Tonight's class was really clarifying and thought provoking. I'm coming to a much greater appreciation of the significance of examining the rhetoric we encounter and utilize. I found myself really working over the interrelationships of the concepts of gender roles, racial stereotypes, and ecological relationships in this week's readings and film. It seems like all three of these important facets of life are rarely something we question or consider the genesis of. Instead we largely accept things the way they are due to cultural and institutional influence, through routines and implied normality, and through the way we understand nature. Tonight's class and this week's readings have really culminated in an "Aha!" moment for me. I hadn't really wrapped my head around the importance and significance of rhetoric regarding ecology, until today when it hit me that the interrelated and overlapping aspects of society that go on without being challenged are largely tacitly accepted due to an engrained rhetoric and sense of normalcy around prevailing ways of thought. To change our own rhetoric and the way we engage with others, is by its very nature the first step in challenging aspects of our world that could stand to be more closely reflected upon.
That being said, to round out this blog post, we are supposed to post a picture of ourselves. Here is one of me engaging in one of my favorite activities (hiking), meanwhile not tacitly accepting the routinely engrained belief that trees are not food.
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