Day two - Panopticism, society, and crazy French dudes!

Pet Peeve Of The Day: "White People", once again. There's no real way around it, and it was probably the best brief summary of the situation possible, but I still see it as one of those big warning flags that a rant is incoming.

The main point I'd like to hit on, though, is when the guy said (a bit defensively) "What if I don't want to be a part of the system?" I was really tempted to say "there's a cell for you too." The whole "rebel against society" act/persona/whatever is so standardized it's nothing more than another facet of society, and still most definitely a panoptic structure in its own right. Example: "I'm a rebel, I own a Dell." It's laughable because in the little box of "I'm an artsy rebel against society", the Mac is the only acceptable computer. I'd continue on and talk about how Macs are nazi computers, but that's irony beside the point.

The other thing that I noticed - he was wearing a baseball hat backwards. Way to fit the stereotype of the rebel, there. When was the last time you saw a "rebel against society" wearing a fedora? Or a clown hat? Or an early renaissance jousting helm? Wake up! You're not rebelling against anything! You've bought into the commercial ideal of the iRebel, which is (to quote a friend), "just the same with a different paintjob". (And, I might add, more money spent on your part.)

And then we get into commercialization of culture, which was really covered quite nicely in class.

To the person who asked simply "Why?" when it came to Foucault: Why not? Are you so afraid of new ideas that you're trying to pretend they don't matter? Do you just not like to think?

Overall opinion on the class: Guardedly optomistic. This is making me think, and as long as it keeps going in that vein instead of turning into a platform for indoctrination, it'll be of more value than many classes I've taken.