Are we born human or do we learn our humanity by living? Art Woo looks for signs everywhere in Gish Jen’s short story, “Birthmates.” Art Woo has no solid instincts. He reads as much as he can into the glass of the world, hoping to identify himself in the reflection; but he misinterprets every clue, every significance. Jen delivers the details of the story through his warped senses, forcing the reader to suffer Art’s disjointed life; and the brilliance of the story reveals itself only at t...
Survival of Atrocities Emmanuel Levinas writes that horror does not derive itself from Presence, but rather from the negation of Presence: "Horror is the event of being which returns in the heart of this negation, as though nothing had happened." (The Levinas Reader, P.33) You face a marvel or an atrocity. Are you a conservative when Kepler and Newton eliminated the notion of uniform circular motion? Then you have faced a marvel that is revolutionary in thought; a marvel that will...
Per posting strategy of certain JoeUser ultra-right authors, I thought it might be educational to re-post a response I made to a specific form of Postmodern racism. I believe the original article in this series was posted by ModerateMan, with point and counterpoint provided by Little Whip and CityGuy, respectively, here: Link . Little Whip subsequently provided the enlightening article, "What It's like to Be White" here: Link . Before I quote my response, I find it necessary to c...
What is peaceful rebellion? Like Gandhi? Things do change that way, no question, but the system doesn't change. The perspective passed down from Hammurabi and an educated handful of drunken greeks remains in place. This system, it runs based on its own rules, not on some metaphysical conception of morality. It is an organism trying to survive. Go ahead and think that it is getting worse, more invasive, more corrupted, more inaccessible, more big brother. It doesn't matter. It's just ...
Hate for the Sake of Feeling You lose friends, sometimes. Casual friends, intimate friends, you lose them in places that you know the best. Forget them: that's the easiest way to do it. Take them for granted. Try to make them responsible for your well being. You lose them before you even know they're gone. Sometimes they resurface, unbidden and unsought. They forget why you left them behind, and the forgetting makes them angry. They feel something and they want an explanation.
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