The Multiplicity Of Discursive Elements
My first semester of graduate school, one of the courses I took was on Critical Theory with Dr. Bluemel. As we went from theorists as varied as Eve Sedgwick, Stanley Fish, and Roland Barthes I noticed a pattern forming during our discussions. A number of my contributions to the discourse were referential to not only outside sources, but even some outside of what is normally considered “literature” by most students. My professor told me to try to stay within the bounds of literature in order to not lose or confuse other students, which was fine by me. Still, I was troubled that I received blank stares from my classmates when bringing up David Hume, John Dewey, or even a popular contemporary like Zadie Smith. I had an extremely hard time trying to stay “in bounds” which it came to our classroom discourse.
In History Of Sexuality, while discussing the unity of power and knowledge in discourse, Foucault offers this definition of discourse:
We must conceive discourse as a series of discontinuous segments whose tactical function is neither uniform or stable. To be more precise, we must not imagine a world of discourse divided between accepted discourse and excluded discourse, or between the dominant discourse and the dominated one; but as a multiplicity of discursive elements that can come into play in various strategies (100).
As an undergraduate, I took a number of extra courses to attain a minor in Philosophy. I did this in order to supplement my literary studies. What I learned from Dewey, Hume, Nietzsche, Arthur Danto, and others went with me back to the English classroom to accentuate my work there. Perhaps this is why theoretical concerns are more compelling to me than the standard close reading associated with English, but I see no reason for not extending into other fields for further enlightenment and thought. Just talking about English in English classes bores the hell out of me.
Weekly Reader
The Reading Experience has another post about John Dewey up.
One of my favorite pieces of Transformers fan fiction is A Chance In A Million. Now that I think about it, it might have been the first one I ever read too when I got back into the fandom in 1997.
Veronica over at Conversational Reading finds War & Peace to be a bit of a disappointment. I started reading it back in high school but never finished it. Maybe I will pick that up again this summer.
It seems that I link to a Marjane Satrapi interview almost every week. This week’s interview is from Nerve:
I have to tell you something: I never felt as free as when I wrote Chicken with Plums. When I write about women, and obviously when I write about myself like in Persepolis people relate [the text] to me. In this book, the main character in is a man. I could hide behind him, yet in some ways, he is me. I can be very cynical, but I can also die of love.
Incoming Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is interviewed over at Mother Jones:
Third, I want to take a look at some of the good things that are being done around the rest of the world that are almost never discussed in the United States. How often is it discussed that the American people work the longest hours of any industrialized country in the world? The two-week paid vacation is almost a thing of the past; meanwhile in Europe you get four to six weeks vacation, and maternity leave with pay. We don’t know about these things. I want to take a look around the world and see what workers are receiving, and compare that to the United States — from an educational point of view.