Stress Production (Part 1 of 3)

[curiouscliche]

So here’s what happens when you have to write 40 pages in 8 days and take an Astro final at 9 am. Interestingly enough, the Soc papers are the only ones that are legitimately decent (interesting because I’ve never been very good at writing Soc papers). The history paper is on the exact same topic as my last history research paper, except with new

Comments

[johnwesley73]

I thought paper #1 was a bit inside baseball. For example, I'm not sure I understood what the three dimensions you kept referring to were; but, presumably your professor did.

Paper #2 was very interesting. However did you come up with the idea comparing Goffman and Foucault? So different, and yet you found a way to play them off each other. The anonymity of Foucault's conception of bodily punishment has implications for the eventual democratization and diffusion of these methods, don't you think?

Obviously, both papers could have benefited from a bit more exposition; otherwise, I agree with you --they're pretty good. :)

[curiouscliche]

Unfortunately, there was a paragraph limit for both papers and my professor had a thing against extensive summaries (perhaps understandably).

The second paper's prompt (I actually wrote this one first) asked us to find a difference between Goffman and Foucault, prove the difference was more than incidental, then argue whether the difference led to contradictions. Honestly, I didn't really like the prompt, but our other choices were even worse (except for the prompt for the first paper, which I loved (basically, "how does the proleteriat cast off its chains?")).

I agree with you that Foucault's conception implies eventual democratization and diffusion, but is this really a good thing? Who wants to live in a society where everyone is perpetually opressing each other?

[johnwesley73]

"I agree with you that Foucault's conception implies eventual democratization and diffusion, but is this really a good thing? Who wants to live in a society where everyone is perpetually opressing each other?"

That's precisely my point; who would have thought a generation ago that someone other than a sophisticated government agent could steal someone else's identity? Or, design a dirty bomb? Questions involving internalized oppression (be it internalized racism, sexism or, in Foucault's case --internalized worker's oppression) have always fascinated me.