Just Looking ...

I wish I didn't have so much over these past few weeks otherwise this class and the blog function are a wonderful way to engage with so much of what prof. Kalmar says in class. Its familiar but not so much at the same time. I'm a good rambler so I'll do that. I enjoyed the theory portion of the class than the 2nd half - though it was interesting overall to see how these theories worked.

One class that stood out for me was the one on the Afro-Diaspora and Africans - I have a background in post-colonial/colonial theory so I was looking forward to it. Likewise, I did my paper on the impact of hip hop on black femininity in the U.S. In lieu of 'black' as a constructed category something that I always come back to in my essays and the things I read is NO ONE CARES IF RACE IS CONSTRUCTED! At least in how we use these racial categories, as much as I am committed to theory (make Homi Bhabha your hommie!), if you talk to people about these ideas of permeable racial categories and even new ones - see New York Times article database and type (Generation Ethnically Ambiguous) these racial markers still stick. So while we know for sure that there's no such thing as 'white' or 'black' (wink wink nudge nudge) we still use them and talk as though we don't care their constructed (AHA! SAVVY REFLEXIVITY IN PLAY).

One of the most prolific and tormented souls to theorize these categories is Frantz Fanon. Now he grew up in France thinking he was 'white' (his father was a descendant of Slaves and his mother was mixed-race - French and Black) and he lived in Martinique, now a former French colony. Trained as a psychologist and familiar with Lacanian psychoanalysis, Fanon treated Algerian soldiers from the Algerian revolution. He learned a couple of lessons which includes (drum roll please) HE'S A BLACK MAN who go figure is on the inside a WHITE MAN! How this happened will be theorized until academics go blue in the face (there's actually some wonderful work by Bhabha in his Location of Culture on Fanon.) Nevertheless, as ordinary as these categories seem to us though we know they shouldn't be, Fanon had a different psychological experience. The Other in his head was black or white (well depends on what the self was at the time I suppose). So he agonizes over this issue, writes his memoirs (Black Skin, White Masks) and revolutionizes de-colonization and the post-colonial imaginary. Now, I'm quite certain that Fanon knew the fragility of these categories, though they are political powerful (how savvy can we really be????).

Tell you the truth, I wish people cared. But theorizing can only get you so far. Some food for thought, I by all outward appearances will be categorized as a 'black' woman (I'm from Djibouti - look it up). I am also by outward appearances a Muslim and a Woman. So let's ground all of this, if I take my hijab off I'm still a Woman and Black. Neither of these I can help, now I'd love to conceptualize myself along different lines but the power and potency of these categories isn't in my hands. I suppose why I find these categories (and stereotypes in general) so troubling is how they manifest themselves. Identifying someone as black means they can potentiallly be called a N*****; likewise many anti-semitic, and islamophobic terms stem from these categories (THIS IS HOW THEY FUNCTION). People don't care how stereotypes get constructed all they care is that they work. You can call 'real' and 'reality' different things but its all the same at the end of the day (side note: If we can only finally get to the 'real' through death - the ultimate real- then how does Zizek know there's a 'real'?).

A friend of mine told me once, regarding all this post-anything stuff I do saying: 'If I shoot you, you bleed, REAL blood'. I'd like to believe I'm not as cynical but if we're going to ground these ideas lets do it in reality! I think alot of what we've been doing in class is especially useful considering its emphasis on ordinary life (well life seems a little less ordinary after this class). And that makes me happy :)