Week 4

I was initially thinking of documenting an object that related back to my cultural history, since over the last year or so I've become increasingly interested in pre-Christianized Germanic culture, which, from what historians have been able to descern, was rather similar of Scandinavian/Norse culture and mythos. But since I one, don't own anything that relates back to this culture, and two, don't have any stories to document about it that wouldn't be reschewing already existing myths, it didn't feel right to me.

Instead I've opted to document an old photo of mine, the original I could not photograph because of the current circumstances, but I tried as best as I could to make a loose sketch of it from memory instead. It is a photo of me, as a baby, being held by my great grandmother, who would pass away before I turned three years old.

I remember some stories about my great-grandmother from my own mum, which over time became more elaborate as I grew up as well. My mum recalled that when she was little, she always regarded her grandmother as rather cold. She was a bit of a tough-love person, and as such never told her son, my mum's father, that she loved him, and this was something my mum noticed returned in her own upbringing. The more I learned about my great grandmother though, the less surprising I found this method of raising her son.

My great-grandmother was born in 1911, and as such lived through both World Wars. She was brought up in a monestary school, and as such had a sobre upbringing. Her husband died young, leaving her to raise three boys and one girl all on her own, the youngest, my granddad, being born during the Hunger Winter, something that is still reflected when you line him up next to his siblings: to this day he remains the skinny one.

There were more details I wished to include, but due to the time zone differences between my mother and I, I was unfortunately unable to do so.

Document something that is already lost (from memory). The documentation can take any form you like.

British band Keane performing at Live on the Beach in Scheveningen, Sept. 7 2019

I initially thought of documenting my childhood home, that neither my either of my parents or myself live in by now. I was uncertain if this would fit within the 'already lost' concept, since the house is still standing and lived in, it's just no longer the way it was when I lived there. Because of this uncertainty and the melancholy it would doubtlessly have induced, I opted to instead document a concert I attended last fall that was one of the best concerts I've experienced yet.

I initially attempted to put a moodboard together based on my memories and the atmosphere of the evening. While I'm nowhere near the same level of image editing as some folks on Pinterest or Tumblr, looking at it does the job for me, bringing back memories and giving a rough feeling of atmosphere.

However, the night before this homework was due, my mind came up with a more abstract idea for documenting this evening. The idea was to merge lyrics of one of the band's songs with snapshots of that day that mirror each other. I've included a rough sketch for that as well. I was not able to put this idea into practice, but I may yet come back to this idea at a later time, either within or outside the context of this major.

Marx' Historic Materialism is a world view that busies itself with how the relationships of production - who is in charge of the profits earned off' the labor of workers - influences the entirety of society, and it also involves Conflict theory, which argues that struggles over power drive sociatal change. With this in mind, it's easy to see how Dutch imperial/colonial presence presents us with a rather unbalanced relationship of production, and Wekker writes in her introduction that she intends to explore how these power struggles and this imperial history, which is almost completely absent from the Dutch educational curriculum, silently influences the white Dutch cultural archive, which what Marxist politician Antionio Gramsci defines as 'cultural hegemony'.

Another one of the worldviews that we discussed that appear here would be Systemic Interactionism. When introducing us to how she uses the term 'innocence' in her writing, Wekker points out the contradictions within white Dutch society on a macro and micro level. She explains the common Dutch representation of an 'innocent and tolerant progressive little country'. But she also explains to us that: "The claim of innocence is a double-edged sword: it contains not-knowing, but also not wanting to know. Denial of racism may merge into what is called smug ignorance: (aggressively) rejecting the possibility to know or learn. Innocence is then not as innocent as it appears to be." This is something that is easy to take notice of when, for example, the discussion around Zwarte Piet is brought up.

Which of the three world views would you attribute to Wekker's work? Substantiate with arguments/examples.

I would argue that it's meant to introduce reocurring themes and concepts to make the reader familiar with them, and to make the reader aquainted with her world views and the approach she intends to take hroughout her book when approaching the aforementioned themes and concepts.

What is the focus of Wekker's introductory chapter?

Please read the Uzma Rizvi's quotes in the One Note Section titled 'Decolonisation as Care'. Write back to Rizvi expressing your thoughts on all 4 of the quotes cited.

"A simple example might be to consider my own childhood: as a person of South Asian heritage, I was often confounded while dealing with crayons that did not have any color to represent my skin tone. I was told by teachers to color in bodies as ‘peach’ because that was the norm in the 1970s, in the United States. But my body was not peach.

The disjuncture, cognitive dissonance, and alienation between what I experienced as body and what I represented was unaccounted for: the tools (i.e. crayons) and the representation could not align unless I let go of wanting to see myself represented in that image. I had to make myself into something I was not, and it very quickly became clear to me that I was not the ‘norm’ in the world of crayons." p87

"Often we feel trapped in one system, and we feel the system is so much larger than we are; but we are the ones who are keeping that system going. So once you recognize the inequity, and trace how your own body is being disciplined and kept in a certain place, you can begin to think through how you might design intervention, as a creator of cultural material." p90

There was a point in my life, somewhere in high school, I'm not certain, when I, through drawing connections to my own experiences, suddenly realized with startling anger, how rightfully upsetting it is for POC to not see themselves represented. To explain: As a child, I was surrounded by media in which the female characters were all white, blonde-haired and blue eyed feminine appearances. As a tomboyish, brown-haired and, as much as I still now dislike admitting it, cross-eyed kid, this always bugged me. Unlocking the character of Daisy in Mario Kart, just to have a character that looked like me, brought me some comfort at least, but of course that doesn't really take away the underlying feeling.

And then, years later, as a teen, came the realisation how exponentially worse this issue of representation is for people of color. It's something that, once I realized it, I was no longer able to unsee. Not just in media, but also in real life settings, such as the predominantly white animation department, or the civilian advisory panel the municpality put together from people in my neighborhood based on addresses, to discuss construction/gentrifying plans. An aquiantence told me this is something Tupoka Ogette talks about in her (originally German) book 'exit RACISM', where she calls it 'leaving wonderland': meaning you will probably never be able to go back to a state of indifference.

As a creator of art and media I understand the importance of accurate representation, research, etc. At the same time I find myself currently at odds with my major, unsure of whether I really want to spend the rest of my life in its field. Nevertheless, this quote still applies. Recognizing how institutions keep systems of inequality based on race, gender, sexuality, ability, etc., can help us figure out how to go about our lives differently, avoiding or challenging the system in small ways that, when enough people do so, can bring forth actual change. Whether we take the historical example of revolutions like the ones we've seen in France, or the cry for more representation in media from marginalized communities in the current day and age.

At the same time I feel a certain sense of fear when thinking about these things. Part of me feels as if cultural hegemony and, for lack of a better word, the propeganda of capitlism and facist movements, are more prevalent and subtle than they've been in previous perilous times in history. Part of me can't help but wonder if there were working class people in 18th centruy France vehemently defening Louis XVI's spending habits and absurd wealth, because 'he must have worked hard for it'. There are plenty of people currently challenging these systems, but soemtimes I wonder if it'll be enough.

"That realization is a small gesture that has huge implications for the ways in which the material culture of schools can be changed. A key tenet of decolonization has to also include a sense of intersectionality. So another clear example might be the heteronormativity of public bathroom spaces, particularly in schools. If the architecture of our early childhood spaces structurally reiterates gender binaries, we will never grow up to really be comfortable in non-gendered bathrooms because our comfort is first introduced and developed at a young age. Prior to those moments, most children do not think very much about who is around them when they perform any biological act. If we change the gender markings of early education bathrooms, we have changed the embedded social meaning of everyday practice in the future." p89

There isn't much I have to say about this, I think? I agree with the statement made: that the social meanings we give to things start from a young age, but that that also means they can easily be challenged and made more intersectional to ensure future generations grow up with a less narrow view of what they're comfortable in. In this case it's moreso the question of whether or not the institutions (read: in this case the schools) are willing to put such changes in place or not.

Part of me wonders, then, about what were to happen if this were to be put into place. I'm sticking to the example Rizvi has given us: imagine, if you will, that parents of children address this issue with the school board and ask for a change. In more progressive, for lack of a better word, parts of the world (Blue states, regional differences within countries, etc.) this would probably be met with much less resistance than in conversative parts of the world. If these changes are then implemented in some schools, but not in others, this can create a gap between the two groups of students. Zooming out to a macro level, I wonder if this is then one of the many factors in the growing polarisation in the world at large. (That's not to say that, by spitballing here, I mean to say that I blame said polarisation on an urge to make the world more intersectional. That is a complicated phenomenon with many different factors playing their roles in it.)

"If, due to your body experience, you have never had to question how the world looks at your race/class/ethnicity/ gender/body, or if that has never impacted the way the world identifies your research or work, you should know that that is a privileged experience. And that privilege or lack thereof, informs you and your praxis." p86

This quote has me thinking about my own experiences of how to the world looks at me and how this influences my behaviour and work. Because how this has impacted my behaviour, well, I can think of quite a few examples where I've had to alter myself, or where the world considered me as lesser-than, because of my body experience, as Rizvi calls it. Just last night, I had hoped to talk a walk around the city to get some fresh air and combat cabin fever, but I had to text some friends to share my location with them, since I had done my math and realized I would not be able to make it home before dark. This is just an example of course, but it's one of the many ways in which this has affected my way of being.

I've never really bothered to think about how this affects my work/praxis/art/etc. While I have, argueably, used some of these themes in my work, I have not bothered to question how my body experience changes how the world looks at my work. Perhaps this is because I don't consider my work to be of a large enough scale to amass a big enough audience where this question can be raised. Dicussions about the 'death of the author' theory, or about the serperating the art from the artist-dilemma, while of course applicable to any creator, have mostly revolved around larger creators whose influence is much further reaching than my own currently is. At the same time I wonder if I should want to know how my body experience changes the world's outlook on my work, painful as that might be.