{"id":1164,"date":"2019-03-14T00:43:26","date_gmt":"2019-03-14T00:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/?p=1164"},"modified":"2019-03-14T00:43:33","modified_gmt":"2019-03-14T00:43:33","slug":"laurens-response-to-anne-fingers-comrade-luxemburg-and-comrade-gramsci-pass-each-other-in-the-congress-of-the-second-international-on-the-10th-of-march-1912","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/uncategorized\/laurens-response-to-anne-fingers-comrade-luxemburg-and-comrade-gramsci-pass-each-other-in-the-congress-of-the-second-international-on-the-10th-of-march-1912\/","title":{"rendered":"Lauren’s Response to Anne Finger’s “Comrade Luxemburg and Comrade Gramsci Pass Each Other in the Congress of the Second International on the 10th of March, 1912”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Anne Finger\u2019s fictionalized historical\nstory Comrade Luxemburg and Comrade\nGramsci Pass Each Other in the Congress of the Second International on the 10th<\/sup>\nof March, 1912, <\/em>much can be said about the fictionalization of two\nonce-living people within the scope of disabled autonomy. However, the passage\nthat was most intriguing was the author\u2019s set-up of a fake dialogue between the\ncharacters of Rosa and Antonio. In this I say characters, because as the piece\ncheerfully admits, the real disabled people lost to history are simply being acted\nby the author. In focus is the single conversation they are allowed to have,\nand the direction it steers. This passage makes a larger point about the visibility\nof privilege and what constitutes privilege for the person experiencing it. In\ntheir dialogue, Rosa wonders if she has gotten to her high rank in the\nSocialist party because of, in the author\u2019s words, her \u201cde-gendering\u201d (115). She\nis of course referring to the system of ableism that constructs the disabled body\nas less sexually and romantically desirable, even sexless. This construct\nallows those with disabilities to be othered further within society, but in a\nkey twist here, subverts a system of misogyny. The pressure to be desirable\u2014literally\navailable for sex\u2014 is a trait forced on women by a patriarchal structure. A woman\nseen as sexless within social perception is less of, or not at all, a woman.\nTherefore Rosa is enjoying the freedom that she feels by not<\/em> being seen as feminine within society, giving her a masculine\nboost in a masculine world. This freedom, however, should not be interpreted as\na privilege. It stands on shaky ground, as evidenced by Antonio\u2019s initial interruption\nto her sentence, saying \u201cde-sexualization\u201d instead of Rosa\u2019s preferred language\n(115). She thinks that after being viewed as nonsexual for so long, and gaining\nsome benefits from it, \u201chis words [made] her a bit prickly\u201d (115). I interpret\nthis as a telling stab of fear. By insisting on the language of gender instead\nof sex, she is using a less charged concept, and shifting the conversation into\nher comfort zone away from any discussion of desirability. The mere reference\nto sex by a man makes her uncomfortable. Rosa, as a character, and I would\nassume the author, as a woman, know what I am referring to here. Her \u201cprivilege,\u201d\nas it is, is not in fact a gift because it is always accompanied by fear. It is\nalways followed by the persistent what\nif.<\/em> Privilege by definition is invisible, it is not something that the\nperson of higher status ever needs to think about, and therefore it is sometimes\nhard-pressed to be acknowledged by the privileged person. Disprivileged people\nare the ones who must navigate the world with more caution. The concept that\nher \u201cluck\u201d might change is not something Rosa can forget, it is extremely\nvisible to her even as she tries to ignore and deflect from it. It cannot be\nconsidered an actual gift. There are many small complications to the system of privilege\/disprivilege\nsuch as this one fictionalized scenario. Another example might include the \u201cprivilege\u201d\nof a transgender person who can pass as cisgender within the binary structure,\nas opposed to a transgender person who cannot or does not want to. The person in\nthis scenario, like Rosa, must always worry about the possibility of perception\nand the harm that might come with it. Essentially, the point remains the same: an\nactual higher standing of privilege is not, at least initially, invisible to\nthe person who possesses it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Word count of paragraph excluding citations: 590<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pledge: \u201cI hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have\nneither given nor received unauthorized help on this work.\u201d -Lauren C. Magee<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finger, Anne. \u201cComrade Luxemburg and Comrade Gramsci Pass Each Other in the Congress of the Second International on the 10th<\/sup> of March, 1912.\u201d PDF file.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Anne Finger\u2019s fictionalized historical story Comrade Luxemburg and Comrade Gramsci Pass Each Other in the Congress of the Second International on the 10th of March, 1912, much can be said about the fictionalization of two once-living people within the scope of disabled autonomy. However, the passage that was most intriguing was the author\u2019s set-up … Continue reading “Lauren’s Response to Anne Finger’s “Comrade Luxemburg and Comrade Gramsci Pass Each Other in the Congress of the Second International on the 10th of March, 1912””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/papJgd-iM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1165,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions\/1165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}