18 February, 2009

Displacement

A couple of classes ago we were posed with the question: What is displacement?

In going about answering this question I came to the conclusion that there are two types of displacement, physical and emotional. A person or a thing can be displaced. Like water is displaced from a container when something heavy is placed in it. A person is displaced when their home is no longer there for them. The biggest example that I could think of was Hurricane Katrina. Many people in the New Orleans area were displaced from their homes and forced to move to other areas.

After discussing displacement I realized that people can be emotionally displaced, too. Trying to come up with an example I thought of myself. After my dad died I think that I emotionally displaced myself. Which brings about the other point, that displacement can be a voluntary action. I went about my life shortly after my dad's death thinking that no one could relate to me and that I was the only one with those issues.

2 comments:

LWA said...

First of all, thanks for sharing. I think your point about the ways we can actually displace ourselves reminds us that displacement not only can be voluntary, but can be done with self-interest/protection in mind. Is there a connection to the video you posted, or was it just for fun?

Le said...

When I originally thought of physical displacement I thought of school when we would hold experiments to find the density of objects and this led me to think of David Letterman's will it float because of the huge tub of water and just dumping objects into it to see if it would float or not.

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