[-empyre-] On the familiar and The Latin American body and landscape

[AAR]

Christina has done such an fascinating job of how she’s grouped the presentations. I found it very interesting to watch Carolyn’s visuals, and think about Johanna’s Questions.  Of Carolyn’s work, I was most interested in the Female Report, because her stated interest in the “official,” vs the real so clearly illustrated the point Johanna made about challenging authority, but as women enter positions of power, it becomes ever more blurry to define ideas like authority, official positions, or what is familiar in gender terms.

I’m going to free-associate a bit to your presentations, to find a point that’s possibly less blurry and more consistent.

One thing I do know is how often women are at the activist forefront, as well as the first victims of authoritarian crackdowns. In environmental activism, this seems particularly notable. The leadership of women in that case is predicated, esp in indigenous cultures, on the relationship between rural productivity and child rearing- that is, the same women who grow & cook the food, feed the children, are the first to be impacted by ecosystem fragmentation and despoilage.

So what exactly might be the relationship between challenging the familiar, or the official in that rural context?? If no one gives warning, how can you challenge the status quo until it’s too late? If we do consider the rural experience, the familiar would be how clean water is taken for granted in the ecosystem- for example that water will always be potable, rather than contaminated by industry (which point source may be far upstream of impact). It is easier to see in an urban setting. Most recently, in the USA, in Flint MI, we have seen how water can become a serious urban issue. In that urban setting, it was the women who noticed first because they couldn’t bathe their children. But is that in fact a consistent pattern that we might call Feminist observation leading to data? And if so, what do we identify as the “data,” the alarm?

So the question is how do you become visionary about  Feminist observations of the danger in the familiar, or the official, if the familiar itself is presumed, unconscious? If the official is internalized, where is the point of egress to externalize perception that may have only subtle signals? Does Johanna’s class exercise take us closer to that clairvoyance?

To come back to how data is visualized, and how to challenge the powers that be, I feel I need further clarification from both of you, about the specifics of where you would locate either official or familiar perception in the two examples I referenced about ecosystem degradation- rural or urban water supplies, or any other example of your choosing, and in fact, where to test the limits of perception. In the case of the environment, is the location indeed with from caretaking women? Is that essentialist, but perhaps true anyway? And in other situations, how would you, could you link the familiar behavior or routines particular to women, to challenge to official (but perhaps illegitimate) power beyond what we already know (ie., rape culture)?



“What the world needs is a good housekeeper.”
Aviva Rahmani, PhD
Affiliate INSTAAR, University of CO. at Boulder
https://www.nyfa.org/ArtistDirectory/ShowProject/1446ef3a-0a9d-4449-96be-74023eb9c376
Watch “Blued Trees”:  https://vimeo.com/135290635
www.ghostnets.com
www.gulftogulf.org





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