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Nov. 4th, 2005 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
felis_ultharusConversation with Éric last night, who stopped by "just for a few minutes" to pick up a book:
'Twas another 20 minutes before I got a chance to speak again.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
montrealais applauds me for getting him out of the house in a little over an hour and a half.
I'm adoptingfoi_nefaste's description of him -- Éric "means well."
Class was strange last Tuesday. A guy I respect greatly in spite of our differing views was giving his presentation on Green Grass, Running Water. And he was going heavily in Barthesian stuff.
Now, Green Grass, Running Water is all about how Native people haven't had the opportunity to write their own stories -- they've all been written by white people -- and it's a sort of first attempt to redress that. And Roland Barthes' stuff is all about how the author doesn't matter. Well, if the author doesn't matter, then Green Grass, Running Water could have been written by a white guy. Which would just be stupid. But there wasn't time to point that out, we were so rushed with three presentations.
This post-modernist/post-structuralist stuff tends to create doublethink, probably because there's no way to really apply it in the real world, or even in the quasi-real world of academia. It's why I prefer humanism -- I need a philosophy that a person can live, not one that only works when published in an academic journal.
The books for the course are good at least. I'm lost in the marvellous Famous Last Words. Not that far into it yet, but it has the best frame story of any book I've encountered yet. And I've never come across descriptions like Findley's. I've never encountered anything that vivid in prose.
Éric (translated loosely from French): My astrologer said since I'm a Taurus with Leo Rising and Mars in the first House in Leo and Moon in Aries I should be careful of being the kind of person who dominates social situations...
Me: (attempts to get word in edgewise for no less than 20 minutes)
Éric: But that's not really me at all. So I don't know why that is...
Me (after Éric finally takes a breath): You do occasionally have a tendency to dominate conversation...
Éric: Me? No. Really? I have a hard time speaking...
'Twas another 20 minutes before I got a chance to speak again.
montrealais applauds me for getting him out of the house in a little over an hour and a half. I'm adopting
foi_nefaste's description of him -- Éric "means well."Class was strange last Tuesday. A guy I respect greatly in spite of our differing views was giving his presentation on Green Grass, Running Water. And he was going heavily in Barthesian stuff.
Now, Green Grass, Running Water is all about how Native people haven't had the opportunity to write their own stories -- they've all been written by white people -- and it's a sort of first attempt to redress that. And Roland Barthes' stuff is all about how the author doesn't matter. Well, if the author doesn't matter, then Green Grass, Running Water could have been written by a white guy. Which would just be stupid. But there wasn't time to point that out, we were so rushed with three presentations.
This post-modernist/post-structuralist stuff tends to create doublethink, probably because there's no way to really apply it in the real world, or even in the quasi-real world of academia. It's why I prefer humanism -- I need a philosophy that a person can live, not one that only works when published in an academic journal.
The books for the course are good at least. I'm lost in the marvellous Famous Last Words. Not that far into it yet, but it has the best frame story of any book I've encountered yet. And I've never come across descriptions like Findley's. I've never encountered anything that vivid in prose.
