Maybe I won't. I don't want to bore you with my reading responses. Well the queer theory ones really started up something, but this one, maybe it's because it's my first assignment I'm actually doing, I'm quite apprehensive about it. And I also want to have dinner at Shaun's house, but I have to do this. I have to do two. Hmm, fuck?
Anyways.
The reading for my Semiotics class (fuck I have to do this, just gotta :I ) is "Culture, 'Nature' and Everyday Life" by David Inglis. We only had to read the introduction, which is nice. I wonder if I have to do two pages for each reading, or two pages for both readings. She said 1-2 pages too. pfft, fuck I'm alright. It's just having to have to think about something. Yesterday was all semiotics, I shudda done this. Nope, I shuddn't have that attitude.
Anyways, it's actually quite interesting. (Changing attitude). Because, we are submersed into our culture. Exactly like a fish in water. Exactly like us existing in space. The truman show quote, "We accept the world which we are given." Or something like that.. is it. The use of arbitrary is a bit off putting, I've heard it a lot in semiotics, it's kinda like when people are using the term 'juxtapose' for their art pieces in NSCAD. Or at least the classes in which I've been. I'ven't yet ben able to keep on writing thoroughly. I find this stressing me out a bit. Especially that Marena came home, and I don't know why it bugs me. Well it doesn't, I'm just on edge.
The culture around me tells me how I should be, right from when they saw that I was a girl. Right from when they saw my parents and gave them their jobs and their house. Right when they would treat my mom as an immigrant (did they?). Right when they saw that I looked asian, chinese, japanese, no Korean. I've read readings of feminist valour, and since I'm a chick, they're talking to me, I'm inclusive in their use of the word "us". Even as I will talk to my peeps, my friends, ma crew, it's "How's your day going?" (first off, the first form of cultural greeting) (hell, I'm even writing this on a blog, this is new culture(ish) too, North American dominated I'd guess?) But when I will be talking to my friends too, its quite organized. What we talk about to the other isn't even surprising. My friend, Barrett, and I, speak of school mostly. We speak of 'intellectual' stuff. Our dimeanor is even hoity toity.
There is a predisposed position on how me/we in this culture are even suppose to look at and treat those on the streets. Pan handlers. "Spare change" askers. Even how they're of popular subject. In my photography class last year, 4 people out of the 12 or 16 had used the 'homeless' as subject matter. What does the word 'homeless' even mean? Do they actually not have homes? Where do they go in the night? If it is in shelters, could they not just be living freely in community housing? Is it public housing? Would I be able to stay there if I wanted to? Is there a permancy for its regular goers?
"Sociology is in the business of stereotyping" is what Inglis says in his introduction. And it is. Bless it. Stereotyping, and openly stereotyping is a touchy issue to. It connotes a limited experience of individual expression. Or if they do not fit into the linguistic categories into which society has predisposed them, they are labelled as Queer. Because I don't know if we have many Shakespeare running about now, making up words. (Maybe I am/could be one?) Man I'm interested in language right now, or at least today.
It's like we're in our own triadic relationship/web/triangle of life. Or of culture. I don't know what to name it. But it's where culture and society and everyday affairs effect the other. After learning about Black History, or the Holocaust, I act differently, or black Slavery or anti-semitist topics come serging through my head when my eyes perceive coloured folk, or jewish folk. Hell, it's even difficult trying to explain what I want to, because there are so many negative and sensitive pairings that go with the words, "black person" or "jews". Or is there not? I don't want to hurt anyones feelings, and I'm kind of trying to be careful, I say kind of because I don't feel like being Shakespeare right now, all I want to do is get it out. Fuck, I'm already defending myself. Society has taught me to behave cautiously this way, around these sensitive topics (black slavery and holocaust). I'm personally interested in them, because I am not apart of them, I guess, in the same way some one else who is removed from that living culture as Inglis put it, but who is still "black" or "jewish" living today. But am I not apart of it? Like, I'm no black jew, hell, I might not even be a woman. Whatever to these ideologies. there is a tie though, with this inside feeling that one, or I guess, empirically (if this word fits) I feel connected to those representations of dead people in piles I've seen for pictures of the holocaust. I receive visceral reactions when I hear of black slave ships, and how those conditions more than the word suck could ever connotate.. but still I am removed from their group, or kin, because I am.. Asian? Although my father is White? I am .. not Black and not Jewish.
Sensitivities man, sensitivities. How does one defamiliarize themselves from the Holocaust? Why am I using this as an example even. On the outside, trying to speak of what's in. In society, everyone is an outsider, I swear. And I am neither informed well enough, or know greatly, the boundaries of sensitivities of social groups, or of cultures, and of the languages they use to speak amongst themselves. It's like constantly learning a new language everyday, but all you seem to say are profanities.
I have been on the inside with outsiders talking to me too, and no matter what they said, I took it offensively - their language though! How could they not know. Do not use Asian jokes to joke about me, or joke about the 'academics' of art school. Now whenever these topics arise, I turn into a great defense, with a pinch of aggression. Is Culture and Nature one thing? How are human activities not natural? Does it mean, would it exist outside of the existence of humans? Like Beaver Dams? Are beaver dams natural then? Or are they not.
And I don't agree with Inglis' use of the word arbitrary, to explain culture. Arbitrary means, according to my dictionary on my laptop, which is my reasoning for all my definitions, something that is without reasoning for its manifestation. Then we go into some sort of cultural history lesson (which is subject to fallibilism for shure!), but then it's black slavery happened, because some folks found some boats.. well, I don't even know how to reason that one. But where reactionary steps formed from prior steps. I feel like that is reasoning. Reasoning does not mean what is truth, or scientific. It is merely that if one cultural idea formed as a reaction to something that had effected that culture, then yes everything is and was contingently made upon its prior existence. Everything that has not happened is relativistic, yet once it has happened, it is determinism. So I guess the point of this would be to ideally form what is future and relative, into a more widely acceptedly culture where everyone's happy, if we all even want to be happy..
