everything is everything

In M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang explores power and prejudice of nationality, culture, race, gender, and sex. He never tries to create a hierarchy, order, or separation of these issues: they are constantly interweaving. The West perceives Asian culture as feminine, thus perceives Asian nations as feminine and able to be (even desiring to be) dominated. The West considers Asian men inferior because they are feminine. Asian women are considered submissive because they are women, and because they are Asian. Rene’s sexual “conquest” makes him seem a man of knowledge and power for political “conquest.” Constantly Hwang inverts these prejudices and reverses the power dynamic, but he never separates them.

There is interconnectedness of all things. In our nation, we can’t separate the problems of poverty from the problems of race, we can’t prioritize eliminating sexism over eliminating racism or vice versa, and we can’t separate the nature of power from money, gender, or race.

And I do not make the heavy moral separation between types of violence. I see relationships between terrorism and war, between individual violent acts and terrorism, between war and individual violent acts.

And I don’t see the murders at Virginia Tech as entirely separate from any of these. We must always abhor violence. We should work to eliminate war in any way, in the same way we should work to eliminate domestic violence in any way. We should work to eliminate terrorism and crime and state-sponsored torture and all of it. I do not separate vegetarianism entirely from pacifism: our violence against animals may be tied into our violence against people.

The shootings at Va Tech should rightly fill us with sadness and horror. So too should all violence fill us with horror.

Scattered thoughts of pain

We’re all at the mercy of thieves and murderers. We walk about our lives, but there’s really no defending ourselves; at any random moment, we could be killed by the chaotic actions of somebody with a gun. That’s a lesson on mortality we never really accept but is true nonetheless.

I’ve always believed universities to be a special, unique, hidden chunk of civilization. It’s where social movements, from the Reformation that started in 1517 to the major social evolution that took place in the 1960s. Universities have produced the best and brightest ideas and people of civilization, and universities have maintained, protected, and rebirthed the great ideas of our culture. It is where our great leaps in science, in religion, in ideas, begin. Universities are a place for youth, for hope. Universities are for people willing to devote their lives to ideas. Universities are places of progress, of openness, of free speech, of discourse, dialogue, conversation. But whatever ideal role universities may hold in civilization, it still exists within this messy civilization. In Paradise Lost, Lucifer and the demons discover and utilize gunpowder. Milton wasn’t far off.

We should always respond to violence with horror. Bloodshed should always make us cringe. When we stop wincing at the suffering humans inflict on each other, we lose something of our humanity. And when that violence becomes so clearly senseless, when the chaotic random chancy nature of violence comes so close, so desperately close…there aren’t even words for these feelings.

All the debating and moral wrestling of last week over Imus, rappers, and words seems so silly now. Nobody was hurt. Now, when we shift our attention to the real, horrific blood and bones of death and violence and suffering, concern over words seems futile. It still matters; for many of us, most of us, almost all of us, words are the stuff by which we live. We devote our attention to sports; we blog about amusement; we dissect syntax and word choice. It’s all worth something, I believe, but let’s always know that it means less than other things.

There’s a lazy inefficiency to a campus. There’s nothing in the world like a college campus. And to have it marred by such massive violence just causes a deep ache. And many of us that spend much time on campuses recognize that there but by the grace of God goes us.

I just can’t imagine the pain being experienced by the friends and families of the murdered students at Va. Tech. For right now, I’m not sure I want to imagine it; for right now, that limitation to my imagination is suiting me fine. I can’t stomach the loss of all these young people, blithely going to class, bored or indifferent or on fire for learning, whatever it may be, cut down. Removed from human affairs. Their presences suddenly and violently obliterated. We hope, of course, that they are somewhere else, that their souls have life beyond this veil of tears. We hope that those souls weren’t permanently destroyed. And we weep for those classmates, those teachers, those colleagues, those friends, those parents and brothers and sisters. There are all sorts of ritual phrases that people utter in these times. But ritual words, while often hollow, are often full to bursting with emotions.

But this stuff still matters. This devotion to ideas, this study of human affairs, this quest for understanding of humanity and the cosmos, this devotion to language, it still matters. In the face of this tragedy, a tragedy occurring in the very cradle of ideas, we have to remember that. To make sense of this, to prevent this, to know what this means, still matters. That young students can be brutally killed even in these places where words are studied and science advances and everything is open to civil, honest, rational debate, scars. Universities, the bastions of reason and inquiry, are made up of the people, not the buildings. And those people, flesh and blood and bone, are subject to the slings and arrows that all people of flesh and blood and bone are subject to.

Merger

Like the ABA and the NBA, this blog has merged with Pacifist Viking.

This blog sucks

Rereading a lot of old posts, I'm depressed. On the one hand, I think, "I used to think this way, with such overflowing energy. What happened?" On the other hand, I think, "The things I wrote before that I thought were good were really lousy."

I hate this blog. I am not deleting it because I have links on the side that I use to get to interesting things. But this site, for all intents and purposes, is dead.

Hiatus

I'm considering this project a failure. I had two goals in creating this blog.

1. Find a place to start dialogue about literature and theory. This was a failure--it has never turned into a place of dialogue. The PV blog has had more intellectual dialogue than this one, and even the stupid Sven blog has found a niche.

2. Find a place to express my ideas about literature and theory. Well, that's what it was, even with very few readers. But I haven't written a post that really interested me in months.

I'm going on hiatus here. Rob still has access and can write if he wants to. Soon I'll put together a post that will link to my favorite essays I've written.

Smell you later.

This is the end...

I'm seriously considering deleting this blog. Destroying it, blowing it up for all-time. I would probably copy some of my favorite "essays" I've written, but that's it. I still need a place to express ideas of a literary nature--but I'm finding ways to do so in other venues. The hell with it. I think I may have said all I really have to say in this spot.

I'll give the next 48 hours for anybody to convince me I shouldn't.

I could always just go on hiatus and leave this here...but that's so unfulfilling.

Should this be the end of Costanza Book Club?

Here's what I'd probably do: I'd go through and delete most of the posts, leaving just my favorite ones up here as a sort of database of my ideas.

Being Vegan

Frankly, I wish I had never had a moral thought in my life. Oh, what pleasures I could experience.

But once I reached the conclusion that I shouldn't eat animals, it seemed there was little choice but to go a step further. For me, the line between imprisoning, mutilating, and torturing a chicken for its wings and imprisoning, mutilating, and torturing a chicken for its eggs is a very thin line. However, I encourage others never to become vegan. Why? Because I like my sense of moral superiority. Never underestimate the value of a sense of moral superiority--it can get you through a lot of tough times.

But the difference in difficulty between being a vegetarian or a meat-eater and between being a vegan or a vegetarian is quite great. I can't even have cheese, which is torquing me off like nothing else (I could have soy cheese--unfortunately, in this area all the soy cheese I've found contains milk casein, making it a waste for a vegan. There is vegan-friendly rice and soy cheese--I just can't find it around here. But the quest never ends. It's not meat that makes me wish I weren't vegan--it is definitely cheese. Oh, for a slice of pizza! You just never realize how intrical cheese is to a good meal). As a vegetarian, you know what options are available to you; as a vegan, you always have to look closer and rarely can assume. At any restaurant, there will be options (or easy alterations) for a vegetarian; for a vegan, those options are much more limited.

No regrets--this is the life I've chosen. And I'm losing weight (which should go a lot better in two weeks when my load drops down and I can get exercising again). I feel good about my lifestyle choice and believe I can continue to maintain it (I'm almost at two months here--if I can just find some acceptable soy cheese, I'll fall over with joy).

link

"Child-Safety Experts Call For Restrictions On Childhood Imagination" (the Onion)

Stop Martin Scorcese!

I watched The Departed last night. Scorcese is clearly one of the great movie directors (not necessarily evident from this film, but from his career). But some studio executive somewhere needs to reign him in.

Somebody could let him know that not every movie has to clock over two and a half hours. In fact, a movie might be BETTER if you are able to cut out some unnecessary material, making it tighter. Instead his (very good) movies rattle onward, longer and longer, hurting the overall film quality and experience.

Stop Martin Scorcese!

Do I even know what is out there? Rambing thoughts on gender, perception, feminism, and idealism

I've recently come to realize I live in an idealized world when it comes to gender. It all should have been clear to me before, and when I look back, of course it was there all along, but still, i've got a new realization.

I have an idealized view: I tend to think of men and women equally, think concepts like "battle of the sexes" have been abandoned decades ago, and assume most of society thinks the same way. Now, looking back, how I thought the rest of society was thinking this way is a mystery to me.

Perhaps as an English student with a B.S. and and M.A., the concept of feminism has been so internalized in my mind that I accept its premises without thinking. I accept that differences between men and women are largely socially constructed (not that there aren't biologically inherent differences, of course, but that how we understand roles for men and women, and acceptable behavior and appearance for men and women, is entirely socially constructed). I work in a field with a generally progressive atmosphere and the strong presense of women in leadership positions. I am married to a strong feminist and we don't act like some jobs are for me and some jobs are for her, except to the extent that we actually apportion out jobs. Not that we don't act different, and not that we aren't influenced by both our biology and our existence in a society with particular roles, portrayals, and perceptions for 26 years, but that we don't fully accept them. We're aware, we analyze. And most of my friends and acquaintances, men and women, are progressive people who are conscious and aware of gender stereotypes and don't usually engage in them.

Equality for men and women is one of my strong and accepted values. The avoidance of stereotyping men or women is another. The freedom to be what one desires, not what one is told by society is acceptable for a specific gender role, is another. I feel fairly comfortable calling myself a feminist.

At the same time, I have recognized that the world doesn't work entirely this way. Every standup comedian falls back on his/her "men and women are so different" schticks with the same jokes about toilet seats. I know a guy that doesn't want to be seen holding his wife's purse (I wonder what he thinks will happen. Will people see that and forget he's a man? Will they think he's gay? What on earth is possibly the concern?). I knew a person who thought there was something inherently different between men and women that prevented women from really understanding football (seriously). But...I thought this was an old-fashioned idea. I thought the majority had moved past it. I thought most progressive people shunned such barbarian concepts as "battle of the sexes" or traditional gender roles. But how could that be? I'm AWARE that most people in society have these backward views that I specifically measure myself against...and at the same time I thought that most people in society had moved past these views.

So what are people out there thinking? When I hear cliched arguments, comments, discussions, or conversations about what movies men/women like or don't like, I'm bored by the predictability and assume the speakers need to move on. But this isn't the case. I laugh at sitcoms and their conventional gender roles and stereotypes (I often talk about how in sitcom marriages, the husband gets to act like an irresponsible adolescent while the wife needs to be responsible, so that the relationship is more of a son to mother relationship than a husband to wife peer relationship), but yet I thought most people didn't think this way? These sitcoms work because the majority accepts these stereotypes. I watch them with self-aware and critical perception, not accepting the premises even as I might laugh at the show. But most people ARE accepting the premise. I talk about how in commercials there are the strictest of the strict traditional, conventional roles. I criticize how advertisements portray the traditional and accepted roles of men and women. And I talk about how these portrayals and representations influence us as we grow up.

So, I see now I've been living somewhat blindly in an idealized world, even while aware that I wasn't, and even while being self-aware, critical, and conscious of just what was going on and how it was affecting me and others.

So there: I promised rambling, and I gave you rambling.

Links and the Business

Today I'm getting ready to teach William Faulkner's "Barn Burning," a masterpiece of inner conflict. Here's a list of tensions I came up with in this short story:
--obligations of Law, Right, Family
--Free Will v. Biology/Fate/Determinism
--Class
--Peace v. Conflict
--Family v. Others
--Self
--Adult Sarty v. Boy Sarty
--Family v. Sarty
--Time
--Future
--Chaos v. Order

One of my favorite passages in all of literature comes from this story:

"this the old habit, the old blood which he had not been permitted to choose for himself, which had been bequeathed him willy nilly and which had run for so long (and who knew where, battening on what of outrage and savagery and lust) before it came to him. I could keep on, he thought. I could run on and on and never look back, never need to see his face again. Only I can't, I can't..."

Now some links.

A few comments on The Glass Menagerie at the the Guthrie.

Some comments on Robert Frost's poetry

My own comments on an A.E. Housman poem at a different blog.

Poetry and Life

"What W.B. Yeats's 'Second Coming' Really Says About the Iraq War" by Adam Cohen