HOA 411

The article, "Indigenous Methodologies Characteristics, Conversations, arid Contexts," by Margaret Kovach, is a conversation on indigenous methodologies.  Indigenous epistemology is a form of philosophy that focuses on the study of knowledge.  My focus is on what the author uses within her article to explain education through generations.  Indigenous methodologies flow from tribal knowledge, and while they are allied with several western qualitative approaches, they remain distinct through history.  The author uses different theories through the article like decolonization, self-culture, and ethics.   In the article, there is a moment where the author uses a quote from Dyke, 1986: 132.  "The first step to liquidating a people ... is to erase its memory ... before long a nation will begin to forget what it is, and what it was.  The world around it will never forget even faster."  After this quote, Margaret explains that many indigenous people ...

“Meaning. Identity, Embodiment,” by Amelia jones is the exploration of the issue of identity in relation to art.   The example used in this is the painting, “The origin of the World,” by Gustave Courbet.   In the essay Jones argues clearly in the essay her viewpoint on issues of gender and sexuality.   Jones expresses strong enmity toward the interpretations of Courbet’s painting.   Through this essay we can see that Jones believes that we can make a better sense of the painting or artwork through the creator.   In the essay Jones says, “It is not enough, to understand the social and cultural effects of visual imagery purely in terms of disembodied structure of the “gaze.””   To me this meant that even though there is a that level of interpretation missing from a piece despite giving information based on what we see.   Which is interesting because in our discussion of the oppositional gaze and visual pleasure, there is the argument of sexualization in ...

The essay, “Death of the author,” by Roland Barnes is the outlook on the rules of the author and the reader by using the commonality of meaning from the text written. Roland argues that the author has no has no jurisdiction over their own words that the words belong to the reader to interpret them and evaluate in their own accord. Roland challenges the idea of originality that an author may have and how the readers view it. The problem with this is that Roland in my opinion Wrongly assumes that anyone can pull an exact meaning or intent from what an author has written. Also, in this I believe that Roland thinks there must be a set meaning within the writing that someone should try and find. I evaluated this essay is in two ways. That an author by the standards of this essay, is someone that loses all their meaning as the written piece is put out or becomes irrelevant to the viewer. The other is that this article challenge’s purpose and what it means to have purpose. In the ess...

The essay, “The oppositional Gaze: black Female Spectators.” By Bell Hooks is the discussion of black females and the relation to black and white representations in movies. Hooks argues in the essay that we have an oppositional gaze. This oppositional gaze according to Hooks is the idea that black women must have the desire to correct or challenge the stereotypes of black women in movies. She argues that despite a long history of oppression on screens and in real life, black people had the right to look, observe, gaze. She also explains in this article how the power of looking had set this sense of resistance for black people. How it is meant to be “confrontational, a gesture of resistance, a challenge of authority.” This essay focuses on the days of slavery when there was a hard sense of control from white males to blacks and how they would look at their masters. It is this this gaze that is used in parenting, to control how their kids act. In many ways I understand that look...

“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” by Laura Mulvey is an analysis on focused on many theories about the representation and importance of women in cinema. Laura explains how women are in a way used a visual pleasure only, while men are sure to be the dominant role. She also began with Freuds ideas on scopophilia, or the pleasure in looking. In this reading, Laura focuses her attention on the theories from Sigmund Freud. While reading this article I found it hard to keep reading. The representation on how women were viewed and that this was probably a reality in how women were viewed is both fascinating, and disgusting. According to Freud, scopophilia is the manifest in, “the voyeuristic activities of children’, who have a desire to see private areas on the human body. There are many moments within this article where Freud refers to castration, or how women are a castration threat. “her lack of a penis, implying a threat of castration and hence unpleasure. Ultimately, the me...

This week we looked over the essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, by Walter Benjamin. Overall, I felt that this essay was interesting to think about, but also confusing. I believe that the main point of this essay was arguing the effect of manipulation and mass reproduction from original art and how it loses its aura. Through in the essay Benjamin acknowledged the reality of artistic reproduction throughout history, but suggests that mechanical reproduction had introduced an entirely new and revolutionary change in experiencing art. In the essay, Benjamin refers to how photography is another form of reproduction. He claims that although something like a photograph captures a moment more accurately, it is a moment that can be altered by the positioning, lighting, lenses, etc. This kind of reproduction loses the traditional value and historical proof of the art it its original form. In the essay he states, “A painting when drawn can have cultural or emotion...