Blog 6 Tenille Jensen

While reading Judith Butler’s piece on global violence and sexual politics, I came across a quote that really resonated with me. It stated, “the body implies morality, vulnerability, agency: the skin and flesh expose us to the gaze of others, but also to touch, and to violence; the body can be the agency and instrument of all these as well. Although we struggle for rights over our own bodes, the very bodies for which we struggle are never quite only our own.”

In that moment, I believed Judith Butler said something so profound that it made me stop and think, reread it, and think about the quote some more throughout the day. I had never thought about the body in this way before and by the time I got off of my shift today at work, I felt very sorry for society. It made me sad because it made me think back in relation to this weeks prompt surrounding anticipatory strategies, dominant groups, marginalization, and imagined communities. In her article she explains that the body is a social phenomenon within a public sphere. If that is correct, than our body is never truly autonomous. However we as a society are constantly holding on to this fear of loosing our autonomy, our self. In reality, what we are is a blank canvas that bears the imprint of our imagined community over time, constantly being shaped by our vulnerability as humans and our dependency on one another. We as humans have more similarities than differences despite our urge to resist through stereotypes, classifications, and hierarchies.

Throughout history we have migrated in packs, built imagined communities through states, empires, and civilizations because we were biologically woven to desire that connectedness. Butler goes on to further explains that through violence, we exploit the primary tie that makes us humans interconnected, which in turn creates an unnatural disconnect, throwing off the balance of society. I became sad for that very reason. We have a tool that allows us to teach, and learn, and grow but when used as a strategy to secure this imagined belief of autonomy, it can become our greatest enemy. I think of the movie, Who Killed Vincent Chin by Renee Tajima Pena, is a primary example because it depicts the very act of violence as a way of creating the ultimate disconnect and natural way of life. It describes a case of anticipatory strategies dominant groups use when threatened with marginalization and this fear of loosing autonomy.