Throughout the semester, not only have I learned about the complex relationships between art, criticism, and self-fashioning that we have grappled with as a class, but I gained confidence in my ability to analyze complicated texts and become comfortable with not immediately “getting” it. I have realized that confusion is a part of the process and only makes the eventual understanding more rewarding and meaningful. It has been interesting to step back and look at the intersections between the two texts we have spend significant time thinking about. All of these ideas connect in sophisticated ways; the powerful ideas of identity, curiosity, art, culture, and criticism allow us to progress and push the boundaries of innovation. Self-fashioning relates to everything we have learned because it encompasses everything humans do. Everything we create plays a role in self-fashioning which subsequently leads to the generation of identity. It is a never-ending process that explains how we have become the way we are and how this process is inescapable. While we may feel that we have autonomy and the power to control our identity, this is an illusion, regardless of how desperately we crave it. Discovering this after thinking so deeply about art and criticism during the beginning of the year has shown me that art and taste are illusionary product of self-fashioning and an attempt to feel like we have control over our identity. This leaves me with some inner tension, as I now realize that we have never had true, unfettered control over who we are and who we want to become. However, what results from this attempted control is beautiful and gives our life meaning. Whether or not we have autonomy over our identities, we still live in a world where people express themselves through creation of music, art, poetry, etc. Our attempted control over our taste and identity results in culture, which in turn shapes us, creating the unending, dialectic and reflexive relationship of the human experience. Regarding Renaissance Self-Fashioning, I have thought deeply about how power and structure, examining how the force of submission shapes our identities in relation to authorities in aliens. My commonplace book has been a space where I can project my ideas through language and drawings, whether I have concrete answers or not. It consists of questions about the 10 conditions, relationships between self, alien, and authority, and anything else that confused me during the thinking process. Viewing the text from a dialectical lense, I have realized that every aspect of self-fashioning is oppositely dependent on another structure to exist. We cannot have an alien without an authority or an authority without an alien, and there must be a self to be fashioned, and there is no truth outside of accepting that this dialectic, recursive, and reflexive process exists and is inescapable. The thinking I have done in this class both individually and with others has led me to a more comprehensive understanding of my own role in society as an artist, critic, self-fashioner, and questioner. I feel excited for the rest of the year, as I currently have more questions than answers about our content. I am excited to continue progressing as a thinker, reader, and writer, and look forward to reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I hope to make more connections between texts, to history and culture, and to my own life, as I continue to read, think, and fashion my own identity. I speculate that as we continue grappling with complicated texts, we will continue asking questions, feeling frustrated at times when we don’t understand, build off of each other’s ideas, and hopefully have meaningful and rewarding ideas.
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AuthorI'm Melissa! I love cats, violin, books, and Netflix. Archives
November 2019
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