Crazy Monster #5: It's All About Capital
Generic Asian Man: I have more money than you!
Crazy Monster: Oh Yeah? I have more cultural capital than you!
Generic Asian Man: I create your cultural capital!!
Crazy Monster: You little misrecognized structured bitch.
I drew this cartoon during a seminar discussion on Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction. Bourdieu is HEAVY - everytime I read him I become so depressed because I feel like no matter what, the working class, or the marginalized are always fucked. So to counterbalance this - I drew a cartoon, a la Bourdieu - but with a silly side. Would he find it funny? I don't know - but to understand this cartoon if you haven't read his work yet, here's a quick primer.
Bourdieu tried to show that there are more ways than just using money to dominate people - and that people use "culture" to also reproduce their superiority. So he conceptualized this as "cultural capital."
For example, he said public education is a way social hierarchy is reproduced. When the school sends their students on an art museu fieldtrip - this is form of trying to enforce the dominant class's taste of what is considered to be "artistic" and valuable for education. Bourdieu was trying to point out that the contradiction with public education is that it's supposed to INCREASE equality, but instead it PERPETUATES inequality. When teachers and textbooks force into black kids that they need to know about European art and memorize European history, this is one way of reproducing the hierarchy of whites on top, and blacks on bottom. Of course textbooks give Blacks one month for their anti-slavery heros, and a chapter on third world Africa, - and of course we say the West colonized Africa, but one month of heros or 1 chapter of lesson plans is not enough. Even though we are past the plantation days, school classrooms and curriculum ensure that racial superiority stays alive in more subversive ways. It's all one big structure of structured domination! AHHHHH!
Read and Laugh at Crazy Monster #1-4
Comments
But I didn't. I mean, questioning the intentions of my all-knowing history teacher? Taboooo...
I guess, at least a little, now I know better; but that's only because I've been taught that it's OKAY to ask questions....to question the actions of others, to question the intentions of others, to question what others are attempting to teach me and to question how they are teaching it.
I remember I had a TA last Spring who expressed her frustrations for our class she was TAing for. I wondered..."wow, this person is questioning the legitimacy of the class SHE is helping us with." It struck me as bold that she was so liberally questioning something which, in my mind, had been glorified to the point that I felt questioning it would be "wrong." In a sense you, Tricia, my TA I had that Spring, led by example and, in turn, one of the things I got out of CAT 3 was that very lesson you taught so effectively: "It's OKAY to question...watch me...I'm questioning too."
Thanks, Tricia, for helping me find this little token of knowledge that has helped greatly in my journey to understanding the way I have chosen to see "things". I hope you're doing well, and I hope you're continuing to help others so selflessly and effectively, like you helped me.
Juan Vazquez