May 26, 2009 at 11:14 am (http://mdia100.newsouthblogs.org, mdia 1000, mdia1000 tutorial, mdia1000create, mdia1000tutorials)
The little thing under the bed is an alarm clock, when it is clicked on it rings and you hear the sound-file “No! I’m still tired.” Also when you click on the word sleepy ‘z’ comes out and you hear snoring. The word tired floats onto the bed from a blank screen.
May 20, 2009 at 8:55 am (http://arts1090.newsouthblogs.org, mdia 1090 tutorials, T15A, Uncategorized)
Tags: identity, z3292296
“Our identities have no bodies…we obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlighetened self-interest and commonweal, our governance will emerge”
-John Perry Barlow Our identity is no more real then our soul, our feelings or our beliefs. It’s tangibility can be glanced at through choice of clothes, profession or even music tastes, but that is only how we identify ourselves. In a lot of cases our own identity it beyond our choosing, such as when it comes down to “a physical feature of the body…a genealogy or a cultural preference” people are then placed into groups with others that share the same “trait.”
I am frequently asked what religion I believe in, when I state that I don’t believe in any they often go on to ask what my parents believe in, when I inform them that they too don’t believe in anything there are some people who become exasperated and say ‘but what about your grandparents…what are you by blood??!!’
They are no longer interested in who I am as an individual- they are trying to classify me. Judging and choosing and picking people to be friends with, hire for a job or teach is far more sensible if you can group them. As Simon During states in the reading, “identity is won at the price of reducing individuality.”
Although is seems that identity is a futile matter to work on, as we are already grouped, it is still largely based on our perception of reality. “Individuals don’t have a single identity, they have identities,” which means that once we are stripped of our color and cultural heritage we still have plenty to be judged on.
When a Christian Italian man is in the company of other Christian Italian men, they do not sit around thinking to themselves ‘we are so Christian and Italian and manly’, they judge each-other on the other aspects of their “identities.” These other aspects tend to come from how they “internalise…images of themselves” and ultimatly how they want their image to be externalized and are a type of “hybridity” of identities.
This raises the issue of “identity politics” a political attempt to justify all identities and put them on an equal playing field. However, it’s greatest downfall is that is “erase[s] internal differences.” When these men start to disagree about treatment of women in third world countries- that fact that they are all Italian and Christian does little to help them.
Identity politics is the result of fierce division in an attempt to justify identity. Women don’t need different things in life to men, just as Muslims don’t need different things to Jewish people. This type of politics is fighting for the rights of people that all deserve the same rights and should be fighting together for unity- rather then to have each of their needs met separately but under a different name.
A Utopia aside, identities are how we communicate with society, amongst society, amongst ourselves and within ourselves. Just as information is easier to take in when it is presented in table form, life is easier to comprehend when everything is grouped- it leaves less room for chaos.
Bibliography
During, Simon. “Debating Identity” In Cultural studies: A Critical Introduction, Routledge: London, 2005, 145-152.
z3292296
May 18, 2009 at 1:33 pm (mdia 1000, mdia1000, mdia1000 tutorial, mdia1000create, mdia1000tutorials)
May 15, 2009 at 9:38 am (http://arts1090.newsouthblogs.org, mdia 1090 tutorials, T15A, Uncategorized)
” During war, the effect of violence upon language is amplified, euphmeized; imperatives replace dialogue…as war reveals, violence harms language; it imposes silence [and] language is censored and encrypted”
– James Dawes The Language of War
As a society we follow the ‘rules’ of grammar together, we agree on a correct way of speaking and writing and therefor come to a mutual understanding of what is said and what is meant. However, what happens when we only learn something but aren’t given the opporunty to understand it? That is the relationship the majority of us have with grammar.
There is no better way to exemplify grammar manipulation then through propaganda, and there is no better way to empitomise propaganda then through war. Annabelle Lukin breaks down grammar beyond word and sentence structure in Reporting War: grammar as covert operation.
A linguist or a good journalist can use grammar to “conceal and distort real meaning.” Unfortunatly, instead of using their powers for good, they tend to be the speech writers for presidents, politicians and even US Defense Secreteries as- seen with Donald Rumsfeld.
When Rumsfield was asked to comment on the Baghdad Museum looting incident, he simply stated “stuff happens.” Camouflaged as an immature and evasisive response, his choice of words actually used the thought out technique of “middle voice.” He made the ‘looting’ a seperate entity, therefor eliminating a source of blame.
This is how the experience of war “harms language.” Grammar finds all the loopholes and moves through them relentlessly until we are in a jumbled state of passiveness. Nobody is to blame, nothing is wrong, maybe war isn’t so bad, it’s pretty good for the country isn’t it?
Knowing that a bomb can not throw itself, and a gun needs somebody to pull the trigger, why do we still so willingly accept the middle voice in writing? Because, as Luking put it, “the use of language is always ideological.”
Rather then simply a way of living, Michel Foucault explained ideology “[as] an almost ideal way of life for society.” This plays on his concept of “ideological neutrality.” We accept the “passive” and “middle” voices of the media because we want to believe what is being said.
Playing on language and grammar allows the ideal society to be ‘created’ without technically telling a lie. During times of war society is particularly susceptible to this ideological language because we, as humans, don’t want to lose hope.
And so the language of war uses the greatest cencorship tool, grammar, to create “silence.”
Bibliogrpahy
Lukin, A. “Reporting War: Grammer as Cover Operation” Dissent (2003), 14-20.
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