Journal Entries

I've been racking my brain trying to think of how to fit my blog in this week. If you follow me, you know that I will be writing everyday, but not on the blog, and anytime I write outside of the blog, I typically forget about my little bloggy.

What I've decided to do is share some of my journal entries from the semester. During the course of the semester I had to handwrite two pages a week. Not a small job, but not an extremely difficult one either. Typically, I wrote in my journal when something about our required reading, or a classroom discussion particularly interested me.

The entries should speak for themselves, but if not I'll add some small notes in red or blue or purple or whatever color tickles my fancy that day. Savvy? I hope you enjoy.

Week 1


Today in class the professor asked (in an "of course" sort of way) what was wrong with the phrase "Noble Savage." I barely remember what was said, because my mind began to reel. What is wrong with "Noble Savage?" Only everything! First of all, "Noble Savage" is a label and like all labels it can never be accurate because of it's tendency to generalize. That's basic. Labels will always work better to exclude people than to include and hence cause bigger problems than they, may originally seem to solve. What good has come of labels like, "Liberal," "conservative," "Democrat," "Republican" and "Independent," other than to separate and cause argument for argument's sake.
Further than that however is the fact that "Noble Savage" is harmful because of its double term. "Noble" has positive connotations and "Savage" (unless talking about Fred) has negative connotations. Labels notoriously create "others" better than they create themselves. For example instead of changing the label "Savage," in adding a "Noble" the "other" Savage is instantly created; the not-noble Savage must exist. Or else, why distinguish?
Perhaps even more harmful than that, though is the other "other" that is created. The other that is implied is the "Noble" non-savage. This one is harder to communicate but I believe I am going in the right direction here. What or who are you if you are not a "Noble Savage?" Are you a Noble or a Savage? Now, if you do not consider yourself to be a Savage are you necessarily noble? No. And the opposite isn't true either. Would anyone admit to being a "Savage Noble?" Probably not, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist. 
It is unfair then to the people being labeled as "Savage," "Noble Savage" or otherwise that the very label which is meant to promote a positive image, is the very label that will prevent them from being considered anything other than "savage."
The same is true for sex/gender. There does not only exist the Masculine Male and Feminine Female and every polarized other that they create, but all the variations in between that would be impossible to label. I'm hoping to find out, in this class, that there is such a thing as Women's Writing and that it, either, has nothing to do with being a female, or everything to do with it, rendering it unrecognizable. Anything in between and I wonder how we would study it.


Please remember that these are arguments as they slip from my grey matter and like newborns, not fully formed or strong enough to hold themselves up. ...Yet!