readings for the week

I was amazed at Trinh T. Min-ha's artistic abilities and how she was able to blend those with ethnic culture, theory, and politics. She's a modern day "Renaissance woman" and we need more of them. By having knowledge or talent in various disciplines, we are able to see from different perspectives and we can teach them to the people in our livesand make the world a more enlightened place. From this, we can as Min-ha did, "seek to question existing framework and boundaries" (RFRT 213).

How fascinated I was to see rhetoric from the point of view of films. I actually didn't even think about how the real and the filmed are actually very different in terms of space, time, and rhetoric. She says that truth is actually "produced, induced, and extended" (RFRT 225). From what I read, I think she says most of us are spectators and prefer to watch passively than take action and inform others about injustices. The role of a filmmaker then is to provide the hidden information to the masses. She compares a filmmaker to "the almight voice-giver" who "desire[s] to service the needs of the silent common people who have never expressed themselves unless they are given the opportunity to voice their thoughts by the one who comes to redeem them" (RFRT 229). I agree with that except for the "redeem" part. It makes them sound like they are sinners or in the wrong for not speaking up by themselves.
I was really surprised when she explains that "Reality is more fabulous, more maddening, more strangely manipulative than fiction" (RFRT 231). It's kind of ironic. I think reality can be manipulated into fiction but not vice versa.

I guess I can try to relate Min-ha's reading to the time we made i-movies in Dr. Blair's computer-mediated writing course. We were to make videos observing a colleague while he/she was teaching. We then, had to manipulate an hour's worth of teaching into a 5 minute summary. It was very difficult! Filmmaking or in our case, "super-amateur" film making consists of constant decision-making. What is the focus? What should we show and what shouldn't we show? How can we make something undesirable become desirable? Another problem was transitions. As we were able to insert our own transitions through i-movie, there were so many types. We had to determine what was acceptable or unacceptable. Although I was drawn to the diverse transitions, fonts, and colors available, I knew my final goal was to present a professional video document. I used clear, easy to read fonts and colors. I broke up the course into how the instructor began the course, how students prepared for group presentations, how students presented, and finally, what students think are the ups and downs of a computer-mediated course. After toiling for hours, I was able to create a document that my colleague used for her own electronic portfolio. Thus, filmmaking is time-consuming, takes energy and effort, but is well worth the experience. :)

readings for the week...

Sorry! I realized my last posting was a draft and not published. Also, I was presenting for Kramarae and Daly with Bethany and forgot to post as well. Bad Ann-Gee. Say it twice. :P

Anyway, Bad Ann-Gee was glad to see that alternative yet radical forms of rhetoric have been accepted into anthologies. In the first semester of the history of rhetoric course with Dr. Carter-Wood, I studied and presented ancient Chinese rhetoric, which was fascinating and fun to read. I find that alternative rhetoric is quite philosophical and spiritual. I feel very "at one" with the world when I read it. :) And Taoism is all about balance between humans and nature, male and female.

For each person or culture, their gods look different. For us in the Western world, we've all grown up with the concept of God as a man. Secretly, I've harbored a preference for God being a woman or woman-like. This may be why my mom and I admire the Chinese goddess Kwan-Yin so much because she represents mercy. The Western form of a male god is one who also engages in mercy, so ironically, Buddhists would consider God to be another buddha, enlightened spirit, instead of the one God.

Starhawk is very radical as not only is she a witch but she believes in the Goddess. For those who do not understand witchcraft, they would immediately consider her anti-Christian. However, her version of witchcraft is magical and has the power to heal. Witches in fact "bend energy and shape consciousness" very much like the Eastern Tai'chi or Chi'gong, methods of physical exercise that involve breathing and channeling energy. Starhawk does mention chi later in “Truth or Dare.”

People fear what they do not understand, stick a label on it, and just stay away from it. Witches have generally been perceived as old women who are jealous and spiteful, have evil motives, and even cannibalistic. Starhawk disiproves these types of myths in the beginning of "Witchcraft as Goddess Religion," when she says, "The mysteries of the absolute can never be explained--only felt or intuited" (RFRT 143). Everyone feels in different ways that are inexplicable. And to understand, one must invest feelings. Later, she says “true social change can only come about when the myths and symbols of our culture are themselves changed” (145).

Starhawk implicitly blames male-dominant religions in which, "Women are not encouraged to explore their own strengths and realizations; they are taught to submit to male authority, to identify masculine perceptions as their spiritual ideals, to deny their bodies and sexuality, to fit their insights into a male mold" (RFRT 144). I can see how many women would prefer to be Wiccan than Christian in that the Goddess’ images “do not define or pin down a set of attributes; they spark inspiration, creation, fertility of mind and spirit” (RFRT 144). And also it encourages women to “see ourselves as divine, our bodies as sacred, the changing phases of our lives as holy, our aggression as healthy, our anger as purifying, and our power to nurture and create, but also to limit and destroy when necessary” (144). With her Goddess, men can also play roles and learn to “experience and integrate the feminine side of their nature” instead of being war-mongers obsessed with conquest, desire, and ego (145). Also with her Goddess, much like Buddhism, we are to treat other living beings equally. Starhawk later affirms, “In the Craft, all people are already seen as manifest gods, and differences in color, race, and customs are welcomed as signs of the myriad beauty of the Goddess” (147)

This makes me wonder: Is the Craft one that has uses effective types of Listening Rhetoric? In “Truth or Dare,” she says the Goddess is not called that just because of gender, but as a “reminder that what we value is life brought into the world” (150). Also, in her roundtable discussion on backlash, she speaks of a world "where those who differ can listen and learn from each other instead of attempting to dominate one another" (178).

Witchcraft is clearly not passive because “if suffering occurs, it is not our task to reconcile ourselves to it, but to work for change” (147). And finally, they envision what they want clear obstacles for creation. Witchcraft also provides security as there is “nothing to be saved from, no struggle of life against the universe, no God outside the world to be feared and obeyed” (148). It is also empowering as there are 3 different types of power: power-over, power-from-within, and power-with (152).

Starhawk’s Goddess seems like a beautiful, spiritual type of philosophy that we should not necessarily drop everything and start practicing, but definitely appreciate. :)