I want you to find at least three things in "Situated Knowledges" that either reference, build on, critique, or otherwise apply something or someone we've talked about in class. But don't just quote them -- explain them. What/who is she referencing? What does she mean by this? Translate her prose into your own words. And if you have an opinion, by all means, state it.

Haraway's begins her criticism of activist feminist inquiry by pointing out that much of it revolves around the idea of an imagined "they," the "maculinist scientists," and an imagined "we," the "embodied others, who are not allowed not to have a body." I agree with her completely, that when you get down to it, whether you're studying sexism, racism, or homophobia, there are very few "bad guys" to which it makes sense to refer to as "them." I think, for the most part, it's "us."

This reminds me of Foucault's idea that we are not individuals whom power acts upon, but rather we are the vessels of power. Bringing a more systemic view to feminist theory that sees sexism as an interaction between people, rather than as the evil acts of powerful men, will allow the movement to reach far more people than the man-hating technique.

Haraway also criticizes those who believe that "science is a contestable text and a power field."' She doesn't necessarily refute that statement, but she doesn't think it's a good way to think about science: "So much for those of us who would still like to talk about reality..." Then she talks about the difficulty of fighting for legitimacy and trying to stay organized while also rejecting many principles of science.

This idea seems to have stemmed from Foucault's "power/knowledge," the word he invented to describe both power and knowledge, which he saw as inseparable. It sounds like Haraway agrees with that, for the most part, but she's also saying that it doesn't mean a lot of science is still good science that should be learned--even by feminists.

Haraway writes, "There is no way to 'be' simultaneously in all, or wholly in any, of the privileged (i.e., subjugated) positions structured by gender, race, nation,
and class." This idea is in keeping with many psychoanalytic theories, especially those of Freud's. Many of our gender, class, and even race performances in social situations mirror the inner plays we put on in our minds. Freud believed that we mature to sexuality by identifying with others, our parents in particular, and then internalizing those modes and eventually settling on a way of being. Although this model only works rarely when it's being used to understand sexual maturity, one of Freud's greatest contributions to psychology was the idea that we don't just have one personality, but rather a constellation of internalized characters that consult each other, ignore each other, and occasionally even fight each other.

So, if we apply that to the idea of subject and object, straight and gay, black and white, and oppressor and oppressed, we can see that in some situations we are straight, others we are gay, and in others we are neither, since the words only have meaning in relation to each other. In some situations we are oppressed, in others we are oppressive, and in others we are neither. I believe that it would be beneficial to the field of gender studies, and probably most other fields, too, for people to learn that no one is oppressed all the time, and no one is oppressive all the time.

When I was sixteen, the dean of my high school, a black woman, shouted into my face, "You don't know anything about racism because you're white!" I was then suspended for a week. Because she is a black woman, she sees herself as continually oppressed, even when she's shouting at and punishing a white teenager whom she would be treating quite differently if he were black.

Post Number Eleven

A couple weeks ago, my friends and I celebrated my birthday. One of my friends, Ben, brought his girlfriend, as well as his other friend, Mike. On the phone, he said, "Is it cool if I bring Big Black Mike?" I didn't ask, but from the way he said it, I guessed that Mike was in the room with him. Mike is a freshman on the football team, but he's a little dorky and doesn't seem like he has too many friends. Anyways, I like Mike, so I told Ben to bring him.

We all went and saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Strangely, Mike didn't laugh once during the entire movie, even when everyone else in our row was doubled over and howling with laughter. About two thirds of the way through he took out his phone and started texting.

After the movie, Ben told me and my roommate, Stephanie, that he was going to go back to his girlfriend's house. I wanted to invite Mike to come over and hang out, since some of my other friends were going to come over and have cake that night, but I didn't.

A couple hours later, my Korean friend, Hannah, came over and asked Stephanie and me how the movie was. We said it was good, but that we felt bad for Mike, who was probably either hanging out alone, or stuck watching Ben and his girlfriend make out. Hannah asked us why we didn't invite Mike over.

"Because he's black," I said.

"Seriously?" Hannah narrowed her eyes at me.

"Probably. If he were white, we probably would've invited him over." Hannah suddenly seemed annoyed, and she stood up, marched into the kitchen, and began to do the dishes, angrily.

"Why do you always talk about race?" she shouted from the kitchen.

Stephanie shouted back, "We only do it when you're here." This was a joke, since we talk about race pretty much constantly. Unfortunately, Stephanie had over-estimated Hannah's sense of humor.

Hannah shouted, "I know!" A few minutes later, she left. She probably spent a total of fifteen minutes at our house.

Spiller said that things are placed into visual categories, and that it's only skin color and other visual characteristics that are associated with people by those in power. The histories of oppression go unmentioned. Although I am a Jew, and most of my relatives on my father's side died in the Holocaust, I've never found it necessary to invoke my own family's history--probably because my grandparents were luckier than most children of immigrants. But it is something I am sensitive to.

I thought it was interesting that Hannah was so opposed to the idea of talking about what's underneath the surface--that she would rather I didn't question whether I didn't invite Mike over because I don't know him very well, or because I was shying away from the burden of trying to make a dorky black freshman feel comfortable hanging out with a bunch of white people in my house.

Spiller is suggesting, I think, that mostly white people with the power to define situations are the ones keeping the oppressive undertones in the background. That probably used to be true. But at this point, especially at CU, where most racism is covert and easy to ignore, maybe we're all doing it.

Post Number Twelve

I hate Nick Mansfield. I liked him up until I read his little critique of Die Hard. And now I hate him. Say what you will about me and my family, but do not ever criticize Die Hard.

Die Hard is perhaps my favorite movie of all time. It is a close tie between Die Hard, The Terminator, and Aliens. So I was similarly enraged when I saw Mansfield's claim in Chapter 6 that the Alien films equate horror with the maternal because of the feminine nature of the aliens and because they procreate uncontrollable. He seems to have ignored the opposite reading of the films--that male egocentricity and ignorance about the power of maternity and cooperation will lead to the destruction of our society.

Anyways, back to Die Hard. First of all, Mansfield's retelling of the final confrontation is inaccurate, or incomplete at best. It's true that the three men end up laughing while Holly, hero-cop John Mclane's wife, watches in shock and horror from within the evil German terrorist Gruber's clutches. However, the laughter is initiated by John, not by Hans Gruber, and this changes the meaning of the scene. Mansfield claims that the feminine, in this case, Holly, is turned into an object which the men are fighting over, and that the laughter represents some higher plane of existence where men who are about to kill each other can go and where women are not welcome.

But the whole point of Die Hard is that John Mclane ISN'T a cowboy. When John Wayne or Clint Eastwood would be hunting down the bad guys and gunning them down one at a time, John Mclane is simply trying to leave the building. Whenever he runs into terrorists, he avoids them. He doesn't like fighting or killing people.

So at the end, when Hans has Holly clutched in one arm, and he is leveling his gun at Mclane with the other, he says, "What was it you said? Ah, yes, yippie kay-yay, motherfucker." He is repeating Mclane's retort to Hans's earlier accusation that Mclane is just another macho American cowboy. And Mclane lets him believe it--he starts laughing, inviting Hans to that superior level of being that Mansfield is talking about. But while Hans, Mclane, and Hans's thug are laughing, and Holly is staring at them as though they're insane, we see a close-up of a revolver taped to Mclane's naked back. We suddenly realize that it's all a trap for Hans--Mclane is not a cowboy, he's not actually laughing with Hans. He's faking it.

Then he breaks the laughter by yelling for Holly to duck, and shoots both of the men, but Hans grabs Holly's wrist as he falls out the extremely high window of the office building. He hangs by her wrist for a few seconds while Mclane and Holly struggle to pry his fingers off, but they are only able to to so by unclipping Holly's Rolex from her wrist--the Rolex that she received as a gift from the company she left Mclane to go work for.

And with that, the metaphor is complete. In order to save their relationship, John has to prove to Holly that he cares more about her than he does about self-preservation. He comes to the realization that he should have supported her move to LA instead of hoping she would fail and return to him about two-thirds through the movie, when he almost dies and suddenly has more perspective on himself. He tells another cop over the radio, "Tell Holly that John said he was sorry. She's heard me say I love you a thousand times, but she's never heard me say I'm sorry."

The flipside of that is that Holly has to prove to John that she cares about him, and herself, more than she cares about her career. She proves this by taking off the Rolex and saving their lives.

While Holly does play a diminished role in the final action sequences in the film, the whole movie is about John learning that his career is not more important than hers and that she is not a prize to be won.

Post Number Eleven

Wittig argues that "difference" is used by power hierarchies to mask conflicts of interest that would be apparent if everyone were the same. So, she recommends that we reject the labels of "men" and "women." Butler, on the other hand, says that rather than reject these labels, we should simply be aware of their superficiality. Mansfield says that it is romantic to think that our passions will ever be free from the binary.

I actually agree with all three, but they all seem to want to have timeless arguments that will always be true. This makes all three arguments weaker. We should reject the terms "man" and "woman" the same way we have rejected the term "Negro." If it becomes necessary to describe someone's physical appearance, we can mention that they have breasts, or a beard, or even that they are feminine or masculine, without needing the terms "man" and "women." By the same token, if it is necessary to mention someone's skin color, we can call them black, or white, or Latino, or any other number of things without thinking of them as "a black" or "a white."

Mansfield is correct that it's romantic to think that we'll ever be totally free to desire whomever we choose. It would also be romantic to think about gay marriage fifty years ago. Now it's an inevitability. I mean, damn, my own mother is married to a woman.

And Butler has it right on the money--for now. The best thing to do is to hold up the binary to ridicule. When future generations grow up seeing the superficiality of these labels, they can decide when to discard them. But, for me, and for my friend Natalie, who now refuses to use gender pronouns and cut all her hair off and changed her Facebook name to "Nate," and gets mad at you if you tease her about it, it is far too late. I will never be able to stop using gender pronouns--it's simply the language I speak--and Natalie will never be able to stand her ground without oozing self-conscious hostility. And in six months, she will most likely be Natalie again.

Right now, dropping the labels simply won't work. But we could probably teach our kids to stop using them.

Post Number Eight

Irigaray believes that femininity is self-contradictory and inherently plural, whereas masculine culture is obsessed with unity and oneness. She uses the shape and nature of male and female genitals as metaphors for her characterizations of masculinity and femininity. The penis is singular, symmetrical, and stands out apart from the body. But the vulva, because of its multiple layers and folds, is always in contact with itself, and represents an undefinable, plural version of femininity--which men, including Freud, often see as lacking or disorganized, and thus threatening.

Butler calls femininity a performance. She points out that any scientific observations we make about nature and sex must first go through our cultural lens which automatically separates everything into male and female. She argues that this lens may be the very reason that we take special note of the genitals in all animals. So to ascribe any particular meaning to the shape of a person's genitals, and attach them to the person's behavior, doesn't make sense. Instead, she argues, a better way to think about femininity, and masculinity, are to see them as performances. She points out that people who dress up in drag prove that the part of "feminine" or "masculine" can be played by anyone who chooses, and that the social pressures and threats of stigma act as a far greater reinforcer for acting the way we are expected than genetics or science could explain.

Butler's argument is clearly anti-essentialist--she basically wants the gender categories to vanish, and become as acceptable as the numerous other performances we have in our culture ("class clown," "uptight," "used car salesman").

Irigaray, on the other hand, believes that femininity exists, but that it is unfairly characterized by the dominant masculine, penis-loving, vagina-hating culture. It seems like she advocates for a better understanding and acceptance of femininity--and the idea that there even is such a thing, especially if it's defined by the genitals that half of all people carry, is certainly essentialist.

Post Number Seven

1. Christianity introduced a new kind of power--"pastoral power"--which is concerned, above all else, with the salvation of individuals, and which must sacrifice itself for the individuals' salvation, rather than having individuals sacrifice themselves for it, as royal power does.

Another power structure similar to this one is between guidance counselors and students. The guidance counselor sacrifices his or her time for the students' benefit, and must worry about each individual student. If the students fail in later life, so does the guidance counselor.

2. Communication produces effects of power Foucault gives examples of communications in clearly defined power relationships, such as labor distributor and laborer, and teacher and student.

A less clear but equally valid example, I think, is a conversation between two friends in which one says, "Oh, that new movie with Jackie Chan and Jet Li is coming out this weekend." Though the sentence seems strictly about conveying information, and thus devoid of power relations, the subtext is, "I would like to see this movie," and beneath that is, "See this movie with me."

3. Power is exercised when actions modify others. For power to exist, it must be put into action. Foucault gives the physical example of power in the form of violence--violence acts upon physical things by breaking, forcing, or bending them.

An example in psychology would be in the practice of exhibitionism, or flashing. The flasher exerts power over the victim by behaving in a way (exposing themselves) that greatly modifies the behavior of the victim (screaming, running away, looking shocked). It is this modification, or this exertion of power, that the flasher seeks--not the actual exposure of his or her body.

1) How does Foucault's conception of the subject differ from the theories we've studied so far?
Focault's conception of the subject is different from the other theories we've studied because he believed that the dynamic between power and the individual self is the opposite of what Freud and the others we've studied think. While Freud believed that the self is created by experiences and is a representation of the true self, Focault believed that the self is not created, but defined by power and culture. Moreover, he believed that the self is even a vessel for the power of a society.

2) Why did Foucault coin the term "power/knowledge" and what does he mean by it?

He coined the term "power/knowledge" because he believed that the two were so inextricably intertwined that it's not worth mentioning one without the other. He believed that the act of defining, or sharing or creating knowledge, requires power. The act of exerting power over others, in turn, requires knowledge, or at least the perception that one has knowledge. He used the example of prisons to argue this point. In order for prisons to exist, those in power must use knowledge to define some acts as criminal and some acts as not. While this seems like a fairly academic or practical thing to do, upon closer inspection, we can see that it also requires an enormous amount of power. He also said that the people in power exert that power over others by simply informing them that prisons exist--and that this power effects the individual on the level of the subject. In essence, he argued that prisons get a lot of their power by existing in our minds in the form of knowledge, rather than by existing in the physical world.