Daisy, 12/6

During class this week the main topic was “the other.” On Tuesday, we discussed bell hooks, and “the others” were ethnic individuals. Hooks particularly explained the need for many white men to spice up their lives with women of a different cultural background. Sleeping with an African American woman for white men gives them experience, a sense of power and pleasure. Hebdige told us that a way we deal with the other is to exoticize them, and this is exactly what has happened to individuals of another cultural background. We discussed the idea of “sluming,” where individuals invade the territory of another socio-economic group. This occurs when white males look to women of a different cultural background for pleasure. In class we were able to see how googling the phrase “exotic women,” brought up many sites where women were featured as exotic. The ability to google exotic women further perpetuates the lost history of cultural backgrounds. The commodification of “the other” is problematic, especially when it is so present in the media. Lyotard would agree that there is a loss of avant-garde, exoticized women in many forms of the media have caused cultures to no longer appear different. It seems ironic that the reason cultures became exoticized was due to the fact that western cultures wanted to create different aspects of themselves and move away from sameness, and now the exoticized cultures can be lumped into a category as normal. As individuals trying to be different, we are ultimately hurting another culture for our own benefit.
On Thursday we talked about another type of “other,” women. Women appear as the other in comparison to men. It was really eye-opening to have only the girls in the class discuss the readings. Cixous and Butler are women who are trying to create herstory! In a phallologocentric world, it is hard for women to get recognized. “Writing is woman’s,” is a quote discussed in class, which is a way for women to gain voice. In a world where masculinity has dominated for centuries, and I believe it is still that way in some ways, women have had trouble gaining respect and being viewed as equal to men. How can we change this? Well I think everyday we are a step closer to being equal to men, during class we agreed that women just want to be given respect and treated as equals. Men and women are different, and I want it to stay that way to a certain extent. After studying Adorno and sameness I learned we need to embrace our differences and at the same time respect one another, because men and women being depicted as the same would lose aspects of themselves. Being considered “the other” in my point of view is good as long as we are all treated like equals.