The Politics of Food and other things

Ethics No Comments

For years, I’ve thought about food.  I’ve thought about the food that different cultures consume, the ways that culture motivates people to eat certain foods, the ways that we mass produce food here in the United States, and I’ve thought about my own (oftentimes poor) practices of food.

During graduate school, I became vegetarian.  I did it for theological reasons–that it is never just to kill, especially the killing that goes on in mass produced farm animals who are subjected to cruelty.  But, it is never just to kill for pleasure.  I was vegetarian for six years, then I started eating meat again.  I can’t tell you what prompted this change.  And so, I enjoyed meat, often trying to purchase it from an organic grocery store.  I justified my consumption in this way.

Along the way in becoming vegetarian, I grew quite close and fond of my oldest dog, Cricket.  I began to explore animal studies and learn the closeness that we share with non-human animals.  As animals ourselves, it was this relationship with Cricket that motivated a new and renewed look or glance at the way I view food and eat.  This glance at food, though, took years.  It wasn’t a fast glance.

After some years and a move across these United States for doctoral work, I revisited my food politics.  I often had this bodily nudge that I should ‘go’ vegetarian.  And then my oldest dog passed away, but didn’t pass away naturally; we had to euthanize her.  The following day, my partner and I went out for dinner.  We ended up going to a popular hamburger joint.  While there, my partner said:  If we care about Cricket, why are we eating hamburgers.”  While you may initially think that cows and dogs are not parallel, the point my partner was making was around cruelty and not participating in animal cruelty.  We cared for Cricket up to her last days, then had to make the painful decision to euthanize.  This motivated me to look at my food politics and practices.

So, I went vegetarian, again, and along with my partner we are seeking to make little moves against destruction when it comes to animal and farm cruelty by reducing our participation.

Categories of Resistance

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the tools, methods, and categories that have helped me resist hegemonic strategies, patriarchy, homophobia, and misogyny.  All this thinking has also created questions in my mind.  For example, I use feminist analysis and feminist tools, but am I a feminist?  I utilize queer analysis and methodologies, but am I queer?  I have long resisted categories that seek to stabilize and unify one’s experience.  And so, I’m left with categories of resistance, a box that cannot be ‘checked.’

Is there a word that helps collectively display all of the liberative ways that feminism, queerness, and other methods seek to create moments of openings and liberation for marginalized bodies?  In searching for a ‘new’ word, do we further institutionalize and stabilize the very thing that we’re trying NOT to stabilize?  Do we need to reach back into history to see where we might have gone wrong?  Will history show us something that will help us today?  Or, will history simply reveal the same patterns and motifs that we’ve perpetuated?

I think we need categories of resistance, but I’m not sure that these categories can be housed within normative white methods and standards, because the outcome is that these moments create new models of stability, that thereby fortifies whiteness.  I look toward a more material reality of resistance–bodies, actual physical bodies, resisting.  What is that called?

Mourning & Loss: when intellectual giants become part of memory past

Ethics Latinos Theology 1 Comment

OttoDespite the news that broke yesterday concerning Dr. Otto Maduro’s passing, I begin this morning as I normally do:  get up, take the dogs out, brush my teeth, shower, dress, and walk to the bus.  What is different about this morning that impacts me tremendously is how my mind continued to think about both Ada María Isasi-Díaz and Otto Maduro.  These two folks were intellectual giants for our community and others, and I suspect that my friends and colleagues on FaceBook will highlight their memories of Otto.  That’s what I’d like to do today in this blog post, but I’d like to frame my ‘memories’ with a question:  What happens when intellectual giants become part of memory past–when stories that begin with “I remember when…” or “I’ll never forget when…?”  I can share that I’ll never forget when…this past year at AAR as I sat on the panel for Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Otto came up to me and said he loved my hair, then gave me the sweetest kiss on the cheek.  I’ll never forget that exchange, and his gentleness toward and for my queer mestizaje body.  That moment will stay with me; it is memory.  That moment is how our commitment to doing theology with one another should be:  gentle, celebratory, and lovely.

Our commitment to do theology en conjunto means that these stories shape and form our theologies and ethics.  We don’t invent a new theology; we borrow and shape what has existed before.  We live into these memories helping the memories of our intellectual giants take new shape for justice for all living things.  We don’t lay aside the very important work that Otto and Ada created, regardless of how we feel about it (we all have our critics).  We do theology together, with memories, with joy, with one another.  We mourn the loss of intellectual giants, but we do not stop there.  We celebrate their work, and we find ways to continue their intellectual patterns.

Let us remember Otto for his pioneering work in sociology.  Let us not forget his commitment to multiple communities, and his gentleness that surpassed our own.

Talking Taboo? I did!

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Talking Taboo

A year or so ago, I received an email from a writer.  This letter came from a recommendation from Dr. Mary E. Hunt.  I read the email and thought:  ”what do I have to say about today’s church?  I don’t even attend church!”  And then it dawned on me…I had a whole life committed to church and grew up in the church.  And so, a while ago I began writing for the “I Speak for Myself” Campaign.  I began writing about doubt and my tattoos.  What resulted was Talking Taboo.  I wrote about my migration from Texas–to Chicago–to Denver, and the ways that my body changed with the texturing of tattoos.  I mapped out my faith in images and words, which are all tattooed on my mestizaje body.  I called my narrative “Faith Seeking Understanding:  Tattoos Mapping my Faith.”  I think moments like what has resulted in this book are great ways to teach others about religion and faith.  While I continue to enflesh an agnostic orientation, I think this book is one that will help ignite the grassroots!  I hope you’ll get a chance to pick up the book; there are some really great contributors in it!

You can hear a little about this writing from the Indigogo crowd-funding site, below.

 

 

When writing is part of daily habituation

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I was talking w/ a colleague last night and I shared with her that at some point in my academic career, I want to write about writing.  The idea of writing is fascinating to me, and I want to spend some time thinking about writing, outcomes that emerge as a result of writing, and general ideas we have about writing.  This idea stems from my work with Anzaldúan scholars–thinkers and writers who spend a lot of time analyzing Anzaldúa’s work and efforts to better understand Anzaldúa as a scholar-thinker.

Anzaldúa was obsessed with writing.  She edited over and over again, and much of her writing remains unpublished because of her obsession with editing.  I think she probably agonized over her writing, not wanting to let it go because it wasn’t perfect, or perfected.  There is a spirit of consciousness contained in this process–Anzaldúa was conscious that she could not let certain pieces leave her sight, her possession, for when she does, it is released into the world and takes on a new and different consciousness, perhaps.

I want to know more about that moment when writers complete a thought, an idea, and then agonize over it.  Is the thought truly complete?  Or, is it more that the idea has given birth to other ideas, trails of thoughts that we writers chase after?  I feel a certain connection with this moment, as I’m writing an essay on perversion.  I am turning over ideas in my mind all day long.  It is as if writing has become a daily habituation, and that writing has taken on new forms of production for me.

I want to know more about this process we call writing.  Writing helps us generate new and different ideas, but writing also has an internal calculation with material subjects.  What is that?  How do we explore that?  What happens when writing is part of daily habituation?  And, secondly, what type of discourse is then produced?  After all, writing and discourse are related.  These are my question this morning.

“Race is not a Thing”

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I enjoyed coffee with a friend this past Sunday.  It was the perfect company:  a fellow writer, a nice coffee shop, and stellar conversation.  What struck me was our conversation about race.  I always enjoy talking about race, but am often concerned to venture down this path, especially when today’s racial politics and theories of race center on or around biology and biologized notions of race.  But, despite my concern, I entered into this conversation, and was listening intently.  My friend, at some point during our conversation, claimed (or rather exclaimed): “I don’t think race is a thing!”  I thought to myself–could this be happening?  Brilliant, I thought, because I don’t think race is a thing, either.

I think race has been used to categorize people, bodies of all sorts of difference.  And, we’ve turned race into a thing.  We’ve turned it into a box, for example, that people check to organize themselves into a certain tribe or culture.  But! Race escapes this, because it is a discursive phenomenon.  It is not a thing, not a stabilized category into which different colors of bodies fit.  Race is an experience of sorts, a phenomenon whereby our subjectivity incorporates a certain stylistic meter to organize itself.  What I mean is this:  our subject, comprised of many and multiple layers of experiences residing at the constellation of differences, is texturized by discursive markings; one of these is race.  If this is the case, then race is certainly NOT a thing.  It is a discursive reality (one that I call texturized markings) that helps constitute bodies into their becoming different in the world.

The Quest of Publishing: Re-Imagining Text

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I’ve long been impressed with both academic presses & indie presses. In Chicago, I would spend hours in bookstores–mostly independent & feminist. As I’ve spent time in a doctoral program, I’ve even thought about doing some sort of online journal with close colleagues, & I’ve seen how the rise in online publishing & open source has strong roots. Starting an online journal resides in details, which are still panning out, and forever in process, but the question regarding to the future of publishing remains a serious question.

I have spent years blogging, reading academic journals, & enjoying the indie stuff that has come from folks like Aunt Lute Press & Third Woman Press. I wonder what & how we might re-evolve today’s publishing machine in the Americas? How might we re-imagine a way to do work as a community of multiple coalitions, in the borderlands, cross-disciplinary & transgressive? That’s my question now.

Put a Ring on it!

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WeddingToday is my wedding anniversary. I married my long-time partner 7 years ago. We’ve been together 14 years–7 of those are the result of us marrying in Toronto, ON, Canada. I’ve been all over the place when it comes to whether or not to wear my very swanky ring. I’m now really thinking about wearing my ring, and celebrating my relationship with this symbol. But! It doesn’t come without questions and a history. Let me explain.

I have these radical queer feminist leanings where I don’t have any desire to be read as anyone’s property, or that I fit into any sort of normative structure when it comes to relationships. Of course, this has never been an issue. My partner and I entered into a relationship of mutuality, celebrating our individuality and commitment to equality. We have grown up together and found our own way of being in the world as individuals and as partners. We very much are individuated selves, and are very much a team! I love her more and more each and eery day. But! My first year of doctoral work I stopped wearing my ring. I thought for some reason that a queer scholar (committed to difference and radical queerness) shouldn’t be hampered by the wearing of a wedding ring. I generally don’t like to wear jewelry, unless its my piercings. But, as 01 May 2014 approaches (the day that Civil Unions become available to Coloradans), I want wear my ring–I want to put a ring on this thing that I’ve been doing for 14 years: journeying and partnering with a very compelling person who engages me at the deepest levels and calls forth every good thing.

Now! I still have radical queer feminist learnings. Those feelings and ideas have NOT gone away. I’ve re-imagined my relationship in light of the marriage equality movement, and found that having a symbol that signifies my commitment to my partner of 14 years means something to me. And so, starting 01 May 2014, I’ll put a ring on it!

Politics and LGBTQ Lives

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On the heels of my 14th year anniversary, my partner and I decided to spend the morning together at the Colorado Capital. The final hearing/reading of the Civil Unions bill and formal vote was taking place. We thought it would be nice to be a part of history–a history that sheds light on families that are otherwise eclipsed by the unjust policies of the State. There are a lot of different perspectives and opinions on Civil Unions and, for that matter, marriage equality. Here’s mine. Its less of a perspective and more simply my understanding of the ways that this thing called Civil Unions matter.

As I understand it, LGBTQ folks have tried (and succeeded) in becoming recognizable in today’s world. First, by gathering in local bars that resulted in the Stonewall Riots to West Coast becoming the mecca for Gays and Lesbians. We have become recognizable today. We have bars and other establishments dedicated to our community. That’s important. We have fought for equality and equal, non-discrimnatory treatment. We continue to fight for this. We fight for difference and acceptance. And, along the way, this struggle turned to domestic relations. There are some who do not want to engage in the institution of marriage. I get this! There are others who desperately want to marry their partner. And, marriage is by far the overwhelming institution that has stabilized the idea of family, though I argue that its quite the unstable institution in reality. But! Folks want this type of recognition. We’ve created a system where marriage is the pinnacle of recognition by the government and the Church, I might add, and we continue to privilege a notion of the nuclear family as something that is the moral standard of our society. Singleness is still taboo, domestic partnering in one home is not really the best (here we begin to hear moral sentiments concerning people’s choices), and LGBTQ lives don’t seem to fall in the mix. Well, with the passing of Civil Unions LGBTQ lives are in the mix–for better or worse.

I think we need Civil Unions. Its not the best, and its not the worst. We need Civil Unions because recognition is important. And, when we recognize the Other, we see ourselves in a better more recognizable way. Here is where the Jewish philosopher Levinas may have been right; our own recognition depends on the recognizability of the Other. So, while I have already married my partner in Toronto, we will embark on this new journey of a Civil Union. Its important because the State has no other way to understand our relationship outside of a State sanctioned Union. Having the ability to understand our relationship as a way to better organize people and communities, I think, is helpful. It gives us the benefit of being recognized by the governing body of the State of Colorado, and it also affirms the fight we have enfleshed for some 14 years: we want to be family. And so, yesterday created that opening for us to explore yet another step in our becoming family, materializing in the passing of Civil Unions. We will take this step, because it is a step of Social Justice, and to participate in the arc of the moral universe means commitment to the length and breadth of that arc. Today it means looking forward to a Civil Union. Next Year, it might mean that all marriages are turned into Civil Unions! This is an important step in the life of the Gay Rights Movement and Queer Politics. Recognition is good for all parties involved.

Here is a link to our picture in the Denver Post that was taken yesterday (3/12/2013) at the Capital Building in Denver, CO: http://photos.denverpost.com/2013/03/12/photos-colorado-house-passes-civil-unions-bill/#3

And, here’s the same picture on the front page of the Durango Herald.

A Few Thoughts on Teaching

Teaching 1 Comment

I’ve just finished a weekend at the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning.  It is located at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, IN.  This particular group which convened were all Hispanic Theological Initiative Scholars from around the country.  We all are completing our dissertations or have just completed dissertations.  Elizabeth Conde-Frazier and Eduardo C. Fernandez facilitated our workshop.  There were 13 of us who convened this weekend, exploring such things as “the soul of the syllabus” and philosophies of teaching.

I learned that we all bring something incredibly compelling to the vocation of teaching.  And, that, this (teaching) is a vocation.  This is not about assimilating into the market structure of today’s capitalistic society where consumption and production rule the classroom–the very soul of the academy.  This was about profound vision, compelling and integrative teaching for social transformation.  This was about creative relational classrooms and deploying a “bio-centric” classroom, a term that was new to me.  Thanks to Theresa Yugar who introduced me to this term.  I’m continuing to process the workshop, and I have a renewed interest in the philosophy of teaching.  How do I:  a queermestiz@ teach philosophy, theology, and ethics?  Straddling the borders of identity, implicated in several minoritized categories and enfleshing a call to study philosophy, theology, and ethics and a vocation of teaching, how do I deploy my teaching philosophy whose soul, perhaps, is rooted in the ongoing queer(y)ing of the classroom?  This is the question I have for myself…and these are the few thoughts I have on teaching.