This recent news story of a woman who tried to destroy a Gaugin painting touches upon many of the themes covered this year in this course. The power of images to incite extreme emotions in people causing some to want to deface the image like with Orfili's image of the Madonna, the politicization of the body, the idea of "low" (sexuality, homosexuality) being represented in "high" media (Gaugin's painting at the National Gallery in Washington DC).
What I find interesting is how larger, ongoing, unresolved problems in society's structures become manifested in the behaviour of certain individuals. These individuals are then often scapegoated as having individual problems or quirks, and the rest of society, the rest of us, have no responsibility to bear for what they do.
While of course we are individuals who make our own choices for the most part, this course and others are showing me how my choices (and everyone's choices) are not only limited within the scope of our experience, what we have access to, who we know (network theory), what kind of social capital we have acquired, etc., but also our choices are limited by what we can imagine which is largely based on social norms and whatever the hegemonic structures we are located in dictate that we are even allowed to imagine. From liberal capitalism, to modern romance, to gender roles, to imagined communities (that work by exclusion as in immigration policies, and by inclusion of unseen other members of the community), and beyond, many people are unable, untrained or unsure how to imagine things outside the norms of their societies.
Education of other ways that people imagine themselves and the world helps in unblocking our imagination, and ultimately, once we harness the power of imagination, only then can we begin to consider how we are formed by the worlds we inhabit, and how we can begin to affect any change in our worlds.
This has been a wonderful class. Thanks to Professor Kalmar, to Sharon, and to all the students for participating in this mind-expanding experience.
Peace
Kiran Mehdee
thanks for this, Kiran. I too enjoyed this class, and the lively class discussions. It is always a pleasure to interact with such an engaged group of students.
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