h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

[MTG]

[GDZ]

{Courtesy}

Beeble, isn't that what I said about Butler? I might have missed a "not" in there, but I think I *did* say that Butler believes that sex (biological sex) is also determined by discourse...didn't I?

See, this is why I don't do theory. Miss a word, and suddenly you're misrepresenting what someone said. Geez. (Not that I'm picking a fight with anyone, I just get upset with myself when I'm not clear!).

Perhaps that is why, although I despise Marx, I prefer Marxist arguments. You can spot the problems from a mile away. So why, you ask, am I planning on using Foucault and his theory of discipline to write my dissertation? Because, I would answer, Foucault's wrong, and I'm going to prove it. He opens the book with this rather bloody scene and claims that this event, which takes place in 1347 (don't quote me on the date...I'm doing this from memory) is an example of the punishment society...it's external. The XXX affair (I want to say Didion, but I know that's not right!), according to Foucault, which takes place in the 18th century, marks the shift from this external punishment society to an internal, self-regulated, disciplined society.

He's wrong, at least in part. At the end of the 13th and beginning of the 14th century, inquistors' manuals, and the records we have of the depositions given before them, show a shift in how the inquisitors ask questions. Instead of asking if someone fed or housed or bowed to a heretic, they ask what the person being deposed thinks of the trinity, or what heresy is to them, etc. This shows a shift from external to internal, and while the punishment factor (i.e., yellow crosses, pilgrimages, the occasional burning) are still external and part of the punishment society, the focus is turning toward the discipline society, because internal thoughts are now being policed. It marks this really interesting space in which the shift from one type of social order is shifting to another type of social order.

Where Foucault is wrong is that he posits this shift takes place almost entirely in the 18th century (he likes to blame the Enlightment for everything) and that the shift is rather sudden and dramatic. It isn't. It's very gradual, and starts with the rise of the universities, and scholasticism, in the latter half of the 13th century.

Okay, someone remember this for me and email it to me. I think I just wrote the sketch outline of my dissertation proposal there.

There is nothing deconstruction does that I didn't do under the tutelage of Dr. Al Thomas way back in college.

There is a cetain kind of validity to looking upon life as art. My life is a novel, right. But see, that's a degree of self-consciousness -- not all that uncommon, the Walter Mitty syndrome, she observed cleverly.

Lil wasn't really on her game because she knew she still had invoices to write up and a couple of CD's to make for the next morning's clients, and it didn't help that those clients had forgotten to write their names down in the order book. She could make a couple of guesses, or she could give up and do CD's for the wretched lot of them, but she had to do it tonight, because there was a teleconference call looming at 7 am in the morning, with hardly enough time to feed the neighbor's cats before jumping in the car and 4-wheel driving it up the hill to the art instructor's studio. All these issues stood between Lil and the clarity of mind she preferred to summon up for abstract discussions.

But every time she tried to think about Foucault, she instead recalled the phone call of two hours earlier, when one of the art students kept referring to a printed proof as a negative and kept insisting that she, the student, had given Lil a negative and that she, the student, wanted it back. It seemed that her resolution never to work with stupid people ever again was doomed.

Despite all the stress, Lil felt certain of one thing. She couldn't apply deconstructivist theories to her life until she converted it into a literary thing.

Foucault is good for spotting interesting fundamental shifts like that. He also identifies the onset of the Age of Reason as that point where society began to sequester lepers and madmen instead of throwing them outside the village gate. Same thing. The move from external to internal.

[GDZ]

Wow. Having high level theory discussions about Foucault, Butler Derrida and Marx .. not part of my old h2g2 experience, that's for sure. But, I guess I was going to cooking school then.

Montana, I wasn't saying that that wasn't what you were saying, I was trying to create a nuance between 'doesn't believe in sexual difference" and 'thinks 'sex' also has a discursive component.

Way to go, btw, taking Foucual to task. You gotta love him for methodology, but for specifics he got so much wrong. Which, ironically, ends up supporting his methodological point, that knowledge (among other things) is created incrementally, through discourse. And I will be reading him more my orals this summer too, and in french as well. Aren't we cool.

Lil, you are awesome. But be careful. I got caught in overt self-narration for a good while a few years back. In fact... I think we talked about on h2g2 somewhere back in the day... (oh my, I sound like Marv... )

The paper proceeds. I have awesome quotes from fragilis and the infamous Michael Kershaw around the time we got alab******d, and all sorts of amazing insights from all of you now. It's quite fun citing Internet pseudonyms in academic papers. Oh which reminds me, if anyone does *not* want your pseudoname cited directly for anything you have said, let me know and I will keep things anonymous (or.. more anonymous). I will mention this over there now.

Don't ask.

Beeble, what are you taking a degree in? Mine's (well, pretty obviously) medieval European history.

Right.

Off to bed. Let's see if I can sleep.

OOH, I forgot to ask. D has to gain 1 to 1.5 pounds in the next 5 weeks or she has to go off her medication. Can anyone think of things that a 9 year old girl who doesn't much like meat can eat that will put weight on her? I'm making her Ensure milkshakes every night, and feeding her things like pasta with alfredo sauce and the like, so I can do the high fat thing, but I'm really at my wits' end for the high protein side of things. Doesn't like veet or any Morningstar/Bocca/Amy's products, although she will eat the occasional chicken nugget (but only McDonalds, which I refuse to budge on).

[Sol]

*Yawn*

I'm doing my PhD in Communication now. My MA was in Theory, Culture and Politics. (Surprise, surprise.)

Hmmm .. Fish and Chips? its the fattiest thing there is. Nachos with an avocado and been dip perhaps ... um ... yeah, milky creamy saucy things are good and have protein, so you are on the right track.

---->

Kelli, Kedgeree is a word from India, whether its Urdu, Hindi or any of the other subcontinent languages, I don't know. But as it's spelt phonetically, I don't suppose there is a correct spelling in truth.

Raining again today, Cassie is lovin' it, to paraphase a certain fast food advert. Which is fairly appros as most of her food is pretty fast, but she is faster

Mornin' all.

I trust we all had fun-packed weekends?

According to my dictionary 'kedgeree' is the correct spelling, from the Hindi 'khicari'. There should be a line over that 'i' rather than a dot, but I can't be arsed to look for the character code, sorry.

[z] *on the verge of giving an important presentation on a controversial topic*

*shakes*

Thanks for the information on Kedgeree Caer, I'm a little confused as to why it was addressed to me though I can't stand the stuff.

Lots of interesting stuff in the backlog, but nothing I know anything about to comment on...

I need my ...

MR: What about baked potatoes with melted cheese, shed loads of?

You'll be fine Z .

[p]

*Soothing pat for Z*

My HUGE problem with deconstructionism, Lacan and Derrida and Butler and Cixous, is that while the ORIGINAL ideas of context, word as object, word as subject, gender as construction etc etc, are interesting and clever ones, the jack ass morons who promulgate their theories in today's universities are actually using these concepts to play a giant game of Mornington Crescent. If you are trying to write a PhD on how a piece of literature's interpretation depends on the culture reading it and so on, you will be handed over to the Lacanians and they will with your head until you have a minor nervous breakdown and give up your PhD out of total loss of self-confidence. It will only be three years later that you realize they hadn't the first ing idea what they were talking about and you should have had confidence in your own good ideas rather than your sipervisors 'eruditicity'. Thank you Alan Sokal.

Anyway *sniff* I shall have some and go and kick the box with the remains of the PhD in rather sharply and then I shall cheer up and get back to the novel, which I have shamefully neglected over the weekend.

*breifly emerges from his cocoon of cushions*

Good morning!

I really really don't like deconstructionism. But I do like the theory that meaning in a literary tesk is formed through an interaction of text and audience. The author's interpretation of meaning is then 'a' meaning, rather than 'the' meaning, but meaning does exist. And if there is no textual support for a particular reading, then that reading is arising from something other than the interaction of text and reader, and is less valid, if at all.

I think of this, reader-response criticism, as being an approach to literature which treats it as a Lego set. You have a certain number of bricks, all of particular sizes, shapes and colours, but there are many ways in which you can put them together. Not an infinite number of ways, as there is only a finite number of bricks, but still quite a lot of different ways. The reader's personality, education, prior reading, mood and so on will all have a bearing on the way in which they fit the textual bricks together. Does that make sense?

*back to the cushions, in case the post comes when he's not safely hidden*

*hangs head in shame due to incorrect spelling of briefly*