Final Project Topic

     I would like my final topic to be on the indoctrination of LGBT+ communities into the dominant ideology of capitalism. I want to focus on how the Global North has taken the concept of sexual liberation and reframed it to fit pre-existing narratives of sexuality. Meanwhile, LGBT+ populations of the Global South continue to be exploited and marginalized. 

Sources will include:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2059436420949985

https://brill.com/view/journals/hima/24/2/article-p138_7.xml

Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage

The Traffic in Women by Gayle Rubin

Class readings (Sex in Public, Sexuality, The Body)

(Sorry this is late, I didn't catch that we were supposed to turn this in last week!)

Final Essay Topic

    I am focusing my final topic paper on the historical geography of sanitary landfills and the language used to describe them, with an emphasis on landfills in Alaska.

final essay topic

 My final essay topic will be the civil war in Donetsk and Luhansk and the manner in which the war is depicted in physical space and media.

Final Essay on Hog Farming

 My final essay will be on a topic I have recently discovered. I will be examining the history of hog farming and how it has changed and formed the geography in North Carolina, specifically. 

'the wandering state' and naming

 Our subconscious, our experiences, and our language usage - dialect, sociolect, and native language, all influence our thought patterns and connections between reality and the manner we as individuals process it. The wandering state expounds upon these tendencies with two very different personalities, and the manner in which they interacted with an environment never before seen by Europeans. Australia was inhabited, but extremely remote and disconnected from the increasingly globalized world. It wasn't until 1770 - 278 years after Columbus first landed in the New World - that Captain Cook charted Australian waters. Cook was meticulous about giving names and charting the shoreline to aid future exploration: not necessarily colonization projects, but any manner of expedition. The name's Cook chose seem random and pointless at first, but are connected to his experiences of growing up a sailor, the names of his crew members, and the manner in which they interpreted their surroundings, for instance three brothers hill being names so because the hills resembled three brothers. This reimagination of space outside the previous indigenous context changed the manner in which Europeans, and later Australians, viewed their surroundings. Linguistic tendencies manfesting unconciously, creating pathways between experiences in our brains - the process of naming is incredibly complex and multifaceted.

My Final Essay Topic

 My final essay topic is going to be on how the environmental movement is currently changing the way we play and work.

Chapters from The Road to Botany Bay, Carter

 

Emily Gettis

Geog390: Professor Simpson

Reading Response Week 13

11.19.2020

Paul Carter, Chapters from The Road to Botany Bay

            In the chapter “An Outline of Names” by Paul Carter, we are shown the different steps that occur in the Enlightenment era imperialist exploration, naming practices, and written experiences of James Cook and his entourage during their time sailing around Australia. This chapter presents information on how language and act of naming from the perspective of an explorer, Cook and the botanist Banks are focused on in this chapter, undermines the space itself by being self-serving and inaccurate. In a historical deep dive and deconstructing of history, Carter details the not so subtleties of how the perspectives of the explorer and the botanist influenced their specific reasoning for the rhetoric used to name places and flora. Carter places Cook as a seeker of horizons and focuses on how Cook afforded a place a name as a strategy to confirm his journey, reaffirm his ‘right’ to continue on with exploration, and—if I’m understanding Carter correctly—guarantee further explorations of Australia, although not necessarily by Cook. The explorer is oriented and given feedback only by distance and an expected arrival; the journey and the act of traveling creates the explorer, and Cook operated in that spatial realm in a way that is reinforced by the names he chose to bestow on geographic features. This spatial historical strategy is shown in contrast with the botanist, Banks, who gives names as a way to accumulate and erase particularities, a kind of scientific washing of differences.

            A part of Carter’s method I really enjoyed in this chapter is in this quote on page 24, “Primary knowledge lay in the course of the exploration itself, not in the elaboration of possible discoveries.” I think Carter later symbolically explains this claim in this quote, “They [the given place names] assert no literal likeness but are offspring of the paradoxical miniaturization of the magnified image in the telescope; framed and isolated, such features are brought close, make homely, domestic” on page 31. Carter's claims orient us historically and expose how language, intention, and the infusion of perspective create a spatial history that was produced. This production is connected to the colonialist erasure of the environment that Aborigines produced their life on, and made possible for the continued exploration of Australia. I found it particularly interesting that Carter stated that even renaming or reverting back to Aboriginal names of places would be hollow, and his style of presenting information using Linnaeus naming and classification by Banks next to Cooks naming and how other scholars perceived the work done by both. It is interesting to me how Carter brings up that in creating the knowledge from going through the historical text available to us about this exploration, we are also greatly stunted by it.

A Wandering State

 Matthew R. Berry

 Critical Geography

 11/19/2020

 Professor Simpson

A Wandering State

1) In A Wandering State by Paul Carter, the author argues for a new way of viewing history and space through language. It's a pretty profound and supportive argument. The author states on P. 326: 

"In this sense the value of writing history is that it continues to remind us of our origins. But there is also an opposite implication. The fact that history is essentially an act of interpretation, a re-reading of documents, means that it hides our origins from us. For, by its nature, history excludes all that is not quoted or written down. Only what has been transcribed is available for interpretation. Only documents can be compared, ordered, interpreted and judged. Ironically, the originality of historical personages, like the uniqueness of historical events, depends on their not being original or unique but part of a wider already constituted historical pattern. History has a historical horizon which is constituted by the activity of history itself: the horizon of writing. It offers the mechanism for generating a tradition, but not the means of reflecting on the validity of the tradition itself. In this sense, it may exclude much of the past which matters to us - our own spatiality, for instance."

Carter makes significant bounds here, describing how the articulation of history through writing and language can have a direct impact on the spatiality of our understanding. What is said, what is omitted, what is described in journals and annotated, all have direct impacts to our understanding of history at the time and this creates its own version of space. 

2) The connections to other papers that really struck me was with Bruce Braun's Colonialism’s Afterlife: Vision and Visuality on the Northwest Coast. Braun utilized art through the materialist method as a way to investigate space and it's connections through the artists he described. I felt this was similar, albeit different. Carter utilizes language, writing, and the lacktherof to bring together an argument about how history is remembered and who, in his case, the Aborigines, are disenfranchised as a result. Braun reminds us of the colonialistic aspects of the artwork on the Northwest Coast while Carter uses language to investigate actual colonial writings towards Aborigines.

3) P. 332: "Names made them facts which could be written down time and again. Against names information (Native Names, Probable Age, Wives, Designation of Tribes, etc.) could be tabulated and preserved. Names, in short, made them white history." I really liked this because it made me think of the differences between American naming in Southeast Alaska compared to the Alaska Native names and the etymological differences between the two cultures. By naming the glacier by UAS "Mendenhall" it takes a Native name and makes it a White name, erasing the history of the Natives and replacing it with white history.

4) Is it possible to connect these discussions to current issues like Black Lives Matter? Cultural appropriation? How can we use this method of language to inquire into spatial histories of our current electoral process?

Earth and Google Earth

Eric Vilmer

11/15/20

Professor Simpson

            Earth and Google Earth

Based off of what I got from this long reading, it seems to be discussing how our perceptions have

 changed of earth throughout time and  how we can navigate many parts of earth without even leaving

 our home. There is a lot more to this essay though. This essay goes into what sentience is. “One of

 them argues, “sentience or intelligence isn’t a thing, you can’t find it in, or analyze it out from, the cells

 of a brain. It’s a function of the connected cells. It is, in a sense, the connection: the connectedness’ “ 

(118). Osden sums up his experience of this utterly alien form of intelligence by characterizing it as “ 

‘sentience without senses. Blind, deaf, nerveless, moveless. Some irritability, response to touch. 

Response to sun, to light, to water, to chemicals in the earth around the roots. Nothing comprehensible 

to an animal mind. Presence without mind. Awareness of being, without object or subject. Nirvana’ “ 

(118).” (Heise, 18) This book goes into great details about how people live in the world and what

accounts for us feeling, such as the interconnectedness of cells for example. How each of us 

understands reality really has to do with the makeup of our bodies just as how we view earth. After 

reading this essay I have thought a lot about each others role in life and how we all are sort of trapped in

our own realities and we live by a code or system because of the inner bodily development which 

creates what we are and therefore allows for a system to thrive such as ours.

"Permissible" Sexuality

 The hegemony of heterosexual-normative behavior is damaging not only to the LGBT community, but deprives heterosexuals of aspects of the human experience. As I am not LBGT, I'm not going to focus much on this aspect of the debate, but rather appreciate everyone's input, and what I have learned going in social spaces with my gay and lesbian friends to be shocking at times. No one deserves to be treated any differently because of their orientation, and it's nauseating to hear these stereotypes being thrown around just because of the people I associate myself with. I hope that one day we reach a point where we are all considered as humans deserving of respect first, members of our community second, with all other identifiers and class being less important then the individual. This does not mean that we have to have a future where LGBT take traditional roles of hetero couples, two lesbians don't have to conform to gender stereotypes and have one take the male role - two gay couples don't need one man to be the man of the house and the other the house-husband - as we see with Pete Buttiege and his political career. This seeking of conformity for LGBT people to appease conservative sensibilities is another form of power and control. If mainstream society can no longer convert peoples sexuality, perhaps society can twist it into the least offensive form possible. LGBT people need to be allowed to form their own roles, whether they want to seek traditional roles, or to construct new relationship paradigms, it is of no one's concern but the parties involved.

 

This hegemony doesn't just damage LBGT people, but heterosexuals are also harmed by this compartmentalization of normative behavior. Women are expected to act one way - typically in a submissive role - men are expected to shoulder their burdens silently, any out-pour of emotion that isn't seen as mannish behavior is derided as feminine. This is emotionally stunting to boys and girls learning their place in the world, and creates a space of toxic masculinity from the teenage years on. We have roles we are expected to play in social life, family life, and in one's professional career. After all, isn't it common place to expect women to play the role of the office mom, and men to do all of the heavy lifting when needed? This same hegemony extends to race relations: as Werner and Berlant noted, the times cover depicting what the average American will look like in 2050 is purely offensive. It seeks to absorve minorities into the melting pot. This seems scary and strange to many, so to lessen the load of this removal of the Euro-Americans, they depict a future where we remove non white individuals and individual identities for a future where yes- it is unavoidable for races to mix into one, but where it is done on White American terms. Their grandkids might have some "other" background, but they will act in the same way just as white americans have always acted. Of course, this is a reality, especially in Alaska, which has the highest number of mixed heritage people in the nation, but as we can also see in Alaska that doesn't mean someone has to stop being Filipino, to stop being Native, just because of their mixed heritage. It doesn't mean they're half and half, but rather fully native, and fully norwegian-american or whatever. This melting pot idea, reducing space and banalizing these vastly different cultures into an ingredient of a soup is harmful and just plain wrong.

Bodies in Space

 

Emily Gettis

GEOG390: Professor Simpson

Reading Response Week 12

11.11.20

Fortress L.A Mike Davis

            This chapter by Mike Davis exposes the war like techniques that city planning produces in Los Angeles to monitor marginalized poor people and in turn, reinforce and instigate the canyon between those who are allowed space, and those who are not. Davis uses architecture to reveal how, rather than being of benefit to the public in a progressive, holistic sense of place, public space has been injected with the purpose of actively violent security. This transformation of the built environment seeps out into the paranoid narratives it creates and the citizens who internalize it, which then recreates itself in private homes and neighborhoods (and the call to privatize deepens). Residential areas are safe only at the expense and violence of other, particularly homeless (and those deemed ‘unsavory’), who Davis claims are caught in a system that perpetuates these symbols to continue manufacturing the outrageous budgets for architectural and technological warfare. Davis identifies public architectural items as simple as benches to more significant such as libraries, and how these spaces are infused with anti-other, intimidation, and control. The produced energy that fills these spaces is key and results in control and corralling of the other in certain spaces. Davis concludes with how these systems not only produce where bodies can be placed, where they are allowed to be, with a healthy dose of what is the ‘right’ way to be, but also produce crowd control. Spaces, experiences, or situations that are inherently not violent, are soured and made violent by war like architectural and technological presence and narratives that start with marginalized groups verses how ‘acceptable’ groups produce their lives.  

            Of course, I see Foucault and his ideas about power, architectural space, and control in this reading. But I am trying to see how Lefebvre comes in to the narratives about space with mental and perceived space, because I believe that is a large part of what reinforces the abyss between groups of people. And if, for Lefebvre, culture is just as forceful as economy, then is it vital for the L.A.P.D, as Davis describes them, to create and perpetuate culture that the economies for war technology thrives.

Sex in Public

 Sadie Inman

Nov 11, 2020

Critical Geography

Response Paper 9 

The abundance of heterosexuality within public space has never occurred to me but compared with the same actions in a homosexual sphere it becomes clear what is the ruling idea currently. The political and social efforts to outcast all but heterosexuality and even only a small view of it can be seen throughout history. Richard Phillip’s essay “Sexuality” writes about the inherent sexualization of land and people in order to devalue them. How Christopher Columbus related his conquering of the indigenous people and land to the conquering of a woman is a grotesque picture. This tactic also reinforces the treatment of women as purely sexual creatures. Therefore the heterosexuality is moved out of the bedroom and into courts and governments. The current hegemony is tied very closely to heterosexuality and “hegemonies are nothing if not elastic alliances involving dispersed and contradictory strategies for self-maintenance and reproduction.” (Berlant and Warner, pg 553). 

This hegemony is reinforced by the culture of discretion. The separation of personal and work worlds and the taboo of even raising the topic of conversation create a barrier for change. It is impossible to bring in new ideas and dispute the system if the general public refuses to talk about it. The social reinforcement of the “right” actions in these realms is extremely strong and throughout the world the social reinforcement has turned into government enforcement. Many US states still have laws against sodomy and other acts outside the sexual norm despite being done behind closed doors typically. 

It is the “sense of rightness” that is what we call “heteronormativity” and this is the hardest thing to combat when attempting to bring acceptance to other aspects of sexuality. A collective sense of morals that are all abiding by and that help serve the ruling class’s ideology. That ideology is strongly based on reproduction and domination of marginal spaces.