This is a speech I made for the class Classical Literature & Philosophy with prof. Emanuela Bianchi.

In the first class, our professor wrote guidelines for our oral presentation and told us that we need to kick off the class discussion with a thought-provoking question at the end, but to avoid overly broad questions such as “So what do you all think? I then wondered if the question was really that broad. But I finally decided to use this question as the centerpiece of the discussion, and my presentation would inevitably end the class discussion with this question. Even if my motivation at the outset was resistance to the father’s injunctions - anti-Oedipus on a Freudian level.

Shannon Li

April. 24th, 2023

On the Color of the World

I think, in many cases, that color is always so confusing. If it is because of personal experiences and other reasons that I choose to accept certain ideas and reject certain things. Then me, I’m always in denial. From the time I started making choices, I refused to accept them, but I was never able to reject the act of choosing itself. I could see my refusal quite clearly, but I was also refusing to accept my own disgusting refusal.

Shannon Li

Cristina Vatulescu, Yana Makuwa

COLIT-UA 200, COLIT-UA 116

May. 5th, 2023

The Real Touch

Death Stranding is a game directed by Hideo Kojima, set in the United States. The dead are stranded on the “Beach” and become the living dead called BTs. When BTs consume the living, it will trigger a “voidout” similar to a nuclear explosion. In addition, a rainwater called timefall makes the infrastructure of the passage of time accelerated, so that they quickly collapse. The player takes on the role of Sam Porter Bridges, who is responsible for delivering supplies to the isolated colonies and reconnecting them with wireless networks. The “Seam” is a place between the living and the Beach, allowing him to travel between the world of the living and the Beach. I will start from this game to deconstruct what Death Stranding is trying to tell us.

Shannon Li

Normandy Sherwood

ASPP-UT 2

8 Mar. 2022

The Unfinished Dreams of Kon Satoshi

“With my heart full of gratitude for everything good in the world, I’ll put down my pen. Now excuse me, I have to go” (Kon). These were the last words Kon Satoshi wrote on his deathbed. In May 2010, he went to the hospital due to physical discomfort and was found to have pancreatic cancer. In August of the same year, Kon Satoshi passed away at the age of 46 (Loo). He is a famous Japanese animation director who only directed six works in his lifetime. The last work Dream Machine was never finished because of his death. As he said in his last words, he always respects his artistic process and appreciates the team that helped him. He regrets that he can no longer finish work that was halfway done. Although the number of works is not large, he has truly achieved that every film is a rich stroke in film history. Each of his works has won many international awards and has been studied and imitated by later directors of various countries.

Shannon Li

Normandy Sherwood

APSS-UT 2

1 May 2022

Sated Days

As I explained in an earlier article, modern men are dead. But how did they die? I have done a lot of theoretical analysis in the article, but I think the theory is not enough for people’s material life. As Karl Marx mentioned in his article Theses On Feuerbach, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” I think my artistic creation is a practice of philosophical theory that changes the world. What I want to show is the process of a person dying. Not biological death, but internal, active, loss of the ability to live.

Shannon Li

Normandy Sherwood

APSS-UT 2

1 May 2022

The Thing We Lost in Modernity

Franz Kafka was a German-language Bohemian novelist and short-story writer. His writing always presents a disgusting world where we feel be apart from ourselves - As how we feel in modern times.

Shannon Li

Daniel Johnson

EAST-UA 950 002

13 Dec. 2021

Consumerism In Advertisement

After World War II, with the economic recovery and prosperity, consumption gradually replaced production and became the core of urban residents’ lives. Western developed countries led by the United States began to enter the consumer society one after another. In Asia, Japan has gone through the most prosperous 1980s in its reflections on wars. At the same time, both South Korea and China have entered a stage of rapid economic development. At this stage, the fatal crisis of capitalism in the era of heavy industry and colonialism was hidden by the economic climax, while at the same time it was exploiting the humanity more covertly. From the post-war era until the arrival of the 21st century, consumer capitalism has always been hidden under the beauty of economic development, affecting the daily lives of Asian people.