skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Dear radio station,
I am leaving you. I know you don't really care, because you probably have hundreds and thousands of fans. But I'm sick and tired of your constant repetitions and redundancies. How about you give me some 'diversity'? It's not that I don't like Beyonce. But listening to her latest song (which incidentally, was produced by the same owner that owns you, my dear radio station) 30 times a day feels a bit like brainwashing. Maybe it wouldn't hurt you, dear radio station, to tap a bit into the wealth of music that's being created out there, outside the studios of your owner. Maybe, just maybe, you'll find that there's actually rhythm and emotions that do not need to be in English - or whatever your 'official' language is.
I'm dreaming, I know. Who on earth wants to hear Stromae when Adam Lambert is playing on American Idol? And why would you ever trade the daring Lady Gaga for Manu Chao (yeah, yeah, I know, it's distracting that he keeps on switching from one language to another)... Hey, it make more sense to hum "my hump, my hump, my hump" than "we no speak americano"...
So, my dear radio station, I'm leaving you. I'll come visit you once in a while, mostly in the morning when you pretend to give me the 'news'. But for the rest of the day, I'm switching over to my own list of songs. It's still Anglophone, I know. But I'm working on it every day, collecting more of the sounds that make me wanna dance. I'm kind of sick of all the crap you throw at me. Good bye, au revoir, arrivederci...
It's nice that we can write blogs and tell everyone who cares to read what we stand for. Or analyze the latest trends, crazes and ideas. It's nice that we can express ourselves and find other people who care to comment. Or not. But in the end, does it really matter? I mean I'm most likely to read the bits and pieces that already fit my values and worldviews. What I read adds to what I already think, but it doesn't change it.
If I am against abortion, I probably won't be reading Feministe (unless I want to trash them). And, it turns out, more and more young women are against abortion. I'm speechless. I simply cannot understand how a woman can be against abortion - unless she's brainwashed by religious beliefs. After all the fight that previous generations had to put up to get to the point where a woman could claim her right to her own body, some still fail to understand the importance of this right. And the price some people had to pay for it. Fighting for the right to abortion does not mean that all women get pregnant and have an abortion. It's like saying 'we are against condoms, because they encourage promiscuity'.
And if I am against abortion, it's most likely that I believe in the sanctity of my cause. Each year, some students in an university in a conservative city put up billboards on campus that equate abortion with genocide. The images are graphic, the students are believers. I'm speechless again. How can it be that students, who used to represent the revolutionary wave, have become the prophets of intolerance, blind faith and conservatism? Their 1968 French fellows must be really disappointed... Students used to represent the commitment to critical thinking and reason (I know, a heavy concept, but maybe it's time to reclaim it). Not anymore. Not since the university has become the labor-processing plant, serving the needs of governments and industry. Critical thinking is a dying breed - nobody needs it anymore.
Photo credits: Liverpool Street Station by victoriapeckham
I was once told that you should keep your child at home rather than send her to day care.
I do not fully understand the day care system, but I wonder why some people see day care as such a bad thing for their kids.
I'm pretty sure the idea that a woman has to be a mother first and foremost, and therefore tend to her kids is still strong. Although many women feel this to be something biological, it is not. It has to do with social factors, with being taught from an early age that a girl cares about the babies, that a woman has to be a mother, and so on.
But beyond the gender discourse, I think this fear of day care also has a lot to do with the day care/ kindergarten system in North America. As said, a system I still don't fully understand: what's the difference between them? Are these institutions public or private? Are people working there educated and licensed? Why some institutions are affiliated with churches? How come day cares are in private homes? Who decides on the curricula?
I mean, I do understand the historical circumstances and the institutional dimension, but I think it's simply wrong. And if you really espouse gender equality, you need to ensure that there is a reliable, secular education system where kids can develop intellectually and emotionally.
I grew up in a different part of the world and went to kindergarten. Our kindergarten was a huge brick building, with a big backyard and a wonderfully huge swing. Oh yes, small kids were allowed to use the swing... That was back in the time when kids were supposed to fall and hurt themselves. I did fall, and I did hurt myself but I survived and not really cared about it.
Our kindergarten had nice and not-so-nice teachers. Mostly women, it is true. But they were all educated and they all made sure our day was neatly divided into play time, learn time, eating time and nap time. I really really hated the afternoon naps.
Each morning, we would have breakfast there. That's when I met my friend M, who always skimmed the milk for me. Yes, that was during the time when milk came with all the natural fat and formed a disgusting creamy skin on top when warmed up.
We then went to our different classrooms and played. I had to learn that one doesn't always get what one wants. And that playing involves taking other kids into consideration. I also learned that I'm not very good at fighting for my toys, but that if you annoy me, I'll make sure I get what I want from you.
We also drew a lot of pictures and sang songs and learned funny things that make kids happy. A very important gift that I got in kindergarten was an extensive range of those annoying diseases kids get. They are to be experienced when you're young enough not to remember them.
My mom picked me up at 4.30 pm. Some days she was late, and I was crying my heart out fearing she has abandoned me. I survived, and I wasn't permanently damaged by my tears.
The point is: the kindergarten was a place that parents trusted. The stay-at-home mom was rare and usually frowned-upon: why was she at home instead of working? They never gave us junk to eat. They insisted on our morning milk and our afternoon veggies. We did NOT watch TV. We played with toys and with each other. We played outside almost every day, summer and winter. Yes, kids cried in the morning because they wanted to stay at home. But hey, it was a great lesson in growing up. And I made a friend for life there. So I guess in the end, it was actually good for me. Photo credits: Seattle Municipal Archives
Your friend's friend makes an intolerant comment on your friend's profile. It's highly offensive, almost bordering fascism from your point of view. But you are not sure what to do. It's not addressed to you, but it's in a cvasi-public space - a friend's wall. You do not know that person, but in a way it's just like being in a shop and witnessing a blatantly intolerant act. What do you? Do you comment? Or do you ignore it? Should you tell yourself it is just a private comment? Or should you rather respond to it, precisely because if a private comment in a public space remains unaddressed, it may look like everyone else endorses it?
"You're speaking Chinese again", a friend told me the other day. I wasn't actually speaking Chinese, but in the language she was using, 'to speak Chinese' stands for saying something that cannot be understood. It's an idiom, but a revealing one. The way we speak, even if we do not mean it, often indicates a variety of things: - how certain groups or certain differences have been constructed in that language and the ethics surrounding this construction;
- how we, as individuals, may consciously or not buy into these constructs, often perpetuating a problematic construction of difference as something to be feared, as something that cannot be surmounted, as something that has to be avoided at all costs.
When 'speaking Chinese' comes to stand for 'saying something that cannot be understood', the underlying implication is that Chinese is an exotic language that cannot be understood. Something that is so different that it becomes incomprehensible.
This is an interesting construction of difference - and I'd be curious to hear if this idiom has any sense at all in English or if readers can relate to it in any way. Here, difference comes to stand for something so apart from our ways of understanding the world, that it can no longer be made sense of.
As we learn our languages, with their biases and suggested views of the world, we also learn how to categorize the world. With this problematic idiom, Chinese comes to constructed as something incomprehensible. It is an exotic Other with whom we can have little if any rapport.
Such a viewpoint may often frame the way we come to relate to individuals we identify as belonging to the group. Often times, the incomprehensibility becomes a source of patronizing irony: "It's in Chinese, so you won't understand a thing, but it sounds so funny!". If you've ever seen someone of Asian background for whom English is not the first language trying to explain something, while other English speakers keep laughing at every word, then you know what I'm talking about. It is interesting though to think about how our perception of difference is informed by such an intricate web of cognitive, linguistic and social dynamics.
Photo credits: Steve Snodgrass
Who decides on your race, ethnicity or nationality? What are the features you need to have in order to be placed in one of these categories? While I am usually more concerned with deconstructing such categories and with showing how unsustainable they are, this post will be slightly different.
A few days ago, TIME published an interesting story on how the French must prove they are French. The idea was that children born abroad to parents that were French nationals are having a hard time getting their nationality recognized by France. If this nationality is not recognized, then you cannot be a French citizen. However, to be recognized as such, you need to be either born out of French parents, or to be born and to have lived in France until you reach adulthood. The TIME story traced the saga of one of the children born outside of France from French parents who were working abroad at the time.
Without getting into the intricacies of the law here, it is interesting to observe the struggle around defining what nationality is, who has the authority to recognize it and by what means it can actually be attained.
Nationality is a notoriously hard to define concept. Back in the 1950s, Karl Deutsch defined it as "a term which may be applied to a people among whom there exists a significant movement toward political, economic, or cultural autonomy” (1953, p. 3). There were obvious problems with this definition, and Deutsch was the first to notice that: just how do you measure that? It is fine to say "a people with a common will to being autonomous", but just what does the 'common will' mean here? Do you count those who are not in favor of that autonomy? Do you count those who do not recognize themselves as belonging to the group in question, but still live with the group?
And even if you come up with seemingly more 'objective' features to define nationality, such as language or common history, you're in trouble again. For instance, language is not as uniform as we want to believe it. In fact, language is better understood as 'languages', where the plural emphasizes the lived diversity of spoken dialects.
However, trying to understand 'what nationality is' is by far less interesting than trying to understand 'how nationality becomes the main principle of categorization' within modern world. Since most people are social beings, they have always lived in groups. What's different in modernity is the nature of the group boundary as well as the importance of the group as an essentializing force acting upon the individual. To the extent that nationality becomes the political principle justifying the organization of the state, nationality also becomes the most important category defining who is in and who is out, who has access to resources, and who has rights or not.
The overlap between nationality and the monopoly of authorized violence (the state) is the most intriguing and the most problematic one. With this overlap, the main authority in placing you within groups resides with the state. The state takes over the possibility of negotiating this placement in everyday life and rigidifies it into a set of rules that establish your location within a system of rights and exchanges.
Photo credits: fdecomite
References: Deutsch, K. (1953) Nationalism and Social Communication. An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality. NY: The Technology Press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology & John Wiley & Sons, I nc.; London: Chapman & Hall, Ltd.
The commercial says: "Be smart. Be attractive to the opposite sex!"
What is this commercial about? You have three guesses:
- Excel, the gum that whitens your teeth.
- Toyota, the car that makes you socially desirable.
- London School of Economics, the higher education institution that makes you very employable.
If you guessed "Toyota", then you've got it! Not because there's something intrinsic to Toyota (the car or the brand) that makes you both smart and sexually attractive. But because the advertising/ marketing team has decided that wits and sex cannot possibly go wrong. Who doesn't want to have them both? And if all you need is a car, then hey, I'm in! The political correctness of this commercial - as well as its stupidity, unfortunately the two go hand in hand here - was compelling. It's a little treasure, revealing how intellectual concerns and criticisms about economic issues make their way back into the world of economics and get reincorporated in the economic logic of profit making.
This commercial may be a nice example of what sociologist Anthony Giddens has once called the reflexivity of the modern world:
“The reflexivity of modern social life consists in the fact that social practices are constantly examined and reformed in the light of incoming informatoin about those very practices, thus constitutively altering their character.” (Giddens, 1990, p. 38)
When some consumers get upset or feel left out, the good advertiser knows that all you need is a re-branding, the miracle touch that transforms the gender-oppressive product into a gender-bender, gender-celebratory one.
- Buying the product gives you the two things feminists have nagged us about: sexual attractiveness and intelligence. Because we all know how hard it is to be both smart and attractive. Yet, with this product, the two become seamless.
- The product is not designed exclusively for men or women. And while it is unfortunately still designed for the heterosexual group (I guess the creative team could not come up with a word that would please everyone... And you have to agree that 'Be attractive to whomever or whatever you are attracted to' does not really sound very neat...), both men and women can benefit from its magical, sexual effects. No more "Mini-Cooper is a car for gays" or "VW Beattle is car for women"... No, sir/mam, this car's magic bestows sexual attractiveness in a (almost) politically correct manner.
Photo credits: DavidHT
References: Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990
Posts
