Emmet’s blog….Jesus and the rest of us in real life

Ch 13

The concept of youth as constantly being in flux across time and space seems accurate. Youth being that gap between the complete freedom of childhood and the responsibilities of adulthood. In a culture where the survival of the family doesn’t depend on the production of each member, regardless of age, it seem natural that the relative time of youth would expand to meet the space available. What makes this crazy is that it is the youth that determines, to a great extent, the norms of tomorrow. The longer youth remain youth the greater power they have and the more they represent the norm. Just lookat the ’Beatles’ or the ‘Stones’, what was once rebellion is now normal and mainstream.

Ch 14

One of the challenges of cultural politics is in recognizing the boundaries, both for their value and for their hindrances. Politics require enemies and allies the ability to stand firm and to compromise. Looking at black culture in America it is clear that there are certain boundaries that separate black culture from white culture. The boundaries serve to motivate black culture to seek power just as the boundaries motivate white culture to maintain as much as possible. A strange balancing act comes into play when both sides realize that compromise can be a powerful in reaching their goals, the problem is, compromise too much and the self definition of the group becomes so blurred that they lose purpose, unity, and identity. What then becomes of the group and the power?

Ch 11

It’s strange that this chapter made so little sense to me, after all, I do love T.V. I think that the issue was that I couldn’t connect to its relevance. The impact of TV in China was the exception for me. It’s hopeful to see culture respond t the intended controlling and suppressive aspects of TV. and find life and transformation. I think it shows the complexity of humanity and culture and its ability to feed off of something so simple and base.

Ch 12

In reflecting on this chapter it was hard for me to not say, “Who cares that the ‘city’ is run by the economically powerful and that decisions are made based on production, commerce, and value? If you don’t like it leave.” However, this response originates in my antisocial nature (not in the Uni-bomber sense, but in the “I like to be alone and in nature” sense). Cities to me are evaluated on their historical character and by their convenience, their social interaction and economic power are attributes that don’t appeal to me. That said, is it fair for those whose lives and life chances depend on the structure and character of the ‘City’ to be overlord-ed by those in power? I don’t know. Influence and power are things that aren’t taken but earned, fairly or unfairly, and it seem natural that those in power would have the most to say about the character of the ‘City’.

Ch 9

The statement, “Race doesn’t exist outside of representation.” isn’t a new concept to be the genetic difference between a native African and a native Norwegian can be less than that between two Irishmen from the same street. I believe that the greater issue is in what Barker refers to as “boundary formation”.  It comes down to an issue of identity. We all want to know who we are, and in order to do that we need to know who we aren’t, what emerges is a strange framework of created boundaries that in and of themselves are baseless but in the quest for identity become divisions of comfort. One of the challenge is that in “knowing” ourselves and where we fit we separate ourselves from the greater community and loose sight of our deeper identity.

Ch 10

The problem with many forms of feminism, is that it addressees a real social injustice but creates new divisions through an incomplete perspective. Difference Feminism, for instance, rightly assesses that there are essential distinctions between men and women. The problem is that it leans on these distinctions and develops the concept that women are superior to men. The division is increased, and many men on the other side respond in the derogative. In embracing the differences women give themselves the opportunity to operate from a position of strength, but in making judgment calls on overall superiority/value, they make the same underlying mistake that the men made before them. The issue is again one of identity, and like that of race, gender identity can’t be established in a socially healthy way as long as superiority is used as a card in the deck.

Anyone who has spent time around children knows that boys and girls are different, they just are. You can make all sorts of arguments about boys being raised with different expectations and standards and therefor develop differently than girls, and vice versa, and that may play a part, but that isn’t all of it. The biological reductionists comments that men are more violent than women are accurate, at least in my experience growing up in a large family and being exposed to children from all sorts of cultures and parental perspectives. even the most pacifist parents will have to deal with the reality that once a boy learns that guns exist, he will have one. It may be a popsicle stick or a paper clip, but dang it , it’ll shoot!

Some of the other comments opened some pretty intense doors for contemplation, from the sections on the evolved brain and the case of emotions especially, but the one that connected to past contemplations was the comment on evolutionary biology in relation to humans in relationships and consequences, and the conclusion that there is no set direction, or as they put it “divine purpose is a retrospectively told story.” This is not an offensive statement to me, if only because I have wondered about it myself. I completely understand it as a natural conclusion, the problem for me is that my experiences say otherwise. The question is, can we as believers enter this dialog without experiences of  prophetic and practical intervention/action that go beyond the other sides ability to box in retrospective explanations?

The double character of ideology as expressed by Althusser strikes me as a humbling realization. The concept that an ideology can simultaneously be correct and incorrect should constantly be at the back of each of our minds. just because an ideology is formed out of the real conditions of peoples lives doesn’t mean that those conditions were evaluated accurately.

I hate/despise/have nothing but contempt for communism and socialism and am therefore predisposed to dislike Marxism. That said, I think it’s still a fair statement that the Marxist concern with concepts of ideology, as stated on pg. 76, overlook the likely option that Marxism simply miss-evaluated capitalism. The reason why the working class didn’t overthrow the structure wasn’t because they failed to understand the world or suffered from false consciousness, but because it didn’t represent the kind of oppressive force that Marxism thought it did. Instead of going back to the drawing board and reevaluating the interaction between capitalism and the working class, the Marxist response was to deride the intelligence of the people who didn’t respond the way they “should” have.

In what ways do we risk making the same assumptions?

My head hurts…

Barker did a good job explaining that there is a massive amount of area covered by cultural studies, unfortunately he did this not just by saying so but by covering a few of the philosophical spearheads…this is why my head hurts.

One of the things that struck me was the statement that identities are made rather than found (pg11). I get that where we are born, who our parents are, and what we are exposed to has an impact on our “identities”, but can all human behavior be traced back eliminating the concept of an independently existent personality. It is interesting to see the deconstruction of humanity/culture, but what is the deeper intent in this process and what is the final result? Is it to reduce each person to a scientific equation, is it to gain the fantasy of control through categorizing everything and completely eliminating the supernatural, or is it simply to try to understand the diversity of humanity?