Week 8 Breakout Activity
Step 1
Locate words, phrases, language, etc. in the following paragraph that you do not know the meaning to or of; locate their definition online using this link to the OED from Emory’s Woodruff Library, or from another reputable source online, and hyperlink ([Command + K] or right-click and select the chain button) the word or phrase to its explainer. (For instance, if you do not know what “symbolic paradigms” means, try to find a source that does and link it within the paragraph.)
Step 2
Locate what you think the “main point” of the paragraph is and bold the relevant sentence(s). Locate what you think is analysis, evidence, or examples supporting that main claim and underline/italicize it. Locate parts you don’t understand, or do find compelling, and highlight them.
Step 3
Rewrite the paragraph in your own words underneath the paragraph rewrite section. The text is difficult, and paraphrasing will be difficult. Focus on trying to “reword” what Spillers is saying rather than trying to figure out what she “means” (we’ll work on that together in the discussion section).
Step 4
Add any additional images online, materials, hyperlinks, embedded videos, sound-clips, evidence, etc. that might help explain some of the paragraph. Think of this part as creating a digital collage.
“Under these conditions, we lose at least gender difference in the outcome, and the female body and the male body become a territory of cultural and political maneuver, not at all gender-related, gender-specific. But this body, at least from the point of view of the captive community, focuses a private and particular space, at which point of convergence biological, sexual, social, cultural, linguistic, ritualistic, and psychological fortunes join. This profound intimacy of interlocking detail is disrupted, however, by externally imposed meanings and uses: 1) the captive body becomes the source of an irresistible, destructive sensuality; 2) at the same time — in stunning contradiction — the captive body reduces to a thing, becoming being for the captor; 3) in this absence from a subject position, the captured sexualities provide a physical and biological expression of ‘otherness’; 4) as a category of ‘otherness,’ the captive body translates into a potential for pornotroping and embodies sheer physical powerlessness that slides into a more general ‘powerlessness,’ resonating through various centers of human and social meaning. But I would make a distinction in this case between ‘body’ and ‘flesh’ and impose that distinction as the central one between captive and liberated subject-positions. In that sense, before the ‘body’ there is the ‘flesh,’ that zero degree of social conceptualization that does not escape concealment under the brush of discourse, or the reflexes of iconography. Even though the European hegemonies stole bodies- some of them female – out of West African communities in concert with the African ‘middleman,’ we regard this human and social irreparability as high crimes against the flesh, as the person of African females and African males registered the wounding. If we think of the “flesh” as a primary narrative, then we mean its seared, divided, ripped-apartness, riveted to the ship’s hole, fallen, or ‘escaped’ overboard.” (Spillers 67).
Paragraph Rewrite
When you enslave a race, you eliminate their inherited human rights and transfer them into certain commodity and this happens to an extent where even their gender is not existent. As a result of the slaves being transferred as a commodity, they also get sexualized in way that makes them act as objects for the captors’ benefits. There is a difference between slaves and liberated people such as “body” and “flesh.” Before someone is enslaved, they are considered have “flesh” in their body; initially making you more valuable. After someone gets enslaved, they only have a “body,” and therefore lose value and are permanently objectified.