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April 20, 2001, 4:17 p.m. || against all odds

I don't want to have to explain how "white boy" is a condensed code -- a warning phrase, a red light signaling a privileged mode of interpreting the world-- and not a general indictment of all white boys, everywhere.

I don't want to have to point out that being broke is different than being poor, and that the general tendency to speak of class or poverty in ways that are merely cultural or lifestyle-focused, while ignoring the reality of class structures and material relations (which do not break down into specific cultural codes as easily as some might believe), is problematic.

I don't want to have to make "interventions" and find myself patiently explaining to friends why this utterance or that statement, so blithely made, needs to be deconstructed, only to be forced to continue on a "personal" level of, "No, I don't hate you, it's just that, okay, never mind, never mind."

6:45 p.m.

This is what I'm ignoring this site to work on instead:

The photographic image has little independent meaning. Critical theorists argue "the narrative poverty of the photograph creates an illusion of neutrality," and that this illusion serves to naturalize a system of beliefs about transparency and claims to truth. Meaning is instead established through interpretive frameworks that exist outside of the image - frameworks that are socially and institutionally constructed and that serve an ideological function. The same image of the Asian female assembly-line worker might be used by national business bureaus to attract multinational investment in Free Trade Zones or by First World feminists to criticize the workers' "dehumanizing" labor conditions. Because meaning is affected by the exercise of power, it would be useful to then examine visual representations of workers in fair trade literature and shops, to appraise "the processes that have made this working body so visible and yet so anonymous."