Humanities Homework Help

November 11: 1. Responding with Difference in Mind Options Menu: Forum

“Interpretation is perhaps best understood as a response,” Nealon and Giroux state. They suggest such such response should be aware of the contexts surrounding that response: “race, gender, class positions.” Rather than judging, we should pay “attention to differences” that dictate “the negotiation of contextual differences” (177). That, Nealon and Giroux claim, is what interpretation is: a negotiation of differences, whether one is producing culture or consuming culture. But what does it mean to “respond” rather than “judge?” Why are contexts of race, gender and class so integral in and to that response? How do those differences alter the production of culture? How do those differences alter the consumption of culture? Explain, and please make use of the concepts prepared for this week’s reading!

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November 11: 2. Constructing and Performing Gender Options Menu: Forum

Gender has, unquestionably, undergone a huge cultural shift in your generation and thanks to your generation. That shift in the perception of gender, though, dates back to the late 1980s and critics such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler. These two individuals, Nealon & Giroux declare, “argue that gender and sexuality are ‘performative’ discourses: They are all about acts and secondarily about states of being” (188). These “acts” are in opposition to constructed notions of gender, or as Butler claims, the task of “responding to already existing categories by disentangling them from determining notions of essence” (184). How, though, does one “perform” gender, rather than gender being essential? How does this disrupt notions of a gendered “self?” Does “performing” gender open up possibilities for gender difference, or does it dilute the belief of “being who you are?” Why or why not?

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November 11: 3. The Socio-Politics of Race Options Menu: Forum

Great care is taken by Nealon & Giroux to demonstrate the historical dynamics that have led to perceived race difference. That difference is far from insignificant: “Race structures American society,” Nealon & Giroux claim. “…[T]he concept of race remains a powerful and ongoing force in social life” (192). Systemic racism remains prevalent in our country; what, however, do Nealon & Giroux mean specifically by the “deeply antidemocratic policies that are clearly race-specific and yet are deployed under the banner of race-neutrality” (193)? How have concepts such as double consciousness (Du Bois), double voiced (Gates), and American Africanism (Gates) addressed such difference, and how might such concepts help us moving forward? How might we apply concepts from postcolonial theory to the “colonization” of peoples of color in this country? Explain!

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November 11: 4. The Privilege of Class Status Options Menu: Forum

Paul Fussell, a critic of the American class system, finds that most people “believe class is defined by the amount of money you have” (194). Whether it’s a fancy car or gold chains, an Armani suit or a Kate Spade purse, we’ve already discovered how conspicuous consumption and sign-exchange value affect our understanding of “difference” between people. But not only is it cold, hard cash that distinguishes the rich from the poor, the exorbitance of the wealthy from the needs of the impoverished; it’s also the power that comes with that distinction of being “upper class.” Pierre Bourdieu considers the cultural access of the wealthy to be as crucial as their money. What does he mean by cultural capital, and how does such power not only set apart these people from others, but also dictate the manner in which our culture and society proceeds? Provide specific examples!

the reading once someone will help me. Also I will need you to respond to people once I have theres.

DIFFERENCE

American Africanism: stereotypical concepts and constructs placed by white writers on black characters and culture in their works. [Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark (1992)]

‘Angel in the House’: Victorian phrase (poem by Coventry Patmore, 1854) in which the woman typifies the values of patriarchal femininity and domesticity; Virginia Woolf made famous the term in an essay. [(Virginia Woolf, “Professions for Women” (1931)]

Compulsory Heterosexuality: heterosexuality perceived as a violent political institution making way for the “male right of physical, economical, and emotional access” to women. [Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” (1980)]

Cultural Capital: not simply economic advantages gained through wealth, but also access to ways of speaking, behavior, taste, and discrimination that distinguish individuals of this class. [Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital” (1985)]

Double Bind: marginalization, oppression, discrimination and disenfranchisement of an individual for more than a single socio-cultural reason.

Double Consciousness: the awareness that blacks are caught between two cultures, the African culture and its evolution in America and the dominant white culture. [W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)]

Double-Voiced: the warring ideals of white culture and black culture represented in African-American literary writing—a quality which makes it unique and seeks to revise Western literary tradition. [Henry Louis Gates, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (1988)]

Gender: refers to the socially-constructed identities man, woman, masculine, feminine;. gender is held to be a product of the prevailing mores, expectations, and stereotypes of a particular culture and so is arbitrary.

L’Ecriture Feminine: wholeness of selfhood in women’s writing—fluid, melodic language that is the natural result of feminine thought processes—that is separate and distinguishable from the analytical style of writing typical of male-dominated culture. [Hélène Cixous, “Laugh of the Medusa” (1975)]

Lesbian Continuum: broad spectrum of intimate relations between women, from those involving sexual desire to mother-daughter relationships and female friendships, to ties of political solidarity. [Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” (1980)]

Performative Acts: position that gender identity is compelled by social sanction and taboo, repeatedly constructed through time, and always constructed through the body: 1) speech;
2) attire; 3) behavior. [Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution” (1988)]

Psychological Wage: the ‘bonus’ of white privilege through unifying, racist political actions and ideology that subjugate people of color, justify violence, and legitimize injustice [W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (1935)].

Sex: the biological designation of male or female, based on anatomy.

Sisterhood: psychological/political bonding of women based upon recognition of common experiences and goals.

Woman’s Sentence: belief that women writers should develop their own characteristic styles of expression rather than employing styles developed in the course of literary tradition by men. [Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929)]

we need these question done in one day or soonest can and then responding to people between tommrow and wed night please once I send to you.