Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others
This text raises interesting ways of thinking about bodies, identities and being. I’m very interested in the idea of experiencing disorientation in order to understand being oriented. I wonder if this way of thinking can easily be applied to other forms of otherness?
I’m also interested in this order of disorientation leading to orientation in regard to my current research on repetition and difference and the idea that repetition is only understood through difference. I would like to further explore these connections and other relations in language/phenomenology.
Haunted Geologies: Spirits, Stones, and the Necropolitics of the Anthropocene
This reading raised questions about categorization for me. I kept coming back to the two different names for the mud volcano: Lumpur Lapindo (Lapindo Mud) and Lumpur Sidoarjo (Sidoarjo Mud) or Lusi. The author quickly relates these two together and discusses the political implications of both names. For me, however, the first (Lumpur Lapindo) holds much more significant political weight.
Because of this categorization, I kept thinking about the boundary between categories and the implications of language when determining a name for something. It makes me think about the history of color perception attached to language. Cultures can only perceive certain colors once a name is attached to it to distinguish it from other colors. Similarly, the name in which people choose to refer to this disaster imbue the situation with so much context. Just something interesting for me to dwell on.
On Contested Terrain
Beyond the themes of conflict and war in Lê’s work, I really enjoyed the connection to contemporary photography with work from a different period. I find often in the contemporary art world, we’re quick to write off the opportunity to reference works from before the 20th century. I love the way she uses the traditions of survey photography to contest the realities of history and war.