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           The word that I feel best sums up Unit 6’s readings is “normative,” in this case referring to our society’s perceived “normative” categories of identity. “Normative” is an adjective defined in the dictionary as, “establishing, relating to, or deriving from a standard or norm, especially of behavior.” In our society, the “normative” or standard for being is a male who is cis, straight, white, able-bodied, Christian, and financially well off. The major thread that I saw between each reading in the unit was the perceived difference from this societal “normative.” Susan Stryker’s, “(De)Subjugated Knowledges: An Introduction to Transgender Studies,” addresses transgender studies, “transgender” being the category of identity that differs from the normative cisgender. Marquis Bey’s, “The Shape of Angels’ Teeth: Toward a Blacktransfeminist Thought Through a Mattering of Black(Trans)Lives,” brings up multiple categories of identity differing from the “normative,” including both black and trans identities which differ from the normative categories of white and cis. Both Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s, “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory,” and Eli Clare’s, “Body Shame, Body Pride: Lessons from the Disability Rights Movement,” address the category of “disabled” which differs from the normative category of “able-bodied.” Each of the four pieces read for Unit 6 address categories of identity differing from what is considered the “normative” of our society, but, each piece tackles this in a unique way, whether from a more standard journalistic perspective or from a more personal perspective. We, of course, know that the whole concept of what is “normative” is an oppressive social construct, so, reading pieces like this that address what it is to be outside of that perceived “normative” is all the more important.

1.     Susan Stryker, “(De)Subjugated Knowledges: An Introduction to Transgender Studies.” In The Transgender Studies Reader.

2.     Marquis Bey. 2016. “The Shape of Angels’ Teeth: Toward a Blacktransfeminist Thought Through a Mattering of Black(Trans)Lives.” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 5 (3): 33-54.

3.     Rosemarie Garland-Thomson. 2002.“Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory,” National Women’s Studies Association Journal14 (3): 1-32.

The word that I feel best summarizes this unit is, “identity.” The word, “identity” is most commonly defined as, “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.” The three pieces in this unit from Gloria E. Anzaldua, Lisa Kahaleole Hall, and Nadine Naber all explore not only identity, but also the consequences of holding some identities, specifically those related to the idea of one’s “race-ethnicity” in American society. Gloria E. Anzaldua’s piece talks about the “new consciousness” that comes with living on the border of holding multiple identities and, “the dilemma of the mixed breed.” (Anzaldua, 78) Lisa Kahaleole Hall’s piece discusses identity in terms of the intersectionality of being woman and indigenous as it relates to Hawaiian women in the modern day. Finally, Nadine Naber’s piece tackles identity and intersectionality specifically as they relate to oppression and racism, particularly nation-based racism, after 9/11. Overall, the three pieces discuss identity, but they also discuss it in terms of holding an identity that differs from the normative identity of the United States: cis, white, Christian, male. Each piece gives unique insight into not only identity, but also into the consequences of holding some identities.

Works Cited:

1.     Gloria E. Anzaldua. 1987. “La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness.” In Borderlands/ La Frontera.

2.     Lisa Kahaleole Hall. 2009. “Navigating Our Own "Sea of Islands": Remapping a Theoretical Space for Hawaiian Women and Indigenous Feminism.” Wicazo Sa Review 24 (2): 15-38.

The word that I feel best sums up Unit 3 as a whole is “marginalized.” The word, “marginalized” can be defined as, “(of a person, group, or concept) treated as insignificant or peripheral.” The readings in Unit 3 show marginalization in american society at all three of these levels: personal, group, and conceptual. As Vivyan C. Adair speaks to her experiences as a child, and then adult, in some form of poverty, we see the personal marginalization of poor people, which is especially poignant in this portion of her article: “As children, our disheveled and broken bodies were produced and read as signs of our inferiority and undeservedness. As adults our mutilated bodies are read as signs of inner chaos, immaturity, and indecency as we are punished and then read as proof of the need for further discipline and punishment.” On the group level, the Cohen and Combahee River Collective pieces speak to the experiences of marginalized groups such as black womxn and “welfare queens.” Finally, the Crenshaw piece really exposes the marginalization of certain groups and people for the concepts that the public feel they represent, even in the face of “antidiscrimination doctrine.” Overall, unit 3 does a great job of exploring the intersections of marginalization.

1.     Kimberle Crenshaw. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Policies.” The University of Chicago Legal Forum.

2.    Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement” (1977)

3.     Vivyan C. Adair. 2002. “Branded with Infamy: Inscriptions of Poverty and Class in the United States.” Signs 27 (2): 451-471.

The word that I feel best sums up Unit 2 which covers the ideas of sex and gender is “construct.” “Construct,” when used as a noun, is defined as, “an idea or theory containing various conceptual elements, typically one considered to be subjective and not based on empirical evidence.” Essentially, a construct is a thing we feel is real only because we have been made to feel that way when, in reality, it is as conceptual or theoretical as anything else. All three pieces (Fausto-Sterling, Butler, and Spade) cover in some way sex or gender and the way that these ideas have been created and how they have been used as defining categories and performative aspects of our lives. “Construct” is the word I choose to sum up this unit because, as created things that are only as real and tangible as we believe them to be, that is just what sex and gender are: constructs. New research is showing more and more how the constructed dichotomies that we’ve lived and categorized by for centuries (male and female, boy and girl, etc), are simply social constructs with no definitive scientific backing. This unit’s main link is just about the performative and constructed natures of sex and gender.

Anne Fausto-Sterling. 2005. “The Bare Bones of Sex: Part 1—Sex and Gender.” Signs 30 (2):1491-1527.

Judith Butler. 1998. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theater Journal 40 (4): 519-531.

The word that I feel best sums up Unit 1 “Feminism and Theory” is “action.” “Action” is defined as, “the fact or process of doing something, typically to achieve an aim.” While some may consider “action” too broad of a term to relate to a class or unit so specific, I think “action” perfectly encompasses the pieces read in this unit from Ahmed and hooks. Ahmed’s introductory chapter, the first reading, spends a good deal of time describing the active part of feminism, the movement and the way that feminism is lived. Ahmed’s second chapter, chapter 1, delves further into the ways that feminism is based off of our lived experiences—our actions and the actions of society at large and the way that we in turn must act or choose not to act to be part of the movement. hooks’s piece on the ways in which theory is a liberatory practice, giving the idea that theory is not merely something studied but something lived and acted and something that has the power to impact our lives. Overall, I think action sums up this unit in the way that the readings all showed the ways in which both feminism and theory are parts of our lived experiences and everyday lives, including what we do.

Sara Ahmed, “Introduction: Bringing Feminist Theory Home.” In Living a Feminist Life.

Sara Ahmed, “Chapter 1: Feminism is Sensational.” In Living a Feminist Life.

The word that I feel best encompasses Unit 8 and the two pieces included in it, Toby Beauchamp’s 2009 piece, “Artful Concealment and Strategic Visibility: Transgender Bodies and U.S. State Surveillance after 9/11,” and Rashmee Kumar’s more recent, “Marketing the Muslim Woman: Hijabs and Modest Fashion are the New Corporate Trend in the Trump Era,” is “deception.” Deception is most commonly defined as, “the act of causing someone to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid.” This idea of deception is seen in a broad sense in both pieces in the way that the powers that be in our society have attempted to deceive many marginalized groups into believing that they are no longer discriminated against, that their problems are gone and that there is no longer a need for their advocacy, when, in reality, that could not be farther from the truth in many cases. The Beauchamp piece brings light to the deception of trans people after 9/11 and the way that, though many government policies are not “targeting” trans people, those policies directly affect trans people in negative ways. Kumar’s piece talks about society’s attempt to deceive Muslim women through capitalism and details the ways in which major brands have begun using and producing hijabs in order to make Muslim women feel accepted and attached to their brands when, in reality, Muslim women still face unparalleled levels of surveillance and prejudice for wearing hijab in public. Both of these articles highlight large-scale attempts at the deception of marginalized groups.

Works Cited:

Toby Beauchamp. 2009. “Artful Concealment and Strategic Visibility: Transgender Bodies and U.S. State Surveillance after 9/11.” Surveillance andSociety. 6 (4): 356-366.

While Unit 7 focused on the idea of the “disposable body” and covered a wide range of topics, from the aftermath of natural disasters to gentrification to homelessness to the opioid epidemic, a common thread that I saw in all of the readings and videos was the idea of displacement. There are three common definitions of displacement outside of physics, all of which are seen in this unit:

a.     the moving of something from its place or position.

b.     the removal of someone or something by someone or something else which takes their place.

c.    the enforced departure of people from their homes, typically because of war, persecution, or natural disaster.

The first, and arguably broadest, definition of displacement can be seen in the Brown and O’Brien pieces on the opioid epidemic, particularly in the way that we can see how this epidemic has displaced not only individual lives but also the livelihood and allocation of funding for an entire region of the United States. The second definition of displacement is seen really clearly in the concept of gentrification as shown in The Last Black Man in San Francisco and the ways in which gentrification displaces entire communities. Finally, the third definition of displacement can be seen in several of the pieces on homelessness, whether those without homes have been displaced due to “war, persecution, or natural disaster,” as is seen in Willse, Goldstone, and Bailey pieces and really clearly in the Cortes piece talking about the aftermath of the hurricane in Puerto Rico.

Works Cited:

Jason Cortes. 2018. “Puerto Rico: Hurricane Maria and the Promise of Disposability.” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. 29 (3): 1-8.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Craig Willse, “Neoliberal Biopolitics and the Invention of Chronic Homelessness.” Economy and Society 39 (2): 155-184.

Brian Goldstone, “The New American Homeless,” The New Republic

Marlon M. Bailey. 2013. “Performance as Intervention: Ballroom Culture and the Politics of

HIV/AIDS in Detroit.” The Transgender Studies Reader 2.

M. E. O’Brien. “Junkie Communism: No one is disposable.” Commune.

The word that I feel best summarizes Unit 6, while incredibly simple, is “stuck.” In this case, I am using “stuck” to mean that a person or thing is unable to move, is unable to change or transition, and is essentially frozen in the space (be it physical, mental, or biological) that they are currently in. The feeling of being “stuck” is claustrophobic, anxiety-feuling, and hope-stealing for many people.

In Mansha Mirza’s 2014 piece, “Refugee Camps, Asylum Detention, and the Geopolitics of Transnational Migration: Disability and Its Intersections with Humanitarian Confinement,” the act of being “stuck” is seen in a very literal way. Migrants are “stuck” as they are essentially imprisoned, whether it be in refugee camps or holding facilities, and are unable to migrate or move to the space and place that they had intended. This very literal, imprisoned, form of “stuck” is also seen in Sylvia Ryerson and Judah Schept’s piece, “Building Prisons in Appalachia” and, “Who’s Behind ICE?: The Tech Companies Fueling Deportations.”

           A different form of “stuck” is seen in Aren Z. Aizura’s 2011piece, “The Romance of the Amazing Scalpel.: Race, Labour, and Affect in Thai Gender Reassignment Clinics.” In this piece, the feeling of being “stuck” can be seen in both the way that trans people are often viewed as being “stuck” in the bodies they are born into without gender reassignment surgeries and also in the way that the Thai women who work in these clinics can feel “stuck” in incredibly physically and emotionally laborious jobs.

The word that I feel best sums up Unit 5 is “crossing.” “Crossing” has three commonly accepted definitions in the English language, two of which are applicable here. The first applicable definition defines “crossing” as, “a place at which one may safely cross something, especially a street.” The second applicable definition describes “crossing” as, “the action of moving across or over something.” These two definitions come into play in not only all of Unit 5’s readings, but also in the videos we watched in class.

The word that I felt connected all of the pieces in Unit 4 was “dehumanization”. Dehumanization is defined as, “depriving a person or group of positive human qualities.” Dehumanization is seen a lot in different forms of labor, which are discussed in depth in this unit. A major point that I kept seeing come up was the apparent desire to dehumanize laborers in order to create the capitalistic economy neoliberalists desire; in a way, turning human laborers into machines without having to purchase and program machines and instead using the readily available human bodies in need of financial support for their lives.

The Van Oort piece on surveillance and digital control in fast fashion retail spoke to the dehumanization of fast fashion retail workers in the way that they are heavily policed and treated with little to no trust or dignity by the corporations they work for. The Kang piece on Korean-immigrant owned nail salons also speaks to dehumanization in the way that the immigrant workers in these nail salons are expected to labor both physically and emotionally for their customers and are still treated as sub-human by many of them. Maslin Nir’s piece, also discussing nail salons, speaks more toward the physical dehumanization seen in the industry as it discusses the physical consequences to workers who are continuously exposed to the fumes in manicure supplies. Finally, Grabell’s piece addresses the dehumanization of immigrant workers in the American chicken industry’s farms as they are expected to perform work that is physically and emotionally draining essentially as automatons.

Overall, all of the pieces talking about the laboring body speak to the dehumanization seen in these fields.

Madison Van Oort. 2018. “The Emotional Labor of Surveillance: Digital Control in Fast Fashion Retail.” Critical Sociology 00 (0): 1-13.

Miliann Kang. 2003. “The Managed Hand: The Commercialization of Bodies and Emotions in

Korean-Immigrant Owned Nail Salons.” Gender and Society17 (6): 820-839.

Sarah Maslin Nir, “Perfect Nails, Poisoned Workers,” The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/11/nyregion/nail-salon-workers-in-nyc-face-hazardous-chemicals.html

Michael Grabell, ProPublica, “Sold for Parts”

The word that I felt best summed up this unit was nationalism. Nationalism is defined as, “identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations.” From that definition, we see both the “positive” and negative sides of nationalistic views. At its “best,” nationalistic thinking leads to a love of one’s country and a desire to serve and better it, to support the people and economies of that nation. At its worst, nationalistic thinking leads to excluding those who are not of your nationality, no matter where they currently reside, and also putting the betterment of your nation over the welfare of all other nations.

Nationalism relates to all of the readings in different ways. Nationalism is seen in the piece on Hawaiian sovereignty in the way that the United States’s lust for land to support its nationalistic goals completely undermined the sovereignty of the Hawaiian peoples. Goldstein’s piece on Indian removals adds to the themes of nationalistic thinking’s disregard for the sovereignty and wellness of other nations and peoples. This detrimental nationalism is also seen in the Erevelles piece on disability in wartime, specifically in the discussions of the way that those disabled as a result of war who are not from the United States are viewed as “collateral damage” that is not worthy of aid or intervention. The Mesok piece further discusses war through the lens of nationalism.

Overall, this unit can definitely be viewed with the negative effects of nationalism in mind.

Bibliography:

Alyosha Goldstein. 2014. “Possessive Investments: Indian Removals and the Affective

Entitlements of Whiteness.American Quarterly 66 (4): 1077-1084.

Enduring Hawaiian Sovereignty, Excerpts from The Abusable Past

Nirmala Erevelles. 2011. “The Color of Violence: Reflection on Gender, Race, and Disability in

Wartime.” In Feminist Disability Studies.

Elizabeth Mesok. 2015. “Affective Technologies of War: US Female Counterinsurgents and the

For Unit 2, the word that I felt best summarized all of the readings as a whole was “investment.”

The word “investment” carries many different connotations with it. Dictionaries actually give three separate meanings for the word, all of which are seen in this unit.

1.    the action or process of investing money for profit or material result

2.    a thing that is worth buying because it may be profitable or useful in the future

3.    an act of devoting time, effort, or energy to a particular undertaking with the expectation of a worthwhile result

The first definition of investment is seen in the Karim piece which details the problems with loans and microfinancing to people in the global south when there is a great risk of the person in the global south incurring debt while the lender gains “profit or material result.”

The second definition of investment is seen in the Switzer piece which talks about Nike’s “The Girl Effect” campaign in which girls are considered worth “buying” or funneling money into because this gives them a chance of being “profitable or useful in the future.”

The third definition of investment is seen in the Mitchell piece that discusses celebrity philanthropy, as the celebrity devotes “time, effort, or energy” into a cause with “the expectation of a worthwhile result,” typically being clout or a good reputation.

An example of investment can be seen in the Nike foundation’s “investment” in girls in the global south with the expectation that they will in turn become a “good” member of neoliberal society and funnel their resources into capitalism, while being a feather in Nike’s cap.

I felt that investment was the most important word in this unit as it is a common neoliberal concept and each of its meanings were seen in our various readings.

Works Cited:

Katharyne Mitchell. 2016. "Celebrity Humanitarianism, Transnational Emotion, and the Rise of Neoliberal Citizenship." Global Networks 16 (3): 288-306.

Lamia Karim, “NGOS, Neoliberalism, and Women in Bangladesh,” from S&F Online

http://sfonline.barnard.edu/gender-justice-and-neoliberal-transformations/ngos-neoliberalism-and-women-in-bangladesh/

For Unit 1, the word that I felt best summarized all of the readings as a whole was “intersectionality.” 

The way that I have best heard intersectionality explained was in thinking of our intersecting oppressions as the bars on a bird cage. While we most likely have at least one bar, or one identity that is oppressed in our society, the more bars a person has, the harder the time they have escaping the cage or living in our society will be. The main “bars” in the modern United States include race/ethnicity, gender identity, sexuality, religion, socioeconomic status, and national origin. 

The concept of intersectionality is seen in many of the readings throughout the unit, in both the Combahee River Collective’s statement and Audre Lorde’s piece, the intersectionality of being black and being a woman is seen and discussed. When we read Monbiot’s article, our view of neoliberalism must be informed by our understanding of how capitalism’s negative effects disproportionately impact those at more vulnerable intersections. Mohanty’s piece gives insight into the intersecting oppressions faced by women around the globe and how transnational feminism is the best route for aid and understanding as opposed to attempts to be a white savior. 

An example of intersectionality can be seen in two university students who live in the same apartment complex’s journey to campus; one is a white man from an upper class background, one is a black woman from a middle class background. While both live in the same place and attend the same school, the man’s privilege allows him to quickly and easily drive to campus using a parking pass that he purchased, whereas the woman must walk to school each day due to her inability to purchase such a parking pass; her walk also leaves her vulnerable to both sexual harassment based off of gender and hate crimes based off of race.