Michael Meng Meng 1
Daniel Pfeiffer
ENGL 1010-033
7 October 2017
The Social Fluidity of Perspectives About the ‘Good Life’
Martial artist and philosopher Bruce Lee has once described the unique properties of water in a very interesting way: formless, shapeless, can flow and can crash. Nevertheless, this had not only helped me understanding how one can use the concept of water and relate to martial arts and fighting, but also enlightened me to start approach subjects with a different angle, a different perspective. In this paper I will be using Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure and the documentary Paris is Burning as …show more content…
They are hated because they are colored, and even more hated because they are queers. Putting preconceived notions aside, we need to understand that not everyone of us is born with equal chances or have the same opportunities growing up. For those who are born this way, how are they going to be open up new possibilities of beings and livings despite the fact that they have failed since the moment they are born? J . Halberstam asks us to not consider that failure is a dead end but consider it as a place for radical or imaginative alternatives. For minorities (black or latino LGBTQ+ communities) to succeed or live “good lives” chafes with the dominant culture is a part of the requirements that capitalism has asked. Yet, by using this logic that colored queers have a hard time of conforming. J. Halberstam states that capitalism is “the structure that marks the homosexual as somehow failed...as inauthentic, and unreal, as incapable of proper love and unable to make the appropriate connections between sociality, relationality, family, sex, desire, and consumption” (95). What he meant is in the eyes of majorities, or the dominant culture, homosexuals are viewed as failures because they lack the necessary skills to survive in the capitalist world. After many years of struggle …show more content…
These unwritten rules of how to behave are called the social norms, and these social norms range from work groups to nation states. We conform by performing actions that fulfills the norms of our society, and this becomes a powerful tool in ways of understanding and predicting others. However, most of the norms define appropriate behaviors, therefore it provides order in society. We need norms to guide and direct our behavior, to provide order and predictability in social relationships and to make sense of and understanding of each other’s actions. So when we understand why most people, most of the time, conform to social norms; we can understand why a minority (being colored or part of the LGBTQ+ community) would be seen as
Daniel Pfeiffer
ENGL 1010-033
7 October 2017
The Social Fluidity of Perspectives About the ‘Good Life’
Martial artist and philosopher Bruce Lee has once described the unique properties of water in a very interesting way: formless, shapeless, can flow and can crash. Nevertheless, this had not only helped me understanding how one can use the concept of water and relate to martial arts and fighting, but also enlightened me to start approach subjects with a different angle, a different perspective. In this paper I will be using Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure and the documentary Paris is Burning as …show more content…
They are hated because they are colored, and even more hated because they are queers. Putting preconceived notions aside, we need to understand that not everyone of us is born with equal chances or have the same opportunities growing up. For those who are born this way, how are they going to be open up new possibilities of beings and livings despite the fact that they have failed since the moment they are born? J . Halberstam asks us to not consider that failure is a dead end but consider it as a place for radical or imaginative alternatives. For minorities (black or latino LGBTQ+ communities) to succeed or live “good lives” chafes with the dominant culture is a part of the requirements that capitalism has asked. Yet, by using this logic that colored queers have a hard time of conforming. J. Halberstam states that capitalism is “the structure that marks the homosexual as somehow failed...as inauthentic, and unreal, as incapable of proper love and unable to make the appropriate connections between sociality, relationality, family, sex, desire, and consumption” (95). What he meant is in the eyes of majorities, or the dominant culture, homosexuals are viewed as failures because they lack the necessary skills to survive in the capitalist world. After many years of struggle …show more content…
These unwritten rules of how to behave are called the social norms, and these social norms range from work groups to nation states. We conform by performing actions that fulfills the norms of our society, and this becomes a powerful tool in ways of understanding and predicting others. However, most of the norms define appropriate behaviors, therefore it provides order in society. We need norms to guide and direct our behavior, to provide order and predictability in social relationships and to make sense of and understanding of each other’s actions. So when we understand why most people, most of the time, conform to social norms; we can understand why a minority (being colored or part of the LGBTQ+ community) would be seen as