#critical reading

[troythecatfish]

[edenfenixblogs]

Goyim non Muslim/Arab/Palestinians who are trying to help with the situation have to understand this:

Reading one book. Reading 3 news articles. Reading even three scholarly articles. Watching the news every day. Even doing ALL OF THESE THINGS EVERY DAY since 10/7—this is nothing more than a drop in the bucket of the work you need to be doing to contribute to conversations about this conflict, let alone leading any kind of charge.

I have been intimately aware of the conflict and it’s intricacies since I was seven years old. I have been learning and unlearning things my whole life. I am Jewish and pro-Palestine and have spent my adult life learning about Palestinian needs as well as combatting pervasive propaganda from extremists on BOTH SIDES meant to confuse newcomers to the situation like most of you are.

It is, honestly, entitlement that makes you think you can’t waltz into a complex situation involving a 2,000+ year old conflict, multiple identities of non-western origin, multiple cycles of extremism and expulsion and ethnic cleansing and wars from all sides—and take the lead on any of this. You can’t. You don’t know enough. You don’t even know enough to know what you don’t know or how to tell if what you know is wrong.

That doesn’t mean you aren’t necessary for helping to solve this conflict. It means a lot of people are being more vocal than they have any right to be about a situation they know almost nothing about. And they’re doing it so they can feel morally righteous and on the right side and like they’re helping.

But if you actually want to help rather than just looking or feeling like you’re helping, then you need to listen to affected groups when they are speaking. You need to not declare either side right or wrong. You need to learn the difference between terrorism and activism. You need to understand the impact of your words on Muslim, Palestinian, Arab, Jewish, Israeli, and even south Asian communities who are constantly roped into the conflict by racists who just hate all brown people.

You need to learn about the foundations and warning signs of antisemitism. You need to learn about the same about Islamophobia. You need to be open to being wrong. A LOT. Because you will be. Because this conflict is complicated and even those of us who have been in it forever learn things and have to revise our opinions and stances. You need to not assume you are correct about anything and you should have reliable sources for anything you add to this conversation.

You outnumber ALL OF US. You outnumber everyone who is actually affected by the conflict by A SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT. And your job should be to focus your efforts on FINDING A PATH TO PEACE. Move the conversation away from the personally fulfilling but globally damaging good guys v bad guys narrative. Move it towards a mutually beneficial peace agreement that keeps both Jews and Palestinians safe and protected and equal in their shared homeland.

This is not a Western European-American Christo-centric conflict. Stop applying your principles to it. Start considering that marching, calling senators, and calling for more or less bombs to happen to the “right” people isn’t helping. It’s not helping. You’re not helping.

What will help is listening to people who are actively working to achieve peace. Listening to concerns about ongoing attacks against Israeli civilians during ceasefire. Listening to ongoing segregation of Palestinians and depravation of essential resources from Palestinian Territories. Learn about the official political history of the international community with Israel and Palestine and what the motivations of EACH NON-I/P COUNTRY might have been over the course of Palestine’s 2000yo history. Learn how that might still influence modern western nations today. Learn about Jewish diaspora. Read about counterterrorism and propose or spread awareness of methods and means that can both protect Israeli and Palestinian civilians and defang or eliminate antisemitic or Islamophobic extremists and terrorists. Look for organizations devoted to SHARED PROSPERITY FOR PALESTINIANS AND ISRAELIS.

Furthermore, anyone who tells you that the conflict is simple or repeating a phrase over and over is simple or tells you there is an obvious good answer is at best uninformed but is most likely operating in bad faith. Their “simple” answer isn’t something every world leader ever has magically overlooked. It is one of the routine, recurring “solutions” that depend upon the disenfranchisement, death, or displacement of an affected population that they deem unworthy of consideration.

Israelis aren’t going anywhere. Palestinians aren’t going anywhere. Both populations deserve safety. Both populations’ religions and cultures deserve equality and, yes, explicit constitutional guarantees that they will have their religious and cultural practices respected and protected from violence or suppression. That may not fit with your modern secular ideas that having any guarantees for any religion in a constitution is inherently evil.

But we are dealing with two groups who have been brutalized to near extinction on the grounds of their religion and culture for millennia so consider that asking for guaranteed safety in writing is a pretty reasonable thing to want for everyone, actually.

[nightlyteaandpaper]

Please stop calling them Morally Grey, they are just dickheads

No one from the Night Court is morally grey. Their actions are horrible, the narrative justifies them.

Feyre destroys The Spring Court, leading to the destruction of the Summer Court, and the only two people who say something against this are the HLs of those courts, but even then, they don't put up much of a fight. Tarquin, after being disrespected in his home, goes to the HL's Meeting and says "Well, the Night Court were the only people who came to help," as if the High Court wasn't the reason his people were attacked. The narrative does not allow Tamlin any breathing room to make his point, right or wrong, instead, the rest of the people on page opening disregard his opinions (which is insane to me because they were his friends longer than Feyre had been alive, and they just take what Feyre says at face value.) Instead, no one speaks when Rhysand magically violates Tamlin's autonomy and shuts him up. No one spoke when Feyre and Azreal were whooping people's asses, despite the NC saying they wouldn't do it before the meeting, and the literal HL of Dawn putting wards on the room for no magic use (which, again, how were they able to use magic to attack people).

Feyre scrambled the minds and implanted thoughts in the heads of the guards in the Spring Court to destroy it and she never looked back on it for more than three seconds and went "huh, that was weird. It wasn't smart to do that because the wall is literally pressed against the Spring Court's ass..." No, everyone pats her on the back for her work. Lucien brings up briefly his discomfort being used as a pawn in Feyre's game and that she single-handedly destroyed his friendship with Tamlin, that older than Feyre had been alive, and the narrative doesn't even have her linger on that thought for more than one second. The narrative is quick to call out people who treat Feyre and the rest of the IC poorly, but never calls out them treating everyone else poorly. The narrative justifies the pimping of Feyre and her physical abuse by Rhysand (twisting her arm to make her agree to the bargain) as a necessary evil but does not extend the same grace to Tamlin, who did what he did as a necessary evil.

Trauma is understood when the person traumatized is the Night Court but never with anyone else. They constantly go back to dogpile on Tamlin, and the narrative doesn't have a single person stop and say, "Yeah, we should leave him alone." In fact, during FAS, after Rhysand tears into Tamlin, he goes back to Feyre, and she says, "You are always a bigger man" I refuse to say male. This is after Feyre writes to him and says, "Thank you for your help, I hope you find happiness too" and it is known that this man is so depressed that he is in his beast form. He does not have a kingdom anymore. Also, no one told Rhys to go to the Spring Court and harass him. One could say that the things the IC did could be from the perspective of Feyre and thus justified, but when we move to Nesta and Cassian's perspective again, nothing is challenged.

Nesta says that the only reason she hates Rhysand is because he is smug, not because of how he treats her. Nesta was threatened because she, albeit not in the kindest way, told Feyre that she was going to die in childbirth, and while Feyre said it wasn't right, there is nothing longer than a paragraph about the whole situation. It was just over as soon as it started. Nesta gets locked in the house for God knows how long (which, again, doesn't make sense because if she could get down the steps, get tired, and come back up, she should be able to make it all the way down the steps. Walking down the steps isn't what tries people out, it the coming back up because you are going against gravity) and no one thinks, "Hmm, that is exactly what Tamlin did to Feyre." They both locked someone in under the guise of protection. Cassian sees how the IC is treating Nesta, and while he tries to say something, he is always shut down.

And I will close on this. In an interview a few years ago, SJM said that Rhysand was a gift to her and that he could basically do no wrong. She also mentioned that the reason why Nesta was mad at Feyre and Rhysand was because she was jealous of their perfect life. This, my friends, is not how you write a story. This is an example of Authorial Fiat. You may say, "it's just a fantasy story" and I will say "Shut up, we know. I don't know how told tell you this, but: stories have to make sense."

[controversialhpmemes]

being a hater in this fandom used to be fun i swear !! like, i was never a massive ron fan. when i read the books as a kid he reminded me too much of a boy i knew who i didn’t like. he just annoyed me, which is how it goes with books sometimes. that said, any analysis of hp as a narrative clearly shows that ron was the PERFECT friend for harry, an extremely realistic kid, a great demonstration of choosing loyalty even when we have doubts and insecurities, as well offering the average and well-meaning magical perspective, biases intact. you used to be able to be a hater while fully acknowledging this. now it’s like “um actually ron befriended harry for the money and ron and hermione’s relationship is abusive (she should have been with draco)” and it’s so annoying. remus and tonks were very well written, and through their relationship we get to see a lot of their strongest traits (remus’ cowardice and self-hatred for his condition, tonks’ spunk and resolve), as well as drawing a parallel of an orphan who grows up so loved. all of this understood, i didn’t love it. but not because fucking.. tonks morphs into sirius in bed (?????) and remus is a repressed tragic homosexual who would never touch a gross dirty w*man. like what on earth. where do y’all get this shit. it takes all of the fun out of being a bit of a hater because these people truly believe this stuff and cannot appreciate narrative value or cohesion when it gets in the way of their made up story. like girl no. stop. i thought we were just playing but you were fr..

Long ago you could tease characters, ships, tropes with nuance. Today it is black and white. Either it is evil or it is good. No middle ground. Your opinions = your morality.

I blame falling reading comprehension skills and illiteracy.

[readychilledwine]

here without you was so good until the end. you ruined it there.

*sigh* I've been waiting for this day and knew it was coming. As calmly as kindly as possible.

1) I can't ruin my brainchild. I wrote the fic. It ends EXACTLY how I, the author, wanted it to.

2) Instead of wasting your time and energy to comment or get on my page to send me an anon for a story you didn't like, scroll. Because this isn't constructive feedback, so as someone looking to improve my content, you've put me at a standstill.

3) if you're going to leave negative feedback, make it constructive and say it with your chest off anon so I can look at your blog and decide if I want to take advice based off your work. Or, message me exactly what you didn't like, so I, as the author, can explain my thought process to you, and you can help me better communicate that next time.

4) ✨️An explanation of the end of Here Without You✨️

If you haven't read my new angsty cheating Az x reader fic, here's a link. If you have and are upset over the ending, please read this, and then, if you still feel the need to comment, we can go from there.

I thought I had made it clear in the end that Azriel and reader are not back together, but working on their relationship so they can be a team co-parenting wise. I have reader explicitly saying that:

"This doesn't mean we're back together. It means we need to coparent for him while we work on things."

That statement is very cut and dry. No where it in does she say, "I forgive you," it in reality, and between the lines, says, "I appreciate your apology, but this is where my boundary is at right now, coparenting while we try to move forward."

Coparenting is a HARD relationship that requires sacrifice, communication, and as little animosity as possible. The ending also blantly says this:

You knew it would take time, that you two had many things to discuss first. This was a needed good start, though.

It is the beginning of them working on their relationship. A relationship is not strictly defined as a couple or marriage. I have a relationship with my parents, my child, my moots, and all of you. Her and Azriel's relationship at the end is coparents. That's it. And you cannot coparent well with someone you have issues with. Reader is being selfless for her child here.

I have had one person message me with their constructive feedback. Her issue was the bond being reopened, and as I explained in a comment, we know from SJM a rejected bond can drive both parties to madness. We have no clue what happens to fae from severed bonds, though. I have the reader opening it at the end because she is already showing signs of advanced PPD. She's opening it for the relief it brings. The last thing she as a single mom working on a coparenting plan needed was her, or Azriel, completely losing themselves or their minds.

I did not feel the need to explicitly explain that because when you're reading fanfiction, there is an assumption that you have literally context from the works it is based on, so me reminding you rejected bonds can cause madness shouldn't need to happen since it is a largely discussed topic in the books and the fandom. I also did not want any of you to feel I had dumbed down the context and hand fed it to you like you were incapable of understanding on your own.

I am sorry some of you did not like the ending, but I, as the author, stand by it. I feel I made it clear what was happening.

Tldr- azriel and reader are not romantically involved at the end. They are strictly coparents.

[belle-keys]

it's like, yes, i do read a lot of books that are inherently about social and political issues. books that respond to the questions that identity politics raise. didactic books that make a point about #diversity and #representation. this is important. but i don't want that to be mistaken for the idea that "all books have to be moral or didactic". i believe novels are primarily meant to, as ottessa moshfegh puts it, "expand consciousness" and teach us as individuals about the best and worst of ourselves. critical readings of novels will of course consider the social and political context and ramifications of a work and its ultimate reception by readers. but to limit a work to only its potential real life implications is in itself a sign of a lack of media literacy. it's not some "superior critical reading skills" bro. some novels are simply meant to reveal, not to teach or to respond, and that's not in the least a critical shortcoming.

[ariainstars]

The Genius of Georgette Heyer

Georgette Heyer, an Englishwoman who lived from 1902 to 1974, is one of my favourite novelists, and I often reread her books or at least some parts of her books just to retire into an agreeable world. She wrote historical novels and thrillers, but I must admit I don’t like these very much. To me, Heyer’s genius was giving a breath of fresh air to the overworn genre of romance novels set in the English Regency era. (Although some of these Heyer novels like These Old Shades or The Convenient Marriage are set during High Rococo.)

In my opinion Heyer is highly underrated, standing in the shade of the more known Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters, books women most relate to when they want to read historical romance novels; Barbara Cartland is also more known, an author whose works are too saccharine for my taste.

Austen’s or the Brontë sister’s novels are not actually romances although they are often described as such; they are accurate portrayals of the society the authors lived in, romantic attachments playing a major role of course, but the focus is on the importance of family and society framing them and influencing them, for good or for bad.

I always found myself drawn to Heyer’s stories, long before I fell in love for the first time myself; the average romance novels get on my nerves. Now, and after having experienced love more than once, I can say that I wholly share Heyer’s approach that no matter how much in love you are has no influence on whether you and the object of your interest fit together.

The common trope in romances is “love conquers all”, which I personally dislike because it strips the protagonists of having their own mind and their own agenda. “Love” makes the choice for them; they don’t consciously choose to be with this person or other. Alternatively, the protagonists are “meant for each other” but “star-crossed”, i.e. circumstances or their own folly (or both) prevent them from being together, in which case the novel is framed as a tragedy and we are expected to cry buckets over it.

This is fortunately not the case in Heyer’s romance novels. Like Cartland, she writes of an England that was long gone before she was born, of course in a romanticized way. A lot of her stories mirror how the do’s and don’ts of those times, in particular in the upper class, influenced their lives and made it very difficult to navigate society.

Georgette Heyer’s genius is her capacity to imbue old tropes with new elements, and most importantly, to detach herself from the adage “love is all you need”. Without being sarcastic, she is at her best (in my opinion) when she weaves stories about people who realize that being in “love” is not that important at all. Her romances do end well, yet not due to the influence of a higher power but because the couples involved had the chance to realize who is the right partner for them to spend the rest of their lives with. Her heroines are usually headstrong, independent and reasonable; they may act on a whim or following their heart, but it is when they listen to reason - or are pushed to do so - that they finally get their happy ending.

Warning: spoilers ahead.

The Cinderella Trope

Arabella, and also Friday’s Child and The Convenient Marriage deal with the subject of a poor, or at least modest-living, female from a good family being launched into London’s high society by a strike of good fortune. In the latter two novels, this includes for them the chance to buy a heap of beautiful new clothes, strongly reminding of the Cinderella trope.

But Heyer would not be who she is if the novels would not be original in their own way: Arabella, far from being a modest, kind girl, pretends to be a rich heiress in order to “show his place” to a man who believed she wanted to ensnare him due to his wealth; Hero from Friday’s Child and Horatia from The Convenient Marriage both do not end but begin the story through marriage, and the plot unfolds as they slowly realize (and their respective spouses, too) that they have married the right person after all.

Finding Love in an Unexpected Place

In The Convenient Marriage, the Earl of Rule is ready to marry a certain girl to make a match, arranged years earlier, with a poor but very aristocratic family; it is on meeting her younger sister that he realizes “he does want to ally himself with the family”, to put it in his words.

In The Quiet Gentleman, as he has to deal with conspiracies and attempted murder, the protagonist Gervase Frant learns to put his trust in a female he first found dull, and who is not aristocratic the way he is.

In Sylvester or The Wicked Uncle, the Duke of Salford is at first disappointed by Phoebe, the girl his mother and her friend had chosen for him, and she doesn’t like him any better; they have to live through a number of adventures, together with friends and family, until they realize that they fit together perfectly.

In Sprig Muslin, Sir Gareth Ludlow overcomes his grief over his lost fiancé due to being responsible for Amanda, a girl of similar temper, and getting the chance to compare her to Lady Hester, a shy, unremarkable woman whom he liked but did not appreciate enough before. A beloved theme of Heyer’s romances is brought up here, too: having the same sense of humour shows to be indicative for two people fitting together.

In Charity Girl, notorious bachelor Viscount Desford gets involved both with a very beautiful girl named Lucasta and another, quite helpless damsel named Cherry, but none of them turn out to be right; instead, he finally realizes that Henrietta, an old friend of his, whom he had not wanted to marry years earlier, is the right mate for him after all.

In Faro’s Daughter, Mr Ravenscar gets interested in Deborah, a girl who works in a gaming house, which makes her free game to all men who visit it although she is a decent girl and only wants to earn a living for herself and the aunt who owns to place. A parallel is made through the protagonist’s niece Arabella, forever being in love with one guy or another but then refraining at the last moment. Finally, her uncle gives her a sound advice: that only if she will meet a man whom she will be ready to introduce to her family, she will know that he is the right man.

In False Colours, twin brothers Kit and Evelyn literally switch their places, one of them finding the right girl in the process by getting to know his brother’s prospected bride.

In The Foundling, the Duke of Sale is all but pushed to make an offer for Harriet, a girl he likes but is not in love with; but as he lives through some adventures and meets Belinda, who is very beautiful but also superficial, he learns to appreciate his future bride better and to realize that he would not want to be married to anyone else.

The Wrong Match

In An Infamous Army, Lady Worth wants to match up Colonel Charles Audley with Lucy, but then has to find out that the sweet, innocent-looking damsel is already secretly married, and that the temperamental Lady Barbara whom she had not liked for him is exactly what he needs since she has courage and straightforwardness.

Not Falling in Love at All

In A Civil Contract, Viscount Lynton, heir of an impoverished family, marries the shy and average-looking Jenny, the daughter of a rich, vulgar merchant to keep his family out of debt; she loves him but is aware of the fact that he does not requite her feelings, since he secretly loves Julia, a beautiful woman who does not have much money of her own. It is only as the plot thickens, the woman he loves marries another man and his wife gives him a son that he realizes “his Jenny” is the best wife he could have found.

Falling Out of Love

In Friday’s Child, Lord Sheringham believes to be in love with Isabella, an acclaimed beauty, until he has lived for a while with Hero, the young woman he had married on a whim. “Bella with her airs and graces, her moods and her sharp tongue! No, thank you!”

Isabella on the other hand was about to contrive a brilliant match, but good sense makes her refuse it after all. “When I thought how my life would be, that I would have to spend the rest of my life with him… oh, I could not!”

In The Grand Sophy, Cecilia is besotted with Augustus, a very romantic but unreliable young man. After a trying period spent nursing her small sister, who was critically ill, she finally realizes that the less romantic but more worthy Lord Charlbury who had offered for her in the first place is a much better partner for her.

In Cotillon, Kitty enters a fake engagement to teach a lesson to Jack, the man she is in love with; but when she comes to London for a while and learns more about him and the world, she slowly realizes that she was in love with a figment of her imagination, and that Freddy, the man she is engaged to, is a much better person.

“He seemed like all the heroes in the book, but I soon found that he is not like them at all.” “No. I’m afraid I ain’t either.” “Of course not! No one is.”

Heyer’s chief oeuvre in this respect is in my opinion Bath Tangle, where Serena and Lord Rotherham, both hot-tempered protagonists get engaged to someone much gentler than them, only for them to realize that they would not be happy with them. The heroine’s fiancé Hector gives her up amicably, having also found a much better life partner.

“You are a grander creature than I even imagined.” “And you are the kindest and best of men, but not my love!”

The “Pride and Prejudice” Trope

The themes of Jane Austen’s famous novel is upended in Faro’s Daughter, where it is the man who has a strong prejudice against the girl, whom he inevitably believes to be a scheming, money-grabbing minx because she earns her living in a gaming house. The girl on the other hand has strong personal pride and would never accept money from anyone, or accept marrying or becoming the mistress of a man for whom she doesn’t care. Far from declaring his devotion to her, the man insults the woman repeatedly, before he finally realizes his mistake and also that she is the right mate for him.

The Beauty and the Beast Trope

In Black Sheep, the protagonists Abby and Fanny are aunt and niece, both at the same time in love with two members of the Calverleigh family who both have a bad reputation; but while Beauty (the niece) has to realize that the man she had fallen for was only after her fortune, non-Beauty (the not quite so pretty, but intelligent aunt) realizes that the uncommon Miles who gives nothing on society’s standards does care for people, and that he is the broad-minded, worldly-wise partner she exactly needs.

In Venetia, the person falling out of love is a Edward Yardley, a sidekick, who really ends up being disillusioned; but the story had made it abundantly clear that he had been a fool all along to believe that he and the protagonist would suit. Venetia, the Beauty, has to find out that she cannot tame the Beast Lord Damerel, and that she wouldn’t want to do it additionally. The Beast is not a bad man but someone who does not fit in with society; which makes him ideal for her since she does not, either.

This trope is brought to a climax in Lady of Quality, where the protagonist Annis, who never felt the slightest interest in the gentlemen she met, on getting to know the rude but protective and straightforward Oliver finally gets to fall in love, despite the fact that they argue frequently. At one time she muses that “Surely kindred spirits did not quarrel?” only to then add mentally, with a little self-irony, “How mawkish!”

If you are tired of Jane Austens’ prim heroines and the Brontë sister’s drama, I invite you: give Georgette Heyer a try. Her novels are entertaining but neither flat nor sentimental, and I always find new layers and aspects in them when I reread them after a few years. Her heroes of course live in an idealized world, but it’s just what you might need after a hard day’s work. 😊

[burninglights]

Shakespeare’s Othello is — in the context of the time it was written in — a relatively sympathetic and nuanced portrayal of how black people are never allowed to truly assimilate or be seen as equals in Western society no matter their achievements. In this essay I will

[seeingteacupsindragons]

do you think louis and liam’s parents are dead or just abandoned by them at a very early age?

Questions like this always baffle me. They're referred to as orphans in the meta text so often that I literally would never think to question that even though it's not in the text itself.

It feels like a conspiracy theory, in the way that things like this are trying so hard to come up with a more complicated explanation for something that simply does not need one. Why is this detail something we have to question?

I like questioning and interrogating things I read. It's an important part of critical reading. But part of that is knowing, well, what questions to even ask. And usually the questions are things like, "Why is this in text?" and "What purpose is this serving?" and "How do these story pieces fit together?" not "What if what we're told is all lies?"

I mean, of course it's all lies; it's fiction and not presented as truth. At a certain point in reading things, you just have to accept that the story presented is the story presented. And yes, sometimes the story is much more layered, subtle, and more complicated than it first appears. But this is...simply not one of them. There is no indication there's anymore more to this at all.

If you can't, at some point, accept and agree to believe what fiction is telling you, there's not a lot of point in bothering to read it, in my opinion. It's what suspension of disbelief is, in many way.

And when you're reading something presented as truth, the question is still not really, "What if what we're told is all lies?" but "What purpose is this serving?" and "Why is this in the text?"

[izzyspussy]

i'm looking for idr either a mnemonic or an infographic that was going around here about how to judge the validity of a source while you're reading it that was like "who's saying it" "who does it benefit for you to believe this" etc that i can't find, anybody have it (or similar)?

[wanderingandfound]

I think we all agree on what media is for: It’s for reinforcing our worldviews via simple morality tales portrayed with as little ambiguity as possible and hopefully a couple explosions just to keep it from being boring. What media is not for is teaching us anything new, or exposing us to novel forms of thought, or showing us how it is to live as a different type of person. And you know why it’s not for that? Because of the children.

Won’t you think of the children? What if they see something that they, literal children, don’t immediately understand? What if any aspect of our cultural stories isn’t instantly graspable by actual children? How would I explain that to them? By sitting down? In the same room as them? And talking to them about it? Ugh. No. Ugh.

It’s just better and easier if we make all of our media only fit what a five-year-old child who has never been exposed to anything outside of his immediate neighborhood will understand instantly and without further explanation. It’s called decency. Look it up. In a dictionary. Which is a book full of words I don’t understand and refuse to learn.

This has been Cecil’s Media Corner

— Welcome to Night Vale 200 - Susan Willman Comes Clean

[troythecatfish]

[protoslacker]

In each case my goal is to help students connect to these historical human experiences in ways that give them a more intense sense of engagement with these human realities. I find it intriguing that many of the texts I've chosen are far from "canonical" -- in fact, most of them have probably had almost no readers in decades. Who has read Koestler's autobiography, The Invisible Writing? And yet Koestler offers a powerful and engaging first-person account of many of the most terrible events of the century. It is sobering that such expressive and truthful voices from the relatively recent past can disappear so quickly from popular imagination. 

Daniel Little at Understanding Society. A new course on the terrible twentieth century

it's worth clicking through to see the texts Little has chosen for the course. Little's course is for college students, but the topics it engages are important for younger student as well.

It's been almost 50 years, but thinking about my schooling, a tenth-grade social studies course in World Cultures and Geography most closely aligns with this course. That's where we studied about the Holocaust and genocide.

Here is an Axios article, Most states lack laws requiring Holocaust, genocide education. The article points out that there are several "Red" states with laws on the books while most states don't have laws requiring it.

The current politics of waging the culture war in schools makes teachers' jobs so much harder. We need more than schools to make civic education widespread and robust.

Mariame Kaba is an inspiring activist who has great ideas and useful projects. She also writes a newsletter and has written good books. Her work points to ways that ordinary citizens can contribute to civic education.

[housewivesoffrankfurt]

DECODING THE SIGNIFICATION PRESENT IN LISA VANDERPUMP’S SHOES IN THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF BEVERLY HILLS SEASON FIVE, EPISODE SEVEN

The Real Housewives, as a franchise, deals heavily in signification and implication. Its narrative process is one that bombards the viewer with motifs and symbols which the user assembles into connotation. The non-linearity of this process is key to its synthesis of meaning: the creators of the show have the power to place segments of footage beside each other to assume that plot developments are happening simultaneously or consecutively, with each scene granting meaning to, and having its meaning exalted through, the other scenes that exist around it. In this way, the storyline is constructed with the same framework that any utterance would be: each instance is able to mean only because of the information that surrounds it. As a collective, these scenes form the storyline, form character developments, and everything that is expected of a TV drama. However, individually, each scene works on a much more detailed level to formulate each of these semantic plot movements.

In particular, Brandi’s housewarming party in season five, episode seven of Beverly Hills, can be used to analyse the production of these meanings, and how characters and non-linear timings can be used to warn of conflict in a scene where one character has not even entered yet.

We are shown an image of Brandi speaking to her friend: immediately we recognise that Brandi is in a place of safety from her proximity to the friend. They are shown standing together with no outsider interaction; they have formed a closed, binarised system of conversation where Brandi’s friend enthuses about how positive the atmosphere is (of course, she is declaring this from the ‘social bubble’ formed by the physical bodies of she and Brandi blocking any social intruders). Of course, given the nature of this fiction, the viewer recognises that this is a premonition for coming drama, and yet no trace of strife exists yet. Here is the first act that the viewer must engage in, as it appears that two characters expressing their delight for safety and positivity is a signifier of negativity, despite no negativity being present. It appears that the formation of negativity is derived exclusively from its absence, and thus declaring safety exalts  its opposite.

Upon the women declaring thanks for their safety and positivity, Lisa Vandepump, Brandi’s nemesis, arrives at the scene. The way that she is introduced is of crucial importance; she first appears as a pair of feet stepping out of a car, with the view of the rest of her obscured by the car’s door.

The camera then pans upwards as the door is closed, revealing the rest of Lisa’s form. At this point, with only her shoes revealed, the viewer is supposed to recognise that it is Lisa’s foot from an earlier scene where she is selecting footwear for the party. The shoe here does a great deal of work as a signifier: with its close temporal proximity to Brandi and her friend declaring safety, the viewer must only glance at a shoe to know that this is soon to end. In addition, the shoe becomes a carriage through which the meaning of Lisa’s entire body is carried; the rest of her form is not visible, and is not pinned down, thus the rest of her body above the ankle is theoretically infinite, and the crushing mass of this meaning is one which flows through the establishing shot of her ankle. Similarly to how anticipation of negativity is drawn from its absence, the rest of Lisa’s body, and the coming drama that is paired with it, passes through the shoe and into the eye of the viewer.

Following this comes an act of unveiling. As the camera moves up Lisa’s body, and the obstruction of the car door is removed, we are able to behold the true narrative mass that she carries, and Brandi’s horror is finally realised in physical form.

In this unveiling, no additional meaning is given, since the shoe already stands in for Lisa’s presence, however this meaning does become recontextualised. Instead of existing in a purely theoretical space as an omen or as a disembodied shoe, all of these earlier meanings become spread across the entire material of her body, and the sweeping upwards of the camera is suggestive of a great matrix of meaning which begins from the bottom of Lisa’s body and moves upwards, spreading as it travels to the top of her head, before solidifying as the antithesis of the ‘safety’ that appeared to be so certain in the conversation preceding it. These are movements which undoubtedly match the narrative movement between Brandi, her friend and Lisa, as well as the chronological movement of the piece: we are expected to assume that Brandi’s friend truly does declare her feelings of safety just as Lisa is stepping out of her car on the other side of the wall, yet, in reality, this seems unlikely.

In all, we see that this is just one of many scenes that establish the opposites that The Real Housewives is intent on functioning from. The key signifier of this scene, the heeled shoe, is a passage-point for the fear that manifests from the conversation before it. Not only that, but the shoe is also the viewer’s access point to the rest of Lisa and what she represents in light of the conversation preceding her entrance.

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Much of the personal investment in this study derives from my awareness of being an "Oriental" as a child growing up in two British colonies. All of my education, in those colonies (Palestine and Egypt) and in the United States, has been Western, and yet that deep early awareness has persisted. In many ways my study of Orientalism has been an attempt to inventory the traces upon me, the Oriental subject, of the culture whose domination has been so powerful a factor in the life of all Orientals.

Orientalism by Edward Said