Post-class notes from Monday, November 16

I.

Our discussion of the Paris attacks engaged a number of important topics. I noted the following:

• We wondered about our own feelings of the reality of the texts. One of us pointed to the difference between the looming threat of nuclear exchange during the Cold War as compared with the lived experience of terrorism since 9/11. Yet for many of us, the attacks felt unreal and distant; we've become inured to the numbers or our position as a citizen of another country makes us less feel less connected.
• Many of us expressed discomfort with the idea of revenge, but some of us also distinguished political acts of violence (e.g. terrorism) from the kinds of crime we usually talk about (e.g. non-violent offenses or "social" crimes).
• In the context of terrorism, we asked: What is safety? What are retribution and/or rehabilitation? Can we rehabilitate "brainwashed" members of ISIS? Are these vulnerable people trained in evil like Jehar, the younger of the Tsarnaev brothers (known as the Boston Bombers). But why do we accept certain people as evil? One of us observed that white terrorists seem to be born evil while brown terrorists become this way.
• The world's reaction struck us as reactionary: there is a feeling that something must be done in response yet the deeper causes and problems remain unaddressed. There are ongoing fears of being Muslim in the United States (not to mention in France). There are ongoing conflicts in the Bi-Co. The world seems to be ending in fire.
• We are at a loss when it comes to "what to do" about ISIS. No option seems desirable.
• The attacks on Paris also call attention to attacks all over the world, many of which are ignored by Americans. Yet the layers seem so convoluted that imagining new options seems impossible? The tangled histories of colonialism make these historical issues as well. 
• We talked about forgiveness and legitimate anger. Who's allowed to respond with anger? As Rankine points out, acceptable anger is racialized in the United States. How has the right to be angry and who has the right to be violent?

II.

Experimental essays by Meera, Abby, and Sula connected some of these themes to consciousness-raising during women's liberation (Meera) while also opening up questions about the radicalism of the movement (Abby) as well as the figuration of "mamas" during SNCC's work in Mississippi (Sula). We did not have sufficient time to return to how our readings from the Freedom Struggles of the 1960s and 1970s help us respond to Michelle Alexander's call for a "new social movement" in response to the "new American Jim Crow." This remains our task for next week!