Weaving of Arachne

  I took my kids to Disney world for the first time in February. I don’t like amusement parks in general. I’m a tea-and-used-bookstore kind of woman; rollercoasters are loud and lack the smell of binding glue. How did we get to Disney if I dislike amusement parks so much? Well, when my children had been sent home from school in April of 2020 and we had to tell them that scouts, sports, and leaving the house were on hold for a while, within their tears was a question about an upcoming birthday party. When I told them that was canceled too, my three boys seized that moment. It was a real low. But my kids, always trying to get the upper hand asked, “When this is over, will you take us to Disney?” Sigh. Of course I would. Photo by  Nathan Langer  on  Unsplash ; Spaceship Earth takes you into the Epcot Ball, where you travel to space and inaccurate history That is how I found myself riding some of the most infuriating rides. I’m not talking about Space Mountain- that was problematic for its

  Postmemory : Marianne Hirsch: “Postmemory” describes the relationship that the “generation after” bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before — to experiences they “remember” only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up. But these experiences were transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right. As I see it, the connection to the past that I define as postmemory is mediated not by recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation. To grow up with overwhelming inherited memories, to be dominated by narratives that preceded one´s birth or one´s consciousness, is to risk having one´s own life stories displaced, even evacuated, by our ancestors. It is to be shaped, however indirectly, by traumatic fragments of events that still defy narrative reconstruction and exceed comprehension. These events happened in the past, but their effects continue i

 Despite menstruation’s centrality, even our language fails to represent it adequately, as linguist Suzette Haden Elgin knows. When she invented a woman’s language in 1984, Láadan, she included words that capture women’s diverse experiences of embodiment: to menstruate, to be pregnant, to menopause. For example, “husháana” means to menstruate painfully; “desháana,” to menstruate early; “weshana,” to menstruate late; and—my favorite—“ásháana,” to menstruate joyfully. In Láadan, a woman can “azháadin”—menopause uneventfully. 3 Láadan constructs an alternate reality that challenges the dominant cultural narrative. But feminists such as Elgin are relatively rare; indeed, feminist scrutiny of the politics of menstruation pales in comparison to feminist engagements with other aspects of women’s lives. Source: New blood: Third-Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation By Chris Bobel.  Inter alia: among other things. "the study includes, inter alia, computers, aircraft, and pharmaceu

Politics of Respectability: Rooted in critical race theory, the politics of respectability was introduced by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham to characterize Progressive-era norms of self-regulation and self-representation directed simultaneously at other black people and whites, who required “justification” that blacks were worthy of their respect (1994, 196). More broadly, it refers to efforts to hold marginalized people to hegemonic standards of so-called propriety. Michelle Smith (2014) writes, “On the one hand, like all democratic politics, respectability politics seeks to realize collective aspirations whether grand (justice, equality, full participation) or pedestrian (balanced budget, community policing, bike paths). On the other, respectability politics evince a distinct worldview: marginalized classes will receive their share of political influence and social standing not because democratic values and law require it but because they demonstrate their compatibility with the ‘mainstr