felis_ultharus | (no subject)

I present to the thermonuclear warhead of annoying, the postmodern mime (from Linda Hutcheon's book):

"The very walls of the traditional museum and the very definition of art come under fire in the performances of Albert Vidal, for instance. His "The Urban Man" is a kind of anthropological performance ritual in which Vidal spends five hours a day in a major public place in a city (Miami's Metro Zoo or the Place d'Youville in Quebec City) offering to passers-by an "exhibit" of postmodern man about his daily business."

What is "postmodern man's" daily business? Deconstructing his groceries? Turning office memos into historiographic metafiction? Informing his boyfriend/girlfriend that love is a bourgeois concept and a construction of language, and that the "I" in "I love you" is a signifier that cannot be tied to a signified beyond language?

Oh well, there are reasons to be happy. I finally polished off more than 8 pages yesterday on my writing, though I've hardly done any today. Plus there's Advent Children to look forward to. And there was a gorgeous gay guy sitting next to me this evening in the internet place, so that made me happy :)

As for work, wish me luck. I'm going to be leading the placement test tomorrow, from 9 am to 4:30 pm. I even have a one-member "team" to help me with the interviews.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Wishing you luck from Vancouver. :)

Also, you may be very amused to hear that I pulled off a copy of Susanna Moodie's "Roughing it in the Bush" while weeding the non-fiction at Kits yesterday. It hadn't been issued since 1999. :)

The test went really well -- much better than I expected.

I'm not surprised it hasn't been issued. They're still trying to sell the overstock 7 years later. Nobody reads it now except Canadian English students :/

Please deconstruct my grocery list. It currently is chicken, green beans, cauliflower, and coffee.

*puts on Jacques Derrida mask*

The word "chicken" contains traces "cowardice" and "underage male pursued by an older man." This intertextuality must be taken into account. The mere presence of the word immediately implicates a homophobic discourse of predatory older queer men who may, also, be cowards.

Taken to refer to the animal in its dead form sold in supermarkets, it suggests an allegiance to a hegemonic, bourgeois, meat-eating regime that makes use of hormones and other capitalist methods of food production.

However, privileging this last meaning would suggest that we are making the mistake of taking the items of the list (itself a genre having no referent beyond textuality) as refering to a referant beyond language.

The presence of "cauliflower" suggests "ears" (as in "cauliflower ears"), and hints, perhaps, of a liberal humanist, bourgeois privileging of the oral over the written.

"Coffee" can refer to beans or to a drink that is part of the bourgeoisie lifestyle. Its presence signals allegiance to a global, coffee-producing culture, a mass-market, and, inevitably, resonates with images of repetition (millions around the world are drinking it) -- which suggests the elimination of the individual, while also allegorically producing an analogous narrative of concern for the "already said, already written." "Coffee", as a drink of bourgeois routine, cannot escape connection to the concepts of repetition. The fear of repetition -- of merely reproducing that which has been said, because there are no origins -- creates anxiety.

Thus, I can only conclude that "coffee" is an allusion to the work of Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes, the post-structuralists who (if we were going to work within the fiction of "author" and "origin") first described these concepts of reproduction, repitition, and the "already said, already written."

"Green Bean" appears to have no purpose, except as a possible intertext for "coffee bean." Having no possible meaning beyond language, "green bean" is clearly an attempt to liberate language from meaning, from the intent of author-as-god.

Your grocery list, in conclusion, reveals a complex web of Postmodern contradictions. The list's early attempt to re-inscribe stereotypes of queer males, and inscribe new ones, is demolished by the second entry's shattering of imposed meaning, and a relapse in the form of "cauliflower" (oral speech), is finally shattered in the reproduction of the theories ascribed (by believers of "author") to Barthes and Kristeva, which results in a final elimination of the notions of authorial intent and cultural metanarratives.

Clearly, your grocery list is an act of liberation.

*removes Jacques Derrida mask*

You win the Internet. May I metaquote this?

Cool

*covets internet jealously*

Of course you may metaquote this :)

We're shaaaameleeeess...

why does that sound to me that he's planning to flash them all?

I wouldn't be at all surprised.