Untitled

[poeticconfrontation-blog]

Network Model

Tropic of Orange is in sorts the type of “meeting place” that Massey describes. With its seven characters — Rafaela, Bobby, Emi, Gabriel, Buzzwork, Arcangel, Manzanar — Tropic of Orange is, like Massey writes, “holding all those networks of social relations and movements and communication” within its pages. Each character comes with their unique experiences, needs, wants, etc, and represent a far larger story and background beyond the moments of these meetings and intersections themselves. Yet when they overlap, their stories intertwining, they are weaving together a network that holds together the book. Perhaps their intersections make the connections and coherence of the book stronger (just as a higher thread-count would make a sheet sturdier), and they are each necessary to making the book make sense (like how each cog in a circuit is necessary no matter how small). Without one character, the story would change. And at the same time, this doesn’t mean that the characters all have to be the same; they do not and do not have to all agree, or be doing the same thing and the same time to make this book whole. They do not have to be in the same place, on the same side of the “border,” etc. In fact, perhaps their differences give magic to the book and show up as superpowers. For instance, Rafaela has intuition, Arcangel has strength and wisdom drawn from an infinite memory and past, Emi wields technology and has a knack for living outloud, Manzanar can conduct the freeways of LA, Bobby perseveres and seems to be able to fly at the end of the book, Buzzworm is able to see/get to the core of people, and Gabriel can piece things together and is perhaps a sort of network weaver in this instance.

[poeticconfrontation-blog]

Isabel, Maria, Jacob, and I will be doing a LabLitArch project as a way of unpacking and then putting together again Karen Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange. We want to explore in particular the narrative and literary tools that Yamashita employs to achieve the impact(s) and purpose(s) of her book. This could happen through dedicating different spaces (perhaps real rooms that could be walked in by the class) for each character in order to get more insight into her organization of the book and the ways themes, symbols, and motifs show up in each characters’ world. It may potentially include a map of sorts to tie together concepts we have explored in class such as the birds eye view and counter-topographies. I am personally drawn to the way Yamashita creates magic in her book, and the way she is able to evoke certain effects in readers. I wonder how magic -- for instance, the magic emanating from her descriptions and positioning of the orange, the line, conducting, elasticity in solid objects, time, etc. -- can be reflected and conjured in the concrete forms of the LabLitArch project? What mechanisms and methods does Yamashita use to create the sense of magic in her book, and can we use them similarly to create a sense of magic in our final project? 

[ienjoyfruits-blog]

Is History Real?

I enjoy listening to Alan Watts. I have never watched his videos before. I find I have a more difficult time watching him than listening to him. When I listen, I am more able to absorb him on a conceptual and intellectual level and his work satisfies me on that wavelength.

As I watch, however, his presence and ideas seem much more a social game than an intellectual discourse. I cannot help to to notice how white and British he is and how appropriated his livelihood can be interpreted as. He is a philosopher of the East, yet he is white and British. Given his relationship to history can he be a great or even ethical philosopher?

HIs video argues ideas ought to be taken at face value, in the present, of the present, and for the present. 

I think this viewpoints that Watts briefly expounds, very closely articulates Hall. And I have found Hall’s essay to be among the most moving works I have read this semester. 

I think it is powerful to the extant that it is true. It deploys a wisdom that academic papers do not always have. It can be difficult to articulate exactly what makes this paper wise as compared to another, say Katz’s counter topography. But, the intuitive sense I have after reading Hall’s essay, as with any good essay, is that it evokes ideas and conceptions from within. Hall is helping me to understand what I feel I already knew, whereas Katz essay reads to me with a sense of conceptual distance.  

I would like to make a connection between Watts and Hall. Watts is lecturing as a white, British academic, specializing in Hindu and Buddhist history and philosophy. He lectures mostly in the US to an American audience of the 1950s-1970s. Hall, also a British Academic, specializing in cultural studies, Black, and born and raised in Jamaica, writes for a presumably academic audience, in 1990.

I found it interesting how two people with different histories, in different times, and with different academic specialities, could espouse such a similar theory for potentially such different aims.

Watts aims to essentially enlighten a Christian audience into hindu and buddhist philosophy. Hall aims to salvage and revitalize the ethos of African diaspora.

Yet they both rely heavily on this one, potentially simple idea. History does not exists. There is only the present, and history only exists to the extant that the present is aware of it.

As hall beautiful evokes, “meaning is never finished or completed, but keeps on moving to encompass other, additional or supplementary meanings” (229).

What is interesting about this interpretation of history or a lack there of, is that it potentially undermines globalization and diaspora. Taking these ideologies towards there extremes, one could posit, everything always was and is a function of the global, and everyone never was or will have home or a from. There is no such thing as from. There is no such thing as was. There is only the place you are. 

I don’t know if I like these frameworks though. They are provocative, and I do prefer them to their polar extreme; history is embedded, entrenched, and here to stay. 

But, I can’t help but to feel disheartened by the idea that history can be forgotten, because as the adage goes forgotten history is doomed to be repeated. 

I do find myself ruminating over ideas of imperialism and appropriation. They certainly happened, it certainly is horrid beyond speech. But, is imperialism essentially European, or white?

I really don’t know, and I’m not sure we can. I discussed this in a previous comment, about how conquest and power are synonymous with written history, and have manifested in essentially all cultures to some degree.  

It is uncomfortable to minimize imperialism and violence. But all it takes is nihilism or a massive historical time scope, say one million years, to do just so. It’s just, I also cannot but to have the feeling that, if it wasn’t Spain, it would have been China, and if it wasn’t China, it would have the Incas, and if it wasn’t the Incas, it would have been the Ottomans, and if not the Ottomans it would have been the caliphate, and if not the caliphate the kingdom of Ghana. 

And yet, it was Europe, and this reality is now, probably not forever, but certainly here now.

[poeticconfrontation-blog]

I wonder if ienjoyfruits’ question of whether “history is real,” can be connected in some way to neoliberal-dog’s image depicting a chicken and an egg, and asking “what came first — globalization or diaspora?”

With different arguments of history, whether motions toward history are pointless as it doesn’t really exist, and “there is no such thing as from. There is no such thing as was. There is only the place you are,” or whether it is that history is anchored and tangible and static, both arguments seem to lead in a circular motion, as if one were answering the chicken of the egg question. It can be fascinating to step away from specifics and ruminate on more general questions about the existence of history, but it seems that directions often point to the hypothetical and academic.

Imperialism and colonialism are done by people other than the British and America. And yes, in theory, if Britain and the US did not enact imperialism and colonialism so brutally and systematically, perhaps other nations would. I believe these are interesting questions, but what are the costs of bypassing specific narratives and the ways that history and narratives and memory are not always held in hypothetical, philosophical, and academic mediums, but rather often in fragments and the body and in private forms of resistance?

[age-of-mass-consumption-blog]

Diaspora & Our Globalizing World

Using Katz’s idea of constructing a “counter topography,” I think there’s a true human-geographical connection between the way in which people imagine place in connection to shifting discourse/practice which creates the cultural diaspora – a “space” defined by the distance from particularly-salient place. With that in mind, diaspora becomes an extremely relative and flexible experience. It’s not a claim that can be delegitimized, but rather a social experience (often times unifying) lived through the way identity, practice, and place operate. In this way, diaspora becomes an extremely spatially-driven concept. But if Katz means counter topography to be a multi-dimensional analysis – one that includes history and time, not just space – we should also consider how the motion and progress of imagination can create the diaspora. Perhaps Samad or Professor Saito, while diasporic through the notions of space, also occupy a “temporal diaspora” driven by the deprecation of popular discourse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7qQ6_RV4VQ

How else, then, can globalization and diaspora come together except through the former’s rapid acceleration of the latter? The context of globalization in its shrinking of space-time and increasing interpenetration of cultural ideas and motions undoubtedly subject the various forms of unity and association across the landscape to greater amounts of diasporic narrative. Situated in postmodernity, globalization helps to expand how diaspora operates. In our texts we’ve read diaspora as processes centered in religious, cultural, ideological (& other) centerpieces, undoubtedly creating more complex frameworks of diaspora than perhaps could be constructed 50, or even 20, years ago. In this way globalization fundamentally reframes diaspora without changing its core character. Perhaps the passage of signal fires, once used to constitute religious events across the diaspora in rabbinic times, appropriately pairs with this idea. The complexity of modern diaspora and the various horizons/nuance which globalization impose (along with the obvious innovation of technology) illustrate the progression from a time of signal fires to today’s vast array of diasporas.

(from https://gothicpagan.deviantart.com/art/Beacons-of-light-204722514)

As I read over this post thus far, I’m curious about what I have now highlighted in bold. Though I have mostly framed diaspora (in response to our texts) as a subjugating cultural process, I wonder about the politicization of “diaspora” and the quest of hierarchically-organizing various processes of diaspora. Should claims of delegitimizing certain diasporas be taken seriously? Or is the nature of challenging a diaspora narrative (as I right now believe it to be:) fundamentally flawed?

[poeticconfrontation-blog]

In eloquently weaving together counter topographies and time and space compression, Age-of-mass-consumption brings up “the motion and progress of imagination” and how it can “create the diaspora.” They reference ideas of “home” and “belonging” through implications of  human-geographical connection — where a “home” is a particular place, and one’s distance from it measured. In this discourse, where is imagination’s place in the making of diaspora? Often, youth growing up in one place, do not have direct experience with their “country of origin,” and so they have to imagine and piece together memories to access the country of origin, history, and perhaps their memory of belonging. This leaves me wondering how “human-geographical connection” is complicated by intergenerational memory and the ways that people in the diaspora piece together their recollections of their so-called “home?” I find that age-of-mass-consumption’s introduction of “signal fires” — “once used to constitute religious events across the diaspora in rabbinic times, appropriately pairs with this idea” — gestures at these questions, while also raising new and connected ones: What do signal fires look like now? How do folks communicate across the diaspora? What shape and form does this communication take? Is it visible like a signal fire, or assembled through fragments and invisible memories?

[poeticconfrontation-blog]

The way Zadie Smith uses dialectics and binaries to set the scenes in which characters come into being stands out to me. Although she does draw in histories and larger contexts when constructing characters, importantly, Zadie Smith also guides her audience’s attention to the the smaller-scale parallels between pairs of characters, giving each pair it’s own context, time, and space.

For instance, she pairs Archie and Clara, Alsana and Samad, Clara and Alsana, Archie and Samad, Samad and Poppy, Samad and Millat, Millat and Magid, Irie and Millat, and so on. I wonder why Zadie Smith does this, and how it relates to our class’s theme of Globalization and Diaspora. Perhaps by constructing each character within a dialectic pair, Zadie Smith is invoking the concept of Interpellation — the process by which a subject is constituted. Usually, Interpellation manifests in institutions and has to do with authority; however, by positioning characters as “interpellators” of each other, I wonder if Zadie Smith is hinting that what is usually relegated to an “institutional” and perhaps more distant and large level, are in fact carried out at everyday, minuscule realms — the power dynamics within them being embodied and negotiated in character-to-character relationships.    

To answer the question of how this connects to our class’s theme/title, I am interested in further exploring Embodiment and how these character pairs are situated in space and place — particularly in terms of body and mind (whether it be desire, Irie’s beauty norms, etc.). How might these binaries Zadie Smith creates relate to Gomez-Peña’s idea that Nationalism is  resistance to colonialism, but that it is only a binary response which makes it limiting? How are characters positioned from each other — not necessarily in terms of country, city, etc., but rather in terms of small-scale space within interactions? How does history and their relationship to it bear down upon certain characters in different ways than others? What does it mean for a subject to “fail a system” (i.e. not become a proper subject) if the system in question is a character-pair?

[poeticconfrontation-blog]

In what ways is the internet a form or practice of globalization? How might we think about online, virtual realms through discourses of globalization?

Zadie Smith shows us neutral spaces as realms unaffected by history and power dynamics, and as ultimately impossible outside of the imaginary. Gomez-Peña traces hybridity’s settlement in places that have been colonized, and cultures that have been threatened to be wiped off. But how do these concepts inform and fit into discourses about online, virtual realms? The first thing that came to mind in trying to answer this question was the Wizard from The Wizard of Oz. The Wizard is able to play a character that is much bigger and seemingly more powerful than he is in reality. Through the projection of this persona, the Wizard creates a world into which people like Dorothy, the Lion, etc. are able to enter into — as they enter this world, they too take on certain roles and follow by the rules that the Wizard creates. Despite being able to create a world with rules and roles that are different from “reality,” the Wizard is not detached from reality; behind the scene that he creates is a man who takes up space in all the ways that a person takes up space.

Similarly, the internet and online, virtual realms exist in a projected world at a distance from “reality.” They often seem like the “neutral” spaces that Irie, Clara, and Joyce might wish for, as people are free to be anonymous, to communicate detached from certain identities, to try on different characters, and to play with imagined experiences. However, like in The Wizard of Oz, internet and online, virtual realms are very real when you look behind the scenes. Most of the innovators in the field of creating online, virtual spaces and technology, finish work for the day in Silicon Valley or at Twitter Headquarters, and head home to their new apartments in San Francisco’s Mission district, Chinatown, or to Oakland or Berkeley. Behind the scenes, they are very real people who take up very real space and are tied to very real power dynamics. Although the worlds they are creating are full of hybridity and mixing and cultural innovation, the worlds they settle into behind the scenes are mostly communities of color — communities often intricately connected to history and tangible space. In the process of creating “neutral,” worlds that are a foundation for “hybridity” online (which also are not neutral as people are still informed by their identities and histories in these spaces), they are displacing entire communities and gentrifying neighborhoods.  

The internet, and online, virtual realms are not much different than the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz, the negotiations between hybridity and places and cultures that have been colonized in Gomez-Peña’s writing, or the impossibility of neutral spaces in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth — the Wizard, hybridity, neutrality, the internet, and online, virtual realms are inextricably tied to history, location, and space.

[disporademery-blog]

A walk through Oberlin

[poeticconfrontation-blog]

The concept that “just by living an American lifestyle, one is complicit in globalization and everything that comes with it” made me wonder what you mean by “American” restaurants, versus “non-American” and “international” restaurants. The owner of Kim’s is the mother of a professor at Oberlin College, Mandarin caters its food to “American” tastebuds, and most of the cooks and workers of these restaurants are based in or near the town of Oberlin. Lupitas, Agave, Mandarin, Aladdins, and India Garden seem very distinctly American — they work with the resources they can find, and cater specifically to the demographic they serve. I feel like these are compromises intricately tied to making Asian, Mexican, etc. food in the U.S. What does “living an American lifestyle” mean? Do the owners and workers of these restaurants count as living an American lifestyle, and if so, how is the way they are complicit in globalization different and specific in relation to people who own the “American” restaurants, if it is different at all?

[humansizedshrimp-blog]

the first and last lines of my post are on this dang building

THE FINE ARTS A HERITAGE FROM THE PAST

We were all encouraged to get off campus, to explore how globalization relates to sections of Oberlin that aren’t inherently designed for the college’s current or prospective students. There are, however, a few places in Oberlin that aim to be both resources for undergraduates and serve the less transient population of this midwestern town. The Allen Memorial Art Museum is just such a place.

Constructed in 1917, the main wing of the Allen is designed to emulate the architectural styles of such places as the Palazzo Medici, while the 1976 extension was created to house more modern “neutral” gallery spaces. With this in mind, one can potentially read the Allen as removed from the history of its surroundings. To what degree is the museum a tool for the college to claim the cultural resources of globalized cities like New York or Los Angeles? Oberlin College tour guides make special mention of the museum’s many offerings to students, careful to highlight how it has been ranked by various publications as the second or third best college museum in the country. Above the front entrance of the museum, one can see inscribed “THE CAUSE OF ART IS THE CAUSE OF THE PEOPLE”. This is a statement that brings into focus a popular conception of arts spaces as transcendent in nature, reflections of collective interests and experiences rather than individual ones.

However, there are several pieces of information to take into account that highlight a commitment to maintaining a link between this college owned space and Oberlin. The museum itself is completely free to enter and often tries to engage Oberlin community members outside of the college in a variety of ways. In addition to offering public programs for Oberlin residents of all ages, the Allen curates its exhibitions with accessibility in mind. The placement of the building, raised and set back from the street, is easy to read as exclusionary and, for me at least, evokes notions of elitism. Yet when the Allen was built it was the only college owned building in its section of Oberlin. It was explicitly designed to be for both student and lifelong Oberlin resident.

In my opinion, both readings of the Allen are completely valid. It is both accessible and impenetrable.  How to understand the Allen’s relationship to its surroundings depends on how much one is struck by the museum as a reflection of globalization. I can’t help but see the museum and its many resources as clear demonstrations of the college’s desire to attract students from metropolitan cities as part of a larger effort to make a profit from wealthy families. That said, I want to say that my reaction to the Allen could certainly be rejected by many people in town who see the museum as a point of pride for their community and not an insidious reflection of the college’s desire to push a kind of globalization onto Oberlin.

THE FINE ARTS A GIFT TO THE FUTURE

[poeticconfrontation-blog]

Your observation that there is a popular conception that arts spaces are “transcendent in nature” resonates with me. The Allen is seen as a place that is supposed to connect college and town, and that holds art from all over the world — it seems to transcend accessibility, time, and cultural boundaries. What does transcendence mean in this case? By bridging space and culture, and having in possession artifacts from diverse origins does a space become accessible? In the allen, different exhibits are separated by walls and layout of space. Each nook or room has a different exhibition, often from different cultures. So walking through the allen, it’s as if you are moving from country to country, stepping over borders, observing the cultures of Asia, india, africa, etc. This way of walking across borders with such ease and glamour seems to attach a sort of culturedness and uniqueness to a person. I wonder where else this way of easily walking over borders exists at oberlin, and for whom?

[happymealhegemony-blog]

A Tour of the Border

Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory—precession of simulacra—it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable [On Exactitude in Science] today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map.

-Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulation”

“Generally speaking, I feel safe in Oberlin,” explains a friend. “During the day I can walk anywhere by myself and still be fine. But after the sun sets, I don’t feel safe anywhere east of Tank.” With these words she constructs a border. It is a border that for some time only she could see. With these words, I construct a border, too, indelibly. 

It goes: West of North Park Street, safe. East of it, lawless, dangerous. Civilization, wasteland. Here, there. Us, them. Us, other. 

Now I cannot, on an eastward path, pass Tank and help but wonder: how did this border come about? What makes the house on the western side of the Park street any different from the house on the eastern side? Or is it more of a gradient, a sliding scale of danger? So that the farther you wander east from there, the more likely you are to be—what?—mugged? Assaulted?

I set out to see for myself. The attached photos were taken during my tour of this imagined border, starting from the southern end, and ending at the northern one. There is a Church, a park, a laundromat, an apartment complex, a water tower, and a football field. The rest is residential.

I tutored a family on the eastern side of this border. They went to school over there, too. See how it is when such borders are made? I speak of them as though they are lost. I speak of their school as though it were more than five blocks from my home. 

So, again, I pose the question: from what did this border arise? 

Does it matter that (according to Zillow) the average price of a home on the western side of this border is ~$140,000 whereas on the eastern side it is ~$80,000? Or does it matter more that the friend had a single bad experience over “there”? 

Further, this conversation got me thinking: what other borders are there? How else do it’s inhabitants divide up Oberlin? There is the ever-present talk of the “bubble,” of course, but where does the bubble end? Is this an on-campus off-campus border? Or is it the town itself? Whichever it is, and whether we like it or not, our bubble is permeable. See below:

[poeticconfrontation-blog]

Thank you for your writing! Your response makes me wonder what are the “map[s] that precede the territory” of Oberlin? Are they materially experienced, perceived, and/or imagined? How do these maps draw a blueprint of “safer” spaces on campus, and complicate notions of Oberlin as a “bubble?” The maps in my communities of mostly asian americans and qtpoc on campus often draw a line somewhere between North campus and South campus due to locations of program housing and dining. They usually mark twc (third world coop) and the mrc (multicultural resource center) as landmarks of “safety.” These lines and landmarks are more material in nature, and anchored in a specific location and physical area. In contrast part of our maps are perceived, and therefore portable. If you are in the company of your friendgroup, then the meaning of a meal at stevie changes in it’s charge. If you are eating in a-house surrounded by people spewing microaggressions, a-house’s charge also shifts. These perceived spaces seem marked by the presence and intention to work to deconstruct existing social hierarchies and occupied spaces, and create something new and portable in their place. To me, “safe” spaces of imagination are harder to identify, or identify as a map. I wonder what the boundaries of “safe” spaces of imagination are?

[poeticconfrontation-blog]

Photo from Loan Tran’s “a letter to the mixed and tender with roots that tangle” from their blog “Y’ALL”

[poeticconfrontation-blog]

Why are you here?

When I think of diaspora, I wonder why people moved from their “home countries” in the first place? I think of the US and other “Western” countries stretching their hands in countries of color (whether it is through imperialism, colonialism, or something else). I want to trace where people go, what communities folks settle in, what jobs folks find, the labor people do, the relationships we build. I wonder how many people get to learn about their histories, and how? I wonder how many people are funneled into prison, into detention centers, and back to their “home? country.” I am reminded that in spite of these journeys, so many people rise up and build support structures for each other. In terms of globalization, I want to learn about the ways sites of “hybridity” (whether it be a nation or a body), arise out of diaspora. How are these sites of hybridity both “bridges of culture” and also sites of conflict? I’m excited to dive into these topics through a literature lens, and to look critically at the power dynamics, conflict, and celebration that are intertwined with globalization and diaspora.