the best way out of an intersection is to exit the vehicle on foot and toss the keys to a beaming child
― Most Scientifically Beautiful Face (President Keyes), Wednesday, 15 July 2015 14:08 (eight years ago) link
people who drive are savages imo
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 15 July 2015 14:09 (eight years ago) link
privilege speaking
― Most Scientifically Beautiful Face (President Keyes), Wednesday, 15 July 2015 14:11 (eight years ago) link
more leftists should just ignore all other leftists & argue with economists and liberals to their right straight up
actually talked about this with a socialist poli sci prof over the weekend & he suggested that while arguing with liberals is fun af its "as much a fool's errand as arguing with anyone to the right of clinton"
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 15:22 (eight years ago) link
it cant be more of a fools errand than arguing with leftists
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 15:25 (eight years ago) link
http://gawker.com/making-peace-with-the-chaos-an-interview-with-ta-nehis-1717839272
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 15:27 (eight years ago) link
someone talk to me abt why ppl are saying "bodies" as in "black bodies" instead of "people"
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 15:28 (eight years ago) link
history of objectification
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 15:31 (eight years ago) link
it seems like just another hopelessly awkward academic construct?
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 15:32 (eight years ago) link
the the only time its used is in the context of oppression you dont need to shoehorn odd shorthand for the oppression in there when youre already talking about the thing
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 15:36 (eight years ago) link
also clearly oppressors throughout the ages have been very interested in their targets as psychological beings too as thats one of the many tools of oppression
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 15:37 (eight years ago) link
^all this, but also, it's a stylistic affectation
resonates w/ abhorrence at control of women's bodies, highlights unsavory implications wrt slavery and male violence, slight creepfactor
― j., Wednesday, 15 July 2015 15:42 (eight years ago) link
the mainstreaming of academic language is one of the worst things about online
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 15:44 (eight years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/P9JnBBP.png
good convo
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 15:47 (eight years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl1dc2cEJfs
― Trap Queenius (wins), Wednesday, 15 July 2015 15:55 (eight years ago) link
just bought the book maybe i will read it even
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 15:59 (eight years ago) link
― lag∞n, Wednesday, July 15, 2015 3:28 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
also seen this as "trans bodies," "queer bodies," etc--was explained to me that "bodies" *centers* the dehumanization of the subject
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:01 (eight years ago) link
"female bodies"
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:02 (eight years ago) link
i think this approach doesnt really "get" how language works but i cld be wrong
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:03 (eight years ago) link
i know you already saw it since you linked to the article, but
Q:There are two terms invoked constantly throughout the book: “body” and “plunder.” There is a physicality to both, a totality in each when you use them, that is terrifying. I’m interested in this idea of choosing the word “black body” as opposed to saying, “the black mind” or “the black soul.”A: I think the body is the ultimate thing. The soul and mind are part of the body. I don’t think there is anything outside of that. Your physical self is who you are. Some people feel that that is reductionist, but I don’t think it is. It’s just true.Q: It’s your vessel.A: But not even your vessel. It’s the thing. The body is the mind. The mind is housed, as far as we know, within an organ—the brain. The brain is part of the body. And when people speak about the soul, they are speaking about certain sensations that they feel as a result of nerves and other organ systems within the body. For me specifically, not really coming out of a religious tradition, that’s how I understand black people. It very much clarifies for me the idea of physical violence. There is a tradition within black America, that I quarrel with, that says: They can do things to our body, but they can’t really trap our minds. I disagree with that. Every assault upon the body is, in fact, also an assault upon the mind. I don’t think there is any way to get away from that.
A: I think the body is the ultimate thing. The soul and mind are part of the body. I don’t think there is anything outside of that. Your physical self is who you are. Some people feel that that is reductionist, but I don’t think it is. It’s just true.
Q: It’s your vessel.
A: But not even your vessel. It’s the thing. The body is the mind. The mind is housed, as far as we know, within an organ—the brain. The brain is part of the body. And when people speak about the soul, they are speaking about certain sensations that they feel as a result of nerves and other organ systems within the body. For me specifically, not really coming out of a religious tradition, that’s how I understand black people. It very much clarifies for me the idea of physical violence. There is a tradition within black America, that I quarrel with, that says: They can do things to our body, but they can’t really trap our minds. I disagree with that. Every assault upon the body is, in fact, also an assault upon the mind. I don’t think there is any way to get away from that.
― 1992 ball boy (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:05 (eight years ago) link
Freddie @freddiedeboer 2h2 hours ago
Please, inform me: what level of overwrought hagiography am I meant to achieve in order to properly signal my moral character?
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:08 (eight years ago) link
I'mm violating my own advice by de boring is hard to resist
xxp yes that's another note to the academic rhetoric too: 'bodies' stands in for references to the worst that can be done because in that context there's nothing worse to be done than something done to a body
― j., Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:13 (eight years ago) link
― 1992 ball boy (Karl Malone), Wednesday, July 15, 2015 12:05 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
lol i didnt get that far
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:16 (eight years ago) link
A: But not even your vessel. It’s the thing. The body is the mind. The mind is housed, as far as we know, within an organ—the brain. The brain is part of the body. And when people speak about the soul, they are speaking about certain sensations that they feel as a result of nerves and other organ systems within the body.
basically redefining body to mean person
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:19 (eight years ago) link
i think using "bodies" instead of "people" or "subjects" is one of those things that attempts to reflect dehumanization but ends up seeming to enact it, at least for me. TNC's idea that it's about grounding the subject in materiality to call attention to the urgency of political struggle makes sense, but i think other writers who use it are less deliberate about their ontological positions. i guess also i am resistant to framing oppression as being at the core of identity: it's something that happens to people, and shapes them, but doesn't produce their subjectivity in some ultimate way, as postmodernists, i think, will sometimes claim as a challenge to the cartesian subject. so maybe i disagree with TNC's materialist ontology too
― Treeship, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:19 (eight years ago) link
why would anybody do this
― Trap Queenius (wins), Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:25 (eight years ago) link
"bodies" will always remind of flattened out art/dance/poetry criticism that reduced humans to objects in a landscape (i.e. "Bodies moving through space")
― Most Scientifically Beautiful Face (President Keyes), Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:29 (eight years ago) link
"the body" was a term of critical fascination in lit studies, idk, 15-20 years ago?
― goole, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:29 (eight years ago) link
heyo
https://granta.com/issues/granta-39-the-body-3/
― goole, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:30 (eight years ago) link
xp to get rid of this nonsense about souls and bodies as vessels for something else
― flappy bird, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:31 (eight years ago) link
i think it's foucault's fault
― Treeship, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:32 (eight years ago) link
There is a tradition within black America, that I quarrel with, that says: They can do things to our body, but they can’t really trap our minds.
This same dualism has historically been used to justify slavery by suggesting that the harm of slavery "only" happens to the body. From Seneca:
It is a mistake to think that slavery goes all the way down into a man. The better part of him remains outside it. The body belongs to the master and is subject to him, but the soul is autonomous, and is so free that it cannot be held by any prison....It is the body that luck has given over to the master; this he buys and sells; that interior part cannot be handed over as property.
― jmm, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:33 (eight years ago) link
Yeah but phenomenologically we don't experience ourselves as just bodies, even if we believe only our body is ultimately real, ya know? Also casting off the soul is nice and all, but I don't understand the necessity of this for emancipatory struggle. It's a huge paradigm shift but what's the payoff? How will this understanding help people fight injustice? It seems just as likely to do the opposite
― Treeship, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:36 (eight years ago) link
Ah sorry, xp to flappy bird
think i've seen that use of 'bodies' traced back to douglass, as foregrounding certain things about the specific embodiedness of african-american experience and the constitution of blackness, i could be wrong w/ that vague detail but it certainly long predates postmodernism in some guise
― Merdeyeux, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:37 (eight years ago) link
I think there's some foucaultian biopolitics stuff in its genealogy too
― ryan, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:39 (eight years ago) link
Xp jmm, interesting passage. But materialist monism could also be used to justify slavery, e.g. people are just their social condition, there is no inherent right to freedom that society should acknowledge. The whole doctrine of human rights is founded on an implicit dualism, or an idea of an inherent value or dignity in human nature that makes things like slavery abominable. It's just hard for me to see either position as inherently progressive.
― Treeship, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:45 (eight years ago) link
Or inherently regressive. The relationship between these kinds of questions and politics always seems obscure and indirect to me
― Treeship, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:47 (eight years ago) link
i think using "bodies" instead of "people" or "subjects" is one of those things that attempts to reflect dehumanization but ends up seeming to enact it, at least for me.
Agree with this. Also, I don't think they're connected, but it links up in my mind with dudes who refer to women as "females," something that's always creeped me out.
― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:49 (eight years ago) link
xp yeah of course and i think douglass discusses how in even a lot of the white pro-african american discourse during and shortly after slavery (and beyond in different ways) is about how ~interesting~ it is that african/afrodiasporic culture didn't fit in the bounds of european/american rationality. so, yes, it is complicated
― Merdeyeux, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:50 (eight years ago) link
xps i don't think stoic philosophy has historically been used to justify slavery...?more like the opposite if anythingprovided techniques & language for humans to think of/ experience themselves as not slaves to another, subject to another's will, but masters of themselves, sovereign subjectsa way for the powerless to find/create/claim for themselves a space of autonomy (even if only in "the mind")epictetus was a slave
― drash, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:56 (eight years ago) link
― Treeship, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:19 (24 minutes ago) Perm
My approximation of how black studies would respond to this is that the slave class--which is contiguous with the system now referred to as blackness--is denied a subjectivity; the Cartesian subject is a white subject. The structures of race are themselves ontological
― supreme problematics (D-40), Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:58 (eight years ago) link
i don't think deciding bodies have inalienable rights is any more of a leap of faith or any less defensible than deciding whatever spooky stuff you think is inside the body has them
― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:59 (eight years ago) link
my body is full of ghosts
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 16:59 (eight years ago) link
http://www.incognegro.org/afro_pessimism.html
― supreme problematics (D-40), Wednesday, 15 July 2015 17:00 (eight years ago) link
"Accumulation" is replacing "intersectionality" I am told
― supreme problematics (D-40), Wednesday, 15 July 2015 17:01 (eight years ago) link
updates xls
― lag∞n, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 17:02 (eight years ago) link
...how?
― goole, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 17:02 (eight years ago) link
Oops I mean "assembledge"--I just read accumulation in that piece I linked
― supreme problematics (D-40), Wednesday, 15 July 2015 17:03 (eight years ago) link