Beauty (Re) discovers the male blody

The writer (Susan Bordo), barely keep me motivated to turn the pages. Or maybe my motivation came from the fact that this was assigned. I dont care about her opinions. What and who determines the classification of a good writer?This one was borrrrrrrrrrrrrinG!

2nd Reading Questions - "Deep Play: notes on a Balinese Cockfight"

1) There's really 2 answers to this question. There are contrasting commentaries. One commentary is at the beginning where it says that cockfights aren't about money, they are about status. However, at the end it says that they really aren't about monetary value or status, it was all about the "game" and that your status is only "momentarily, affirmed or insulted".


2)I think that Geertz is trying to educate us. He's telling of experience in the beginning but only to bring you to what cockfights are all about in Balinese.

3)I couldn't find any passages in the 2nd and 3rd readings (lots of information to answer the Q2 on the second reading questions). There were so many different passages that gave a lot of information so it was hard to decipher each passage and look for the ones where he wants you to do, or not to do something. Maybe if I had one or two more examples, it might help me find those passages.

Discussion Questions from Class

Hey everyone, sorry I haven't posted the discussion questions in class, but here they are now!

1) In "For Waging War Is My Cosmic Duty," what is Anzaldua's argument? What makes her argument effective or ineffective?

2) Compare Adams' notions of the 'Virgin' (in "Dynamo and the Virgin") and the 'American Woman' (in "Vis Inertiae") with Anzaldua's concept of the "Virgin/whore dichotomy (in "Entering the Serpent")

Those are the questions we were discussing in class on Thursday. Professor Chilson wants us to post responses to these.

Stranger in the Village

Question 3:

I really don't understand the effect but I think he left certain people (women) because he is a man so he really can only base his opinion on men. You can read a little deeper and instead of comparing the racial aspect just substitute everything to women and men. It is almost the same thing, gender has been discriminated against longer than race.

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Stranger in the Village

Question 2:

I don't know who E. Franklin Frazier is. James Baldwin created insiders, outsider, strangers, and companions because it's like he took both sides of discrimination. He takes the psychological side of the white man, "The idea of white supremacy rests simply on the fact that white men are the creators of civilization, all previous civilizations are simply 'contributions,' and are therefore civilization's guardians and defenders. Thus it was impossible for Americans to accept the black man as one of themselves, for to do so was to jeopardize their status as white men." This quote shows how and why some acted the way the did, the strangers of another civilization.

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Stranger in the Village

Question 1:

I don't know how to be that descriptive, seems more like a run-on sentence.

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Entering into the Serpent and How to Tame a Wild Tounge

Question 3:

I really don't know the arguement that she is trying to make.

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Entering into the Serpent and How to Tame a Wild Tounge

Question 2:

The very beginning is new and fascinating form of writing/reading to me. Closely paying attention to how she writes and when she changes her structure of writing. I think her ideal reader is someone who can understand the style, a form of writing that most people do in a draft because there isn't real, traditional, structure. The reader must be open-minded, read the words and meanings, don't focus on the "chaos."

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Entering into the Serpent and How to Tame a Wild Tounge

Question 1:

I read the essay "Entering into the Serpent" the most accurate way that I could. I ignored the spanish the first go around and the second time I refered to the translations. The phrases that weren't trasalated I just tried to improvise the best I could. I really can't explain how you would handle the bylingual style of writing, I guess you just do the best that you can.

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Education of Henry Adams

Question 3:



Th first sentence in my opinion would have to read with a haunting tone of voice. The reason for that is because he couldn't find the knowledge that he was seeking. In my understand Adams is showing sympathy but not celebrating the courage, he is celebrating the determination that Henry Adams had. I don't see Henry Adams thinking of himself in such grand terms, I must be reading it wrong.

Like Jen said people learn in different ways, auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. Henry Adams needed someone to teach the way he learned information.

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Education of Henry Adams

Q 2:

In the preface of the essay Adams is using the metaphor of a manikin and cloths to young men in universities. Adams is also trying to describe why we attend universities and further our education, which are just tools to "clear away obstacles. Once we've learned how to use the tools we can simply throw them away." I actually disagree with the throwing away part because you never know when you might need them again.

The manikin, cloths, and tailor all represent education in ourselves. The manikin would be us, the tailor would be our teachers in life, (not necessarily the educational teachers but peers and family as well) and the cloths would represent our tools, models, and theories in education.

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"Stranger in the Village" 2nd Reading Questions

Q1)

I have no clue how to even begin writing in that kind of style. Yes, they say that "Baldwin provides the skeleton, you supply the subject and the words to fit." But I don't even understand the style that he's writing. Maybe someone could give me an example or explain a little more what kind of "style" Baldwin is writing in.

Q2)

According to Wikipedia, "Frazier was a founding member of the D.C. Sociological Society, serving as President of DCSS in 1943-44. Frazier also served as President of the Eastern Sociological Society in 1944-45. In 1948, Frazier was the first black to serve as President of the American Sociological Society (later renamed Association). His Presidential Address "Race Contacts and the Social Structure," was presented at the organization's annual meeting in Chicago in December 1948. Frazier's position formed one half of the debate with Melville J. Herskovits on the nature of cultural contact in the Western Hemisphere, specifically with reference to Africans, Europeans, and their descendents."

This essay can creat insiders and outsiders, strangers & companions mainly becuase in the beginning of the essay, no one really knows who he is or what he's gone through by being a stranger in the village. As the essay continues, people start to relate and take his experiences and his thoughts and apply them to what's happened through out their lives. That's where it creats insiders and companions. Because as the essay comes to an end the insiders and companions feel what he felt at the time. However, there are people that feel like outsiders and strangers, because they don't have an open mind. Some people have such closed minds (mainly stemming from environment they grew in and the people they grew up around) that they don't see they are just the like character in the essay. Or maybe they've never felt like a stranger or an outsider, but think back in your life. Wasn't there at least one moment in time that you felt out of place, like you didn't belong? Didn't you ever start a new school or moved to a new state (or even contry)?

Q3)

I think that he talks mainly about men and not women because "...since white men represent in the black man's world so heavy a weight, white men have for black men a reality which is far from being reciprocal; and hence all black men have toward all white men an attitude which is designed, really, either to rob the white men of the jewel of this naivete, or else to make it cost him dear." This says a lot to me. This tells me it's all about testosterone and how the men are protecting their territory. To me, the reason he doesn't really mention women is because women aren't really about toughness. Men will fight it out, whereas women will talk it out. Women are more peaceful and this essay is a more agressive essay.

Q4)

The last part of the sentence in the question says, "...in effect, the black man, as a man, did not exist for Europe." I found a website (linked) that shows that black man were praised as a higher power. The website follows as a hyperlink:

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Classroom/9912/africanseurope.html

Q5)

I can't think of who a comparable figure would be to Baldwin.

Jen

"Entering the Serpent" & "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" 2nd Reading Questions

Q1)

When I reread the 2 sections of this essay it took me awhile because instead of just skipping over all the spanish words she used, I actually tried to sound them out. I didn't understand the sentences and poems that she used ALL spanish words, but in the sentences that she used spanish words here and there, I would read it a couple of times and try to come up with an English word that would make sense in the sentence. It didn't always work, but hey, they can't all be winners right?

Q2)

Analdua's ideal reader is one that lives through her writing. One that will follow her "crazy dance". Her ideal reader will grow up with her and will be alive throughout her story. One that will sympathize and understand what she went through when trying to explain her language and how she came about so many different types of spanish language. She wants one that will show emotion with her while reading her story.

Q3)

I think question 2 answered question 3. Same thing as before. She wants someone to be able to show emotion as they read (laugh, cry, happiness).

Jen

The Education of Henry Adams - 2nd Reading, Q5

"Race-inertia seemed to be fairly constant, and made the chief trouble in the Russian future. History looked doubtful when asked whether race-inertia had ever been overcome without destroying the race in order to reconstruct it; but surely sex-inertia had never been overcome at all. Of all movements of inertia, maternity and reproduction are the most typical, and women's property of moving in a constant line forever is ultimate, uniting histroy in its only unbroken and unbreakable sequence. Whatever else stops, the woman must go on reproducing, as she did in the Siluria of Pteraspis; sex is a vital condition, and race only a local one. If the laws of inertia are to be sought anywhere with certainty, it is in the feminine mind." This is a perfect example of what the 2nd reading, Q5 wants us to do. It displays a passage that involves women, sex and race all in one paragraphy. It basically says that no matter howignored women were and how people looked down upon women, they will always be the most important because they are the ones that will keep life going.

As far as Adams imagining himself as a horseshoe crab, I think he's just saying that he realizes that the he will always be the same and that the women will have the power. So he'll be a horseshoe crab in the bottom of the sea while women swim about in the big ocean.

Jen

The Education of Henry Adams - 2nd Reading, 4th question

I wouldn't even begin to know how to write a parallel sentence. I can however, write a short paragraph describing what the first long sentence does, etc.

It's basically describing what "...the fever..." does to most New England people when they get it. Then it goes on to tell that there were very few people who didn't have "The habit of doubt; of distrusting of his own judgement nd of totally rejecting the judgement of he world; the tendency to regard every question as open;..." Adams' brother were the type to get that, where as Adams himself was not.

Jen

The Education of Henry Adams - 2nd Reading, 3rd question

The tone should be read like when you want something so bad but don't know how to go about getting it. You feel anticipatio and anguish, yet sad and disappointed . "Yet Langley said nothing new, and taught nothing that one might not have learne from Lord Bacon, three hundred years before;..." "...the literary knowledge counted for nothing until some teacher should show how to apply it." Basically he saying that someone can teach you or tell you something until they are blue in the face, but that person won't understand unless you teach it a different way. People learn best in different ways. Some learn by audio, some learn by sight, and some learn by doing. If you can find someone's learning style, you'll be able to "get through" to them and make them understand. "Adams had looked at most of the accumulations of art in the storehouses called Art Museums; yet he did not know how to look at the art exhibits of 1900." All Adams needed was for someone who knew his learning style and taught from that.

Jen

Education of Henry Adams, 2nd reading, 2nd question

What he means is when the reader reads the following sections, not to take the readings lightly. I get that because at the end of the last paragraph it says, "...must be taken for real; must be treated as though it had life." He means that when you read, read them slow and thorough and pay attention so you understand everything because the following sections of the essay are hard to follow if you don't pay attention.

Jen

The Education of Henry Adams - 2nd Reading, 1st question

I tried to reread this essay and to be perfectly honest with you, I don't undersand it. I failed to see the difference or connection of any kind with the writer (Adams) and the character (Henry Adams). I see connections all through the essay while he's explaining things like why everyone goes to college because, to me, it sounds like he's speaking from experience. However, the only distance I see from the writer and the character is when he is actually talking about Henry Adams. For example, at the beginning of Harvard College, he states, "One day in June, 1854, young Adams walked for the last time..." Another example, "...if Adams had been capable of finding other amusemnt..." Does someone know what they mean by distinguishing the distance between the author and the character? Can someone help me with this concept please?

Jen

Testing

Trying to see if the link works to distinguish who left the message.