Alas, it ends.

Blog Prompt 12: Bodies, Difference, & the Politics of Visuality–Course Wrap Up

This course was designed as an interdisciplinary inquiry into the relations between power, visual culture, and embodied difference. We have engaged with a plethora of visual cultural productions stretching across various national and transnational locations that construct bodies through regimes of race, sexuality, gender, nation, and ability/disability. Further, we’ve critically analyzed the pleasures and perils of visuality and visibility. I want to know what you are taking away from this course–what you found most provocative about the course, what visual cultural productions and written texts you found intriguing and why, what topics or texts or cultural productions would you add to the course that we didn’t get a chance to talk about, and what brilliant connections you were excited to see your classmates make in class and/or on this blog?

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I joined the class late and was terrified that, since I had only recently begun (read: not completed) Introduction to Feminist Theory that I was going to be far behind the intellectual level of my classmates. I will admit that the class holds many minds which one may feel intimidated by, but the intimate nature of the class made me feel welcomed regardless. I also found that I was not alone in my duel enrollment.

The first affect that this class had on me was a profound awareness of how I present me body (or how my body is presented). If I wear stripes am I naming myself a deviant of sorts? Is it wrong to wear a “harem” pant? Most of all, the course gave me the tools to begin critiquing daily occurrences in my life on a deeper level. Am I being monitored? When am I being monitored? How is my body perceived by others? While the class certainly brought up more questions than answers, I believe that to be the sign of a worthwhile course. My favorite parts of the course were when we discussed disability, performing the body, organ transplantation, and freak discourse.

The section on disability made me take a look at how I interact with specific people with disabilities. A few years ago I had a small crush on a girl who had a deformed hand. I was too nervous to tell her how interesting her thoughts were…etc. because I was paranoid that she would be paranoid that I was staring at her hand…So instead of getting to know her like the perfectly wonderful human being she was, I ignored her so that I wouldn’t be perceived as being offensive…thereby being offensive. So frequently society imagines disabled people as not having a voice—simply being in need of protection or guidance to what is normal. We are afraid of personalities which can talk back to us—which can challenge our traditional views that we have become so comfortable living in.

Which bring us (out of order, but on topic nonetheless) to freak discourse. It was incredibly fascinating to see how abnormal bodies have been displayed as spectacle. What interested me most here was a return to the idea of looking for the “tell.” As I went through the book of historical medical photographs from the Mutter museum, I felt that instead of looking for the gender tell (where can I find proof that this body is male while appearing womanly or female while appearing manly…etc) I was asked to look (frequently not very hard) for the disease tell. What makes this body strange or queer? What is wrong with this body? What ails this body? Has a doctor fixed it? Is it fixable? Do we now have the technology it would take to cure this abnormal body and allow it to live normally?

This class has also made me acutely aware of how much power and trust society gives to the hospital and medical doctors in general. Critiquing the UPMC website was particularly interesting for me because my dad has worked there my entire life and I have always conflated the two. I perhaps gave the system even more power and trust as in some way it represented him. Through critiquing I was both pleasantly surprised and utterly horrified at how easy it was to pick apart the donor body-based rhetoric used on the website.

Finally, performing the body needs to be mentioned. It was not my favorite unit, but it contains my favorite cultural production. The piece, Untitled, choreographed and danced by Bill T. Jones was spectacular. I still get chills thinking about it.

It has been a wonderful course and has made me incredibly excited to further my studies.

Originally posted 12/7/10:

http://bodiesinvisualculture.blogspot.com/2010/12/alas-it-ends.html

From Mystical to Medical

Blog Post 11: Open Topic–Mütter Museum, Freakshows, Colonial Spectacle

The topic for this response is open so you can write about a topic that you’re most interested in, but your post must engage in some way with the readings, cultural productions, and/or class discussion from this week (Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s chapter “From Wonder to Error–A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity,” the Mütter Museum, medical museums, historical or contemporary “freak shows,” the spectacle of the devalued body, medicine’s visual culture as popular entertainment, legacies of colonialism and world fairs, etc.).

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Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s book “From Wonder to Error—A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity” opens with the line “People who are visually different have always provoked the imaginations of their fellow human beings.” Who counts as being visually different? Is it only the body that is accounted for or do observable abnormal behaviors count towards one’s freakery? Garland-Thomson discusses monsters, dwarfs, albinos, bearded women, conjoined twins and many other abnormal forms that have been recorded as deviations from the normal body. Her focus was on freak shows, so I braced myself for the photograph that we were asked to look at in the book “Mütter Museum Historical Medical Photographs.”

At first there was nothing out of the ordinary—well, in the realm of freaks, anyway. You had your conjoined twins, amputated or otherwise missing limbs, enlarged breasts, extra limbs, a “tail” and some other ailments that did make me a little uneasy. At first I was confused by the lack of separation between the abnormal bodies created by nature and those which were created by accidents in our modern world [missing or malformed limbs versus gunshots leading to amputated (missing) or malformed (awkwardly healed) limbs]. This concern of mine was soundly put to rest when a classmate pointed out that, to the general public, they appear equally “freaky” as we do not get one’s life story by merely gazing at them (despite many failed attempts). As I approached the end of “Mütter Museum Historical Medical Photographs” a smaller section of the book intrigued me. The book had documented psychological disorders. Unlike the bearded lady or the conjoined twins, one could not look upon a picture of a mentally ill patient and know that they are any different even if they are observably different in person. Why would one then record the disorders in a medium that could not fully capture the disorder like photography can (at least to a certain extent) record the physical abnormalities of what the Barnum and Bailey Circus first called “freaks” and then “human curiosities”? (Garland-Thomson 13)

Despite the fact that they were not capitalized on as frequently through freak shows or the circus, those with psychological disorders were still considered to be other and a type of wonderment surrounded them. Schizophrenia and Epilepsy have a shared history in this fashion. Garland-Thomson discusses how freak discourse’s genealogy “can be characterized simply as a movement from a narrative of the marvelous to a narrative of the deviant.” While she discusses physical abnormalities, the path of mystical to medical is shared by mental disorders. In Europe in the middle ages, those with schizophrenia were thought to be possessed by demons and would go through exorcisms—sometimes even therapies which included drilling holes in one’s head in order to release the demons. Because of this link, the symptoms of schizophrenia were conflated with signs of practicing witchcraft or being the victim of another’s evildoing. Epilepsy on the other hand was frequently considered to be possession be a demon or a prophetic power. Many famous religious leaders are thought to have had epilepsy including Mohammad, Moses, and St. Paul. However, with the classification of mental disorders, science proved that these were in fact abnormalities that are observable and recordable through the study of brain function/neuroscience. The cultural difference became that schizophrenia and epilepsy became diseases to be cured through medicine and therapy and knowledge of the disease versus something to be amazed at and ask for the guidance of God.

Where are the freak shows then? How is this freakery being displayed? Why on television of course! With medical dramas like House depicting various types of medical illness for the public to be entertained by, we can still be the nameless and faceless majority looking on at a group of people who will never have a conversation with us and will never talk back. Popular real life documentary show such as Hoarders make one wonder if any of the freak spectacle has actually dissipated or if it has only changed mediums.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAnah0l0rqk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3GiAcD9BfI

www.schizophrenia.com

www.epilepsy.com

 

Thomson, Rosmarie Garland. “Introduction: From Wonder to Error–A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity.” Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. Ed. Rosemarie Garland Thomson. New York: NYU Press, 1996.

Originally posted 11/28/10:

http://bodiesinvisualculture.blogspot.com/2010/11/from-mystical-to-medical.html

But They Told Me it’s a Pipe!

Blog Prompt 10: The Politics of Peering

In “Fetal Exposures: Abortion Politics and Optics of Allusion,” Valerie Hartouni writes, “technologies themselves do not peer; they are instruments and relations that facilitate or obstruct, but above all, contruct ‘peering’…likewise ‘peering’ is not itself a benign, impartial, disinterested, or disembodied activity, but is both mediated and situated within interpretive frameworks, points of view, and sets of purposes” (Hartouni 211). How does this argument relate to the various medical, military, and/or popular imaging technologies that we’ve discussed in class?

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There is a false sense of legitimacy that is socially ingrained in the technologically produced image. Painting and sculpture are not considered by popular culture to display complete accuracy. We believe that photographers (and others who document an aspect of our world through imaging technology) reveal the truth to the viewer and do not have as heavy a hand in manipulating the scene portrayed or the emotional response of the viewer. While not every aspect of every photograph taken has been due to a deliberate intention of the photographer, photography and other imaging technologies are far from void of manipulation.

Valerie Hartouni argues in “Fetal Exposures: Abortion Politics and Optics of Allusion” that “technologies themselves do not peer; they are instruments and relations that facilitate or obstruct, but above all construct ‘peering’…likewise ‘peering’ is not itself a benign, impartial, disinterested, or disembodied activity, but is both mediated and situated within interpretive frameworks, points of view, and sets of purposes” (Hartouri 211)

There is a strong connection between this concept and what Errol Morris argues in his film Standard Operating Procedure. The cameras which documented the acts of torture are not intelligent in that they do not understand what it is that they commit to visual history. The camera does not “peer” at the tortured Iraqi male however the camera is the instrument that facilitates our discussions surrounding the torture at Abu Ghraib as well as obstructs the various possible truths (reality?) at the prison. The way that the photographs are presented to the viewer by the documenter has a huge affect on how the viewer receives each image. As I discussed in a previous blogpost regarding Abu Ghraib, in Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris presents images to the viewer with a white frame against a black background evocative of a scrapbook (read: we are supposed to view these images as a routine part of our soldiers’ trip abroad). This scrapbook is the “interpretive framework” in which our peering takes place. We may peer at the photographs of the soldiers’ lifestyle and think how horrible those people were—but only because we, “mediated and situated” by the photographer (and in Standard Operating Procedure, the director) into a space where outrage and horror are the (perhaps the only) appropriate response.

Appropriate responses are elicited through interactions with imaging technology and the profound “truths” that they expose (and conceal). Hartouni articulates that at one point women who received abortions and did not experience regret or loss were viewed by popular culture as “callous, hard, selfish, capricious, or ‘unwomanly,’ but that this societal view shifted along with abortion discourse surrounding the more readily available technology of the ultrasound. In the late 1980s, women who didn’t have incredibly negative experiences with abortion were now considered to simply be “maternally illiterate or simply ignorant of fetal life.” The appropriate response of wanting to keep one’s baby was thought to be attainable through ultrasound imaging—a woman would see the fetus, recognize it as her legitimate preborn child and decide to not have the abortion. (Hartouni 206) The ultrasound machine does not have the ability to peer, but as with the pictures of Abu Ghraib, the viewer is mediated and situated towards a particular response—even guided step by step. I cannot read an ultrasound image—a doctor would have to tell me where the fetus’s head is—where the fetus’s foot is. I am mediated and situated by society to look at the image and claim it as a child—possibly my child. At every step, imaging technology is used to produce images that are read to the viewer through discursive frameworks surrounding the topic which we believe to be presented to us within the image…but this is not a pipe.

Hartouni, Valerie. “Fetal Exposures: Abortion Politics and Optics of Allusion.” The Visible Woman: Imaging Technologies, Gender, and Science. Eds Paula A. Treichler, Lisa Cartwright, and Constance Penley. New York: NYU Press, 1998. 171-97.

Standard Operating Procedure. Dir. Errol Morris, 2008

 

Also, this reminded me off the discussion we were having in class regarding how women are supposed to just want to be mothers. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJRzBpFjJS8

Originally posted 11/16/10:

http://bodiesinvisualculture.blogspot.com/2010/11/but-they-told-me-its-pipe.html

To Whom Does Hope Belong?

Blog Post 9: Organ Transfer, Biopower, & Economies of Life and Death

Drawing on Nancy Scheper-Hughes’s “Commodity Fetishism in Organs Trafficking” (Body and Society 7.2-3, 2001) and Lesley A. Sharp’s “Strange Harvest” (from Strange Harvest: Organ Transplants, Denatured Bodies, and the Transformed Self), do a critical reading/analysis of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Transplant Services website. What arguments does the website make regarding organ transfer? What bodies, processes, technologies, and questions does it foreground? What bodies, processes, technologies, and questions does it minimize? What ideologies are at work in how it frames  questions of organ transfer as well as what is argues about those questions?

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My first thought when viewing UPMC’s website focusing on organ transplantation was how recipient-oriented the webpage is. I suppose that they assume that most potential people searching their website are potential patients (clients) who are in need of a transplant and not simply giving up an organ out of the good of their own heart. It surprised me (I’m not sure why, actually) that two of the main side tabs are “Financial Considerations” and “International Services.”

Under “Financial Considerations” I was shocked at all of the preliminary hoops that one must jump through to even get consideration for the transplant process—if there is no money (or insurance) then there is no hope, really (the hope that was promised all over the website). Who was the hope promised to? The affluent.

Speaking of which—the majority of the black and brown bodies featured on the site were found in the “International Services” section. The services were not quite up to the Cuban resort (slight exaggeration—but only slight) discussed in Nancy-Hughes’s article “Commodity Fetishism in Organ Trafficking,” however, the services provided to (wealthy) foreigners seeking medical treatment were far beyond any treatment that I have received anywhere. Below is the list of hospitality services posted on the website:

§ arrangements for an interpreter to greet patients and their families at the airport and accompany them to their prearranged housing location

§ assistance with air and ground travel

§ arrangements for accommodations, depending on each patient’s needs — Family House provides convenient, affordable housing for patients and their families traveling to Pittsburgh for treatment of serious illnesses.

§ assistance in planning tours, day trips, and shopping trips as requested

§ reading materials, such as periodicals and books, and videos in each patient’s language

 

To me, it sounds like a pretty fabulous vacation.

 

When discussing donation, the website goes through great pains to present the donor body in a very particular manner. Lesley A. Sharp informs us in “Strange Harvest: Organ Transplants, Denatured Bodies, and The Transformed Self” that kidneys “can be transferred legally and with relative ease from living kin; recent news accounts also indicate a rise in the national incidence of kidney’s offered by friends and even strangers to patients in need. This sort of organ transfer is referred to as living donation…” (Sharp 5) These facts are supported by the UPMC website which under Organ Donation facts lists that “About three-quarters of all live donors are relatives of their recipient, most commonly a brother or sister,” and “The number of unrelated donors has nearly tripled since 1998.” The living donation is where we find the donor body within the webpage. The donor is presented as a hero who gives “hope” and is “life-saving”…and is healthy and happy post-surgery. We, the viewer, are prompted to be an organ donor with phrases such as

“People of all ages and medical histories should consider themselves potential donors. Your medical condition at the time of death will determine what organs and tissue can be donated. Even those who have received an organ transplant themsleves may be an organ donor.”

“You have the power to save lives and improve the quality of life of those in need of any form of transplant.”

What disturbs me most is the lack of information on cadaveric donors (deceased donors) since UPMC tells us that most organ donation comes from cadaveric donors. Sharp would tell us that this is because cadaveric donation “places a heavy emotional toll on all concerned parties because of death’s inevitable presence. Recipients, donor kin, and transplant and procurement professionals alike must make sense of transplantation as a lifesaving technique that nevertheless relies on donors’ deaths and surgical removal of their organs.” (Sharp 15) I have to wonder about what thought process UPMC undertook here. Are they concerned that potential patients facing organ failure may not be able to handle the emotionally-charged concept that they may only have a shot at living due to someone else’s death? Or are they simply avoiding the topic as not to face it publically, themselves? The sole reference to donor kin which I was able to find was only mentioning that parents and spouses may decide to donate one’s organs (assuming that you have not declared otherwise in a living will, etc.). It did not surprise me that there was almost no mention of donor kin since it appears as though the recipient is not to think about where their “new life” is coming from.

Works Cited:

Lesley A. Sharp. Strange Harvest: Organ Transplants, Denatured Bodies, and the Transformed Self. Berkely: University of California Press, 2006.

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. Commodity Fetishism in Organs Trafficking. Body & Society, 2001.

UPMC’s website:

http://www.upmc.com/Services/TransplantationServices/Pages/default.aspx 11/4/10

Originally posted 11/4/10:

http://bodiesinvisualculture.blogspot.com/2010/11/to-whom-does-hope-belong.html

Looking for the Tell

Blog Prompt 8: Trans Photography, Palinodes, & Medium Specificity

Gayle Salamon’s chapter “Transfeminism and the Future of Gender” and Jay Prosser’s chapter “My Second Skin” both offer critical readings of photography that addresses the relation between trans/gender embodiments and the medium of photography. Drawing on one or both of these texts, choose one or more photographs from the following artists and provide your own reading of it:

Del La Grace Volcano
Loren Cameron
Jana Marcus

Link to or embed the photograph/s that you are analyzing, and be sure to think about how the medium specificity of photography is at work in the image that you chose.

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The photographs which I chose to “read” are by Del La Grace Volcano. When I saw the photographs, I admit that my first thoughts were not the average ones—I had seen them before. I realized after several minutes that “Jax Back, London, 1991” and “Jax Revealed, London, 1991” were the front and back covers respectively of Masculinidad Feminina (the Javier Sáez translation of Judith Halberstam’s Feminine Masculinity). After putting this from my mind, I looked at the pair of photos again—always scanning “Jax Back” first, followed by “Jax Revealed” since it is in that order that the photographs are presented to the viewer.

“Jax Back” suggests to the reader that one is looking upon the body of a man—not only because of the muscularity of the body shown to us, but by the military-camouflage pants and shaved head which would generally imply maleness to the general public. The photograph is in black and white creating a sharp contrast between Jax white body and the pure black of the backdrop. The sharpness created in this fashion brings and even harsher (read: masculine) feel to the photograph in general.

In Gayle Salamon’s “Transfeminism and the Future of Gender” she discusses a New York Times article by Paul Vitello which employed the use of photographs of a transman named Shane Caya. Salamon discusses how in the first shot of Caya he is shown with “his ex-partner Natasha, and their three-year-old child. All three are smiling as Shane lifts the young child into the air.” (Salamon 128) Del La Grace Volcano’s photograph “Jax Back” reminded me a lot of this photograph. They both seem to just be set ups for the viewer. They seem to say “Look at this normal picture. Nothing here is awry or strange or queer or different. Just a happy family (Just an army man’s muscular back).”

“Jax Revealed” is meant to shock the viewer. This masculine body in camouflage pants has turned around and is in the process of taking off a shirt—but now we can see small breasts on the masculine figure. The photograph is also in black and white which still accentuates every white muscle against the black backdrop, but this time also emphasizes the outline of the subject’s breasts.

Salomon describes Caya in the second photograph (Shane Caya shirtless) used by the New York Times by pointing out “He sports a head of short, salt-and-pepper hair, an upper arm covered with tattoos, and a muscular, well-sculpted male chest.” She goes on to say “The caption of the photo reads: Shane Caya displays his mastectomy scars.” (Salomon 129) “Jax Revealed” reminded me a lot of the photograph which Salomon describes here—both asking the viewer to “read [the] body for evidence…the ‘tell’ that would give the lie to that maleness.” I do not know what gender Jax identifies as, however, regardless of whether she is a rather muscular (masculine?) woman or he is a transman, Del La Grace Volcano asks us through the title “Jax Revealed” to not only view the photograph of Jax as a person taking off clothing, but also as a masculine body revealing female parts.

This brings me back to Masculinidad Feminina. The viewer is clearly meant to approach the book and see first a man’s back. Then when one read’s the title they are to be confused and start looking for the tell. They turn to the back cover and the tell is revealed to them in the revealing of Jax’s female parts. I have to wonder how ethical it is to scrutinize every inch of the body upon which we gaze—even in critiquing I find myself feeling somehow uncomfortable with the concept of looking for “tells” even if I am asked to do so by the artist themselves.

Works Cited:

Salamon, Gayle. “Transfeminism and the Future of Gender.” Women’s Studies on the Edge. Ed. Joan Wallach Scott. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. 115-36

http://www.dellagracevolcano.com/classics.html#5 10/29/10

http://www.dellagracevolcano.com/classics.html#610/29/10

Originally posted 10/29/10:

http://bodiesinvisualculture.blogspot.com/2010/10/looking-for-tell.html

Sensual Disability and Gender Presentation

Blog Prompt 7: Fashion, Imperialism, & the Post/Colonial Body

On this blog, Bodies in Visual Culture, please post a 600-word response to the Threadbared blog entry that you brought in to discuss in class on Thursday October 21. Your response should critically engage with the arguments that the authors of your chosen Threadbared post make, and connect those arguments to material from our course.

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http://iheartthreadbared.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/genderqueer-butchfemme-crip/

The Threadbared post which I wish to discuss is entitled GENDER/QUEER: “Butch/Femme Crip.” When I read this piece, I was reminded heavily of the piece from the special issue of GLQ entitled data “Desiring Disability.” “Butch/Femme Crip” was written by a black queer wheelchair dancer who, in this essay, exposes how the Butch/Femme dichotomy does not (cannot) apply to her. Through living her life in a wheelchair and through her wheelchair dancing, she has created an extremely athletic build. While it could be argues that muscle is not inherently butch or femme, she is incredibly proud of her muscles, patting them in public, flexing them, stroking them. Due to her pride surrounding the body which she created for herself, most queer women read her as butch. But can one read pride of the sculpted body as butch if the sculpting was not out of personal enjoyment, but as a necessary and natural process in going through one’s life? Through her blog, cripwheels.blogspot.com, she hopes to expose how disability complicates all parts of life including sexual identity and gender presentation. I found this section particularly interesting:

“My decision to wear impractical shoes is as much a consequence of me not having to walk in them as it is a decision to participate in a particular understanding of femininity. But what do you see? A sad attempt to look normal? A pair of high heels on a woman? Or something so over the top that it slides into the devotee/fetish view of disabled female sexuality? Note that this is a risk that is only present for disabled women. It’s a long way for nondisableds to go through femme to fetish. Merely presenting certain aspects of traditional femme for a queer disabled woman puts her at risk of becoming a usually straight object of the devotee community.”

She will frequently wear impractical shoes (a sign of femininity?), but as she doesn’t have to walk in them, they do not produce the same connection to femme identity that they would on an able-bodied person. In fact, she points out that they push her almost automatically in being disabled to the tokenized disabled person’s pathetically attempting to look like a normal able-bodied person in her dress, or to a fetish object. These are two aspects of desiring disability which were found to be unacceptable in “Desiring Disability.”

All of the clothing (if clothing can be gendered) which she discusses wearing (a low cut tank top, a mesh dress, pointy heeled boots) are feminine outfits. According to her gender presentation in clothing choice, she should be seen as femme, but it is specifically due to her disability and occupation (and the muscle-pride that comes along with it) that she is “read” as butch. Through her complicating the Butch/Femme dichotomy, we can see that it is just as socially constructed as man and woman—this time instead of heteronormative culture being to blame, it is the able-bodied GLBTQQIA…etc.

The piece of visual culture which I chose was the youtube video “Maria Full of Sin.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iul_MwHrt8A&feature=related

In “Desiring Disability” and “Butch/Femme Crip” it becomes clear that the public, able-bodied world has a tendency to not want to view disabled persons as having any kind of sexuality—it even freaks them out to a certain extent when they are faced with the possibility. On youtube, under the username “GoddessinBloom” Maria R. Palacios posts her poetry—often sensual and dealing with her disability. She exudes sexuality—it is impossible to look upon her and deny her that aspect of herself. Her poetry exposes to the public eye just how sensual and sexual that disabled people can be. She also speaks of her femininity coinciding with her ability to beat anyone at arm-wrestling which I thought connected very strongly to “Butch/Femme Crip.”

Works Cited:

http://iheartthreadbared.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/genderqueer-butchfemme-crip/ 10/22/10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iul_MwHrt8A&feature=related 10/22/10

McRuer, Robert. Wilkerson, Abby L. “Introduction.” QLQ. 9.1 (2003): 1-23

Originally posted 10/22/10:

http://bodiesinvisualculture.blogspot.com/2010/10/sensual-disability-and-gender.html

Imagining the Undesirable and the Desirable

Blog Prompt 6: Bill T. Jones, the National Imaginary, and Loss

In “Death and the Nation’s Subject,” what does Sharon Holland argue with regards to the ways that blackness has been positioned in relation to the U.S. nation-state? How does the documentary A Good Man about Jones’s recent work Fondly Do We Hope…Fervently Do We Pray engage with Holland’s arguments? What processes is Jones negotiating here?

For your “outside visual cultural production”: Find, link to, and explain 1 performance (video clips, photographs of performances, posters/programs for performances, etc.) that relate to Jones’s Fondly Do We Hope…Fervently We Do Pray or Untitled  with regards to theme, form/medium, methods of circulation, means of production, or choreographer (For an example of how to do this, look at how Gere relates Jones’s Untitled to Tracy Rhoades’s Requiem). A “performance” in this case could be a live theater performance, a dance performance, a performance in a music video or film, a political performance (for example, at a national speech or an inauguration ceremony), etc.

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In “Death and Nation’s Subject” Sharon Holland perceives that in the United States, living is “something to be achieved and not experienced.” She argues that blackness “is the yardstick by which most peoples in this nation measure their worth—by something they’re not.” One, in fact, “achiev(es) the status of ‘American’,” through the establishment of non-blackness. Blackness is therefore perceived as undesirable by the nation-state despite the fact that according to the nation-state, blackness is a nation within a nation—unable to define itself, unwanted, and yet incapable of separating itself fully from the norm (white America). Blackness, in relation to the nation-state becomes one of two things: invisible or undesirable (Holland 16).

Despite the fact that with the nation-state came the abolition of slavery, the U.S. treated(treats?) the African American as less than—in fact, non-existent. Through slavery (specifically slave-trade), Africans were cut off from their heritage. The formulation of the African American identity was very slow because there wasn’t a strong sense of community and a common past. When slavery ended, blackness was still viewed culturally as the invisible other—you know they are there because you are better than they are, but they don’t get any personal consideration. Holland rightly identifies this as “the unaccomplished imaginative shift from enslaved to freed subjectivity.” (Holland 15)

The other concept that blackness takes on in relation to the nation-state is that of the undesirable, unfulfilling (non-member) who is merely tolerated. In modern day especially, blackness is nearly synonymous in pop-culture with (or in Holland’s rhetoric, imagined as) theft, guns, drugs, and ignorance (everything which the nation-state supposedly despises). Holland discusses the “ganster film” Menace II Society in which the two African American youths are viewed by the Korean shop-owners as shoplifters and are followed around the store by the older Korean woman. The Korean man says as the boys were heading out “I feel sorry for your mother,” implying how unwanted and unrespectable what they perceived to be young male black behavior to be. This brings us one again to the imagination: “the Korean couple dies from what they imagine as real—from the belief that all black subjects are criminals.” Blackness in pop culture seems to be synonymous with the gangster life—because the bad apples are visible in our disgust whereas the rest of the African American community is invisible in our apathy.

The Documentary A Good Man about Bill T. Jones’s work on his piece Fondly Do We Hope…Fervently Do We Pray engages with Holland’s work in a number of ways. What stands out to me most is when Jones says that as a boy, Abraham Lincoln was the only white man that he was allowed to love unconditionally. I believe that this exemplifies blackness as being a nation within a nation—not everything in the nation can be his, but he may still have a shared national pride and reverence for this figure. The documentary focuses on the idea of a good man. Jones would like to imagine that Abraham Lincoln was a good man. Do we know this for certain? No, but the idea—the common imagination of him creates Lincoln as a very good man.

The performance piece which I chose is the song “Abie Baby” from the musical Hair. Right before the song is sung, a trio of performers with spears in African garb kills the other politicians on stage. Abraham Lincoln (played by a black female) is left alive and the Africans rejoice in him being the emancipator of the slaves. This reverence for Lincoln and only Lincoln is a common thread between Hair and A Good Man. The ambiguity of exactly how good a man he was is also present in both pieces.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKq2EGqpWyI

Works Cited:

Holland, Sharon P. “Death and the Nation’s Subjects.” Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. 13-40.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKq2EGqpWyI 10/15/10

http://www.billtjones.com/repertory/present/fondly_do_we_hope/ 10/15/10 negotiating

Originally posted 10/15/10:

http://bodiesinvisualculture.blogspot.com/2010/10/imagining-undesirable-and-desirable.html

Disability or Different Ability?

Blog Prompt 5: Queer Disability Studies and Medical Imaging Technologies

1. What do Robert McRuer and Abbie Wilkerson mean by “homonormativity”? According to their article, how can queer disability studies and activism/art resist it? How might Axis Dance Company’s performances be considered an example of “desiring disability” and how might they be an example of this type of critique of homonormativity (or not, if you think this is the case)?

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When Robert McRuer and Abby Wilkerson speak of homonormativity, they mean a cultural philosophy in which gay people do not criticize heterosexual lifestyle, but try to live in a heterosexual manner—depoliticizing and privatizing gay issues. They believe that queer disability studies and activism can resist this lifestyle through critiquing the ways in which queer bodies and disabled bodies alike are placated and tolerated in society, but not viewed as valuable. Through activism, the queer identity (and perhaps the disabled identity) can retain their political agency (a part of their very identity) which homonormative society wishes to take away under various guises [e.g. we’re all disabled in some way! (Read: So it doesn’t matter)]. The Axis Dance Company provides a wonderful example of “desiring disability” in its resistance form. While it is not as outwardly political as many groups, it publically addresses not only the issue which face those with disabilities, but also the beauty that being disabled can bring. The pieces literally cannot be performed without the use of a wheelchair (or several wheelchairs). The point of the pieces is not that disabled bodies are pitiable and should be given normal lives, but that disabled bodies have something incredibly valuable to offer society. In this manner, the Axis Dance Company critiques homonormativity—the disabled dancers are not simply attempting to live as an able-bodied person or giving up on public life for an easier private life in a care home of sorts. The dancers are expressing their gifts that are unique to them through their disabilities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAOTCtW9v0M

I believe that this a key part to being publically proud to be queer, disabled, etc. Once one is ashamed of a part of themselves or feel like they are a burden to society, they take what are given and are thankful for whatever scraps they have received. Only when one is proud and public can they make what they want for themselves. So the challenge becomes publically exhibiting and even showing off what disability has given (and is giving) to the world—not just in terms of successful people who happened to be disabled, but people whose disabilities have been in some ways a gift to mankind. Ludwig van Beethoven is one of the first examples to come to mind. His musical composition are world famous despite the fact that he was deaf for the last 25 years of his life (during which he wrote the majority of his famous pieces). Many exclaim how amazing it is that a deaf man could write such awe-inspiring music. I argue that he had the ability to write that music because he was deaf. Through his disability, composition became about the vibration created through playing the piano—the music came from organic relations between notes instead of the pitch of the note itself. Despite the non-political nature of Beethoven’s successes, I believe that his work did not fall victim to homonormativity and in fact sets an amazing example for those who are beginning to deal with resistance.

Works Cited:

McRuer, Robert. Wilkerson, Abby L. “Introduction.” QLQ. 9.1 (2003): 1-23

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAOTCtW9v0M 10/7/10

http://listverse.com/2010/01/18/top-10-extraordinary-people-with-disabilities/ 10/7/10

Originally Posted 10/7/10:

http://bodiesinvisualculture.blogspot.com/2010/10/disability-or-different-ability.html

Abu Ghraib is the Banality of Evil

Blog Prompt 4: Spectacle, Imperialism, & Visual Nationalism

3. How does Standard Operating Procedure present various photographs (the photos of sunsets, of Rumsfeld, of U.S. soldiers, of abuse and violence)? What is the effect of the white frame and black background that appears around each photo that is shown? What argument is Morris making about the relation of the photographs of torture and the other photographs?

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We, the viewers, are told that the Secretary of Defense didn’t want to see anything beyond the hanging chambers. Then we are shown a picture in which the Secretary of Defense is giving a disgusted look. We do not know if he is disgusted by what Saddam Hussein’s people had implemented in the prison. We only know that he looks displeased. The presentation of the photograph, however, is embedded within several shots of U.S. soldiers looking strong and capable in photographs which I might otherwise deem to be patriotic.

When Javal Davis is presented to the viewer, he speaks of arriving in this disgusting place full of fecal matter and urine and decaying bodies. The photograph presented at this time depicts a U.S. soldier standing on a mound with a rather gross looking atmosphere behind him, full of grey-brown liquid. The picture may have no connection to the speaker, but it certainly illustrates the type of atmosphere in which they arrived. It also depicts the manner in which the United States occupied that space—they were tourists. The picture seems to say to the view “Isn’t this place disgusting? I can’t wait to do my duty and then get back home to humane conditions.” The area around Abu Ghraib is not the normal space in which a U.S. soldier—or citizen—would inhabit. The picture could’ve easily been of someone standing in front of the Eiffel Tower or Ground Zero or the Pyramid of Menkaure…just showing you that I was there—documenting that I have traveled to somewhere new and/or important, regardless of the background.

The photograph of Lynndie England holding the leash with a prisoner dragging (crawling?) behind her is shown as a cropped photograph throughout much of the movie. At least one other woman was beside her and yet the image which circulated the prison and which was most frequently used by the media only showed England. The reasoning for this is unclear. Was Graner trying to protect the other woman? Is Errol Morris trying to suggest this as a possibility?

The photographs of Standard Operating Procedure, torture, sunsets, good times with friends, etc. is all scrambled together within each of the cameras that Morris used. Morris wanted to show that these were not just documentation of specific events, but a lifestyle there. No one would be taken aback at the prison if they were to go through a camera because they are things that they had seen—took part in. I am not suggesting that every American stationed at Abu Ghraib enjoyed the torture sessions and were taking pictures to remember the good times. I am, however, stating that Morris wished us to consider how mundane these events were to those who took part.

The photographs are portrayed in the movie with a white frame against a black background. My first thought was that they are presented this way so that they stand out—that it was all about visibility. I then realized how much the photographs presented in this manner resemble a scrapbook. Morris is suggesting that these photographs are, to the Americans who took them, akin to what any of us would put into a scrapbook at home. I began to think of which events I would document in this fashion—especially if I were abroad. I would document everyday life if for no other reason than to show how different it is from my life at home in the northeastern USA. The scrapbook idea also brings up the question of cropping. Of course I would crop photographs going into my personal scrapbook…if it made them fit better. Morris has me questioning if that is not exactly what Graner did at Abu Ghraib—made things fit to his liking. In any case, the photographs are presented as just some fun pictures that Graner and friends took while abroad.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/09/18/arts/20070919_ALBUMSS_AUDIOSS.html

At the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum lives a scrapbook of an Aushwitz officer. Unlike the photographs taken at Abu Ghraib, the pictures are PG and, for the most part, depict a bunch of nice looking men and women having a grand time just socializing. Some of the time the pictures look boring—mundane life. This is what becomes terrifying for many people. The Nazis were as human as those involved in the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib and as you or I. Torture and genocide are not exceptions which occur sporadically—they are concepts which humans are astoundingly capable of carrying out.

Standard Operating Procedure. Dir. Errol Morris, 2008

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/ssalbum/ 9/30/10

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/09/18/arts/20070919_ALBUMSS_AUDIOSS.html 9/30/10

Originally posted 9/30/10:

http://bodiesinvisualculture.blogspot.com/2010/09/abu-ghraib-is-banality-of-evil.html

What is Ours

Blog Prompt 3: Digital Bodies & State Surveillance: Hasan Elahi & Monica Enríquez-Enríquez

How does Hasan Elahi’s Tracking Transience and Monica Enríquez-Enríquez’s Asilo Queer and/or Objetos de Memoria critique specific U.S. state surveillance practices? How does each artist use specific mediums (cell phones technologies, GPS, digital video, interviews, written text, etc.) to comment on how bodies are produced through visual culture? How are race, gender, sexuality, and citizenship at work in these artists’ pieces and in the arguments they make about state surveillance?

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Hasan Elahi innovatively critiques U.S. state surveillance with the use of technological deices. After being accused of being involved in terrorist activity and being detained, Hasan was ordered to keep the FBI informed of his whereabouts. He responded fervently. Through the use of a smart phone (its camera and GPS function especially), Hasan documented every move he made and presented it to his FBI handler each week, and then each month when they were to meet. Flooding the surveillance system with thousands of documentary photographs devalued the set as a whole. To the FBI, Hasan as an individual is only visible through his possibility of involvement in terrorist activity. He produces his “body” through the photographs (which, not unintentionally, never include his physical body) which he presents. It is, in fact, a presentation of himself, although portrayed in a documentary style. His race plays a key role in his plight. There is little reason beyond race why the FBI would continue to monitor Hasan despite the fact that he has been a citizen of the United States for quite some time. In his photographs, however, there is nothing that would set him apart due to his race. To me, this is yet more evidence that race can be rendered inconsequential. His gender is represented only in the numerous pictures of urinals and I am entirely unaware of how his sexuality functions. Hasan created a lovely critique of state surveillance in choosing to “aggressively comply” and monitor himself.

Monica Enríquez-Enríquez chose to critique state surveillance through the visual medium of digital video. In Asilo Queer, Enríquez speaks specifically of how she has been created through the labels given to her. In her eyes, she has been “written all over by the way in which she entered and is allowed to stay in this country.” As a queer Latina who was granted asylum in the United States, she is labeled as Columbian; she is labeled as a resident; she is labeled as a lesbian; she is labeled; she is labeled; she is labeled—and thus an identity which state surveillance can read as legible is formed. Her sexuality is noted in the writing on her body. Her race is noted in the writing on her body. Her story—why she left—is noted in the writing on her body. Her very language is interrupted by the definitions placed upon her.

I am concerned that as technology gets smarter and smarter, we will be monitored more and more. In a blog reviewing technology, Tom Simonite points out what exactly we are buying—what technological surveillance we are supporting. While the technology itself does not automatically have links beyond personal use, it is only a matter of time for some of the pieces’ data to be sold to various companies and businesses. In fact, Rattner, the CEO of Intel has stated that “Future devices will constantly learn about you. Your habits, how you go about your life, your friends. They’ll know where you’re going, they’ll anticipate, they’ll know your likes and dislikes.” What isn’t common knowledge (via Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc.) will surely be the states information in relatively little time.

(http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/25758/)

Works Cited

tracking transience: http://trackingtransience.net/

Monica Enríquez-Enríquez’s site: http://danm.ucsc.edu/~mpenriqu/home.html

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/25758/ 9/21/10

Originally Posted 9/21/10:

http://bodiesinvisualculture.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-is-ours.html