chiaroscoe-blog

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"The church was old and poor and many of the icons had no settings, but somehow one prays better in such churches."

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

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how to achieve your goals

start

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"Science is wonderful . . . But I am unhappy about God—I miss Him!"

—Dmitry (Mitya) Karamazov

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"I know she doesn't. I just said that because it sounded good."

—Kolya Krasotkin, 13

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I bought makeup and now I'm journaling, trying to convince my palate that I do in fact like ginger tea; woe is tryhard sophistication

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From my reading journal TBK entry

Mitya confuses reality to be "realism," qualifying the endeavor right then and there

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this is probably the best thing anyone has ever made

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intro to lit theory

Authorship: Barthes, Death of the Author; Foucault, What is an Author?

Formalism: Eichenbaum, The Theory of the “Formal Method”;  Brooks, from The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry

Structuralism: Saussure, Course in General Linguistics ; Barthes, from Mythologies

Psychoanalysis: Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams; Lacan, The Mirror Stage & The Significance of the Phallus

Ideology: Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses; Foucault, Truth and Power

Feminism & Queer: Sedgwick, from Between Men; Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa; Wittig, One Is Not Born a Woman; Butler, Gender Trouble

Deconstruction: Derrida, from Of Grammatology;

Postcolonial: Fanon, from The Wretched of the Earth; Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?

Cultural Materialism: Adorno & Horkheimer, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception; Williams, Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory  

these are about 2/3 of the readings for my intro to lit theory course, if you’ve ever wondered what one studies on such courses, the links lead to free pdfs  

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Almost December 29, almost

I’ve noticed that little habit we humans have of using “un-” as superlative (viz. “ungodly” and “unearthly”), and I don’t think this has any consequences. In fact, I should be able to make this observation without the prying eyes of keen thinkers.

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Is there something unethical in contemporary criticism? This essay is not just for those who identify with the canaries in the mine, but for anyone who browses through current journals and is left with an impression of deadness or meanness. I believe that the progressive fervor of the humanities, while it reenergized inquiry in the 1980s and has since inspired countless valid lines of inquiry, masks a second-order complex that is all about the thrill of destruction. In the name of critique, anything except critique can be invaded or denatured. This is the game of academic cool that flourished in the era of high theory. Yet what began as theory persists as style. Though it is hardly the case that everyone (progressive or otherwise) approves of this mode, it enjoys prestige, a fact that cannot but affect morale in the field as a whole… These days nothing in English is “cool” in the way that high theory was in the 1980s and 1990s. On the other hand, you could say that what is cool now is, simply, nothing. Decades of antihumanist one-upmanship have left the profession with a fascination for shaking the value out of what seems human, alive, and whole.

Lisa Ruddick, “When Nothing Is Cool” (via ecrituria)

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“Do You know that more centuries will pass and men of wisdom and learning will proclaim that there is no such thing as crime, that there is therefore no sin either, that there are only hungry people.”

—Dostoevsky, just last night

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Bach while I am reading

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It is best to take snapshots of the outside; the interior's fucking messy. (DECEMBER 28)