The following is a bit of a messy and meandering blog: a kind of a ‘brain train,’ that starts with a question of reification and eating disorders, and moves into a sense of the literal ‘consuming’ nature of oppression. So I will start with a ‘thank you’ to readers who will meander with me and with gratitude to the teachers whose thoughts I am wandering with along the way.
Reification is the process by which those created ideas that we externalize into institutions, concrete objects, or social principles then become so real to us that we tend to think of them as a separate reality or a thing/ life in and of itself.[1] I teach this concept in my ethics classes when we discuss the way in which actions and choices are connected to what we often consider to be external forces like “the government,” or “the economy,” when in fact, we are in relationship to and often, actively play a role in maintaining these realities (even when only playing a small role). Reification can subversively undermine our understanding of response-ability because it is a way of making the structures that form our society “other” than ourselves.
My students definitely struggle with this concept and often express the fear that they are too small as individuals to see any real change happen. (I too, often struggle with this fear when thinking about the reified ‘monsters’ of oppression and hate.) Dealing with this discouragement in class, I (and we) switch gears by emphasizing praxis and recognizing its successes. I ask my students to consider what can be done and what choices/changes I, they, or we are capable of making while re-membering changes already being made. As Gustavo Guiterrez says: “Pessimism comes from reality because reality is tragic, while optimism comes from action because action can change reality.”[2] Continue reading “Musings on Reification by Sara Frykenberg”
Feminism and Religion 