Blog Post 7

I really enjoyed the presentations! I think everyone did a fabulous job in articulating what their theory was about. I found the presentations to be really informative, because i will admit that some of the theory's i had heard of but i didn't know much about them. Two of my favorite theory's were queer theory and post colonialism theory.

Queer theory are the theoretical & critical writings concerning things like gender identity & sexual desires. Queer theory builds both upon feminist challenges to the idea that gender is part of the essential self & upon gay/lesbian studies close examination of socially constructed nature of sexual acts & identities. This theory was discussed using the film Brokeback Mountain. This film really does stumble upon some of the issues that come across in queer theory, such as stereotyping, social constructivism, binary operations, etc. But for me binary operations stood out because of the fact that it kind of deals with what is right and wrong according to society (morally speaking). I loved the fact that the presentations had videos as visual aids because it was easier to connect with.

Postcolonialism theory consists of a set of theories in philosophy & various approaches to literary analysis that are concerned with literature written in English involving colonialism and imperialism. Our group used Aria by Richard Rodriguez as an example of post colonialism. This story ultimately dealt with the assumption that in order to gain a public identity you have to loose your native identity. The term that really interested me in this theory was the idea of "unhomeliness", because personally i could connect with the idea of feeling caught between two cultures.