(In Homage to Marissa) Think.

So I thought that the Red Group's "Anti-Crisis" presentation was interesting in class today. As a reminder, they considered anti-crisis to be an undercover siege meant to infiltrate a certain thing for purposes of the infiltrator, without the knowledge of the observed. They described it being a bad thing, for obvious reasons, but also a good thing in the case of a rare African tribe being researched, "romanticized", and advertised. Their question really hit me: Is this anti-crisis really a bad thing or are there good aspects to this philosophy of indirect, incognito operations? I thought that it was funny how our group specifically had a lot of interesting things to say about whether anti-crisis was a good or bad thing. Conor, specifically, really caught my attention when he mentioned what was good about anti-crisis. He pointed out that of the two evils, the fact that they were not immediately bombarding these people and were less intensely intruding them was a good thing. That idea never crossed my mind when I first heard about anti-crisis in the presentation. In response to that, though, I think that it kinda contradicts itself. Anti-crisis is bad because it intrudes on the life of whoever or whatever is being observed, but it is good because it does not immediately displace it but instead slowly creeps its way into the life of the observed? I don't think so. The fact that we need to find an excuse to intrude, whether directly or indirectly, should immediately imply that it is a bad thing. Though in Heidi's example the African women of rare descent were benefitting from their pictures being taken, they did not initially intend on this infiltration to be a silver lining to their slow, undisturbed lives. I just thought it was funny that, though we were looking for "good" things in anti-crisis, we just ended up pointing out even worse things about it.

I also thought that our discussion about subalterns during class today was very interesting. Subalterns are these people and things that we classify as under us--people or things to disregard because it is "natural" for us to assume that we are better than them, or it. In our case, we were talking about people. Whether in novels or in real life we are always seeing examples of subalterns. In class we assessed subalterns in The Calcutta Chromosome, but what about some real life examples? A subaltern is defined as: "lower in rank; subordinate". We may not realize it, but we are constantly surrounded by people who we look down on, and consider ourselves better than. From custodians to workers in the dining hall, to professors and maybe even fellow classmates, we always consider ourselves better than them--someone to disregard or ignore because they have no benefit to us. But when you really think of it, subalterns are not always subalterns. They are just lower-ranked in our perspective, whether that be because of our arrogance or because of social status. In reality though, subalterns are the reason why there is a backbone to our world--a foundation for the lives that we lead. Custodians clean up after us, kitchen workers feed us, and professors educate us. Our classmates even teach us things about ourselves sometimes! And not only do subalterns frame our real lives, but in novels, you never notice what a big role subalterns play in the plot and in the story. Those one-liners or characters in that one chapter are there for a reason--to enhance our reading experience and our perspective of the story.

I know that I mentioned kinda a lot to think about, but I really wanna know what you guys think. Though I know most of you responded in class, reiterate to me what you really think about anti-crisis--do you consider it a good or bad thing? Why? And tell me about subalterns. What other examples, whether fictional or not, can you name? Do they shape our worlds as much as I think they do?

Just some stuff to think about :)

Cara-Joy