September 12, 2002, 5:45 p.m.
In the
definitive-proof-that-we-feminist-cultural-studies-types-are-not-making-this-shit-up-about-masculinist-nationalisms-on-display
category:
The East Bay Express covered these bad boys in an article hitting the high notes of 9/11 commercialism --
genuine, all-American brass balls. (Modeled, as the Express notes, to
hang "realistically.") Owning a pair means that you've got "what it
takes to defeat terrorism, defend our homeland, show courage and
determination in the face of adversity, and to have the moral fiber to
do what's right."
You can choose to wear your balls on your
sleeve (since the heart is apparently AWOL) -- or on your keychain
or jacket lapel, around your neck, or dangling from your ears. You can sip your morning coffee with the
knowledge that your balls are on twenty-four hour alert, or cruise the highways
of this great country with
your pendulous scrotum hanging from the back bumper. You can even
purchase some balls in sterling silver, all the better to display your
(ahem) "moral fiber." At the website you can even read
testimonials (the pun "testes-monials" is sadly neglected)
to the turgid swell of national pride these balls inspire.
Sarcasm is wasted in the shadow of these scrotum.
September 12, 2002, 9:01 a.m.
reading: Laura Hyun Yi Kang, Compositional
Subjects: Enfiguring Asian/American Women, Rosemarie Garland
Thomson, editor, Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary
Body
listening: Girl Group Greats CD, The Epoxies LP
One of the most provocative current features on Salon.com is about "forbidden
feelings" about 9/11 -- the feelings
that rupture a dominant discourse of an "America"united in grief or
vengeance, or indeed, that "the world is forever changed." In their
classification as "forbidden," we are forced (once again) to
acknowledge that the national imaginary generates a structure of
emotional response that interpellates "good" and "bad" citizens and
assimilates ideology into the intimate logic of feelings. We learn that
what qualifies as appropriate citizenship is not the initiative to
act as a critical participant in the democratic process, but is instead
located in the articulation of certain patriotic feelings as the proper
expression of national collectivity.
The recent controversy over the color of memorial ribbons to be distributed
on the Berkely campus is a frightening instance of the policing
of "right" feelings; student leaders' choice of a white ribbon,
which they argued could be understood as a both a collective (but
not nationalist) gesture and a personal expression of mourning, peace,
or hope, became a target of national derision as "un-American." The
chancellor bowed to conservative pressures and overrided
the students' decision, promising that red, white, and blue ribbons
would be made available to those patriots who loved "America."
However, he did not see the need to address the death threats and
racial slurs sent to members of the student body or the campus newspaper as a result of the controversy; perhaps these are "acceptable" expressions
of patriotism
and remembrance,
or merely incidental (rather than constitutive, or emerging in a dangerous liaison),
whereas the elasticity of meanings and emotions attached to a
white ribbon --including the hope for peace-- is not--?
(For the record,
I wore my "We Are All Billie Jean" pink tee shirt
and my black socks with the glow-in-the-dark skulls as
my private, sartorial protest against the US mobilization for war.)
These other forbidden feelings, then, are small fissures in the
normative discourses of sentimental citizenship --populated, for instance, most tragically by grieving
widows or abandoned children-- and can reveal the political instrumentality of
"right feelings" and their other contradictions in multiple
ways.
This one, for instance: "My father was one of those people
who was supposed to be in the city that day but didn't go in that
morning due to a freak coincidence. I hate him. I wish he'd died in the
attacks, because then memorializing him would have been easy. I wouldn't
have ever had to hate him again because he would have been one of the
people lost in 9/11. As we waited to get in touch with him, I prayed
we'd never find him. No one knows this."
Or this one: "I'll admit my
first thought was, 'Thank God, I won't have to hear [name withheld] bitch
about her marriage anymore.' Her husband worked in the WTC and they were
on the road to a messy divorce. Of course, then I spoke to my friend,
who was now the proud widow of a martyr -- and has since claimed full
benefits. The hypocrisy of her attitude, especially as she spoke about
him in the reverent tone normally reserved for saints when he was once
known as TB (short for 'The Bastard'), nearly made me physically ill."
I, of course, had "inappropriate" feelings all
over the place, and I still believe "Bin Laden and the
Boxcutters" would be a brilliant name for a punk band.