Pivot: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies and Thought
Not a member yet
117 research outputs found
Sort by
From Collective Amnesia to Shared Responsibility: Bridging Trauma in Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore
Get PDFIn Kafka on the Shore (2002/tr.2005), Haruki Murakami explores the ambiguities surrounding Japan’s traumatic history and its lingering impact on contemporary generations. In the form of two parallel narratives, Kafka on the Shore juxtaposes the story of Kafka Tamura, a fifteen year-old runaway searching for his mother, with that of sixty year-old Satoru Nakata, a man who lost his memory in a strange episode during WWII. Initially isolated, both characters leave Tokyo for Shikoku (the smallest of Japan’s main islands), only arriving at their destination after accepting the support of others. Reaching across generational shores, friendships are used in the text to bridge the gap between past and present, personal trauma and collective amnesia. As affective gestures established outside traditional communities of belonging, these friendships teach characters new ways of interpreting their painful past, while allowing readers to reflect on their own sense of shared responsibility
Palimpsestuous Manifestations of Slavery-Inflicted Somatic and Psychological Trauma in Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987)
Get PDFMy essay explores Toni Morrison’s Beloved ability to map out the often irrepresentable consequences of slavery-inflicted trauma on the survivors’ bodies and souls. In particular, it discusses the inextricability of the physical and psychological element in the changing same of the African American condition in the U.S.A. With references to the Middle Passage, slave scar-branding, freed slaves’ infanticide and inability to escape the vortex of somatic and psychological trauma, Beloved provokes its audience to reflect on the history of racism and slavery-inflicted trauma in the U.S.A. Morrison’s fictional testimony may therefore be approached as a reparative attempt to American history by unveiling how the U.S. has always constituted a nation founded on systemic and systematic exclusion of African Americans who were continuously regarded as second-class citizens
To See Space: Following Caterpillars and Confronting Anorexia
Get PDFThe following paper provides a critical and storied account of how my literal and literary encounters with Eastern Tent Caterpillars invites me to re-encounter space as a concept and a living reality that shapes my research, my perception of myself as a researcher, and my perception of myself as a body. More specifically, observing caterpillars’ spatial relations challenges me to embrace space(s) as lively and packed with non-uniform potentials for world-building; accepting space as alive demands that the body-in-space (in my case, a white, settler, woman, and former anorexic body) be marked as a non-neutral world-building agent alongside other spatial bodies. This paper ponders some of the discomforts, tensions, and promises of embracing embodied research as an always-creative and potentially intrusive spatial act, and it explains how my research has helped me shift my focus from how much space my body inhibits—where less is always good, more is always bad— to what relationships I am building through and in my embodied research. 
two long exhales: or, the body is a finite mode
No full textInhale, exhale. Eyes closed. The ringing in your ears, eminent being. Blurring boundaries between yourself and the world; slipping consciousness, struggling to pull itself up. Seeing yourself through the eyes of the world: not a being, an extension of being. You move through her, and he moves through you. We shiver, spinal echoes a message from below. Eyes closed. Inhale, exhale
I Am the Night, Color Me Black: The Vampiric Positionality of the Black Pedagogue in Ganja & Hess
Get PDFFor me - an Afro-L’nu interdisciplinary doctorate candidate rooted in cinema and media studies - vampirism resembles cinematic realism: a visuality of authenticity effected in scene, setting, and storyline on-location respective to narrative milieux. However, what often defines reality as opposed to preferred realism is that Black positionalities continue to be afflicted by disparity, exploitation, exclusion, and inaccessibility alongside systematic anti-Blackness which extenuate our adversities. This contrasts with the avid albeit ambiguous initiative of equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility (EDIA) sweeping through academic spaces in the wake of reconciliation campaigns. Moreover, this initiative is vampiric in its avid solicitation of efforts and insights from the very marginalized positionalities it purports to uplift.
Too little, if anything.
Too late, if ever.
The wealth of lip service paid in comparison to what pittances we marginalized peoples are afforded. I find myself immortalized by pearls of wisdom which speak to ancestral strength and blood memory, akin to how kernels from an artifact transform Dr. Hess Green and Ganja Meda into the vampiric undead. This personal essay offers a discourse analysis of Ganja & Hess (1973) that incorporates my own positionality and academic exegesis, notably revelations as to what vampiric contingency underlays my transformation, survival, and eventual demise
Skateboarding in Place: Creating and Reclaiming Namescapes Through Skatescapes
Get PDFThis exploration paper considers the sport/art/activity of skateboarding as it intertwines with spatial experiences, identities, and our personal and kinetic vernaculars. I try to understand what skateboarders, and Indigenous skateboarders especially, can teach us about alternative ways to understand space, place, and identity. I posit that skateboarding encourages spatial comprehension and landscape-use in particular ways, what I think of as a skatescape: a landscape as seen through skateboarders’ eyes. Through a skateboarding media and art lens, I reflect on some ways in which skateboarding influences narratives of place and belonging. I then consider these personal narratives and attempt to broaden the definition of a skatescape and in so doing speculate on how we create, share, and navigate our unique and personal spatial languages through movement and presence. Finally, I reveal that appreciating Indigenous skatescapes has illuminated a blindspot in my settler psyche: that up until recently I had not acknowledged fully that each and every spot I have ever skated was and is Indigenous land
Democratizing the Museum: Disability and the Need for Accessibility
Get PDFUnbothered by disruption of body and mind, the abled body moves and acts freely without consequences. This abled body, within the vernaculars of visual culture, represents a dogmatic portrayal of naturalism that privileges itself as the normative representation of idealism. However, these sentiments affirm bias for the disabled body, as well as sensory and mental impairment, as undesirable. Historically, politically, and culturally marked by their differences, these polarities of disability and ability reveal the systematic ableism that is presented within the exhibition of museums and galleries. By examining the relationship between disability and museum studies, this paper looks at how exhibitions engage with disabilities in relation to ableism and the notions of the ideal citizen. Considering the historical, social, and political discourse of disability, this paper considers how exhibitions can confront the stigma of disability by analyzing the relationships between visual culture and disability, the universal survey museum, and its exclusion of the other. Through close examination of accessible galleries, such as Tangled Art + Disability Gallery, I argue that the democratization of museums through the inclusion of others creates inclusivity that reflects the new era of museum studies and the current construction of identity politics