A blog for SUNY Geneseo students and faculty interested in American Studies
Reading Jennifer’s post, I was thinking that maybe I would comment, but I didn’t want to post my own blog post regarding the final. However, I have thought about it and I think that it’s important to get my thoughts out there.
Honestly, I have really struggled with this project. I feel as though everyone else had more intelligent things to say than me, and it has been a exercise in putting some of my thoughts out Continue reading “Final Project”
I have been interested in writing this post for a while now, but life has gotten the best of me. However, I am still interested in looking further into the idea of pheromones. This is in relation to Imago, and I’m hoping to debunk the concept that they might be creepy or predatory.
Here is what interesting information I have found from the Smithsonian’s website :
I, too, like Sandra, was struck by Katie’s post. It got me to thinking whether any of us are really truly autonomous. I would have to say no.
I consider myself to be very self sufficient–I pay for college by myself, I pay rent out of my own pocket every month, I pay for groceries without help from my family, and I even sometimes treat myself to a few new articles of clothing (not without justifying it first: “I’m entering the working world soon! I need nice clothes!”) or a concert ticket. However, I am also bound to this system of autonomy–doesn’t that make me immediately not autonomous? I am not free to do whatever I want with my belongings, or money, or life, really. I am bound to the system. I need to do well in school, because if I don’t, I will have wasted the money I worked so hard to get so that I could attend college. Still, not everyone is this lucky.
I have long found an interest in gender, and the recent conversations in class regarding gender in Butler’s fiction has made me consider the subject even further. For me, and what seems like much of the class, I have struggled in gendering characters that don’t actually possess a gender.
Leading into reading this novel, I was internally struggling with how I was going to get through this class. I am not a fan of science fiction, and the syllabus felt overwhelming, especially when considering the entire class was centered around science fiction novels. However, since the first chapters (Past 1, etc.) I have been extremely interested in the narratives that Butler has created.
I have found myself becoming immersed in the reading, and not wanting to put it down after I had finished the sections assigned for each class. I often found myself conflicted with the ideas of how I felt I should have been feeling based off of the things we discussed in class, such as the concepts of consent and humanity. In a way, I often found myself being disturbed because I was more comfortable with the super-natural beings in the enclave who often defied the laws of consent and “ruined” so many peoples’ lives and I found myself annoyed and uncomfortable with other characters such as Blake. Why am I finding myself being more accepting of these characters that are so destructive in their ways and wishing those who are victims of these people to disappear? I am interested in the ways that Butler’s future novels that we read will lead me to conflicting feelings once again.
My first impressions of this class were clearly wrong, and I’m happy to have found another English class that leads me to think about class discussions and the themes in the books we read long after I have left the class. It also doesn’t hurt that I look forward to reading in between classes.