{"id":86,"date":"2005-10-02T22:37:03","date_gmt":"2005-10-03T02:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/2005\/10\/02\/400-words-of-nothing\/"},"modified":"2005-10-03T18:33:10","modified_gmt":"2005-10-03T22:33:10","slug":"400-words-of-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/2005\/10\/02\/400-words-of-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"400 words of nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been waiting for some time to post, as I did not want the first response to The Female Man<\/u> to be the voice of a male, but as I have another paper to write, here I go!<\/font><\/p>\n

I am having a difficult time providing a coherent critical response for a couple of reasons.  First, this is hardly a subtle piece that warrants a nuanced reaction.  Rather, it is the pummeling of a blunt instrument over the collective heads of a patriarchal society.  What could I (a bumbling bag of testosterone) possibly have to add, critique or question?  It seems to me that this text is structured so as to make my voice irrelevant (and I assume that is the point).  My ethos has been stripped and I shall gladly defer any further conversation to the voices this novel purports to represent.  (I am not sure who this is, as the question of gender was so thoroughly troubled by the characters that populated Manland and Whileaway that it moves beyond the simple label of “woman” let alone “feminist.”) <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font><\/font>Unfortunately, as I have little to add to the discussion of the text, I had hoped to address Harraway’s seminal text, “A Cyborg Manifesto.”  However, once again, I have hit a wall.  Her text is so dense and meandering that I really don’t know where to begin.  I have yet to engage in a conversation or sit through a conference presentation that did not essentialize her text in one way or another.<\/font>  <\/font>In fact, her neo-Marxist critique (the central thrust of the entire essay) always seems to be overshadowed by discussions of baboon hearts and breast implants.
<\/font><\/font> 
<\/font><\/font>So, rather than attempting to engage two impenetrable texts with a 300-word response, I will attempt to spark a discussion with reflexive moment.  It seems to me that what we have here is the nominalistic representation that I was blathering on about while we were discussing Whitehead’s text.  It troubles me that, when I am presented with it, I have very little to say.  Is it that I rely so heavily on essentialist representations that these texts have left me befuddled?  Is the reason that the first response to a text that we have had two weeks to read is being posted the night before the final day is that we all are encountering a similar problem?  These two texts address a central problem in our society, a problem that I care quite a bit about, and yet I have written 400-words of incoherent, inconsequential ramblings. 
<\/font><\/font> 
<\/font>Is it good that I am speechless?  Or more to the point, does this void provide space for an otherwise marginalized (yet, not essentialized) group so that they may have a voice?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been waiting for some time to post, as I did not want the first response to The Female Man to be the voice of a male, but as I have another paper to write, here I go! I am having a difficult time providing a coherent critical response for a couple of reasons.  … Continue reading 400 words of nothing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}