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felis_ultharusToday I moved on from the post-structuralists to the structuralists, especially Gérard Genette. I'm beginning to wonder what is it about France that produce all these rather extreme literary critics.
The structuralists seem somewhat more sane, though it may just be Genette. He has a tendency to try and squeeze square pegs into round holes. he has a tendency to believe, "The living bird is ... the labeled bones." But at least he believes that words can have meanings, and that the vision of the author matters.
Meanwhile, I'm still perplexed by the obsession of post-structuralists for meaningless writing. They seem certain that everyone will share their quasi-sexual obsession with dull and deliberately meaningless avant-garde experimental books. And I mean quasi-sexual. Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes both describe the experience of reading "words liberated from meaning" as a jouissance -- from the French jouir, "to come, to reach orgasm."
Apparently meaninglessness, confusion, and emptiness got them hot. I vaguely wonder if Roland Barthes is still alive, and if he uses videotapes of George W. Bush's press conferences as a sexual aide.
Edit: I've checked on Wikipedia. Apparently Roland Barthes died in 1980, run over by a laundry truck.
As gauche as it is to find humour in another human being's death, I have to admit I'm amused by a very famous post-structuralist's sudden and irreversible encounter with reality.
The structuralists seem somewhat more sane, though it may just be Genette. He has a tendency to try and squeeze square pegs into round holes. he has a tendency to believe, "The living bird is ... the labeled bones." But at least he believes that words can have meanings, and that the vision of the author matters.
Meanwhile, I'm still perplexed by the obsession of post-structuralists for meaningless writing. They seem certain that everyone will share their quasi-sexual obsession with dull and deliberately meaningless avant-garde experimental books. And I mean quasi-sexual. Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes both describe the experience of reading "words liberated from meaning" as a jouissance -- from the French jouir, "to come, to reach orgasm."
Apparently meaninglessness, confusion, and emptiness got them hot. I vaguely wonder if Roland Barthes is still alive, and if he uses videotapes of George W. Bush's press conferences as a sexual aide.
Edit: I've checked on Wikipedia. Apparently Roland Barthes died in 1980, run over by a laundry truck.
As gauche as it is to find humour in another human being's death, I have to admit I'm amused by a very famous post-structuralist's sudden and irreversible encounter with reality.
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Date: 2005-09-12 09:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 04:26 pm (UTC)