Savvy, Hooks 4.20.09

"The commodification of Otherness has been so successful because it is offered as a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling. (366)
- I thought that this quote was important because it talks about the importance and power of "othering" It does not look down upon Othering as a negative thing, It is saying that Otherness has been turned into something to be used as a profit. That to Other has been used not to put others down, but for everyone enjoyment and clearer understanding.

"Commodity culture in the United States exploits conventional thinking about race, gender, and sexual desire by "working" both the idea that racial difference marks one as Other and the assumption that sexual agency expressed within the context of racialized sexual encounter is a conversion experience that alters one's place and participation in contemporary cultural politics" (667).
- I felt that this quote related to pieces later in the article where the author discusses the encounter with the white, male jocks, as the author listens to their conversation about different racial women. The author views this process of the sexal encounter as a positive learning experience.

"It is this willingness to transgress racial boundaries within the realm of the sexual that eradicates the fear that one must always conform to the norm to remain "safe".
- this quote is important because I felt the the author was trying to say that even though they may have sexual encounters with "others" the boys will always go back to what is expected to be cultural normal to them.
"The direct objective was not simply to sexually poses the Other; it was to be changed in some way by the encounter" (368).
-"They do not see themselves as perpetuating racism" (369).

The quotes above are the ones that I felt stood out to me the most in the reading. At first, I was unsure of what the authors main point for the article was. To be completely honest, I still am a little unsure of what exactly the authors main argument that they want to portray to the reader is. However, I still felt that these quotes above I could relate to postmodernism. It was interesting when I was reading this article because we had discussed the idea of the "other" in my cmc200 class last semester. The discussion of the "Other" has been a main topic in my Intercultural communication this semester as well. In a way I felt like I was reading and article that could have been presented in any one of these three classes.