(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

It's beginning to look like the game's going to be a no-go again. We just won't have enough players, so I thought I'd give everyone a head's up for Sunday. And next Sunday will probably be impossible :/

I'd still like to get together with people, though.

Editing is going slowly, because work has been insane. I had more hours of work this week than I've ever had at that job, and it looks the same for next week. We're testing around the clock -- last year at this time, it was so dead I was laid of for several months.

Our semi-new saleswoman works around the clock getting contracts. Our teachers are working 9 to 5, our filing cabinets are bursting with recent student tests, and everyone is frazzled. Summer has never been this busy before, from what I hear. I can only imagine what things are going to be like in September.

Otherwise, I read a short introduction/biography to Foucault today. Interesting. He's one of my least-favourite philosophers, but it helped me to find some redeeming qualities in him -- as a person, if not a philosopher.

I also discovered a few more reasons to dislike his ideas.

He was much more politically active than I thought, though, even as his ideas attacked real politicial commitment. I was also amused that he and Roland Barthes were on-again, off-again lovers -- there's a metaphor in that for the relationships of postmodernism and poststructuralism, I'm certain.

Comments

[yumemisama.livejournal.com]

I thought Foucault was kind of interesting when we touched on him briefly in sociology classes. I don't know anything about him personally, however. Can you recommend some books?

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Foucault was interesting in his earlier days, but he skidded off more and more in abstraction. His personal life remained interesting until the end.

There are quite a few biographies of Foucault -- interesting, because his own thoughts on identity and Barthes' theories of authorship should mean that all biographies are meaningless and irrelevant.

I'd recommend just getting one of those "Introducing Foucault" books, and then diving into his theories -- which is what I should've done, having approached things from the opposite way around.

(I don't like his theories myself, but no one should attack them from a position of ignorance.)

It's interesting -- one of the things Fou8cault set out to show was the impossibility of genuine change of any kind -- or genuine anything. And yet he devoted much of his life to trying to change the world for the better.

I guess that's probably the best kind of hypocrite -- the kind who's better, not worse, than their beliefs.

[scottevil.livejournal.com]

Well, which was the bottom? Isn't poststructuralism postmodernism's bitch?

I ran into Nic last week. We talked for a good half hour. Since he'll never be marking me again, I confessed that I would purposely write stuff in my essays that cracked me up, wondering if I'd be called on it or not. I also fessed up to the "jejune" thing.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I always suspected Foucault of being a top. And Bartrhes' theories about the passivity of the author before language does have a certain metaphorical resonance.

And if Nic's a true postmodernist, he probably won't belive in authenticity anyway ;)