{"id":212,"date":"2014-03-27T12:51:51","date_gmt":"2014-03-27T16:51:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=212"},"modified":"2015-01-06T11:02:17","modified_gmt":"2015-01-06T16:02:17","slug":"etre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2014\/03\/27\/etre\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00catre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not a man and not ever able to be a woman, suspended nameless in the limbo state between existence and nonexistence\u201d pg 77<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From the first read of this sentence, the binaries being set up are glaringly apparent.\u00a0 \u201cMan\u201d is set opposite of \u201cwoman,\u201d just as \u201cexistence\u201d is contrasting \u201cnonexistence\u201d (77).\u00a0 Similarly, \u201csuspended,\u201d \u201cnameless,\u201d and \u201climbo\u201d are all clustered together (77).\u00a0 Even the sentence structure itself follows these binary and cluster rules; the binary of man\/woman is set opposite of the existence\/nonexistence comparison with the suspended\/nameless\/limbo cluster floats alone in the middle.\u00a0 This double binary emphasizes the strict boundaries of the concepts of man\/woman or existence\/nonexistence, claiming that they leave no middle ground for any sort of womanly man, somewhat existence, etc.\u00a0 If something doesn\u2019t fit into one of these categories, according to this sentence, it doesn\u2019t even deserve a name.<\/p>\n

A limbo state is not a desirable one.\u00a0 That is to say, no one actively seeks to end up in limbo.\u00a0 To be in limbo insinuates failure; that one wasn\u2019t strong enough to make it to one end point or the other, and instead had to just sort of stop in the middle.\u00a0 With failure comes shame and so one could argue that being in limbo is shameful.\u00a0 As namelessness is paralleled with \u201cthe limbo state,\u201d to be \u201cnameless\u201d must also be shameful (77).\u00a0 Humans express themselves through language; we have a word for everything we interact with in our lives.\u00a0 Therefore, to be \u201cnameless\u201d is the ultimate failure, because, according to human logic, if there isn\u2019t a word for it, it must not exist or be important enough to acknowledge.<\/p>\n

I believe that Mala and Tyler are able to connect on such a deep level because Mala doesn\u2019t really use words.\u00a0 For her, words don\u2019t hold the same power as they do for someone whose sole method of expression is through them.\u00a0 Since Mala doesn\u2019t use words, she is able to just let Tyler be, rather than try to define him.\u00a0 For example, when Tyler tries on the dress, Mala pays no attention because \u201cthe outfit was not something to either congratulate or scorn \u2013 it simply was\u201d (77).\u00a0 Mala doesn\u2019t seek to define Tyler as gay or transsexual or whatever words someone might try to pin on him.\u00a0 He just \u201cwas\u201d and no words were needed to categorize that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not a man and not ever able to be a woman, suspended nameless in the limbo state between existence and nonexistence\u201d pg 77 From the first read of this sentence, the binaries being set up are glaringly apparent.\u00a0 \u201cMan\u201d is set opposite of \u201cwoman,\u201d just as \u201cexistence\u201d is contrasting \u201cnonexistence\u201d (77).\u00a0 Similarly, \u201csuspended,\u201d \u201cnameless,\u201d and … Continue reading \u00catre<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2014-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","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=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}