25 February, 2008

• My nap was so nice! #
• Whole Foods’ pizza was GREAT! It’s Oscar fever over this way…though, I’m reading and writing! #
• Back at work today at 7:42-and its a regular week for me! I have got so much on my mind! #
• My horoscope? Can these be for real?! #
• Learning about myself… #
• Its a hot and heavy lunch hour! #
• Thank god my day is almost over! Its been a heated day! #
• Made it home! What a heated day it was, literally! #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Difficult Dialogues: Exploring Myths and Stereotypes within the LGBT Community
5:30-6:30 p.m. TUESDAY, February 26.
Room 181/Behavioral Sciences Building/1007 W. Harrison (Rainbow Resource)

• Aimed to tackle the difficult issues LGBT folks typically don’t discuss.
• Open to UIC students, faculty, and staff. For more information e-mail Michael at mbricker@uic.edu.
• Co-sponsored by the UIC Counseling Center and the OGLBTC.

Having spent my later academic career moving from the study of systematic theology to that of culture and studying/learning about the conceptual and symbolic meanings of borders and the philosophical and/or political underpinnings of borders caused me to question the categories of transcendentals or the unity of truth, as often understood and expounded upon by theologians: truth, beauty and goodness.

It is my sense that these 3 elements exist together, are interconnected, and are triggered when there is a relational context. After all, philosophy is not simply theory with no performance or performativity. Philosophy is a search and love for wisdom, embodied in all things good–or all things beautiful.

Truth, though oftentimes touted as an objective reality, is actually the subjective component of a life lived. So, the sentence: “Truth happens.” is a sentence embodying the very subjective component about which I am speaking.

Quickly, from a theological perspective, which perhaps will help in my following argument, let me explain what is oftentimes termed: the Unity of Truth: truth, beauty, and goodness.

For Jesuit Theologian, Hans Urs von-Balthasar, “Truth is what happens when beauty is unveiled.” There is a coherence of truth, beauty and goodness, and yet there is a coINherence of these three. I’m wondering if there is a way for anthropology and feminism to look at the unity of the philosophical and/or theological concept of truth and see it played out in our simulation of life: relationships? I think there is.

Culture and/or relationships provide society [communities] with what I term “the certainty of subjectivity.” In fact, culture is a type of poetic prose which in turn reveals the confluences of perception, passion, and eroticism. And, while this is one cultural component, there is another: the truth of being.

Truth is only possible to BE when the human knower or receptor is open to the existence or appearance of being. Conversely, beauty and goodness are only able to emerge when the human receptor is open to the erotic reality of truth. Therefore, the intersection of these three: truth, beauty, and goodness are all sustained by the eroticisms of life which is rooted in a relational context.

I think what this means is that certainty emerges leading one to realize that she will be at the standpoint of realizing that she will surely die of love. It is the dialectic of love and death that becomes apparent in the face of the realities of truth, beauty and goodness, because of the life and death these three require.

The result? Comó agua para chocolate or jouissance …

I will surely die of love, which is the truth and passion of loving the being of truthfulness and beauty–be that the culture of you or you yourself. I will hold this passion in my heart enjoying the eroticism existing between us, though my mind and heart both race and beat with trepidation.

Quiero los labios, g.

p.s. I know my colleagues who are Theologians will find my analysis of the categories of truth, beauty and goodness some sort of aberration from the “truth of theology.” And you know what I say to that?! Get over it!

CALL FOR PAPERS
For the AAA meetings, Nov. 19-23, 2008

Session Proposal:
The Problem of Global Translation: Female/Queer Masculinities in a Same-sex World
Organizer, Evelyn Blackwood
This year’s AAA theme “Inclusion, Collaboration and Engagement,” offers an excellent opportunity to highlight some of the critical questions in LGTQ studies that arise as a result of “gay” globalization.  As queer knowledges circulate the world, Western images and categories tend to dominate the discourse of sexual rights and sexual liberation.  Lesbian and gay liberation movements of Europe and the United States uphold an expectation of the global production of “modern” same-sex identities reflecting Western meanings.  These identities may be taken on as a way to validate sexual meanings and categories, but at the same time they force diverse subjectivities to align with same-sex categories in order to effectively participate in global rights movements.  Excluded from those categories of modernity are gender-defined queer subjects, the masculine females, tomboys, ftms and lesbian men, among others, whose self-positionings do not easily match up with the categories of a same-sex world.

Because individuals intercept the circuits of queer knowledge in class- and gender-delimited ways, their subjectivities reflect the particularities of place and the particular circuits they access, which is not to say they are therefore out of touch with “modern” forms of sexualities.  While their subjectivities are often imagined as pre-modern or lacking in modern “sexual” knowledge, the difference female/queer masculinities represent are not the difference of outmoded gender-based sexualities.  They are already part of and crucially interconnected with a global queer community, suggesting that queer subjectivities are not created in a singular fashion between the globalized and the localized but through many different intersections within and between regions and nations.  While their subjectivities reflect their particular location within national and transnational queer discourses and movements, their particular differences demonstrate the multiplicity of queer subjectivities and the importance of recognizing and validating these subjectivities.

This panel seeks to bring into view queer subjectivities that have been relegated to the peripheries of a global “gay” movement by examining the processes by which certain queer practices and sexualities are privileged and attending to particular circuits of queer knowledge and their reception by female/queer masculine subjects in global/transnational contexts.  Among the topics that could be addressed by this panel are:
The ways anthropology contributes to a homonormative US queer discourse and the construction of coherent, stable subjects;
The problems of and responses to the global translation of queer categories, such as the “modern lesbian” subject, “butch/femme,” or the strategic imperative to be “out”;
Circuits of queer knowledge and how these are received, appropriated or deflected by female/queer masculine subjects;
The multiple practices and lived experiences of female-bodied queer subjects and how dominant gender meanings are expressed, redefined, or resisted;
Theories of female masculinity, their value or lack thereof in addressing queer masculinities or gender-defined subjectivities, such as female-bodied men, tomboys, ftms, lesbian men, etc.

Please submit your 250-word abstract to Evelyn Blackwood at blackwood@purdue.edu by March 15, 2008.  This panel will be submitted as a joint panel to SOLGA and AFA.

Dr. Evelyn Blackwood
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
700 W. State Street
Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN  47907
(765) 496-1728
Homepage: http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~blackwoo