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Assignment #1
• Directed essay (choice)
• Due Oct 21
• circa 8 pages, word processed, double-spaced
• Use text but go beyond it– other texts in social geography, sociology,
geography
Michel Foucault
• Power and space intertwines
• Can explore power by looking into the places which it creates
• Power is a way of looking at things
Michel Foucault
• The Gaze:– a culturally-learned way of looking
• Self: the observer
• Other: what is observed
• Difference:– the Otherness of the Other
Body as personal space
• Cultural/spatial differences in personal space
• link 1
• link 2
Body as location
• for identity, Difference
• for social relations
• site of social struggles, disputes
What is a body?
• a temple?
• a machine?
• a prison?
• sacred/secular?
• private/public?
• natural/social?
Cartesian Dualism
• “I think therefore I am” (Rene Descartes)– Body and mind are separate
• body takes up space
• mind occupies no space
– Justifies other dualisms:• People vs Nature
• Culture vs Nature
• Mind vs Body
– Plain wrong
Descartes
• Venerates the rational mind– vs bodily urges
• Body and universe– become a machine– something to be mapped,
explored, dissected by rational science
Age of Reason
• Growth of rational science
• Culture venerates rationality, consciousness
• Represents educated (white, male) mind as– rational, scientific, critical, objective
• Others (women, non-white) represented as– irrational, emotional, superstitious, corporeal
• Dualism a basis of much Western thought
Spinoza
• C17th Dutch Jew
• Objected to Cartesian Dualism
• Proposed double-aspect theory:– Mental & physical different
aspects of the same substance
C19th/C20th Changes
• Biology– Universe is not just a
machine– Reveals the animal
inside the human
• Analytical Psychiatry– Showed that the mind
is both rational and irrational
Feminist contribution
• The body as an important “site” in social relations
• Connection between bodies and society
• Critique of dualism:– men/mind/culture vs women/bodies/nature
– bodies, minds, society, the universe are all integrated
Neil Postman
• Present-day media and culture critic
• TV and electronic media destroy intellectual culture
• we are– amusing ourselves to death (1986)– informing ourselves to death (1990s)
“We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.”
—Robert Wilensky.
Critique of Postman
• Assumes technology shapes culture– culture shapes technology too
• Assumes people are passive consumers of media-generated images– They have a consciousness too– They create images and counter-
images