived experience (that structures one's current state of being) of one's self is put aside in favor of metaphorical space where only one's utterances create one's identity. It is interesting to note that the power in the film, that is, the fact that it is able to elude to contemporary social and raced issues (thus necessarily abstractly?) is due to a "prism" that focuses the fundamentally unnmappable totality of human society/interaction in a way we can experience. It is interesting to see the world of "cause-and-effect" word as superficial because I feel like we've been taught, through scientific method and celebration of the Enlightenment, to treat that as the deepest level of understanding. This lends well to our discussion of the power and use of affect in world which is still Modernist (as opposed to modern) in many ways.
what an avatar can do
Morrison writes on whiteness constructed in the case of Sapphira: “… she has the leisure and the instruments to construct a self; but the self she constructs must be – is conceivable only as – white. The surrogate black bodies become her hands and feet, her fantasies of sexual ravish and intimacy with her husband, and, not inconsiderably, her sole source of love” (26). I thought of this when watching Avatar because this kind of relationship is almost literalized in the film. Having lost his competency and ability to enjoy life (it seems) as a human being, Jake Sully nonetheless achieves mobility, confidence, excellence, love and fulfillment through the avatar body of a native, an other. Yet despite the appearance of Jake’s avatar as the indigenous racial other, underneath this appearance the subjectivity that is developed throughout the film is by no means indigenous – he alone is the anthropologist intruding into the indigenous culture to study the racial other; he alone is confronted with the ethical dilemma of whether to rescue the racial other or not; he alone has the courage, intelligence and capability to seek out a way to save the Na’vi’s home, which is precisely because of his being not one of them and not playing according to their rules; and he enjoys the freedom of moving between human and Na’vi, and the freedom to eventually choose to be a Na’vi and hence the perfect life. A dream through the mystified other, but definitely a dream about oneself.
Men, Aliens and Narratives
It is rather interesting to see how Children of Men and Avatar read alongside Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark. Western literature, Morrison argued in Dark, echoes Africanism, a tradition overwhelmed by colonial discourses. This evidently persists, and as revealed in the cases of Men and Avatar. Unfolding from the revelations that these characters/subjects are raced is an unsettling new indulgence in colonial nostalgia. What's interesting though, despite the insipid invocations that these narratives hurl to the fore, is the context of science-fiction (Children of Men and Avatar fall into this category). Both films deal with the question of technology and the role of human beings in reconciling with its usage and effects on human perceptions and realities. As texts of sci-fi, they are essentially racial allegories/parables, what have you.
On Avatar. In terms of what I consider its overratedness, I believe many are fascinated by it because of latent colonial nostalgia. However, what becomes unsettling is the way technology (CGI) is used in its production and out of it to suppress even the slightest utterance of Avatar as being a raced film. For example, in interviews, James Cameron said that Avatar was a story about technology’s role in the future and was not a racial one. As Avatar seeks to stifle its racialized aspect, consumers say that it is a visual masterpiece and the undertone of race should be disregarded. Thus, we understand colonialism not in the sense of race here. What we see is a sort of disengagement with its historical definition because of the visuality of the "film." In Children of Men, the gendered roles, which are also raced, are metaphorically interchangeable with the relations between humans and aliens in the case of Avatar. So, the west stands in for the men; and the nonwest stands in for the women--and this is so with white, male Theo opposite Black, female Kee. Again. Nonwest as producing and west as governing; hence it is Theo’s job to protect/save Kee. While constructions of such narratives may echo colonial discourses, they are only manifested so at the surface. In this trajectory, these retellings of the stories become very melancholic, holding on to this past, but rejecting it altogether.
Race, Other and Self
I was very interested by some of Toni Morrison’s arguments in Playing in the Dark, and, after reading many of her texts throughout my life, I can see new angles from her works. I was really interested by two of her arguments in particular:
At the beginning of the year, we were talking about how the Internet is a place that does not need to recognize race, as it does not matter there. This issue has come up constantly throughout this semester and Morrison brings this matter up once again when she states that “a criticism that needs to insist that literature is not only ‘universal’ but also ‘race-free’ risks lobotomizing that literature, and diminishes both the art and the artist” (12.) Why do many people think that by recognizing race, racism has to be attached? In a non-discriminatory way, we can recognize the race of an artist/writer/performer in order to clearly illustrate the story or the deeper meaning behind their races. Why are we so scared to delve deeper into what could be something from which we could learn much, but instead we just want it to be smooth like a white linoleum floor?
The second point I found to be extremely interesting, has again, been brought up in previous discussions about the racialized other vs. the self. How we portray/create the idea of the other is very important, as it shows a lot about how we portray/create the idea of the self. Since “one sees how the concept of the American self was similarly bound to Africanism [a.k.a. the other], and was similarly covert about its dependency” (57-58,) we can also see how the other and the self are so intertwined. It is not that we see the other as someone who is “not us,” but instead, we create the classification of the self as someone who is “not them.” By placing the othered individual further and further away from what one does not want to be, one solidifies his personal image by putting the other at arms length. However, he still has to hold on to the other to show what he is not.
At the beginning of the year, we were talking about how the Internet is a place that does not need to recognize race, as it does not matter there. This issue has come up constantly throughout this semester and Morrison brings this matter up once again when she states that “a criticism that needs to insist that literature is not only ‘universal’ but also ‘race-free’ risks lobotomizing that literature, and diminishes both the art and the artist” (12.) Why do many people think that by recognizing race, racism has to be attached? In a non-discriminatory way, we can recognize the race of an artist/writer/performer in order to clearly illustrate the story or the deeper meaning behind their races. Why are we so scared to delve deeper into what could be something from which we could learn much, but instead we just want it to be smooth like a white linoleum floor?
The second point I found to be extremely interesting, has again, been brought up in previous discussions about the racialized other vs. the self. How we portray/create the idea of the other is very important, as it shows a lot about how we portray/create the idea of the self. Since “one sees how the concept of the American self was similarly bound to Africanism [a.k.a. the other], and was similarly covert about its dependency” (57-58,) we can also see how the other and the self are so intertwined. It is not that we see the other as someone who is “not us,” but instead, we create the classification of the self as someone who is “not them.” By placing the othered individual further and further away from what one does not want to be, one solidifies his personal image by putting the other at arms length. However, he still has to hold on to the other to show what he is not.
Need for re-presentation?
Let me add a couple more comments to Erik's nice analysis of Children of Men. Since I am having trouble weaving those comments into one coherent post, I'll just list them.
1. I find Kee almost a cinematic cliche. She, just like Navis from Avatar, embodies everything about the overused Hollywood binary of:
Colored - White
(Mother)Nature - Culture
Primitive - Civilized
Life - Death
Pure - Tainted
Past - Future
Genesis - Apocalypse
Accented - Fluent
Nostalgia - Present
and so on.
Both the movies color-code such binary with visible colors such as black and blue. Rather than attempting to embrace both sides of the binary, the movies situate "us," human beings living in the over-civilized society that is to demise, and imagine the color-coded "others."
2. Children of Men, ironically, struggles to send messages such as "after all, we're all humans" or "life is all created equal and sacred" and so on. But the movie needs to have a separate representation of life, of human-ness, of fertility, to convey the message. In the utopia in a true sense -- and Mr. Gilroy would agree with me -- we would not need visual signification of such values. Every living beings, regardless of gender, can be symbol of fertility. Us, for simply existing at this very moment, represent life.
3. Some might say this irony is a sort of Derrida-esque tactic for deconstruction, that is, to speak the language of the system to deconstruct the system from within. I am quite skeptical of the strategy. As we have discussed many times, for us to think outside of the common sense, we need the moment of explosion. How can we break outside of the rigid binary of you vs. me, us vs. them, etc., when we utilize the cliched representation of such binary?
Masters without slaves?
Toni Morrison calls white freedom "parasitical" (57). The same could be said of male freedom, heterosexual freedom, etc. So, is freedom possible without this parasitism? Is it possible to affirm the freedom of someone without disaffirming the freedom of someone else? If there's no "us" and no "them," is there anyone?
The answer, according to Morrison, seems to be no: "Freedom has no meaning to Huck or to the text without the specter of enslavement, the anodyne to individualism; the yardstick of absolute power over the life of another; the signed, marked, informing, and mutating presence of a black slave" (52). This leads me to the conclusion that the only way to escape the current unequal definition of freedom is to escape the current definition of the human. There's a reason the human, defined as free, evolved as a concept around the same time as race. Race is a part of this formulation of humanity — not just race, but racism. The very definition of freedom depended, still depends, on being not a slave. There is no master without slaves. Therefore, we cannot all be masters. There has to be a definition of the human that does not contain mastery. If there's no "us" without "them," to stop othering people requires no more subject. People have to be seen as multiple and other to themselves, and to view others as pieces of themselves (this ties into melancholia as well as the decline of presence and singularity).
After last class, Nathan and I talked about how racism advantages white people. Morrison's discussion of Cather helped me see how the inferior status of other races helps elevate the status of white women. Like a parent repeating habits observed as a child, women dominated by white men can reverse this power dynamic by dominating people of color. This made me think of how the Declaration of Sentiments at the Seneca Falls Convention during the early women's movement included, in a list of women's grievances about patriarchal society, "He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men--both natives and foreigners" (obviously, "her" meant someone white).
One tension in the way that Morrison talks about the interdependence of blackness and whiteness occurs when she says whiteness is constructed as meaningless (59), yet blackness is constructed as historyless and contextless (53). How is it that white is the race rendered meaningless, yet black is the race whose background is rendered meaningless? How are these two constructs related?
After thinking about how my life is influenced by race (as a white person), I am somewhat aware of how racism has advantaged me but less clear on how it has disadvantaged me (see Ms. Education's post). I'd really appreciate if we could discuss how our personal experiences relate to the topics we've talked about in this course, especially how race has affected people in unexpected ways (such as negatively affecting people at the top of the hierarchy).
Race as Literary Technology
Like Beth Coleman's argument for race as technology, Toni Morrison argues for race as a kind of technology in literary terms. Coleman calls race a tool that uses us even as we use it, and suggests that a more ethical, liberated humanity can result through better understanding this relationship; Morrison characterizes Africanism as a tool that writers used and are used by in their pursuit of writing American-ness, and suggests we may better understand our literature through acknowledging this invisible mechanism. Morrison writes, “The ideological dependence on racialism is intact and, like its metaphysical existence, offers in historical, political, and literary discourse a safe route into meditations on morality and ethics; a way of examining the mind-body dichotomy; a way of thinking about justice; a way of contemplating the modern world,” (64). I found this characterization of race as a “way,” or “prosthesis,” (like Madison mentioned) or “tool” in literary discourse productive to thinking about race as technology in terms of this course.
Something illuminating about the way Morrison conceives of race as a kind of literary technology is her emphasis on the boundedness (rather than flexibility) of the ways race was/is conventionally deployed in American literature. Race can only be used in certain ways; grapple with race unconventionally and your novel will be “marked with decline.” Coleman, on the other hand, argues for the almost limitless mutability of the ways race can be harnessed as a technology. In this way, it is clear that while they both appreciate the reflexive technique of race in literature and in human political and social life, Coleman and Morrison conceive of this tool in very different ways.
The opposition between the aspect of limitlessness written into a reflexive, flexible technology that theoretically offers itself to any user and a technology that has a set, established way of working is the opposition that Kelly Dobson’s work so playfully, brilliantly straddles. Her remark that technology “teaches us to be human” struck me as extremely insightful—sure, phones and blenders are meant to suit the particular needs of our keenly individualized lifestyles, but these tools also show us what it is to be normal. You can’t use race or technology for just anything—a screwdriver can’t be a hat, and you can’t sell your race on the internet. Race and technology have typical uses, and the interruption, failure, or excessive, playful attention to these uses is figured as incorrect, problematic, or a joke. It occurs to me (has this been Haraway’s point all along? Am I getting to it in a new way or no?) that if we consider Morrison (which overlaps to a certain extent with Dobson’s) view of (race as a) technology with having very specific rules for use (rules that were made to be broken) humor or mis-use of race and of technology might be a kind of limit to the way race can be seen as a technology.
prosthesis
I was incredibly fascinated by Morrison's Playing in the Dark and the concept of ignoring racism/race as a means that perpetuates difference. The choice to not mention race or pretend that race does not exist, therefore allows for those who are racist or who are readily affected by institutionalized or societal racism to continue have racist thoughts or be subjected to racist non-nonsensical ideologies. Morrison's analyses of Sappharia and the Slave girl both reminded me of this concept and of the Imitation of Life and the relationship between the characters within the film. While both stories from the film and text are completley different, the concept of the inferiority of blackness being seen through the superiority of whiteness is ever-present in both contexts. In Cather's novel, and as Morrison brillantly articulates describes, Sappharia is able to escape her maladies, her confinement and lack of attention from her husband through the perpetuation of ruining the young, black, female slave, Nancy's, life. By constructing a situation where Nancy will be raped and therefore supposededly "not admired," by Sapphaira's husband, Sapphaira illustrates her whiteness, and the power she has to greatly destroy Nancy's well being by solely being white, to exemplify the inferiority of blackness. Though Morrison does claim that she is not intended to deem any author or text as racist, Cather's novel can be seen as prosthesis that illuminates whiteness through the degregation of blackness. Similar in The Imitiation of Life, the camera, like Cather's text, becomes the prothesis that illuminates whiteness as desirable and superior through both the potrayl of a black character (Sarah Jane) by a white actress and the unhappiness Sarah Jane experiences because she is black. While when race is not discussed or mentioned it can evidently perpetuate racism, it also appears that when race is mentioned in a "discrete," non-blatant matter, this too can further perpetuate prejudice. Whether or not Cather intended for race to be a huge factor in her text, it cannot be ignored or viewed as a "discrete," factor of her text. Race in Sappharia and the Slave girl and in The Imitation of Life, is crucial to understanding the context of the novel and how each character functions and navigates in the society of which the work takes place.
After reading Morrison's analysis I couldn't help but question, well then, how does she feel race needs to be illustrated in texts/films/music etc? While I am a huge fan of hers and for the most part I completely agree with her arguments, I didn't feel she answered her own questions or thoroughly explained her statements. Nonetheless, I am interested in continuing to explore the possibilities of all forms of technology including books, articles etc, as prostheses to illuminate difference.
After reading Morrison's analysis I couldn't help but question, well then, how does she feel race needs to be illustrated in texts/films/music etc? While I am a huge fan of hers and for the most part I completely agree with her arguments, I didn't feel she answered her own questions or thoroughly explained her statements. Nonetheless, I am interested in continuing to explore the possibilities of all forms of technology including books, articles etc, as prostheses to illuminate difference.
The Invisible Kee
I find it curious, watching Children of Men, to see the position of Kee and to consider why the film portrays her as it does. As I see it, she is a conventional character, and a fairly empty one at that. She is almost totally dependent on others for survival, and would be nowhere without her two white European companions. Her presence in the film as the first woman to concieve and give birth in two decades places her in the position of the dark-skinned symbol of fertility somehow unsullied by Western industrial pollution, and her general lack of character does not seem to elevate her above this.
Granted, she is young and has not grown up around children, but it bothers me that Children of Men is still a white man’s story. I would not wish to essentialize Kee’s character further by suggesting she should have been the instinctual mother figure, but in making Theo the source for much of the parental wisdom the movie further eroded the potential for Kee to be a powerful woman in her own right. She ends up little more than a talisman of motherhood, passed from one group of (primarily) men to another. While she needs Theo to tell her she can succeed in giving birth, Theo soldiers on without so much as a wince, after being shot in the stomach, until Kee becomes hysterical thinking the blood is her’s—which sounds like Harry and Wesley in To Have and Have Not.
Kee is at the center of a pivotal struggle (which could change the fate of the human race) that is nonetheless not about her so much as it is about Miriam and Theo and the others who risk themselves to protect her child. It seems to me a poor choice to make Kee almost invisible from her own story, and I wonder what we should attribute it to. Is this the color bias of Hollywood? Or is something deeper going on in the writing of her character?
Granted, she is young and has not grown up around children, but it bothers me that Children of Men is still a white man’s story. I would not wish to essentialize Kee’s character further by suggesting she should have been the instinctual mother figure, but in making Theo the source for much of the parental wisdom the movie further eroded the potential for Kee to be a powerful woman in her own right. She ends up little more than a talisman of motherhood, passed from one group of (primarily) men to another. While she needs Theo to tell her she can succeed in giving birth, Theo soldiers on without so much as a wince, after being shot in the stomach, until Kee becomes hysterical thinking the blood is her’s—which sounds like Harry and Wesley in To Have and Have Not.
Kee is at the center of a pivotal struggle (which could change the fate of the human race) that is nonetheless not about her so much as it is about Miriam and Theo and the others who risk themselves to protect her child. It seems to me a poor choice to make Kee almost invisible from her own story, and I wonder what we should attribute it to. Is this the color bias of Hollywood? Or is something deeper going on in the writing of her character?
Monday, April 25, 2011
The Last
"But equally valuable is a serious intellectual effort to see what racial ideology does to the mind, imagination, and behavior of masters."
This point remains invisible in so many conversations. It is hardest to see and challenge a system through which you benefit directly. An example: The cult of womanhood defined femininity as submissive, chastise, etc. It was not difficult for black women to feel the consequences of this construction, because they were defined out of it, so to speak. White women, on the other hand, were still oppressed by these definitions, but also revered when they conformed. Thus, a system that identifies you as "master" is hardest to challenge. This point to me is so crucial. Often we try to undo hierarchy, by placing oppression itself along a hierarchy. I like points like Gilroy's and this one, that call for us to recognize the ways in which we are all limited by the current system.
In this book she's illustrating this point through a discussion of literary criticism, but the argument is quite political by nature. It's important to her not only to further "enshrine" the current system by creating separation or even inclusion (in some instances). She makes the claim that we fail to understand all major American literature without understanding the presence of black characters and the context of the book (which is American... which cannot be separated from a slave history): "What is surprising is that their refusal to read black texts- a refusal that makes no disturbance in their intellectual life- repeats itself when they reread the traditional, established works of literature worthy of their attention." P. 13
This point remains invisible in so many conversations. It is hardest to see and challenge a system through which you benefit directly. An example: The cult of womanhood defined femininity as submissive, chastise, etc. It was not difficult for black women to feel the consequences of this construction, because they were defined out of it, so to speak. White women, on the other hand, were still oppressed by these definitions, but also revered when they conformed. Thus, a system that identifies you as "master" is hardest to challenge. This point to me is so crucial. Often we try to undo hierarchy, by placing oppression itself along a hierarchy. I like points like Gilroy's and this one, that call for us to recognize the ways in which we are all limited by the current system.
In this book she's illustrating this point through a discussion of literary criticism, but the argument is quite political by nature. It's important to her not only to further "enshrine" the current system by creating separation or even inclusion (in some instances). She makes the claim that we fail to understand all major American literature without understanding the presence of black characters and the context of the book (which is American... which cannot be separated from a slave history): "What is surprising is that their refusal to read black texts- a refusal that makes no disturbance in their intellectual life- repeats itself when they reread the traditional, established works of literature worthy of their attention." P. 13
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Diffusion of Racialized Boundaries
I found Jennifer Gonzalez's account of morphology of race, and the notion of race as a morphable visual technology to be interesting, especially in light of the readings we've been considering recently. As the course comes to a close, I've been trying more to get a sense of where I am in relation to the various articulations of race that we've considered, and I realize that I'm coming to terms with the notion that digital technologies (as well as modern scientific technology such as fMRI) have a significant role to play in presenting a visual argument for the dissolution of race (if indeed that is where we're headed). Goebbels says that “Propaganda must be made directly by words and images, not by writing.” And in a sense, propaganda is required to make the case that there's “no gene for race,” moreso than writing, if it is to have reception across a larger audience.
Thank Michael Jackson for this, in his video “Black or White,” which has been stuck in my head ever since I watched it to see the face-morphing. This sort of argument, made through art, and especially mass art, has an important role to play, in addition to theorizing on the topic. Perhaps the internet, too, plays a crucial role in a similar regard, as is suggested by Mark Hansen. These seem to be two ways of diffusing racialized boundaries – by rendering the boundaries more diffuse themselves through art, or by thoroughly ignoring them altogether on the blogosphere and throughout the internet.
Evocations of previous readings in Gonzalez
At several points in this course, I've found myself going back to the initial dialogue between the Reardon and Gilroy readings. I also read Gonzalez as taking up these questions: Does race matter? Can race matter in a future, just society? Can it not matter? Specifically, she asks these questions with regard to race as a visual signifier. Reardon argues that using biology to prove that race isn't real puts undue weight in the scientific institution and doesn't solve the problem; Gonzalez makes a similar point about faces. Like Fusco, she argues that to say that an image or form of communication transcends race risks ignoring the racial codes and social hierarchies that went into its making.
For this reason, it is problematic to use racial difference as a gateway toward sameness, whether in the form of identity tourism or digital or real racial mixing. I agree with this — the fantasy of racial mixing seems to me like, at best, a reflection of a new and barely attainable Western beauty ideal that requires taking on every race's most prized qualities, and at worst, a white fantasy of absorbing and softening other races' characteristics and not having to deal with racial conflict or guilt. More to the point, these images are still racialized.
Yet I keep wondering if we cannot try to get rid of the construct of race — and identity politics in general — at all. The attempts we looked at this week were not effective, but what about the cyborg future in which community is based on affinity rather than identity?
The Face: the outdated interface
The face is the most basic interface we understand. We model technology after our own faces, in order to create something familiar to interact with. Within cyberspace, however, the visual identification is lacking and it is possible for users to "pass" without any racial identity. With the use of cyberspace, we can move beyond spectacle and more towards cultural relation.
Caught Like a Nigger in Cyberspace is an interesting game, which requires the player to avoid "techno jargon". Hansen states, while playing the game, he felt "compelled to undergo a kind of becoming-other, a loosening grip of the identity markings on my embodiment, a felt recognition of the fluidity - the bodily excess - underlying them." It becomes clear that identity cannot be measured be visual interpretation alone, and the body is actually an unnecessary party of the identity. Through cyberspace identities are interacting directly, without a visual / physical interface. People are no longer limited by their visual appearance, and communication is still possible without the physical human interface, the face.
Caught Like a Nigger in Cyberspace is an interesting game, which requires the player to avoid "techno jargon". Hansen states, while playing the game, he felt "compelled to undergo a kind of becoming-other, a loosening grip of the identity markings on my embodiment, a felt recognition of the fluidity - the bodily excess - underlying them." It becomes clear that identity cannot be measured be visual interpretation alone, and the body is actually an unnecessary party of the identity. Through cyberspace identities are interacting directly, without a visual / physical interface. People are no longer limited by their visual appearance, and communication is still possible without the physical human interface, the face.
frustration, spit, the face (colour separation)
First things first-- the cover photo of Gonzalez’s Face and Public is disturbing. I was thinking of Silence of the Lambs until I reached her passage on Colour Separation, when two ideas emerged: first, the idea of frustration described by Hansen. Looking at the photo, I’m completely frustrated. My reaction is to look for the ‘actual person’ behind the photograph; is this two people? Do the eyes and ears belong to the same person? Are the separate stitched-on parts composites? I want to know how photoshopped the image is. I want the ‘payoff’ of seeing the original pictures. I think this is an extremely productive and successful frustration—it asks me which ‘face’ I want to/tend to identify with, and it indicates my need to situate the face at its origin in order to ‘interface’ with it. It's disturbing not only because it's a wounded face, but because that wound has been inflicted on a non-face with which I'm unable to identify--the photograph only depicts a wound.
Second, the spit. I think its fascinating that the spit becomes a ‘visual sign’ of ‘a personal narrative of everyday racial abuse.’ Doesn’t, in this scenario, the spit become a face? It’s personal, individual, micro, (in conjunction with the everyday experience of one person) and its also the public, social, macro—produced by a user who has either entered the gallery or downloaded the software, a user who has entered the social/community in order to spit on this face. In light of this unplace-able, stitched-together face, the spit is the most direct bridge between two individuals. Could this be a successful displacement of the face within technoculture?
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