Society And Desire - Essay Example

SOCIETY AND DESIRE (SOCIOLOGY) Investigate some of these implications with the help of several continental thinkers as well as other contemporary writers who find this approach useful INTRODUCTION: SOCIOLOGY. This new science is generally known as the study of society where a man or a woman lives in. what is also studied what he or she does in the society or environment that he lives in. The sociologist is the scientist that studies what are common and unorthodox reactions a man or woman does in any society situation(Kirby,81-96). The sociologist studies the person does or does not do when he or she is alone or when he or she is with his close friends and relatives or when he or she is in an association or institution or groups and also how and why the actions or reactions in one given situation may be different in another situation. The Sociologist studies the also the global interactions between and among persons from different countries around the world. Sociology is the study of each member of the society. Therefore, sociology is the study of the social lives of groups, societies and people often called social interaction. DESIRE. According to Leonard Erogatis, Ph.D.,(Erogatis, 86-111) he stated that he stated on Oct 19, 2006 that when a man desires to have a sexual drive than a woman, his desire is more intense than a woman’s sexual desire. The sociological question of what happens biologically when a woman desires(Foucault, 1-13) to have sex. The research was done in Australia to determine whether the physical characteristics and actions of her sexual partner was a factor for her to desire the sexual advances or whether the sexual desire was a combination of both the sexual partner and her internal biological drives. The Australian study was done on woman from many countries. The results were astoundingly the same with women from many countries. One of the findings was that the women interchanged the word desire with sexual arousal especially when women talked about responsive desire that followed after her sexual partner continuously stimulated her sexual desire. Women were talking about their ability to become sexually aroused. The Australia study showed that Desire in women was a combination of behaviors, feelings and thoughts. BODY EXPLAIN Identity and meaning are always relational “entities” that have no individual autonomy. Entity is defined as a separate body, unit or article or being or person or individual or even creature. In short, Identity is a separate entity and meaning is another separate entity. Rational means to exercise the reasoning ability or of sound mind or sane or, to put it more plainly. IDENTITY is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy. In the article authored by Elizabeth Grosz entitled Intolerable Ambiguity: Freaks(Grosz, 55-66) as/at the Limit, she stated that there are many classes of freaks as discussed in contemporary cultural and intellectual life. She stated that discussing freaks does not have good taste or personal politeness in civilized and politically correct milieu. The perception of difference is an erotic process through which we are forged as bodily beings whose very identities are constantly shifting. Elizabeth Grosz discussed that the gross physical disorders will decrease if not eliminate that erotic process. People with these gross physical disorders are called FREAKS(Yuan, 368-384), CURIOSITIES, PRODIGIES and MONSTROSITIES, who are poor suffering individuals with observable disturbing bodily disorders and with stunted limb or distorted figures. Examples are : Siamese twins, dwarfs, giants, hunchbacks, humans with parasitic or autositic attachments or legless or armless wonders, half creatures, hermaphrodites, rubber men and many more freak classifications. The people who see these freaks either feel their spines tingling with fear or sometimes feel pity for these societal outcasts. The freaks are sometimes used to entertain normal growing people(Foucault, 1-13) by putting these freaks as display items for the consumption, pity or ridicule by normal human beings. One group of freaks have bodily infirmities like having one hand or foot lost at childbirth or otherwise. The freak is not gifted with unusual aptitudes. Another group of person are not classified as freaks. This group is composed of the very intellectual or bright ones and the athletic ones or those who excel physically(Foucault, 92-102) such as basketball players, billiard players or swimmers or even bowlers. Another group of freaks are the genetically or hereditarily disadvantaged such as abnormal elasticity of the skin or albinism, the growth of human horns, microcephaly (pinheads), dwarfism or gigantism, multiple births and others. Dwarfism is caused by tumors in the pituitary glands. Still another group of freaks are intentionally maimed, crippled, one or more parts of the human body is removed painfully or distorted by unscrupulous individuals, often parents for profit. Dr. Moreau created two headed creatures, hermaphroditic cattle, freemartins and interspecies of hybrids for false scientific or perverse reasons. In short, Freaks are human being who live out lives that are not the usual doings of most normal human beings. One particular freak that needs to be mentioned is the hermaphrodite. The chromosomal sex of such person is a woman but this particular freak classification is identified by such person having both the male human being’s testicles and the female human beings ovary glands. Our sense of self emerges through difference when a normal person is compared or contrasted with a freak. The difference can result to the freak being made an outcast from normal human gatherings. A hunchback maybe laughed at when he or she is seen walking by a group of bystanders. Whether we accept it or not, there is still a bit of contrasting or comparing done when a man and a woman applies for the same job. It is clearly evident that IDENTITY is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy because freaks can be identified as dwarf and at the same time can also be called a child. The freak is identified as crippled and at the same time a Christian and also a woman in love. The statement that IDENTITY is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy is well illustrated in book of Foucault in the topic of Panopticism(Foucaul,368-384). He stated that the situation described where the town is divided between the sick and healthy. The sick are quarantined in their own homes and locked. The main purpose is for prevent the sick from mingling with the healthy residents of the town because the sick may infect the health ones and increase the number sick inhabitants of the town. The town syndic is responsible for the daily inspection and reporting which residents are sick and who are not as well as the degree or gravity of the sickness that is plaguing the town. The danger here is that there is a possibility that a small percentage of the residents that have been diagnosed as sick have been wrongly diagnosed and now they are sentenced to be quarantined. The person could have been infected with a less contagious or infectious sickness. There is a strong possibility that two or more diseases will have the same symptoms. How our sense of self emerges through relationship. When a normal man walks with a woman or child, the relationship between the two persons will be emphasized through their physical appearance, their culture and how the communicate with each other. Communication could be through holding of hands, or sweet eye to eye glances or exchanging loving smiles with the other person. The statement that IDENTITY is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy as clearly explained by Roger Benjamin(Benjamin, 73-81). Some people feel that the Aborigines of Australia are identified as being exploited or made victims of First World Commodification. But Some sectors in Australia identify the Aborigines’ art as empowerment or called savvy marketers moving toward greater self-determination. The statement that IDENTITY is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy is clearly explained with the article Bad Aboriginal Art by Eric Michaels when he stated that the Aboriginal art is of dot paintings is described as the flavor of the month in the three major sites of New York, Paris and Munich(Michaels, 59-73). This same art are also identified as the second rate sometimes labeled cultural cringe. In fact, Australia can identify the Aborigine art as colonial leaning or creative The statement that IDENTITY is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy is clearly explained by Grosz when this person stated that the a person is sometimes described as mind and body(Grosz, 130-62). The body and the modes of percepting senses are not merely physical or physiological and they are not only psychological results of physical causes. The body and mind is also identified as the connectedness or consciousness as it is incarnated where the mind is described as the always embodies and always based on corporeal and sensory relations. The statement that IDENTITY is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy is clearly explained with the topic entitled The Intertwining – The Chiasm(Grosz, 130-62) Because philosophy declares itself a reflection or coincidence that it prejudices(Allen, 130-62) and then it begins everything all over again by rejecting the instruments of reflection and intuition that provided themselves. The statement that IDENTITY is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy is clearly explained in the article On Nature’s Tendency to acquire habits in the book entitled Signs of Meaning in the Universe (Hoffmeyer, ) life is predetermined by the laws of nature or by fate so that nothing in this world will happen by chance. The statement that IDENTITY is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy is clearly explained in the Book Biosemiotics: The Semiotic Web 1991(Hoffmeyer, ) because appearance are deceitful. Wrinkles, gestures, carriage and others tell a story about our lives. This means that we can be identified at one stage as fat and at another stage a s slim or when we are ten years old, we were identified as long haired and when we were older we could be described as bald headed. MEANING is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy because a person can be called a freak by a particular class of persons in one place or time but at the same time the freak is not a freak in another place where there are too many of the freaks and the normal persons in one place is the freak in the other place. A very example is when Yao Yan, of the China visits his home town, he could be considered a freak because most Chinese are less than six feet in height. But when Yao Yan of the Houston Rockets will visit the an Australian University of New South Wales, he is considered normal and not a freak because the Australians, who came from the United Kingdom, have an average height of six feet and above. To the Australians, the average sized Chinese could be considered freaks when such Chinese with a height of five feet five inches visits New South Wales. A freak is defined simply as a person who does not belong to a group. A child who is deft mute is a freak in a normal human society who are not deft mutes. But a person who is not a deft mute can be classified, using the basic definition of freaks, as a freak when he or she is surrounded by deft mutes because the deft mutes will communicate with each other using hand sign languages. Another comment about the statement that MEANING is a rational entity that has no individual is when a fifteen year old child goes to kinder school. The children will look to him as a freak because most of children with the age of fifteen years old are already high school students. But The child who is fifteen years old will think of the children who are his kinder classmates as freaks because they do not have the same mental age or intelligence as the child. The statement MEANING is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy is also true with the writing by book of Foucault(Foucault, 195-228) as he stated in the above paragraph stating that the statement that IDENTITY is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy, The definition that a person has the plague can wrongly done because a person who has similar symptoms as the plague may actually no have the infectious and contagious plague at all but have the common cold or even the flu or even just a simple headache or stomach ache. The statement that MEANING is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy is clearly explained in the Report From Australia article entitled Aboriginal Art: Exploitation or Empowerment? Authored by Roger Benjamin because life according the Caucasian Australians is the education of their young in a British based school system. Life according to the Aborigines is giving their young ones the education that based on the Aborigines’ primitive style of learning. The Aborigine young are taught the honor the Aborigine’s tribal laws which have been handed down from generation to generation. The money the Aborigines receive for selling their art gives them a meaning that their paintings are loved and wanted by Caucasian or White Australians. The Caucasian Australians, on the other hand, find the meaning of the Aborigine art as a low priced high quality work of art. MEANING is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy because it is clearly explained with the article Bad Aboriginal Art by Eric Michaels when he stated that the Aboriginal art is of dot paintings the aborigines described their art as the flavor of the month or eye catcher in New York, Paris and Munich but some quarters identify the same aborigine art as colonial meaning the aborigine art is not highly regarded as compared with the Caucasian Australian art because they are described as second rate. The statement The statement that MEANING is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy is clearly explained(Grosz, ) with the Book Pages 86 to 111 which stated that the a person is sometimes described as mind and body. Another meaning for the mind and body is described by Merleau-Ponty as being to the world or a subject committed to the world. The human mind is described as the captain of the human body ship. The statement that MEANING is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy is clearly explained with the topic entitled The Intertwining – The Chiasm Because philosophy gives so many meanings to simple everyday situations. For Philosophy describes itself as a reflection and also another meaning which is coincidence. The statement that MEANING is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy is clearly explained in the article On Nature’s Tendency to acquire habits(Hoffmeyer, 1993) in the book entitled Signs of Meaning in the Universe by Hoffmeyer J., and Published by B.J., Haveland and published in Indianapolis and, because is defined as people deciding what they want to do with it and also life’s meaning is that what happens to man is fate where he or she is predestined to die by car accident or by cancer or by heart attack. When people divide their own bodies in many ways into alien parts that it may be repulsed as part of a larger social process that determines how we experience the world. This can be clearly explained by the example of the hunchback is looked down upon by some people because their unique bended back is contrasted with the normal backs of other people found near to the hunchback. The lame and the freaks maybe looked upon with pity as one rare part of the larger normal human beings. The statement that MEANING is a rational entity that has no individual autonomy is clearly explained in the Book Biosemiotics(Hoffmeyer, ): because to a person is defined as fat ten years ago and slim today or a guy can be described as grade single a year back and married at this present juncture in time. Some people divided their bodies into alien parts that may delight them as part of a larger social process that determines how we experience the world. A woman will lower her neckline to show her cleavage or the top portion of her big luscious breast in order to attract her male crush or object of sexual desire. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, in our human society It is clear from the above data that identity and meaning are always relational “entities” that have no individual autonomy. The can be used in any two given situations. Bibliography 1.Grosz, E.,‘Intolerable Ambiguity: Freaks as/at the Limit’ in R. Garland Thomson (ed.), Freakery : Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, New York, New York University Press, 1996, pp. 55-66. 2.Yuan, D. D., ‘The Celebrity Freak: Michael Jackson’s Grotesque Glory’ in Garland Thomson, R. (ed.), Freakery : Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, New York, New York University Press, 1996, pp 368-384. 3.Foucault, M., ‘Panopticism’ in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Harmondsworth Middlesex, Penguin Books, 1977, 200-205, 215-16. 4.Foucault, M., "We Other Victorians" in The History of Sexuality Vol 1, Penguin, 1990, 1-13. 5.Foucault, M., "Method" in The History of Sexuality Vol 1, Penguin, 1990, 92-102. 6.Kirby, V., “Out of Africa: ‘Our Bodies Ourselves?’” in O. Nnaemeka (ed), Female Circumcision and the Politics of Knowledge: African Women in Imperialist Discourses, Westport and London: Praeger, pp. 81-96. 7.O’Bryan, C. J., “Interior/Exterior” in Carnal Art: Orlan’s Refacing, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press,2005. 8.Benjamin, R., ‘Aboriginal Art: Exploitation or Empowerment?’, Art in America, No. 78, 7, July 1990, 73-81. 9.Michaels, E., ‘Bad Aboriginal Art’ Art and Text, No. 78, No. 28, March/May,1988, 59-73. 10.Newspaper clippings, aboriginal satellite technologies, Elizabeth Durack and the Eddie Burrup controversy. 11.Grosz, E., “Lived Bodies: Phenomenology and the Flesh” in Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1994. 12.Merleau-Ponty, M., ‘The Intertwining: The Chiasm’ in The Visible and the Invisible, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1968, pp. 130-62. 13.Hoffmeyer, J., “Repeating: On Nature’s Tendency to Acquire Habits” trans. B. J. Haveland in Signs of Meaning in The Universe Bloomington Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1993. 14.Hoffmeyer, J., “Some Semiotic Aspects of the Psycho-Physical Relation: The Endo-Exosemiotic Boundary” in T. A. Sebeok and J. Umiker-Sebeok (eds.), Biosemiotics: the Semiotic Web 1991 Berlin and New York, Mouton de Gruyter, 1992. Benjamin, R., Aboriginal Art, Exploitation or Empowerment? Read More