Walled Women

I really enjoyed reading Wendy Brown's essay on Freedom Silences, especially because that it's a text that can be used as a frame to read other texts, events and experiences. I also think that a big part of why I enjoyed he text so much is because I did the kind of close reading that we did in Anne's class last week. I was particularly by the way in which breaks down the traditional ways in which we think of silence and oppression as standing in contradiction with freedom and voice. This helped me recall my experience abroad last semester in which I equated having power and feeling "free" or valued with "schooling", as I called it, people's statements that posed immigrants, people of color, Muslims, the poor as inferior. In my mind, this "voice" was freeing and I needed to speak out and get angry every time I encountered such statements. Soon enough, however, it became exhausting and I no longer felt free. It's as if all of a sudden I was back in jail that I had created for myself in feeling the need to fight every battle, get upset, and then realize that the person's point of view had not changed.

Reading about niches really got me thinking about my own personal niches, other's niches and specifically what the women at the Cannery do while they are there to make their niches.

When I think about my own niche and about it's relationship to Bryn Mawr, I realize that if I had not found my niches within the BMC community, in many locations, that my experiences here would not have been so fulfilled and satisfying. But my discovery of niches does not feel comparable to those in the reading. I feel that they are found coming from different reasoning but I also feel like they can be compared because people find niches for the same general reasons.

In connection to Doing Life, I wonder if those in the book found their own self-discovery as a niche. I say this because alot of the people in the book talk about how they have changed as people and how they have realized their mistakes that brought them to where they are. Have they found niches within their own minds that have allowed them to escape and reflect?

In "Sing Soft, Sing Loud" I found a couple of quotes to be pretty interesting. One quote was said by Iva, and she comments about the single window that she has in her cell. She appreciates watching the palm tree outside this window but then theorizes, "I think maybe they put it there just to make us miserable" (3). It just reminded me of our tour earlier this semester at ESP because I couldn't believe how little the windows were. I never realized the significance of windows and never took the time in my everyday life to understand why spaces are designed the way they were, but I'm glad our 360 is forcing me to do that now. We don't really notice windows and we also take them for granted. They can either feel like they're entrapping you in this space or freeing you by allowing you to see what the world has in store outside. I noticed that one of our dorms, Merion, has ridiculously tiny windows. Every time I visit some friends there I feel miserable because there's barely enough glass to let in some natural sunlight, which is something that Iva complains about too.

After reading Laurie Finke’s article entitled “Knowledge as Bait: Feminism, Voice, and the Pedagogical Unconscious”, I was reminded of something we discussed in our silence class, which is the notion that the classroom is a space in which learning needs to accommodate the student body’s diverse voices. What I understood from this discussion was that the fundamental building blocks of voice are found within the social context of that voice, and that the classroom is the physical space in which voice is found and complicated simultaneously. Thus, teachers who neglect the myriad of contexts that constitute voice are not creating a space in which all students can both be treated equally and receive an equal education. I found it very problematic that Finke’s analysis of the power of transference consisted of having to, in essence, force individual students to let go of their socially rooted voices in order for their “true voices” to shine. I found the latter to be problematic because there is an inherent contradiction in the idea of having a true voice. Voice cannot be removed from the social context that influences it and therefore constitutes it. Thus, I suggest that in order for individual voice to shine, the role of the classroom must be taken into consideration. A classroom must be one in which the power relation between student and teacher should be dialogical, as Paulo Freire refers to it in the dialogical method of teaching, and one in which every student’s voice is heard.

When reading Olsen's "Silences," I was particularly interested by what she said about female writers and the silencing they've experienced for so long in the literary world. I think even now, it's very difficult for female writers to be taken seriously in "literature" even though they make up a large proportion of the writers in more specialized genres (such as romance novels, young adult novels, children's books, and popular fiction). In my senior year of high school, I took an english class called "Great Books." Of the twelve books we read, only two were written by women. I think, in general, women are simply taken less seriously in the literary world. S.E. Hinton, for example, wrote under that name because she hoped readers would assume she was a man if they only saw her initials. 

As I've been reading Sweeney, I've been seeing some parallels to Haney's work in the Visions and Alliance facilities, in terms of how penal institutions try (and sometimes fail) to regulate women's desires, and what they feel like they need. In Visions and Alliance, it was obviously a very flawed system, despite the fact that it was an "alternative to incarceration", and the directors of the program seemed to want to shape what the women wanted extensively. In the more traditional prisons that Sweeney writes about, the main regulation of desire is over books--especially, as I've read, over the women's complex and diverse desire or lack thereof for urban fiction, which prison librarians try to unify to fit what their rules are for keeping urban fiction on the shelves. 

Is anyone else making this connection? What are your thoughts?

On another note, if anyone would like to borrow my book before Tuesday, let me know!

At some point in our conversation last Thursday, we arrived at a discussion of whether or not texts should always be accessible to us. Now, I completely understand the frustration that comes with not understanding. I definitely felt shut out by Footfalls and Mark's comment that there really was no take away. Well then why are we watching it!? But, with that said, I can't help but think about how English departments around the country would be out of a job if students understood everything they read. So much of my learning, specifically in high school, revolved around making the inaccessible accessible, and our teachers provided the tools for us to do that. What is analysis if not breaking down a text and its literary elements to further your own understanding? And then you write an essay to share that understanding with others. As a writing center tutor, every day I come across people who struggle to understand their class texts. To work through this and try to find some meaning that is accessible and interesting to them, I see my tutees grasp on to a certain aspect of the text or a particular motif, whatever. Through further exploration of the little accessible piece that they pull out, the entire text starts to gain a deeper meaning for them. Rather than shutting down like I was tempted to, I also used this method during Mark and Catharine's performance. After it became painfully apparent to be that I wasn't going to "get it", I shifted my focus to something I could appreciate, which was Catharine's craft of her role through voice.