Last Blog (sorry it's late)

I was actually a little disspointed that we didn't get into the topic of religion- though I know that it is a "touchy, touchy" subject that has to be discussed with care...

I grew up going to a non-denominational Christian church (my mother converted to Christianity from Catholicism in college before coming to the states) and although I have thought a lot about my personal faith since attending Columbia College, this class make me think even more about it.

I guess, even though I feel guilty about it, I sort of thought of Adorno's theory about how we're drones and accept whatever is put in front of us, without even questioning it or trying to fight it. Now, I would not say that my mother or other people from my church (which are some of best people I know) are brainwashed and that they need a reality check- because it works for them. For me- not so much. So I thought about how every single Sunday of my life since I was 3 years old, until I moved out after my senior year in highschool, Sunday School and church became a routine and how I never really questioned why I went willingly even though a lot of times I never even listened and just doodled until the closing song was sung.

Also it seems to me that Christianity HAS become a sort of Industry, just as Adorno believes in the "Culture Industry." I'm not sure if you are familiar with the Willow Creek church in the suburbs, or with the "church-chain" of Harvest Bible Chapel, but I mean come-on, a church with multiple chains? Especially because I grew up in a small church, it seems like these Wal-Marts of the Christian world are making Christianity less personable and that people are more concerned with the what "church brand" they are associated it- similar to the way industrilization and mass production was seen as cheapening or devalue-ing art.

Columbia Cultural Movement

Since I've been in Cultural Studies, I learned allot about culture. What shocked me about this class, is the observations we made, had not been what I expected. When I first came to take this course, it didn't occur to me how much we don't question. One of the main things thats stand out to me, is the difference between high culture and popular culture. I consider College a culture in itself, and there are numerous things included to make this statement true. A perfect example would be a school such as, UIC. This would be considered, by allot of our standards to be a normal college. When I think of its opposite, it would be a school like Columbia College. When I consider a school such as Columbia, it usually stands out to be popular. Everyone have there own type of artistic expression that gives a certain portrayal. It seems to be a big competition, to make themselves seem different than the other. Alot of the times, we don't acknowledge this, simply because this would place us in a particular category. One of the main cultures I've observed is Hip Hop, and it usually reflects in Columbia allot. Growing up in Chicago, I've witnessed allot of people who were truly a part of Hip Hop. It seems to be less authentic when every one seems to be part of it, and this is usually the case with popular culture. This observation may be another case, with someone trying to escape category.

Final Blog Question

Umm...we didn't study film theory very much. I don't know if the class has caused me to reconsider this but I have realized even more so lately, how films are mediums and vehicles. I've seen a lot of documentaries that are just blatant vehicles and they state the obvious but then I saw the Constant Gardener. It is a narrative film but really does well exploring social injustices and the like. This also happened when I saw Il Conformista, a brief synopsis from IMDB: "A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident." I thought that it conveyed reality very well even though I have never been in that situation and probably never will be. From what I know though, this film delivered a thorough glimpse into that particular situation very realistically. I had no doubts that the situation wouldn't be the way it was portrayed. I have started to appreciate heavy-hitting narratives more than ever now. I guess talking about space and time giving rise to this occasion would make the most sense. In the films that have really moved me that were trying to deliver a distinct message about something that is wrong with the world, the concepts of space and time were portrayed extremely accurately and to my knowledge were all completely true and not very exaggerated. I don't know if I understood this question at all or answered it correctly. =)

Last blog! It's been real!

hmmm, this is a toughy because we've covered so much in class but here goes nothing!
This might not nessecarily be something I believed at one time but it is something I wonder about: the organization of miniorites in the city.
Alright this goes perfectly with both a dicussion we had in Common Ground (the GLBT group on campus) and today's issue of the Red Eye, which is about (one of my favorite parts of the city) Boystown.
In Common Ground we brought up why do certain miniorites set up their own enclaves inside citys like Chinatowns, Gay Villages, Little Italies, etc. and the Red Eye pointed out this morning that Boystown was being "infiltrated" by others outside of the GLBT community and how some people were afraid it'd harm the neighborhood.
Granted, Boystown does kind of have a strange set up since it's right next to Wriglyville and-in my experince-homos and drunk sports fans don't mix, but whatever it seems to work.
My point is why do miniorites form communties in which they are both seperate (some would even say segregated) yet still part of the city as a whole? Someone in the meeting said it's to foster a sense of "togetherness" and commradary in a city that might otherwise be anything but.
And yeah, that sort of might be true, I can see why but there may be more to it then just that especially when you think about the suburbs, which has less ethic diversity and therefore more need of "togetherness", yet suburbs (for the most part) are more confroming or the communties are extremely confined.
I don't know. It most likely has something to do with space. I'd be intrested in learning more about it.

Sorry Corinne but your blog immediately made me think of this

When I was 13 I was a strict catholic. Before then, I really didn't give a shit about religion and all the required CCD sesssions and church masses that my mother made me attend. I hated going to Christmas Mass especially, because we had to go to my grandma's church which was in South Omaha...once known as Little Italy, but soon became "Little Mexico". The only reason I liked attending her church was because there were times when they would ask me play my violin during mass or sing with them, and also because I got to listen to the mass in spanish as well and made many friends with the hispanic choir. BUT, the reason I hated it was because it made the mass twice as long, and who enjoys sitting in those uncomfortable wooden pews for over 4 hours?
When I was 13 and suddenly my relationship with my grandmother began to blossom (after she stopped calling me Sarah..which was my 6 cousin who was 6 months older than me and attended a catholic school from kindergarden until she graduated highschool), you would find me more than 4 times a week in a church, whether it was the one I was confirmed from or my grandmothers....praying, or just talking with the priests....confessing my sins which were not much for 13 year old.
I continued to practice catholicism, maybe not as strictly as I was when I was 13...until about a week and a half before I turned 15. My grandmother died 11 days before my 15th birthday. And suddenly, my belief in God died with her.
I never really thought about why my sudden interest in Catholicism disapeared until lately. Now, I do not practice any religion. I feel that I do not know enough about one certain religion to subject myself to it. And, I know what you are thinking, I could study them, learn and get to know a religion better that suits my beliefs, and BAM, I'd be set. But, the truth is, I don't have time too. Not only that, I don't know if I really want too.

On page 83 in Theory Toolbox, it says "This constitutes the first definition of Ideology: something that is false or misleading because it's mystifying. Ideology in this sense is a discourse that always misrepresents concrete conditions and specific causes, trading concrete realities for murky, vague, metaphysical conditions."

Did I just fall into Catholicism to escape from what was happening in my life during my early teens? I had no real knowledge of the religion because I never paid attention during church, or CCD growing up. But, there was something special and powerful about it when I began to really believe. I saw my grandmother, so happy and powerful, in her late 80's and what was something that she had believed in her entire life?--God and Catholicism. I had no confused or hurt feelings when I suddenly quit attending church and believing. I did not feel guilt. I felt nothing. I do know, that when I was attending church, reading the bible, praying, and believing, some sort of positivity took over my life that made everything seem alright. It gave reason to everything wrong. Is this the mystifying part?

So, after discussing ideologies in class, is this a reason why I am far from interested in finding a religion or a belief that would suit me? Is it because I have learned that it is all just a false misleading mystified version of something that really does not matter in the end?

Last Blog :[

Well guys, this is it.

I'm a Christian, and I think the ideology that I thought about "requestioning," was the ideology of religions. I mean, don't get me wrong, requestioning it doesn't make me believe it any less, but it does bring up the question- is this right for me? I think it is healthy to question your religion, because it can either make you realize it isn't for you, or it can strengthen your relationship with it even more. This class made me think about the whole ideology aspect of it, and the possible reasons for having those ideologies in place. I mean, obviously it could be something that keeps people from doing bad things, but it also gives people comfort during life problems, and death. I can understand why people could view it only as that, but even as I thought about these things, I know why it is more than that for me. In the "ideological" sense, religions are right for some people, and wrong for others. I think that was the whole point of the ideology talk- at first I thought the book was saying that all ideologies were false, but then I came to understand that just ideologies aren't true for everyone. So, that is what I have taken away from that discussion, as well as the more specific religion topic that I have brought up now.

Page 195 #2

It seems like these ads try to provoke many levels of thought and of advertising itself. The first ad of the Vodka was the ad that interested me the most. Everyone knows that alcohol is bad for your body. We are taught from a very young age about the dangers related to drinking, and how it begins to affect your life, and even shape our relationships from a very young age. This substance is such an enigma to me, in the sense that it is hard for me to look at alcohol in only one way, because through ads like the common Absolut Vodka ads, and Budweiser ads, this and through so many other venues in life, alcohol/drinking is presented in a very different way. How can this seemingly dangerous substance, be so accepted in mainstream society. Who stands for that? I always wondered that. Alcohol seems like the drug that was just able to slip through. I think this is a sort of cultural phenomenon, and the ad, in my opinion does a very good job in helping put alcohol in its rightful place, because after all, it plays a role in the deaths of thousands of people every year. Using courtroom terms, in a murder case, alcohol could/would be an accessory before the fact, directly linking it assisting whatever murder was thereafter related. This ad brings a more blunt and honest side of the effects of alcohol back to the table. As Shakespeare says in the quote underneath the bottle, "The drink provokes the desire, but takes away the performance" I think we can all agree on this one. It is just harder for some rather than others to face this reality. How has the acceptability of drinking found its way in to our society. Why? It seems that there is no ending it now, considering the millions of alcoholics in this country, and just how pervasive and always present the effects of drinking, both seemingly positive and negative at the same time. This is a cultural phenomenon that I would be very eager to do some more research into.

pg. 195, #1

What repels us, also attracts us-that's kind of what I intrrupted agency to be. As much as we're a part of our contexts but we're also, just as people who strive to be something different, to subvert those contexts even though we can't completely change them. it intrigues &pushes us toadvance and reach out of the box in which you find yourself.
I think it explains why humans are naturally curious. True, humans are routine creatures who cling to conformity but at the same time when we've been put into too much of a box we try to break free of it.
I was watching this program last night on the history channel
(hist channel rocks!) about hippies and the narrator basically explained why the baby boomers were so angry and felt so cut off, even though most of them came from the middle-class and were brought up with a sense of optimisum.
He said "the '50s was lock step conformity", "you had to do this because this was the way it was done"
"we were bored and fed up and needed something new"
See, even though the hippies were a collasal failure in of themselves, these kids were brought up with one idea on everything, culture, languge, future, purpose, etc. and their "agency" made them want to break from that and try something different.
I hope that made sense
<3 Bella

#1

"Our agency is both constrained and enabled by the contexts in which we find ourselves." (pg 195) This means that not only are you held back by the context in which you find yourself but it also intrigues or pushes you to advance and reach out of the box in which you find yourself. Agency seems tricky but when I think about it and try to put it into one of my own personal situations, I think it is becoming more clear. Growing up, I was limited to a certain amount of intake of culture, and just anything different from what our family was suppose to look/act/talk/live around/live like and be according to my father. So, this caused me to want to break out and know people and things. It made me hesitate a few times, because I had no idea but, for the most part it intrigued me. I didn't want to be constrained anymore. And here I am, living in Chicago, a place I chose to move because I knew not one single person, 500 miles away from my family.

Page 195 Question #1

I had to reread this about three times and I have no idea why I am so confused, But I will try so I'm sorry if I sound stupid. I think agency can both be constrained and enabled by our contexts all because of our situations. More geographical than anything. In the Midwest, we have all the possibiltiy in the world to become farmers that someone in LA may not have and people in California have all the possibility to be surfers or get into the fashion world, which are things that Chicago doesn't offer. I'm taking it as growing up in Chicago, I can get to the highest point that a Chicago job can offer but where would that job lie on a scale of possibilty for people in Dallas.
I really hate to compare it to this but I remember being like five years old and getting upset over the fact that I wasn't born one of Santa's elves because that was the life that I wanted to live. I told my mom and she told me that she was sorry but this is where I was born. My context, I guess.
Being stuck in a bad relationship and then getting out would enable your agency rather than limiting it because you believe you have so many options nd possibilities that being in that limiting relationship can offer. Your agency gets enalbled because you have something to compare it to rather than just accepting a bad relationship. I think I am confusing myself.

Agency

When I first read the last sentence, immediately I think of the first part of Nietzsche’s book, On The Genealogy Of Morals, in which he explains how he believes some of our most fundamental morals were created. Nietzsche believes that in a society there is a ruling class that controls the other classes, and in many cases without the people who are being controlled ever knowing they are being controlled. And since the ruling class is just that, the ruling class, they have the agency to say, “do this, or you will be killed”, to the lower classes. It is merely the fact that the lower classes do not have the ability to fight back the powerful ruling class, Nietzsche stats, is the reason people had the ability to believe that humility, patience, and “Weakness is being lied (by themselves) into something meritorious…” (47)

So had the lower class of people not been oppressed, these morals would not have come to be. On the other side of power, if the ruling class, (class A) had it not been such, and was equal to the class it had controlled, (class B), class A would not have the agency to produce, lets say the pyramids by the Egyptians, without there ability to use slave labor, class B.

Michel Foucault takes the idea of agency and power a little farther relating them to discourse, stating “...in a society such as ours...there are manifold relations of power that permeate, characterize and constitute the social body, and these relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse." (Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge)

Foucault is saying that, for example, if the discourse of law did not hold that murder was a punishable crime, then when someone commits murder, there is no power to, under the law, put someone to death for murder. Of course that means that everyone would have the power kill the murderer without fear of legal reproductions. But I believe people would also fear another power if they kill, the power of basically lawful revenge.

p. 195, #1

Agency is constrained and enabled by context just like anything else. It is enabled because the context is what creates the experience and situation on which to base agency upon. It is constrained because that context is all we know. Wanting to get out of a bad relationship enables agency because the bad relationship creates a context in which getting out of it becomes what is wanted. Agency is an escape, but the concept of even what an escape is, is contextual. "Escape" is enabled by "imprisonment" because it sits in contrast. You have to know one to know the other. There is no "happy" without "sad."

pg. 195 question 1

I think that in a relatiionship where a person is abused, it depends on the persons mentality that affects the agency. If that person decides to get out of the relationship, they arent mentally limited by the power of the other person that is abusing them, even though they are physically and mentally limited and put down andeven with the love they have for that person they know that they have to get out and take any action to get out. This makes that person have the power to do that, and try even if it fails and it enables agency because of the thought and persistance to get out. they arent limited by it because its the thoughs they get. thoughts can not limit a person unless bad thoughts are running their life, but agency gives the power to do something in what ever the context of the situation is.

Ch. 11 Pg. 195 Q. 1

If one is lucky enough to realize that he or she is in a go-nowhere-relationship then there is an opportunity to let one's agency do some work. Once all of the complications have been worked out, like hurting someone and changing what could be an intense routine, one can see what else society and life has to offer. A go-nowhere-relationship doesn't automatically mean that agency can be produced. There is a great possibility but one of the people in the relationship has to be moved to enable it on account of what could be a limitless amount of possibilities of catalysts coercing this person to do such a thing.

Escape enabled by the imprisonment that it presupposes? I'm sort of confused but I suppose that being imprisoned can motivate someone to go to extreme measures to escape whatever is imprisoning them within the realm of possibility and reality. Like, the more it starts to dawn on someone that they are trapped the more fervor they put into trying to be un-trapped. An example, the premise of the movie The Shawshank Redemption. Andy Dufresne, an accountant, was falsely-convicted and forced to cook the books of the warden at the prison. He was in an impossible situation with literally no hope. But a love for gemstones forced him to ask his buddy, Red, the go-to guy in prison for finding stuff, to get him a tiny pick-ax. The story that we don't see until the end of the movie is that Andy has spent 17 years pick-axing his way through a small tunnel. Does he escape? Watch the movie. Anyway, he used his imprisonment to escape. He tapped into his agency and slowly but surely it granted him positive results.

Blog #13 - Agency

Question #1

:Our agency is both constrained and enabled by the contexts in which we find ourselves." By having some restraints or limitations in what we are able to do or able to be introduced to, can and does have an effect on our agency. I was born and raised in Missouri, and as a kid I really wanted to learn for to surf. Now I'm not the best at geography but last time I checked there was no oceans anywhere close to Missouri, just one dirty ass river, and I was not about to take a dip into that. I was constrained by my environment, but that constrained factor lead me to the person I am today in wanting to be a writer. The resources in my environment lead me to this part of my life, and in that way my agency enabled me to this junction in life. It is often in these limitations that either motivate us or enable us into something creative, and we will never find ourselves where we will truly be not constricted by anything, so if anything this statement juts goes with what the book says about us not having any say in our history or not having a choice with the things that we are born with (religion, sex, race, etc.) but rather we are dealt these life cards and it is up to us, to a point, to do something with them. So in limitations, we often find ourself with paths that we otherwise may not have noticed, and that is why this statement makes sense.

-Corte

Agency p.195 q.

The way that I see it is that agency can be both enabling and constricting at the same time, because it can be strong in some contexts and weak in others. Being a woman can be constricting in the business world these days as women make less than men do, and it may enable her to manifest her agency to change things. I keep remembering the point that was made in the book, "Our choices always are made in contexts that we do not control." It makes a lot of sense to the statement I'm debating in this blog- Constricting contexts that we can't control enable us to make choices- whether they challenge problems and make changes with agency or not.
With the relationship, it seems to me that when you're stuck in a contextual going-nowhere relationship, you're forced to examine why that is, to at least recognize that things aren't right. The situation, the constriction enables the person to use their agency to change things. That is the whole idea behind this book though, isn't it? It never really gives us any straight up answers to the questions it arises, but it does as us to pay attention and to re-examine, recognize the things that are going on around us--- ie. the constrictions of a government that hides things from us by limiting what we see on the news--- enables us, gives us the choice to use our agency to have a freaken voice and actually do something about it. Am I right or am I wrong?

TT p. 195, #1

"Our agency is both constrained and enabled by the contexts in which we find ourselves". This is obvious in one glaring example--parents v. children. Children always feel that parents are stifling and "constraining" them, when in reality parents are acting in their children's best interests and "enabling" them to be the best that they can be. Also--by "constraining" their children and keeping them from things that would endanger them, they allow them to have more agencies and make more decisions and act more for themselves. A son may feel like his parents are stifling him and constraining him by not allowing him to be out all night, but in reality, without his parents' strict rules, he could have gotten into a lot of trouble, ending up in a place where he had zeros choices and options and hardly any opportunities to use his agency.
Power can create an escape in contrast to the imprisonment that it implies by forcing people to either act or be submissive. While the vast majority of people will be submissive and allow a power to imprison them, those very few will rise up and challenge that power, creating an amazing opportunity to use agency and produce change. By being stuck in a terrible relationship--you now have the opportunity to move on, to learn from the experience, to remember to watch for the warning signs so you don't get stuck again, and to hopefully learn something about your true self, as well. So while it may seem like a stifling situation, your agency and the choices you make are freeing and a learning experience for the future.