I emailed this to a favorite person of mine after returning home and thought I summed up all I wanted to share in it. This is a new strategy...rather than adapting (fresh thoughts) my messages for blogs why not maintain the originality of the first expression of the thoughts?
Attempt one: unadulterated explanation, straight from the heart.
Just got home from the Rushdie lecture. He was on point...as per usual I assume.
His lecture was centered around Adaptations. He focused mainly on film adaptations of movies (Ben Button, The Reader, and Slumdog being the primary three) but then led into discussion of adaptations in our own lives (which got me at the core). I thought of you and your infrequent transformations. I appreciated his critique of Slumdog after hearing Deepika's (shared aversion to the film adaptation being made my a man who had "never visited India and thought it would be interesting") and am looking forward to seeing it and viewing it with a critical eye albeit influenced by some marvelous thinkers. He noted an important question when thinking of adapting books to film, mini-series, etc. is What is essential? Then applied this same question to humanity. It was interesting to think in terms of how at times in our lives we find certain things essential (i.e. reading, love, money, "success," parenting children, etc.) and when our lives are shaken (we go blind, someone leaves us, get fired, children grow up) we adapt to find a new essence of life. On a larger scale even to think of this adaptation is also pretty rad. He said we had lived through an era of bad adaptations, appeasements, and can only hope for better films, better movies, and better stories. That was an approximation of how he ended his speech as they took my bag from me and I had to take minimal notes on an the Methodist Church's Offering Envelopes (forgive me father).
Back to our point of how what gets you and I going individually seems to be these endless tunnels with tiny lights at certain points, but for some reason we keep wandering about (and I can only speak for me here): I think that what makes a lot of this stuff so great is that the truths that we stumble upon in our 'studies' are truths that we have known in our lives and have always been on the cusp of naming (consciously or otherwise). It's like tonight, Salman was connecting literature and humanity, and by this ability I was blown away and envious. I want to do that...I want to train my brain to get big, be free and not rigid, to guide itself to epiphany after epiphany as I cultivate it with stories and studies. There was also something comfortable about everything he was saying towards the end though, and I think this is because I have known this habit of adapting by some other name at some other time in my life. I think it is this; the connection to humanity, to emotions, to the 'essence' of life, that keeps me wandering because I am (or feel at least) always almost there. It, like my mother's perfume, C's dumb jokes, and the sound of you singing a new tune, feels like home.
That is what rules about loving what you study and studying you love and I certainly hope that I get into graduate school.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Reflection on Lecture: "There are no women in the Third World"
Last night the student inside of me experienced the blessing of resuscitation; the life-giving thrusts upon my chests, the exhalation from another human’s breath into my lungs, and I feel alive again, in theoretic discourse at least.
I attended a lecture by Emory’s Associate Professor of English and South Asian Studies, Deepiks Bahri last entitled: “There are no Women in the Third World.”
She discussed the role of and position of women in the context of globalization and from a postcolonial feminist perspective examined the questions:
Who can speak and for whom? Who listens? How does one represent the self and others?
Here is where I attempt to connect the dots to what she said and the fragmented thoughts and memories that live somewhere in “No Man’s Land” (i.e. my brain).
As D addressed issues centered around these women that live in developing countries and, therefore, deemed Third World Women (by the First World, of course) she brought to the proverbial table a lot of interesting issues regarding representation, globalization, market economy, power, language, knowledge, understanding, misunderstanding, repression, recession, and oppression. A problem with the problems,she suggested, is that there are no clear resolutions and sometimes the problems aren't viewed as problems to the livers of the lives.
I drifted here and began thinking of the livers of the lives and how we discuss these people like we know (because we have done the research)their situations; their relationships to living. Deepika brought me back with stories from her travels through slums and brothels in India. Personal stories are history, I attempt to thread the tales together to create my understanding of humanity...maybe that explains why my understanding and remembering of things is in such shambles!
An idea came back to me during this lecture; was one that was born in a class on Jazz and Pop Culture as I was reading Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. In the beginning of the book, second chapter or something, the narrator is thrown into a battle royal and all I remember thinking as this scene filled me with terror disgust is "how can he keep his dignity?"
-and for the connection!-
As Deepika traveled in India and heard the stories of married women who were subjected to forced, unprotected sex with their husbands, forced into the sex trade, chose to live and work in the sex industry, orphaned, sick, and many of these women,she said, had one thing in common: the idea that they still had their "dignity." Deepika discussed the women she encountered as having dignity in a way that suggested that having dignity empowered these women who are seen by many in the Western World as powerless victims to their situations. Her argument, I think, was that these women who, in many ways, have been silenced are speaking up every day in their own language, in their stories that are never going to be published (see globalization to blame), and are not seeking salvation at the hand of Western values or judgments.
I was then led to wonder if feeling worthy of honor (dignity) can conquer a representation that has manifested itself deep into human consciousness (which is an entirely different discussion on representation, our susceptibility to it, and our perception). If that sense of worth carries that much power, and if so how does one maintain that sense of self hood when others are deliberately attacking it. What strength human beings have.
Ah, but these are just questions...that lead to more questions.
I attended a lecture by Emory’s Associate Professor of English and South Asian Studies, Deepiks Bahri last entitled: “There are no Women in the Third World.”
She discussed the role of and position of women in the context of globalization and from a postcolonial feminist perspective examined the questions:
Who can speak and for whom? Who listens? How does one represent the self and others?
Here is where I attempt to connect the dots to what she said and the fragmented thoughts and memories that live somewhere in “No Man’s Land” (i.e. my brain).
As D addressed issues centered around these women that live in developing countries and, therefore, deemed Third World Women (by the First World, of course) she brought to the proverbial table a lot of interesting issues regarding representation, globalization, market economy, power, language, knowledge, understanding, misunderstanding, repression, recession, and oppression. A problem with the problems,she suggested, is that there are no clear resolutions and sometimes the problems aren't viewed as problems to the livers of the lives.
I drifted here and began thinking of the livers of the lives and how we discuss these people like we know (because we have done the research)their situations; their relationships to living. Deepika brought me back with stories from her travels through slums and brothels in India. Personal stories are history, I attempt to thread the tales together to create my understanding of humanity...maybe that explains why my understanding and remembering of things is in such shambles!
An idea came back to me during this lecture; was one that was born in a class on Jazz and Pop Culture as I was reading Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. In the beginning of the book, second chapter or something, the narrator is thrown into a battle royal and all I remember thinking as this scene filled me with terror disgust is "how can he keep his dignity?"
-and for the connection!-
As Deepika traveled in India and heard the stories of married women who were subjected to forced, unprotected sex with their husbands, forced into the sex trade, chose to live and work in the sex industry, orphaned, sick, and many of these women,she said, had one thing in common: the idea that they still had their "dignity." Deepika discussed the women she encountered as having dignity in a way that suggested that having dignity empowered these women who are seen by many in the Western World as powerless victims to their situations. Her argument, I think, was that these women who, in many ways, have been silenced are speaking up every day in their own language, in their stories that are never going to be published (see globalization to blame), and are not seeking salvation at the hand of Western values or judgments.
I was then led to wonder if feeling worthy of honor (dignity) can conquer a representation that has manifested itself deep into human consciousness (which is an entirely different discussion on representation, our susceptibility to it, and our perception). If that sense of worth carries that much power, and if so how does one maintain that sense of self hood when others are deliberately attacking it. What strength human beings have.
Ah, but these are just questions...that lead to more questions.
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