Reflection
1) I think this project most certainly created a new type of discourse. Through the use of a media (blogging) that allows multiple ways of viewing (by category, tag, or chronological) this project has created a mass of ideas and affects as opposed to a novel or essay that adheres to a linear idea of step by step logic and understanding. Despite being mostly aesthetic the project does offer many ideas from a historical perspective that allow for reason and belief to play a minor role in understanding of the whole idea. Despite the many different media used, each piece resonates with the next to produce the “sound” of a war bride experience and cultural assimilation.
2) Throughout this semester long experiment I have learned a new way to approach literature. Rather than just reading for memorization or trying to comprehend each one of the character’s emotions, I have learned to focus on the affect expressed by the author and the methods the author uses to express theses. Also I learned to see the connections of literary endeavors to not only other artistic realms but also to all other facets of society, like history and science.
The experiment brought to light many ideas, the most outstanding to me being the idea of memory and forgetting. Before this class I made no distinction between active and passive agency, but by the end I even analyzed my agency of opening a door, or squeezing a stress ball. The impact of history on the future was another idea that had a major effect on my thinking this semester. The idea that history intertwines so inherently with our daily lives never occurred to me before, but again I now think about it constantly. The advantage of this new perspective is that now my mind is open to a completely new realm of literature understanding and experience and no longer based solely on rational thinking.
This experiment, and blogging especially, made me realize I am an active producer of American culture, not a passive receiver of information. My participation in this experiment may seem to be just a class assignment but really, I may just have moved a grain of salt in the vast desert of the world wide web. This final project made the biggest impact as I was responsible, just like our authors, for expressing the experience of someone else in history. This task is seemingly impossible, and yet through the assemblage of intuitions and affectations, one can get an experience that is unique to a certain time and place and person.
