During our discussions in class today I was really interested in the conversation that surrounded Edmund’s status as a bastard, or illegitimate child. I found that during both the small group that I was a part of, and when we all reconvened as a class, people had interesting ideas and interpretations of what it meant for Edmund to identify as a bastard and in particular, the connotations that the word, bastard, has. Continue reading “[Edmund the] bastard”
King Lear & the Housing Crisis
Hey everyone,
I’m trying to draw some connections between King Lear and the course themes we’ve been talking about. Since reading Act III, I feel a little less lost and confused than I did about how Shakespeare would fit into all of this than I did a week and a half ago. I think there’s much to be said for King Lear, a man who is supposedly in a position of relative authority, and his relationship and interaction with nature. So great is King Lear’s faith in his own status that he underestimates nature itself, and we can see this attitude reflected in his relationships with Goneril and Regan, whose power and authority he similarly underestimates. Like King Lear, people in positions of authority played off the destructive force of nature when Hurricane Katrina hit, underestimating it and/or playing off the damage it left in its wake.
Survival and Selfishness (and other ramblings)
I was stuck with the documentary we watched in class. I’m also sure that mine wasn’t a singular reaction. One moment that stood apart from the others was when Mr. Gettridge’s daughter wouldn’t tell him the exact date of his wife’s homecoming. It seemed like a great surprise, then June Cross told us that he’d an agreement with Anderson Cooper of CNN to televise her return. It felt gaudy and awkward. Why would Mr. Gettridge strike this deal when his own daughter recognized it as something her mother would detest?
*I subsequently checked myself* Continue reading “Survival and Selfishness (and other ramblings)”
ENGL 439 in conversation with ENGL 458
I was part of the ENGL 458: Major Authors class that Beth taught last semester focusing on the work of Toni Morrison, and how it related to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Throughout the semester, I (as well as my fellow classmates- many of whom are in this class as well) learned how to change the way I think and process information, working past the shock of different experiences and instead understanding causes/effects and the humanness of reactions and emotions. Also, Toni Morrison wrote novels that examine the wonder of language in regards to its specificity and limitations as well as certain themes that I believe are applicable to this course as well, including diaspora, disenfranchisement, memory/forgetting, and loss/gain (to name a few). Continue reading “ENGL 439 in conversation with ENGL 458”
Monday’s Archive (but don’t overlook Brianne’s post below)
Posted after the jump in all its low-tech, messy glory is the archive from yesterday’s discussion identifying possible themes with which the art this semester might grapple. Don’t let this archive obscure Brianne’s post on narrative foreclosure though! Continue reading “Monday’s Archive (but don’t overlook Brianne’s post below)”
Ending on a Lighter Note
I hope finals week is treating all of you well. That being said, it’s been a challenging year, and I know everyone is likely busy and/or exhausted, so I wanted to share something a little lighter before the semester is out.
This is a brief Stephen Colbert interview with Toni Morrison back from 2014, when he had his old show. For those not familiar with his shtick, his character is a far-right conservative that often brings arguments to their extremes–needless to say, he’s brutally sarcastic. This interview is short, but very entertaining, and, in typical fashion, Morrison manages to share some wisdom in the middle of it all. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.
Abstract/Prospectus with a little writing
This project takes as its launching point several claims about power and contemporary subjectivity: first, that the legitimization of authority and power now takes place through biopolitics, a form of power “in which the vital aspects of human life are intervened upon for the purpose of rationalizing regimes of authority over knowledge, the generation of truth discourses about life, and the modes through which individuals construct and interpellate subjectivities between a sense of self and the collective.” Continue reading “Abstract/Prospectus with a little writing”
Biopolitics and Neoliberalism: Research Semester Bibliography
Here’s the bibliography for my research this semester; I read every text on this list, but not every text I read made it onto this list. These are the sources that I think will either find their way into my essay next semester, or alternatively, influenced my thinking enough to include them, even if I don’t think they’ll make it into the essay (“The Subject of the Plague” is a good example of the latter). And then there are some sources I probably forgot. If I remember any, I’ll add them. The only text on here I haven’t finished is Love by Toni Morrison—I’m putting it on hiatus for finals week but I’m going to finish it over winter break. In addition to this bibliography, I’m hoping to post a prospectus or abstract illuminating how I see my final essay taking shape, as well as what I currently see as the first few pages of that essay. Continue reading “Biopolitics and Neoliberalism: Research Semester Bibliography”
Thoughts on the Final Meeting
In today’s final meeting, my group and I spoke about what we have taken away from this semester, and I thought I might share some of the ideas that I took away from the conversation. To begin, I shared some of my own thoughts about the final assignment. I am most interested in exploring Morrison’s storytelling and her “repetition with a difference,” as Linda Krumholz observes. When considering this technique, I am brought back to Saidiya Hartman’s “Venus in Two Acts,” in which Hartman both “mimes the violence of the archive and attempts to redress it by describing as fully as possible the conditions that determine the [historical racial and gender prejudice] and that dictate [the victim’s] silence.” Rehashing the oppression of the slave trade could be dangerous to the black community, but it also has the power to begin redressing the lasting prejudice faced by the black community throughout the last few centuries. Continue reading “Thoughts on the Final Meeting”
Morrison and the Bible
So I’ve been struggling trying to come up with what to write for a final post. I mentioned to a majority of you in class that I am interested in writing on Morrison’s discourse on religion. This made me decide to go on a hunt to see if I could find Bible references that correspond with Morrison’s works, as her works clearly focus on western religion. Continue reading “Morrison and the Bible”