#catherine belsey

[transmutationisms]

I’ve seen you mention structuralism and post-structuralism in some of your posts - can you recommend any books/articles/anything else on that topic?

tried to arrange in approximate order of most to least friendly for a reader unfamiliar with specialist philosophical language / concepts. also, this includes both secondary and primary literature and one might even say implicitly challenges some of the assumptions that structure that dichotomy. if one were in an impish sort of mood.

poststructuralism: a very short introduction, by catherine belsey

twentieth-century french philosophy, by eric matthews

the columbia history of twentieth-century french thought, ed. lawrence kritzman

what is enlightenment? by michel foucault, tr. paul rabinow, in 'the foucault reader'

death of the author, by roland barthes, tr. stephen heath, in 'image-music-text'

structure, sign, and play in the discourse of the human sciences, by jacques derrida, tr. alan bass, in 'writing and difference'

superstructuralism: the philosophy of structuralism and poststructuralism, by richard harland

how do we recognize structuralism? by gilles deleuze, tr. david lapoujade, in 'desert islands and other texts'

madness and civilization, by michel foucault, tr. jonathan murphy and jean khalfa

philosophy in turbulent times: canguilhem, sartre, foucault, althusser, deleuze, derrida, by élisabeth roudinesco, tr. william mcuaig

untying the text: a post-structuralist reader, ed. robert young

[butchhamlet]

u mentioned it once in one of ur twelfth night posts but where can i find the catherine belsey book, disrupting gender: meaning and gender in the comedies? it sounds interesting

i'm afraid i only know as much about it as is mentioned in the back of the folger twelfth night copy! but if you have access to a university library, i would try that; i checked jstor and could not find it :(

[starsandsteelandbrokenglass]

June 2023 Reading Wrap-Up

Well, summer is officially upon us. Happy belated pride month and happy disability pride month! Strength and joy to everyone in those groups. I did a lot of reading in June...mostly because I’m avoiding other, more necessary things. (Namely, my dissertation proposal, which is emphatically NOT cooperating.) 18 books and about 6,300 pages this month! Here they are:

Anywhere You Run by Wanda M. Morris- 3.5/5 stars

The City of Dusk (The Dark Gods #1) by Tara Sim- 4/5 stars

Nine Liars (Truly Devious #5) by Maureen Johnson- 3.5/5 stars

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

This Poison Heart (This Poison Heart #1) by Kalynn Bayron- 4.5/5 stars

A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland- 3.5/5 stars

All Our Hidden Gifts (The Gifts #1) by Caroline O’Donoghue- 3.75/5 stars

Middlegame (Alchemical Journeys #1) by Seanan McGuire- 3.75/5 stars

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder #1) by Holly Jackson- 3/5 stars

Winterkeep (Graceling Realm #4) by Kristin Cashore- 3/5 stars

What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier #1) by T. Kingfisher- 5/5 stars

Greek and Roman Necromancy by Daniel Ogden

Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children #1) by Seanan McGuire- 4/5 stars

Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children #2) by Seanan McGuire- 4/5

Beneath a Sugar Sky (Wayward Children #3) by Seanan McGuire- 4/5 stars

My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Indian Lake Trilogy #1) by Stephen Graham Jones- 4/5 stars

Tales of the Troubled Dead: Ghost Stories in Cultural History by Catherine Belsey

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Choksi- 4.5/5 stars

My favorite book this month was What Moves the Dead, but I actually read a lot of great stuff, so it was hard to pick!

Currently Reading: Classic Ghost Stories (I know. I promise I am reading it sometimes. I’m in the middle of “The Lost Stradivarius”.) and The Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan.

[arisefairsun]

The play established a remarkable degree of parity between its lovers: this passion is mutual, symmetrical, equal. Remarkably, it is Juliet who describes their wedding night in a speech that is both lyrical and sexually aware. The love scenes credit her with as many overtures as Romeo, perhaps more, while Romeo is to a degree feminized by love. As if to confirm an element of interchangeability between the protagonists, the play’s final couplet reverses the order of their names as these appear in the title of the play: ‘For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo (5.3.309-10). Neither, we may understand, has primacy here; the story, like the love scenes, like the enjoyment of the wedding night, belongs to them both equally.

Catherine Belsey, Romeo and Juliet: Language and Writing.

[derfilminmeinemkopf]

Red Sparrow

Regie: Francis Lawrence     Gesehen am: 08.03.2018       Wertung: 00/10

„Dein Körper gehört dem Staat.“

„Die Ideologie ist innerlich; wir sind ihre Auswirkungen; wir zitieren sie unabsichtlich jedesmal, wenn wir das >>Selbstverständliche<< erneut bestätigen“, hat Catherine Belsey geschrieben. Insofern ist „Red Sparrow“ Ideologie in Reinform. Francis Lawrence und Jennifer Lawrence bleiben nach dem beiden Mockingjay-Filmen den Vögeln treu, reanimieren das untote Klischee des Russen als das ultimative Böse vom ideologischen Müllhaufen der Spionagefilme und legen damit eine veritable Bruchlandung hin.

Interessant ist zunächst, dass ihr Film jedoch nicht in der Zeit des kalten Krieges sondern heute spiel. Das hindert jedoch scheinbar nicht daran, ganz tief in die Kiste der bekannten Klischees zu greifen und sie in die Jetztzeit zu retten. Der kalte Krieg geht nämlich einfach inoffiziell weiter, der gesamte Ostblock ist rein optisch sowieso in den Achtzigern hängen geblieben, die Russen sind eindeutig böse Kommifaschisten und die Amerikaner aufgeklärte, wenn auch leicht verblödete, Gutmenschen. „Red Sparrow“ geht jedoch noch einen Schritt weiter. Ungehemmt greift er auf die stereotypen faschistoiden und sexistischen Machtideologien zurück, die Hollywoods Durchschnittszuschauer gewohnt ist, weil er  seit Jahrzehnten in Spionagethrillern darauf getrimmt wird. Er wendet sie jedoch dermaßen überzogen auf die Körperlichkeit seiner Protagonisten an, dass noch dem letzten NRA-Patrioten und Kommunistenjäger auffallen müsste, wie unfassbar schwachsinnig das hier alles ist. Jetzt könnte man ja noch auf eine Trashgranate hoffen, wird jedoch auch in diesem Sinne bitter enttäuscht. „Red Sparrow“ ist und bleibt ein auf 140 Minuten aufgeblasener, völlig ironiefreier Rohrkrepierer von einem Film, wie gutmütig man auch an ihn herangehen möchte. Wenn man Georg Seeßlens These folgt, dass sich im momentanen politischen Klima jeder Hollywoodfilm darauf abklopfen ließe, ob er >>trumpistisch<< sei oder nicht, könnte dieser hier von Trump persönlich geschrieben worden sein.      

Rico Handorf

[sammeldeineknochen]

Die Liebe zum verlorenen Objekt und der Todestrieb sind in der Begierde unauflöslich miteinander verstrickt.

Catherine Belsey: “Poststrukturalismus”, S.134

[hermesstolemywig]

This evening is rather sultry but I seem to have contracted a mild cold (let's hope it's a common cold) and I'm trying my utmost best to study but my brain seems to have other plans. It keeps on deliberately rejecting all the academic jargon that I need to process before tomorrow's class. So I've decided to give up on life and be the natural dumb self that I am.

[zielenna]

We have bodies, Silvestris, and human bodies, which in their own natures being much more wretched than beasts’, do much more miserably than beasts pursue their own ruins. And since it will ask longer labour and study to subdue the powers of our blood to the rule of the soul than to satisfy them with the fruition of ours loves, let us be constant in the world’s errors and seek our own torments

John Lyly, Love’s Metamorphosis. 

‘A Wittie and Courtly Pastorall’, first staged by the Children of Paul’s, a troupe of child actors, c. 1589-90.

[muchadoaboutlearning]

understanding coherence in writing of research essays inside the pastel green university library

I am doing a literature-arts joint major with a social studies concentration (most probably) for my undergraduate degree. This is my sophomore year, specifically dedicated to pursuing my major courses. I am taking the following courses this trimester:

1. The Genre of Short Story: learnt a lot about genre theory, especially formalism (Russian formalism, New Criticism) in the initial two weeks, now moving forward towards Structuralism

2. Writing a Research Essay: An academic writing intensive course, specifically dedicated to learning the art of writing a research (in my case literary research) essay. I loved the reading by Catherine Belsey for this class.

Do check out her essay on "Pleasure: Have we Neglected it?" It talks about the lack of study of pleasure or importance being given to pleasure of reading/consuming literary texts/media in literary criticism.

3. Pathways in the Arts: An in-depth course to analyse the sectors of arts, certain modules on art management, art scholarship, patronage, curation practice, etc.

4. Concepts in Aesthetics: A philosophical inquiry into aesthetics. We began with the renowned book by Dewey called Art as an Experience, specifically focusing on the chapter of Having an Experience to understand aesthetic experiences. It is probably my favourite class of the term right now. Introduction to insightful concepts such as Immanance, Transcendence, Aristotle's Poetics etc.

//"Week 33 2022"// First Week of Sophomore Year

[zeleniafic]

o children

“A ghost is always radically out of time, as well as out of place.” — Catherine Belsey

Taglist: @raith-way @decennia @booty-boggins ~ hmu if you want to be added! ♡

[onetwofeb]

'Big Words... Small Worlds' (feat. Raymond Williams)

'Big Words... Small Worlds' was made for Channel Four in 1987. Written and narrated by David Lodge, it's a documentary about the 'Linguistics of Writing Conference' in 1986 at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.

Raymond Williams appears alongside Jacques Derrida, Stuart Hall, Edward Said, Catherine Belsey, Derek Attridge, Fredric Jameson, Jean-Luc Godard, Jonathan Culler, Nigel Fabb, Benjamin Zephaniah, Ruqaiya Hasan, Stanley Fish, Morris Halle, Mary Louise Pratt, Martina Attille, Jonathon Green, Willy Maley, Pratap Rughani, Rosalind Coward, Terry Eagleton, Antony Easthope, and Jane Tomkins.

[butchhamlet]

thinking about how twelfth night gives us the name cesario in 1.4 but we don’t get the name viola until the last scene. thinking about “i am not what i am” in 3.1 and the paper (disrupting sexual difference: meaning and gender in the comedies by catherine belsey) that points out “i am not what i SEEM” would have scanned just as well but that’s not what she says. thinking about how the whole play is the slow unfolding of viola, but is viola being unfolded to the audience or to herself or to everyone?

[weirdletter]

Aeternum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies, Volume 7, Issue 1, edited by Ashleigh Prosser, Gwyneth Peaty, and Lorna Piatti-Farnell, June 2020. Info and free download: aeternumjournal.com.

Aeternum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies is an open-access biannual on-line journal. It offers peer-reviewed academic articles. The purpose of the Journal is to provide an emphasis on contemporary Gothic scholarship, bringing together innovative perspectives from different areas of study.

Contents: Editorial – Ashleigh Prosser     Articles The Joy of a Gothic Fable: Form, didacticism and ‘happy- ness’ in Sonya Hartnett’s The Ghost’s Child and Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook – Allison Craven     Book Reviews The Vampire Chronicles. Anne Rice. (1976-2018) – Antonio Sanna Tales of the Troubled Dead: Ghost Stories in Cultural History. Catherine Belsey. (2019) – Astrid Crosland Videogames and Horror: From Amnesia to Zombies, Run! Dawn Stobbart. (2019) – Gwyneth Peaty

[arisefairsun]

Perhaps the greatest threat to Mercutio’s hopes, had he been alive to hear them, lies in Juliet’s words to the departing Romeo: ‘Art thou gone so, love, lord, ay husband, friend.’ The emergent cultural value of loving marriage changed the terms of the relationship between the couple. Partners were now friends too; a spouse was beginning to take up most of the emotional space available. Medieval chivalry had put a high premium on relations between men; a loyal companion could be relied on to help a warrior off the battlefield and send for a surgeon. And in peace a friend was there to share good news and bad. In Francis Bacon’s words, ‘this communicating of a man’s self to his friend works two contrary effects; for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs and halfs.’ Cornwallis went further. As sceptical towards romance as Mercutio, he maintained that real love could exist only between people of the same sex, since relationships between men and women were contaminated by desire. Stories in wide circulation in the sixteenth century, but not remembered only by cultural historians, celebrated the model friendships between men: Titus and Gisippus, Damon and Pithias. But if medieval elite couples once entered into arranged marriages and spent their days in separate chambers, each with a same-sex retinue of knights or ladies in waiting, early modern married couples increasingly expected to be companions and friends, as well as lovers. To the degree that she too is Romeo’s friend, Juliet unwittingly supplants Mercutio.

Catherine Belsey, Romeo and Juliet: Language and Writing.

[oupacademic]

A Very Short Fact: On this day in 1918, French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser was born in Algeria.

“Under capitalism the state sets up institutions to defend property. The most obvious of these is the law, backed by the police force and the prison system. When in 1969 Louis Althusser reread (or rewrote) The German Ideology in the light of Saussure and semiology, as well as Marx's own later work, he began from there and went on to explain how capitalist society maintains itself. According to Althusser, the Repressive State Apparatus preserves order, the existing relations of production, in which some people have to sell their labour-power to earn a living, and some don’t but live on their investments. If it is directly challenged by revolution or civil disobedience, the Repressive State Apparatus works in the last analysis by force.

But many, or perhaps most, of us barely come into contact or collision with the police and the courts. We ‘work by ourselves’, Althusser says, to reproduce the class relations on which capitalism depends, even if these do not serve our long-term interests. The deserving poor of the 19th century reaffirmed the values of that society, even though by doing so they mostly remained poor. Why?

Because, in Althusser's account, the Repressive State Apparatus finds a parallel in the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs), institutions that produce and reproduce the meanings and values which represent the relationship we imagine we have to our real conditions of existence. The ISAs tell us that work is a duty; that work well done is a pleasure; that we are free to get another job if we don’t like this one; that we can move to Cuba if we don’t like capitalism. (The range of places to move to is dwindling fast, of course, as McDonald's takes over the world for the free market.)” — From ‘Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction’ by Catherine Belsey

[Pg. 33-4 — From ‘Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction’ by Catherine Belsey.]

Image via Wikimedia Commons 

[sammeldeineknochen]

Die Ideologie ist innerlich; wir sind ihre Auswirkungen; wir zitieren sie unabsichtlich jedesmal, wenn wir das 'Selbstverständliche' erneut bestätigen.

Catherine Belsey: “Poststrukturalismus”, S.57