Hello

Hello!

My name is Sam Saludades. My family is from the Philippines; however, I am part of the first generation to be born here in the US. I lived in Moorestown, a small town in Southern Jersey which is a short Patco train ride away from Philadelphia. For 12 years, I spent the majority of my education at a small private Quaker school. Up until middle school, the student population was predominantly white; however, in middle school, the school established a new initiative to promote and encourage diversity, recruiting more people of color and of different socioeconomic backgrounds which interestingly and positively changed the dynamic of the classroom and community. In any case, as a result of my educational experience, I developed an interest in how people's backgrounds affect who they interact with, how they interact with others, their approach to obtaining knowledge and education, and in turn, their outlook on the world which is why I was very excited to take this class.

With this in mind, I was very interested in the way that Foucalt linked knowledge and perception, especially his words "the wonderment of this taxonomy…is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that".  Although he talked about animals, I found that his view on taxonomy related to distinctions between people as well: Our own knowledge limits how we make distinctions between other people. For example, initially when we meet people, we aren't able to distinguish characteristics beyond their physical appearance - whether they're funny, artistic, etc.- because we know nothing about them other than their hair color or eye color. This concept actually reminded me of the nature of  the 1984 and Brave New World dystopias in which the characters had been prevented from discovering a better life because they had no knowledge of a society other than their own.  Much the same, we are unable to develop a more correct perception of others until we go through new experiences to attain more knowledge about them…