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Deleuze on repetition and masochism.

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Copy of Anti-Oedipus for Michel Foucault illustrated by Deleuze’s children

(“For Michel, admiration and affection, and for shared causes, intolerably, where I will follow you.”)

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i recognize that not everyone is a narratology-pilled story-head, so i shall define a few things and (hopefully) explain why this is so fun to have a lot of thoughts about

many of the stories we write for young children are “apologues”—short, didactic narratives that utilize abstraction to make a moral, political, or philosophical point. for example, i could tell a child “hey, slow down, if you go too quickly you will become tired and consequently unable to reach your goal,” but it’s difficult to link all of that information together when you’re five.

so, we link the information to something they already know. rabbits move quickly, and tortoises move slowly. it is easy to assume that—in a race between a tortoise and a hare—the hare would fucking obliterate the tortoise. but what if the hare got cocky and burned his dumb ass out? this scenario provides helpful scaffolding on which to construct our rhetorical point.

children have access to a limited amount of information, so it’s important to keep things simple. animals can talk. don’t worry about it. this is a fact of our “diagetic world,” the constructed world that allows the narrative to function. it is hermetically sealed and internally consistent in that 1.) the ‘rules’ of human life do not interfere (no one questions why the animals can talk), and 2.) the ‘rules’ make perfect sense in relationship to each other

this is all well and good! until we confront the fact that the ‘rules’ of human existence are—uh oh—inconsistent. your mother might have a different opinion on “morality” than your father, one teacher might be cruel and another kind, chores require one outfit and your cousin’s wedding requires another. welcome to earth, kid.

alice’s adventures in wonderland (and through the looking glass, though in all likelihood they’re lumped together in your brain) borrows the form and aesthetic of the apologue. the architecture is there—talking animals, episodic structure, pockets of internally consistent logic—but rather than supporting a real-world value, such as the value of hard work or perseverance, the story says, “hey. how coherent are these structures, really?” it’s an endless parody, a deconstruction that pokes and jabs at the inconsistency and incoherence of institutionalized knowledge

and at the center of it, there’s alice, not a part of the apologue’s world nor a part of her own.

this is not a new assessment. i just find it interesting. we construct information for children in many ways, some helpful, some dangerous. but one of the most honest and painful things we must tell them—at the end of the day—is that we are often wrong.

having a lot of thoughts about alice in wonderland as a subversion of the apologue—one in which the diagetic world is neither hermetically sealed nor internally consistent. having a lot of thoughts about childhood, and how we construct stories for children.

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hey! pinned post!

on my main blog, i am a jester. i jingle and jangle and (occasionally) partake in a jumble. here, i indulge in my esoteric/academic interests (narratology, classical theater, philosophy, etc.)

ask me anything. please. please. please—

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having a lot of thoughts about alice in wonderland as a subversion of the apologue—one in which the diagetic world is neither hermetically sealed nor internally consistent. having a lot of thoughts about childhood, and how we construct stories for children.

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The holy grail of searching through academic literature is coming across a string of publications that are like:

Here’s An Idea. Smith et al. 2016

Terrible Idea; a comment on Smith et al. 2016. Johnson 2016.

You’re Wrong Too; a response to Johnson 2016. Nelson 2016.

Guys Just Stop Fighting, None Of Us Know What’s Going On; a Review of the Current Literature. McBrien 2017.

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classicists will make the ugliest least functional website in the history of html and it will contain the entire library of fragmentary papyri of the works of aeschylus. for free

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For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings:

How some have been depos’d, some slain in war,

Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,

Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping kill’d,

All murdered – for within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits,

Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,

Allowing him a breath, a little scene,

To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks;

Infusing him with self and vain conceit,

As if this flesh which walls about our life

Were brass impregnable; and, humour’d thus,

Comes at the last, and with a little pin

Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!

— Richard II, William Shakespeare

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“you’re not supposed to like richard he’s a tyrant king” then why did you cast david tennant to play him huh? why did you cast david tennant and give him the most lusciously beautiful long hair and make him kiss men while crying and lamenting like a pathetic little baby huh? you think I can resist such a girlfailure of a character? you’re WRONG. he’s my blorbo now.

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"Henry VII stole the throne!" Ah yes who could forget Richard III's landslide victory in the General Election of 1483.

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Did a zoom rehearsal for our Frankenstein Radio Drama today and a cat jumped into my lap during the reanimation sequence. Would that I could recreate this moment

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AITA for not telling my fiancé I know he’s queer? 

I 20s (F) have a 20s (M) fiancé, V, and he’s been talking about this terrible secret he cannot tell me and he keeps almost starting to come out and then backing out. The issue is V and I were raised together by his parents, and my surrogate 40s (M) father and (now deceased) surrogate mother arranged for our marriage back when we were both children. They thought it was the best for us and at the time we were too young to realize the implications and had no reason to reject to the match. When we were teenagers our mother was on her deathbed and she told us again that she wished for us to marry, and of course we both agreed. However, V is also best friends with a 20s (M) guy called H, and they were nearly inseparable as boys and teens. They also went to university together and shared an apartment but V had to come home due to family reasons. Lately he’s been going out all day and coming home at night hours later. He insists that he’s fine and that we all leave him alone and not worry for him, but I think he and H have been sneaking around. He even delayed our wedding day by arranging a trip to go to England alone with H. It’s exhausting for all of us and I think I should just tell V I know and support him and that we can call off the marriage, but I’m not sure that’s the best course of action? I’m completely fine with not marrying him - he always felt more like a brother to me anyway - but I worry it might come off wrong. The worst part is he’s really beating himself up about it. He’s so guilty it’s beginning to take a toll on his health. I don’t care if he has a boyfriend I just want him to be happy.

EDIT: nvm he built an 8ft creature in his dorm

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I am normal about this post, I am normal about my career, and I will not go into a long-winded diatribe about the history of theatrical conventions even though I am a cat and this is my crunchy plastic

so what do u think about plays

i like how in a theatre time and space are necessarily metaphorical. i don’t like how plays always have to begin with someone walking onstage and talking. too many directors try to work around this by having someone walk onstage and brood in silence for a moment before talking. this is worse. 

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“Smart people” who only consume “smart things” are just prisoners of their own self-image. “Intelligence” is less about just what you consume and more about the insights you can extract from whatever you engage with.

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