The Prose of Counter-Insurgency

I have to say that this article is very well written. The first sentence right away caught my attention because it presented the problem at hand in a very clear manner. Just from that sentence we know that the problem to be discussed a peasant would have to break a list of codes in order to rise for his rights. “For his subalternity was materialized by the structure of property, institutionalized by law, sanctified by religion and made tolerable- and even desirable- by tradition” (p. 45).

The first thing that came to my mind when I read this was the recent events in Saudi Arabia, where when the people thought of rising in a revolt (and there were few protests that happened) they were threatened to be put in prison (or worse), to have their properties taken away, losing their jobs, and of course the so called religious scholar of Saudi said it is against religion to go on with the protests. Exactly the way Guha explains about the materialization of subalternity. (In case you guys are wondering, it worked. Not only they stopped the revolts in Saudi, they also sent troops to Bahrain to kill the peaceful protestors there).



I think one of the main aspects of the article is the manipulative description of the people who revolt and of their actions. As the author explains by giving examples of some of the metaphors used to describe these people as: “they break out like thunder storms, heave like earthquakes,
spread like wildfires, infect like epidemics” (p. 46) which clearly gives the sense of a rebellion that is done without thinking, in a very wild and “natural” way (in a negative sense of the word), as uncivilized, more reflexive rather than intentional and conscious.

The author explains the reason why this is the case and how historically this kind of representation of the revolts was possible by talking about the three discourses that are used when talking about these events: primary, secondary and tertiary.
Primary: - almost always official (originated with bureaucrats, soldiers, sleuths, people
who were directly employed by the government, or people not officially working for the
government but with personal interest in supporting the government.
- For administrative use and administrative concern
- Characteristic of immediacy: they were written during or right after the event, and by people involved in it.
Secondary: -uses primary source as material but this material is transformed
- There is considerable time gap between this discourse and the event
- Could be written or taken from writing intended for the public
- It is supposed to be less biased, it has various perspectives, but it is not the case
Tertiary: - “further removed in time” (p. 71)
- It looks at event from the third person perspective
- “work of non-official writers ...or of former officials no longer under any professional obligation” (p. 71)
- “This literature is distinguished by its effort to break away from the code of counterinsurgency. It adopts the insurgent's point of view and regards, with him, as 'fine' what the other side calls 'terrible', and vice versa. It leaves the reader in no doubt that it wants the rebels and not their enemies to win” (p. 72).

p.s. Image 1: Bahrain protestors
Image 2: Saudi troops sent to Bahrain

Edward Said: "Orientalism"

Edward Said’s Orientalism is my favorite reading so far. His arguments are very clear, and he gives various examples, which makes it easy to follow what he is trying to say. Since my presentation tomorrow will be on this reading I will not tell you much about my personal opinion/thoughts, I will leave it for tomorrow and for the discussion. So I’m going to make a brief summary with some of the quotes that I think are important.

Said gives different definitions of Orientalism, he starts off by saying “I shall be calling Orientalism, a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in Eurupean Western experience” (p. 1). What does this mean? Simply put I think what he’s trying to say here is that Orientalism is basically the relative view of the Orient, from the Western point of view. We can say that this notion is a way of defining the self by defining the other. As he goes on to say, “the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West)” (p. 1). Which is really interesting.

Well then the question is what is the Orient, which helps in defining the West? Said’s answer to this is that there are no such things really as the “Orient” and the “Occident”, and that these are “man-made” (p. 5). “The Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West” (p.5).

In section II of the Introduction the author gives three qualifications about Orientalism. To make this brief and clear (since he says them so eloquently) I will quote three sentences that summarize them:
1. “It would be wrong to conclude that the Orient was essentially an idea, of a creation with no corresponding reality” (p. 5)
2. “ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied …the relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony” (p. 5)
(The second part of point 2 seems very important in the discussion.)
3. “Orientalism is more particularly valuable as a sign of European-Atlantic power over the Orient than it is as a veridic discourse about the Orient” (p. 6)

Said talks about three aspects of his contemporary reality, which are:
1. The distinction between pure and political knowledge. I will go into this section in detail for my presentation tomorrow because I found it very important specially for students of literature.
2. The methodological question. In this section he talks about the difficulty of approaching the question of Orientalism and its study, the method of doing so.
3. The personal dimension. Which to me seemed really important because often I’m told that when it comes to academic work I need to completely leave out anything that is personal (even if I have academic backing). So you can imagine how happy I was seeing that Said specifically speaks about the personal dimension of his study and I would like to quote that Said quotes from Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks “ ‘The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is ‘knowing thyself’ as a product of the historical process to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory…therefore it is imperative at the outset to compile such an inventory” (p. 25)

Alright, I think as a simple introductory summery this should be enough for now. And hopefully tomorrow we’ll have more of a discussion.

hooks' "Is Paris Burning?"

I have a hard time understanding, or accepting the claim that transvestism is subversive. Because to me, if a woman had to dress like a man thinking that she would gain power and “cross from the world of powerlessness into a world of privilege” (p. 145) then she didn’t really gain that power and privilege, not even temporarily because she is accepting the norms that were put in place: that the world of women=powerlessness, the world of men=privilege. So I see it more as giving in to these norms, and changing her own identity. Now if it is done just because of personal taste or for other reasons it’s different, I just don’t agree that a woman dressing like men to gain power would ever gain power just by transvestism.

It is interesting that she would consider transvestism of a woman as subversive but not that of a man. (Although after reading her argument about the comedians I am tempted to agree, I’m not completely sure though).
The author talks about how “many black comedians appearing on television screens for the first time included as part of their acts impersonations of black women” (p.146) as insulting to black women because they make her the source of ridicule which serves a misogynist society as well as the racist one. This point really caught my attentions that something like comedy, which can often be viewed or considered as ‘innocent’ can be full of meaning and messages, negative of course in this case.
As I was comparing this with the female transvestism, at the end of this section she mentions that this male transvestism “ were never subversive; they helped sustain sexism and racism” (p. 146)

One transvestism is empowering, the other degrading, sexist and racist?
It’s an interesting point of view,but I’m not quite sure what I think of the second passage, that’s why I thought I’d share to see what everyone else thinks.

Rhetoric as Philosophy

I really liked Grassi’s article “Rhetoric as Philosophy” because it reminded me of a philosophy logic course which I took in my undergrad years of exploration. I think to summarize the article in a few words (especially that I will be presenting the article and I don’t want to say too much already) I would say that this article is a response to the idea that “Theoretical thinking, as a rational process, excludes every rhetorical element because pathetic influences-the influences of feeling-disturb the clarity of rational thought” (p. 18). Grasso clearly questions this idea by bringing proofs from literary and philosophical texts, as Plato, and at the end he suggests that there is a unity between the rhetoric and philosophy and that the two go hand in hand.

Here are some thoughts that I have about some passages of the article. In the section “Cassandra’s Tragic Movement from Rhetoric to Rationality”, although the argument was clear enough, I thought that the demonstration of the article was not strong enough because it needed previous knowledge of the story and the text, if one does not have any idea about the first section in which Cassandra is in the “semantic language” it would be really hard to understand what the author means by that. For example in the 3rd paragraph of page 22 it is said that “Cassandra does not hear the words of the Chorus; she repeats her invocation (v. 1076), and again the Chorus reacts in a rational manner (v. 1078)”. Maybe if the author had included these passages briefly it would have given a clearer idea of the argument to a reader who has not read this text.

Basically the reader has to take the author’s word for the arguments made in this section, and is unable to do her/his own analysis of the literary passage. However, I have to admit that despite this, the argument was clear enough and I knew what Grassi was trying to prove.

In the other sections, in the other hand we have the ability to do our own thinking about the passages that are used as support for the main argument, as is the case in the section “Plato’s Union of Knowledge and Passion”.
All in all it was a good article, interesting topic (I love philosophy so anything related to it fascinates me), and clear arguments.

We’ll see if my presentation tomorrow will demonstrate my appreciation of this reading :)

Rhetoric as Philosophy

I really liked Grassi’s article “Rhetoric as Philosophy” because it reminded me of a philosophy logic course which I took in my undergrad years of exploration. I think to summarize the article in a few words (especially that I will be presenting the article and I don’t want to say too much already) I would say that this article is a response to the idea that “Theoretical thinking, as a rational process, excludes every rhetorical element because pathetic influences-the influences of feeling-disturb the clarity of rational thought” (p. 18). Grasso clearly questions this idea by bringing proofs from literary and philosophical texts, as Plato, and at the end he suggests that there is a unity between the rhetoric and philosophy and that the two go hand in hand.
Here are some thoughts that I have about some passages of the article. In the section “Cassandra’s Tragic Movement from Rhetoric to Rationality”, although the argument was clear enough, I thought that the demonstration of the article was not strong enough because it needed previous knowledge of the story and the text, if one does not have any idea about the first section in which Cassandra is in the “semantic language” it would be really hard to understand what the author means by that. For example in the 3rd paragraph of page 22 it is said that “Cassandra does not hear the words of the Chorus; she repeats her invocation (v. 1076), and again the Chorus reacts in a rational manner (v. 1078)”. Maybe if the author had included these passages briefly it would have given a clearer idea of the argument to a reader who has not read this text.
Basically the reader has to take the author’s word for the arguments made in this section, and is unable to do her/his own analysis of the literary passage. However, I have to admit that despite this, the argument was clear enough and I knew what Grassi was trying to prove.
In the other sections, in the other hand we have the ability to do our own thinking about the passages that are used as support for the main argument, as is the case in the section “Plato’s Union of Knowledge and Passion”.
All in all it was a good article, interesting topic (I love philosophy so anything related to it fascinates me), and clear arguments.
We’ll see if my presentation tomorrow will demonstrate my appreciation of this reading :)

Benjamin "The Work of Art..."

Here are some quotes that I thought were important to look at in the text:

“With the concept of "artistic volition," Riegl sought to show how art tracked major shifts in the structure and attitudes of collectives: societies, races, ethnic groups, and so on. Kunstwollen is the artistic projection of a collective intention.” (p. 10)

What I understand from this is that one of effective ways to study culture is to study its art because it the art you can see all the major changes or developments. However, I don’t fully grasp the meaning of the last sentence in the passage. What does the “collective intention” refer to exactly?

“Man is, however, not solely a being who takes in impressions through the senses -he is not only passive -but also a desiring- that is, an active -being, who will interpret the world as it reveals itself to his desire (which changes according to race, place, and time). " (p. 10)

What I understand from Benjamin’s theory is that the works of art are not merely a window to the culture at the period of time when they were created, but rather they could be eye openers to the culture in the present historical era and in understanding our culture today. The reason for this is that works of art “play an import role in shaping the human sensory capacity” (p. 10) because according to him our world can best be described with the term “phantasmagoria” which is the reason for which humans are unable to perceive and understand their own world.

I’m not sure if I have the right impression from this reading, but I got the sense that Benjamin has an appreciation for the traditional art which cannot be replicated like the current art (which can easily be replicated technologically) when he speaks of the authenticity. While at the same time showing the advantages of the art which is created with technology, because it can capture/have aspects which are not possible to attain with the traditional ways of creating art. “Technological reproduction can place the copy of the original in situations which the original itself cannot attain” (p. 21).

Did I get this right? I have to admit some parts of the reading were a bit confusing for me.

Pleasure, Reality or both? "Beyond the Pleasure Principle"

So far in the readings that we have done in this class this is one of the most interesting for me. The “pleasure principle” in itself, it’s relation to the “reality principal” and to the phenomena of repressed memory is absolutely fascinating for me.

Let me share more specific examples from the text. One of the points that caught my attention in part one of the text, where we have the idea that when one is powerless in a certain situation, in other words when one is passive, repeating the experience in a way that puts the person in an active position is in itself a source of pleasure. The author derives this idea from the child’s tendency to play the game of making his toys “gone” and then having them back, imitating the disappearance of his mother, over which he has no control, by throwing his toys away, going from passive to active. So despite the connection of this game with an unpleasant experience, being in control brings a sense of pleasure to the child. Those of us who are control freaks can relate I guess :)

Another passage that surprised me was where Freud suggests that sometimes children, who are to my understanding for him the representation of the adults, tend to repeat terrifying experiences to which they were subjected, as an operation or a visit to the doctor, but they change the situation around by becoming the perpetrator of the action, as if revenging themselves “on a substitute” (p. 170). This idea seemed sadistic to me, and I would like to believe that it is not true. I think we can say that the reason why a child might repeat such a game comes from the fascination that they have from the experience or because the experience left a strong impression on them. Also if what he is saying is true then the child who went to the doctor or had an operation should always be the “doctor” in the game and should not accept to be the “sick” person. Usually children take turns so I don’t think that’s the case. I just can’t really agree completely on his suggestion that they are trying to take revenge on a substitute.

When speaking about the “compulsion to repeat” the author states that “there really does exist in the mind a compulsion to repeat which overrides the pleasure principle” (p. 173). This statement can be puzzling, because why would one want to repeat an experience that brings them suffering and which is unpleasant? However, at the same time it makes sense because often there is a need for repetition or remembrance in order to get over the unpleasant experience. This is where the “reality principle” is stronger that the “pleasure principle”. We can also conclude, from this text that compulsion to repeat does not necessarily go against the “pleasure principle” because it is something that people sometimes enjoy. I’m not sure if this part is clear enough, in my head it makes sense but it’s a bit hard to explain. Feel free to ask what I’m trying to say if you find it confusing.