The most amazing thing I learned was Prof. Jackson's mention of there having been no internet when Piercy wrote He, She, and It. Her creation of nets and bases must have been as difficult as me now imagining life without the internet, a feat I really don't even want to try. Our society would be completely different. I'm amazed at how Piercy somewhat foresaw and created that.
During our discussion of why Piercy made her charactres Jewish, I found it curious that none of us raised the simple question, "Was Piercy Jewish?" And voila, not only was she raised Jewish, but her grandmother's name was Hannah-a tidbit that just caused me to...giggle. In fact, Piercy's critiques on a male dominated society and her seeming bias of the benefits of females make more sense after reading her biography. As for the Jewish focus of the novel, I do feel she hit on an excellent cultural example. Which other religion contains myths of creating people from nonliving material, in so similar a process as the science fiction notion of a cyborg? And have any other religions been so extremely forced to live in secluded towns, but still served a function in society? Multiple details made the Jews the perfect medium for paralleling the futuristic portion of Piercy's tale. Did I mention she loved cats in her childhood? Or that she had three husbands?
Aside from how much more understandable her motives are when you look into her personal history, we looked at some interesting arguments in class, including, "Two guys a girl and a pizza place, except the pizza place is one of the charactres." (I'm not sure who to credit with that idea).
We never really came to a resolution on whether you have to be able to physically inflict yourself on your environment in order to be granted personhood. Personally, I don't feel the physical aspect has anything to do with personhood, and we were much closer to an answer with Jack's idea of being able to impose your choices on the world. Both Yod and Joseph certainly "imposed" themselves on the world, but beyond a certain point Joseph couldn't make his own choices, and Yod was certainly closer because he not only was capable of affecting the world physically, but of affecting the lives, emotions, and choices of those around him as well. He fits into the human structure and uses human terms to impose himself on the human world. If I had been on the council, after exhausting my allotted 3 minutes of oratory, I would have voted to give Yod personhood. :)
During our discussion of why Piercy made her charactres Jewish, I found it curious that none of us raised the simple question, "Was Piercy Jewish?" And voila, not only was she raised Jewish, but her grandmother's name was Hannah-a tidbit that just caused me to...giggle. In fact, Piercy's critiques on a male dominated society and her seeming bias of the benefits of females make more sense after reading her biography. As for the Jewish focus of the novel, I do feel she hit on an excellent cultural example. Which other religion contains myths of creating people from nonliving material, in so similar a process as the science fiction notion of a cyborg? And have any other religions been so extremely forced to live in secluded towns, but still served a function in society? Multiple details made the Jews the perfect medium for paralleling the futuristic portion of Piercy's tale. Did I mention she loved cats in her childhood? Or that she had three husbands?
Aside from how much more understandable her motives are when you look into her personal history, we looked at some interesting arguments in class, including, "Two guys a girl and a pizza place, except the pizza place is one of the charactres." (I'm not sure who to credit with that idea).
We never really came to a resolution on whether you have to be able to physically inflict yourself on your environment in order to be granted personhood. Personally, I don't feel the physical aspect has anything to do with personhood, and we were much closer to an answer with Jack's idea of being able to impose your choices on the world. Both Yod and Joseph certainly "imposed" themselves on the world, but beyond a certain point Joseph couldn't make his own choices, and Yod was certainly closer because he not only was capable of affecting the world physically, but of affecting the lives, emotions, and choices of those around him as well. He fits into the human structure and uses human terms to impose himself on the human world. If I had been on the council, after exhausting my allotted 3 minutes of oratory, I would have voted to give Yod personhood. :)
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