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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Week Fifteen- Conclusion: Cyborgs and Posthumans


What is a human? Even more pressing, what comes after that? Not in terms of death, but in terms of evolution.  As an impatient race, humans flock for the chance to buy every new apple product, see every movie with hot girls or explosions at midnight, to live stream every new show the second it is live from the comfort of our own Ikea-laced home.  What happens next? AS humans become impatient with everything around them, they also become impatient with themselves.


Here come the fake tits and fake tans.




Sorry, that was admittedly too easy (as are the women featured).

That’s exactly what I’m saying.


But past that, what else is there? The surgical knife and excessive sun damage can only do so much, what is the next line to cross?  Well, the first thing we have to note is that there is not much left, aside from our humanity.  Oh, there we go. Humanity.  Humanity is one innate barrier we can push and push, but to be post-humanity requires the complete desecration of it.  N. Katherine Hayles says in “How we became post-human” that “Mutation is crucial because it names the bifurcation point at which the interplay between pattern and randomness causes the system to evolve in a new direction.  It reveals the productive potential of randomness that is also recognized within information theory when uncertainty is seen as both antagonistic and intrinsic to information.”  (2172)  This development, this self-imposed evolution, this mutation is not only necessary it is crucial.  




This crucial need to move on and evolve is inevitable.  The post-human world is inevitable.  Get with the program, because it’s happening.  

Word Count: 274

Works Cited
Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print. 

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Analysis Seven- Ethnicity Studies and Post-Colonial Theory and Criticism



Benedict Anderson writes in a section of Imagined Communities about Latin.  How it was once used, became something for the elite, and is now a language to be read, not spoken, and is reserved for the educationally privileged.  He says that “for the older Latin was not arcane because of its subject matter or style, but simply because it was written at all, I.e. because of its status as text” (1918).  What is culture supposed to mean anymore anyways?  If culture is meant to evolve, what good does it do to simply trickle out the elite from the mainstream?  Anderson also notes Martin Luther saying “where Luther led, others quickly followed, opening the colossal religious propaganda war that raged across Europe for the next century.  In this titanic ‘battle for men’s minds’, Protestantism was always fundamentally on the offensive, precisely because it knew how to make use of the expanding vernacular print-market being created by capitalism, while the Counter-Reformation defended the citadel of Latin” (1918).  There is a defensiveness that comes with any progress, this is proven true.
In summarization, change is not always welcome.  In fact change is typically met with resistance (I assume you know what’s coming next).






There is a specific implication that culture, in fact, is dead.  All that is left is recycling of ideas and the idea of something ‘new’ is dead.  Culture is recycled.  There will be nothing new.  Possibly one of the most accessible pieces of evidence for this is fashion.  Fashion is never anything new, it is recycled and marketed as something new.  Of course there is 80’s revival, 90’s grunge revival, etc.  Most recently, there was a 90’s rave culture and bohemian 70’s revival.  And of course, these initial fashion statements were based off of something else, and so on.  Fashion is proof there is no new culture, only regurgitation of what once was new.


Oscar Wilde said that “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.


In the movie “The Devil Wears Prada”, one of the most seminal fashion-forward movies, a seemingly frumpy Anne Hathaway is thrust into the ever-evolving world of fashion, only to soon learn she is in way over her head.

 Some of the fashion pieces specifically noted is traditional French lingerie and over-the-knee black stiletto boots.  Hathaway takes to these pieces quickly, and rightly so.  They are popular because they are staples.  While pieces of fashion, they are considered ‘hot items’ and yet are still coveted.  Both pieces have been very in style, only to be replaced by something else that is seemingly shiny and new, but come back around to prove their fashionable relevance.

  Meryl Streep plays the ‘devil’, the HBIC of the magazine.  Adding to her power stance, she is noticeably older than everyone else.  Within the world of fashion, while age may take away some relevance, it grants memories.  She is old enough to remember original pieces now considered vintage, a notation I think the movie subtly makes.


Fashion happens to be a culture within itself, a huge economy in every single continent.  However, the culture itself has hit a wall and has resorted to recycling and reality tv.  Post-colonialism hit fashion, and it hit it hard.







Works Cited
Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.
The Devil Wears Prada. Dir. David Frankel. By Aline McKenna and Lauren Weisenberger. Perf. Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway. 20th Century Fox, 2006. Film.
Fight for Your Right Revisited. Dir. Adam Yauch. Perf. Elijah Wood, Seth Rogan, and Danny McBride. Hulu. 2011. Web.

Week Fourteen- Ethnicity Studies and Post-Colonial Theory and Criticism


Within “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”, Langston Hughes said of the racial struggle for black people that “this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America- this urge within the race toward white-ness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible” (1192).


He identifies the struggle to succeed as being rooted as the struggle of being different.  This implies that it is common thinking that the big hurdle is being different.


He offers this anecdote: {“One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once. “I want to be a poet- not a Negro poet”, meaning, I believe, “I want to write like a white poet”; meaning subconsciously, “I would like to be a white poet”; meaning behind that, “I would like to be white.”  and I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself” (1192).



Of course being racially different from the majority of mainstream or successful poets will cause some anxiety, but I don’t agree with Hughes that saying that the racial mountain lies in this example.  This exchange is rumored to be between Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, a poet closely tied with the Harlem Renaissance.  I feel that in the sentence “I want to be a poet- not a Negro poet” Cullen meant that he wanted to be defined by his work and not by his race.

 I will be the first to admit that Langston Hughes is a brilliant gifted writer and was blessed with a mind, I feel that the drive for Cullen was to be remembered for his poetry.  For his words to transcend his family, his hometown, and the blood that pumps through his veins.  Cullen died young, living from 1903-1946 but is remembered for his work.


Word Count: 323
Works Cited
Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.