A Summary and Application of Presence and Resistance: Postmodernism and Cultural Politics in Contemporary American Performance :: Research Papers

A Summary and Application of Presence and Resistance: Postmodernism and Cultural Politics in Contemporary American Performance Here it is a book seen from the outside. A book is only a book when seen from the outside. Seen from the inside, a book is not a book, but a train ride at night - Michael Goulish In his book Presence and Resistance, Philip Auslander responds to the claims of many prominent cultural theorists that recent performance has been unable to engage in political critique. He argues contemporary performance can - and has - mounted a critique of postmodern politics. He holds up performance of the 1980’s as an example of politically critical (what he terms ‘’resistant’’) performance, claiming it carved a space for political critique by questioning, or reconstructing, the authority of the performer’s presence. He breaks his argument into two parts. First, he positions resistant performance of the 1980’s within postmodern mass media culture and identifies it as a response to the failure of the 1960’s avant-garde. Second, he examines the resistant strategies performers of the 1980’s employed to deconstruct presence and mount political critique. He focuses mainly on performers Laurie Anderson, Spalding Gray, and T he Wooster Group, and secondarily on comedians Andy Kauffman and Sandra Bernhard to illustrate his points. Part I will summarize Auslander’s argument, and Part II will use his insights to discuss Michael Goulish’s book, 39 Microlectures in Proximity of Performance, which gains relevance as a resistant text in light of Auslander’s analysis. Part I Auslander takes time to situate the performances of the 1980’s within the context of postmodern culture before launching his main argument on the strategies resistant performance employed. The ‘’mediatized,’’ information-saturated, environment of mass media culture, he argues, is paralyzing. Paralysis extends to the political sphere, where even the most vehement political critique is neutralized by the fact that one â€Å"must participate in the very activity that is being denounced... to denounce it’’ (Jameson qtd. Auslander 23). Auslander acknowledges mechanized culture’s impact on political critique but refuses to accept the conclusions of other major cultural/media theorists that a politically resistant performance aesthetic has not yet been developed, or that performers can only find a voice by rejecting mainstream culture altogether. Instead, he argues that performers of the 1980’s succeeded in critiquing postmodern cultural politics and did so, necessarily, from within mediatized postmodern culture. Auslander explains the significance of internal critique, arguing that resistant performance of the 1980’s grew from a rejection of the fringe approach of the 1960’s avant garde.

Inequalities in our society: gender and sex Essay

Inequalities between men and women had been in struggle I believe as older than I am, as older than my ancestors. Everyday I see simple proofs that although we are in the 21st century, although we are living on the fast lane, we are still shackled with the shadows of the past. According to Gallup Surveys, in 1946 Americans felt by a margin of 54%-19% that women live more difficult lives than men. More than one-half century later that margin had increased to 57%-7% with most of that change swing to increasing agreement among men (from a 47% to 27% margin in 1946 to 52%-19% in 1997. In the 1930s, 26 of 48 states had Laws prohibiting the employment of married women. (It was the midst of the Great Depression and there were not enough jobs to keep the men out of political mischief, so married women had to go. ) As human beings it is only natural for a caged man to seek freedom. Freedom from injustices and realize their rights. One great example will be the foundation of ‘Living the Legacy: The Women’s Rights Movement in 1848’. In her ‘Declaration of Sentiments’ Stanton’s version read, â€Å"the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world†. Then she went into the specifics. †¢ Married women were legally dead in the eyes of the law †¢ Women were not allowed to vote †¢ Women had to submit to the laws when they had no voice in their formation †¢ Married women had no property rights. †¢ Husbands had legal power over and responsibility for their wives to the extent that they could imprison or beat them with impunity †¢ Divorce and child custody laws favored men, giving no rights to women †¢ Women had to pay property taxes although they had no representation in the levying of these taxes †¢ Most occupations were closed to women and when women did work they were paid only a fraction of what men earned †¢ Women were not allowed to enter professions such as medicine or law †¢ Women had no means to gain an education since no college or university would accept women students. †¢ With only a few exceptions, women were not allowed to participate in the affairs of the church †¢ Women were robbed of their self-confidence and self-respect, and were made totally dependent on men Strong words†¦ Large grievances†¦ And remember: This was just seventy years after the Revolutionary War. Doesn’t it seem surprising to you that this unfair treatment of women was the norm in this new, very idealistic democracy? But this Declaration of Sentiments spelled out what was the status quo for European-American women in 1848 America, while it was even worse for enslaved Black women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s draft continued: â€Å"Now, in view of this entire disenfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, — in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States. † Here some additional aspects that the organization dealt with: help-wanted ads in newspapers were segregated into â€Å"Help wanted – women† and â€Å"Help wanted- men. † Pages and pages of jobs were announced for which women could not even apply. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled this illegal in 1968, but since the EEOC had little enforcement power, most newspapers ignored the requirement for years. The National Organization for Women (NOW), had to argue the issue all the way to the Supreme Court to make it possible for a woman today to hold any job for which she is qualified. And so now we see women in literally thousands of occupations which would have been almost unthinkable just one generation ago: dentist, bus driver, veterinarian, airline pilot, and phone installer, just to name a few. To site another example, an article was written about a woman prayer leader, an Islamic scholar at Virginia Commonwealth University, Amina Wadud. The organizers who invited her claimed that she is the first woman to have presided over a mixed gender prayer service in public since Islam’s earliest days. The event was held in cavernous hall in the grounds of New York City’s cathedral church of St. John the Divine because no major mosque would play host to it. â€Å"There are still men who believe women are not allowed to be leaders. They’re bullies,† says organizer Asra Nomani, an author. Furthermore she said that it was time that women take their rightful place alongside men. Last fall, at Chicago’s Muslim Community Center, a 6-feet partition that had long divided the genders during prayer was was reduced to 3-feet after several women protested. That enabled the women to see the ‘imam’ in front, and center president Mohammed Kaiseruddin says the change has helped women â€Å"feel like part of the congregation. † Another woman whose a Muslim, Nomanis , according to her fight began on her return to Morgantown, W. Va.from a pilgrimage to Mecca, â€Å"I experienced full and unfettered access to the holy mosque in Mecca,† Back in Morgantown, she decided to defy a ban that forbade women to use the from entrance and pray in the man hall with the men. Mosque leaders are considering banishing her for such disruptive behavior, but she feels she’s making progress. She prays in the main hall now and say,† they just pretend I’m not there. † For a more grave evident in the issue of inequality between men and women, it has been noted that violence against women has been called â€Å"the most pervasive yet least recognized human right abuse in the world. † The Vienna Human Rights Conference and the Fourth World Conference on Women were organizations that gave priority to this issue, which jeopardizes women’s lives, bodies, psychological integrity and freedom. Violence may have profound effects- direct and indirect on a woman’s reproductive health including: †¢ Unwanted pregnancies and restricted access to family planning information and contraceptives †¢ Unsafe abortion or injuries sustained during a legal abortion after an unwanted pregnancy †¢ Complications from frequent, high-risk pregnancies and lack of follow-up care. †¢ Sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS †¢ Persistent gynaecological problems †¢ Psychological problems The noted violence intentionally or unintentionally perpetuates male power and control. Despite the evidences a culture of silence exists and denial of the seriousness of the health consequences of abuse. Most domestic violence involves male anger directed against their women partners. This gender difference appears to be rooted in the way boys and men are socialized — biological factors do not seem to account for the dramatic differences in behaviour in this regard between men and women. Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to gender-based violence. Some husbands become more violent during the wife’s pregnancy, even kicking or hitting their wives in the belly. These women run twice the risk of miscarriage and four times the risk of having a low birth-weight baby. Cross-cultural studies of wife abuse have found that nearly a fifth of peasant and small-scale societies are essentially free of family violence. The existence of such cultures proves that male violence against women is not the inevitable result of male biology or sexuality, but more a matter of how society views masculinity. Studies of very young boys and girls show only that, although boys may have a lower tolerance for frustration, and a tendency towards rough-and-tumble play, these tendencies are dwarfed by the importance of male socialization and peer pressure into gender roles. The prevalence of domestic violence in a given society, therefore, is the result of tacit acceptance by that society. The way men view themselves as men, and the way they view women, will determine whether they use violence or coercion against women. UNFPA recognizes that ending gender-based violence will mean changing cultural concepts about masculinity, and that process must actively engage men, whether they be policy makers, parents, spouses or young boys. The majority of sexual assault victims are young. Women in positions of abject dependence on male authorities are also particularly subject to unwanted sexual coercion. Rape in time of war is still common. It has been extensively documented in recent civil conflicts, and has been used systematically as an instrument of torture or ethnic domination. Resulting from the inequalities happening between men and women, Sandra Lipsitz Bem decided to create a book discussing the matter in psychological perception. Her book was entitled ‘The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the debate on sexual inequality’. According to Sandra there were three lenses that were evident: androcentrism, gender polarization, and biological essentialism. Androcentrism, defined as male-centeredness, moreover, these are definitions of male and male experience as a neutral standard or norm, and females and female experience as a sex-specific deviation from that norm. it is thus, not that man is treated as superior and woman as inferior but that man is treated as human and woman as â€Å"other. † Gender polarization is the more subtle and insidious use of the perceived difference as an organizing principle for the social life of the culture. This male-female difference is super imposed in so many aspects of the social world that a cultural connection is thereby forged between sex and virtually every other aspect of human experience, including modes of dress and social roles and even ways of expressing emotion and experiencing sexual desire. The last lens is Biological essentialism, which rationalizes and legitimizes both other lenses by treating them as the natural and inevitable consequences of the intrinsic biological natures of women and men. According to Sandra, the lenses systematically reproduce male power in two ways. First, the discourses and social institutions in which they are embedded automatically channel female and males into different and unequal life situations. Second, during enculturation, the individual gradually internalizes the cultural lenses and thereby becomes motivated to construct identity that is consistent with them. In line with my research, I concluded that our society have still a lot of work to be done to deal with the issue of inequality among men and women. Even in a famous novel like The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown the plot of the story was about the conspiracy of having a woman be seated at the right hand of Jesus of Nazareth. Abuses of women were told. Fiction as it may seem the whole story had a very astounding effect to anyone who read it challenging their faith intentionally or unintentionally. That was why there had been some instances where the movie of â€Å"Da Vinci Code† were tried to be banned on showing in other countries where Catholicism religion is dominating. I just want to reiterate from my comparison that authors usually based their pieces according to what they see, imagine or deal with everyday life. From my point of view, the author might have not said it literally but I know that he wanted to imply that we need look at how we look and treat women per se. We can never change the world overnight but we it can be done one step at a time, I hope that the first step would be mine. Works Cited Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. Living the Legacy: The Women’s Rights Movement. 1848-1998 Eisenberg, Bonnie. Ruthsdotten, Mary. The National Women’s History Project. 1998 â€Å"Gender Equality: An End in Itself and a Cornerstone of Development. http://www. unfpa. org/gender/index. htm Heise, L. Violence Against Women: the Hidden Health Burden. World Bank Discussion Paper. Washington D. C. The World Bank. 1994 Bem, Sandra Lipsitz. The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality. Yale University Press. 1993 http://www. trinity. edu/rmkearl/gender. html Chu, Jeff. Mustafa, Nadia. Her Turn To Pray. Time Magazine. March 21,2005.

Book Review on Persistent Poverty Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third Worl

The idea of persistent poverty is a pervasive one, and its context in the plantation economy is important to understand if these aspects are to be applied to one’s own concept of the economy. In George Beckford’s 1972 book Persistent Poverty: Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third World, he presents a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the plantation states in the West Indies, while expanding the scope of these appraisals to other third world countries. Beckford’s basic argument is that â€Å"the net development impact [of the plantation system] was large enough to bring about a transformation from a condition of undevelopment to one of underdevelopment†; that being said, â€Å"plantation economy never gets beyond the stage of underdevelopment† (Beckford, p. 210). In short, while there were some improvements made in the short-term by the development of the plantation economy, it does not have the change to expand further than that, effectively stunting the future economic development of these third world countries. The plantation economy did these countries more harm than good. According to Beckford, plantations were set up in these countries to solve the problem of labor scarcity; however, since these jobs are so labor intensive, they had to be compulsively created (p. 64). The market did not demand an increase in labor, and so only so many jobs were created. Since unemployment remained high, markets could keep wages low, as people were willing to work for less just to have a job. Also, since plantations were such a strong economic force in these countries, they often stole land that was fruitful and ready for cultivation, leaving little reason to set up any alternative methods of agricultural production. This effectively set up a monopoly of these plantations, cutting out any possibility for a more well-rounded economy to increase skill sets and provide more diverse employment. There are many ways in which Beckford claims the plantation economy leaves countries in a perpetual state of underdevelopment; first off, plantations have the ability to take away land and resources from the peasant sector, which is thought to be more dynamic than the limited scope of plantations (Beckford, p. 23). While they manage to mitigate the detriments of a plantation economy to the other country in the transaction, there is little benefit that the host country receives either (p. 168). Resources that are already rare are not being used to their greatest effect (p. 177) Racial conflicts within the country are used rampantly to further the plantation economy, exploiting hatred and violence for profit (p. 205). More so than all of this, the national elite is effectively given lordship over the rest of the country, creating a substantial class war that prohibits any sort of economic cooperation. For these reasons and more, it is thought that plantation economies hurt underdevelop ed nations in the long-term. One of the most important concerns of the plantation economy is the misallocation of resources – â€Å"How resources are used in any society will influence the welfare of people who live in it in important ways† (Beckford, pp. 147). While resource shortages have not been a huge problem in the Third World, what has been a large problem is the way in which those resources are allocated and utilized. Plantation owners and managers are very lax at actually meeting their goals, and manage to hoard resources to the level where the economy as a whole suffers; â€Å"efficient resource allocation on individual plantations unites coexists with inefficient resource allocation within plantation economies (Beckford, pp. 155-156). One interesting aspect of the plantation economy that Beckford approaches is its status as a community. This inserts aspects of sociology in this economic context, explaining further the total effects that this type of system can have on a country. For one thing, plantations are geographically isolated, reducing â€Å"the extent to which those who live and work in it can have intercourse with other people outside its boundaries† (Beckford, p, 53). As a result, members of a plantation community have no choice but to interrelate and interbreed, in many cases. This is a shining example of the long-reaching effects of plantations in Beckford’s eyes; since these people are so isolated, they form small city-states around the plantation, contextualizing their entire social structure among who lives and works in that area. These kinds of observations enrich Beckford’s analysis of this economic system, looking beyond mere numbers to show how the individual is affected by this particular type of system. With all of these factors in mind, Beckford proposes a few items for change. His overall scheme is rather extreme; â€Å"To put the matter rather bluntly, the plantation system must be destroyed if the people of plantation society are to secure economic, social, political, and psychological advancement† (Beckford, p. 215). This is no small feat; it would involve overcoming all of the problems that stem from the plantation system, including having unskilled and underpaid workers, distortions of usage of resources, income distribution inequalities and so forth. The community structure would also have to be strengthened, finding a way to overcome racial and class tensions and facilitate factor mobility in these societies. He cites specific obstacles in overcoming these goals, like the lack of acknowledgement by policy makers that many of these problems exist (Beckford, p. 216). Beckford works hard to provide workable theories, at least, for the possible change of these economic systems from a plantation system to something more equitable. He cites World War II as â€Å"the most significant historical experience of change in all the plantation economies of the world,† as the lack of imported goods meant that these economies were forced to undergo diversification in order to survive (Beckford, p. 220). Beckford acknowledges that another war would be counterproductive to the world at large, but he cites this example as an interesting method of forcing potential change in policy for these economies. One of Beckford’s primary concerns in the book is plantation America, the stretch between the Southern United States all the way down to Brazil. Basically, he fears that this same type of underdevelopment will continue and spread all the way to America, and seeks to find out the disadvantages and warning signs now, rather than let this type of economy stunt the development of the United States. Already, plantation sub-economies in America lag behind the metropolitan centers that exist within the same country in poverty and economic development levels. They have â€Å"limited connection with the larger national community apart from revenue payments to the national government,† effectively cutting them off from the rest of the country (Beckford, p. 87). The fact that many different disciplines and factors (not just economic) are appraised in the creation of the plantation system is a testament to just how complete and detailed Beckford’s work is. He seeks to create a better picture of just what leads a country to have this economy, not just what the economy does for the country. At the same time, it is interesting that his overall message seems to be that Third World economies should be studied more in depth, while this same absence leads Beckford to rely a lot on North American economic theories and aspects of developed countries’ society and anthropology. While it may seem that this is hypocritical of him, it only serves to underline the importance of a broader scope of knowledge, and it helps to contribute to his interdisciplinary and widely-drawn appraisal of the economic system itself. In conclusion, despite some minor gaps in his critique of plantation systems that stop it from being truly comprehensive, and his lack of many concrete solutions for the problems he delineates, Beckford’s appraisal of persistent poverty in Third World countries is detailed, interesting, and interdisciplinary. Of particular note is his insertion of social and political attributes of these countries into the analysis, showing how they affect the establishment and maintenance of a plantation economy and vice versa. While he has no specific solutions that must be implemented in order to improve development in these economies, he does have a detailed list of factors that contribute to it. According to Beckford, further study is needed in these factors before any steps or plans can be proposed to make these changes; however, his summarization of the problem leaves a good start for the solution. References Beckford, George L. (1972). Persistent poverty; underdevelopment in plantation economies of the Third World. London: Oxford University Press.