Two incomplete thoughts I hope not necessarily to complete, but at least size up later, when I’m not drowning in… air, or something:
TEXTILES: I took a course on women in Chinese history last year. It was not a course on notable women, but rather more ordinary women. We had the opportunity to research particular areas of interest/assignment. I worked on women and work, which was not my first choice, but it’s more interesting than placenta in my opinion. “Men till, women weave,” had been the motto.* When weaving was displaced to the textile industry (beginning in the Song dynasty), women’s labour was increasingly devalued, which followed with a decline in women’s status in society. In an related or unintended rant, my professor in Islamic law described the demise of women’s position in Middle Eastern countries towards the end of the Ottoman Empire as local silk began to compete with cheap British-imported cotton (grown in India where farmers were paid virtually nothing and manufactured in England where women and small children were also paid virtually nothing). And capitalism… I should remind you, dear reader, that this is an incomplete thought. Also, I like clothes, but should consider the implications of this more carefully.
SPIRIT: The aforementioned professor constantly reminds us that contemporary law in those nation-states which identify as Islamic cannot reproduce Islamic law in the modern setting no matter how many thieves it deprives of its hands because the spirit behind it is just not there. Modernity has set in and all those things Foucault identified about power that became associated with the apparatus of the state… it’s just not the same, and Islamic law then worked in benevolent and sustainable ways but it cannot now (apparently it can only be sketchy rather than creative). In my Chinese literature class we also talk about modernity. It is in fact the theme of the class, and I guess my professor’s research interests (I am intentionally avoiding discussing how awesome I think he is). We are currently discussing Kant and most of it is going way over my head, but we are somewhere in the first half of the twentieth century and Republican Minister of Education Cai Yuanpei is really into philosophy, and aesthetics, and thinks about the China that could be if its national curriculum included the problem of beauty and morality… or something (I really must read these books sometime)… So anyways, I think I want to study public policy and I feel like maybe I should remember these things later when I’m taking an economics class for the first time ever, that there is, or there should be, a spirit behind things, maybe… Also, the term “humanities,” includes the word “human.”
O man, I seriously need to work on my thesis. I’m going to be sooooo screwed next semester. My thesis has nothing to do with either of the above incomplete thoughts, though I should maybe consider the latter, but that just complicates things really. I apologise again for any unnecessary run-on sentences.
***
I’m pretty happy Obama won but I wonder about all those states who want to restrict the rights of gays, and I hope that Obama can make try to make some things right to bring about a more inclusive American society. Similar wishes for Canadian society of course, but I really don’t have as much faith in Harper.
