In response to Sabrina’s most recent post about the question of who is to blame in the Octavia Butler works we examined this semester. I want to agree with Sabrina and add on that this has been something I have really struggled with these works. Butler writes novels with no set antagonist to blame. As a reader I was trapped into these loops where I was blaming whomever was easiest. For example, in Clay’s Ark I wanted to blame Eli for spreading the disease even though he was not 100% to blame. When looking back at this novel, when the farm enclave is infected its due to their own mistake of touching Eli while he was injured by their dogs. As a reader my instinct was to interject that Eli still could have told them. But reading that scene again it is clear this is not the case because Eli was so weakened by the attack. Continue reading “Who’s to blame”
Beware the Epistemophilia
Epistemophilia: An excessive love for knowledge.
Water is great! In fact, 55%-60% Of the human body and 71% of the earth is composed of water. Like water anything in moderation, even things that hold a necessity to live is beneficial. However, to look on the other side of the spectrum, an abundance of water, proves have disastrous effects both on the body and ecosystems all over the earth. This same can be applied to other resources like sunshine, rain, wind etc., but also to the human mind, to emotions we experience and actions we partake in. Epistemophilia is when a love for knowledge is approached in an excessive manner and possesses the possibility of causing more damage than good. Interpretation of Octavia Butler’s work then becomes a minefield of epistemophilic traps. Continue reading “Beware the Epistemophilia”
Freud’s Ego and Id in Dawn
Freud states that there is an ego and an id in each person. The ego is what a person believes they are, what decisions they make, and basically our sense of autonomy. The id is our subconscious desires, desires, the things we do without our conscious knowledge. While reading the first parts of Dawn by Butler I came up with kind of a crazy theory. What if Butler has placed the character of Lilith as the ego, and the race of the Extra-terrestrials as the id. For example, Lilith is pretty sure and set in who she is, she believes she makes conscious decisions, and wants to be in control. She isn’t in control though, the Extra-terrestrials are. They make sure she gets full nutrient value (although by the family chapters she’s allowed to choose what to eat), they make decisions about her life (such as changing her chemical compound to open doors), and w Continue reading “Freud’s Ego and Id in Dawn”
be a man
This past week I attended Geneseo’s eighteenth annual cultural harmony week. I participated by attending the screening of a film entitled “The Mask You Live In.” I had previously watched this film in my gender and sexuality course I look last semester with Dr. Scott. Re-watching it gave me the ability to look at the film in a different light. I was able to look at it to notice and learn connections on what brings boys and men together as well as, what binds them. I also noticed what drives boys and men away from girls and women.
The Brown Girl’s Dilemma
Something woke up in me when I read the Contract and Social Change. Not an epiphany, but more of a moment of realization when I read the lines, “In Jamaica, with a different set of racial/color rules, I count as “brown” rather than “black,” since blackness isn’t determined by the “one drop rule” (any black ancestry makes you black) as it is here. So brown constitutes a recognized and relatively privileged social category of their own, intermediate between white and black.”
Harold Washington and Being “Too Fair”
Something that really stood out to me in the podcast we listened to on Friday was the phrase “too fair.” It’s something I’ve been thinking about the past six days because how can anything or anyone be too fair. Too fair is what we should aim for, or least should be the goal on the horizon.
I really liked how the people on the podcast kind of explained being “too fair.” To them Harold Washington was too fair as the mayor because, as the first African-American mayor of Chicago, he didn’t use his power baisley like literally all mayors beforehand did. Instead of giving projects to workers in the African-American community simply because he was apart of his community, he would give jobs to those he saw best fit for them. To me it’s funny that people get angry over situations like that because it’s what we’re, or at least I was, taught in school. The person who does the best should get the job. People’s bias amazes me that way, the fact people decide things based on anything other than that fact.
I wish I had learned about Harold Washington before college. I feel like he should be someone we learn about in high school because for one I had no idea Chicago didn’t have an African-American mayor until the 80’s. The first time they mentioned that it really blew my mind. Thinking about it now after the fact it makes total sense. Seeing as how the civil rights movement took place through the 60’s, and change happens so goddamn slow in this country, that unfortunately it really makes sense that Chicago did not have an African-American mayor till the 80’s. And I hate that it makes sense to me, my least favorite thing about this country is the underlying racism that is always present and always has been present.
Honestly, I think if I had learned about Harold Washington he would have been one of my hero’s. The more I learn about him the more he stands out and this is why admire him so much. In the simplest of terms he didn’t take any bullshit and really did what was right. He was “too fair” and was ridiculed for it but stuck to his guns anyway. We could use more Harold Washington’s in the world, it’s men like him that inspire me to be better and be “too fair.”
Page Requirements in Essays: The Struggle of Creativity within Boundaries
Encountering word minimums or restraints when assigned to write a creative papers is not an uncommon occurrence. Within the academic sphere, writing papers with certain page requirements is a way to not only offer clarity for the student to know the extent of which they should elaborate on their topic, but to offer a means of keeping the different essays produced among a variety of students at similar lengths. Word maximums/minimums are a necessity in order to offer clarity for not only students, but the teachers that have to evaluate the quality of the work and if it met the standards for the assignment.
In other ways, word limits/minimums can be viewed as a necessary evil. When an individual engages in the process of writing a paper, there are various components that they will need to consider. One of the most stressful parts of writing a paper for some students is often the page requirement. From my personal experience, I know that there is a very different type of anxiety that is provoked from a 10 page paper compared to a 4-5 page paper. The very nature of page requirements when writing a creative piece can cause students to feel like they either need to hold back on their ideas or add “fluff” to their points in order to satisfy these arbitrary requirements. In my academic career, I have struggled with formatting my essays in a particular way to be able to efficiently meet page requirements. Some teachers have advised that there should be certain ratios for the number of words in introductions and body paragraphs when taking to account the length of a paper. As a student, these boundaries often inhibit my ability to be creative when I write. There has always been a certain pressure that I cannot keep out of my mind when writing a paper because I am unable to forget that I must say what I need to say within the boundaries of word requirements.
Word requirements are indeed needed when assigning papers to multiple individuals, as seen most commonly in classroom settings. Some people would write about a topic for 2 pages while others would interpret the assignment to need 10 pages or more. In order to keep the amount of work each individual puts into the same assignment fair, the word count must come into play. As much as it can be a burden to write within limits, at the end of the day it is necessary when writing academic papers. Recently when I was assigned to write a paper that had the requirement of being 2 pages single spaced, I was genuinely thrown off. I had not previously come across this type of structure for an analytical paper before in college. I began to feel quite anxious that I would not properly get my point across within these new boundaries and might not meet the expectations of my professor. This nervous feeling provoked me to question the very nature of word requirements in writing essays. I questioned how my behaviors as a writer would change if I never had to work within the parameters of a page limit/minimum. Would I be a stronger writer? Would I be a lazier or more ambitious writer ? Would I be a less anxious writer? As I pondered these possibilities, I asked some of my other English major friends how they felt about constantly dealing with word limits in their classes.
We discussed how when we are given a word maximum that it can inhibit our flow of ideas and the ability to make a clear and coherent thought. For example, if a response paper is assigned to be about 500 words, but the response needs all of the components necessary for clarity in 700 words, how does one properly condense these ideas without sacrificing quality? Contrastingly, if the response could be completed succinctly and thoroughly in 300 words, then why elaborate further when the point has already been made? In this discipline as well as in countless other subject areas, we will frequently encounter page requirements. They are a part of what is necessary for creating assignments that are given to large amounts of students. As a writer, you will encounter many obstacles that make being creative feel quite challenging. It would be odd to go through our academic careers without page requirements for papers being a key component to our writing assignments. Part of what can make writing a strenuous task is the limits that are placed on us and the limits we place on ourselves. Word minimums/maximums are simply another obstacle we will encounter and must conquer as writers.
“Free Will”
Is there such a thing as free will? Octavia Butler’s Fledgling has made me rethink this philosophical debate. Within this work, as those who’ve read it know, the saliva of an Ina bite addicts humans to the Ina’s saliva. This gives the Ina control over the human; however, still allowing the human to make independent decisions. Even without being bitten however, Ina still can influence humans through speech and action. This is no special skill as anyone can do the same regardless of how effective they are in doing so. People persuade, manipulate, and encourage others into doing various actions both intentionally and unintentionally. This mental effect people have on one another is called influence. Continue reading ““Free Will””
Inherent Societal Non-Consent and Identity
The social contract we, as humans born into a Lockean society, live through is inherently non-consensual. Before birth, society has already established this social contract that we do not agree to until we become cognizant of said social contract—for some, this may be in high school and for others college. The assumption I just made was also made through a privileged power structure—there are many people living in our society today that have not attended high school or have had a formal secondary where they would have come in contact with the social contract—and they may not be educated on theories by Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, or other “Enlightenment” thinkers. I put “Enlightenment” in quotes because many of those authors may not explicitly outline the non-consent in their theories—what are they actually enlightening for us? Regardless of this, we are not consenting to live under this social contract until we are old enough to understand it, and by then I think for many of us (at least for me, when I first encountered this in high school) the social contract is taught as a fact/founding principle of this country that we just accept. There is a compulsory agreeance in the non-consensual social contract. Personally, this comes across to me as propaganda—we are led to blindly elevate the social contract as the ultimate form of democracy—and have even fought wars and instilled political figures to further our own “democratic” political agenda.
In the handout from class today (October 16th) the section on Rousseau reads “[s]ome human beings come to dominate others, denying them the equality they enjoyed in the state of nature” (Mills) (emphasis is mine). This brought questions to my mind of language and power structures. Are we separated from animals (and the state of nature) by our ability to use complex language? In our current state, we cannot exist in a system outside of language, and even in theoretical arguments about such we still use language to construct them. Language and power structures/inequalities play on each other and are deeply intertwined—by nature itself, the power structures we spout everyday would then be nonconsensual as well, because we use coded language without explicitly being cognizant or agreeing to these power structures.
My point in saying this is that all of the things we are born into, socialized to believe/perform, etc.—all are non-consensual. There is compulsory masculinity and femininity, compulsory heterosexuality, compulsory ethnic and race identity, compulsory gender identity, compulsory class, etc. This is not to say that we can’t push back against this, and this is perhaps what Butler is getting at. Maybe Butler is trying to show us the inevitability of non-consent in the society we live in today, but in a more idealized society, we might not have to be born into all of this non-consent. That being said, being born in and of itself is inherently non-consensual, and language itself, the tool we use for communication, is rife with inequalities. Maybe the point is that we can’t completely free ourselves from non-consent, but we can do our best to mitigate it.
Some Brief Research on Octavia Butler
I have finally made the time to do a bit of research on the life of Octavia Butler. In this post I wish to share some of the insight I have gained as to who she was as a person, so that we may gain a better understanding of her writing through this lens. Continue reading “Some Brief Research on Octavia Butler”