Core Post #3 - Week 5

This week’s reading, although a bit dense, was very intriguing. I enjoyed reading through Beatriz’s Colomina, “Domesticity at War.” What particularly drew me to this piece was the foregrounding theories surrounding the house as a scene of conflict and one that is always at war. This metaphorical “battle of family, battle of sexuality, battle for cleanliness, for hygiene” made me re-consider how these implicit conflicts are directly related to the American rhetoric of war and militarization. It actually aligns heavily with my anxieties towards the constructions of familial dynamics and this complicated expected “allegiance” we are to have with our American-ness. Colomina continued to deconstruct their argument by claiming that the private space has been compromised, or rather, has invited the public into their private spaces as an exchange for exterior/outdoor interactions. “The public concern for surveillance and control moved into the private space. The house could not be separated from the state and its military program,” (Colomina, 4). This quote in particular made me consider how involved our government is with our private lives. With the increase of automated home systems, Amazon Alexa’s and controlling your home through something as simple as your voice is becoming rather eerie. Most recently, Amazon Alexa has even been accused of spying on its users, claiming that they save the recordings of private conversations indefinitely, unless a user chooses to delete it. This piece put into perspective my skepticism of purchasing these items for my apartment. It is also pretty ironic, and at times laughable, that folks are giving their trust to these voice assistant systems in their homes to “protect their privacy.” The main idea that I have realized about people’s usage of these automated devices connected to your home is that people use these devices for convenience, for an aspect of peace and to make their busy lives a bit more easier to bare. But this search for piece is the same one that is discussed in Colomina’s reading, which further extends the militarization and government involvement in the construction of the home. Colomina states, “’Peace’ was thus achieved in the midst of war by environmental control, control over “the exterior”: temperature, weather, air, light, view,” (Colomina, 7). This quote was referencing the 1960s, at the height of TV as a necessary “convenient” object in the household, but this still heavily applies to the use of voice assistant automated systems today that can control lighting fixtures, temperature, air and “the exterior.” It is all an eerie reapplication of the home as a military operation.