(no subject)
I don't know why I'm an Anthro major. This is what I'm typing because I'm so angry about writing this paper right now (which was due on Friday). Academia sucks the life out of everything and turns it into paper and type and large words that don't really have much to do with life.
I would be lying if I were to say that it does not disturb me that we can talk about what America is or isn’t or what being Arab American is or isn’t, or how that community (what is community? Should they really use that word? Are they real, or imaginary?) is negotiating its survival by not being authentic (“authenticity” is something “communities” use to negotiate who belongs, or how one ought to act - its really a load of bunk that they apply to each other and shows their own incoherence as a group. It has no value but in its imaginary ability to create what the community “ought” to be). It disturbs me that we can talk about “identity” as something purely made-up and materialized, only based in otherness and assimilation (identity being a thing that Americanizing non-Americans acquire when they put a hyphen after their culture and stick American after it). It disturbs me to discuss how a group of people go from having a culture to becoming non-threatening people with “heritage” as if America is so lofty, so above it all, that it can have no culture, and is instead made up of “heritages.” As if Americans are the only ones not stuck in time. As if they have “heritage” rather than culture and boo-hoo it’s so sad, and damn it you non-Americans about to hyphenate your ethnicity, don’t do it, because you ought to stay the same and oh-so-very different, because you assimilating is bad, because then we can’t teach our children what real culture is, because really, it’s stuck in time. It’s somewhere else. It certainly doesn’t happen in America, where things change and are more complex than that “culture” thing and where things like oppression and belief in crazy things like God and how people ought to act properly doesn’t exist (really…it doesn’t…we can do whatever we want…it’s a free country). And to do it all without a drop of emotion? Without a sense of absolute heartbreak that children born in America don’t necessarily speak the same language as their parents-not literally, but culturally? That disturbs me.
I would be lying if I were to say that it does not disturb me that we can talk about what America is or isn’t or what being Arab American is or isn’t, or how that community (what is community? Should they really use that word? Are they real, or imaginary?) is negotiating its survival by not being authentic (“authenticity” is something “communities” use to negotiate who belongs, or how one ought to act - its really a load of bunk that they apply to each other and shows their own incoherence as a group. It has no value but in its imaginary ability to create what the community “ought” to be). It disturbs me that we can talk about “identity” as something purely made-up and materialized, only based in otherness and assimilation (identity being a thing that Americanizing non-Americans acquire when they put a hyphen after their culture and stick American after it). It disturbs me to discuss how a group of people go from having a culture to becoming non-threatening people with “heritage” as if America is so lofty, so above it all, that it can have no culture, and is instead made up of “heritages.” As if Americans are the only ones not stuck in time. As if they have “heritage” rather than culture and boo-hoo it’s so sad, and damn it you non-Americans about to hyphenate your ethnicity, don’t do it, because you ought to stay the same and oh-so-very different, because you assimilating is bad, because then we can’t teach our children what real culture is, because really, it’s stuck in time. It’s somewhere else. It certainly doesn’t happen in America, where things change and are more complex than that “culture” thing and where things like oppression and belief in crazy things like God and how people ought to act properly doesn’t exist (really…it doesn’t…we can do whatever we want…it’s a free country). And to do it all without a drop of emotion? Without a sense of absolute heartbreak that children born in America don’t necessarily speak the same language as their parents-not literally, but culturally? That disturbs me.