We've talked a lot about Borges with regards to the notion of his "Library of Babel", but the question raised in Generosity about there being a fixed number of possible plots made me think of another Borges story: "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote". This short story is actually less of a story than it is a theoretical thought experiment. Borges discusses the fictional personage Pierre Menard, a 20th century writer who sets out to write the novel Don Quixote.

 So the other day I received this email on my BMC account. I also got a notification from the Erdman email list-serve that I moderate to have it verified through that so I have NO idea how they got into the BMC email lists. I read it and tried to avoid twitching over the word choices and grammar/spelling mistakes, but thought it was interesting and it connects back to which story of evolution each person chooses to believe… enjoy!!!

THE CAUSE

 I was really fascinated by the debate between the Nobel laureate and Thomas Kurton from pages 149-152. The debate between science and the humanities is really interesting here, and it seems pretty obvious who's supposed to win. The writer is "the most painfully shy person who has ever been forced into a public spectacle," while Kurton is "charming," with "shoulders [that] bob like a boy on his first day of summer camp." The novelist's arguments are fatalistic, pessimistic, backward-looking, tragic, while Kurton's toothy explications on his theories are full of hope and the promise of progress. The audience to this debate seems totally taken in by Kurton, and at the end, Candace declares Kurton, "Optimism," to be the winner, "by a technical knockout."

Upon reflecting on the field of feminist science studies I began to think about the aim or goal of developing this new field. Would this field investigate and try to determine how much of who we are depends on social factors and how much on biological factors? Will it try to understand the complexities of the body and biology with a greater recognition to the social factors that affect scientific interpretation? Subramaniam and Barad are both asking for a new way to structure how we generate knowledge, how we learn and think which could potentially lead to changes in how we educate. In addition to changing the education system I began to wonder if/how the research from this field could be used politically?

 In Paul's class on Thursday, we discussed human emotion and the possibility of being happy in the context of challenging events or disorders (like MDD). Throughout the novel, Candace and Thassa both assert that happiness is attainable regardless of the hand you've been dealt. But can we all escape the clutches of negativity, and is negative affect a result of choices in cognition?

This week's class discussion on Barad was very interesting as it posed various tensions. One of her biggest criticism is that people shouldn’t rely on moral judgments. She discusses the role of agency and how authors write text while the text also writes the author which leads me to question the role of power and who maintains it. Her basis of critique of Frayn’s play demonstrates that you can’t know all of the time, and that relying on content sometimes leads to points of ethics which doesn’t always lead anywhere. You can’t necessarily judge actions or intentions objectively because there’s no objectivity which ties into her discussion of the past which she argues never ends.

I will admit that my post this week veers a little bit from what we looked at in class. However, I do feel that it is relevant to the course as a whole.

Some background info:
Today, I was sitting at my laptop in my room listening to my Pandora station. A friend came into the room wanting to talk so I switched my tabs, paused the song I was playing and then saw the name of the album that was currently playing. It was called "Women in Technology". My initial reaction was woah, this GIST course is taking over my life! And then (after freaking out at my geekiness) I decided to look more into why the album was named 'Women and Technology' and I thought it would be interesting to write about.