Reading (please read this text):
– Hua Hsu, The New Monuments that America Needs, from The New Yorker, 15 September 2020 Download Hua Hsu, The New Monuments that America Needs, from The New Yorker, 15 September 2020
AND PICK TWO OF THE FOLLOWING:
– Anand Giridharadas, The Critic and the Thought Leader, from Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (2018) Download Anand Giridharadas, The Critic and the Thought Leader, from Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (2018)
– Naomi Klein, Hot Money: How Free Market Fundamentalism Helped Overheat the Planet, from This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (2014) Download Naomi Klein, Hot Money: How Free Market Fundamentalism Helped Overheat the Planet, from This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (2014)
– David Treuer, Digital Indians: 1990-2018, from The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present (2019) Download David Treuer, Digital Indians: 1990-2018, from The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present (2019)
– Karen Ho, Biographies of Hegemony, from Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (2009) Download Karen Ho, Biographies of Hegemony, from Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (2009)
In previous essays, you have been asked to reflect on the abilities of individuals to make changes to a world governed by profit-seeking logic (Klein 224). You have examined the power differentials that shape how people can act in the world, and discussed whether and how we are complicit in the world of power around us (Treuer 439). And you have thought through the empowerment and constraint that occurs when these individuals band together in groups (Ho 163).
In The New Monuments that America Needs, Hua Hsu reflects on all of these questions through his discussion of the struggle over monuments in the United States. He contends that monuments connect us to history while defining the space around them. But whose history are we connecting to through monuments, and who is welcome in the space these monuments define? Hsu argues that the debates around monuments often stand in for larger political arguments about history, democracy, and progress in American life. He quotes Sue Mobley, an organizer and researcher in New Orleans, who asks how artists, organizers, and monument makers can create room for all, wondering, Is there a way in which we can weave together and lift up what it means to occupy space together? (Hsu 6).
For essay #4, utilize ideas, terms, and quotes from Hsu and two other pieces of your choice to address the following question:
How can we create a space that has room for all as we move into the future?
Questions to get you started:
What does it mean to make room for all? Is this even possible?
What kind of space are we creating? Is it physical, intellectual, cultural, social? All of the above?
What are some of the obstacles to creating room for all right now?
Use these questions to focus your thoughts and generate ideas as you work to answer the central question of the prompt.
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