Academia From Home

My attempts at applying to PhDs continue to be thwarted, so this is me blogging about the academic journal articles I read for funsies.

[lauranlora]

All mothers disappoint, pro-choice feminism, leaning into the threat

Title: Kill Daddy: Reproduction, Futurity, and the Survival of the Radical Feminist by Mairead Sullivan

As accusations of communism are leveled towards expressions of the most basic social services or even human empathy, I find myself not wanting to decry or make fun of the accusers for their tactical ignorance, but wanting to lean in. Yeah, I am. So what? Would this not work better to deflate these accusations? The conversation is being led there anyway, might as well gain control of it. I'm boggled by why this isn't a more common tactic until I remember, of course they're not. Yet, when it comes to feminism, I found myself repeating the same trap upheld by two factors: my attraction to men and my (hard worked at, might I add) desire to respect children. I considered these two factors emblematic of my growth as a nuanced and complex person. Things I had to work at and through to control my previous impulses of "fuck all men" and "I hate kids". I considered the resistance I still feel around my new, evolved stances to be an example of first thought instead of authentic thought. I also struggled to reconcile both of these with my complete disdain of motherhood.

Lately I've been asking myself how is motherhood compatible with feminism when it's one of the biggest forms of control and exploitation under the capitalist system. If we follow (and I remember correctly) Federici, it's the primitive accumulation of human capital. Current trends also support this with the attacks on birth control and bodily autonomy, and popularity of trends of return like tradwifery and the "divine feminine". And if the thing about women losing gray matter during pregnancy is actually true, I cannot in any way rationalize support for anything that reduces women's cognitive capabilities in the AI era that is desperate to strip all of us of our critical thinking skills. It's first in Sullivan's article here that I encounter the concept of futurity, namely, reproductive futurity.

To be blunt, I don't give a fuck about the future, I give a fuck about the now. The next century is my responsibility only insofar that it's impacted by my stewardship of the present. I concern myself with the next decades, next year, next week. Tomorrow. I care about the future through my concern of making sure we get through the night. I cannot be brought to develop concern for lowering birth rates (being manipulatively marketed as low fertility rates) when feminicide surges. I cannot be compelled to desire motherhood when I see what it did and does to the mothers I know. How--if I can allow myself a tad of selfishness that is actually unmet needs--mothers, both mine and others, fail me to tend to their (other) children. How the village that they do not have also reduces my own. Motherhood (and parenthood in general) is a deeply violent act of selfishness. It's the ultimate infringement on consent. It's forsaking the people we have for those that don't need to exist. It steals the women I love and respect from me. I crave being an aunt, and the maternal role that comes with it, because I see it as the only path to maintain these women in my life.

I'm fascinated by Sullivan's breakdown of the Child and how aptly it analyzes the popular decry of "think of the children!" utilized to shove the public towards the right-wing on any and every subject. I'm also intrigued at how it's most often leveled at trans people and how TERFs seem to have appropriated radical feminism, at least in the mainstream. It's difficult to talk of radical feminism these days without having to disavow TERFism, to the point of almost poisoning radical feminism as a whole. It's an intriguing evolution? corruption? of the sinthomosexual, if that can even be said given how TERFs ultimately serve the patriarchal capitalist system by painting women as defenseless and in need of protection by that very same system.

The other popular, contemporary example of radical feminism that comes to mind is the 4B Movement in South Korea, which feels more faithfully aligned to the ethos of radical feminism and the sinthomosexual figure of the radical feminist that spooks. I'll have to look more into the Movement, as I have only heard those ideas in passing (there was a graffiti that read [translated from Spanish and my memory] "sex strike until they stop killing us" near a coffee shop I used to frequent) and as hyperbole, but not as serious topic of discussion. The hyper-emphasis on safe motherhood, reproductive rights, and pro-choice forces the radical feminist out of most contemporary feminist spaces. Although important initiatives because of their goal of safeguarding women's health and dignity, it's the pro-choice part that keeps nagging at me. Is choice feminism not generally understood, by most serious feminists, as, at best, a misunderstanding of the cause? My inclination to call myself pro-abortion instead of pro-choice (which happens to be the standard nomenclature in Spanish, interesting) is electrified with understanding. I begin to recognize my political home. Nominal? linguistic? determinism, etc. etc.

Sullivan presents the radical feminist as a sintomosexual figure and a threat. I wonder, in the era of pink pussy hat Women's Marches and No Kings Day protests that are mere pressure release valves rather than the threats that marches could (and imho, should) represent, how can the figure of the radical feminist be brought back into popular consciousness? Does the current social regression not present a fertile ground for this figure to rise again beyond its bastardizations by transphobia? Do we have to wait until birth rates begin to reach true "crisis", as they did in South Korea? Is the feverish natalist propaganda a sign of the threat actually working?

[lauranlora]

Fronterismo intangible, la promesa de la literatura, volver; quedarse

Título: La asimetría poblacional y el "round-trip ticket": sobre el discurso de ser puertorriqueño por Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger

Me intriga que las tendencias de hoy no han sido suplantadas en los pasados 25 años desde la publicación de este artículo. Más bien, se han agudizado con el marco de La Crisis contemporánea. Su multiplicidad me dificulta nombrarla (neoliberal, neocolonial, desplazadora-expulsora, entre miles más) pero la he notado apoderarse casi por completo de la literatura contemporánea, o al menos, la que yo encuentro que vale la pena leer y discutir.

La eterna pregunta de la puertorriqueñidad se disputa hoy más que nunca, desde las canchas y los campos deportivos hasta la sección de comentarios de videos verticales en redes sociales. Y por el medio la Ley 20/22/60 que busca saquearnos hasta la identidad misma (El Gallito de Dorado, el dueño gringo de ProSolar que "lives here just like you", según sus anuncios de televisión). Esto sucede mientras en el congreso del imperio proponen legislación para eliminar la ciudananía de nacimiento a las colonias estadounidenses. Si se formalizara la secundad ciudadana de los puertorriqueños--porque esa es la meta--¿cómo redifiniría la puertorriqueñidad cuando se restrinja el vaivén, el "round-trip ticket" (de los cuales he comprado muchos) y nos convertimos, innegablemente, en seres sin estado?

Durante mi maestría en El Paso, Texas, ciudad fronteriza con Ciudad Juárez, México, se hablaba hasta las náuseas sobre la frontera y la literatura. Siempre me costó un poco el tema, siendo de un lugar en que la frontera no es una línea arbitraria y en eterna tensión, si no que el mar mismo. Llevo años, con éxito dudoso, escribiendo poemas, cuentos y novelas que logren matizar esas diferencias geográficas y cómo impacta el relacionarse. Admito que siempre me pareció medio necio la santificación del borderland, aunque sí entendía su importancia, vitalidad y fertilidad ambas literaria y política. Algo simpelemente no me cuajaba. Este párrafo del artículo me comienza a desmenuzar el tema:

Al parafrasear el Middle Passage, visualiza en el mapa de su portada la línea de transporte aéreo desde Nueva York a Puerto Rico como una distancia de 1.380 millas. El objetivo de Soto-Crespo es racionalizar las implicaciones emocionales de su concepto de habitar un borderland, parte integral de un mundo globalizado. Este borderland relacionado con el nacionalismo cultural, el Estado político, el federalismo, la muchedumbre y la soberanía, se manifiesta como la representación del Estado político en la pintura de José Campeche y Francisco Oller, interpretada como tal en la obra de Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá. Luego el autor dedica un capítulo al gobernador de Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín, un teórico radical del concepto de borderland y representante de la filosofía de la transformación de Puerto Rico en el primer objeto trans-americano. Soto-Crespo considera el estadolibrismo o la Constitución Commonwealth de Puerto Rico de 1952 como una política de escape, como una relación federalista anormal con los Estados Unidos. Demuestra en el último capítulo la majiera en la que los poetas residentes en Nueva York enfrentan esta situación al verbalizar una sensibilidad que vive este problema como experiencia dolorosa.

No puertorriqueños, si no que "trans-americanos". El "borderland" boricua es el coloniaje mismo pero en un espacio intangible que, en vez de ser potencial fructífero e imaginativo, utiliza la ambiguedas para seguir saqueando con impunidad. Por eso los reclamos flojos de dizque xenophobia cuando se habla, muy justificadamente, de los gringos desplazadores en el archipiélago.

El Puerto Rico como referente al que alude la introducción del artículo se vuelve más borroso con los años, más difícil de precisar. En cuanto a la literatura, la relación con el inglés entra en una nueva etapa de tensión. Durante mi crianza en el archipiélago el inglés (y por consecuente, el spanglish) era un símbolo de otredad, el cómo se comunicaban los nenes raros. Ahora figura como extensión del guaynabismo, como indicador de clase y, más preciso a lo que estoy intentando desenrredar aquí, de actitudes (léase, positivas) sobre el pillaje imperial.

Recién leí algo, no recuerdo si fue un comentario en redes, o de un artículo de Zona de Carga y Descarga, afirmando que Puerto Rico no produce escritores que escriben en inglés. Claro, cuando se hacen afirmaciones así, sólo se refiere a los gran nombres históricos y del momento, no de la masa de producción literaria. Yo misma escribo y me han publicado en inglés. Aún así, no estoy completamente en desacuerdo con la aseveración. La literatura puertorriqueña contemporánea que he leído en inglés que se aserta como Boricua ha dejado mucho que desear. Leen como filosóficamente opuestos a las vivencias isleñas, aunque así sea de escritores que se formaron, al menos parcialmente, en el archipiélago. Textos como Ordinary Girls de Jaquira Díaz y Olga Dies Dreaming de Xochitl González (de mínimamente a grotescamente ofensivo por razones que te puedo explicar si tienes mi número de teléfono para textearme) son enaltecidos como el canon nuevo diasporriqueño, pero caen más bien en ese borderland intangible que ya he problematizado.

[lauranlora]

Framing Star Wars, narrative implications, all roads lead back to colonial violence

Title: Chasing Wild Space: Narrative Outsides and World-Building Frontiers in Knights of the Old Republic and The Old Republic by Cody Mejeur

As I continue my foray into watching all of Star Wars with the first two episodes of Andor, I found myself asking not about the big picture of the larger story, but the frame itself. I talked with (sometimes at) my brother--who is visiting for a few days and is my primary source for all things SW--about the implications of "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away". Who is this narrator? What is this narrator's relationship to the SW galaxy? Is it us, the Milky Way Galaxy human from Earth? Is it a third party external to both our galaxy and theirs? Will the narrative eventually end? How so? What do the answers to these questions imply about the story of Star Wars itself? What is the story that Star Wars, as a whole, is setting out to tell?

I'll admit, the depth I have found in this series sometimes feels miraculously accidental and only possible due to its vastness and, consequently, it's necessary specificity and focus of its various entries. Every Star Wars story is not about finally defeating whatever current version of the fascistic empire that is at bat, but about the one thing (big or small) a specific group of people did to make that, eventually, possible. The big win, so to speak, of Star Wars has yet to come as it is presently the only logical narrative ending to the story of Star Wars.

Mejeur's chapter describes and analyzes the narrative and ethical implications of how SW, through two of its video game entries, utilizes Wild Space and frontiers and how these mirror american imperial and colonial violence. I've heard much talk, primarily praise, of Andor and how revolutionary it is. I was skeptical, but after watching the original and prequel trilogies, I have come to understand how politically audacious the series is despite its reputation and that of its bros.

Andor does indeed (at least within the only two episodes I have watched) present fertile ground for this exact exploration. It's worth reading the closing paragraph of the chapter in full:

Outside spaces play a significant role in world-building and it is crucial to develop an ethics in how we represent and use them in order to avoid inadvertently re-inscribing the colonial mythology of the frontier. I suggest that there is another meaning or approach to outside space—one that can help break the cycle of narrative violence evident in Star Wars. One can face outside spaces and learn from them in ways that are not violent, controlling, and xenophobic. Certainly, one should resist threats of conquest and domination whenever and wherever they manifest themselves. But outside spaces are not always-already evil threats and expansion through conquest does not need to be the dominant mode of the hyperdiegetic cycle. Instead, one could embrace the outside, the unknown, the strange, and the other, along with the insights and new possibilities they hold. Only by seeking such paths can we hope to unlock the transformative power of hyperdiegesis and outside spaces, and to build narrative worlds that are more inclusive, equal, and just.

Allowing the Kenari scenes to exist without transcribing subtitles draws the viewer in at a disadvantaged and vulnerable position, into the position of guest instead of that of outlander or conqueror. I don't yet know the details or fate of Kenari and its people, nor do I fully comprehend the political reality of mid-rim planets during Galactic Empire times, but I'm intrigued about how this positionality (inner, outer, mid rim) to the imperial core can influence Rebellious tendencies. Perhaps that is what Fanon meant by identifying the rural peasant as the central revolutionary. If so, does Andor present the narrative rectification that the sequel trilogy was unable to deliver on by making Rey a Palpatine-Skywalker instead of the galactic nobody-everybody?