rekognition

잠홍

[rekognitionoisuled]

\hello/ i’m going to delete this blog & remake, let me know if u want the new url!

[artblackafrica]

Grammars of Imaging

Shadi Ghadiran,: Untitled (Qajar Series), 1998

Hassan Hajjaj, My Rock Stars: Volume 1, 2010

[khofnak-deactivated20160409]

In the last decade or so, there has been a beautiful and necessary increase in the visible mobilization of a Muslim LGBTQIA community. Queer Muslims around the world—from Imaan in the UK and Al-Fatiha in the US (which no longer exists) to Marhaba in Australia and The Inner Circle in South Africa—have been able to find, love, and support each other; but they are doing it with the privileged safety of existing in non-Muslim majority countries and following the same tired, gender-binary model still used by most Western, queer movements.

That “visibility” is based on a very capitalist understanding of what gender and sexuality are. It’s the same visibility that is utilized by settler colonial countries like U.S. and Israel to show how exceptional they are in comparison to other “barbaric and backwards” Muslim majority countries. It’s the same visibility that uses “queer Muslims” (where often labels such as queer and LBGT are forced on them) to justify systemic violence (we treat your Queer Muslims better than you do, so we can get rid of your whole country and way of being). it’s the same visibility that is based in imperial thought — of importing one way of being across the world. it’s the same visibility that is commodified. 

How are “queer Muslims” afforded “privilege and safety” in non-Muslim majority countries in compared to Muslim countries? What kind of systemic power do “queer Muslims” (who are not one entity, not one people, not the same) have? What does saftey mean? from whom? How does this tired argument (that U.S. Israel Australia etc. as the exceptional saviors while the “Muslim-Majority” countries being codified as the opposite, as the unsafe not raise any sorts of red flags? 

How can one purpose change within a “Queer Muslim Moment” by working within the Western constructed/very recent identity frameworks? 

Why is it being assumed there is such a thing as a “Queer” or “LBGTQIA” Muslim Community? Is there a movement? 

The article is based in liberal ways of thinking about “progress”. The same progress that enables the U.S. empire (among other ‘empires’) to be seen as exceptional.

[rekognitionoisuled]

in south korea a major way of becoming a 'professional writer' (esp. if you're writing literature) is by getting selected as a New Writer in an annual literature competition hosted by the major newspapers (aka 신춘문예). today i went to an award ceremony for one of these competitions. six awards were given, and four out of six recipients were women. the head of the panel of judges noted this as a triumphant sign of gender equality in the judging process. he was male, as were all other judges on the panel, as was the CEO of the newspaper, as were all of the VIP Guests (established members of this lit scene) introduced during the ceremony. i wondered which of these New Writers would be asked to share more of their writing in the future. which would get paid for their writing. which would be asked questions about their worldview at the afterparty. which would be noticed at the afterparty at all.

the ceremony was over in less than an hour. afterward i waited around for the crowd to disperse so i wouldn't have to squeeze into the elevator. as i lingered i saw the New Short Story Writer, a middle-aged woman with colored glasses and scarf, pose on stage for a group photo with her friends. the hall was empty but for these women and their flowers. wait, someone said, one more, one more.

[mymodernmet]

Photographer Graham McGeorge captured incredible photos of eastern screech owls in Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp sitting in the holes of trees. 

[rekognitionoisuled]

me,

[jewelnet-blog]

Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals. As a result those differences have been misnamed and misused in the service of separation and confusion.

Audre Lorde, quoted by Chela Sandoval in Methodology of the Oppressed (via mangoestho)

this is v v important

(via copperkeep)

[almostinhalf]

Instead of spending $6 to watch The Interview consider donating $6 to LiNK which relocates North Korean Refugees

[rekognitionoisuled]

actually no DO NOT SUPPORT LiNK they are a sus organization that spends more money on themselves than on actually relocating North Korean refugees and perpetuates the white savior complex. danggeun, who was born in NK, has a great post on why u should donate to NKHR Rescue Fund instead, so please read that.

but alright if you're not convinced by the stats on LiNK's financial shadiness, take a look at their 2013 promo vid. NK is visualized as an isolated mole hole or entirely separate planet, where ppl don't have access to the internet or cell phones (FALSE), who are only connected thru to the rest of the world thru the North Korean diaspora. i get that the video mainly seeks to 'raise awareness' but there is really no information about what exactly LiNK does to help North Koreans; it's more about establishing LiNK as a chic NGO that will titillate your ego as a savior.

a crucial part of the vid is the discourse of potential. LiNK says the relocated refugees are able to perform at their fullest as independent agents who pull themselves+families up by navigating the market. this reeks of neoliberalism to me... so we should help refugees cuz we can't let all this potential go to waste?

is it possible for us to envision refugees as not just bundles of potential waiting to be cashed in on (exploited) but as people, who deserve better lives with greater freedoms, unconditionally?

i am guilty of this too but i urge y'all to srsly look into what u are proposing as an alternative before u hit that reblog button

[wondersmith-and-sons]

I find it funny (and by funny I mean I want to bash someone’s face in) that there is a sort of compartmentalisation that happens when it comes to making NK into an international enemy. Kim Jong Un and Kim Jong Il can simultaneously be overweight manchildren who mispronounce english and eat weird food (a la Team America) while the state itself is full of terrifying, powerful assasins with sights on destroying American Freedom (tm) (Olympus Has Fallen/Red Dawn).

Kim Jong Un is the perfect anti-Asian stereotype and he fits neatly into the mould of Hollywood’s racialised fictional enemies so in a mix of American arrogance and neo-imperialism, this film decided to use build on those sentiments and use the world’s most powerful media platform to further reinforce that. 

Hollywood needs a stock villain, and as a result North Korea was turned into the Face of the Ultimate Enemy as a by-product of anti-communism, misplaced patriotism and a mutated Yellow Peril that couldn’t be directed at China.

People are already forming the narrative about NK giving ‘retaliation’ and ‘revenge’ and throwing shitfits about ‘WHAT IF THEY KILL US IF THE MOVIE GETS LEAKED’ as if this were a fucking spy movie and not just another result of imperialistic cock-fighting. If you think this is actually something that’s going to happen, I hope you take a long look at the type of media you consume and reflect on the fact that you’re personally complicit in the fun new trend of creating imperialistic, anti-Asian media. 

Americans who are angry about about the interview being pulled are not getting angry because of the precious freedom of speech and if half of them knew jackshit about their own laws and constitution they would know that the First Amendment doesn’t protect you from private companies censoring/deleting/editing their own content. 

People are angry about the interview being pulled because in their arrogance and self-righteousness they think that American mass media has the right to dehumanise and make light of the suffering of an entire nation - and be protected from consequences because their media is the single most influential platform. 

People are not angry about North Korea being a dictatorship - they have never given two fucks about the country, or its people, or the fact that American policy during the Cold War helped create it.

They’re angry about the fact that they’re not allowed to capitalise, humiliate, dehumanise and mock that dictatorship in a cloud of comfortable self-righteous patriotic judgement while ignoring the people who suffer under it. 

America has been complicit in the oppression of NK and SK for years, through their politics, their foreign policy, through their media, through the way they talk about them. 

By all means, be angry at the Interview and the gigantic sack of shit that is James Franco, but let’s not forget that this film was the result of neo-imperialism of the ugliest sort, one that deliberately and strategically used long-circulated tropes to form a racist meta-narrative.

[danggeun]

Hope you don’t mind but I bolded a very important part.

[rekognitionoisuled]

cleaning out my computer for another year of selfies, i realized i barely have any photos from the first half of the year, or the last three months. this was taken in august, my third month in busan. summer is truly my favorite. even misery feels more vivid in the heat and monsoon, even if you're a pallid little houseplant that needs a trim. 

[rekognitionoisuled]

쌍용차 해고자인 김정욱과 이창근은 우리의 강함을 증명하기 위해 70미터 굴뚝에 오르지 않았습니다. 우리가 얼마나 약하고 나약한 존재이고 무서움 또한 많고 여린 인간인지를 알리기 위해올랐습니다. 도와주십시오. -이창근 @Nomadchang

김정욱 금속노조 쌍용차지부 사무국장은 “대법원 판결로 사법부도 등을 돌렸고, 국정조사를 해준다는 약속을 지키지 않은 정부와 의회도 등을 돌려 기댈 곳도 갈 곳도 없었다. 그러니 결국 기댈 곳은 공장 안 동료들 밖에 없었다”며 “벌써 공장 안 동료들이 ‘힘내라’는 문자메시지를 보내주고 있고, 몇몇은 굴뚝 아래로 찾아와 손을 흔들어주고 있다. 결국 공장 안 동료들이 희망이다”라고 말했다. 

-

쌍용차 노동자들, 평택공장 70m ‘고공 농성’ 돌입

[anniekoh]

Space cannot be reduced merely to a location or to the social relations of property ownership — it represents a multiplicity of sociomaterial concerns. Space is a physical location, a piece of real estate, and simultaneously an existential freedom and a mental expression. Space is both the geographical site of action and the social possibility for engaging in action. That is, on an individual level, for example, it not only represents the location where events take place (the container function) but also signifies the social permission to engage in these events (the social order function)… Furthermore, space possesses multiple properties on a structural level. It is simultaneously a means of production as land and part of the social forces of the production of space… In addition, space is an object of consumption, a political instrument, and an element in the class struggle.

M. Gottdiener’s reading of Henri Lefebvre’s conception of space. From page 123 of his book The Social Production of Urban Space (1985)

[guillaume-barrau]

Fei Fei Sun photographed by Hugh Lippe for Fat Magazine #4 Spring/Summer 2014.

[rekognitionoisuled]

this gaze

[amy-ambrosio]

Fei Fei sun in “Modern Romance” by Sharif Hamza for Vogue China, May 2014.

[rekognitionoisuled]

fei fei makes my head hurt ! ! !

[rekognitionoisuled]

밤중에 바다 건너 온 '좋아해요' --

마치 옆에 누워있는 것처럼 다정하게 답해본다 '응, 나도 좋아해'

[lasmaracuyas]

frustrated with people who talk about agency as if it were a tangible, discrete thing that can be identified and defined outside of contingent, social and historical contexts. this is why i don’t use the word, full stop.

[3264940139-deactivated20141204]

A Story of A Comfort Woman - Tattoo (어느 일본군 위안부 할머니의 이야기 - 문신) 

[rekognitionoisuled]

Korean original is here

[rekognitionoisuled]

The way the oppressor tries to stop the oppressed from using violence as a means to attain liberation is to raise ethical or moral questions about violence. I want to state emphatically here that violence in any society is neither moral not is it ethical. It is neither right, nor is it wrong. It is just simply a question of who has the power to legalize violence.

Stokely Carmichael, Stokely Speaks