Let's learn about NYU courses!

So I came up with the incredibly bright idea to summarize my notes on blogspot! It's my ideal method of reorganizing the chaotic mess of writing in my notebooks and forming clear concepts for me and anyone else who is remotely interested. Although who would be interested in Concepts in Social and Cultural Analysis?

The concept of the day is difference. But to understand the concept of difference, whether in a social or individual sense, it is imperative to realize the abstract qualities of sameness and identity. What is an object's identity; what makes it different from other objects? Take for example rest and motion. They are polar opposites, correct? However, the unitary notion of rest cannot exist without the concept of motion. An entity obtains it identity by being what it is not; rest is not motion, therefore it is rest. The definition of rest is inherent in it quality of not being motion: identity incorporates difference. But what is identity? According to Heidegger, identity is manifested in his example: A is A. However, this does not presume that A = A. For what is at stake is not the equality of two separate objects, but of a singular object. Insomuch as my own identity remains the same, I remain the same with my past self; in other words: because my conscious self has remained the same despite the divisive forces of time, I continue to identify with myself through the gap of time. My reflexive, tautological identification to my past self is indicative of a circular dative line of self recognition. Therefore, difference can be understood as the exclusivity of sameness - A is the same only with itself because it is not B, C, D, etc...

However, in a social context, the line separating different organizations becomes hazy and nebulous. What a group represents, its identity in relation to its members is unclear. For example, the fragmentation within feminism and paradoxical opposition of the movement by women indicates a perplexing conundrum. The feminist movement is for women, but there exists difference within its own organizational borders; feminists do not possess a seamless, coherent unity; one cannot presuppose that the category of women is singular and identical to itself. Feminism does not constitute the unitary subject of women, for factions exist even in the boundaries of the movement itself.

And I'll stop there for today, this is confusing as hell.