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Random & Too Much

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This week's readings have been going around in my head over and over and I'm trying to think what to write about. A couple of things: some of these are comments, others are questions.

1) Stemming from Sam's class, I'm still wondering if anything we do as scholars is ever representing and if we use that word too lightly. Should we not be presenting what we are witnessing instead of representing a culture or a group of people? I feel uncomfortable with the narrow target and concept of representing and more comfortable with presenting.

2)Participation and resistance fascinate me. Does resistance work without participation? I keep thinking about the article by Bennett here. Simply participation was a form of resistance for these me. This made me think of Cloud. She says "Of course texts do things, but changes produced only through symbolic action tend to be symbolic rather than material changes" (2005, p. 516). However, the gay men's changes were both symbolic and material. They were symbolic because they were resisting and they were material because they change was actually happening, their blood was given to others in order to save their lives. The structural change did not happen, is this what she means by change?

3) I worked hard to take the personal out of my papers I submitted to NCA. (This is response to the aesthetic chapter). However, should I? Should there not be room for this type of discourse in academic writing? Of course, it could lead to being rejected, but there's always risk involved in resistance right? That's what we learned from Cloud and Basu & Dutta.

4) Can we talk about resistance being co-opted by the neoliberal project? Does it still count as resistance? Does it still have room to change?

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