We had two presentations yesterday; we talked about language in Joyce as a tool of re-appropriation. The result of re-appropriating the English language, through deconstruction (and taking quotes out of context as Michelle mentioned) is to create an artist’s ownership of it. Most importantly, this ownership (as painted/achieved by the artist) belongs to the artist [...]
Note-Taking for Joyce (Jessica)
November 13, 2009 · Comments Off · Uncategorized
Tags: art·fly by these nets·forster·jessica·Joyce·myth·Note-taking
Subjectiveness and Irony in Joyce
November 5, 2009 · 1 Comment · Uncategorized
Portrait is an interesting text because it melds together both English “empire” (in Ireland), and the idea of a Bildungsroman. What I like most about this is the fact that it is so subjective. First, the title of the text betrays that it is only “a” portrait (as opposed to being “the” portrait for example). [...]
Modernism and Woolf- Creation of “the Real”
October 29, 2009 · 1 Comment · Uncategorized
Honestly, when i read the first 3 pages of Woolf I thought the entire thing was going to be insufferably boring- but I ended up reading the entire thing in one sitting. I really liked his writing style (the Modernist tendency if that is what you want to call it) because it really draws on [...]
Binaries, Power and Imperialism
October 22, 2009 · 1 Comment · Uncategorized
In Stoler’s discussion of the ways in which power is manifested and created in Empire, she identifies how the assertion of dominance is linked to ideas of gender binaries and sex. She identifies for us the different “roles” and images of figures in the colonial discourse; namely, the white colonial ruler bursting with “good health, [...]
Burmese Days- Early Dystopia, Death Eaters and Alienation
October 15, 2009 · 2 Comments · Uncategorized
When reading Stoler’s article, I was immediately struck by her chapter on the European anxiety that the “wealth and cultivation” of “persons of mixed descent” were “rivaling those of many ‘full blooded’ Europeans” (Stoler 528). This view of inequality reminded me instantly of the Harry Potter books- after all, what is Voldemort undertaking but some [...]
Tags: "pure-blood"·alienation·Burmese Days·dystopia·jessica see·Stoler
Lord Jim and Modernism
September 16, 2009 · 1 Comment · Uncategorized
I’ve always had a kind of sketchy view on what “high Modernism” really means, but in reading Conrad’s Jim, I think I might be starting to understand the shift to Modernist aesthetics. What struck me most was the fact that Conrad seeks not only to debunk the idea of glorifying and romanticising sea stories, but [...]
Tags: jessica see·lord jim·modernism·shelley·truth
Achebe’s Heart of Anger and the Ethics of Re-Appropriation
September 9, 2009 · 1 Comment · Uncategorized
When I read Achebe’s essay, I was struck by his strong desire to make us (Westerners, colonizers, outsiders) view Africa as something other than commodity, colony and “the other” foreign land/culture. As a fan of Things Fall Apart, I am interested in what fellow colonial/postcolonial writers have to say about each others’ works, but I [...]
Tags: Achebe·Conrad·discourse·jessica see·picasso·re-appropriation
The Discourse of Violence
September 2, 2009 · 1 Comment · Uncategorized
I thought of blogging about this because it is related to my part in the presentation tomorrow, but since we have limited time to give our parts, here are some more interesting points I picked up when reading Fanon that I won’t cover in my presentation. Fanon talks a lot about the undeniable violence wrecked [...]
Tags: discourse·Fanon·forster·jessica see·Violence
“Alice to the Lighthouse”
August 20, 2009 · 1 Comment · General Thoughts on Modernism
There is a book by Juliet Dusinberre called Alice to the Lighthouse that I find very interesting. She talks about the idea of the ‘irreverent generation’ that is first glimpsed in 19th century writing and then honed up by authors like Virginia Woolf. In my opinion, the ‘irreverent generation’ that is revealed during Modernism occurs [...]
Tags: authority·beckett·carroll·dusinberre·identity·jessica see·woolf
