Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

    From her work, I learnt a new word Homosocial, a word difference from homosexual; oppositely, it describes social bonds between persons of the same sex. Sedgwick argues that "sexuality" and  "desire" were not a historial phenomenon but carefully managed social constracts. She also uses Foucault's theories of the history of sexuality to reproduce Feminism and Gay and Lesbian Studies.

       It also arises my curiosity of the difference between female and male.

Other informations Sex and Gender; Sex and Gender and Sexuality

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Talking Black: Critical signs of the Tiems

    For long time, I have been wondering about race problem in America. I feel the whites really misunderstand others especially on the African American culture. Gates give people a frank analysis in his work to argue with those bias from tradition. Besides, the black text or the black tradition is valued to the literary field. 

Martha C. Nussbaum

    After studying her work, I cannot help to think of an old saying by an ancient Chinese author---- Women are made of water. It may too rough by my translation, but I really want to express my feeling for her " Cultivating Humanity"---- as soft as water spreading into my mind.
About her interpretation on plot of Sophocles, the cultivation acts as nymph to connect the drama and the audience. This way, a work profoundly awakes the sleeping soul.

Here the arts play a vital role, cultivating powers of imagination that are essential to citizenship.

    This theory can be seen in many literary works. In Emily Bronte's Wuthering Height, the figure Heathcliff at the dying bed finding his original humanity hiding in the deepest part of his heart. Though he did his revenge to both families crudely, his unfair life experience draws the sympathy of the audience to his inside feeling. His rage and revenge are seen as the reimburse from an unjustified life. However, a wild life was eventually cultivated on his deathbed to back to his original soul so that the novel at the end brings a light of hope to people. The work practice the cultivating power to the audience which agrees with Nussbaum's theory of Cultivating Humanity.

Stephen J. Greenblatt

                                                             

Review from Resonance and Wonder 

     "The aesthetic wonder that texts arouse as well as their historical resonance". Greenblatt named the New Historicism which is an interest in the embeddedness of cultural objects in the contingencies of history. It is a distictive literary criticism from the traditional historicism, which opposite to the formalism and structuralism. The theory is a culturally poetic study on explaining the literature relates to history and politics. Another word, he emphasizes on the interaction of reality and history and politics, rather than thinking the history as just an event under a certain time.
    New historicism is different from the others like marxism as a doctrine, instead, it is more like a practice. First, the literature is a historic reflection which needs to be studied and researched on its historic characters and events. Secondly, it is also important to study the author because the author would be varied on characteristics, different times and environments. Thirdly, it is no necessary restoring in the traditional historicism---- to discover the affection of history on the context, while the context reflects the history.
    To conclude, according to his theory, the literature reflects the past and the present while the reality is led or affected by the literature---- "the touch of the real"---- re-creating the social and cultural negotiations of a historical moment.

Edward W Said

The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Oter. In addition the orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience.

    Orientalism is a structure created by western power, colonism. It has two meanings: From the linguistic study, culture and anthropology, orient and occient are distinct. From the politics, the overstatement of West about their own opinion or idea of Orient "represents part culturally and even ideologically", but not the actual one. In his work, middle-east exemplifies orientalism----for western people, it expresses either the oil provider or the potential terrorism. Thus, the orientalism is an incomplete perspective by the west which is controlled by the idea of procolonism.

    Besides, Said has the flaw on his theory---- he only focus on the middle-esat as the Orient. However, the middle-east can only represent part of orient. Therefore, in my opinion, he overlook the other part of asia to work on his theory.

Stanley Fish

A New Idea About Reading

    "There is no right way (formula) to read the text. " I would like Fish's idea because it makes sense for me to think actively while I am reading, rather than just collecting the stuffs from a text. For me, I think an active reading make the interaction between the author and the readers, this way could be as giving a life to a literary work. At same time, Fish's theories prove the necessity of literary criticism, which an extraordinary process on modern criticism.

    Stanley Fish gives the readers the infinite space to absorb the information from the literary works. He breaks the limitation from the convention view of the relationship between the audience and the book. If his view of "The text doesn't exist, it's only from the reader, and the reader makes the text" is true, it will undoubtedly give a push to the readers to read, to think, and create positively.
    His theory also emphasizes on the importance of reading. Reading is a process requires optional ideas. Without reading, a book would lose the meaning of its existence. While the author takes the role who introduce a group of informations to the reader, the reader would work on collecting those informations and create one's own thought about it. Yet the produce from reading a text varies among the people. Therefore, there is no a certain way to read, and the text is made by the readers.

Lennard Davis

http://www.lennarddavis.com/home.html

The Existence of Varied Bodies In a Same Big World

Review from Disability Studies

    
    The patient with mental problem is always relate to "insane" and "uncontrollable" or something with crime. Those irrational images with the bias or discriminations limit the space of living for the disable people. The most of them are excluded joining the society cause of the potentially inexplicable dread or obstruction, thus "Once a man is prescribed as psychiatrically “abnormal”, he is sentenced to death because they are being isolated, incarcerated and even eliminated. "

    The world we are living in contains varied kind of lives, and everybody is different. The one's own particular signs diversity the world. However, there is a standard ("disability comes into consciousness after the construction of the concept “normalcy”) to distinguish "abnormal" and "normal", which implies those "abnormal" are disable and deficient. According to Lennard Davis, "normal" and "average" appeared until 19th Centruy. Thus, there should not have had those "natural standard" in the world. While the standard was built, those outside the "standard" would be "abnormal, unit, defective".

Undoubtedly some people with any different features or appearances would be the objects for others whom to be judged as unusual strangers.

    Davis states how brutal the situation is for the disable people. It is like fascist to saluter by distinct the people with the theory of good human race. Because we are judging people with the "standard" which makes the "abnormal" people have to be hide, otherwise, the living space is too tight to stay.  A normal soul would be crushed by this way not cause of the furious, but the crude reality. 

    What if the world can think about this problem with a multiple point of view? "Then there is no 'hegemony of normalcy' which has violently makes people unfit to the norm excluded from society. The world is big, big enough to hold all the differences; the world is big, big enough to be enjoyed by everyone.