Postcolonialism!

Clearly you can view Things Fall Apart through a postcolonial lens. The cultural studies packet we received clearly states, "postcolonial literature and its theorists investigate what happens when two cultures clash and when one of them, with its accessory ideology empowers and deems itself superior to the other." This theory is clearly portrayed within the book when the white Christian missionaries come and thrust their religion upon anyone willing to be subservient. In joining their church the members of the tribe had to accept that all of the social constructs that they had believed in where no longer true and that the only acceptable god was the one that the white people worshiped. Suddenly the spirits and the gods these people were accustom too held no value in this new religion. In fact these "heathens" where so frowned upon that converts must cut their ragged hair as a physical metaphor of their letting go of old traditions. But how these oppressive settlers treated these tribal members did not really matter because "many Westerners subscribed to the colonialist ideology that all races other than white were inferior or subhuman. These subhumans or 'savages' quickly became inferior and equally 'evil' Others."
With the above in mind that is what I will write about within my paper. You can see this book through a postcolonial lens because of the oppression of Christianity upon the tribal citizens thus making them appear savages. But upon viewing this objectively you can see that the "savages" actions were just. They believed that what they were doing by killing messengers and burning down churches would please their gods and the spirits they believed in; to cleanse their land and restore order to their tribe. The white missionaries mindset may be to call the tribal people "subhuman" but this is only because they do not understand the narratives or discourses in which these tribes live because they were brought up differently with different beliefs, morals, and ethics. This is the point I will work to address in my essay.

Cut it out with the synonyms, let's talk singularity!

Technopoly and singularity; aren't they the same thing? If technology was a mother, these two words would her identical twins she's always mixing up and calling by the wrong names. We keep going over the same thing!

In all seriousness though, technopoly can be an elaboration of singuarlity. Singularity told us that one day we will be over run by technology and technopoly tells us that it is because human's can think and have judgements therefore become counterproductive. Postman said, "the culture seeks its authorisation in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology" and later goes on to say that technology will use us and we will become the tools that technology uses rather than vice versa. Which makes me think it is very ironic that in Brave New World they worship a person rather than a type of machine.

They worship the man that made the technology. Does this mean that one day when singularity is a reality we will worship Bill Gates? Will we worship Raymon Kurzweil? Or maybe even Benjamin Franklin for his electricity experiment with a kite in a storm that started it all?

It's extremely obviously that technopoly is up and running in Brave New World along with his running buddy singularity. It is obvious that, as Postman was portraying, there are no individual experiences, just technological ones.

Singularity: Help or Harm?

The concept of singularity is not a bad thing. Through medical advances, people who have lost a limb or need facial reconstruction have been able to live life normally once more through the help of prosthetics. Isn't this a form of singularity? Maybe I'm missing the concept here but in the article Grossman says, "Maybe we'll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical abilities." So if planes and cars are off branches of singularity, then the medical aspect must too be a form of it. Now in real life circumstances this form of technology helps whereas in the book it does not. People are born in test-tubes acting as machines once they are born and programed a certain way. If you ask me, singularity has already occured in the book. Sure not to the extent of everyone literally being robots with metal in their limbs and computer chips in their brains, but a form of it. Surely if something as simple as the alphabet can be technology then people can act in a technological way and therefore exist in singularity. And if this is the case then the transition to, "scan our consciousnesses into computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually" should not be that difficult in the book. Bernard's problem is that he has a concious. Everyone else is like a robot just programed with the emotions they should have and only THINK that they are experiencing these things. They are going through the motions and mimmicking emotion where they think it is, especially where pleasure is concerned. Whereas Bernard actually thinks of right versus wrong and moral standards before pleasure. But on the topic of singualirity, it is already alive and well in the society of the World State. Readers just might not realize it because they are thinking about iRobot and are expecting people to have robot arms like Will Smith. As far as real world application goes, singularity can only evolve for so long. Until there is some way for a human's soul to be transfered into a robot then singularity will never fully reach its peak. This is why there is Bernard. Bernard has a soul, he is not a robot.

Oh no Shakespeare! (Rhetorical Analysis)

For my rhetorical analysis I chose Habitus in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew by Abigail R. Marsch. In this article, Marsch is trying to explain Pierre Bourdieu's theory of habitus which is a way of understanding the dynamics of power relationships in social life. This applies to the play because some people believe that Katherine and Petruchio's marriage was one of equals. Some even believed that although in the play Katherine was treated very poorly Petruchio actually treated her as an equal and they had intelligent conversations much like some relationships today. Begging to differ, Marsch uses Bourdieu's theory saying that they couple would not be able to act one way in public and another way in private. She is appealing to our sense of reason stating

"private and public spheres have always informed one another and are inextricably linked together in the process of determining societal norms of behavior."

Marsch means that there is no way in that society Katherine and Petruchio would be able to portray two different sides to them, either the mean overbearing Petruchio of their social life would bleed into their personal life of the intelligent and witty Katherine of their personal life would bleed into their social life. And a wife that is not obedient to her husband in that day and age would be unheard of. So if Katherine is not seen as "tamed" Marsch says this would severely damaged the society that they live in. Therefore the mean and overbearing Petruchio enters the personal life on Katherine and himself, proving Marsch's point.
When I went online to Student Pulse and picked this article to write on, i had never actually read Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and saw fit to go and read it once i picked this article to have a better understanding on what the author was arguing about. And I found the author's point quite credible. There are definitely points in the play that suggest that Petruchio had to treat Katherine as an inferior to keep the persona of "taming" her. This eventually led to this happening in their personal life. An example of this is when Petruchio says

"Thus have I politicly begun my reign,
And ‘tis my hope to end successfully.
My falcon now is sharp and passing empty,
And till she stoop, she must not be full-gorg’d,
. . .
She eat no meat to-day, nor none shall eat;
Last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not;
As with the meat, some undeserved fault
I’ll find about the making of the bed,
And here I’ll fling the pillow, there the bolster,
This way the coverlet, another way the sheets.
. . .
This is a way to kill a wife with kindness,
And thus I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humor."

So basically he is saying that he will not feed her or let her sleep until he sees fit. This seems like the kind of persona he should only portray in public in he wants a secret marriage of equals. But this is in their personal life and he is being quite overbearing.
Aside from beautifully reaching her point in this article, Marsch also quotes other authors and writers that disagree with her. Saying that that Petruchio was just acting this way because he thought he had to to establish a type of authority but deep down he really wants to treat her nicely. But as Marsch quotes another writer saying, to prove these claims one must seek outside references and we are just analyzing Shakespeare here.

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My cat is cuter than Anne's (:

And Jessica's panda...