Final Paper

While I'll miss the discussions of the class, the conversation extends beyond its confines.

Here is my final paper:

Last Class

While there are supposed to be 14 classes in a course in a semester, this class is actually only 10 with two exam classes. A total of 12 classes and no make-ups for the missing two classes, hmmm.

Nov. 30th

.missed first section of class.

this is what was on the board....

Waning of Affect

Paratactical > proceed by juxtaposition/association

Quilts > patched narrative

-scraps, fragments

-communal >inheritances

>quilting circles

-domestic

-familiar

-AIDS quilt

isolation

-stigma

-loneliness

-mortality

-survive

Closing Monument > build it

> summation / stitches > point de caption

> isolated > mark > organizes space

- stand-in for people

- ring/knell > funerary

- mobile

-open

Opening > Survival, isolation

dependancy <> independence <> isolation

Beuys > -isolation

-survival

-mysticism

-politics

-sympathetic magic

shamanism

Bouys > monuments

Boys > (homosexuality)

second half:

anxiety of influence:

-fear of performing up to the quality of the previous

-how do I make a place for myself in a space that seems already full

-seth as an example

-placed in a freudian oedipal paradigm

-"kalo was so good, yet seemed to fail, so where do I fit in"

pataphysics:

-related to dada

-understands itself to be the construction of imaginary solutions to insoluble problems

-game playing science

-anti-science > finds exceptions

-an indiscipline

-influences some of the 315 canon of poetry

Parataxis:

-list like > viewer is left to make connections

-a penny dreadful

-chocolate milk, cards, poke in the eye

>the connection between the statements is to be found

-I walk down the street, Elvis is my friend

Obscenity:

-in relation to theatre

-related specifically to theatre and indicates things that should not be shown

-hat's are obscene, why are hats obscene?

-typing instructions in This is for you Anna, an air of obscenity

-things that are unwatchable or shouldn't be shown

Agency:

-the ability to act, rather than be acted on

-the opposite of passive of to be a victim

-have an affect on the world around

Survival:

-an artifact survives

-identity of some sort

-individual or cultural

Ninth Class

Nov. 23rd

Agency

Parataxis

Obscenity

-Theatre/drama

> performance > example > interpretation

> audience / money

target > specific audience (person in the audience)

inclusion / exclusion

communal event > ritual / ceremonial

venue

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

feeling time go by

closer to death

This is for you Anna:

> text moves quickly

> performers move

> sections

> difficult to visualize

> non-linear

> fragment*

> thematical organize > associative lateral

rhizomatic > Deleuze & Guattari

Poses a challenge to unity / coherence

form /content > how do they work together?

postmodernity

fragment*

Parataxis > this play is parataxical

the opposite of hypotaxis

hypotaxical is focused and tied together, as like an essay

Agate > hypotactical > narrative

> 2 stories

> revenge

> "go to sleep" > just ignore it

motive > Anna's murder

> murder as trigger

> multiple motives

> education discouraged

> barmaid / low income

> seems like bad mother

> rape

> cycle of abuse > culture of systemic abuse

(cliché) > alcoholic father

> sent to a home

> "she's one of those" / type of person

> listed in the 1000 sins > ails > suggestive of martyrdom

Grabowski's Fiancée > blindness

Both Lucretia and Agate are both myths

myth's have an ideological foundation

foundation for a culture

didactic

lessons > teach by example

the function of the story is hegemonic when the mother tells the daughter

myth > revision / intervention

content

structure / form

> cliché

stories about the murder of children could be considered cliché

> marianne's life

> feminism as man-hating reciprocal violence

> "strangers with candy"

> talking as flirting > framing relationships

> precious / innocent children

> cheering mob

> male / female > murder / victim

murderer > punishment / difficulty / responsibility

victim as murderer > man > revenge

> children > "Grabowski's child"

> suicide > ownership of body

> only option?

> virtue (preservation of virtue)

suicide > canonicity

> experience

Talk about husband treating wife > mattress comment, etc.

- relationship > men / women

- power; abuse;

- (light tone > common) problematic

Marianne denial for all three perhaps

Jenny & Eena > sharing pain > minimizing

Maria > hesitation > pain > embarrassment > fear & guilt

-talk vs. response

'once you know, you have to do something

becomes a responsibility and a burden

victimhood can be comforting

Agency > calling the cops

Ob Skene

> violence > never in greek theatre

> the scene is obscene

Eighth Class

Nov. 16th

Ludic

Concrete Poetry (Dirty)

Parataxis

Myth

Panopticism

Language Poetry > how do you talk about ideology

> which is mediated through signs

> without reproducing that ideology

critique a structure using the same structure. collapse back on itself

the world preexists language

adam and the naming of things

general common sense presupposition is that the world is about language

the reverse is the case in more investigation

language in fact carves up reality and thus shapes reality

undifferentiated mass

language has a direct impact on how one experiences reality

the difficulty of changing the structures of ideology

How to step outside culture and reflect upon it?

Gustav Morin:

A Penny Dreadful

-cheap and full of horror

looking at one thing as a whole is the impression

-how does the poetry work?

-what is trying to say?

-are there patterns?

first you dream & then you die

-provisional

-hand on head?

-body shape

-idea/thought/in bubble

>assembly/disassembly

-dream? fear? fantasy?

-juxtaposition

-machine made label

mock psychogeography

-sunrise

-duality and juxtaposition

-consider replacing the cities with the dream function imagery

suggest pattern through poems

-a movement through "sleep" to "wakefulness"

-light within each

-camera/umbrella, where's the pattern of light within this image

>silhouette > shadows

>camera into the umbrella :block:screen: is it projecting or recording?

>Umbra > shadow

>read into/push out

"meaning emerges from interruption rather than statement"

description of what the work is doing:

concrete poetry . dirty

{nichols blob/plop is . pure}

Neither Either Nor Or

-ludic > game > rules??? > arbitrary

allegorically > inevitability of death

> can you win?

> what kinds of death are possible?

a book that talks to you as a reader

> reaches outside the book and into the world of the reader

> textuality / identity > Plato's cave of analogy

> flowchart

> multiple stories > "Garden of Forking Path"

> video games (early text based video games)

the garden of narrative

-infinite possibilities and choices made close off other possibilities

-nipping buds

The Anna Project:

four woman core

-collective production

>authorship

-based on historical fact

-multiple venues

-combination of ground work for a play and a record of a production

> Drama / Theatre

book / one specific performance

-the room left for interpretation creates a unique experience through production

decisions of direction can create a completely different understanding of a narrative

{multiple examples}

action, casting, setting, etc.

money - who's your audience, mobility of the play

Prologue -

lots of action, multiples of same character

-do you remember > history > dream

-regret

-photo

-shooting gesture

-milk

basic elements:

-memory

-violence

-multiple voices/views

>two voices in unison

-violence/nuture

milk and relation to nurture and maternity

life/death

giving/protecting

revenge as protection that comes too late

question of the symbolism of fridge

fairy tales / myth / children's stories

interruption of moments of introduction to violence

> parallel of mother's and daughter's tales

Seventh Class

Nov. 9th

Materiality

Écriture Feminine

Pataphysics

Materiality > Physicality of language > Game

Language being made of raw materials > splashes on a page, etc.

Sound Poetry is attempting to address the importance of a signifier.

Semiotics > Signs, sign systems

Three Branches:

semantics.. relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata

word A = X, meaning as a positive value

syntactics.. relations among signs in formal structures

pragmatics.. relation between signs and their effects on those (people) who use them

Three Parts:

signifier.. the sound "Cat"

signified.. a cat, your friend Kat, a groovy cat, a multiplicity of possibilities

referent.. outside language or system of signs that we're actually talking about

material expressions of stuff that generate ideas

Semiotics:

Signifier A ≠ B, C, D, E, F,....

Cat means this because it doesn't mean this and this and this and this, which all have signs

What a specific signifier signifies is shaped by the signifiers that it keeps company with

Networks of meaning: the dictionary as a closed system that you don't step outside of.

sound poetry through problematizing reference creates a new awareness of language

ludic structure of language

"it might be difficult right now to hear my voice as pure noise, although sometimes it might not {laughs}."

the blurring of boundaries between poetry and speech and music

insisting on the materiality of language

spoken language as corporeal > isn't just noise but the result of a process.

Corporeality: in two directions

Uncanny> Slavoj Zizek: the voice is itself may be uncanny: simultaneously familiar and unknown, generally unsettling. think of "cleave" as an example

what is the source of this uncanniness?

triggering the unconscious, repressed, beyond naming, forgotten

Zizek says the relationship of voice to body is to detached/complex/ problematic. resides "between the body" (vibrating air).

Disorderly> supposed to make sense, if not then taken to realm of madness

Language in and of itself. the ability to speak or write clearly. is inherently masculine.

the emphasis on direct clarity in language and faithful to reality.logic,etc. is in and of itself. participant in a broad cultural emphasis in the west, which have been historically gendered masculine. "you could say."

Several thousand years of sense in the west is built on binary systems. system of opposites. understanding relationship between things that can be thought of as opposites.

The question of a third sex is problematic. One that isn't a blend of the opposites.

Masculinity tends to be affiliated with:

daylight. linear temporality. logic. reason. culture. civilization.

Femininity tends to be affiliated with:

dreams. embodiment. unreason. emotion. moonlight/moon. night. reflection.

Working with this cultural inheritance:

language is masculine

Phallogocentrism: phal.logo.centrism

logo centric culture; sense making reason in aspiration

How do you use language in a way that is feminine?

Ècriture Feminine > feminine writing

Julia Kristeva, Helene Cixous, Marguerite Homans

three people who think about what a feminine language might be.

childhood. before entering the realm of the father.culture.rules.order

expresses a playfulness of language

develops an idiolect

breaks the rules of language purposely

the development of the individual

Julia Kristeva:

> poetic . open and playful

> semiotic . the arrangement of language that makes sense everyday

"I can call cottage cheese, finger stick." but never be understood.

Helene Cixous:

> strictly the writing of the body. writing through the body. sounds of the body

sounds that defy sense (problematic)

embodied language

Marguerite Homans:

> is also something that situates itself against logos.. non signifying. it is its touch.

infant and mother. a kind of touch. a phatic function. establishes connection.

Originating from Aristotle.

How do you address the problem of this entrenchment of division without reinforcing it?

It seems to be difficult to step out of this binary system of thinking.

Sound poetry seems to trigger this sort of conversation of embodiment and sexuality.

The tensions are being addressed: what they're doing, where they're going, is up to you.

BP Nichol:

puzzles, games, play

em ty : word as shape > concrete poetry

full?, P-less, illustration of self, self reflexive, page empty, MT

the contradiction and triple meaning of the empty fullness of the page word and meaning

U+⁻P=MT

there seems to be a relation to minimalist sculpture

Pataphysics:

Alfred Jarry > french artist and playwright. Ubu Roi (play)

discipline . indiscipline

imaginary solutions to unsolvable problems

looks for exceptions. looks for inconsistencies. paradoxes. problems.

had a tour through Dadaism

{dadaists do not want ism or ists attached ∴ henceforth is just dada}

Blues:

-title

-content

> colour, musical style, emotion

> loss of love, presence of love

-love, evol, eeeee > heavy bold on the page > impersonal > empty vessel

how do you deal with a poem that tells you how to read it?

-commentary

> handwritten > personal

> monospecific

{Glen Beck}

love > over signify, under signify

"The anthropologist dated the dead neanderthal."

the doubling of meaning and un-understanding of things

what happens when you give up a measure of control by introducing chance into your work?

chance > genius > intention > agency

Labour > value in relation to the amount put into it (work)

Dada Lama

divestiture of ego

why do people make things?

Eunoia . poetry book

Sixth Class

While this might actually be considered the 7th class, I don't count midterm exam writing as a class.

Nov. 2

Anxiety of Influence

Canonicity

Pataphysics

Meeting Annie

The ending of

Poetry selection of reprotext

situating Seth > functions as an individual

processed through othering and projection

self deceptive work to maintain a sense of individualism

recursion > nostalgia squared

self reflexive process creates a true sense of individuality

individuality recognizes collectivity to create individuality

intellectual slapstick structure

Artist > medium > ephemeral.popular.low > not in museums

{aside} exception is windsor mckay at the louvre as well as seth himself

Annie is odd perhaps

proxies/stand-ins/doubles/variations

Kalo: assumption of failure due to obscurity

Boris: animals function as pure sites of projection

Child (backyard).Chet.Annie.Boris.Kalo.Trendies

Annie > humour > desperation > pathos.edge

childlike or alternatively trapped in anxiety

sharing things; enthusiasm

isolated.alone.collector.doesn't think clearly?

suggestion of instability

features and mannerisms

real misery versus self-pity. annie versus seth ("Count Your Blessings")

she functions as a warning?

she is obscure, etc etc etc, and a kind of failure (haplessness and desperation)

special due to negative aspects rather than positive ones

art star model of studio practice:

they need to be the winner

universally celebrated

studio class as a version of american idol

dangerous and scary to think that way

seth's thinking seems to be functioning this way

aspires to fame or canonicity

Walter Benjamin

-article in illuminations. last section

statement: every work of art.masterpiece.every document of civilization is always

also at the same time a document of barbarism "ready to crush you"

"sounds oblique"

canons indicate.imply what to forget

control the stuffed animal/love the stuffed animal > perhaps parents will too

Narrative is interested in a specific syntax

why here, why now

the ending

no Kalo

mother

why this way and not any other?

Quest > object.purpose.goal to achieve

always implies transformation in the hero

changes the perception of the familiar

-different sense of success > family and domestic bliss

relief > artistic success > search for work and kalo

bringing a family closer together

kalo left cartooning for family and seth bring that element back into the family

alternation of drawings and family photos

kalo's family seth's book kalo's drawings are brought into the same level

father daughter

then

son mother

seth's father is absent

kalo's artwork for seth, traces of father for family, traffic of icons, images, objects, becomes a familial exchange

kalo functions as a proximate/surrogate father

finding a master/mentor.someone to follow

anxiety of influence (book) > Harold Bloom

takes freud and oedipus and relates it to art history

faced with the challenge of creating work that supersedes the predecessor

creating pressure through the collection of influence

Final Essay Question:

insert last year's workshop notes about Link's thoughts on writing a paper

ALEX NOTES:

researching efficiently/effectively

Determining priorities

Augmenting awareness of audience

Situation in a field

Contextualization

Recognition of newness of your ideas

Gather material selectively

Measure of reliability in it

begin broad and cloudy general idea of interest

brainstorm the ideas.

write them out

collect sentences and create paragraphs

find the theme/thesis at the conclusion*

it will present itself

Read the research work with a pen/highlighter

mark only relevant, succinct, specific, significant statements

combination of research and brainstorm ideas for categorization

*develop the thesis once you've written your first draft

a.k.a Discovery Draft

you find what you're talking about

Drafting written work:

provisional thesis (review and revise as you go)

edit and refine work from paragraph to paragraph::::

every paragraph has a point (miniature essays in themselves)

needs to connect to the rest of the work

timeline of ideas (makes linear sense)

make a claim (needs to be disputable)

what is there, that is new, that you're offering that can be argued.

draw in relevant research

supporting materials

objections

there's no point in writing about answerable questions

dialogue with the research you bring into the paper

the person reading your work is reading it to see what you have to say

and not the research itself

explain with detail and clarity why you disagree with something

clearly site sources of influence and support/disagreement

"This is what I'm going to tell you and this is why you should care."

come out with the thesis and then follow up with the essay.

BP Nichol

Sound Poetry

interruptions

disturbances

discerning pattern.meaning

{listened} Interrupted Nap > from Ear Rational

-crazy?

-seemingly hostile

-ill

-menacing?

{listened} Mischievous Eve

4 Horsemen piece

-chanting

-meditative

different kinds of nonsense

saying different things

maybe they're not nonsense

noise/news

news: inefficient, but clear

noise: communicates a great deal, lacks clarity

rational/irrational > different kinds of ways to think about crazy

models of sanity as determined by cultural ideals

-constitution of sanity/madness

-category of mental illness is fluid (changing through time and culture)

in many ways a function of power

"someone somewhere decides what's good art and what's bad art"

these poems drift in and out of crazy talk

rational > reason . irrational > unreason

-politically charged

juxtaposition of sense and lack of

what is it like, or how could it be, to go to a poetry reading

and not know it was going to be like what was heard

"it's more feeling than hearing"

-not representational

-not about stuff > experience.event.

raising questions about referentiality or reference

-no story, not even much to be about

William Carlos Williams raises ideas about poetry

-worthwhile thinking about a poem as an idea machine

-an idea generator.thought maker

-poems aren't about anything

-the is an object, it is something unto itself, there's no aboutness about it

-the poem is trying to push your ideas somewhere away from the page

start thinking about sound itself with sound poetry

when you listen to someone speaking you're not

language is always an act of translation

every language is a foreign language, you might just know some better

-these poems are an abstraction of language

animal response

a different part of the brain is functioning

"I call this one nachos with cheese."

Book > Underworld > performance art troupe >

eat this man's garbage and shit it out an stage

audio versus visual

translation versus double translation

Read the rest of the poetry in the collection

and read Neither Either Nor Or

Fifth Class

Oct. 26

Seth:

-specific strips at key moments

-examination of strip used on midterm

is this Seth at the time of the skating or Seth in retrospect of the occasion?

existentialism > finding some sort of direction or purpose in life

angst / joy > struggle

response to continuous situations with a plethora of choices

-woodstock and snoopy and relation of reading

-woodstock slashes in comparison to snoopy with characters in relation to the reader

bad faith

-putting a sense accomplishment in something that can't exist

-the never get to situation (peanuts)

-a guarantee in failure (goal oriented living is a doomed existence)

interest in the everyday

-exploring the everyday

slapstick / body humour

-the fall in the skating strip (schadenfrende > not you)

(jackass > obvious stupidity)

-abuse or mortify the body

-low humour = satanic

the ongoing issue of laughter. linked with evil, cruelty.

the universe taking back control from the illusion of reality

> fragility of sense. life

window display and dinosaur display > pity and interest

"bad" art

aspires to, but fails

Seth and Ruthie and the dissolution of the relationship

theodore sturgeon > beating to maintain the relationship of fragility

layers of pretense upon layers of pretense

understanding in relation to others

-projection

-othering (defining difference)

-seeing the world as an expression of internal feelings

pg 44-45

finding an understanding of self through an analysis of those around

1st person PoV > doubleness of internal/external > bidirectional

back and forth with connection and dissociation

identity via relation to others

romantic individualism

flâneur

wander

separate

judge

-the child that Seth observes and is told to stop

the world is more than a personal fantasy and projection

page 19 bottom right corner two pages and again same place and again two pages later

-relating through people who are silent

"I'm special and an individual"

"I'm exactly like everybody"

Stephen - Seth's brother (kind of happy/content)

-laid back

-childish.child like

-sloppy /lazy.relaxed

-stupid jokes

-annoys Seth

too like himself, too similar

-prison/cage/box

Seth's climbing into a box memory

cardboard box / related to mother's place

-trains = temporary suburb in motion

cells/frames of comics

-routine / predictability

-greenhouse

finding and paying attention to patterns in the narrative

the start of section three

-pages without text

slowing down and looking at the reason why this section of the story is important

dinosaurs

-old

-collected

-fascinating > children

-artificial > salvage > recovery

1970s movement of recovering women's literature

reinvigorate and return to promise women's literature

-"Diving into the Wreck"

-a poem that is a conceit

-constant return; pastness

-nostalgic

projection to flesh the beasts

guesswork to assembly

-fragility and obvious artifice

something that creates verisimilitude (the creation of reality in a simulation)

Boris and the steps of health in relationship to the narrative

the anchor of monumental buildings

eroded history with the intention to monumentalize

Seth is a champion of seeking to remember was is to be forgotten

enthusiasm for decay in architecture

The casualty of Seth (talk about next week)