American Values vs. Global Values–reconsidering “Individuality” over Community amidst the COVID19 PANdemic . .

“Creating an Inhabitable World for Humans Means Dismantling Rigid Forms of Individuality”  by Judith Butler, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.

“However differently we register this pandemic we understand it as global; it brings home the fact that we are implicated in a shared world. The capacity of living human creatures to affect one another can be a matter of life or death. Because so many resources are not equitably shared, and so many have only a small or vanished share of the world, we cannot recognize the pandemic as global without facing those inequalities.

“Some people work for the common world, keep it going, but are not, for that reason, of it. They might lack property or papers, be sidelined by racism or even disdained as refuse—those who are poor, Black or brown, those with unpayable debts that preclude a sense of an open future.

“The shared world is not equally shared. The French philosopher Jacques Rancière refers to “the part of those who have no part”—those for whom participation in the commons is not possible, never was, or no longer is. For it is not just resources and companies in which a share is to be had, but a sense of the common, a sense of belonging to a world equally, a trust that the world is organized to support everyone’s flourishing.

“The pandemic has illuminated and intensified racial and economic inequalities at the same time that it heightens the global sense of our obligations to one another and the earth. There is movement in a global direction, one based on a new sense of mortality and interdependency. The experience of finitude is coupled with a keen sense of inequalities: Who dies early and why, and for whom is there no infrastructural or social promise of life’s continuity?

“This sense of the interdependency of the world, strengthened by a common immunological predicament, challenges the notion of ourselves as isolated individuals encased in discrete bodies, bound by established borders. Who now could deny that to be a body at all is to be bound up with other living creatures, with surfaces, and the elements, including the air that belongs to no one and everyone?

“Within these pandemic times, air, water, shelter, clothing and access to health care are sites of individual and collective anxiety. But all these were already imperiled by climate change. Whether or not one is living a livable life is not only a private existential question, but an urgent economic one, incited by the life-and-death consequences of social inequality: Are there health services and shelters and clean enough water for all those who should have an equal share of this world? The question is made more urgent by conditions of heightened economic precarity during the pandemic, exposing as well the ongoing climate catastrophe for the threat to livable life that it is.

Click on the link above to read more . . . Continue reading “American Values vs. Global Values–reconsidering “Individuality” over Community amidst the COVID19 PANdemic . .”

The American Dream at OU

From the OU Daily, 1 May 2021

American Dream and Promise Act of 2021 Offers DACA Recipients Opportunity to Obtain Residency

“Some OU students protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program said the introduction of the American Dream and Promise Act of 2021 has offered them a chance of obtaining lawful permanent residence in the U.S. and a “sense of hope.”

Click the link about toreadmore Continue reading “The American Dream at OU”

The American Dream of . . . Home . . .

“The ‘Old American Dream,’ a Trap as the Floods Keep Coming”

“The modest house on Eugene Street, clad in white siding and shaded by a magnolia tree, was the embodiment of her father’s aspirations for his family. It was the inheritance he left for Ms. Hall and the generations to come: a place to return to when relationships faltered or jobs were lost. No matter what, the house would be there, and it would be theirs.

. . .

“Owning a home has long been part of Houston’s promise for many working-class families, offering security and a foothold for upward mobility. But disasters — flood after flood — have kept coming. A changing climate threatens more. In Houston’s poorest neighborhoods, the houses are no longer the safety net they were intended to be.

“A few months before Harvey, Ms. Hall ran into her mother’s bedroom and found her collapsed on the floor. Now, she cannot forget the request her mother made soon before she died: Don’t y’all lose my house.

“After all this time, and all this frustration, her patience had worn thin. “I’m tired of the unknown,” Ms. Hall conceded. Still, she wanted so badly to keep her word.”

Write PRELIM 10: Evolving Annotated Bibliography as a Blog Post or Page

Would you like to earn double credit for PRELIM 10: Evolving Annotated Bibliography by creating a Blog post or Page on your Blog in addition to turning it in on Canvas? Below are some instructions on how to do so!

First, sign in to your WordPress website (or other blog host program if you’re not using WordPress to host your Blog).
Second, choose “Posts” or “Add New” located in the left hand menu of the Dashboard.

“Add New” (to start with a completely new Blog Post)

You can add text by copying + pasting from another text file (i.e. MS Word, .pages, etc.) OR by typing in the window. For example:

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Thorpe, Ulverscroft,  2018.
[Novel Chapter] In a future where most animals are a rare commodity, bounty hunter Rick Deckard tracks deviant androids, hoping to earn enough money to purchase a living sheep (as opposed to the robotic one that he already possesses). In the process, he falls in love with an android. Struck by this unprecedented dilemma, Deckard struggles to differentiate between humanity and inhumanity as he reassesses his situation. Since my essay focuses on the portrayal of robots in media, this classic felt like the perfect reference point. As Deckard realizes the dangers associated with making androids as human as possible, I see a chance to analyze why the androids even need to be human-like in the first place. The book also provides an opportunity to define androids in the context of classic fiction, setting a reference point for the reader audience. Plus, the novel opens the following discussions: What makes a human? What about the androids makes their emotions so uncanny? Why give them the ability to emote in the first place? Are they meant to be better than us? If so, again, why give them emotions? And so on.

If you have images, upload them to the Media library by clicking on the Media item in the Dashboard menu. Then choose “Add Media” at the top of the composition window menu to add them where you want to place them in the Post. Here is an example::

  • You can include an image or link to a video or other source in the annotation beneath your bibliographic citation. When you add sources or links to sources to a Post, you can edit the entries on the Post by revising or adding annotations, and also by making Hypothes.is to annotate your own Post.
  • If you have links to web-based sources you have found doing your own research, such as web-pages, images, or audio or audiovisual material,  you can include them in the Post by clicking on the “link” icon in the composition window menu, typing the URL, and typing title information for the source. For example: “She’s a Replicant” from Bladerunner (1982).
  • ALWAYS SAVE YOUR POST.
  • PUBLISH your Post or schedule your Post to be published on a particular date. You can also un-publish a Post while you are in the process of revising entries or adding new entries to PRELIM 10.
  • You can also create a PAGE and add it to your MENU and write PRELIM 10 (i.e. add any of the above information by copying & pasting or uploading a PDF of PRELIM 10 to the page).

Book of “recovered photos” of Tulsa race massacre + “Justice for Greenwood” virtual lecture

‘This is still being suppressed’: OU professor’s book of recovered photos preserves history of Tulsa Race Massacre

“After half a century without pictures of the massacre readily available, OU professor Karlos Hill compiled images like the ones of Mount Zion and others as part of his latest project, “The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic History.” His photobook is centered on the experiences of Black survivors and is intended to contextualize images taken by white participants.

In his research on the massacre, Hill has seen countless images depicting destruction, damaged buildings and, simultaneously, the wrecking of the hopes and dreams of a prosperous Black community. But in his mind, one stands out from the rest — an aerial image of a smoky sky above a smattering of buildings, with a caption scratched across the bottom of the picture.”

[Click on the link above to read the entire article and to access additional links to articles published by the OU Daily.]

Also, click here for information about a Justice for Greenwood Virtual Lecture that will take place on 23 April 2021.

Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Symposium


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