Meanwhile, speaking of policy, of which Trump has none, J.D.
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SufferForMe 🆘replied to William Lindsey :toad: on last edited by
Politicians really should stop devising policy based on dystopian sci-fi novels.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to SufferForMe 🆘 on last edited by
@sufferforme Indeed. A valuable angle to think about Vance, for sure — really dystopian sci-fi novels.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Karen Strickholm on last edited by
@KarenStrickholm Yes, deconstructive criticism, especially Lacan, was a big thing when I did an M.A. in English in the 1980s. It never appealed much to me. I was always more interested in Bakhtin, who never seemed to me to fit the deconstructive paradigm.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Runyan50 on last edited by
@Runyan50 An excellent question — and perhaps one Vance should reflect on himself.
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HotTubMemeMachine for Harrisreplied to William Lindsey :toad: on last edited by
@wdlindsy @sufferforme They look at 1984 and the Handmaid’s Tale as instruction manuals.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to HotTubMemeMachine for Harris on last edited by
@HotTubMemeMachine @sufferforme So it seems. And that truly was my very first thought when it was announced in 2016 that Trump had "won" the election — namely, that Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler had both been prescient. I didn't think so much of Orwell, but he, too, definitely saw what was coming.
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Kinenereplied to William Lindsey :toad: on last edited by
@wdlindsy @Oldfartrant Folks around me called a sofa "the Davenport." No clue why.
Ol' JD can go have an affair with a Davenport or a Chesterfield.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Kinene on last edited by
@c_merriweather @Oldfartrant I've heard the Davenport term, too — interesting names for what I grew up hearing called a sofa or a couch. I love the regionalisms. Yes, Vance has lots of choice, doesn't he?
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Karen Strickholmreplied to William Lindsey :toad: on last edited by
@wdlindsy I forgot about that guy! There was also a school of criticism based in Estonia, before the Russians went in and conquored that land. I remember liking what they had to say, buy the humanities was in the full (intolerant) grip of the French literary philosophers of the time.
It's funny what sticks with us. This book has influenced my whole life! High time to go back and read it. It's not an easy read.
Orality and Literacy (New Accents) https://a.co/d/7JnudiM
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Karen Strickholm on last edited by
@KarenStrickholm Yes, the French theorists conquered the field, for sure. Thanks for the link to the Walter J. Ong book. It's not one I've read, though his name is familiar to me, though only vaguely.
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RealGravitasreplied to William Lindsey :toad: on last edited by
@wdlindsy Listening to TFG, Vance, and the guys that support them, often makes me ponder what men are for. ️
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Karen Strickholmreplied to William Lindsey :toad: on last edited by
@wdlindsy It really caused a shift in my understanding of human communication and how it actually shapes our perception and consciousness. He explores orality, then the transition into literacy. Most intriguing to me were his thoughts on the next great transition, from literacy to the moving image. That's what we're in now, he asserts. Fascinates me.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Karen Strickholm on last edited by
@KarenStrickholm A good point, the shift in understanding of communication and how it shapes our perception and consciousness. French theory has been good on that point, I agree: Ceci c'est pas un pipe is, at one level, so simplistic and almost banal that the big point it's making is easy to overlook initially — namely, that the signifier and signified are not literally the same thing. Recognizing that opens up whole new vistas on communication, seems to me.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to RealGravitas on last edited by
@CWilbur Touché. And that makes me think of a brilliant line from Toni Morrison's novel Beloved,
“Clever, but schoolteacher whipped him anyway, to show him that definitions belonged to the definers—not the defined."
Only some of us get to be the definers, and when we the defined get out of our places, the definers get violent.
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Karen Strickholmreplied to William Lindsey :toad: on last edited by
@wdlindsy Amidst all that theory, what attracted me to literature most of all is the power and enchantment of storytelling. That pleasure, decouple fr9m going down the deconstructionist road, was/is frowned upon by these literary critics. I do think they overlook and devalue the primal draw of story.telling Can't we have both? Do you know what I mean? Not sure I'm expressing that observation very well.
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Karen Strickholm on last edited by
@KarenStrickholm I'm with you on that point, the power and enchantment of storytelling. My Ph.D. work focused on history (in the field of theology), and I chose history as my focus because it is, quite literally, story.
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Karen Strickholmreplied to William Lindsey :toad: on last edited by
@wdlindsy BTW we have a lot in common academically. My PhD dissertation was supposed to be about the relationship to divinity in the works of women writers in early medieval Spain, when Christians, Jews and Moors lived together in relative peace and harmony. Only problem was I was having trouble finding texts by women in that period. But those works existed all over the rest of Europe so it stood to reason they were somewhere. Intersection of 3 languages and 3 religions... Such a rabbit hole!
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William Lindsey :toad:replied to Karen Strickholm on last edited by
@KarenStrickholm Really fascinating topic. I think right away of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who was, of course, post-medieval — but she illustrates the problem of finding women's voices in that culture for a long time. I also think of Teresa of Avila, who had conversos blood and may have been hounded by the Inquisition for that reason. I also think of Tariq Ali's series of novels about the co-existing Jewish, Muslim, and Christian cultures of Spain — and then what happened to that arrangement.
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Karen Strickholmreplied to William Lindsey :toad: on last edited by
@wdlindsy Yes, that's the world. Remembering I also liked Berceo, but he was a dude. And, El Libro de Buen Amor, a Chaucer-like frame story, saucy as well. Around 1200? When I left academia, I went into the corporate world, so it's pretty foggy. I don't know those novels though, will check it out, thanks!
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Karen Strickholmreplied to William Lindsey :toad: on last edited by
@wdlindsy What was your focus?