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autonomy & the subject

17 Nov

discussion about such abstractions as masculinities or femininities, must always invite the question of autonomy. with autonomy, or agency, comes responsibility and accountability. does what works for the individual necessarily work or benefit the whole? how do our individual moves shape, benefit, and harm theories and practices of everyday life?

let’s move on. follow me – this will get tricky. space/place interact in such a way as to compose a post-modern geography wherein liminality can be positioned as a location of disembodied identification – the liminal imaginary – a productive standpoint of the Othered. Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

A Positionality: Feminism and the ‘man (outside)’

13 Oct

feminism and standpoint

the most striking categories or patterns to emerge from my reading in feminist standpoint, lately, are the concepts of dualism and the Self. the reason i choose to focus, here, on two of these is because they are inexplicably interlocked and, as Sandra Harding states in her introduction to The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader, “claims of any sort only have meaning in some particular cultural context – that is, relative to some set of cultural practices through which the meaning of the claim is learned and subsequently understood. claims thus have meaning ‘relative’ to that context of practices” (Harding, 2004). what is the Self, if not a claim to being – a grand declaration? if, as Harding states, all claims are “necessarily socially located…and thus permeated by local values and interests” (Harding, 2004), then the Self, for females (and males), is always already located within a hetero-patriarchal framework that doesn’t allow for an “adequate representation of the world from the standpoint of women [or men]” (Allison Jaggar, 1983). Continue reading →

Tags: , , , feminist theory, , , , , , ,

“Where’s My Manhood?” and Other Questions About Nothingness

3 Sep

Alaridpost2At the Rhetorics & Feminism’s conference at Stanford, in 2013, I and my (now) girlfriend led a roundtable discussion in which we expressed our interest in feminisms. We were interested in what that word means and what it implies, what its focus is in our current theoretical ‘moment’ – what that paradigm looks like and how it can be articulated.
Continue reading →

Tags: , , deconstruction, , , , , , , poststructuralism, ,

“don’t invent me” or “my dick is terrifying!”: Constructing the Male homunculus

4 Aug

 

thinker

 

  reflections, lessons, thoughts, frustrations, and ramblings as after-effects of the Steubenville Rape swirl

we’ve all heard about it. the “Steubenville Rape Scandal“, as it has been called (among other things), was/is everywhere. everyone was/is talking about it. and it should be talked about. but we wonder how rape should be discussed, characterized, disseminated. it seems a lot of people are unhappy about the type of attention the incident received, for a number of reasons. but the media lens seldom focuses on the truly hidden places. what should be talked about? how should it be talked about? when, why, and where should it be talked about? it’s tricky. we don’t have all the answers to all of these questions. we have some good theories and the beginnings of answers to them, sure – but definitive answers? no. not really. Continue reading →

Tags: , social constructivism, steubenville

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