Discussion notes 3/4
Questions:
The Pregnant Man/T he Octomom: Monstrous troubling names:
-Who are really the troublemakers?
-How does the heteronormative institution of motherhood cast judgment?
-Why are his sexual parts troubling to others?
-What is the media’s role in troubling these circumstances?
Is this gender trouble at its finest?
Nadya vs “Jon & Kate + 8” and the Duggers (18 kids):
-What is she troubling and they aren’t?
- Why are fertility and science in trouble?
Is Beatie a monster or was he made one?
Media portrays him as “the freak”
Homonormativity makes it unsurprising that some GLBT groups disapproved of the Beaties b/c they reinstate the notion of these couples a freakish
Is there more resistance to trans couples than same-sex? Who is trying to assimilate and how?
Beatie disrupting transnormative paradigm by straddling the gender line
Idea of spectacle: How gender trouble exposes “the real” as spectacle
Nancy breastfeeding, Salma Hayek: something weird about that but not in the same way
-When you breastfeed a child that isn’t yours, you aren’t giving that child the antibodies it needs; history of wetnursing and slavery
What does this really mean for the children? Hard to see that (Ocotmom) as the same as the pregnant man.
What is “good” troublemaking vs troublemaking for the spectacle? Is there a continuum of spectacle? As troublemakers/troubling names, does their very existence make them objects of trouble or are they subjects engaged in active troublemaking? Did they decide to make a spectacle?
Spectacle as grotesque/freak show, as carnivalesque (Bakhtin), as political? How do Beaties fit into these characteristics, when they put themselves out there as normal yet the spectacle is still there- exploitation?
Re Foster on lunch counter sit-ints: They weren’t trying to be spectacles but claiming their right to humanity, to be there. Is going on Oprah, being on the Advocate cover, a claiming of humanity that got taken up as spectacle?
What is, at that moment, the representation? Sit-in participants as deliberate counterspectacle to typical media portrayals of black bodies; ACT UP as response to dominant spectacle. How are Beaties harnessing that for their own benefit? Thus becomes an issue for groups who don’t want that controversy/ version of identity vs family seeking benefits. Recognizing the material conditions of spectacle in a strategic sense. It’s all a struggle for control of representation.
Does productive/effective troublemaking have to be connected to more thoughtful, deliberate, organized, populist goals- making it better for others and not just yourself? How do we define deliberate, purposeful?
Foucault “What is Enlightenment” and idea of im/maturity in Kant: How does im/maturity determine whether troublemaking is productive? Obedience and discipline and the possibility of resistance- is there more possibility of resistance in being immature, as opposed to the “managed freedom” of maturity? Individual vs collective social responses- is immaturity operating in the same way on an individual vs collective basis? Foucault’s axes of knowledge/power/ethics and the possibility that troublemaking points the way to an ethic that does not see maturity as the typical ethical position- is there another way to think about being responsible and accountable?