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Tumblr post, May 24th

In this week’s viewing of Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer, the class saw a robot future that was not very liberatory. Jane described the monstrous power structures in place that aimed remove and sort of difference or deviation from what was deemed to be normal. Particularly, we see Jane and friends’ sexuality and exuberant disposition (a.k.a. low-class) implied as the main targets of their scrutiny and persecution. “You were dirty if you refused to live the way they dictated.” Heteronormativity is a dominant ideology that dictates how (most) societies function. Those who do not identify as conforming to gendered or sexual norms are seen as dangerous deviants, clearly exemplified here as Jane’s parter, Zen, is taken by law enforcement, and as Jane is taken to a computer cleaning facility to be cleansed of her difference.

This line in the movie also parallels the idea that people of color, especially Black people, are seen as dangerous and unruly when they attempt to oppose the roles we are given. We are attacked when we o longer with to live the lives of subjugation assigned to us by colonizers who think of us as inferiors slaves, as bodies meant for labor and minds they can steal ideas from. When Zen (or Maryapple) says “...thinking will only make it harder. It’s best if you just enjoy the process—accept it. People used to work so hard to be free. But we’re lucky here. All we have to do is forget...” it made me ~think~ of how we are supposed to be complacent, grateful, and non-revolutionary (in a Matrix sort of way, but I won’t give out any potential spoilers). We are meant to conform to the idea that our oppressors think is the correct way to be--at least the correct was for us to be--and not want anything different, like higher education, access to clean water, the right to walk the streets without being shot to death.

The concept of orphaned beginnings shows itself in Zen/Maryapple. As she was "guiding Jane to the light,” she slowly began to remember her past. She then had to decide what to do with those memories. She had to navigate her place in the facility with this realization. Analogous to this plot, I believe the past ~80 years has been a specific era of people beginning to *wake up* from the hegemonic narrative of how the world should be and is realizing that what we have been taught about the ideal race, gender, sexuality, ability, age, etc. is not true. We know more than ever before about our respective and intersected histories, therefore we know more of the truth about ourselves. Now it is up to us to take action with this realization we have. We should take our future into our own hands and hold those who took our past and our present away from us accountable for that loss.

In a liberatory future (robots), people will not be considered deviant (dirty) because there will be no norm to standardize to. Life is not a bell curve. As Monae said, “I don't really give a fuck if I was just the only one ho likes that.” Singularity and individuality is not inherently evil or lesser than. It just is.

I would like to add the term “robot” to the glossary. A robot is an electronic machine with some sort of programmed intelligence for a certain or multiple tasks. Recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has personified robots, commonly in the norm image of a woman-- again, a robot is an electronic machine with some sort of programmed intelligence for a certain or multiple tasks. It is not (should not be) a deceptive, sensual, sexual, gender-typical representation of a woman that men create to fulfill their various needs and lust for control over women. A robot is an electronic machine with some sort of programmed intelligence for a certain or multiple tasks.

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i, robot 2 (2018)

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I don't really give a fuck if I was just the only one Who likes that

Janelle Monae, “I Like That”

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Tumblr post, May 17th

This week, I got the feeling that a common theme was intersectionality in relation to disability. Mingus state that “[her] story is just as much a story about Korean adoptees… as it is a story about disability… feminism and queerness and growing up on a rural island outside of the U.S. mainland.” She cannot separate her identities. Each one affects the other, and in turn becomes part of the other. Your disability will affect your place in mainstream feminism. Your socioeconomic class will determine how your disability is handled. We see the idea of money being equated to one’s life mattering (a haunted power dynamic that still blatantly haunts us, especially in healthcare) in Erevelles’ story.

As Erevelles was saying, though her friend Thomas had a potentially non-fatal form of cancer, he could not afford his medical treatment and was not given access to the same high-quality facilities. The people compare Thomas who had lung cancer and Robert who had terminal brain cancer, some may say that Thomas is in a much better situation. But how can one compare their situations, when so many other factors come into play, such as social class?

“Robert’s diagnosis impacted almost all aspects of our family life” Here, Erevelles describes how her entire family was affected by her husband’s brain tumor. Everything changed for them, and they had to learn to live again with and through this new complication. This orphaned beginning of navigating life with and as disabled Black man (who now is especially targeted due to his disability amplifying his dangerous presence) is a part of their lived experience as one whole unit.

Author of “Disability Justice’ Is Simply Another Term for Love” spoke about liberatory access. Liberatory access is an ideal that I agree with. It is the idea that disability should be met with more than simply adherence to the bare minimum out of obligation. Not only to speak in politically correct terms, but to want to use inclusive language. To not just have a wheelchair ramp, but to understand and reverse why it is needed in the first place. Instead of “being met with empty silence,” we (meaning others and I) can “be able to truly engage” in dialoguing these experiences and situations.

Additionally, I believe that for the future to be truly liberatory, we must stop thinking of disability as something to fix. For most of my life, I have been thinking about the word “disability” and how it describes something that is solely wrong with the disabled person, something that must be fixed, it possible. But at five years old, I developed hearing loss and became permanently deaf in my right ear. While it does present challenges in my everyday life, I do not think it is something about myself that needs to be fixed. Rather, society’s expectations of me taking full responsibility to deal with all implications of my hearing loss instead of empathetically equilibrating to my situation is what causes my to have disability. 

I would like to add the term “disability” to the glossary. A disability is a term given to those who have a mental or physical difference than what is deemed normal. It was termed disability because those with it are seen as not being able to do basic human functions. Instead of society changing to fit all people, including the differently-abled, it has marked the disabled as Others the must be fixed or destroyed through Western medicine and science.

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It shouldn’t be that we have to go to the margins of the margins of the margins of the margins…this is also a part of the isolation we face everyday.

Mia Mingus, “’Disability Justice’ is Simply Another Term for Love”

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[ID: tweet reading “No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. Ever. –Stella Young on why the saying the only disability in life is a bad attitude, is bullshit.”]

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Perceived as the very embodiment of the irresolvable 'case,' and therefore a constant source of curiosity and experimentation, such bodies also find themselves 'being on permanent display, of being visually conspicuous, while being politically and socially erased'

Nirmala Erevelles, Disability and Difference in Global Contexts

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If you take [imprisonment] seriously, you will never last.

Snap Judgement, “Love Lessons”

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Tumblr post, May 10th

The power dynamic that haunts Palestine to this day is settler colonialism. During Al Nakba, Palestinians were forced out of their homes and made enemies of their own land. Wardeh, one of the women interviewed, talked about how she was forced to leave her children behind while she escaped poverty because she could not even afford to feed her them bread. Now, the sight of freshly-baked bread causes her to break down in tears. Settler-colonialist Zionism haunts her in the form of the bread she could not feed her children with, reminding her of the monstrous present that is the Israeli government’s forced exile of thousands of bodies like hers.

In the same reading, Nadia, another Palestinian woman affected by Nakba, said that her and her family were irreversibly changed by the colonization of her land.  “We tried to go back home...” but they could not. Nadia and other women of this piece describe how their husbands and fathers changed under the harsh circumstances Nakba put them through. Nadia’s husband was so tormented by thull that he committed suicide. Everything that Palestinians knew was taken from them. They were thrust into a new beginning--an orphaned beginning--from which they could not escape. Some were not “strong enough” to make it through their new reality.

For Wardeh, resistance was coming back to her home, learning Hebrew, and getting a job in the place that wanted her to disappear. For others, silence is how to cope with the unbelievable loss and pain, and a method of not perpetuating the violence that happened to them. But either way, a liberatory future for Palestine is one in which Palestinians exists. They exist and are heard and are not just assuming “death-in-life” from the constant threat of a brutal murder or erasure. The United Nations and Israeli government would be held accountable for all of the rights taken away from Palestinians and all of the deaths caused/land stolen. As much that can be given back (i.e. the land, unfortunately not the lives) would be given back once a peaceful agreement could be agreed upon--an agreement that would include Palestinians.

The Palestine Remix article describes the Zionist Movement as attempting to “ethnically cleanse Palestine.” This theme of ethnic cleansing has been seen over and over again throughout the world’s history: through the Holocaust, with the forced sterilization of minority groups and eugenics in the United States, and now in Israel. The idea of racial superiority is a power dynamic that haunts not only history but the present. As long as groups see Others as inferior, ethnic cleansing will always be on someone’s mind. But we can imagine (or re-imagine) a future in which this could never happen. If we all think logically and without hate in our hearts, it never will.

The future that holds accountability for one’s actions is the opposite of today’s reality. In the Snap Judgement podcast we listened to in class, the interviewee talked about how he was kept in Guantanamo Bay for about 15 years without a charge. We live in a world in which a government can literally rip a person from their life and lock them in a cage for years (or even a lifetime) for no reason. Then, even if that person is cleared, that government can still keep that person in a cage to avoid the repercussions of wrongful imprisonment. Justice does not exist in Guantanamo Bay. So, in a just future, Guantanamo Bay will no longer exist.

I would like to add the term “Freedom” to the glossary because I feel that that word really does haunt our society. Freedom is a physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional sense of safety and independence from a master or tormenter. Freedom bans chains, bombs, and metal bars. It is the right to expression and the right to civil liberties.

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'I started working as a nurse in Rotshild hospital in Haifa. I even started learning Hebrew in Beit Edeltstein with Jewish newcomers. They hated seeing me in class, and in the street, but I was stronger than them. I worked hard, educated myself, and learned the language. I even told them that I belonged to the land, that my father, grandfather, and great grandparents were from here, from Haifa. I told them they are foreigners to this place, and that that is why they feared us. You know, my mere presence scared them, because I reminded them of the real natives, the real owners of the land.'

Wardeh, Infiltrated Intimacies

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What is Al-Nakba day and why do Palestinians remember it?

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The battle for Palestine was lost by the Palestinians not in 1948 but in the late 1930s, because Britain completely smashed to the ground the Arab revolt and the Arab irregular forces.

Palestine Remix, “Al Nakba”

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Tumblr post, May 3rd

In “Monster, Terrorist, Fag,” cis-gender, white heteronormativity is the power structure that haunts society and creates the monstrous anti-Arab/Muslim terrorist narrative. The idea of terrorism is contextualized in sexual perversity, claiming that terrorists are sexual deviants, and therefore political deviants. This implies that the heterosexual patriot is the epitome of a well-behaved, ideal citizen because any deviation from the accepted forms of sexuality that were laid out by this country’s Founding Fathers is indication of some twisted evil inside someone. This conception literally creates monstrous presents; terrorists are described as “monster,” “diabolical,” and “terror goons” by the media. And because Muslims and Arabs are perpetually seen as terrorists, Muslims and Arabs are perpetually seen as monsters.

In shock doctrine, we see the haunted power dynamic of class that Karl Marx opposed, just in a different form. The bourgeoisie have always controlled the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat. The former makes all of the decisions (business-wise), while the latter two carry out those decisions and create profits for the former (as laborers and pawns in their business). But ever since “democracy” gained importance in Western society, capitalism has suffered. The bourgeoisie needed a new way to control the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat without impeding on our democratic rights. So shock doctrine was used as a way around them. The classism of the past is still around, haunting us in the form of gross manipulation of the general public through extreme circumstances, some of them even planned.

I think the concept of orphaned beginnings connects to the way Islam is being seen through a Western perception. Islam has existed since around 600CE (but that is just a number I found from Google). For approximately 1,000 years, Muslims were (at least socially) separate from Western society. During the past few centuries, Muslims and arabs have had to deal with hatred and, recently, the “War on Terror.” How does one go through life while having this new identity--terrorist--draped on them by some of the most powerful nations in the world?

In a just future that holds people/institutions accountable for their monstrous actions, terrorist would have no ethnic connotation. White boys who shoot up their schools would be held to the same standard as any other terrorist who is seemingly associated with an entire religion.

Currently, the government that is meant to carry out the decisions of the public in the most efficient and lawful way is using shock doctrine to get away with breaking the very laws it swears to uphold and to benefit big businesses. In a future in which society is liberated from class manipulation by the government and large corporations, distorters will not be taken advantage of or created in order to create abrupt and radical change that opposes the general public.

I would like to add “Terrorist” to the glossary. A terrorist is someone who practices causing terror to some aspect of society. And that is it. A terrorist is NOT the face of a brown man in a turban. A terrorist is NOT a suicide bomber on a bus in the “Middle East” screaming in Arabic while holding a bomb to their chest. A terrorist is a terrorist.

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the atmosphere of large-scale crisis provided the necessary pretext to overrule the expressed wishes of voters and to hand the country over to economic 'technocrats'

Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine

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shit the Hollywood sign has been changed again

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Now of course, that is precisely what terrorism studies intends to do: to reduce complex social, historical, and political dynamics to various psychic causes rooted in childhood family dynamics.

Jasbir K. Puar & Amit Rai, “Monster, Terrorist, Fag”