Feminism and Othering through Voyant Tool


After a class I took last semester with Dr. Slater about the literary theory, I become interested in knowing if there is any connection between feminism issue and colonialism matter. In term of othering, if we look form a feminine perspective I noticed that sometimes they call female as the man’s other. Lois Tyson in her book Critical Theory Today, states, “The word woman, therefore, has the same implications as the word other. A woman is not a person in her own right. She is man’s Other: she is less than a man; she is a kind of alien in a man’s world; she is not a fully developed human being the way a man is” (96).  male are the center of the world. women’s position was, or still in some places, seen as they are colonized.

Similarly, by looking into the othering and orientalism of the colonized people, we noticed how the European missionary treated the colonized people as the others. Tyson states,“So the colonizer saw themselves at the center of the world; the colonized were the margins” (419). Europeans are able to dominate African people by changing the African conception of religion and justice; by Othering native African religious beliefs, Europeans could gain control over African leaders and, thus, their land and natural resource.

Both groups appear as powerless and subordinate. Feminist and postcolonial seek to gain their right, freedom and leave the world of dominant behind them.

Thus, I find it interesting to use text that related to these different issue and combine it by using Voyant to do a kind of close reading and analyzing the result to see of there is a real similarity. However, I added different text and that  was the result. to be quite honest,  Voyant did work the way I expected. I am not sure what is the reason behind that! I might did not choose the correct sources to do so, or voyant has some errors issues.

 

 

THIS AFTERNOON WISDOM,

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when it’s the only one we have” Alain.

 

Visualizations V.S Teaching

looking into this tool make you see it as an art, and enjoying your time reading this visualizations. It kinda remind me by the camera zoom, when you find something interested you will zoom in to present it clearly and make every one notice it.

with the reading of the information visualizations article, I came to realize that the simple usefulness of this tool is to communicate and manipulate complex information. for example, historical, statistical and literary texts. It will make it easier to understand, analyze and view the text. instead of using power point or paper work to combine theses different texts or information without making yourself and your students to feel lost. my question here are we consider it as An tool to teach or some kind of arts?

I am thinking of applying this tool to teach novels. So I might look into the historical issues of any novel, and combine it with the analyzing of the character, themes, plot. It seems interesting to use, and will caught students attention. additionally, it will make me as a teacher more organized. However, I am not sure yet of I can use it to any kind of novel to teach students. what is the benefit they will gain by using this tool, as literature students.

 

 

Today wisdom,

When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.”

Confucius

Omeka

 

http://wqumayri.omeka.net

The aim of this sits is to collect some useful sources, data and information about colonization, postcolonial topic. additionally, it introduces some of the novels which mention colonialism theme. This wed site is useful to scholars and researchers who are interested into looking to the colonization in depth.

 

Thank you and enjoy your searching,

Wejdan