{"id":2083,"date":"2022-10-27T21:20:57","date_gmt":"2022-10-28T01:20:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=2083"},"modified":"2022-10-27T21:20:57","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T01:20:57","slug":"something-that-just-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2022\/10\/27\/something-that-just-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Something That Just Is"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cNot a man and not ever able to be a woman, suspended nameless in the limbo state between existence and nonexistence\u2026The reason Miss Ramchandin paid me no attention was that, to her mind, the outfit was not something to either congratulate or scorn\u2014it simply was\u201d (Mootoo 77).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This quote about Tyler from <\/span>Cereus Blooms at Night<\/span><\/i> explores how his identity does not yet have a name or label in his society. He exists in a liminal space, unable to properly fit into the definition of man nor woman, and therefore people don\u2019t know what to make of him. We are conditioned to see gender as binary, and stepping outside of this binary is often seen as negative. In Tyler\u2019s case, he is not physically harmed but he is mocked for his femininity. His coworkers make passing comments, laugh, and stare. He stands out, which is an inherently bad thing to them. On the contrary, Mr. Hector views Tyler\u2019s gender as celebratory. Tyler\u2019s queerness reminds him of his beloved brother. He even asks Tyler and Otoh if they know his brother just because they are queer. For Mr. Hector open queerness is something to be celebrated, as he knows the harm his brother suffered in their childhood for being too feminine so he empathizes. However, Mala does not take on either of these lenses, but a neutrality to Tyler\u2019s queerness. She views it as natural, nothing to gawk at, something that simply exists, neither congratulating or scorning it. Queerness to her is neither good nor bad as society categorizes it as. It just <\/span>is<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mala\u2019s lens reminded me of something I read in my philosophy class, excerpts from Martin Heidegger\u2019s book \u201cThe Question Concerning Technology.\u201d While Heidegger\u2019s politics were disgusting, his claim about technology surprisingly relates directly to Mala. Heidegger wrote that while technology itself is neither inherently good nor bad, humans think of all of their surroundings as either technology or on its way to becoming technology (looking at it for how it can become useful rather than what it currently is). Everything is seen as materials for technological advancement, even the earth is seen as materials for oil and the cutting down of trees to build factories. <\/span><\/p>\n

Like the characters\u2019 need to label Tyler\u2019s gender as good or bad, there is a human need (perhaps a result of socialization) to label things, to understand their purpose in the world. <\/span>To believe that everything <\/span>must<\/span><\/i> have a purpose, one that\u2019s either good or bad. In his book Heidegger wrote \u201c<\/span>When we once open ourselves expressly to the <\/span>essence<\/span><\/i> of technology, we find ourselves unexpectedly taken into a freeing claim,\u201d meaning that when we begin to look at technology as something that simply exists rather than the way to view the entire world, we can be free. This freedom would allow us the understanding that there is not one correct way of thinking, that multiple lines of thought can coexist not necessarily in relation to the others. Adopting this neutrality like Mala does in regard to gender, we can look at queerness (which is either celebrated or scorned), as simply existing alongside heterosexuality, rather than the antithesis of it. Queerness is queerness, not directly opposing the dominant framework, not as something that is good or bad, but something that just is.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cNot a man and not ever able to be a woman, suspended nameless in the limbo state between existence and nonexistence\u2026The reason Miss Ramchandin paid me no attention was that, to her mind, the outfit was not something to either congratulate or scorn\u2014it simply was\u201d (Mootoo 77).\u00a0 This quote about Tyler from Cereus Blooms at … Continue reading Something That Just Is<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5022,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169404],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2022-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083","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\/5022"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}