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I have, admittedly, been putting this post off, because I'm not really sure what to say regarding the two very different lectures. Between the darkness in Goodheart during Butler's lecture that prevented me from being able to take readable notes, and my struggle to try understand and make sense of Barad's lecture, I'm left with a bunch of, well, entangled thoughts on gender, space, and time. I was apprehensive about Butler's lecture, because of the way her writing is, however, I found her lecture to be very accessible and easy to understand. I wish I could say the same for Barad. I'm still trying to process Barad's thoughts, and I'm re-reading my notes from her lecture, and the article. In the meantime, please enjoy some of my dis-jionted, entangled notes from Butler and Barad...

-diffraction

-the right to appear

-bodily enactment of gender norms

-trans/formation

-quantum leap (I love that show!)

-queer

-identity politics 

-quantum dis-continuity 

-matter

-gender not only received but enacted

-intra-action

The quotes I will put here are meant to be put in conversation with themselves and each other. Uncredited quotes are pieces from a final paper on T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, which is a set of four poems: Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding. I believe the Four Quartets respond directly to Barad's reading of time and the importance of the past in regards to not trying to return to the past.

I was one very happy woman during Karen Barad's visit to campus this week. As I said in my introduction, I've been talking w/ her (in my head) and thinking with her (in classes and publications) for 5 years now, so it was just a delight to have the time to share supper with her and other colleagues interested in science and justice, to welcome her afterwards to a class full of philosophy and gender studies students, with whom she explored what it might mean to "ma(r)k time," and then to have a "processing-it-all" drive back into the city together afterwards.

To prevent myself from lecturing you all @ length, I'm noting here what were for me the sweetest--because potentially most generative--moments in her talk:
* "we are part of that nature we seek to understand"
* "there are no fish-killers without fish"  (or: the intra-action of an organism
and its environment is a phenomenon that cannot be separated out)
* the "self" I am is the result of specific intra-actions
*  identity is undone @ the heart of matter itself (=the queerness of the quantum)
* setting ourselves to linear time causes great pain
* how is all this related to gender studies?

As alice.in.wonderland so wisely observes below, the "spectacle" that was Judy Butler's appearance here meant that all of those in the audience in Goodhart were "in the dark" = unable to take notes. Here's the residue of what I tried to write while being unable to see what I was recording. I was happiest during the Q&A, when the lights went up and Butler was responding so fully to each of the questions--really hearing them, I thought, and working hard to speak to what she was asked.

In SAT Wars,  Joseph A. Soares (a sociology professor at Wake Forest and author of The Power of Privilege, an in-depth look at the history of admissions at Yale University) writes that the nation would be a better place without the big, bad tests that have long dominated the admissions world: “Our world is not best served by a test-score social Darwinism in support of a collegiate caste system" (from The Rigors and Rewards of Going Test-Optional, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 4, 2011).

Since last night's lecture, my mind has been spinning with loosely connected threads of thoughts and a multitiude of questions.  Maybe the biggest question I have is: How does one even begin to react to a lecture that expansive and illuminating and confusing and engaging?  I really don't have an answer to that, so I'm just going to jump in here and possibly make a fool of myself.

One of the many things that kind of stood out to me as I read the assigned piece and then listened to the lecture was the poetry of Barad's language.  The rhythm of the way she broke words in half and the pace of the piece and the lecture were kind of breathtaking in a way, and they also made me feel as though I was rapidly excellerating through time, while just sitting still.  It was a strange way to be taking in physics, by way of feeling like I'd been invited into a poem.  later, as I chewed on all the things that had been discussed, and all the things that had been left out, I wondered what Anne and Professor Barad were getting at when they were trying to get us to relate the talk to gender.

I found Judith Butler’s lecture on Monday night very intriguing.  I was a bit apprehensive before the lecture because I expected her to deliver her speech in the same way she writes, which at times can be quite dense, but I think Butler did a very excellent job making her speech much more accessible.   In her speech Butler said that gender is assigned from birth when a stranger checks off a box labeling one as male or female, and that person is expected to reproduce the norms of that specific gender.  I am curious to find out how Butler feels about all woman’s colleges.  All woman’s colleges categorizes and excludes people as well as empower people.  I wonder if Butler finds all-woman’s colleges to be a more positive or negative thing.

Welcome to our first Diablog Poll. Please make your selection and after you do, write a post explaining your selection and write a response to someone else's in which you raise a question to further your and their thinking.  Enjoy!

"Letter to a John" - Ani DiFranco

In thinking about college activism in regard to Judith Butler’s lecture last night, I am struck by the thought of “appearing” on a college campus. While I would like to think that I’m having a typical college experience, the fact remains that I attend a women’s college and have little interaction with the male gender. Attending a domestic study away program last semester increased not only my academic knowledge but my social experiences as well, and I now call several of my male classmates from my time away from Bryn Mawr my closest friends.

Maintaining a friendship, as most of us know, takes a lot of work. So while most of my friends from my study-away experience do not go to Bryn Mawr or reside in the Philadelphia area, I regularly make efforts to remain in contact with them. Most recently I found myself braving a bizarre October snowstorm during a visit to Williams College in Williamstown, MA. While touring campus, I spotted a flier that would never, ever, not in a million years be seen on our campus. The flier reads as follows:

“Are you interested in men’s issues? Are you ‘man enough’ to talk about your feelings? Are you looking for different representations of masculinity? Then come meet, share your thoughts, and learn from other men who are interested in having conversations about the diverse experiences of male-identified people!”

I was very pleasantly surprised by Judith Butler’s lecture last night. Going into it I was very apprehensive, I knew that the lectures were supposed to reflect her more recent dedication to activism, a change I appreciate, but I was nervous that her style of writing (and by extension her style of speech) would alienate a large potential audience and limit the reach of her ideas. In general, I do not believe in a necessary separation between scholarly work and political ideology. I am in favor of scholars who ground their work in activism and/or the pragmatic rather than the simply theoretical. I was very encouraged that Butler was able to do this while maintaining a rigorous and sophisticated academic platform--while still being fairly comprehensible and accessible. The academic content of her lecture did not obscure her point but rather was critically important  as the thread that ties her diverse interests together. This emphasis separated it from other activist or political agendas that I have most often been exposed to.