Final Thoughts… not complete yet
This class has been really reflective for me. I think I’ve thought long and hard about youth media, about education, about peace and justice and hope. And of course about the body and emobodiment and space. It’s been so deeply connected to stuff I have been reading about connectivity and space and networks, so I’ve been trying to think about it that way. I think I’ll write this last blog in the style of Shaviro, who wrote “Connected” this entire book in fragments, like tiny moments and peices of information that are very related at the core of their being but whose existence is only flickering… Pulled from the backlogged blogs are in italics. Written in real time now is not in italics. I have highlighted moments, encounters, words that seem to hold potential in the sense of Tsing’s globalism, and in Hayles’ embodiment, hooks’ simple writing Giroux’s and Freire’s words. Trying to make sense of a semester in a blog written in the fragmented-spiritual-hopeful-painful-flickering way we exist….
(11/20) its still important to think about how we represent. Its still important to wonder whether a film is made through exploitation or relationships of learning and respect. Race, gender, sexuality, eating the other, hooks, Mohanty and a hundred others weigh in on this. Youth need to be part of the debate. But how is it different when you make a film about someone you don’t know or understand, perhaps one that objectifies and then put it on YouTube, allowing it to enter into a stream of particpation and viewing that could catapult its being into nothingness or into ciruculation through the traces of force?
(11/21, SL blog)“The body is both the persistant site of self recognition and the thing tht will always betray you. It dreams of its own redemotion and knows better” (Kathleen Stewart, 1036)
(11/20 unpublished draft) He said I didn’t take it seriously, like I needed to focus more. As though I could have gotten anything out of it when she lie there so still and bleeping. Like a ghost without a soul. Just a body. Gone, but they keep her little body breathing, like she can become a breathing machine. And the kids don’t even know what to do. Just swear and act tough. I might as well too. Who the fuck cares about anything when such a simple thing like keeping a alive bright girl engaged can’t even happen? Why would we make a documentary about something we don’t care about when such turmoil tuggs at our souls, when a grandmother starts to talk about donating organs? I’m for it in life, but seeing her like that, I don’t know how I could even imagine someone cutting her open even more, tearing her body into peices. I want her to be whole, to be full of life. Maybe she’ll come back. Its only been a day.
(11/21, SL blog) “The proliferating cultures of the body spin madly around the palpable promise that fears and pleasures and forays into the world can be literally made vital all-consuming passions” (Kathleen Stewart, 1039)
(12/5, SL Blog) These new niches of existence and of being release potential for our learning about each other in new embodied forms. This is very important because in what bell hooks refers to as a “racist capitalist hetero-sexist patriarchy,” the lines of division between different kinds of people with different kinds of bodies are highly threatening and destructive in the pursuit of knowledge.
Power is so loaded. Bringing me back to struggle. To cold hard tile floor green beneath my back and my arms pinned by hands bigger than my own. Power is the woman named Elsa riding on a motorcycle through the mountains of the DR, organizing left and right, educating, instilling hope and bringing paint. Encouraging, hugging. Thats power. Power is about organs and blood pulses and a terrifying fear so deep it freezes your stomach and your throat. Power is Elsa and Laura cooking Its about no one hearing tears, and everyone coming together in a room to agree, to coalesce, to hope and to yearn. Its brilliant paint on the wooden frame of the casa club. And brilliant blood from my body on the green tile floor. Its so loaded with hope and tragedy. Its so filled with emotion. And so guarded so no one knows deep inside this word lies life and pain and eagerness and sheer joy and utter disbeleif. How can one word confuse me so, leading us in myriad of circles that do not connect? Or do they?
(11/12) So video might overshoot. It might aim to save the world, spark enlightenment, shift visions and empower the communities and people of the world to be more than is realistic. Sometimes we imagine romantic workings, idealized romantiscized moments in video. We imagine our youth saving the world. I am definitley guilty here. I often think video can catapult us into a new youth led world order, though I am even more often shocked by the reality of working with youth in video- shot because of my expectations they will catapult us into that new world order. Its a fascinting tug of war. With these kind of dreams, one is forced to try to align resources- individuals, institutions, etc. And then comes the moment where the stars align, everyone is on the same page, and visions happen. And almost, almost, the youth reach that moment where they can save the world. And so we keep beleiving.
Because there is force. We can believe because there are forces. I’m not convinced this is new with new media. Of course we are all kind of interpollated, stuck into each other, regulating our beings and each others’ beings. Its not like we’ve ever existed in a vaccum. New media makes the virtual more visible. We’re shocked we’re connected. Our livelihoods our traces. Our youth are monitored. I can direct a camera into your window by accessing a certain website with cameras on almsot every corner of every street. I can know where you are, and your actions ripple out to me.
(11/20) When you make a beautiful piece of art, or write about love and care and hope, or make a stunning documentary like “The House is Black,” who sees, why do they see, and where- or what- is the purpose? Is the purpose of research that is experimental to move academia in new ways? Is moving academia to reconsider knowledge a valid purpose for academic research? Does moving academia in new ways result in moving society and the world in new ways?
Freire wants the waves to be as big as the ripples. For there to be such hope in the clear blue waters that pebbles of thought, mini little seeds of ideas are so clear and hopeful and imaginative that you can see them. They don’t get lost in murkiness, and every drop into the pool is valuable, making ripples until we can no longer feel them, but somewhere else they are felt. Hasn’t it always been so? Or are we instead corrupting the ripples, turning them into waves theat stirr and murky the water, making us unable to find each other? Pinning us down on hard green tile. Hoping but its cold. So cold. And the pain is peircing.
I want to hope for it. I want to continue to have this space. I want to be in this moment of reverie, where I get to simply listen to the goodness that comes of people thinking and listening and imagining. What happens when we can actually engage? Its hopeful.
It coexists. It has to. Hopefullness mingles with hurt and sadness, like it can only grow and strengthen a resolve to beleive. A last resort, you have to beleive in something. I refuse to beleive this is all there is. I refuse to beleive blood can be drawn so simply. That fear can so paralyze me. Me! That this could happen to the girls I love so dearly, that this has happened to those girls. A human right, I guess. But I’m skeptical because its so dehumanizing. To a point where there’s no language to talk about it.
(10/28) “When women separate (withdraw, break out, regroup, transcend, shove aside, step outside, migrate, say no) we are simaltaneously controlling access and definition. We are doubly insubordinate, since neither of these is permitted. And access and defintion are fundamental ingredients in the alchemy of power, so we are doubly and radically insubordinate” (Kearny, 128)
Let it go. It has nothing to do with academics. Stop spiraling everything back to it.
(10/18) Then we did circles of my multicultural self with a twist- only choosing things- and they could be senses, body parts, identities, ideas, passions- that we were really proud of to put into our circles, represented by four rocks. Then they shared them, and told a partner why they were proud of that circle-rock, what it meant to them.They chose things for their circles unlike other youth I have done this activity with. Often, youth choose race, gender, sex, family, place, space, hobbies. These girls did also, but they did so in a way that sort of involved sensing of the world, which I think had to do with the way the activity was introduced.
I’m so often doing a thousand things…
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