I OWN: A Reflection
Tianyi Li
Photo by Ben Brown
This year, SLU’s Multicultural Competency Vision Team created a powerful initiative called “I OWN: Cultural Marketplace” for diversity month. This marketplace acted as an interactive exhibit to explore the dimensions of oppression and commodification of bodies by institutional, structural, and individual forces of our society. The dimensions consisted of bodies as entertainment, bodies as property, N/A bodies, disposable bodies, invisible bodies, dangerous bodies, and hardest-working bodies. For a week of November, the room in the BSC became a marketplace. The stations had different multi-media elements with information about how bodies have been oppressed and used as social commodities. The marketplace also featured life size visual displays of faculty, staff, and college students whose tangible and intangible body parts will be priced and tagged by the marketplace attendees according to their societal values.
As a person who worked at the marketplace for the week and as an observer, I noticed that overall, the SLU community was overwhelmed by this exhibit. There was also some resistance to price the life size display bodies. Comments usually consisted of how they did not feel right pricing someone because people are priceless. However, the various stations in the marketplace showed that society has not treated all bodies as if they were priceless.
The marketplace reminded me that there is still change yet to be made in America. The exhibit served as a reminder to help reclaim bodies who are being oppressed and commodified. It also made me wonder if I realize when I am personally being used as entertainment, used as property, non-applicable, disposable, invisible, seen as dangerous, and hardest-working.
We encourage everyone to continue to think critically about the different forms and levels of oppression beyond this one week in November. To the Multicultural Competency Vision Team: a sincere thank you for giving the SLU community a chance to explore and educate ourselves.
