Chapters 8-11

Right at the beginning of the last class that we had, I described a scenario where someone would be incapable of imagining. This scenario involved an individual who has never travelled and has never met anyone like himself or herself. By saying “like themselves” I am attempting to cover many things such as being transgendered, or homosexual. Through this hypothetical scenario I was aiming to assess how this individual becomes courageous enough to be themselves. I feel as if page 109 of dispossession indirectly answered the question of how individuals can arrive at this courageous state. Judith Butler states “the ethical question of how best to open, or even how to remain open, is at once a question of resistance and survival”. She precedes this quote with the example of prisoners who, despite their current situation, must believe in something other than their condition in order to survive. Of course, the example of prisoners and my initial vary in the sense that prisoners knew freedom before and the individual described in my scenario did not. However, I am propelled to think that hope would manifest even when freedom has not been experienced before.

            The idea of “I” being social from the start also stood out to me. It expands on our ideas of interdependence that we spoke about in class. On page 116, Judith Butler explains that in order for our problems to be political, or social then we know that these issues cannot exist without “him or her, or even ‘we’”.  Independence, then, is not something that we must find and search for, but a feature that we share by nature.

            Another part of the reading that really stuck out to me was when Judith butler delved into what it means to “count”. Of course, when most of us think of the word “count” we think of mathematics, but it also means to matter and society has found ways to dictate who matters and who does not matter. This made me reflect on the 3/5ths compromise, which basically demonstrated this idea that some people count more than others.

            Furthermore, I enjoyed reading page 111 that discusses the idea of people recognizing systematic racism but also on the level of the individual.  For some reason this reminded me of the readings on the epistemologies of ignorance and the discussions we had on that topic. I remember that someone’s blog post described that ignorance is down to the individual. However,  I think it is important to recognize both the systematic level and the individual level as Dispossession does because both levels influence eachother.