Bumble: 4/15

Today’s class revolving around the transliteration of languages from one religion and culture to another and about the riddle and playfulness of words reminded me of an expression in Hebrew. A little memorization technique that my mother made up to help me learn certain expressions… it rhymes:

Ani is me
Me is who
WHO (Hu) is he
And He is she

This little riddle makes one realize that when I say me, in our culture it means I, me, etc…. while when speaking Hebrew it means the question who.

Like Derrida says, Language definitely is fully of games.


Also, in the line of Hebrew it is interesting to think about the roots of every word. Every word stems from the Shoresh or root, which is three letters. Those letters can be manipulated in all directions to make different meanings. All words that contain the same root are in some way related to every other word containing the same root.
For example take the word: Bereshit:
The root for this word is: R (resh) A (Aleph) (SH) (Shin)
Bereshit means the beginning, or referring to creation, and then the root means literally head. We use this word in Rosh Hashana, which literally means head of the year or new years.


This interrelated language system proves how everything revolves and feeds and builds off of one another.


When we stated to talk about Foucolt, I was intrigued because it was clear that like Adorno had said, and Althusser in order for there to be an established understanding of something, there has to be common ground and everyone must subject themselves to the system.

When we had discussed about the ideologies at work in airports and prisons, it is amazing how powerful our minds are. Our minds can not differentiate between reality and fiction, and so if there is a prison guard booth, and our minds want to believe that there are guards inside of it, then that is what you will believe. It is in essence like the placebo effect and self fulfilling prophecy.

While in our culture and society our airports run by this belief that is mostly based on a fear in our minds, in some places it is a legitimite fear. For example, in Israel everyone must agree to abide to a very strict system because their lives are in jeopardy if not (like Foucolt talks about the plague). When there is a briefcase, bag, anything left in a public space, it is called a Hephesh Hashud, This means suspicious object. Immediately people are under the ideology to report this item, and then it is taken to a bomb proof room to blow up, because of how many times people plant bombs in places like airports. I was in the airport there once when the sirens went off and they screamed drop everything and run to the garden. This is because they found a briefcase left and had to blow it up, just. In. case. Our ideology at the airport is to behave passively, and try to blend in and not cause attention to be drawn to yourself, this may not be the ideology everywhere, proving the idea that ideologies are NOT natural, but cultural.