#and focault said -

[magnoliamyrrh]

the sheer irony of it all. western academics writing pro-pedo shit in the name of prison abolition and going on about how "well you see the west is against pedophilia its more complex than that tho :(" while also citing foucault like. we truly are in hell and god has a sense of humor my bro my brother you absolute bafoon YOU are the annoying fucking westerner whose using the ideology of another one. SHUT UP if theres ONE thing thats good about the west is thst sometimes its againd pedophilia at least in theory

#'we should lessen sentences and also stop considering 20 yr olds w 15 year olds bad' 'also this poor dude molested his prepubecent #daughter bc he had a tomor :( and this one bashed a toddlers skull in a wall and killed her but he doesnt remember :( #and this one murdered his wife and cup up and dumped her body but i wasnt scared of him :(( #and focault said - #INSANE #INSANITY #can i find ONE O N E normal article from a prison abolitionist which isnt fucking insane on this topic or completely avoids actually #answering thw question

[mi4012amandithewarathanthri]

18th July - Independent Study

Which principle(s) apply to the location or space your film occupies?

Principle 1 - the  location functions as a space for social deviancy, but not exactly in the way  Focault describes. Instead  of entering the space to participate in this social deviancy (which in this case is indulging in our obsession with surveillance and the commodification of the self), those living in the wider world watch Truman go about his daily life by watching him on TV. So, in this case one does not occupy space in this Heterotopia to participate in the social deviancy it provides. 

Principle 4 - in a way, the Truman show set breaks the natural flow of time. It suspends Truman in one time for the whole of his life, in order to prevent him from ever wanting to leave Seahaven. This is best seen in the repetitive scenes of Truman’s daily life and activities; there’s a set routine that he never strays from. This routine never breaks, and none of the actors ever act any differently, keeping Truman stuck in the same time for the rest of his life. In addition, Christof set Truman’s world in the 1950s, despite the film taking place in the late 1990s. This is done deliberately, as  there was no social media or cellphones at this time, making contacting the real world much more difficult for Truman. Furthermore, its set in this glamourised time in US history that is considered idealistic. Therefore, Truman’s world is never allowed to leave the 1950s, essentially trapping him a specific time period. 

Principle 5 - Truman’s world is a strictly closed off space that’s kept away from greater public life. That being said, Truman’s world is still penetrable to outsiders who perform the customs of this particular Heterotopia. In this case, that is being an actor who is willing to follow the rules and regulations set in place to keep Truman immersed in his perceived reality. 

Principle 6 - Truman’s world is a heterotopia of illusion as its very existence exposes the nature of those living in the wider world. As stated earlier, this is used to create a social commentary.

Principle 6 - The set could also be viewed as a Heterotopia of compensation. Truman’s world is a highly manufactured reality that does not suffer from many of the shortcomings of the real world. As mentioned earlier, Truman’s reality is set in the 1950s; a time in US history that was highly glamourised through advertisements as the epitome of the American dream. This makes sense — The Truman Show is a feel-good show that viewers put on as a form of escapism. Therefore the space is meticulously constructed to create a ‘perfect world.’ However, the space cannot be deemed a utopia because despite the cast and crew’s attempts to make it perfect, Truman’s set still exposes human flaws. Truman’s world isn’t perfect and he still suffers in many of the ways we do in the real world. 

[kouranysoumahoro]

Week 14 Rumination

The Scientific Looking

This week we learned about scientific looking. This is about how looking inside the body becomes a privileged form of medical knowledge during Enlightenment. Focault also said that the anatomical dissection reveals human structure, provides classification systems linked to knowledge and power. Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man is one of earliest drawings of human as universal signifier of nature and universe. This is why it is shown everywhere all of over the world and is also why everybody recognizes the drawing. This was made for technical and artistic purposes. The human body and the fascination with dead bodies has been used in surgical theaters and museums as well. As you can see it is seen and used in many public places. A camera is supposed to capture things that the human eye can not see that is of high value. An example would be , that medical equipments like Pet scans and sonograms are supposed to see things that the human eye cannot see very closely.

[rlg102group203]

Week 2 - Avery

Bataille, in the Tears of Eros, talks about the original sin, however there is another biblical transgression that takes place much later on in the Torah.

When the Jews, wandering the desert for 40 years, are lacking water, and ask Moses to bring water from a rock, as he has done for the past 4 decades. When Moses speaks to the rock as God commands, nothing happens, and he decides to strike the rock instead.

This, although someone small deed, marked a huge transgression as Moses had been the proxy of God, and had done everything God said for over 40 years, and during this act, he transgresses the word of God, who told him to speak to the rock, and hits it instead. Consequently, he is punished by dying before the Jews enter the land of Israel.

I believe that this defiance of God could be seen as a step towards secularization in the eyes of Focault, and could be seen as a transgression of the profane (Jews following God), to the sacred.

[iloverichardpapen]

Gender Trouble, Feminism and Subversion of identity by Judith Butler

Chapter 1

<<Women as the subject of feminism>>

"Do the exclusionary practices that ground feminist theory in a notion of women as subject paradoxically undercut feminist goals to extend its claims to representation?"

The idea of a subject according to Focault is usually determined by the jurical systems which regulates the subjects' political life through limitation/prohibition/protection. But the subjects regulated by these structures are by being subjected to tnem in according to the requirements of such. This poses two problems for feminism:

1) The is a subject that anticipates Feminism, the woman. But the assumption that there should be a universal basis for this subject to exist cross-culturally is accompanied by the notion of an hegemonic oppressive system (patriarchy). This ends up with a discriminative tendency to colonize and induce non-western people to appropriate western views of oppression but also creates an alternate society.

2) Butler says "The suggestion that women can seek wider representation (...) has the ironic consequence that feminist goals risk failure by refusing to take account of the constitutive powers of their own representational claims"

"Is the construction of women as a coherent and stable subject an unwitting regulation and reitification of gender relations?"

Perhaps it's time for a new feminism

<< Compulsory order of sex/ gender/ desire >>

"If gender is the cultural meanings that the sexed body assumes then a gender cannot be said to follow from a sex in any one way."

"sex/gender distinction suggests a radical discontinuity between bodies and culturally constructed genders"

These then means that the presumption of binary sex is a "mimetic relation of gender to sex whereby gender mirrors sex or is otherwise restricted by it."

Are natural facts of sex discoursively produced in the service of political and social interests?

"If the immutable character of sex is disputed by itself, perhap this construct called sex is as culturally constructed as gender (Butler, 1999)"

the binary frame is secured by casting the duality of sex as the prediscoursive domain which should be understood as the effect of the apparatus of cultural construction designated by gender

#philosophy #literature #feminism #butler #gender Trouble

[misterbitches]

i live in a universe where if i were to walk down the street i could get murdered willy nilly cos im black but men are out here going around being like “my boyfriend and i met when he was a junior in high school” i don’t believe in jail and i try not to make jail jokes but HOW IS THAT FAIR? JAIL!!! GUILLOTINE!!!! GET THIS MAN A RETIREMENT FUND AND A THERAPIST

that dialogue was fucking embarrassing. he shoulda just said “im 12 yrs older than him” no one needs to know u were 30 dating a 17 year old u insecure freak. retire bitch and get away from her

 i wanted muren so badly to be like “LMAO SRY didnt mean to seem surprised i just like men my own age i guess?” i wouldnt have even apologized if i was surprised. my friend was dating someone ten yrs younger than him and i made fun of him for it and he was like “i know” bc he does know.

just a tip: i don’t like getting hit on by men way older than me, a lot of people don’t. i’ve had men who are 36 interested in me when i was 23, and i reciprocated, but now as i am 29 and older i realize how much it confused me and how i didn’t like it.

age gaps are what they are. ther’es many times i do not like it especially if it is a pattern (this is what happens in tv shows and movies and the opposite of that isn’t gay age gaps or power imbalances or women much older than a younger man ok that’s not progress it’s just peopl ewanting to be like cis men and no one wants that) and esp if the person’s peers are all their ages. people seem to forget that we travel in the same social circles on purpose due to our environments and also our world experiences. the only way to meet an older man is outside of school and yet adults can’t seem to control themselves?

i saw this person who was one of the editors of sexual hegemony (a book on capitalism and homophobic laws and sex basically idk google it it’s interesting) and he was trying to have a foucultian outlook (i hate focault btw doesn’t mean what he says wasnt interesting but it does mean i am not okay with psychosexual philosophers who take advantage of people. the only testament against him having reltaions with younger people is a bunch of young people i nfucking tunisia and there’s an excuse that he wasn’t a fucking pedophile he was those ebebebbeopopopo people and it doesnt matter when ur in fucking tunisia as a white french algerian fucking preying on children) how age of consent laws desexualize younger people. they were passed for  abunch of reasons like any law but here is the thing

we have no business in being in spaces to determine children’s sexual identity and teenagers in their own realm. THEY need to figure it out. our job as adults is to PROTECT THEM full stop. not intrude on their lfe and not give them the tools to decide for themselves. age of consent laws are meant to protect not to facilitate children against some boogeyman of sex. the issue is the way our society views it but young people are sexual AS YOUNG PEOPLE. it has NOTHING to do with adults and it shouldn’t. that’s why it is extra fucking intrusive when you are literally wedged into someone’s life who you have no business being around. it’s only by fucking circumstance. it’s abysmal and not cute. 

what this tells me is that the age gap is salacious. not in the way that i was 23 and a man was 36. in the way that he was 17 and this dude was 29. that’s interesting right? it’s “oooh” and it means we shouldn’t balk at it. saying 12 years would have sufficed, raises some eyebrows, and we can figure out the dynamics after but you just had to put that in BECAUSE YOU FUCKING LIKE IT but the thing is there’s no part of it that was fun. i’m just going to assume you like fucking teenagers bc that’s what it’s telling me lmao

i rarely talk about this couple but to put them in my eyeballs and then have that stupid conversation it was insulting lmao god please get a fucking script supervisor fuck but none of them care about sotry or any of what i fucking laid out. how stupid and careless and just unfun. i don’t like it. also ew at the idea of 2 tops and 2 bottoms talking oh my god i am gonna give myself a heart attack i’m already so fucking anxious i have to see my family lemme chill

im 29 and feel bad having a crush on a 23 year old CELEBRITY ok and i SHOULD feel ashamed and it’s not even a big deal that’s how everyone should approach life tbqh u walk around like ur 100 yrs old to avoid children. oh what’s that this korean cebrity learned english and moved to america to start a family with me and i find him very hot and i like his voice but we’re 6 years apart i’m not sure if i would work (how fun of a drama would that be. pointless and ridiculous. i love it.)

oh there’s a great review on CMBYN and its history and how the isolation and seeclusion was so fuckign capitalist bougie patriarchy and yea idk if anyone is interested. i think it’s ironic the ending for the people in CMBYN irl bc it’s just. so indicative of this shit. i dont like guadignino (idk is that how u spell his name) and think he’s not a great....person or director (i love the look of suspiria tho likke visually and edited. the DP was thai btw! he did an amazing job!!!) but it critiques this film from a perspective of someone who clearly at least cares about artistry, no matter how poorly i think he executes it, and just how hollow it is. the thing about “escapism” is that it relies on the harsh realities of the world to make it opposite, everything has context, nothing is apolitical. to make something that exists in a vacuum is negligent and it doesn’t help you escape it makes you even more tied to this world and its flaws because it doesn’t do anything to mitigate it.

people view it as like “we can put something stupid on screen and people have to accept it in this world” but that isn’t how IT WORKS. you hvae to build up the stakes of the world. but i can’t see introducing some “taboo” (see: stupid) elements and pretending the escapism is seeing this and allowing it. how could it be when the problem is the nature of the rship itself? what world are you taking us to? and why does this world ignore the pressing realities? and i wouldnt say either of these are explicit escapism (i think i hate that word now) becuase um they arent. this fantastical generally rich people escapism isn’t about bending things that don’t work to mold it into our society because WE DO THAT ALREADY it’s about taking those things and twisting them to something we can accept and like or something that has real consequences for people. it’s so funny how marketing and the idea of pc culture and shit and conservative ideology seeps into these. they have  an explicit interest in holding the status quou of taking advantage of people and using their power; age is a huge structure to do so. in this society when we struggle why would its existence not be challenged? because rape, ridiculous rships, abusive rships, torture etc is a power move, conservatives rest on it and people who gain power. what about that is appealing? making it gay? well, no. especially because men DO have power. 

every fucking thing in BL is a reflection of of patriarchy honestly. i can admit that and i’m not okay with it but it’s consumption. there’s a way to make this decent or entertaining without it being so fucking poorly done. and atp i dont even want to call things bl it’s a tv show just bc it’s for a certain audience doesnt mean anything do better idiots

#i am soooooo #history 4 #history 4: close to you #history 3 #history 3: make our days count

[diffractor]

So, there’s several different aspects of punishment that the criminal system is trying to do, none of them well. I’ll try considering how to best optimize them individually, and then mentally expose them to other considerations to arrive at something not totally evil (something still feels a bit off about my results, this is a first draft). Only reblog if you’re going to do a dry effortpost about crucial considerations left out and a better way to do things taking those considerations into account.

The aspects: 1: Retribution: Someone hurt you, so you want them to suffer. 2: Deterrence: Preemptively prevent people from doing [thing] by guaranteeing that bad things happen to them if they do [thing]. 3: Prevention: If someone does [thing], you do something so they don’t do [thing] again. 4: Reparation: If someone does [thing], you take resources from them to pay back for the damage caused. 5: Preemption: Do stuff that makes [thing] less likely to occur in the first place, like after-school programs or something. For maximizing retribution: Well, that’s just called torture. For maximizing deterrence... well, certainty of punishment plays a bigger role than magnitude of punishment, so some 100% certain moderately bad thing is visited upon you when you commit a crime. For maximizing prevention... idk, a magic rock that when you touch it, it instantly wipes any desire to commit crimes. Or a teleporter to extradimensional australia where someone walks in and they don’t come out. For reparation... fines seem pretty sensible. And for preemption, that’s just structuring society in ??? way s.t. there’s no incentive to commit crimes in the first place. Now, a lot of the earlier-mentioned stuff is pretty evil when taken to extremes, so let’s try throwing a moral parliament at this. Retribution: Ok, this one gets a whole lot of shit as not a morally valid motive, and I think there’s a lot of people who, if given a magic criminality-wiping rock, would have “touch the rock” as their only legal consequence. I don’t know about that, desire for retribution is pretty clearly a terminal value. If a man shot someone’s dog, and then they touched the magic rock and were remorseful and would never do something like that again... then, according to my personal sense of which worlds are better, it’d be clearly better if they also got kicked in the nuts by the dog owner, even though that doesn’t affect anything going forward. With that said, however, there’s still all the other moral considerations about. Disproportionate retribution like Hell or Azkaban or spending a decade or two in prison gets a very strong veto from the rest of the moral system, and it isn’t even that satisfying to the retribution value. If someone burns down my house, I don’t want them to spend several years in a dreary place with their life on hold, either no or bad company, a high risk of rape, and then find it impossible to come back into society, that’s just depressing, excessive, and not even that satisfying as punishment. Retribution-Value says it’d be much more awesome to just beat the shit out of them with a stick, or sting them with a bullet ant. I also think that, if given a choice between the latter options and prison, I’d take getting beat up in a heartbeat. There’s a tremendous amount of risk with the legal system having retribution as a purpose, because there’s no incentive for mercy there. The prisoners cannot vote, and the people voting for what to do with criminals are not going to go in the direction of “more mercy”, signalling is going to take it to really bad extremes. Also (Retribution-Value says), hurting someone yourself is way better than having someone do it for you, and (Mercy-Value says), there’s a possible check in the latter case that isn’t present in the former case, namely, the person doing the punishing feeling bad. There is, however, still a slippery slope of being permitted to come up with increasingly nasty retributions to do to people. So, the best option for retribution seems something like “if you were greatly wronged, you get a chance to personally beat up the person, someone’s nearby to ensure you don’t do permanent harm”. For stuff like imposing a bullet ant sting, that’d take a great deal more care because past a certain point, increased intensity of pain doesn’t make someone look like they’re suffering more, so you’d need incredibly strong restrictions on not adding additional painful options (example of failure mode: “yo we found this one species of centipede that hurts like 3x as bad as a bullet ant, let’s add that to the allowable retribution list”), or a rule like “you’ve gotta personally go through a quarter of what they’re going through, choose your retribution accordingly” to give more of an incentive towards not being too cruel for really vengeful people. I don’t trust any civilization to be able to stick to those rules, so I guess “you get to personally beat up the criminal, but not cause permanent damage” is about as good as you’d get. Retribution-Value says this is awesome, and other values don’t object too hard. 2: Deterrence. Magnitude of punishment isn’t as important for deterrence as certainty of being caught, so I guess just ramp up the number of police, and do the Singapore thing of caning. I’d definitely take that over prison and it seems like a pretty effective deterrent. Or maybe “eat this ghost pepper”. Having devastating punishments that are infrequently applied is just the exact wrong way to go about this. 3: Prevention. I don’t really know what works for this one, having not done a literature review. I will, however, observe that putting someone in a place stuffed with repeat criminals and then tanking their ability to get honest work once they get out is a uniquely awful way of preventing future crimes. An aspect of this is incapacitation, where a repeat offender has to be kept in prison because otherwise they’d totally do [thing] again. If you need to incapacitate someone, prison seems like an uneccessarily cruel way to do it, just design, like, a big apartment, throw in an unlimited supply of video games and weed, and drop the solitary confinement part. Or, if you really really need to make sure someone stops interacting with others, period, just cryopreserve them. Thinking about it a bit more, these two feel unsatisfactory, there’s probably better options. Also, I’d be quite worried about using crime-stop magic rock for this one, because we have instances of moral progress (legalization of weed, gay rights) which relied on people breaking the law, so sufficiently advanced deterrence or prevention may shut down lawbreaking for bad laws. I’d take a bullet ant over the magic rock if the magic rock enforced compliance to the laws of the US, because there’s a lot of really dumb laws. 4: Reparation. Idk, fines? Community service seems like a way of doing reparation, but I’m a bit leery of it because it saps time instead of money. 5: Preemption. Again, I don’t really know what’d be effective here, and there’s the aforementioned issues with sufficiently advanced deterrence/prevention/preemption taking away the recovery mechanism for bad laws. And there’s one last thing that hasn’t really been discussed but also feels like a terminal value. The desire for the person to realize how bad the thing they did was. I think one of the original motives for prison back in the 1700′s-1800′s was that the time of solitary reflection would prompt a realization on the part of the prisoner that what they did was wrong (source: half-remembered Focault book), and... it doesn’t really seem like that works. The ideal would be something like the ending of the Eragon series (major spoilers ahead!) So, there’s an evil king who’s been making the land pretty terrible for a while, the hero confronts him, is just about to lose, and then in the last moment manages to fire off a  wordless empathy spell born from the desire for the king to just... understand that what he’s been doing is wrong. And so, he mentally experiences all the consequences of what has happened to all the people of the land since becoming king. Needless to say, full awareness of all the consequences of one’s actions minus scope insensitivity is a pretty severe thing to think about, and the king shortly thereafter commits suicide. Minus the suicide part and the full removal of scope insensitivity part (because wouldn’t that be as bad as all the stuff that has happened up to now?), that just feels deeply right. That there be something to bring awareness of the full ramifications of everything you’ve done and realize that it was wrong. We’re probably not getting that, but it feels like an unusually pure form of justice. So, summary: current penal system sucks, more police, less prison, more minor corporal punishment (for deterrence/punishment), more fines (for reparation), ??? (whatever works) for addressing the cause of crime/somehow ensuring that people don’t do their crime again, if you need incapacitation then you don’t need to be cruel about it, just go for something Lotus-eater-like. You don’t want to be too effective at shutting down crime, because some crime is good when the laws are dumb. Retribution is a terminal value, fite me on this, but it’s best done on a personal level without lasting harm instead of being put in the hands of an impersonal organization with no incentives for mercy. Finally, full awareness of what one has done is something that’d be awesome if it existed.

[viajeraentrelibros]

The “parreshia” in Bungou Stray Dogs

I want to talk with you about a concept that I’m sure that the 99% of you don’t know about: the parreshia (παρρεθία). Also, I want to say that this analysis is based in this lecture of Michel Focault.

Definition of parreshia

“What is that?” you are probably thinking. It’s a Greek term, specifically, an old Greek term. It could be translated as free speech in English, in French it has been translated as French-parler and in German as freimüthigkeit. Also, I want to say that the verb is parrhesiazestai (παρρεσιαθεσται) and means to say everything, “pan” [παύ] (everything) and “rhema” [δήμα] (that which is said). (If you are wonder why the word and the etymology doesn’t concur… it’s the magic of the languages).

In which sense it used?

According to Focault:

In parreshia, the speaker [parrehsiastes; “someone who says everything he has in mind”] is supposed to give a complete and exact account of what he has in mind […]. The speaker makes it manifestly clear and obvious that what he says in his own opinion […], avoiding any kind of rhetorical form.

But there’s an important point that we don’t have to forget:

The parrhesiastes is not only sincere and says what is his opinion, but his opinion is also truth. […] The parrhesiastes seems to have [not] any doubts about his own possession of the truth.

So, what is the difference between someone sincere and a parrhesiastes?

If there is a kind of “proof” of the sincerity of the parrhesiastes, it his courage. […] Someone is said to use parrhesia and merits consideration as a parrhesiastes only if there is a risk or a danger for him or her in telling the truth.

This risk could be the risk of dying, but also could be losing a friend, your reputation, your job or your status.

This parreshia could only come from “below”, directed towards “above” because if this doesn’t occur, it hasn’t the danger. For that reason, a student who criticizes a teacher because he explains badly is a parrhesiastes, but a teacher who says what a student is doing wrong, it isn’t: the student is risking of a punishment, the teacher doesn’t have that risk.

In parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy.

Introduction. Agency of the Detective: the parrhesiastes

First of all, I want to explain why the Agency are the parrhesiastes of this arc (vs the Decay of the Angels).

The ADA always have wanted to discover the truth, the real culprit, the real reason. But, also, they always try to cause the less damage possible. What I find interesting, is that they don’t act until they have to (until someone come for help to the office or Yokohama is in danger). The ADA don’t have ambition, unlike Mori, for example, who always wants to expand his criminal empire, they only “live the day” doing what is correct, specifically, what is correct in the law. (Although, we could do another analysis with the alignment of the ADA, but in my opinion, they are between lawful good and chaotic good).

But the most important thing is the ADA don’t have the ambition to be famous or demonstrate they are right, they only do what is right (although is true that BSD centers around the concept there always isn’t white or black, but because the detectives are on the side of the law, they do what is right). They are selfless, despite the fact that this is their job, they are detectives for different reason, the majority of them for selfless reasons: Atsushi because, with this job, he has a reason to live: help people; Fukuzawa founded the Agency for Ranpo, not for himself; Kunikida has his ideal to do always what is right (because he has a black and white mentality, although he is changing in the lasts arcs, realizing the world is grey).

I think the only ones who has “selfish” reasons for go to the Agency are Dazai, the brothers and Yosano: Yosano works as detective because they only want her kindness, not her power; Dazai, because he want to fulfill his promise and be a better person; and the brothers (Tanizaki and Naomi) because they needed a job, although we don’t know their past. Even with that, I don’t think these people really have a selfish reason.

As I quoted before:

The parrhesiastes is not only sincere and says what is his opinion, but his opinion is also truth. […]

The ADA has had it easily because they were on the side of the law, and the Agency is “a place with no many rules” as it has stated in the epilogue of Dark Era light novel. Due to that, they can follow their instinct and investigate what they think should be investigated; although is true they don’t have to respond to anyone, except their clients.

In parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy.

I could extend a lot talking about this, but long story short, the ADA always have been the parrhesiastes of this story: they discover the truth because it their job, but also because they really want to know it because they really think the truth is better for everybody, otherwise, they wouldn’t strive to save the city every time it is in danger.

But, being sincere, they didn’t become in parrhesiastes until this arc (vs Decay of the Angel) because they haven’t been in the side of “below”: they are “below” of the Hunting Dogs now, who are “above” of them now that the ADA are criminals and they aren’t on the side of the law.

Next part --> (Soon)

#bungou stray dogs #agency detective armed #ADA bsd #bsd meta #Fukuzawa Yukichi #yosano akiko #bsd yosano #decay of angels

[vladtheunfollower]

remember what Focault said about self-monitoring...that’s what I think about when a woman steps on a scale

[hellokitty2901]

Journal #11

The Sweet Hereafter

The Sweet Hereafter is based on the 1991 novel following the story events leading up to and following a school bus accident that kills 14 children in a small town. The people of the smalltown lives change when a big-city lawyer, Mitchell Stephens tries to sign them up for a class-action lawsuit. A surviving teenager named Nicole regains her strength and dignity and, by telling a lie, reunites the community. After watching the film and thinking back to the discussions we had about transmedia story telling and the adaptation from book to film. Watching the Sweet Herefater and learning that it was a book first makes me think about all the features and details that may have been missed from the book. In the reading, Michael Focault, “ What is an Author?”, Focault describes the work of an author and what it means to have an author work published and seen through the eyes of transmedia, “is everything he wrote and said, everything he left behind, to be included in his work? This problem is both theoretical and practical. If we wish to publish the complete works —------ where do we draw the line? Certainly, everything must be published, but can we agree on what 'everything' means?” (Focault 302). Throughout this course a lot of the movies we watched were told through the lens of transmedia storytelling and previous storytelling where stories are told numerous times deviating from the original plot. The Sweet Hereafter does a good job of storytelling and keeping the pace but I wonder if theres more that the viewer may be missing from the original or the focal points that were in the original but got lost in translation through the means of transitioning to film.

#film #film criticism

[rohanime]

Psycho Pass (1/20/22)

In all honesty, this was probably my favorite anime out of all the ones we watched in class so far. It reminded me of a lot of classics in the American canon with the seemingly utopian but realistically dystopian world.

I got a lot of the same vibes as when I read The Giver and watched The Matrix as when you begin reading and watching these titles respectively you are presented with a society that seems to operate in a great near utopian manner but soon you are presented with the true nature of the society and conclude that the society couldn't be further from the truth.

The moment I arrived at the conclusion that this society was dystopian was when the woman who had gotten kidnapped and raped by that other man in the first episode was supposed to be killed after the Dominator determines that her Crime Coefficient exceeded the limit for fatal shooting.

I feel like the system itself is very flawed as the Crime Coefficient can be so easily changed. For example, they said the women who was raped in the first episode had a significant increase in her Crime Coefficient after the traumatic events that happened to her, and is then sentenced to death. However, they also say that for some people who have lower Crime Coefficients therapy is also an option, which means that simply talking to a trained professional is enough to impact something that determines such a significant portion of their life, and also could be the difference between life and death. I think it's pretty clear that the Crime Coefficient has a pretty large correlation with mental health.

Another thing that contributed to the fact that the society in the movie is the overall color palette used for the movie is very dark which brings down the mood for the entire series which I felt was a very good contrast compared to A Place Further than the Universe which had a very bright color scheme meant to show that the show is going to be very easygoing and lighthearted compared to this show which foreshadowed the doom and gloom that occurred in this show.

The reading Panopticism by Focault is pretty similar to this show in that both of them involve surveillance of the public and then punishment if it has been discovered that they have a certain condition. In seventeenth century Europe the condition was having the plague while in the show it is having a high Criminal Coefficient. I feel like the plague situation that's described in the reading is reminiscent of the COVID quarantine situation we recently went through. However, I feel like the situation described in the reading makes much more sense than the one in the anime as having an infected quarantine is better for the greater good of society as it absolutely prevents the spread of the plague or COVID, whereas in the anime the life or death of a person is determined by a very instantaneous example of mental health rather than a death that would be deemed absolutely good for the majority of society.

In the society there are people called the Sibyl who are tasked with watching over the people which is pretty similar to how in the article it discusses how there are students being tracked by the school so it knows whether or not they go to class. Again I feel like this is most likely beneficial for society as it subsidizes kids going to school.

[thelittlepalmtree]

I got accused of being a terf because I said someone should be less judgemental at their job. Literally what about that says terf? TBH if you're judging someone for ordering an Instagram drink I can't imagine you're a scholar of Focault & Butler. OP Literally sounds like they'd hate crime just for wearing a rainbow button.

[anonymus-maximus-er]

Good is contagious, once a day in September

Oooops. Turns out I forget these things when I have full day stuff - yesterday scouts. Was good fun tho.

See, the thing about scouts, for me, is in part that I believe that if you are the sort of person that finds scouting fun, then scouting will also help develop a good set of values. (of course I say that, I agree with the values of scouting... Something something Focault right?) It helps in developing confidence and leadership skills and problem solving abilities and cooperation and whatnot. It is an education in how to be a good citizen and a good person.

And you know that thing, when you are realising with horror that you are the adult supervision? That thing got mitigated by scouts, because you get to grow into being a role model, you get to grow into being the adult, and it is both incredibly helpful and very rewarding. (and then, a few years later it is a good way to make new, good friends in adulthood)

But mostly, it is just fun. We laugh so much at scouts.

Supposedly* BP said

if it isn’t fun, it isn’t scouting.

But also,

if it’s only fun, it isn’t scouting.

And maybe that’s it. I love scouts so much because it is fun. But it is fun with meaning and value beyond the fun.**

*I haven’t been able to confirm this, and I have also seen the saying as ‘if it isn’t fun it isn’t learning’ so who knows.

**not to say mindless fun isn’t an activity that is valuable in and of itself, but I dunno. I do so much mindless stuff already that the added Function and Meaning of scouts adds to the experience.

#good is contagious #In my dreams I'm going back to Gilwell

[kitt-draws]

Post modernism And philosophy

Philosophy has lead the argument over what constitutes post modernism. The essay says a good way of describing post modernism is 'as a form of scepticism' against:

Authority

Received wisdom

cultural norms

Political norms

Scepticist philosophy is used to discount other philosophical theories in the search for 'ultimate truth' the technical term for this pessimistic form of philosophy is 'anti-foundational' this form of philosophy is said to have 'an almost reflex like dislike of authority' which separates it out from other branches of philosophy.

Signifier (word)

Signified (concept)

'In an act of understanding to form the sign, language is said to be above all a system, a system with rules and regulations' structuralist made 'the assumption that every had internal grammar that governed it's operations' structuralists attempted to 'uncover that grammar'.

Post structuralisted disagreed with this 'tidiness'. In the essay it's argued that 'the analytical techniques being used by the structuralist determined the results' of analysis.

'Chance' 'creativity' and the 'unexpected' are neatly controlled by structuralists. To a post structuralist these are 'more important than all similarities between systems'.

Post structuralist 'Jacques Derrida' demonstrated 'the instability of language' believing signs were not predictable. Some words held echoes of others and some 'slippage' of meaning always occurred. He names this concept 'differance' meaning in French both difference and deferral, these words were pronounced in the same way.

Derrida however denies it is a concept, describing it instead as 'the identification of a process embedded within language itself.'

Michel Rocault was another post structuralist mentioned in the text. His focus was on 'marganalised groups such as the mentally ill, prisoners and homosexuals' he disagreed with the way 'a dominant faction in society can impose it's will on others'

Focault demonstrated how demonised sexual difference is in society and analysed Greek culture, which was far more tolorent 'homosexuality and heterosexuality flourished side by side' then.

Differrence feminism comes under post structuralism. It supports the idea of gender being fluid, in particular female gender identity. This form of argument has been used to challenge ' Assumptions of patriarchy' 'gender traits' and 'stereotypes' that are used 'for the surpression of women'.

Post modern science: a search for paradoxes instabilities and the unknown.

Simulacra: when we can 'no longer differentiate between reality and simulation'.

Marxists beleived: nether human nature nor historical process was as predicable as thought.

[justineabrugena]

Privileges and Positionality: academia and the rest of the world

PRIVILEGE — it’s a word that has been constantly dropped and discussed as I did my graduate studies, and it’s something that I have been acutely aware and conscious of for the past year and a half. Maybe if someone asked me two or three years ago if I consider myself privileged, I would have answered, “no, not really, I don’t think so. Whatever I had, I had to work hard and fight for it.”. Even when I went to one of the premier (and most expensive) universities in the Philippines, I did not necessarily saw myself as privileged. I worked hard to be there, fought to be there, and begged to be there. I was the scholarship and financial aid kid in a place full of wealthy privileged kids. Compared to them, I was the underprivileged. I equated privilege with money, and indeed it is an indicator of privilege, but only one amongst numerous indicators. 

In retrospect, I realized how self-centered and narrow that perspective was. The way I saw it before, it was either you have it or you don’t. I saw privilege as a ‘dirty’ word, something to be afraid of, and something that if associated with oneself would make someone bad or worse someone who perpetuates the system of inequalities. To someone who had to fight for whatever they had, acknowledging their privilege felt like discrediting the hardwork, tears, blood and pain, that came with getting what one had. But then I realized, privilege is not something that’s black or white. It’s more like a spectrum of monochrome; there are levels. One would be more privileged than others, but there are others who would be more privileged than one. One’s privilege doesn’t really discredit any effort and hardwork that was done to achieve something, to be in something, to have something. Rather, what my graduate studies taught me, is that privilege is something inevitable; it is something that comes along whether one likes it or not. It is something that we all work for, something we get after all our efforts, tears, and pain. Privilege is not necessarily bad or evil, what makes it problematic, is when one doesn’t acknowledge it. So there you go, check your privilege and acknowledge it. Take it into account, how it affects your actions, how it affects yourself, relative to the rest of the world.

Why am I writing this? Well, first because I am privileged enough to have time to reflect, to think, to write. Second, because I just finished having coffee with a friend and we talked about this (see, I am privileged). Third, a few months ago my feathers were ruffled because I heard a discussion between an academic and another individual. The academic called some individuals irresponsible for not being able to grasp words that would be considered academic jargon in layman’s terms, which I interpreted as condescending because instead of responsibly and humbly pointing it out (and IDK, maybe try to do something about it), the academic just whined and ultimately deemed others irresponsible (maybe I misinterpreted what was said, maybe I’m overthinking, maybe Im putting words in the academic’s mouth). Fourth, I just wanted to share my thoughts about it and again I’m privileged enough to do so.

Privilege and academia

As someone who is currently in the academia, I am privileged to have read some of the works of Plato, of Machiavelli, of Kant, of Focault, of Wallerstein, of Spivak, of Bhabha, of many more literary and scholarly canons. I am privileged enough to know and understand, or at least grasp the complexity within big terms such as “feminism”, “queerness”,  “neoliberalism”, “post-colonialism”, “subaltern”, “socialism”, “humanism”,”intersectionality” and many more jargon. Just because others don’t completely grasp those words, or would confuse some terms with another, does not make them utterly irresponsible. To deem them irresponsible would be condescending, as it does not acknowledge the system of privilege that every one of us are placed in. If anything, one has to consider the question of why. Why does that happen? Maybe they just didn’t have the access to knowledge and to resources that some have, resources that I do as a graduate student in the developed West. Maybe, those people were taught by individuals who also have limited access to knowledge. Yes there’s Google and the internet nowadays, but do note that even what most people think as basic might be something that others only has limited access to. Moreover, accessing academic jargon is still limited — one still needs to pay for proper access to journals and books. My point is, what and how we know the world is brought by our privilege, and we have to see it relative to the others in the rest of the world.

Positionality

I think I first heard the word positionality during my graduate studies. It’s something that all my professors have repeatedly emphasized from the very beginning of our program. It's something that usually refers to the researcher’s place in relation to the research,but it definitely applies to our real life too. Each one of us are uniquely positioned in a certain way with regards to all others, which either makes us more privileged than others or less privileged than others in certain different circumstances. One can be considered privileged in a certain context and circumstance but that same individual might be less privileged when placed in a completely different context and circumstance. Our positions and privileges change over time as we accumulate knowledge, experience, network, etc. and as we go through different situations and circumstances throughout our lifetime. What is important though is to be aware of that position and how that positionality affects oneself and others. Still, it is a privilege being able to acknowledge our positionality, to even recognize it relative to the rest of the world. 

We are all little parts of a whole. We are just a tiny specks in the grand scheme of things in the world. Hence, we must realize who, what, why, and how we are in relation to others. It’s a humbling realization, and it’s something grad school gave me. It is definitely a privilege to be able to be in this higher echelons of education, but that is what it is, a privilege. Recognizing that privilege, and acknowledging my positionality keeps my feet on the ground, I think. Nonetheless, just because I’ve gained access to the high tower of Academia, it doesn’t mean that I have to stay there and view the world from atop. Academia doesn’t always have to be the tower that it is considered by the rest of the world. Jargons doesn’t always have to be jargons. The irony, is that I learned that in grad school, I learned that from the high tower of academia, because I was privileged to have met professors, colleagues, and classmates who constantly recognizes their positionalities, their privileges. They try their best to work beyond the tower, to be with the rest of the world, to constantly put their feet on the ground. I realize some may not have had this privilege, some might have met and learned from academics who prefer to be in the tower and condescendingly look down below, but that’s just a sad and tragic way to learn and live. Maybe this is just my privilege and positionality talking, but at the very least, I’m recognizing it and trying to distance myself from it for a moment of clarity.

***This was written for and first appeared at the EMMIR blog

#privilege #positionality #graduate school #emmir #reflection #academia

[c-bassmeow]

Queer theorist/postmodernist/post colonial theorist/post structuralist thesis: here in this paper we queer the boundaries of the ocean whose miscegenation has fallen into various narratives surrounding the preemptive discursive cultural diaspora of the whales who are not an actual species but simply a social construction. Darwin said we all come from a common ancestor and so what logically follows is that by using the Queer-Redefining model of Professor Zigzag-Physics-Envy we can conclude that species are simply a Eurocentric and arbitrary categorization that limit the possibilities of what we consider to be independent entities of the bio-social-historical concept of the self. The whale self is then subject to unnecessary objective scrutiny and criticism when it should remain a nebulous concept that coincides with the post-structuralist concept of the sub-textual rendering of forms to be created. With this conclusion we contend that the subaltern hybridity of the diasporic fragments of the whale  must be protected because Focault and Derrida established this in order to convey the defenestration of evil materialist and rationalist assumptions of analytical and skeptical analysis pushed by the murderous materialists who depend on enlightenment epistemology over French drivel that eliminates the concomitant forms of domination. The whale is then freed and queer. A radical lesbian homosexual that abides by their own social constructions the whale cannot be conscripted into categorical imperatives but flows freely in a queer ocean whose atoms are rendered queer by their own buoyancy.

#this is a joke so dont attack me lol #queer theory #wow i made my own pomo generator #postmodernism #post colonialism #post structuralism #philosophy #the new left #new left #none of this is supposed to make sense .... which is my opinion of many of these viewpoints #obviously i am being overly dismissive and there have been interesting questions raised by many of these groups #but at the end of the day they trash sorry #funny