http://www.alternet.org/visions/crisis-white-masculinity-leading-horrific-gun-crimes-sandy-hook-shootings
2.
(from Critical Junctures in Intercultural Communication Studies: A Review, p. 18) "... a critical perspective is defined as one that addresses issues of macro contexts (historical, social, and political levels, relevance, and the hidden and destabilizing aspects of culture.",
"... culture as politically and historically shaped and the theorizing of culture through power relations."
and... "history as context plays a major role in constituting intercultural interactions and reproducing power relations that are embedded in historical and contested struggles over issues of belonging and ethnic rights." (p. 22)
(from Critical Race Theory Today, pp. 131-2) "One of the first critical race theory proposals had to do with hate speech..... in favor of a broader. more policy-sensitive approach, critical race theorists have been tackling some of the most common policy objections to hate-speech regulation, including a) the more speech is the best remedy for bad speech, that b) hate-speech serves as a pressure valve relieving tensions...."
So, is it the language used and manipulated via communication means that precedes the communication process, or rather language merely uses communication as indeed a "neutral medium" (as Halualani, Mendoza and Drzewiecka contest upon, a problem theoretically remedied by incorporating the critical approach), or is it that everything becomes a "message" (according to McLuhan, analyzed in The Medium is the Massage, this "pompous term" sounds like "mAssage", like pure manipulation)? A logical conclusion, thus, would be that language itself becomes a medium of communication. "Emitter, receiver, code, context, contact, message: language is altered in its substance by its system of formalization, it is reduced to an one-dimensional function, according to the one-dimensional process of life..." Baudrillard attests in The Vanishing Point of Communication. Thus, what used to be a pure act, has now only become an operation; like speech: it was an act while communication is an operation, and together with it follows the "operation" of social life... So, when the Public has been uttered and internalized via so deeply entrenched structuralist and functionalist processes, how can a critical method permeate, not by merely exposing the underlying structures or agendas, but by pointing toward a new (while at the same time so old) means of "receiving" and "processing"?
Following the two posting, one cannot but remember Orwell's line in 1984: "first they take the words; then they take the meaning."
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ReplyDeleteWhen you say "extreme", you automatically imply a fixed, concrete point of reference as to what constitutes "normal", as in "not extreme"; thus "acceptable". You imply a point of departure and a prescribed behavior (engrained in language). The question is, who has forced upon us this point of departure? And who is to say that it is, indeed, what signifies propriety? Isn't that language use a signifier of Power being exercised, rather than possessed?
ReplyDelete“A person of color who happens to be of Arab descent, and who is Muslim by chosen faith or birth, is not allowed to be a deranged individual who made a choice to kill dozens of people”
ReplyDeleteThis quote stood out to me from the article because of my own personal connection to the 9/11. As a native New Yorker, this will always be a topic that hits close to home and one that, even today, is hard to talk about. However, this is a day that will forever be engrained in my memory, one that feels like yesterday, one that has shaped who I am today.
The day those planes hit the WTC so many lives changed and that included many Muslim families as well. What I have felt many have disregarded over the years is that there were many Muslim families who lost loved ones that day too and yet to this day are still being held accountable, in many respects, for what a few extremists did that day. When a group of Muslims requested to build a community center near ground zero, so many people were up in arms that they could ever think that the city would allow that. To me, and many other like-minded friends, couldn’t fathom how we could still be discriminating against an entire culture. I recognize the fear that washed over all of us that day and part of me can’t blame people for expecting the worse from people, but I can only be sympathetic for so many years. It is now that it’s more important than ever that people learn about this culture and understand their religion instead of dismissing it, as if it’s not important.
Considering the quote and thinking about the movie “The Color of Fear,” that we watched, I can’t help thinking about the idea of the white man’s superiority that many highlighted in this film. While I feel the United States has come a long way in history, I also feel that we just seem to find new ways to make divisions in our society – and more often than not the white man seems to find himself at the top. Maybe that seems like too extreme of a thought, but evidence keeps pointing back to this.