December 8, 2011
by Mary Zaborskis
Comments Off on Academic Alliances
When I began this blogging journey back in July, I could not have anticipated how dynamic the conversations we’ve had in this digital realm would be. Looking over my own entries, it’s exciting to see the range of issues touched … Continue reading
December 1, 2011
by Mary Zaborskis
1 Comment
During the question and answer portion of the last lecture, a student asked Judith Butler to expand on what an ethics of cohabitation might look like at a women’s college/single-sex institution like Bryn Mawr. Butler first explained that there was … Continue reading
November 17, 2011
by Mary Zaborskis
Comments Off on Where and When Else Can be in Alliance?
This past Monday, Judith Butler discussed how coming together, occupying, and creating public spaces opens up possibilities because it allows bodies to enact the rights that they’re demanding but being denied. In this sense, alliances are acting outside of established … Continue reading
November 10, 2011
by Mary Zaborskis
Comments Off on Are All Demands Allowed to Appear?
Judith Butler’s lecture, “Gender Politics and the Right to Appear,” this past Monday imagined the possibilities for futures that could become available when bodies gather in public and make demands, for implicit in such joining together are the demands for … Continue reading
October 27, 2011
by Mary Zaborskis
Comments Off on Gay Marriage: Thanks But No Thanks?
I’m from New York City, and I was celebrating my birthday the night that the Marriage Equality Act passed, signaling that gay marriage would be legalized in the state of New York. The bar overflowed with cheers (the joyful shouting … Continue reading
October 13, 2011
by Mary Zaborskis
Comments Off on Queer Children: Losing What’s Been Lived?
I’ve found Judith Butler’s theory on melancholia and it’s relation to gender, sexuality, and gender performativity as outlined in “Melancholy Gender/Refused Identification” useful in some of my own research on queer children in literature. Bryn Mawr’s Hanna Holborn Gray Fellowship … Continue reading
September 30, 2011
by Mary Zaborskis
Comments Off on Who’s Responsible When?
Who or what should be held accountable, if at all, for injurious speech? In Judith Butler’s “Burning Acts, Injurious Speech,” she explains that while we think that we are subjects who are responsible for everything we say, in actuality, “a … Continue reading
September 16, 2011
by Mary Zaborskis
Comments Off on Now You See It, Now You Don’t
In Judith Butler’s “Endangered/Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia,” she unpacks another illusion for us: the difference between “seeing” and “reading.” We often think we’re doing the former, which suggests a neutral way of viewing an object, but more often … Continue reading
September 2, 2011
by Mary Zaborskis
Comments Off on Can We Have Gendered Means Without Gendered Ends?
In Jose Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, he describes political philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s theory of gesture—that is, action and that which constitutes performance—as “means without ends” (91). In other words, gesture is something that … Continue reading
August 19, 2011
by Mary Zaborskis
Comments Off on “Don’t Be a Drag, Just Be a Queen [or a Grand Supreme]”-Lady Gaga
I should probably be embarrassed to admit in a public forum that over the course of this summer, I have become incredibly addicted to the fascinatingly disturbing TLC program Toddlers & Tiaras (sadly, the season finale was last week, but … Continue reading