Ray’s Reading Response

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In the book Light in the Dark, Anzaldúa reflects on her own experiences as a Chicana, queerness, and feminist, and how these intersecting identities have shaped her perspective and understanding of the world. She uses the concept of nepantla, which “indicates liminal space where transformation can occur. It occurs during the many transitional stages of life and can describe issues and concerns related to identity, aesthetics, epistemology, and /or ontology” (p. 35). In China, we also have a similar word connecting to this word中庸 (Zhōng Yōng) means to treat people and things in a neutral and peaceful manner and to make the best use of the time, the things, and the place. It refers to the moral standard of Confucianism, which has been followed and respected by Confucianists throughout the ages. The theoretical root of Confucianism originates from human nature. Throughout the book, Anzaldua emphasizes the fluidity and multifaceted nature of identity. She believes identity is not static but constantly evolving due to various factors such as experiences, environment, and introspection.

The poem Healing Wound illustrates Anzaldúa’s deeply personal journey of healing, trauma, and self-discovery. Each sentence is perfect to express the wound. “to repair there must be damage, for light there must be darkness” Let me think about the Chinese term “Yin & Yang” describing opposite but interconnected, mutually perpetuating forces. The wound is transformed into healing. For human beings, life will not be complete if they do not experience something. For example, if a child does not tumble, he will not notice next time, which is a small wound that he will have the memory for. By contrast, if people are always alright all the time from childhood, they will not mature as they can. I do not express that people should or must experience wounds, but when they experience wounds, they can notice that and heal it. And trust themselves, it will be alright.

Ray’s Reading Response

 

Justice is the word that came to my mind while reading the book Truth and Repair.

 

Through these two readings, the similarity is about how to heal the body. There are also some differences. Truth and Repair talks about justice; it was through the reason the victim faced the social situation to activate the heart of victims. In contrast, The Body Keeps the Score talks about how the brain affects trauma to a biological degree.

 

In Truth and Repair, it let me think about justice. In patriarchy, rape could be considered the signal crime of male supremacy, a pure enactment of power for its own sake (p. 57). Today, I read the news that a scholar using her name informed a public figure working in academia. The expert would like to rape her. Although he failed her, she still has the trauma in her heart. After that, every time the scholar goes to a conference, the expert suppresses her papers. She cannot keep up her academic development. It made me think about the power and the person who uses it. In cases of sexual harassment, restitution can take the form of creating a workplace environment of safety, and this in turn may require removing offenders from positions of power (p. 149). Furthermore, it also made me think about a theatre production – Oleanna by David Mamet- about a professor who raped his students. The person who abuses the power should get out of the position.

 

The Body Keeps the Score illustrates the functions of each part of the brain and how trauma can interfere with each part of the brain in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5, it talked about the connections between the body and the brain to heal the victim. The polyvagal theory enabled us to become more conscious of combining top-down approaches (to activate social engagement) with bottom-up methods (to calm the physical tensions in the body) (p. 108). As an actor, I was trained in some meditation sessions that let me open my heart and listen to my body to accept the world as a traumatic actor.

 

 

 

 

Memory – Ray’s Reading Response

 

This week the topic is about memory. Connerton’s first article “How Societies Remember – Bodily Practices, “ is an overall passage that directs the other three artworks and articles. It illustrated two theories “incorporating practice” and “inscribing practice”. Incorporating practice means the “sender” uses their body to communicate this information in “a particular activity”. when people make actions or movements, they will have the function to respond to certain kinds of memories. For instance, when people pray for some special rituals, their bodies will remember the things that happened before and recall the experience. “Our bodies keep the past also in an entirely effective form in their continuing ability to perform certain skilled actions”. However, Inscribing practice means that something was caught by photographs, sound tapes, paintings, etc. After understanding this practice, one point inspired me “The inscriptional practice of cinema makes possible, and is in turn made possible by, the incorporating practice of the cinema spectator”. When the film is shown on the screen, the audience needs to reply to the actions from the scene. For example, some romantic scenes make the audience laugh and enjoy; some sorrowful scenes make the audience cry. The whole atmosphere in the cinema will be similarly affected by the scene. The audience makes the incorporation practice. For instance, people talk to their neighbors quietly or lean to them and get emotional response from each other. It comes up with a film ‘Because No One Living Will Listen’ by Tuan Andrew Nguyen, which is the memory of the protagonist in the inscriptional. The story was shot in a digital format, and it will save all the time when the person wants to recall that period.

 

The passage of ‘The Generation of Postmemory’ states the post-memory theories from one generation to the next through the pictures – MAUS, a graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman. It is an example of inscribing practices that remain the experience of the generation who suffered traumatic activities. As Aleida Assmann mentions, “Not only transform history into memory but enable memories to be shared across individuals and generations”. As well as, In the book Das kulturelle Gedachtnis, Jan Assmann distinguishes two kinds of memories ‘communicative memory’ and ‘cultural memory’. Aleida Assmann extends this bimodal distinction into four memories: ‘individual memory’ ‘social memory’ ‘political memory’ and ‘cultural memory’. ‘Individual memory’ and ‘social memory’ correspond to Jan Assmann’s communicative remembrance, while the other two connect to Jan Assmann’s cultural memory. “The memory boom reflects a general desire to reclaim the past as an indispensable part of the present”.