Theory, farewell.

Well, it's been a long road, a year to be exact (am I the only one who think those are getting shorter?). I hace not blogged as often as I should or as well as I should. I have no doubt failed to meet the ideal. But the fun is in striving, no? I leave this class with a comfortable amount of academic baggage. Enough to make me feel a little safer regarding higher level courses that await next year.

I shall miss the open forum. An area for me to excise my near compulsive hand-raising. Am opportunity to win friends, admirers, and followers for my blog.

I shall leave you with a song of a decidedly non-literary variety. Just something that's been making my toes curl recently.

You by Gold Panda

He wrote into the void....

A few words from a well mustachioed man...

"This is an artist as an artist should be, modest in his requirement: there are only two things he really wants, his bread and his art"

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

Dustbiting and the Artist's Inevitable Fate

The issue of digital copyright is a difficult one for me because, as a self-professed film and music geek I usually find myself on the side of the artist. But, as a film and music geek, I find myself balking at the idea of having to pay for all the art I consume. I also give credence to the idea that a better informed populace makes for a superior society. Once one allows for the filtering of the internet, the editing away of bits and pieces, one risks losing it as a valid representation of humanity's rich pageantry.

In spite of the noble sentiments, I find economics to be the driving force in my opinion on this issue. I have no desire to start paying for what I now get for free. Plus, it is under such oppressive circumstances that art thrives. Artists, express this frustration through your art! Strive, struggle, produce! And, If you should die starving hysterical naked, dragging yourselves through the negro streets at dawn, well...we'll call you traditionalists and move on.

Props to my man Ginsberg! (please don't litigate)

Bringing the Good News

(Edvard Munch - "Evening on Karl Johan Street", lest we forget the substantial, existential angst of the modernists. This painting fucks me up every time I look at it)

What can one say about postmodernism? It seems an unfortunate progression from Nietzsche and his deity-denying antics to this new position. At the beginning of the 20th century our German friend was happy to declare us all free from "God", "Truth", and all abstract concepts beginning with capital letters. It was a liberation from the falsity of the old systems, and deserved celebrating.

For me, there is nothing to celebrate in postmodernism. It does not reveal the falsity of an old situation of being to replace it with newer, better, more genuine system of thought. It pulls aside the curtain to reveal a fragmented, incomprehensible media-master of a Wizard of Oz, in whom there is no truth and from whom there is no escape. If Archimedes had thought up post-modernism in the bathtub, he would not have shouted "eureka!", he would have slit his wrists.

The Outlaw: Crime and Punishment

Brandon Teena is an outlaw. He exists outside of the law, both in the legal sense and in the sense. An imperfectly postmodern being, Brandon blurs the binaries of sexuality and gender. Is he a heterosexual man or a homosexual woman? He exists as a challenge to the binary language of gender and sexuality that we rely upon for understanding.

Hermann Goering, a prominent member of the Nazi party, once said "when I hear the word 'culture', that's when I reach for my revolver". Such is the violent nature of ignorance. It is well known that men fear/hate the unknown, it follows that the less knowledgeable a person is, the more hatefully they shall behave. Butler refers to "punitive consequences" for the violation of taboos. The rednecks in Boy's Don't Cry as simply carrying out their brand vigilante justice in the name of the cultural laws beneath which they live. They gather a posse and Brandon Teena gets lynched.


On a only a lighter note:
Lenny Bruce - Psychopathia Sexualis

The Female Of The Species...

In my reading of the Emily Dickinson poem I was struck by a notion of sexism as internal dissonance that had not previously occurred to me. If we internalize the ideologies of our institutions and said ideologies are sexist in nature, privileging the male over the female, what does this mean for to the mind of a woman? I have no idea. It is indeed a many-splendored thing to be a heterosexual white man and with each successive unit I am appreciating it more and more. Thank you lit theory!

P.S. apologies for my extended absence. To quote the rap group Clipse, "These are the days of our lives and I'm sorry to the fans but these crackers weren't playing fair jive"