Float On

Of the collaborative essay Floating Foundations, many of my highlighted sentences with asterisks in the margins came from Joe's third of the piece. For me, Joe captures the distinction between the two individual floating foundations, physical space and rhetoric, and then shows how they are intertwine. Additionally, he draws a great parallel to his cocooning and denial. He uses his own rhetoric to expand the thesis of vitality of rhetoric within a post-Katrina community in order to grow.

He continues saying that oftentimes it is easy to distance ourselves from something of the same category. Wordy, I know, but, for example, going to school in Madison, I rarely walk outside the six block vicinity of my classes. That is, I am never really off-campus. I understand this is a far larger city than what I know, but I confine myself inside invisible boundaries. In the past, it was scientific method that hypothesized that humans were divided into subcategories, supporting racism and slavery. The idea that people with different physical features could still be civilized and human, too, was denied. Underlining the goal to rebuild the Tulane english department, a stronger significance the authors portray is this idea of redirecting thought from temporary, specific to floatable and general. To me, this meant the ability to see past the current, the blend the boundaries of one place to another, because one may become the other, because they are continuous. And this is the most important thought because the connection between critical thinking as a floating foundation and the idea that separation is actually indistinct is clear.

It is hard to articulate my thoughts of the essay, but I do not feel comfortable restating their, very true, very eye-opening arguments. I can only agree.