I, Curtis

Category: PHIL6320

  • PHIL 6320: 220-507-1-PB

    To summarize succinctly Shaviro’s argument in this week’s reading: Modern digital video is different from historical analog cinematography.

    This analysis might be an over-simplification of the argument, but at a basic level it holds. The issue is what that difference means for the ability of video (general term to catch “film”, cinema and related time-spanning visual media) to be an accurate representation of the artist’s intent. There seems to also be a struggle between the agency of the subject and the liberty of the artist to “create” with the image of the subject.  The move to digital manipulation gives the artist god-like power to do whatever it can imagine with the image of the subject (and at a symbolic level, to the subject itself).

    The Grace Jones video displays a subject in flux, almost fluid in lack of conformance to a single state. No context is given to suggest whether the subject consented to the fluid state or if the fluid state is an adaption to some type of need (or force) to conform. The images could be read as calm transition between states, escaping a monolithic form, to seek a fluid existence between concrete spaces or as a subject forced to be fluid and unable to retain a desired or true form. Through the use of digital manipulation like is used in this video, it is impossible to determine as the form is so distorted that the image is helpless to represent itself in any way resembling a full embodiment. It is as though the body/subject is a puppet being pulled with digital strings wherever it is directed. At first I wanted to construct the fluidity of the form to something resembling the queer idea of fluidity, but it is unclear as to the willingness of the form to accept the various distortions that are placed upon it. How can the agency of the body be determined? Shaviro implies that it is a willful dissociation from identity, but I do not feel compelled to agree so easily. If the video was recorded in one form and the changed to something else, then at what point is the consent of the body considered?

    I have a lot of questions, but not many answers.

     

    Shaviro, Steven. Post-Cinematic Affect: On Grace Jones, Boarding Gate and Southland Tales.

  • PHIL 6320: Interactions Between Paraphilic Sexual Identity and The Gender Binary

    Potential Paper Topic: Interactions Between Paraphilic Sexual Identity and The Gender Binary

     

    The social construction of gender is filled with symbols. Some symbols are performative and some symbols are material. Paraphilic sexuality emphasizes the use of gendered symbols and makes them central to sexuality. Normative repetitions of sexuality utilize the biological manifestations of sex as their link to gender. Paraphilia are less centered on genitalia despite engaging gender more strongly at the social level.

    I propose to construct an academic paper, resembling a sociological literature review, which will overview the current literature regarding the use of gendered symbols in paraphilic sexualities and analyze that literature with methods consistent with feminist theory. My primary theoretical tools for this will be Butler’s performativity and Burke and Stets’ social identity theory. I will also consider the potential applications of queer theory for deconstructing the sexual discourse of paraphilia. One such exercise will utilize Lugone’s “world traveling” perspective with a wider scope, to allow “gender traveling”.

    One area of interest I would like to give specific attention to is the difference between “traveling” in different intensities of the gender to which one identifies compared with trying on a gender identity at the opposite end of the spectrum. My initial reaction to this particular area is that the restriction on such an exploration of gender is inhibited only by social norms.

  • PHIL 6320: Identity Augmentation and Deviation in Performance of Gender

    Potential Paper Topic: Identity Augmentation and Deviation in Performance of Gender

     

    Gender performance is dictated through social norms and expectations. Judith Butler calls this enacting of a specified gender role “performativity”. Various social science perspectives on deviations from the gender binary predict that non-conforming identities will be disciplined and either corrected or rendered as stigmatized. Research and theoretical efforts tend to support this conclusion for outward identity deviations. There is minimal research regarding a deviation between a person’s accepted gender identity and their perception of the quality of their performance of that identity, except in cases of ego-dystonia.

    Are there behaviors that are linked to gender that are performed to correct, augment or strengthen a person’s internalized gender identity that are not linked to an external assessment of gender identity? In terms of the gender binary, for this type of behavior to exist, masculinity would have to be constructed as a more vulnerable identity than only “relentless repudiation of femininity “ (Levine 13). Theorizing this type of behavior problematizes concepts of a purely social gender identity, however, it does not necessarily advocate for gender as an essence either.

    One site of behaviors that can augment the gender identity or potentially change the meaning of the identity is power-exchange relationships. Such relationships often exhibit roles that are contrary to standard gender norms, but yet do not encourage acceptance of alternative gender roles. What is the impact to the internalized identity of the participants in these types of relationships?

  • Sonic Corporeality, Gendered Vocal Embodiment

    The two readings for this week, Milla Tiainen’s Corporeal Voices, Sexual Differentiations and Anne Carson’s Gender of Sound discus the status of gendered sound and the role of sound in sexuality. This is a particularly interesting question for me because my interests center on cultural elements that are constructed (or ascribed) as being erotic. In research for my many papers on the topic including those involving fetishes, sadomasochism and pornography I have never run across any literature regarding the erotics of sound. I have seen numerous articles involving fetishes of materials (leather, latex, lycra, etc), of sensation (pain, tickling) and of imagery (nudity, various implementations of the gaze). For sound, nothing. One topic I was particularly interested in was the presentation of masculinity in queercore music, but that still wasn’t about sound, it became about imagery, sensation and a lyrical content analysis. There is a focus on the visual for western philosophy and feminism.

    So what about sound? Why is it important? From the readings over the course of the previous weeks I have gathered a sense that voice matters because there is a lot of power in a voice, and as with most things of power it is typically regulated to favor males in hegemonic systems, although Taininen claims voices are “less codified by power than visual practices.” Perhaps the disparity between the feeling of importance and hegemonic regulation that I perceive in the articles and Taininen’s claim can be resolved through considering how it is that the visual has been given preference. If voice and sound are less codified, perhaps this is due to the treatment of sound by the hegemon is of a feminized modality which is disempowered by that lack of codification. I think back to some of Focault’s arguments regarding language and think that perhaps it is the lack of codification, the lack of language to discuss sound, that confines it to the space of a secondary sense.

    The visual modality is restricted by the physical. To be made intelligible visually there must be some link or resemblance to material that is in the world, perhaps to something that the viewer has seen before or would have a sensory awareness of. Sound is not confined in such a way because it does not have to be “understood” as a whole to be meaningful. I have difficulty following the entire argument of either of the articles, but I recognize the distinction between visual materiality and the materiality of sound. To me it seems as though sound has the potential to be more material than visual stimuli because it retains more of its original corporeal properties. The vibrations set in motion are more “real” than the bouncing of photons. Sound has more in common with tactile senses than it does with anything visual.

    Tiainen’s idea of micro-sexes bothers me. To sex an individual by an expressed corporeality whether it is vocal or genital is equally precarious. Biology may matter and corporeality may matter to some degree but I do not feel that it has any place in feminist literature. The body is oppressive due to the social abstraction of the body. I see no reason to feed another potential site of oppression back into the social system. Until the harshly guarded relationship between sex an gender is dissolved I cannot appreciate any reconceptualization of sex. More work must be done on gender, specifically in the area of fluidity.

    Also, I must regard any work that references psychoanalysis with skepticism.

  • Concepts for my feminism paper

    This post contains notes. This is not intended to resemble my typical article style.

    Current ideas for topics for my feminism paper…mostly based on my plans to integrate technology into my eventual thesis topic.

    1. Identity considerations with new gTLDs with regard to consumers and producers.
      1. Movement from large structures of society and government (COM, NET, ORG, EDU, MIL, etc) to domains for markets and target populations (.PHOTO, .FISH, .XXX)
      2. No longer about identity of producer, now about the markets.
      3. Does this make the Internet any more queer, or just more compatible with neoliberal ideologies?
    2. Analysis of use and intentions of ccTLDs compared with their gTLD counterparts, giving specific attention to the phenomenon of making generic (as in gTLD) a TLD designated as a ccTLD.
      1. .me = Montenegro OR “Me”
      2. .ws = Western Samoa OR “Website”
      3. .tv = Tuvalu OR “Television”
    3. Gendering of smart phone/tablet platforms. Primarily comparing Android and iOS (because no one cares about Palm, Firefox, Windows phone or whatever the Ubuntu phone thing is called)
      1. Gendering of platforms
        1. Android as “technical” (technical = masculine)
        2. iOS as “pretty” and “easy” (pretty + easy (soft) = feminine)
      2. Policing of what is “safe” in mobile OS land (Smasung KNOX, Kindle Fire limitations, Apple’s walled garden approach)
      3. Cultures surrounding the dominant operating systems (iOS = Instagram culture, Android = rooting, “power users” and gadgets)
      4. Re-masculinization of iOS via iPhone as symbol of privilege/power

     

     

  • The Voice of Ambiguity

    Language is imperfect. It is impossible to convey an exact meaning with words, but yet without words precise transmission of ideas and meaning is even more difficult. Cavarero states this and demonstrates it in “The Devocalization of Logos.” When comparisons are made to the visual I am stuck questioning how it is that visual information is represented as the guarantee of truth. Visual information is a two-dimensional representation (with basic cues for a third dimension) of a three dimensional world. Visual information can tell us a lot about an object in the time span in which it is visible, but very little about the essence of the object. I’m not sure that vocal information can resolve those concerns with any greater accuracy, but there is some comfort in the possibility of interrogative or bi-directional information such as is possible with vocal communication.

    Cavarero brings together many perspectives about voice, some of which are complimentary, whereas others are almost conflicting. It is sometimes difficult to discern whether she is discussing voice as an audible act, a written act or as a component of agency.  In any form, she argues that the voice is regarded as unworthy of attention in philosophy, but I cannot say that I have seen this treatment. The center of academic life (which sadly, is the primary realm in which philosophy has any power) is conversation between the knowledgeable people in the field. Academic conferences (and various Symposia) are the site of knowledge exchange. Voices are often lost in these settings and therefore  I suppose that from that perspective it can be seen as being disregarded by philosophy.

    Cavarero spends more time with the dead guys of Greek philosophy than I care to think about, but she does make some interesting points regarding the position of vocal communication in relation to other ways of perceiving.  I am left feeling as though I would have greater success with understanding her more subtle points if I had a stronger understanding of the work of Plato.

  • New Materialism

    I approach this week’s reading on New Materialism with deep understanding of the work of Anne Fausto-Sterling. As such I feel most comfortable to direct my thoughts to the Samantha Frost chapter “The Implications of the New Materialisms
    for Feminist Epistemology”.

    The introductory paragraphs touch on the interesting history that feminism has had with corporeality.  Many early feminist writers expressed the need to move away from the physical body as the site of gender formation, moving gender into the realm of the social. I do not believe that this movement was ever intended to negate the impact of the biologically sexed world that exists, but to draw attention away from it long enough to introduce the concept of socially constructed gender and non-conforming physical bodies. With ‘New’ Materialism it seems that feminism is providing a space for the corporeal to exist again, but this time it is more than existing, it is granted a “distinctive kind” of agency. Upon first reading of this agency I became concerned that feminism was opening a higher-level philosophical question traditional left in the space of cognitive philosophers, rather than wishing to engage the body in interactions of political empowerment. New materialism expands the previous discourse involving the inscription of social constructs (and meaning) upon the body to include how the body is involved in this process itself. As Frost quotes Elizabeth Grosz, “what these bodies are such that inscription is possible, what it is in the nature of bodies, in biological evolution, that opens them up to cultural transcription, social immersion, and production, that is, to political, cultural, and conceptual evolution.” A question this brings to mind is: what inhibits the bodies from rejecting the inscription of cultural meaning? The primary concept that I draw from the new materialism framework is not allowing feminism to become stuck in the same cultural trap that other disciplines fall into. Why do we have to seek answers as being either cultural or biological? That method of thinking is too simplistic, too narrow to provide productive understanding of the processes which have led to the social problems that feminists seek to solve. At this point many fields have accepted that their simple models with simple explanations are not capable of fully answering questions, so it is reasonable that feminism would accept more possibilities as well. The attributes “complex, recursive and multi-linear” seem more like something that would be discussed in a computer science class than in feminism, but as Frost states, feminists need to retool to continue making useful contributions to theoretical frameworks regarding the construction of the body (and specifically gender).

  • Intersectionality vs. Assemblages

    Intersectionality is concerned with the subject and the multiplicity of subject identity in relation to the culture surroundings of the subject or the ability of the subject to have a multiple perspective due to the sum of the subject’s identity (and potentially past experiences). Assemblages, in Deluzian tradition, are a more solid experience that does not necessarily allow the individual identities to be considered apart from the others, but yet does maintain the collective sense of identity. Both the intersectional and assemblage approaches consider multiplicity a trait of social identity.

    In social theory (or at least social psychological social theory) the primary objective of social interaction is meaning-making. Intersectionality and assemblages both work toward explaining meaning-making from an identity that is perceived to be constructed from multiple cultural contexts. The interesting thing about these two approaches over anything social theory has to offer is that they consider external factors of identity and meaning making not being something happening only within the subject, but also something that is happening in interaction with the subject. In essence, these approaches provide for a mechanism in which the subject shapes (to some small degree) their social environment. A specific social theory, such as affect control theory or identity theory, might specify internal mechanisms by which the social actor attempts to internalize meaning that is created around them. The problem with that approach is that it assumes a homogeneous societal environment, or subjects that are interested in conforming.

    One of the most striking differences between intersectionality and assemblages seems to be in degree to which corporeality matters. The discourse of intersectionality has been artificially confined to observing the intersection of race and gender, specifically in observing the political identity of women of color.  This limit is reflective of its original purpose as a tool for decentering identity and its function of revoking significance of labels.  The assemblage de-privileges corporeality. In moving beyond corporeality it is possible to step away from an entirely subjective conceptualization of identity and begin considering aspects of agency.

    A problem that I observe in the concept of intersectionality is that it is based on the idea of an intersection, identities combining for an  additive power is demonstrated, usually additive power of discrimination or disenfranchisement. What about identities that emerge and function parallel to each other (exclusive identities that would not be active at the same time)?  Basically intersectionality presents a model in which identities have to all have the same relationship to each other. As Puar points out, intersectionality is a model of static identity that does not account for change or evolution of identity, and perhaps doesn’t create a space in which additional identities can be added.  Assemblages are not conceived as a specific type of relationship and do not give meaning to each identity separately, but instead gives meaning to the combined identity and to the relationships between the individual identities (which might be better termed as “traits” in an assemblage).

    An analogy that comes to mind is from the discipline of chemistry. Intersectionality:Mixture::Assemblage:Solution. Essentially intersectionality is a combined experience in which  individual components can still be drawn out, whereas an assemblage is a cohesive identity wherein the parts of identity are much harder to look at individually. The later would certainly annoy most sociologists as they enjoy being able to draw nice neat categories in which a single trait (or simple pairing of traits) can explain social phenomena. I can think of no better reason to use an assemblage over an intersectional concept of identity.

    Why does it matter how we conceive of identity? If identity is conceived as intersectional, then only the various attributes (mostly corporeal) may compose the identity. The identity is thus rendered as static and can only exist as a finite set of combinations of various recognized identities. Also, there is further limitation on the intersectional variety from external power structures when confronted with these intersectional identities as they will often be reduced to hierarchical binaries. In the hegemonic perspective there does not exist a multitude of races, only white and non-white. While assemblages do not escape hegemonic restrictions or assumptions of identity, it is possible for an assemblage identity to be significantly obfuscated from hegemonic interpretation to be subversively unintelligible and be granted agency outside of that granted to any specific identity.

    Puar, Jasbir K. “I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess”: Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory. Philosophia 2.1 (2012): 49-66.

  • Pop Feminism and the Expansion of White Heterofemininity

    One of the readings for feminist theory this week is a critique of Sheryl Sandberg by bell hooks, Dig Deep: Beyond Lean In. I approach this reading as a very biased reader. I am quite fond of bell hooks as she has always been a sort of “anti-Butler” for me in terms of her style and I am already predisposed to a passionate hatred of mainstream ideologies.

    As hooks points out, one of the key problems of Sandberg’s work is her reliance on an old definition of feminism which is strongly tied to the gender binary and does not allow for other categories of difference or for the potential for intersectional concerns. With the following comment hooks is very clear in her belief regarding the work of feminism:

    “No matter their standpoint, anyone who advocates feminist politics needs to understand the work does not end with the fight for equality of opportunity within existing patriarchal structure.”

    I agree with hooks’ statement almost completely. If feminism is only working to improve the status of one group inside of existing structures, then it really is not doing any work at all. Hegemony needs the structure of patriarchy to function, there have to be power relationships to support its white-supremacist and male-dominant interests. Even if it were possible for women to achieve full equality inside the system, it would remain a constant struggle to maintain that position. The only option is to break patriarchy. I do not agree with the tone taken by hooks as it can be read as an attack on a form of feminism that is not the same as her feminism. While I share her dissatisfaction in the approach taken by Sandberg, I do not believe that discrediting her so directly serves any purpose toward the improvement of feminism.

    If I were evaluating Sandberg’s approach without the guidance of hooks I believe I would find nothing new or noteworthy about it and I may even suggest that Sandberg is taking a pro-capitalist and almost anti-feminist approach to feminism. Sandberg has produced a book of empowerment for women that gives them no real theoretical tools, only a gimmick of “lean in” to encourage the taking of leadership roles in corporate or pseudo-corporate systems. Corporate systems ARE patriarchy and they provide support for the oppression of women and other marginalized groups. Sandberg is profiting from her book, but can it really be helpful for many women or anyone else? Is Sandberg teaching women how to “play male”?

  • Resilience

    In this first attempt at philosophical blogging I will address the recent societal phenomenon of “resilience” as presented by Mark Neocleous in “Resisting Resilience.”  I find the article itself to be a rather unremarkable piece of writing, as it seems to make no attempt at an argument, only presents a number of absurd obsessions around the term “resilience”. The author relates the current uses of the term resilience to the past uses of phrases like “security”. The author also makes a few jabs at the usefulness of resilience as a social framework merely because it is embraced by a few military organizations.

    The problem with resilience that is alluded to in the article is it is a new form of mediocrity that generally encourages a stable constant state of being. I think that the quest for being resilient is a collective fear of change and a desire for a feeling of safety in that nothing will change, but if it ever does it will be possible to quickly get back to that previous state. Unpredictability is a component of life and change happens, so I don’t think that fetishizing the status quo is the best idea. Progress is made through taking risk and looking beyond the current state, not wasting time trying to plan every potential disaster and be constantly prepared to avoid or recover from those disasters.

    One of the areas where I have practical knowledge outside of philosophy (sociology –> social philosophy –> philosophy) is in information systems. Resilience is part of everything from designing a large scale system to selecting a hard drive. In information technology a lot of the factors of resilience are accomplished through redundancy, mostly because its easy to do and relatively inexpensive compared to other ways of recovering from a disaster. A lot can go wrong with technology, starting with the end user (the most likely reason for any disaster) and moving to more external things like power outages, hurricanes or locusts. Resilience (or redundancy) is a major component of the field, with the overall goals of maintaining data integrity and a certain level of “uptime”. A long time ago redundancy and fault tolerance were buzzwords, roughly equivalent to resilience, but now they are traits that are assumed to be goals of every system and every developer. This works well for information technology, for machines that can’t adapt on their own (at least not yet). Humans and societies are not machines and can adapt without any sort of prior preparation. While some level of preparation is good, dedicating a lot of resources and time to the task of maintaining the current status seems wasteful and overall an inhibition to progress (where progress = moving toward personal or societal improvement).