Blog 11 - April 11

“But bodies are at the core of the political order as markers of status and power. Contemporary societies tend to segregate not only access to political power but also work, religious life, domestic work, and intimate relationships according to the sex and race of the bodies they organize. Our social, economic, and political worlds are organized to reflect these habitual and legal patterns. The corridors of power are structured to accommodate the associated characteristics of male, heterosexual bodies of dominant racial and ethnic groups.” (Body Politics)

Citation:

"Body Politics." Oxford Handbooks Online. Ed. Georgina Waylen, Karen Cells, Johanna Kantola, and S. Laurel Weldon. Oxford Handbooks, 14 Apr. 2015. Web. 08 Apr. 2017.

The body is political.

The body tells a story, and that story is political.

Lawrence Joseph’s poem presents the body in a manner that (to me) reveals status, power (or lack thereof) and politics. Although Joseph is talking about an event/moment, the descriptions of the body in his piece add another layer.

“Joseph could only think/ of how his father,/ with his bad legs, used to hunch/ over the cutting board/ alone in light particled/ with sawdust behind”

This body is a ‘political marker’ – the words used are very precise and vivid. The father is hunched over a cutting board, a counter and has bad legs. This simple scene says so much about the potential status of this man, and therefore the power that he holds. The language associated with the body feels like someone old and tired…this is the body of a working man, this does not feel to be the body of a man in a position of power and higher status. Body Politics states that power is designed to support a certain dominant male, heterosexual body (associated with the dominant race/ethnic group) – based on the description of the body, this man feels outside of the realm of the politically dominant. It is amazing to me how much a simple image can reveal about a man and his status…

A place as the body

The place is a sort of body, and that body is political

In Joseph’s poem, Detroit and the background feel very much like a body being destroyed. Things are on fire, there is a sense of fear, abandonment, disbelief and the birth of something unknown. Just as the man bending over the cutting board is a political body, so is the location of this piece. Detroit is being consumed, being burned and there is no sense of the locale being saved, no sense of this body being revived, instead, it feels like this body, like that of the old man, is a symbol of status and power that is outside of the dominant group.

I read this poem in a very direct yet abstract way, but the underlying stories that I imagined from this piece were very interesting and reminded me of the quotation used from Body Politics…hopefully it makes sense.

  

Other Quotations of Note

“…of the old Market’s wooden walls/ turned to ash or how Joseph’s whole arm/ had been shaking as he stooped/ to pick up an onion,/ and you would have been afraid.”

“…that soon Joseph Joseph would stumble,/ his body paralyzed in an instant/ from neck to groin.”