• How can the turning point be a new technique for us to condor as a way of representing violence?

• What are some versions or permutations of the turning point we can consider?

How do writers of fiction approach our class question of how can we write about violence without exploitation?

Classes Preliminary Questions about the Article:

• Page 12: how do you know when you need to change?

• How do fiction and nonfiction differ in creating recognition, understanding, and action?

• how do you use the turning point to represent violence without exploiting it?

The turning point (anagnorisis): the truth of the matter dawns on the character, that moment toward which a plot usually barrels, and around which a story's mysteries revolve.

3 versions of the turning point:

• recognizing the stranger as human-- pages 11-12 Daniels story. We can see the instructions of dehumanizing strangers, but the turning point is realizing we are not doing the right thing. Is nakedness a metaphor in the story? If there was already a turning point, how many more do we need? Is an individuals turning point enough?

• recognizing yourself as having being wrong--page 18: "to realize you have been wrong about something is, I believe, to experience the otherness of the world coming to you."

• recognizing [the familiar] yourself as the stranger--page 21-22: Moses and Monotheism. "Narrative shape can comfort and guide our efforts, but we must eventually be ready to share-shift, to be decentered, when the light of an other appears on the horizon in the project of human freedom, which remains undone..to remain aloof from the group while honoring one's organic ties to it; to exist between loneliness and alignment, remaining always a bit of a stranger; to resist the resolution of the narrative, the closing of the circle; to keep looking, to not feel too at home." Why does Hammad end their essay on this point? What does this do for violence?

• How can the turning point be a new technique for us to consider as a way of representing violence?

• What are some versions or permutations of the turning point we can consider?

Questions about the article during class:

• How do you know when you need to change (pg.12)?

• How do you use the turning point to represent violence without explaining it?

• How do fiction and non-fiction differ in creating new understanding, recognition, and action?

3 versions of the turning point:

1. Recognizing the stranger as human (pg.11-12)

   • Moral conflict: recognition of humanity when involving war

   • Sadness/reality of what bystanders go through during war resulting in fleeing

   • The instructions somewhat "dehumanizes" the person with the photo and other bystanders.

2. Recognizing the yourself as having been wrong

• "To realize you have been wrong about something is, I believe, to experience the otherness of the world coming at you" (pg.18).

• Example of this: traveling to different places/countries, experiencing different cultures and customs

3. Recognizing yourself as the stranger

• How to read?

• How are form and content related in this book?

Ending of "Seven":

• Includes physical distance on the bus along with silence, even after the reconnection throughout the story

• Isolation, silence becomes unsettling

• Uncertainty about their future, unresolved relationship

• Upset when reading the story because of the lack of closure

“Seven” references between the man in “The Book of the Dead” and “Water”

• Connection between the man in “Seven” and Ka’s father in “The Book of the Dead”

• Pg. 62: “night janitor of Medgar Evers College”

• The distance between stories highlight interconnectedness

1957: Francois Duvalier, “Papa Doc”

1961: Tonton Macoutes: “Secret,” private police force like the “Dew Breakers”

• Very violent police force and culture

1971: Jean-Claude, “Baby Doc”

Why would you write a book like this?

• Writing about conflicts that don’t have resolutions

• Expressing that trauma is still going on

Worldbuilding

• All from Haiti, living in New York City

• Everyone is connected to everyone else, some small connections, others glaring