why i will never listen to or read joe.my.god or dan savage

http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2010/10/predictable-navel-gazing-over.html

the above is a link to one of the most repulsive, essentializing posts i have ever read. dear joe and dan...you (and your listeners/readers) are advocating for the same kind of violence that you claim to be "fighting" against. it is your way or nothing....there is no critical inquiry or conversation regarding your white male "ideas" or about how to "fix" something...and when, goddess forbid, someone does actually want to put your ideas into relief with others you simply go on attack mode...again...how white, male of you. does it really get better? or is this a rehashing of the myth of "the american dream"? if you work hard enough you can get whatever you want....because if you don't get what you want then you didn't work hard enough and therefore you are a failure? turn it around, the "it gets better" videos, as femmephane points out in this post:

http://tempcontretemps.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/why-i-dont-like-dan-savages-it-gets-better-project-as-a-response-to-bullying/

are created mostly by white, privileged gay men...and when you get to the bottom of this issue it doesn't address gay teen suicide at all it addresses a personal experience of "overcoming" that is universalized and repurposed as a truth. what happens then is the self-serving motivation that constructs these videos, as objects of truth claims, create an unchallenged and anitintellectual (much like the tea party is doing) violent and reactionary atmosphere wherein a teen who does commit suicide is going to be seen as a failure instead of the tragedy that it most certainly is. dan and joe...gay teen suicide is NOT about you or your lives...it is about hopelessness and oppression...it is about trauma and the loss of voice. if you really want to "make a difference" why don't you listen instead of throwing your lives up on a video and telling people to just stick it out or rather "pull yourselves up by your bootstraps kids" because "if you don't get through this difficult time then you have missed the point and you are a failure because you did this to yourself"...joe and dan....in your attempt to embrace this problem, to bring it closer to yourselves you (and i think inadvertently) are abjecting the very bodies that you want to speak to. we need dialogue not two guys (among many) who have tricked themselves into pretending to be self-absorbed mother teresas, and, btw, calling queer theorists "navel gazers" doesn't help your cause...at all...you're just name calling...something i'm sure that gay teens are all too familiar with. if you can't listen to other types of narratives, critiques, and standpoints then how in HELL are you going to be able to listen to bodies that feel hopeless, oppressed, and violently abjected into the periphery? ultimately this is about power...who has it...who doesn't...how it is moving through language. i don't see empowerment in these videos...i see a reinscription of a hegemonic struggle enunciating itself through privileged bodies who, in turn, are firming up their always and already privileged standpoints.

and you ain't there...

And everyone in Balencia gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste and history finally overcome. And you ain't there.

ability and place

the body is inscribed upon by a language of ability
that in a room confined through language the body that refuses or
cannot be inscribed with this language must be contained
how do we change the language to reflect inclusive places
how do we narrate ability in different ways
the architecture that we engage with on a daily basis
is simply a language of ability
a narrative that helps to inscribe bodies
reminding particular subjectivities of their "normal-ness"
or "other-ness"
to change this language we need to change the architecture
not just materially but also rhetorically
and not simply by laws either
this change needs to occur on the level of metaphor and poetics
we need to stop thinking and conceptualizing a certain type of
normativity as an involuntary reflex

your revolution

i was teaching my women's and gender studies class today

and one of my students was giving an oral presentation on

women in the music industry

this student's presentation lead to a general class discussion

over what it means to be a woman in an industry that is

insidiously white, male, and (big surprise here: heteronormative)

then the converstation shifted to not just issues of gender but

also race...what are the terms for women artists who are not white?

as my class was productively mulling over the issues related to race,

gender and the music industry i couldn't help but think of audre lorde

and the speech that she gave at medgar evers college in 1980 and the kind

of critique she was developing through her experience as an activist within

the civil rights movement...the struggles of being a woman, african american, feminist, womanist,

and lesbian that made her participation and even her subject negotiation within

the political formation of civil rights groups difficult and highly complex...

she spoke up to a heteronormative, male dominated paradigm that required her particpation

while at the same time demanding that she remain silent...to espouse as best she could

the violent restraints associated with that of an image of "straight woman, african american

woman"

she fought against this pressure

she established place within a third space territory

she was unapologetic for it as well

lorde was not concerned with just interested rights

she was concerned with the flow of power and the assignment of value

she wanted to change the ways in which we all consume otherness

she demanded oppression be addressed at all levels...not selectively

she demanded that perception change not just laws because laws are always

"interested"

this brings me to sarah jones

in the clip below you can hear her perform a spoken word piece entitled

"your revolution" from hbo's def poetry series...

fast forward through moss def's intro and cedric the entertainer's piece (although

his piece is worth a listen as is the interpetation of gwendolyn brooks' "we real cool" at the very

begining) and you will encounter the goddess that is sarah jones...



Sarah Jones “Your Revolution” lyrics


[Intro]

Yeah yeah, yeah this goes out to all the women and men from New York to

London to LA to Tokyo struggling to keep their self-respect in this climate

of misogyny, money worship and mass production of hip-hop's illegitimate child,

Hip-Pop.And this especially goes out to Gil Scott-Heron, friend, living legend

and proto-rapper who wrote "The Revolution will not be Televised." Much Respect.



[Verse]

Your revolution will not happen between these thighs

Your revolution will not happen between these thighs

Your revolution will not happen between these thighs

Not happen between these thighs

Not happen between these thighs

The real revolution ain't about booty size

The Versaces you buys, or the Lexus you drives

And though we've lost Biggie Smalls

Baby your notorious revolution

Will never allow you to lace no lyrical douche, in my bush

Your revolution will not be killing me softly, with Fugees

Your revolution ain't gonna knock me up without no ring

And produce little future emcees

Because that revolution will not happen between these thighs

Your revolution will not find me in the backseat of a jeep

With LL, hard as hell, you know doin it and doin it and doin it well

doin it and doin it and doin it well, nah come on now

Your revolution will not be you smacking it up, flipping it, or rubbing it down

Nor will it take you downtown or humpin around

Because that revolution will not happen between these thighs

Your revolution will not have me singing, ain't no nigga like the one I got

And your revolution will not be sending me for no drip, drip VD shot

And your revolution will not involve me, feelin your nature rise

Or helping you fantasize

Because that revolution will not happen between these thighs

No no, not between these thighs

Oh, my Jamican brother, your revolution will not make you feel bombastic

And really fantastic

And have you groping in the dark for that rubber wrapped in plastic

You will not be touching your lips to my triple dip of french vanilla,

butter pecan, chocolate delux

Or having Akinyele's dream, m-hmm a 6-foot blowjob machine m-hmm

You want to subjugate your queen? uh-huh

Think I'm a put it in my mouth, just cuz you made a few bucks?

Please brother please

Your revolution will not be me tossing my weave

And making me believe I'm some caviar-eating ghetto mafia clown

Or me giving up my behind, just so I can get signed

And maybe having somebody else write my rhymes

I'm Sarah Jones, not Foxy Brown

You know I'm Sarah Jones, not Foxy Brown

Your revolution makes me wonder, where could we go

If we could drop the empty pursuit of props and ego

We'd revolt back to our Roots, use a little Common Sense

On a quest to make love De La Soul, no pretense

But your revolution will not be you flexing your little sex and status

To express what you feel

Your revolution will not happen between these thighs

Will not happen between these thighs

Will not be you shaking and me *yawn* faking

Between these thighs

Because the real revolution, that's right I said the real revolution

You know I'm talking about the revolution

When it comes, it's gonna be real

It's gonna be real

It's gonna be real

When it finally comes

When it finally comes

It's gonna be real, yeah yeah

politics of nothing(ness)

ok, so the question that has been on my mind lately is the relationship between politics and subjectivity. as i have been reading about politics and overt political agendas in the media lately i have really been bugged at the overt political act of separating a personal space and speech acts that aren't considered political to public spaces that are expected to be framed as a politics as such. i know it's not a new issue and at the very heart of my inquiry is "the personal is political" mantra. but isn't the "act" of separating personal and political acts in and of itself political? i grapple with "the personal is political" on an almost daily basis. i used to think that politics were very much separated from personal acts and that politics informed decisions and that the discursive relationship between personal acts and political acts were pointed and strategic. however, i don't think that this is the case anymore. especially as i teach, i find myself attempting to disengage my politics in the classroom in order for my students to reach their own conclusions. they maybe young and immature at this point in their lives and they may still be encased within the political views of their parents but they are adults and they are capable of making informed decisions. however, this is dangerous territory. i create this space in my classroom and on some level i'm expecting my students to adopt a very open-minded stance. but this does not happen in many instances. they choose ideological conclusions that i simply do not agree with. i find it extremely hard to hold back. this is why i admire compositionist and pedagogue peter elbow so much. his writing stresses the importance to let students come to their own conclusions even if those conclusions are not necessarily what we want them to settle upon. recently i have been reading some student writing assignments that i'm just absolutely floored by. i guess this is the importance of instructor commenting. i don't consciously try to change their mind on certain issues but i do question them on their assumptions and encourage them to think outside of the box...but this is difficult and dangerous...especially when it involves the privileged demographic of the typical isu undergraduate. some of them don't even know why they believe in something...they just do. many of them have never really read a newspaper or watch the news. i found myself explaining the recent firings of the us assistant attorney generals last week....many of them had no idea of the firings, most did not really care and felt that it did not pertain to them as citizens in this culture of the united states while the ones who did seem somewhat informed were extremely apathetic. hence the importance of my job...at least for an hour and fifteen minutes of their day two times a week for about 15 weeks they will at least think about these issues.

political points to ponder....

i have been re-reading some really great texts lately in my preparation for preparing for comps...i have also been reading alot of blogs that deal primarily on politics and i ran across a couple of quotes that really resonate with me and that i think are extremely important.

Politcized identity formation(s)

An identity is established in relation to a series of differences that have become socially recognized. These differences are essential to its being. If they did not coexist as differences it would also not exist in its distinctness and solidarity [….] Identity requires difference in order to be, and it converts difference into otherness in order to secure its own self-certainty.(64)

William Connolly, Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991.

The tension between particularistic “I’s” and a universal “we” in liberalism is sustainable as long as the constituent terms of the “I” remain unpolicitized:indeed, as long as the “I” itself remains unpoliticized on one hand, and the state (as the expression of the ideal of political universality) remains
unpolicitized on the other. Thus, the latent conflict in liberalism between universal representation and individualism remains latent, remains unpoliticized, as long as differential powers in civil society remain naturalized, as long as the “I” remains politically unarticulated, as long as it is willing to have its freedom represented abstractly—in effect, subordinating its “I-ness” to the abstract “we” represented by the universal community of the state. This subordination is achieved by the “I” either abstracting from itself in its political representation, thus trivializing its “difference” so as to remain part of the “we” (as in homosexuals who are “just like everyone else except for who we sleep with”), or accepting its construction as supplement,complement, or partial outsider to the “we” (as in homosexuals who are just“different,” or Jews whose communal affiliations lie partly or wholly outside their national identity). The history of liberalism’s management of
its inherited and constructed others could be read as a history of variations on and vacillations between these two strategies. (56)

What if it were possible to incite a slight shift in the character of political expression and political claims common to much politicized identity? What if we sought to supplant the language of “I am”—with it defensive closure on identity,its insistence on the fixity of position, its equations of social and moral positioning—with the language of “I want this for us”? (75)

Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995.

why do i do this to myself?

instead of studying for a translation test in old english tomorrow (or i should say later on today since it is 2 a.m.) i listened to the awful ramblings of the minister fred phelps from the westboro babtist church and another dude argue about god, love, and hate and of course why homosexuals are going to hell regardless of whether they "repent" or not. well i don't really care because even if phelps in some alternate universe does go to heaven i certainly don't want to be there because THAT would be my hell. besides, if we are going to hell why are you preaching then....just let us go to hell and call it a day ...that still doesn't negate the fact that i have comprehensive examinations near the end of summer....in any event the rhetoric that this old man was spewing was terrible and violent but yet i listened to it like some masochist...when i should be doing way more productive (and, in turn masochistic) things with my life, like studying for a test or writing a comp synthesis. it has been a week of ann coulter, rush limbaugh, and other nut jobs spewing hateful things without even thinking of the consequences of what they are saying. right now i am thanking the goddess for john stewart....he's at lest helping me keep it all in perspective. he is my own personal jesus.