Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

Me: I am creatively motivated individual that has big dreams and am willing to do anything for my vision. I have vast resources and problem solving capability, I love operating in the real world at the fantasy level. I am interested in fashion, photography, proformance, education, and theory. I wish to read books about gender, drag, continue studying elements of confession and modes of knowledge. I wish to look deeper into Butler and Foucalt. I wish to go to museums , proformances, and galleries.

 

You: I need organized, creative, dreamers who can give me a reality check. You must be flexible, open, and motivated to do anything and not be afraid to get or receive feedback. I would like people whose work would be both different and the same as mine. And people who are interested in doing hands on (out of the evergreen bubble) social action with their art. People that are willing to be challenged and excited to be alive.     

    Dusty a pair of leather brown loafers past away last night. He had been sewn back together 4or5 times in his life. Last night his souls simply had enough. He left behind Mykey his beloved feet, who had shaped and molded Dusty from a young shoe. Mykey and Dusty lived together for 3 1/2 years, each of mykey's toes and curves showed through the leather skin like hills on Dusty's horizon. Dusty was always dressed for the occiason. Weather it was running across a field or splashing around in a river. After his first profesional stitch surgery Mykey felt that his care was better left to his loved ones. Dusty was a terrific flyer and could fly off mykeys foot and hit someone up to 100 feet away. Dusty was a quiet shoe that no one could hear coming around the corner to scare them. He was dark like a ninja and quick like a cheeta and match every outfit. when you smelled him you knew there was no one as close to him as mykey. So long Dusty thanks for the good times.

I would be a disney executive in a giant suit with my life full of creepy stories and fantasy. Because you know top disney executives must be into some crazy perverted stuff like in eye's wide shut. I would start to tell you about my spirit animal the with my horns on and tell you why I need horns to do what I need to do. I would talk about the types of things I work into disney movies and then do a musical number as a person in inflated latex. Then I would start to describe my crazy sexuality and why I don't identify public ly and justify all sorts of weird fetishes.  follow it with a blow up doll and describe all the boring sex I have with my wife.  I then  would be in drag as a woman and do the song time after time followed by baby drag as a my memory's from infancy. The finally would be some adaptation of botu or other creative play dance symbolic of my disconnect .

    So I work at the crisis clinic and that entails mostly talking to people in crisis and occationally helping people find resources to help them out. This is a thought from an extention of crisis clinic called 211 that is like 911 but for resources. The way community resources work is through knowledge the way to knowledge is through power the way to power is through connections and working for "the man". So start at being a person working for "the man". Some one calls you at 211 looking for a way to get you son out of jail because they told the mother that he needed a job to be released. Well she isn't able to get anything done because she being a low income parent of an offender who is looked at as a pain to deal with or pass off to the next info resource, when she tries to advocate for her son. At 211 we have a power mask because we are official and that is our ticket into the interaction. once we have direct connection from our node to the info resource the interaction starts as fact based then judgments and values from the info resource are triggered and the interaction quickly becomes a fiction and we as advocates commence in redirecting the resources values and mirroring their judgments to get the information which is then given to the mother. The information given to the mother to begin with turned out to be misleading. Because in order to get released she had to communicate a resedience that he will be living at and than he is elegable to get the job. but the mother was shut down at every turn because of the fictions created in people of powers heads. This shows me their are equally more problems produced by play in a position as their is relief. That is why the tools given in our literature are essential. It also shows the problems that can arise in confession to the wrong people, and to be careful who you give power over you and the way in which you devoldge information.     

                                Mykey Arthrell
      Knowledge  Will Get You Into College
Knowledge in Foucault’s History of Sexuality is used as a type of classification for a variety of fields of thought. He addresses the scientific, religious, grammatical, cultural, political; and within all of these is the history of knowledge. Within these articles of knowledge are even more systems of classification for instance, scientific knowledge contains the anatomic, mathematical, biological, and so on; within these are experimentation and theoretical knowledges. Each of the fields of knowledge have vast roots that Foucault finds interact with each other and effect one another; each of these for this reason are tightly controlled within each of their fields through mechanisms of power. With that said, Foucault in The History of Sexuality attempts to spy on the foundations of knowledge that have built the world in which we live, and provide the users of this knowledge with tools to breakthrough the inherent traps of these systems of knowledge. What I am attempting to explore in this paper is the way Foucault’s “Knowledge” can affect the general understanding of things through personal experience within the realms of knowledge.
          Foucault puts a lot of emphasis on confession and its relation to knowledge. He says “seeking the fundamental relation to the true, not simply in oneself - in some forgotten knowledge, or in a certain primal trace - but in the self - examination that yields, through a multitude of fleeting impressions, the basic certainties of consciousness.”(59-60). This illustrates the need to confess the impressions that the world makes upon us in order to find some sort of truth about ourselves, implying that knowledge is a certainty of consciousness. If we are constantly in our own heads we have no gauge to find the truth in ourselves and it is through confession that one can understand the impact the world has on oneself and gain self knowledge, while at the same time the listener is gaining the knowledge of the impact that the world has on them that then effects the way that they might be impacted by the world. This is an example of how the concept of “normal” works to tailor knowledge into a general understanding felt by the mass, as opposed to the individuals impressions and experience making knowledge personal.

I had an interesting experience at work today. I work in a preschool at the community college, and the last few weeks since school started their have been alot of students on campus. One student in particular has stoped at the gate a few times to watch the kids play, and has talked to kids as well when they approach him. It seems like most people in the cultural flow of things understand that you aren't supposed to hang around play grounds if you dont have a reason to be there. But this person obviously doesn't understand this, today he was asked to move along and he complied, but came back and later and sat down on the benches near the play ground but wasn't watching the kids. A teach called the security and I found out this wasnt the first time security was called but it was the first time anyone had talked to the student about not talking to the kids. One teacher was getting the school in an uproar about a scary pedifile stalking the playground. I saw realived that the person she was talking about I had seen before and talked to he was no threat and completely oblivious to the fact that enjoying watching children play was a crime. I saw him walking by this afternoon and haveing meet him before was able to call him over by name. I asked him how his day was and he told me that he had been talked to about watching at the fence and talking to the kids and he was completely surprised at that being a problem. I talked with him about the discomfort at the center and thatr people hand been calling security about him and he was very understanding and surprised and than left. It made me so sad that peoples fear of sexuality is so strong that it seems to create a power that has the potential to transform an innocent confused boy into a petifile. It remined me of the way jean genet took on his label. And that we as a culture can forge criminals out of anyone by simily labling them and using the technology of fear to wheled the power of law over them. It is by alination that we create and mantian the illusion of abnormal sexuality and make it a reallity.

I gained alot by the beauty parlor on doors. It has made me experiment a little with peoples reactions to alternate was of using them. I have started to use doors as a point to slow down, it seems as though people are view doors as an obstacle to overcome and fined the fastest way through but I have started looking at doors as a point to slow down and take time and intention in life. I now press the handicap button and wait patiently for the door to open and reflect on the reasons why I don't have to rush. There also a point of decision for me. before I pass through a door I must determine weather it is the way I should really go. If indeterminate about my destination I am forced to make up my mind before going in or out that door. There are many other intentional and fun ways to interact with doors please share your thoughts on some of them.  

Well I was reading Foucault and started thinking about sexuality, the body, and material things. What about tattoo’s? I started thinking about all of my gay friends and their unicorn and star tattoo’s, and big burly guy's and their biceps tribal swirly tattoo’s, then punk tattoo’s, gang tattoo’s, prison tattoo’s, and heritage tattoo’s. Couples with matching tattoo’s, name tattoo’s, and sexxy tattoo’s. Than there's piercing and those speak for themselves. But what really gets me thinking is the idea of the experience of getting a tattoo or piercing as being sexual as well as what you get and why. When I ponder on why people get tattoo’s there is no fixed answer, but regardless of why, tattoos and piercing become a fashioning on the body and become a part of one's sexuality. Any way back to reading.