{"id":114,"date":"2014-02-12T21:09:05","date_gmt":"2014-02-13T02:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=114"},"modified":"2015-01-06T11:00:19","modified_gmt":"2015-01-06T16:00:19","slug":"114","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2014\/02\/12\/114\/","title":{"rendered":"Precision"},"content":{"rendered":"

A precise emotion seeks a precise expression.\u00a0 If what I feel is not precise then should I call it love?\u201d (Winterson, 10)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This passage immediately drew me in, despite its brevity, because of the simple eloquence of its phrasing.\u00a0 In a mere two sentences, the narrator turns the widely accepted idea of \u2018love\u2019 on its head, questioning how we define our feelings and what \u2018love\u2019 actually means.\u00a0 The narrator poses an almost scientific theory, in the vein of Newton\u2019s third law of motion (every action must have an equal and opposite reaction,) essentially stating that every precise emotion must be expressed through equal precision.\u00a0 This opposition is itself then juxtaposed with the concept that if an emotion is not precise, it may not be expressed precisely.\u00a0 In fact, the word \u201cprecise\u201d is repeated three times, drawing special focus to the concept of precision and inviting the reader to question if it is possible define an emotion precisely in the first place. We all think we know what \u2018love\u2019 is, but if we were to ask everyone who is in \u2018love\u2019 to define what \u2018love\u2019 is, it is unlikely that we would end up with two identical definitions.\u00a0 By that logic, if those feelings of affection most of us seem to experience are imprecise and individual-specific, should we even be allowed to define them as \u2018love\u2019?<\/p>\n

I believe that Sedgwick\u2019s idea of queer, \u201cthe open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances, and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning,\u201d can help us cope with this issue (8).\u00a0 Humans are pattern-seeking animals and therefore seek definitions, particularly for those things that scare or confuse us, such as imprecise emotions.\u00a0 Labels and clich\u00e9s make us feel safe, assuring us that we are not the only ones experiencing the perplexing emotions that we do when we say, fall in \u2018love.\u2019 However, perhaps we overuse these clich\u00e9s, forcing ourselves to shave down our emotions into precise pegs that easily fit in the holes we\u2019ve made for them.\u00a0 We\u2019ve streamlined \u2018love,\u2019 cutting out any room for the \u201c\u2026gaps, overlaps, dissonances\u2026\u201d that Sedgwick speaks of by \u201cembracing one identity or one set of tastes as though they were universally shared, or should be\u201d as Warner argues (Sedgwick, 8)(Warner, 1).\u00a0 As a result, we invite shame into the equation and push it on those whose idea of \u2018love\u2019 is more of a square peg than a round one.\u00a0 Perhaps if we were to utilize Sedgwick\u2019s idea of queer as a precise expression of imprecise emotions, we would be more at ease (and therefore hopefully less condemnatory) with emotions that don\u2019t identically match our own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A precise emotion seeks a precise expression.\u00a0 If what I feel is not precise then should I call it love?\u201d (Winterson, 10) This passage immediately drew me in, despite its brevity, because of the simple eloquence of its phrasing.\u00a0 In a mere two sentences, the narrator turns the widely accepted idea of \u2018love\u2019 on its … Continue reading Precision<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2032,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93617],"tags":[93518,974,93516,93501,93513,93517,93493],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2014-blog-post","tag-definition","tag-love","tag-precise","tag-sedgwick","tag-shame","tag-warner","tag-written-on-the-body"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2032"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}