Aitana's reading notes
Borders and ghosts: migratory hauntings in contemporary visual cultures - Nermin Saybasili
Visual Culture designates an entire arena of visual representations which circulate in the field of vision establishing visibilities (and policing invisibilities), stereotypes, pose relations, the ability to know and to verify: in fact they establish the very realm of the "known" (Rogoff 200:20). What I am interested in, therefore, is what is beyond the "known" and beyond the predictable.
This image reflects on an "imagined world" [...] " the lines between the realistic and the fictional landscapes are blurred [...]
Border officials use this light against the "illegal" crossing of "immigrants". [...] In the advanced technological surveillance systems on European borders, the desire to make everything visible is also an imperative to make things legible and governable. [...]
Visibility ins a complex system of permission and prohibition, of presence and absence. [...]
[Lugagges] serve as compartments in which an immigrant carries his or her wishes, expectations, dreads and desires as well his or her anxieties or fears. [...]
Modern surveillance systems are based on the British philosopher, Jeremy Bentham's panopticon (Bentham 1843), which he invented in 1786 as the perfect prison, and which Michael Foucault saw as the major mechanism for the disciplining of society [...] each person in his or her cell or cage is alone, completely isolated and constantly visible under full lighting. She/he s the object of information, but never a subject of communication. [...] "visibility is a trap" (Foucault 1991 [1977]:200). [...]
"In a state of solitude, infantile superstitions, ghosts and specters, recur to the imagination" (cited by Mirzoeff 2022:241: Semple 1993:132)[...]
[...] people crossing borders [...] operate as "ghosts" mainly because "illegal" border-crossing is all about visibility and invisibility; about dissappearance as coming into presence. [...]
The image is a powerful reminder that materialist science cannot account for the textures of everyday experience of people crossing borders. "Ghost images" of the "illegal" immigrants empty all the realities an immigrant would firmly be tied to.[...]
Thus, we end up with an image that looks like a scene from a horror film. This image blind us.[...] It is spectral [...] and unable to refer to any life values or qualities. [...]
TO BE CONTINUED - PAGINA 306
Separate and dominate - Christine Delphy
Thesis that claim that human beings cannot stand difference is a thesis on human nature an essentialist thesis and therefore, an idealist one.
[...] the hierarchy in our society is due to the rejection of the other. Except when it comes to the opposition between "capitalists" and "workers". [...] Emphazise the similarity among the operations that give priority to one group and stigmatise the other. The problematic of the others presupposes the existence of these hierarchies. [...]
The object is to show that hatred of the "difference" is not a natural trait of the human species. [...]
"Weltanschauung" invisible, subterranean fundation of the world's view. Philosophy of the dominant.
"I"
Descartes didn't care about the others. Pienso, luego existo. [...] The other is abused right from the outset from the very moment of being, defined as "other".
Society meaning "I", meaning "us".
[...] When one group calls another "the other" it is already too late, it has already confiscated humanity, appropriating it as its own exclusive characteristic. [...]
The master group group, the group of Ones is not the same for all these three oppressions: for women it is men... etc. but the master group reproaches its own others for not being part of the Ones; it reproaches them for being different and exhorts them to be more "similar" if they want to obtain their rights,
!! p.16 -> "Nouvelles questions féministes" -> Construction of the otherness.
[...] Men, heterosexual and white are disproportionately -and unduly- sure of themselves, arrogant and talkative: their socialisation and experience have made like that, and their position allows it. [...]
How could the Others be like the Ones, when the Ones are only Ones because they press the others?
The ways (of talking, of standing, of walking, of eating, etc.) of the dominant group are not presented for what they are - as ways that can only exist through domination - but as the norm, as the universal. [...]
Bourdieu claimed in his "Masculine domination" that women were so alienated -precisely because they are dominated- that they could not even think in their situation. He, however, could do so. Why? Because he was, or saw himself as impartial , a neutral observer. May be he ought to have understood that since he is part of the group "men", he couldn't be impartial. [...]
The Ones reject of being confine within an identity. Dominant think they can choose whatever social position and change it however they please. [...]
It is privilege of the Ones to name individuals when the Others turn this process around, they shake up the rules of the game, symbolically at least.< > Naming the dominants means specifying them too. And it specifies them in a way that erases their superiority. >>>