Wednesday, November 3, 2010
I'm not rational, I like people to know who I am.
The Warner reading this week is driving me up a wall. What I got from it is that in order to be heard as a member of the "public", then I have to drop who I am and let everyone assume that I am someone I am not. He does always say that it is nearly impossible to do so. I am sure that many people can achieve this goal, but I do not see why they would want to. I AM a woman, and I AM many other things. My ideas about certain topics stem from who and what I am. I do not think that it is right that in order for my ideas to count to the public, I have to basically speak under the assumption that I am a white male with money. I am just saying, I am proud of everything about me that forms my opinions. I do think that I can assert who I am and be able to speak in the public sphere at the same time.
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I think these "ideal" worlds that these literary theorists are striving for are bogus. Most definitely. I think we have grown up in a society where we are able to voice our opinions from a very young age, therefore we are really unable to comprehend their logic.
ReplyDeleteI think the public sphere is based on the logic of the founding fathers of this country. When the only people who were considered people were White males. Times have changed significantly since and we now live in a world where individualism is promoted no matter what category you decide to associate yourself in.
Maybe one day, the "ideal" will actually be based on reality.
You can't objectively drop who you are as a person because people will be able to figure out who you are based on your positions. But to not be heard is not based who you are as a person. It is based on your influence and your status regarding that influence. When their are over a billion voices how many of the individual voices actually get heard? It seems like its the number of voices that may drown out other voices as a result. But Warner's assertion isn't suggesting that those voices don't matter. It's really up to us to decide which voices matter.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you. Gabe, the only problem that I have is, who gets to decide? If we look at it from the self-abstracting point of view, then the "public" would decide which voivces matter. If that is the case, then we are just talking about a vicious circle in which no individual has a voice because it can not be heard through the overpowering "public."
ReplyDeleteSorry Gabe, I'm going to have to respectively degree with part of your response. I do not think that people will totally be able to pen-point who wrote a particular piece based solely on the idea that someone from one particular region/place/area wrote it. For example, it would be hard to tell if I were to write something and I was all for women's rights verses a female who thinks that women do not have rights. Although, yes, these are extreme, the point I'm trying to make is although I'm a male and I consider myself to be African-American it would be hard for some one to say. D'Angelo, who's African-American, who lives in San Bernardino wrote that. Minus the name, I do not think that it is totally plausiable that people might be able to tell.
ReplyDeleteWhat I think is missing here is the concept that to write about something, you have to have an opinion about that. To have an opinion about it, you have to have some kind of personal reason. So it is whether or not you are able to use non-personal and logical reasons for supporting or opposing something. If you must use personal reasons, other people are then able to say that because those things don't apply to them, your reasons are wrong or at least faulty and one-sided.
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