Final Blog

I am profoundly interested in the Cartesian split. I knew what it was pretty vaguely before this course, but did not fully understand it at all. Like all Cultural Studies students, I pretend to know the many authors and texts that are constantly referenced in class. I had read some Descartes, but I honestly did not really understand the pervasiveness of the Cartesian split to contemporary political and cultural rhetoric until this class. After we close read the meditations, I began to notice the Cartesian split lingering in so much of the material I study.

The Cartesian split interests me a lot because it is an example of a very Western worldview, Western Individualism in particular. The Cartesian split privileges the mind and the individual's will over the body and it's physical limitations. Furthermore, body is thought of as a sometimes misleading entity that shouldn't always be trusted. I see the Cartesian Split as very related to American notions of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps," or using your mind and will to push you beyond any limitations that you face and achieve success.

The Cartesian split is very related to how to view our bodies and interpret the things our bodies try to tell us. Many feminist environmentalist scholars site the body as a locus of knowledge, as something to be taken seriously, and as something that has the ability to help us move beyond racism, sexism, trans/homophobia, and ableism. Scholars such as Stacy Alaimo, Susan Heckman, Donna Harraway, Nancy Tuana, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Alison Kafer, and Winona LaDuke, among many, many others, encourage this way of thinking that allows us to take our bodies seriously without falling into the confines of essentialism.

Our class's discussions of free will and addiction really illuminated how the Cartesian split still lingers today. For example, in the drug unit we saw how some still view addiction and drug use as a choice, and we saw how Eve Sedgwick describes addiction as an epidemic of the will. Also, with drugs, we saw how mental illness and medication for it is still highly stigmatized and often viewed as a lack of control. In the food unit we saw how compulsive eating, dieting, and sugar consumption can all border on obsessive and blur the lines of addiction. However, culturally, we view obese people with much less sympathy than drug addicts. In the digital unit we saw how social media can also be addictive, lead to decreased happiness, and affect the minds of children. We also saw how we tend to think of social media as something we can exercise our free will over, but if it doesn't make us happy, why do we still use it?

Overall, the Cartesian split between mind and body has entirely permeated our culture. Even if literature or theory takes an anti- Cartesian stance, Descartes is usually referenced in conversation with whatever the author is speaking to. I loved using the Cartesian split as a lens with which we can view and critique our culture and contemporary epistemology.