Class begins with a song: Happiness Is Overrated by the Indie band Airborne Toxic Event. Ben proceeds to do a Google search on the band’s website to see if they have mentioned the book White Noise. Nothing comes up except for an excerpt that acknowledges book signings of White Noise by the band at a show.
It is duly noted that many people are missing from class today.
The following is written on the board:
Program:
1. Workshopping our truths
2. Sex murders, solitude and loneliness
a. How, and why, to read political theory
3. Back to Delillo- making sense of history, everyday life, and emergency
Ben consults Hongfa about the previous blog post. He asks her that instead of writing about Jack’s argument, it would have been easier to write about Jack’s view of history.
Empty, dead spaces make Ben uncomfortable.
We begin the activity to workshop our truths (with the person next to you, talk for two minutes each).
The class finishes the activity ahead of time. The class begins a group discussion on topics (inconvenient truths) that will be written upon, and the person(s) that are to be addressed concerning said truths.
May it be known that many people in the class desire to write about the inconvenient truth that Fort Snelling used to be a genocidal camp, and that those individuals who desire to write about said truth can pool their recourses in order to investigate the subject further. It is suggested that Dakota activists be contacted and consulted. It is also suggested that a possible audience for those truth(s) might be individuals who work at Fort Snelling. The activity starts us thinking about possible topics and how we might go about writing our drafts for next week.
Who needs to hear it? Think about your audience very carefully.
It was decided by Ben that the class does not have to have a draft of the metacommentary next Thursday, only the letter itself.
Brittney asks for more detail concerning the metacommentary.
Ben responds:
· It should answer the question, “why did you do it that way?”
· It should be an explanation of your primary way of letting other(s) know about your inconvenient truth
· The text plus metacommetnary should both equal 1000 words
Ben mentions that if your project’s content doesn’t relate to what we have been studying in class, you should make a theoretical link to something in class.
Sex Murders.
It is asked if anyone investigated this topic further. Relative silence.
Ben says: Really? No one found anything?
Ben begins describing to the class what he calls Basic Research 101
Ben: “Look how easy this is children”
Class: murmurs
Ben: So.
Ben attempts to bring up Google but mutters “are you serious” when the University of Minnesota Internet fails to work. He apparently hates technology.
It is taught that the class should conduct research on sex murders by imputing “Hitler “Sex Murders” into Google. A famous book by Fiest entitled Hitler comes up in Google Books with a result.
Ben insists that this is really easy, that there is no excuse not to do it.
In the example from Hitler, Hitler’s speeches are compared to sexual processes. Some important key phrases in the text included:
· Holy erotic fever
· “Only bride”
· Obscene, copulatory character of mass meetings
The class learns that typing a phrase such as “sex murders” in order to figure out what it refers to is actually really easy. It is so easy that there is no reason why we should not have done it. Really. Google is an important tool for students to use, even for the most (minor?) tidbits of information to be researched.
Page 73 of White Noise is referenced.
A passing mention to the film, Triumph of the Will, a 1.5 hour film depicting mass meetings of people witnessing Hitler’s speeches.
Dialectic:
· Internal tension between a thing and its opposite often contained within the thing itself. It can be positive, such as when the thesis and antithesis combine to progress history (Hegel).
In literature, “little death” has historically been used to refer to an orgasm. Sex and death are inextricably linked.
Ben wants to discuss a couple more things, not limited to:
· The curious coupling of irrationality? and rationality
· For all his abandon, he never lost control
· Exist at the same time in dialectical tension
The masses, to Hitler, are seen as feminine. The class ponders why. What is nationhood?
I think (to myself that) the feminization of the masses to Hitler places his speeches further within sexualized, gendered discourses frequently used within the context of colonialist and imperialist thought. To feminize something is to justify its conquest, its obedience and subordination. To feminize the masses is to see oneself as dominating, powerful, penetrating, sexually potent. To impregnate, control. I stay silent, preferring to think this to myself than go into gendered colonialist discourse; referring to an engraving of Vespucci from the mid 16th century seems out of place.
Wikileaks. It has been revealed that US diplomats have been involved in espionage. A US soldier was accused of aiding the enemy. Who is the enemy, exactly? Hallie corrects Ben on a minor point that the soldier who leaked the Afghanistan and Iraq war diaries has been in solitary confinement for a year.
We move on to the Arendt reading. The reading was at the end of a thick book. We pair off and and work together to determine the question that Arendt is asking and her thesis. The class seems to have some difficulty with the activity but seems to get it in the end. Ben provides hints: they (the answers that he got) are not on the same page.
The class learns that for every text they read that makes an argument, they should try to find the question that is being answered and the thesis that the author presents. The activity was designed to give everyone practice thinking critically about questions and theses presented in texts as well as practice finding them in a specific example (Arendt).
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