Here we are. The end of the year. As I pack up my things and finish up my tests and papers, I look back on my sophomore year as one of the most important years of my life thus far. I have come into my own, created special bonds with people, and further realized want I want out of my future while enjoying the present. 

In "The Holder of the World" by Bharati Mukherjee, the main character Hannah travels throughout the world finding herself and figuring out what she truly wants out of life. While reading this novel, I found myself understanding Hannah on a personal level, seeing as how I am going through many of the same emotional feelings as she was. Am I doing the right thing? Am I in the right place? What is the purpose of all of this?

This past weekend I had a conversation with a senior departing this college and it was bittersweet. Hearing her thoughts, frustrations, and experiences during her past four years left me uncertain about my future hear. Intellectual conversations such as this as well as classes such as Literary Theory this semester have taught me how to deconstruct the world around me and try to find my place in the complexity that life holds. Throughout this semester, I have been opened up to a whole new way of critical thinking, and it has helped me truly find out who I am, and for that I say thank you to the class, students, and professor. 

As Hannah did in "Holder of the World", next year I depart to India. My experiences there will be like none other that I have had before, and I hope I will be able to take the knowledge that I have learned throughout this class and apply to the new and intriguing world around me. 

Single motherhood.



Since coming to college, I have learned that my experiences growing up were far from the norm. My of my friends grew up inside a nuclear family with a puppy to match, but that was not the case for me. To summarize my childhood existence, I attended school at a private, Catholic elementary school which taught me all about the love and support one receives from marriage. They also taught me that divorce was bad. My demystification, if you will, of my education and the culture around me all started in second grade when my parents got divorced.

From then on, my life consisted of carting around my life twice a week to spend shared custody with my parents. I love my dad and spent a significant amount of my childhood with him, but for the purposes of this blog I want to focus on my mom. Jane Juffer, author of Single Mother: The Emergence of the Domestic Individual writes much of her book on the single mother and how they are represented in society. While reading this, I found myself vigorously shaking my head yes throughout most of Chapters 1 and 2 where Juffer further explains the network between mother and child. 

My mom, much like Juffer, held a full time job while I was growing up. I spent hours in daycare after school when my mother was busy being a director of a mental health services center. While in 4th-6th grade, I didn't see my mother on Mondays and Wednesdays, she was busy getting her masters degree in Mental Health Administration. Juffer states that "single mothers are household managers as well as business entrepreneurs, showing the intersections rather than the exclusion of those realms".  My mom was busy raising three children, heading a household, working full time, and getting educated all at the same time, trying to live her own life. All the while, she was being misrepresented in our society. 

Fortunately, many people understand how good of a mother and woman she is, and many of her friends go out of their way to tell me how lucky I am to have her as a mom, but she still struggled while raising us because her work did not have child care assistance and she had to make ends meet with only one salary. Not to mention, me and my sisters were only in her custody a little over half the time, so when we were with her, she had to balance work, school, and the desire to spend all her time with her children. 


Juffer states that single mothers constantly question their parenting, asking themselves "how much of my child's identity is a product of these transitions, this living arrangement?" I think I have come a long way from believing what my religion teacher was preaching to me in elementary school that the only way to live a happy life is in a marriage. My mom definitely struggled to make her way, and me as her child was definitely affected by it, but I think seeing her constantly overcoming struggles to help her children is inspiring. I think I have become a hard worker because of watching her. I have also learned never to complain about work load in front of her. 


My mother, like Jane Juffer millions of other single mothers all over the world are continuing to use agency to change the misrepresentation of the phrase 'single mother'. This lifestyle might not have been what my mother initially thought she was getting herself into, but I'll be the first to say she has done a damn good job at it.

 

While researching for a paper on the topic of African American Dance in the Harlem Renaissance I stumbled across a quote that made me think about our Literary Theory and Criticism class. In the book entitled simply Dancing the author Barbara Glass states that "Africa is a large and complex continent more than three times the size of the United States. Today, there are nearly a thousand African cultural groups. Thus, there is no monolithic African language, perspective, or way of life. Instead, there is enormous variety in speech, art, customs, and beliefs from the Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope, and from Senegal to Somalia". This quote succinctly states what Binyavanga Wainaina writes about in his article "How to Write About Africa". 

Last summer, as previously stated, I traveled to Tanzania, Africa for a month long trip. I was emotionally struck when reading Wainaina's sarcastic article. He states that one needs to:

 "treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular."

900 million people. 54 countries. 

These numbers are what people don't understand. When explaining my trip to family and friends I heard so many questions asking if I stayed in a hut, worked with dying people suffering from AIDS or malnourishment, or the worst one-if I contracted a disease just by being there. I will be the first to admit that my knowledge of Tanzania was very limited before I spent a month there. But, by experiencing only very little of one country in the massive continent my knowledge increased a little. My stereotypes were demolished and I get rather frustrated when I hear people grouping together so  many rich cultures, histories, and societies into one-one that most always has a negative connotation. 

Tanzania by itself is extremely diverse. The country encompasses so many different climates. There are big cities with shopping malls, restaurants, hotels, cars, and thousands of people. There are small villages that are run by Catholic monasteries. There are islands off the coast of the Indian Ocean that are 95% Muslim. There are sick people. There are healthy people. There are rich people. There are poor people. 

It is difficult to explain that Tanzania is just like anywhere else in the world, because it is in the continent of Africa. We need to start to get rid of the stereotype by not having Africa be romanticized into some mystical place or described as a dark continent with primitive inhabitants. The continent of Africa
 is fruitful, the countries having citizens with intellect. Not every child there is starving. Not every country is in a civil war. Wainaina's article sheds light on the ignorance of the continent, and I hope people who read it take it to heart.

The structure here at the College of St. Benedict and St. Johns University is very set in stone. We are one community, but separated into two same-sex campuses. All students are treated equally, but we receive different diplomas based on our gender. As time passes, many people raise concerns about this being the best way to structure this institution. Me being one of them. 

Jacques Derrida states in "Structure, Sign, and Play" that there is room for creativity in the post modern world. For my example, I will only use CSB/SJU. It seems to me that there are many structures set in place at this institution that will never allow me, a female, to be equal to my male counterpart at St. Johns University, and vice versa. The two campuses, separate degrees, and the two different stigmas of what a 'Bennie' and 'Johnnie' are all make it extremely hard to challenge the norm here. 

But one needs to stay optimist as Derrida points out. Despite the fact that there are things set in place and that the history and culture of this institution has made it what it is today, Derrida states that new realities can be created and changes can be made. Despite this passion many people have to change the entire structure of CSB/SJU, there are still people who think that the structure is set in place and history has made us this way. They would agree with Lacan, stating that these two campuses should be kept seperate because that is how they were historically viewed and the institution started this way so it should continue to be this way.

I would have to disagree with the Lacan-esque believers and would like to be treated equal to all of the students enrolled at the institution. By not having a degree that also states St. Johns University and not being able to say that, yes, in fact, I do attend St. Johns University as well, half of my college career seems to be erased. By working at SJU, taking classes at SJU (where my major department is located), and spending numerous hours devoted to clubs and organizations at SJU, I feel like part of the community there. But it doesn't show.

By siding with Derrida, I would like to play around with the old structure of CSB/SJU and create something new that encompasses all students. By having more integrated campuses and by receiving a degree from both CSB/SJU would show how my education stemmed from both structures, not just one. 

It is brings in a massive revenue each year, with consumers spending millions or even trillions of dollars watching shows on TV, buying the newest issue of Vogue or Glamour, or spending fifty dollars on something as simple as a tee shirt- the fashion industry.

Growing up, my mom taught me how to make simple purses, blankets, and dresses on the sewing machine which made me quite interested in textiles and fabrics. I have always been intrigued by the fashion world and how it is continuously changing and exactly who is making the decisions that filter all the way down to the consumer buying either skinny jeans or flares. Over the past few years, I have paid more attention to what I wear and what others are putting on themselves. Thinking of my own personal style got me thinking about Lacan and what was discussed in class about the idea of a dis-satisfied "I". 

Objects create desire.

Lacan states this very thought provoking theory in "The Agency of the Letter...". In other words, nobody knows what they truly want. People's desire to attain things, whether material or emotional, is always produced by an object. Whether it be MTV telling us that we all want a rockin' party, a mustang, and Rhianna to sing at our super sweet sixteen birthday party, or going out and buying Skyy Vodka because a handsome man will immediately consider you more desirable and you will attain more sexual pleasure, advertisements telling one what they should want are constantly thrust upon them.

Are the desires felt by objects then considered fake? Does that make the fashion industry an industry completely driven by dis-satisfied thoughts that they themselves created? Well, that makes me a little ashamed to be a contributing factor...

But why do so many people like myself fall into the fashion industry trap of telling themselves that they will be happy if they buy that special skirt or that they will inevitably be more cool if they attain a certain look? Lacan puts it by simply stating that "X creates a wanting I". That "I" is always going to be considered incomplete because it is the human condition to be searching or trying to fully complete oneself. This I is initially constructed through culture. Our own culture telling us we are never fully complete without "X". 

When working on one's 'fashion' or 'style', one almost always feels the need to keep up with the constant changing of what is considered in style and therefore never fully feels complete about the clothes they own. By buying the next cutest item, these consumers are just contributing to the never-ending cycle that they are always going to be a little bit behind on. 

That begs the question: Are the people who don't give a damn about what is 'in' and march to the beat of their own quirky, stylish drum the ones that start the trends? Are the people who have a better grasp on their desires  the ones that make the rest of us exist in a world where we never think we are good enough? Are there people out there that are fully complete and are not affected by objects around them? 

My guess is that those types of people exist where objects are the most limited. In tragically poor areas around the world, the term fashion does not exist because people are too worried about surviving through the night to care about what shirt they have on, if any. 

All this is really making me rethink how I spend my money on clothes and why I hold 'style' and 'fashion' in such a high regard...

This past summer, I spent a month traveling through the Eastern African country of Tanzania. The time I spent there was full of life-changing experiences, amazing memories, elephants, and incredibly wild dreams. Before leaving I had to go to the travel clinic to pick up malaria pills. Upon receiving the pills, my doctors warned me that one of the major side effects of these pills was nightmares. I have never had any crazy or out of the ordinary experiences with dreams before, so instead of getting anxious of this, I was more excited to let my imagination go wild in my dreams.

During the first week or so, my schedule was turned upside down and my sleeping pattern was not regulated. I had not had any vivid dreams yet and forgot about the possibility of having them until the eleventh day there when I woke up in a sweat and gasping for air. My sheets were thrown off the bed and breathing heavily, my dream replayed in my head. I could vividly remember my a woman viciously throwing me onto the ground kicking and punching me. In my dream she was a lunatic trying to kill me, but in real life, this woman is something like a second-mother to me. I was horrified. 

Almost every night these dreams continued. I would wake up terrified because a member of my family or close friend was trying to kill me. I started to fear going to sleep at night to find out who the next murderer would be. In the article The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud makes the distinction between latent content and manifest content. Manifest content is what you actually dreamt, and latent content is the meaning of the dream. Waking up, I would remember all of the manifest content but could not figure out the latent content at all. I had no idea why all of these people who supposedly loved me were out to kill me. Granted, the malaria pills were the reason I was having nightmares, but they didn't choose the content of my dreams. Freud speaks or representation, a thought translated to a visual image, and symbolism, a symbol replaced a an action, person, or idea. Was i thinking that these people truly wanted to kill or did not love me anymore? Did the acting of trying to kill me really mean something totally different?

Since leaving Tanzania, I continued to have nightmares until, I'm assuming, my malaria medication wore off. The vividness and intensity of my dreams were something I have never experienced before, and would wonder how Freud would interpret...since I mylset have no idea why this happened.

While reading a textbook for my Theory and Practice of Nonviolence class, I came across a paragraph talking about Dorothy Day. Day was a nonviolent Catholic activist that is considered to many a modern day saint for the work that she did for many social justice issues including co-founding the Catholic Worker, supporting the grape and lettuce boycotts with the United Farmworkers Union, and going on hunger strikes to show the immediate necessity for change. Day got much of her inspiration from Gandhi and while reading about her own methods she used to be principally nonviolent, I came across a paragraph talking about her stance on celibacy. 

"Unlike Gandhi, Day was no prude. She chose celibacy for herself, but she did not demand it of others. "It is not idealism as against sensuality," she told Coles. 'God...certainly put us here to enjoy our sexual lives." When sexual love is genuine and faithful, it is a beautiful thing, she said. It is a "mating of spirit and flesh," a symbol of divine love. "It is the foretaste we have of heaven." But when sex is careless and exploitative, it "takes on the quality of the demonic, and...is a foretaste of hell."

-David Cortwright from Gandhi and Beyond, Nonviolence for an Age of Terrorism

Dorothy Day

I found this statement so riveting. Day was a strong Catholic, but was speaking about sex in a way I have never heard a religious person talk about it before. Like the quote states, Day did not have the same beliefs as Gandhi, and no where in the statement does Day mention that the act needs to be saved for a marriage between a man and woman. Day uses the word idealism in her statement and it reminded me of our class discussion on 'what is idealism?' Looking through my notebook, i have scattered notes on what different people thought it was. It could be defined as beliefs, ideals, a specific mindset, or habits of a group of people/individual. My personal favorite defined it as your own relationship to the world.

Day's ideology did not come from leaders of nonviolent action, such as Gandhi, and they didn't come from leaders of her religion, such as the Pope, but they came from her own beliefs. In Day's early life, she had a relationship with a man which resulted in her becoming pregnant and having an abortion. The Catholic Church certainly doesn't accept having sex without marriage and definitely believes that abortions are morally wrong. But, by reading this book about Day, I am taking away that she recognizes that things happen in life and her ideology reflects an authentic viewpoint from which people are able to relate to. Since these things happened in Day's early life, her relationship to the issues are different than the teachings of the church. 

Does that make her a 'bad' follower of the religion? Should she not be prominent figure in the church? The culture of the church would, I would think, say that she shouldn't be. The Theory Toolbox defines culture as "way of life". The whole idea is very interesting to me: why is Dorothy Day held in such high regard in the Catholic Church even though her personal beliefs and ideologies are different than what it is that they teach? And what is it about the culture of the church that makes it acceptable for some people, like Day, to be very outspoken about their differences with the Church, but doesn't give the same opportunity for others to do the same?

Who creates the meaning to what I am writing right now? It could be me, the one behind the keyboard, slaving away at creating something that will hopefully sound creative and intelligible. But it also could be you, the reader, picking apart my diction and creating a new meaning for yourself. Foucault argues that it is you. You are the one who takes the subject of the work, mulls it around in your head, and generates fresh ideas out of it. 

If you are the one who gets the privilege to tear apart my words and form something else, how am I supposed to feel? I suppose I don't mind. I have done it plenty of times before. But what is someone had wrote this template and I just filled in the blanks? Do I still get the credit? Are you deriving meaning from my work or someone else?

In one of my other classes we have been talking a lot about love letters. If you type that simple phrase into the Google search bar, the first website that pops up is called The Love Letters Collection. In essence, it is a compilation of letters that have been made anonymous. All the names and dates have been taken out, but the body of the work still remains. It is almost like a blank template for writing the one you love even if you are not romantic or creative enough to do so. This interested me. I always thought the idea of receiving a love letter was a nice one. Reading about the way someone cherishes and admires you would make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. But what if you knew your special someone cheated and stole the template off the internet? Well, personally, I would be a little upset. I would think the feeling wasn't real. But the meaning still remains the same.

Despite the fact that your significant other didn't feel up to the challenge of choosing all the correct words to formulate a letter to you doesn't mean that the meaning behind the letter isn't the same. As a reader you would never know that some other lucky person received this same gift. So what is the true meaning? Fish asks the question, "Do readers make meanings?" in How to Recognize a Poem When You See One,  and I would argue that yes, they do.

Fish describes a scene in one of his college classrooms where students see a list of 5 linguists names on the board arranged in no special order, but end up analyzing them for an entire class period coming up with lofty  proposals that it was some religious or spiritual poem including an altar of some sort. Fish states "as soon as my students were aware that it was poetry they were seeing, they began to look with poetry-seeing eyes, that is, with eyes that saw everything in relation to the properties they knew poems to possess." Just like the students, the teary eyed love bird is going to read the letter with the eyes of delight. Despite the cliches and the empty adjectives, the person who receives the love letter will still think of it as individual to their unique love. 

The meaning of the letter in the end would be up to the reader to create. If the sender took a template off of the website, the receiver would have to look at it with a critical eye, finding the examples of their own personal love in the letter. It would be to the sender's advantage that the templates are so gushy that their sweetie would be so overcome with love that there would be no critical thinking involved.

<3

Click here for The Love Letters Collection website:

lovey dovey 
 

This past week I subscribed to Netflix. Yeah, I know I am a little behind the times but watching movies and TV shows would only make me procrastinate more than I already do. As a friend was showing me how to work it and telling me all the benefits of it, I began to get frustrated and overwhelmed. It was not until I browsed through the documentary section and chose a film that I was satisfied with my subscription. The movie I chose was 'Life in a Day'. The movie is a compliation of thousands of YouTube videos sent in on the same day, July 24th, 2010. 

I was enthralled when watching it. Seeing people's actions of making breakfast, brushing their teeth, and going to work. It was intriguing to see how most everybody in the world has such a similar story. At the same time, I was most intrigued by the juxtaposition of cultures. One clip would show an American man driving his Lamborghini to the store and the next would be a shot of an Indian man on a rickshaw dodging cows.   I enjoyed the movie so much that, as always when I am interested in something, I went straight to Wikipedia. While reading the section "Themes and Content", I was startled by what one of the producers had said. Director Kevin MacDonald saw the movie as a "metaphor of the experience of being on the Internet...clicking from one place to another, in this almost random way...following our own thoughts, following narrative and thematic paths." 

What? During my viewing I was captivated by the people and the actions they were doing. I was intrigued by the thought that the millions of others around me are not as different as I think. I was enticed by the display of the human condition. The comment made by the 'author' of the movie, the director, got me upset because I didn't agree with him. But alas, I remembered Roland Barthes. Barthes argues that the author doesn't seem to matter at all, and the analysis of the work can be done without any knowledge of the author and his or her intents on writing the work. 

I agree with Barthes. MacDonald did direct this film, but this film was a compilation of thousands of authors. There is no single author of this film. To understand this movie, one needs to understand the human life. We all are our own authors to our own lives, and MacDonald and his producers strung together bits and pieces of lives around the world. Since there are so many contributors to this piece of work, I would argue that it is not important to know the authorship, since all of us have a little authorship over it. We all are alive and could connect with this movie in one way or another through work, family, love, birth, and death. 

Click below to watch the film.
http://www.youtube.com/movie?v=JaFVr_cJJIY&ob=av1n&feature=mv_sr