A Letter (?) on Multiraciality

Dear Ms. Cogito et Histoire de la Folie,
Wow, that's a mouthful. I remember, some number a weeks ago, when you and I were discussing your non-fiction essay in which you discussed race. I remember your spot-on segment about your friend you met while on vacation and we somehow came to discuss the very Time cover which you referenced in your post. I think you sum your opinion, one I agree with, up rather nicely when you say, "One day, far in the future, our concept of race will become so dilute that racial discrimination will be virtually impossible.
Tradition will be maintained, but culture individually innovated."

The one point which I take issue with is this. You wrote that, "In fact, that racially plural, digital face does not represent the people of the future; we're here right now, and guess what? We've always been here." While I agree that "We are here right now," is true, stating that multiraciality is not so much for the future but rather for the present, the absoluteness of "We've always been here" bothered me slightly.

The more I think I about it, the less I realize I know. My sense of the history of multi or biraciality is quite limited. Specifically, I think of the terms mestizo and mulatto created at the time of the conquistadores. My mind then moves onto the children between slaves and slave owners, like those of Thomas Jefferson. More recently I think of Nazism, Hitler, and the value he placed on Aryan children, leading to what are called "Lebensborn children," lebensborn meaning "Source of Life." Essentially that Nazis sought out and relocated "racially pure" children who would be able to repopulate Germany during the Third Reich. (Interesting subject. For more read here and here).

I forget what my point was, but I also remembered Sudie last year talking about Loving v. Virginia, a few days after Mildred Loving had died. I guess all I'm trying to say is that history seems to have a pattern of fighting against multiraciality, so perhaps Time was trying to convey this sense of a growing acceptance? Though, one only need look around the internet, googling "Aryan children" should do it, to find some truly horrific people completely against any "mixing."

Ethnic Cleansing and the Future

Danielle's blog post about ethnic cleansing reminded me of a question posed to us in class, which I cannot remember exactly but basically said "Will this ever stop?"

Leigh responded by saying that sure, eventually yes, which I agreed with. While discussing French-Algerian-Italians, I thought a lot about biraciality, a group of people who are just being recognized on official forms (think college applications). Then I thought about the our children's generation. Bi might become Quad and so on until it is impossible to identify solely on ethnicity. In this way, I think ethnic cleansing (thankfully) has a very dim future. Although there are those who still preach "pureness of bloodline" and reject inter-racial marriage, I feel like the majority of people could be moving away from this traditional, purist view.

But then I thought of religion. Will the divisions in religion undergo the same syncretism? Possibly? There is a growing amount of people nowadays who have been born into two different religions. This, of course, is only in my small version of the world, namely the SF Bay Area where religion is not of the highest importance in most people's minds. I can see, though, religious disagreement becoming the vehicle through which violence is conducted. Already, in several places this is happening, for when we can no longer draw boundaries of blood, what can we fight about?

Research Paper: Post Three

Given that Moorish influence in Spain ended too early to be considered a viable option for this research paper, I've decided to dedicate my portion of this research project to Ireland. More specifically, English control of Ireland. To begin with, here are some dates selected from a timeline (found here)

450 Saint Patrick converts Ireland to Christianity.
1169 Norman Invasion, puts Ireland under nominal English control.
1315 Edward Bruce, brother of Robert I of Scotland, attempts to drive English out of Ireland.
1536 Henry VIII of England begins reconquest of Ireland under Protestant rule.
1594-1603 Nine Years War: English conquer Northern Ireland and assume control of Ulster.
1641 Catholic Uprisings during English Civil War; massacre of Protestants in Ulster.
1649 Oliver Cromwell invades Ireland—infamous Siege of Drogheda.
1688-1691 Williamite War in Ireland, following the "Glorious Revolution" in Britain.
1691 Penal laws enforced which oppress, dispossess Irish Catholics.
1782 Henry Grattan establishes independent Irish Parliament.
1798 Irish rebellion.
1801 Ireland (unwillingly) merged into the "United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland";
1829 Catholics allowed to vote.
1893 Parnell's Home Rule Bill defeated by small majority.
1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, raises sympathy for Irish Rebels.
1919-1921 Irish War of Independence.
1922 Partition of Ireland: Formation of Irish Free State.

-More information on St. Patrick: here and here
-Norman Invasion: here and here
-Obviously, the conflict between Protestantism/Catholicism came to a head under the reign of Henry VIII, who founded the Church of England. This conflict led to and enduring rivalry between the two religions manifesting themselves in persecution and oppression.
-Nine Years War: here
-Siege of Drogheda: here and here
-Williamite War: here and here
-More info to follow on penal laws in Ireland
-Parnell/Home Rule: here, here, and here

Art, Art, Art

I really enjoyed Friday's class in which we discussed each of the pieces/clips we had chosen on our postwar culture Easter egg hunt. If any of you are interested, here is the link to Serge Poliakoff's wikipedia page and here are several of his pieces.

In particular, this one caught my eye:

(source)
Poliakoff, born in 1900 in Moscow, moved to France and in 1962 became a French Citizen. Previously he traveled through Istanbul and Germany, playing guitar and balalaika. He also was in contact with Kandinsky, which perhaps would explain why his art seems to have more structure to it than that of Abstract Expressionists. Kandinsky, who died before the end of WWII, had been a member of Der Blaue Reither (The Blue Rider) which we studied in Civ. (It also included Franz Marc if that jogs anyone's memory).

But, to get back to Poliakoff. I was looking at a few more of his pieces when I saw the one above and immediately thought of the France. Could this be Poliakoff's representation of the flag? I immediately found a picture of the flag, realized that white is on the left of red, and deflated a bit inside. Why was I so eager to impart meaning on this work? Why can't I look at it and be simply absorbed in it the same way that I can with a Rothko (who while not a self-defined expressionist, was a colorfield painter, put under the umbrella of Abstract Expressionism).

I think it's hard for me to accept that a piece of art can simply not mean or represent anything, which is more than a bit odd, considering I really love Dadaism. Looking at other pieces by Poliakoff, I see faces and cliffs and falling rocks, and I'm aware that I'm not experiencing the pieces in the way they were meant to be viewed, understood, and valued.

It's this attachment to meaning and representation which Abstract Expressionism sought to unseat, and thought perhaps they were successful at the time, introducing an attitude which did not scrutinize a piece for the sake of decoding it, it's clear that now the attitude has disappeared, in me at least. This saddens me a bit, but examining art, it's clear that one style period is often the response to a preceding one. But this leaves me wondering what style period we're in right now. What is it responding to? More importantly, why?

Existentialism and The Second Sex

Although I missed class on Tuesday afternoon, I shall attempt to discuss existentialism as I understand it (from the mini catch-up-lecture and readings). I found this website particularly helpful (there are also some pretty cool diagrams which you should all look at, and when I say cool I mean stick-figure, flow-chart cool)

In reading JED's post regarding the de Bauvoir and Camus excerpts, I found myself disagree with his assertion that neither were "really existentialist."

I came to class on Wednesday psyched to talk about the de Bauvoir stuff, and when I heard the word "existentialism" I instantly became confused, whether from not really knowing what "existentialism" meant or because I saw no conceivable connection between the topic and The Second Sex. On further thought, I have reconciled the two in the following manner.

Focusing on the tenet that "Existence precedes essence," which we broke down in class as "You are what you do." Although we exist, we "construct our nature or our essence through our actions" (source). In terms of de Bauvoir: women exist. They define themselves by their attachment to men, or rather, the dominating male defines the female. Women "do" nothing, actively that is. All they have won in their struggle for equality is not really won at all. Rather, it has been given to them by men and women accept that as enough. Until women actively organize and take their due rights, they will not have constructed their nature or essence.

"Hot N Cold"

And you always think
Always speak
Cryptically....
'Cause you're hot and you're cold
You're yes then you're no
You're in and you're out
You're up and you're down.

I couldn't really resist connecting the Cold War with Katy Perry, though that in itself is probably degrading on many levels.

The ideas that have most commonly been bandied about by blog entries in our community (like here and here and here) involve degrees of guilt and attempts to gauge "the enemy." I imagine it must have been extremely disconcerting for the Americans in the post-WWII era to realize that the USSR was also developing nuclear weapons (as well as the aircraft needed to carry them). What had been our weapon suddenly was up for grabs, becoming only one facet of competition between the USA and USSR during Cold War, one "race" of many. My personal understanding of the Cold War and the non-usage of nuclear weapons in the conflict boils down to a lot of what Danielle talked about. Similarly, I disagree completely with the statement that, "Having lots and lots of nukes sitting around means that probabilistically, there is a strong likelihood they will be used eventually." I think that one thing which prevented and continues to prevent nuclear warfare is the conscience. Earlier in class we discussed the Nuremberg trials as a way to burn a sense of shame and an urgent need to not forget the atrocities committed during the Holocaust. Hiroshima/Nagasaki act as their own. While the number of people killed in the two atomic blasts did not exceed the number of people killed in prior firebombings of Japan, the lasting effects both psychologically and physically are burned into our memories. Thus, neither we nor the USSR felt particularly trigger happy. (I also concede that paranoia about each other's weaponry might have delayed/prevented any dropping of atomic bombs as well as fueled the countries' desires to have the most powerful, most lethal weapons, certainly greater than their opponents.)

To wrap up, I offer you this video courtesy of YouTube. One thing my mom remembers from her youth were this duck and cover drills. (The video gets more interesting around 2:00)