Dispossession Part 1

Some of what Butler said reminded me of what Linda Alcoff was talking about at her lecture on "The Complicated Experience of Rape", specifically about how the self and our own experiences as a self are not autonomous of outside influences. This relates to ideas of relationality, not just in the ways we experience dependency upon or with other people, but how our very conceptions of our experiences and ourselves is dependent on the way we have been conditioned and constituted to conceptualize. Butler says, "Our interdependency establishes our vulnerability to social forms of deprivation" which to me means that our position in social settings has a powerful influence on not only our access to certain types of physical necessities, but also to our ability to access and engage in certain intellectual or social practices. This makes me think of the Lugones and Spelman reading when they were talking about how some Latina feminists are forced to engage in dialogue that isn't even in their native language because the ways to access feminist theory in a big way are through Western opportunities and by using English. In a political way, this reminds me of children who are indoctrinated by their parents and their surroundings (usually in a religious context) to hold certain values about society, but this sort of vulnerability leaves them deprived of an ability to conceptualizer outside of that kind of intellectual framework.