sara.gladwin's blog

So the Lives of Animals got me thinking about the wealth of animal videos available to watch on the internet. I admit, I'm definitely guilty of watching hours of back to back YouTube videos of cute puppies, kittens, hedgehogs, etc. I'm starting to wonder what the fascination is with cute things that struggle. I was watching this adorable bulldog puppy struggle to get off his back, I was struck by how many people where so delighted with how cute and funny this video seems. A few commenters called the owner out on it, calling it animal abuse. As I looked at the description, I noticed that the owner of the video had included a response to the angry comments, stating, "All bulldog puppies have to deal with this problem, they have to learn to get up on there own. If the owner helps them, they won't learn and the owner can't be there to help flip them over 24/7. It is a common thing you see when around any bulldog puppies. Due to their odd body shape, yes it is difficult for them to get up. Everyone seriously needs to calm down, the owner of the video was actually doing the right thing, and people will realize this if they think about it hard enough." While I see the reason why the bulldog puppy needs to learn how to get up on his own, is it really necessary for the puppy's efforts to be posted online for everyone to laugh at? I kept wondering if he was scared and suddenly watching the puppy turned from cute to agonizing.

My initial interest was the “rules” of Bryn Mawr Campus and ways in which students either resisted or followed these rules. I eventually narrowed my focus to smoking on campus, after coming across a series of correspondences through student publications in regards to Student Government Association’s involvement in determining the social regulations of students’ lives. More specifically, these “correspondences” focused on campus drinking and smoking amongst students. In the Spring of 1944, the Lantern, one of Bryn Mawr’s student literary magazines, issued an aggressive editorial calling upon the student’s radical abolition of the Student Government Association. Students who crafted this editorial were tired of staying “silent” when it came to rule breaking, writing that, “Rules are being broken. Those who find the rules unreasonable to maintain soon find that the risk of being caught is considerably reduced by discreet silence.” They claimed that Student’s obvious resistance to the rules was indicative of unfair policy and too-strict rules. Without restrictive policy governing their conduct, student would no longer have to remain silent or risk categorization as “rule-breakers.” 

I have many different feelings about prayer.

On one level, it’s a representation of something I’ve stepped away from. For a little over a year, I was the youth representative on my Presbyterian Church’s session, which is the governing body of the church. It’s a lot like our government. Session meets regularly to discuss whatever current issues are brought before them. There are committees delegated to handle particular issues, and there are committees to delegate each committee. For the entire time I served on session, I did not speak a word. I showed up to meetings, I filled a chair, and I listened patiently to each debate. I watched friends become hostile and impatient with each other. Over the course of the time I was a session member, I watched several other members abruptly resign and leave the church. I was angered by the way money and finances seemed to poison the conversation. The contention that seemed to accompany each meeting, little by little, soured my relationship with the church and I chose not to participate.

Today, I went on a walk with ekthorp and sarahj to discuss what our plans would be to arrange the opening and closing for tomorrow’s ramble. On our way back we began discussing “the Lives of Animals” and I became really fixated on the part of Elizabeth’s speech where she brings up Sultan, who is starved until he can achieve his task. In doing so, he is being trained to focus and give importance to only one thing, and being asked to disregard all other possible thoughts or distractions. I had recently listened to this podcast that had reminded me of Sultan for another one of Anne’s classes (http://www.onbeing.org/program/last-quiet-places/4557) and it had a huge effect on my thinking. One of the things discussed in the podcast is how children are taught to direct their attention, to close themselves off to divergent and distracting thoughts. I began to see a connect here between the way we are conditioned to focus and the way in which Sultan was taught to abandon his instincts and focus only on one thing in order to achieve his task. I wondered about the way we teach children, and how often learning and play are intertwined. Most “play” moments actually serve as teaching moments, where children learn problem-solving skills, teambuilding skills, leadership skills. It doesn’t seem like children are ever just playing. However, I’m starting to wonder whether or not it is “ecologically literate” to teach and condition children to filter out divergent thinking.

The reading “How Offenders Transform Their Lives” kept reminding me of our discussion in Voice class today about GirlTime. Someone in class brought up how self-congratulatory many of the people in charge seemed about the program, and how that was a negative aspect because it seems to eliminate possibilities for the program to effectively critique itself and become better for the girls it was attempting to change. In addition, it was brought up that the program was supposed to be for those girls, not necessarily for the volunteers involved. However, I also thought that the reverse would have been equally negative, if not worse. If the women (teacher-artists) had maintained the position that they were the authority and the program had no effect on them, they would have reinforced a sense of hierarchy, a separation between the girls and their more “enlightened” positions. Positioning themselves as authority figures, they would have continued to perpetuate the sense that there was a fundamental difference between themselves and these girls. Doing this places even more importance in their authority, the necessity of having someone “in charge” who by the nature of their position, knows more than those they are intending to change. It sets up a dynamic of us/them, perpetuates the “normal” vs. “other” attitude that can be so damaging to how people chose to live their lives.

HI everyone- I had been planning to do the reading by taking the book out of reserves but its been out each time I checked so I began to look for alternatives in case I didn't get a chance to at least look over the reading before class. I ended up finding the lecture that "the lives of animals" is based on, delivered by Coetzee during a series of lectures at Princeton. I believe from what I led it has similar themes and uses the same alter ego that Coetzee uses. I posted the link below, I hope that helps anyone having similar issues getting the reading!

tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/Coetzee99.pdf

This is a what-if paper. By writing this, I’m asking others to play the believe/doubt game along with me; I ask you to entertain these ideas in their possibilities but to retain a critical eye toward their infeasibilities.

Eva is a character whose life seems filled with silences, particularly her own. Often she will refuse to answer, refuse to explain. While I do not intend to take away her agency or voice through my interpretation of Eva’s Man, I wanted to focus particularly on what I see as inherited silences; silences that seem to have been passed down from Eva’s mother, Marie, to Eva. This mother-daughter transition represents a circle of life. This also emphasizes other circles that are present within the book and the relationships portrayed. The style of writing also works to emphasize “cycles.”

Throughout the novel Gayl Jones continually makes use of fragmented story telling, sometimes leaving little or no transition between each story. It becomes impossible to untangle each fragment and the reader is forced to see the way in which nothing is unrelated. Jones refusal to write cohesively is both inviting and uninviting. She mirrors Eva’s own contradictory emotions of desire and refusal. She gives the reader the pieces of the story but refuses to order them or explain them. Readers have to choose how to negotiate reading Eva’s Man. They either have to book at arms length or they can choose to seek clarity; choose intimacy with Eva. In a way, Eva treats the reader like she treats the men and women in her life. We are both a refused and desired audience.

Originally, my intention was to write two separate posts; one about the Morris Wood’s experience and one about what I would have said if I were in class today based on to the course notes. However, after I wrote both posts, I found that the two were inseparable and ended up combining them together.

On Morris Woods and Carmen Papalia:

It was weird to be reminded of how dependent I am on my sight; to the point where I couldn’t figure out how to move my body. I kept feeling like my brain knew what I was supposed to be doing but my leg and hand movement seemed outside of my control; even standing up straight seemed like a particularly difficult task. When I finally took off the blindfold to find my tree, I realized that I had been so busy just trying to figure out how to move my legs forward that I hadn’t been paying as much attention my physical surroundings while Emma was trying to lead me. I also realized later when we met as a group that it seemed like the other pairs had been very careful to lead their partners as best as they possibly could; helping each other along the way. Emma and I actually did the opposite, doing our best to confuse each other further. We even went as far as spinning each other around so finding the right direction back was even more impossible.

I was very interested in a particular allusion that seemed too often invoked in the conversation to be coincidental: the discussion revolving around “the void.” It is described as “not something created by patriarchy, or racism, or capitalism…. It is beyond personality; beyond who loves us or hates us” (191). The conversation creates the feeling of something not quite describable or fully explainable; something that lies just beyond and outside of words.