In the FemTechNet video dialogue, “Transformations,” Catherine Lord and Donna Haraway discuss Beatriz DaCosta’s triptych art video “Dying For the Other,” where DaCosta creates visual representation of her own transformation through chemotherapy. She documented her many transformation after being diagnosed with brain cancer. The video goes back and forth comparing DaCosta’s treatment experience with being the patient and being tested on, in comparison to transgenic mice who are being used for testing for cancer research. Both are equally depressing to watch. The video displays her many transformations and changes in her lifestyle as she begins to learn how to use her brain and body normally after chemotherapy. DaCosta and the mice share similarities …show more content…
through their painful process of living and dying. Haraway discusses how the mice feel pain and how they are “dying for the other”. The mice have no choice in this, they are being used for testing to help others, and ultimately giving their lives to science. In relation to Haraway’s essay “Cyborg Manifesto” where she states her famous last line “I’d rather be a cyborg than a goddess”, Haraway is suggesting for feminists to be more imaginative and use science fiction for new possibilities.
Haraway challenges feminist frameworks and is very critical of it. She discusses the imaginative possibilities embedded in science fiction and how changes can be made/visa be our bodies. Haraway is conceptualizing the cyborg as oppositional consciousness, and a human centered life, that situates humans in a garden of Eden. The goddess feminist is often described as possessing a concept of deity, which draws upon and can be informed by notions of femaleness, nature and politics. Haraway critiques stereotypes which argue that the goddess/women are closest to nature and because of that they should be opposed to use technology. Haraway describes the image of cyborg in four different ways: cybernetic organism, hybrid of machine organism, creature of lived social reality and creatures of fiction. She wants to revisit technology as a binary, and not be opposed to nature. Haraway describes [the cyborg] "is not afraid of joint kinship with animals and machines...of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints"
(Haraway,1983:154). In relation to DaCosta’s video installation, we need to use cyborg characteristics, science and technology for new possibilities to help humans and animals, and join forces with the animals. We need to use technology in a positive way to help. Humans and animals both share similar characteristics and therefore both should be treated with respect and without cruelties.
The Broken Spears is a book written by Miguel Leon-Portilla that gives accounts of the fall of the Aztec Empire to the Spanish in the early 16th century. The book is much different from others written about the defeat of the empire because it was written from the vantage point of the Aztecs rather then the Spanish. Portilla describes in-depth many different reasons why the Spanish were successful in the defeat of such a strong Empire.
The fourth Chapter of Estella Blackburn’s non fiction novel Broken lives “A Fathers Influence”, exposes readers to Eric Edgar Cooke and John Button’s time of adolescence. The chapter juxtaposes the two main characters too provide the reader with character analyses so later they may make judgment on the verdict. The chapter includes accounts of the crimes and punishments that Cooke contended with from 1948 to 1958. Cooke’s psychiatric assessment that he received during one of his first convictions and his life after conviction, marring Sally Lavin. It also exposes John Button’s crime of truancy, and his move from the UK to Australia.
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys, is one of the most famous historical fiction books ever written. This 352 paged book has inspired many teens to acknowledge the Genocide of Baltic people. Ruta Sepetys was inspired to write a fiction book instead of a non-fiction book based on the stories she heard from survivors of the genocide during a visit to her relatives in Lithuania. She interviewed dozens of people during her stay. Between Shades of Gray was her first novel that she had written. This book was interpreted well enough by the readers to become a New York Times Bestseller.
This novel is a story of a Chicano family. Sofi, her husband Domingo together with their four daughters – Esperanza, Fe, Caridad, and Loca live in the little town of Tome, New Mexico. The story focuses on the struggles of Sofi, the death of her daughters and the problems of their town. Sofi endures all the hardships and problems that come her way. Her marriage is deteriorating; her daughters are dying one by one. But, she endures it all and comes out stronger and more enlightened than ever. Sofi is a woman that never gives up no matter how poorly life treats her. The author- Ana Castillo mixes religion, super natural occurrences, sex, laughter and heartbreak in this novel. The novel is tragic, with no happy ending but at the same time funny and inspiring. It is full of the victory of the human spirit. The names of Sofi’s first three daughters denote the three major Christian ideals (Hope, Faith and Charity).
This is How You Lose Her is a book written by Junot Diaz consisting of short stories, told by the protagonist, Yunior. Yunior’s character is described as the Dominican guy who struggles with infidelity and unable to love others full-heartedly. Diaz also shows how in Dominican culture; men carry the reputation of being womanizers and usually is pass from one generation to the next. Throughout the book, he tells us stories pertaining to the relationships he had with the women he had in his life, and his family. From the stories one can assume that Yunior, caught up in a vicious cycle was destined to follow into patriarchy; a father who cheated on his mother, and an oldest brother who followed
Death and Grieving Imagine that the person you love most in the world dies. How would you cope with the loss? Death and grieving is an agonizing and inevitable part of life. No one is immune from death’s insidious and frigid grip. Individuals vary in their emotional reactions to loss.
“Who is more to blame though either should do wrong? She who sins for pay or he who pays to sin?” Throughout “You Foolish Men” by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz the central question lies around who is to really blame for the suppression of women. De la Cruz attempts throughout her poem to portray men as ludicrous for their a double standard of women. However, De la Cruz blames human nature more than men for the suppression of women.
There is perhaps no greater joy in life than finding one’s soul mate. Once found, there is possibly no greater torment than being forced to live without them. This is the conflict that Paul faces from the moment he falls in love with Agnes. His devotion to the church and ultimately God are thrown into the cross hairs with the only possible outcome being one of agonizing humiliation. Grazia Deledda’s The Mother presents the classic dilemma of having to choose between what is morally right and being true to one’s own heart. Paul’s inability to choose one over the other consumes his life and everyone in it.
Haraway’s cyborg is a blending of both materiality and imagination, pleasure and responsibility, reality and the utopian dream of a world without gender and, maybe, without end. We are all hybrids of machine and organism. The cyborg is our ontology, a creature in a post-gender world with "no origin story in the...
We have all heard the saying, “What goes around comes around”, in this particular book, “This Is How You Lose Her” written by Junot Diaz, the main character Yunior learns firsthand what it is like to have karma served to him on a cold silver platter. Throughout this book Yunior has several polygamous relationships with different women. He cheats on them, and lies to them, all the time thinking that this is what love is. Yunior did not have a father figure to show him how to treat women or the difference between right and wrong. From a young age he watched his big brother bring in different women night after night, and thought that was the way to treat his relationships.
Why would an author want to trick a reader? What are some specific ways that Luisa tricks readers into reading the story the “wrong way”? What is motivating the author? Themes are never explicit, but authors allude to their response to an issue through images and characterization. Sometimes themes are so explicit that an author actually makes you see the story in a “wrong way” when you first read it. In “All about Suicide”, Luisa tricks the reader in several ways. In the end, authors mislead the readers so that they can be enticed and intrigued in finding the real meaning.
The novel, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (2011) written by Sherry Turkle, presents many controversial views, and demonstrating numerous examples of how technology is replacing complex pieces and relationships in our life. The book is slightly divided into two parts with the first focused on social robots and their relationships with people. The second half is much different, focusing on the online world and it’s presence in society. Overall, Turkle makes many personally agreeable and disagreeable points in the book that bring it together as a whole.
Parents tell their children to think first and act second. Most people forget this as illustrated in Yann Martel’s satire “We ate the Children Last,” written in 2004. It starts out with an operation and humans are given a pigs digestive tract to cure cancer. Because the operation made people eat garbage, they gave it to the poor At this point everybody wants to have this operation. When people started going cannibalistic, the government puts them together to eat each other. This started out as a good thing by curing cancer. After that everybody from the poor to the people administering the operation didn’t pause long enough to consider the consequences. Real world examples of people not pausing to consider the consequences are seen frequently, whether, it be on a small or big scale. Yann Martel is saying that
Simone de Beauvoir, the author of the novel The Second Sex, was a writer and a philosopher as well as a political activist and feminist. She was born in 1908 in Paris, France to an upper-middle class family. Although as a child Beauvoir was extremely religious, mostly due to training from her mother as well as from her education, at the age of fourteen she decided that there was no God, and remained an atheist until she died. While attending her postgraduate school she met Jean Paul Sartre who encouraged her to write a book. In 1949 she wrote her most popular book, The Second Sex. This book would become a powerful guide for modern feminism. Before writing this book de Beauvoir did not believe herself to be a feminist. Originally she believed that “women were largely responsible for much of their own situation”. Eventually her views changed and she began to believe that people were in fact products of their upbringing. Simone de Beauvoir died in Paris in 1986 at the age of 78.
In her introductory lines of The Second Sex, De Beauvoir says: “One wonders if women still exist, if they will always exist, whether or not it is desirable that they should, what place they occupy in this world, what their place should be.” (Solomon, page 296) De Beauvoir claims that woman should not be a biological category, but rather an existential category, with which I agree. De Beauvoir’s primary thesis is that men oppress women by characterizing them as the Other, defined in opposition to men. Man is essential, absolute, and transcendent, while woman is inessential, and incomplete. In this paper I shall summarize De Beauvoir’s take on womanhood, and her proposition on what womanhood should ideally be. I will also acknowledge the plausible objections to this claim and try to answer them within the existentialist perspective.