Différance

The hardest concept for my mind to digest in this essay was the concept of a Trace. An effacement? Like effacer, in French, to erase?

In my mind, trying to visualize Trace I thought of the bear tracks that we spoke about in class, of course with understanding that Trace is not an object, but a doing. So Trace is that time when I see the tracks and I think of the bear. Although the bear is not present, I make him present and therefore the tracks are not really there anymore, but have been erased by the presence of the bear (in my mind). I have brought the bear to the present by erasing what is in reality the presence in the present (the tracks), and have brought the future to the present.... I think...

Two Lectures by Foucault

This kind of ties in with my last post of reason and discourse. Here he pretty much says that as we try to narrow down knowlege, many things get left out. He says that sooner or later those things left without revolt against those things left within.

Then again he doesn't really blame anyone. He says it is mostly, if not all, done unintentionally over time and space. It is not pruned purposefully, but rather it just gets, so to speak, "filtered" out. I wonder though, is it really all unintentional?

What is Enlightenment?

If I understood it correctly, I fell in love with the way Foucault attacked what we think of as "Enlightenment." If I understand it as he does, "enlightenment" is merely the rejection or the ignoring of, not necessarily what is UNreasonable (or maybe it is), but what is beyond reason. Without saying it directly, he points out the arrogance of humanity of wanting to squeeze everything within the limits of "reason."

When people thought (or think) of themselves (ourselves?) as enlightened by reason alone, was it not by reason alone that people once assumed the earth was flat? At that time, that only sounded reasonable.

Discourse on Language

This confused me because for a while I had my fixed visual of discourse: a box. It is a box for what today is "truth and knowledge." Then suddenly my visual of discourse began to transform into something that looks more like a cell, from which organisms leave and to which others enter, without force and some with the use of force. Just like in diffusion and osmosis, truth and knowledge have entered our minds forcibly and other times unintentionally....

What is Philosophy?

I want to focus on two things Deleuze talked about: truth and discourse.  He attacks the fact that people search for the truth from a preconceived notion, from a certain disposition. As if truth was somehow a balloon and it was tied to a ribbon, which was tied to say, a chair, on the other end. "Truth" can only go certain ways, and can only reach out so far when it is trapped within that discourse. This makes sense to me, but I wondered, how can we escape that?

Celebrating love for the African American family

Gabriela Fierro

By tradition, the Catholic Church dedicates each month of the year to a certain devotion. In February, it is the Holy Family; Mary, her beloved Joseph and Baby Jesus. February is also the celebration of Black History Month and of love, and it is ironic that the greatest attack on the family, especially the Black family is abortion. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood (which was originally called the American Birth Control League), first referred to it as her “Negro Project” which aimed to control and maybe even exterminate, some claim, the African American population. Sanger wrote articles and letters about her goals to “purify” the Human race from “unfit” persons, as she called them. 

Sanger held meetings with other members of Board of Directors of Planned Parenthood at the headquarters of the Eugenics Society to discuss ways in which the Black population could be more easily controlled. The quickest way, they realized, was through sterilization, birth control, and abortion. Today, there is a lot of evidence that would seem to validate this. For example, 78% of the company’s clinics are situated in neighborhoods that are predominantly inhabited by minorities. Cries of outrage from charity organizations were made against Planned Parenthood after Haiti was struck by Hurricane Tomas in 2010, when after killing thousands and leaving many wounded, Planned Parenthood asked America for donations so as to provide Haitians with new abortion clinics and more contraceptives as soon as possible. When a natural disaster destroys the homes and the lives of people’s beloved, it is expected to find that someone would give that person in suffering a hand, but not that they would be given a condom (Blackgenocide.org).

Planned Parenthood also distributes many forms of birth control pills, one of them being the RU-486. The initials RU stand for Roussel Uclaf, a division of a company called Hoechst AG. After WWII, a company known as I.G. Farben was closed and re-born in the form of small, separate companies. I.G. Farben was a German company that had committed serious crimes during the war, one of them being the production of Zyklon B, used in gas chambers in the Concentration Camps in Germany and Occupied territories. The company then split into several smaller ones, one of them being Hoechst A.G, from which Roussel Uclaf derived. In short, the RU-486 is a pill that still carries the name of a company that served the Nazi Party and for many years supported the eugenicist market(Hli.org).

"Several years ago, when 17,000 aborted babies were found in a dumpster outside a pathology laboratory in Los, Angeles, California, some 12-15,000 were observed to be black." (Erma Clardy Craven, Social Worker and Civil Rights Leader). Every day, nearly 3,500 women in America get an abortion, and almost 2,000 of those aborted are African American babies. Shockingly, abortion is the number one cause of death in the African American community ever since Roe v. Wade. As a matter of fact, more African American babies are being aborted yearly than are being born, outnumbered by nearly 130,000, and although they make up less than 13% of the American population, they make up for about 37% of abortions of all Americans. (Bound4life.com). Ever since Roe v. Wade, 30% of the Black population has been wiped out through abortion. In order for a population to maintain itself, that is, to have enough number to “replace” those that have passed away, an average of 2.11 babies per woman must be born. The African American community has a rate that is less than 2.00 (Humanlife.org). The decrease is fatally steep, and what is now called abortion could be plan B of Margaret Sanger’s “Negro Project.”

The question now is, in this month that celebrates Black America, the Holy Family and love, how is society to celebrate?

Picture 1- The table above shows statistics based on race and percentage of abortions each race makes up for. (curtesy of jillstanek.com)

Picture 2- The picture above is a photograph of Margaret Sanger, a eugenicist and founder of Planned Parenthood. (curtesy of 1.bp.blogspot.com)

Picture 3- Above is a photograph of an African American father and his baby, both targets of Margaret Sanger’s conspiracy. (curtesy of cdn.elev8.com)

Children are not alone in the Battle against Oppression

The Women and Literature class at Avila University focused on a book called “The Cancer Journals” by Audre Lorde. The author of the book discusses in her book the ways in which women are still oppressed today. She is a cancer survivor. Before the surgery, representative s from the American Cancer Society quickly flocked to her to try to persuade her to obtain a prosthetic breast, and a nurse in the hospital told her to wear one because it was “bad for the morale of the hospital.” Lorde points out that society objectifies women, even to the point of trying to persuade them to focus on their looks rather than their health even before treatment.  This photo shows an anti-abortion rally in Washington, D.C. Protesters stated that women are objectified still today through abortion and birth control, which have shown to cause mental, emotional, and health problems, and even death. Most women who have gotten abortions report that they did it because they felt they had no choice or were coerced. Feminist groups showed up at this rally to make it known that abortion has become a hidden exploitation of the woman.

"Little Girl" by Mosul (Michael) Yon

A group of soldiers were in an Iraqi neighborhood, surrounded by a group of about 20 delighted little children when a suicide bomber exploded a car nearby, harming and killing some of the children, including this small girl who was taken to the hospital by Major Bieger (above). The child did not survive the bombing.

This photograph grabbed my heart and attention as soon as it popped up on my screen. To see a child bleeding endlessly and so vulnerable and fragile, it really made me want to break down. It is a paradoxical photo because despite the despair it provokes in me seeing the little child dying, it also gives me hope and comfort to see the Major treating her as if she were his own, with such love and compassion amidst war.

I guess this photo tells me that no matter how horrific human actions may be, there will always be another more beautiful aspect of human nature: that we are capable of the better, that we can love no matter how much in suffering or how deep in the war zone we may be. They may take away their children, their security, even their very lives. But they cannot take away love.

Egypt Post-Mubarak

What's going to happen to Egypt now? That is the question the world is asking. One thing is certain; there are still protests going on. The people of the Egyptian nation are resented, not only because of more than 300 people being wounded and killed during the protests that took place to force Mubarak to resign, but now it seems the economy is losing itself. The Egyptian people are desperate. Many are out seeking for jobs, and especially those with college degrees are anguished. A young man named Ahmed, for example, has a degree and a master’s in archeology and, after graduating in 2004 and being the top second student in his class, has not been able to find a job. Those touristic places that would normally be packed with foreigners are pretty much drained. Tourist guides have had not a single customer in weeks now. The country’s present minister is very concerned.  For now, the military will seek to implant a new democracy for the country by calling for electoral votes in six months. Best wishes the Egyptian people!

President Obama and the 2011 State of the Union Address

Like most other addresses, this seemed like a very promising one and a very optimistic one. However, it seemed to me as though President Obama was all about competence and being the "#1 country" and compared the nation to others in the world. I felt a bit of arrogance in the speech. It also seemed to focus only on the positive effects on the nation ever since he has been president and it also only talked about the possible "good" effects many of his plans for the future will have. This is not to say that it would be foolish to believe that his plans will bear fruit, though.
There were a few words from him that disappointed me a lot. For one thing, he said that the "progress of the nation is measured by the success of the people." It sounded like a line a hard-core fascist would say. He talked about the business owner who wants to have a "better life." In a few words, he pretty much had nothing to say to the lower class, although he made sure to mention the fact that tax cuts for the upper class are almost impossible. He kept talking about people as money-making machines, or so it seemed to me, and focused almost not at all on the American person as that; a person. He hardly touched on issues such as racism (although this issue is a very dangerous one to touch, so I can see why he would stay away from this one), which are other issues that need to be addressed besides money, money, money.
I was relieved when he said that teachers need to be viewed as they are in Korea, as "Nation Builders." I fell in love with his plans to fund more for education, whether the students' parents were born here or not. I have never felt (or heard of) a nation that pulls out of poverty by depriving its people of education. I also was very happy to hear that he plans on funding more money for research on clean energy and the environment. However my question was, will this funding be made after or before the nation is out of debt?