RP2

During class discussion on Thursday, the idea of living inside of a ball became a way to explain quotidienne life, all of the struggles and joy and clutter and pride that can be found inside of one's own sphere. Daily life seemed simple to understand because we all have daily, personal experiences and routines. But "cultural productions" as explained in Ramirez's article threw me off. Now that we've had four weeks to work with different theories, ideas have been snowballing; so initially when I read "cultural production" I was reminded of "racial projects", the term brought by Omi and Winant. Productions vs projects. Racial projects help link the meanings that people associate with race to the structural experience of race, while racial productions represent contestations symbolically and provide a literal means to intervene in the issue and discuss it. I agree with Ramirez that quotidienne struggles and cultural productions exist in our day to day lives, but I think that racial projects lay in between the two. When discussing Omi and Winant, we agreed that everyone is included in the realm of racial struggles, therefore everyone takes part in racial projects because we all have ideas of race. Combining the theories of Ramirez and Omi and Winant, I believe that we each experience quotidienne struggles according to the landscape of our independent lives; next, our quotidienne lives are infused with racial projects so that we can attempt to understand racial discourse outside of our own spheres; lastly, with quotidienne struggles and racial projects combined, cultural productions are able to form and serve as common-ground to discuss and dissect the world around us.