December 16, 2004
Last night at 10 pm I started Greg Bear's Blood Music and finished it up this morning. Didn't sleep well in other words. I got this book b/c I'm trying to make peace with the lyme/ehrlichia combination that will not leave my body (read about it in Walter Benn Michaels The Shape of the Signifier). Although somehow I doubt things are going to go so well for me, that the lyme/ehrlichia are transforming me into a more peaceful and transformative state.
December 10, 2004
George McKay, ed., DiY Culture: Party & Protest in Nineties Britain. Decent essays. Not transformative. Wasn't as helpful as I had hoped. But glad I read it.
Went to Eleni Sikelianos reading last night. And then when couldn't sleep got up and read her The Book of Jon, a memoir of her father. I like its move between different registers.
Went to Eleni Sikelianos reading last night. And then when couldn't sleep got up and read her The Book of Jon, a memoir of her father. I like its move between different registers.
December 08, 2004
Finally finished, as part of my finish books rather than keep starting new ones policy, Chris Rohmberg's No There There: Race, Class, and Political Community in Oakland. Looks at three key moments of community organization in Oakland: the Klan in the 20s, the General Strike of 46, and the Panthers in the 70s. And then at the end asks why so little organization now. Interesting book. Very sociological but it had a lot of good neighborhood data. Didn't know that I live in a neighborhood once called "the Bible Belt" for instance.
December 07, 2004
Two talks this week at Berkeley...
Jacob Edmond
5 + 5 = Poetry: Re-Imagining Russia in Contemporary American Poetry
The room was full of language poets. I think four of the 5 in 5 +5 were there. Interesting talk. Very well researched but avoided argument. I left thinking he may have a really interesting project in how international poetries get used in the US (and abused but also for the most part he seemed to be interested in the language/Russian connection for how it was a little less conservatively used than the other poetries). His work is US/Russia/China. The US has used Russian and Chinese poetries so long for ideological reasons. There wasn't much that suggested that the project is anything more than historical survey. But who knows. It could have been audience anxiety.
Amitava Kumar
Lights, Karma, Action: Report from Bombay
He said he wanted to write about Bollywood film in the language of Bollywood film in the Q&A. But the talk was not in film language. It was in the language of realist novel or short story. And while it was about Bollywood, it seemed to be in the genre of fiction written in the west by literary critics. Reminded me a lot of the Kristeva novel. Or any of those other novels that came out in the 80s that were written by theorists. I was fascinated by it. And I liked how it wanted to talk about how Bollywood was, like Hollywood, an industry of class mobility for a certain sector of people. It told, instead of showed, a huge amount. Which always interests me. But mainly I was fascinated because I felt it was finally a failed experiment. And yet also so close to my own failed experiment of this long piece I keep writing. I kept having these rushes of empathy.
Jacob Edmond
5 + 5 = Poetry: Re-Imagining Russia in Contemporary American Poetry
The room was full of language poets. I think four of the 5 in 5 +5 were there. Interesting talk. Very well researched but avoided argument. I left thinking he may have a really interesting project in how international poetries get used in the US (and abused but also for the most part he seemed to be interested in the language/Russian connection for how it was a little less conservatively used than the other poetries). His work is US/Russia/China. The US has used Russian and Chinese poetries so long for ideological reasons. There wasn't much that suggested that the project is anything more than historical survey. But who knows. It could have been audience anxiety.
Amitava Kumar
Lights, Karma, Action: Report from Bombay
He said he wanted to write about Bollywood film in the language of Bollywood film in the Q&A. But the talk was not in film language. It was in the language of realist novel or short story. And while it was about Bollywood, it seemed to be in the genre of fiction written in the west by literary critics. Reminded me a lot of the Kristeva novel. Or any of those other novels that came out in the 80s that were written by theorists. I was fascinated by it. And I liked how it wanted to talk about how Bollywood was, like Hollywood, an industry of class mobility for a certain sector of people. It told, instead of showed, a huge amount. Which always interests me. But mainly I was fascinated because I felt it was finally a failed experiment. And yet also so close to my own failed experiment of this long piece I keep writing. I kept having these rushes of empathy.
December 04, 2004
Oh geez. It has been over a month since I finished a book.
But finally, finally, made it through to the end on at least one: Walter Benn Michael's The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History. I'm always fascinated by Michael's work, part fascination of annoyance and part fascination of his love of argument. This one begins with Susan Howe and while his argument is interesting, I'm not convinced he knows his Howe. Same thing with his reading of identity politics in general. The argument is interesting in the tight little world in which he defines identity politics. But identity politics do so much more than he assumes them to do. The book pretty much ignores that one of the reasons to preserve diverse language practices is because often different languages contain different knowledges. It is not that all are equal and all are just markers of identity. (Big refusal to deal with Whorf, who I know is out of style yet still feels constantly relevant to me.) Or there are weird sentences like "Our descendents will all have some culture--as long as we know in principle that it can't possibly be worse or better than ours, why should we care which one it is" (50). This is of course true as long as we assume that there are no special knowledges embedded in cultures. But environmental knowledges radically vary from culture to culture. So it might actually matter which one we choose. But the book made me want to reread Acker's Empire of the Senseless. And I think I also felt jealous of it because it moves between avant garde poetry and science fiction and is the sort of book I keep wanting to write except on language, not on identity and culture.
Also to check out:
Rorty's essay "The Inspirational Values of Great Works of Literature" in Achieving our Country
Richard Powers Plowing the Dark
But finally, finally, made it through to the end on at least one: Walter Benn Michael's The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History. I'm always fascinated by Michael's work, part fascination of annoyance and part fascination of his love of argument. This one begins with Susan Howe and while his argument is interesting, I'm not convinced he knows his Howe. Same thing with his reading of identity politics in general. The argument is interesting in the tight little world in which he defines identity politics. But identity politics do so much more than he assumes them to do. The book pretty much ignores that one of the reasons to preserve diverse language practices is because often different languages contain different knowledges. It is not that all are equal and all are just markers of identity. (Big refusal to deal with Whorf, who I know is out of style yet still feels constantly relevant to me.) Or there are weird sentences like "Our descendents will all have some culture--as long as we know in principle that it can't possibly be worse or better than ours, why should we care which one it is" (50). This is of course true as long as we assume that there are no special knowledges embedded in cultures. But environmental knowledges radically vary from culture to culture. So it might actually matter which one we choose. But the book made me want to reread Acker's Empire of the Senseless. And I think I also felt jealous of it because it moves between avant garde poetry and science fiction and is the sort of book I keep wanting to write except on language, not on identity and culture.
Also to check out:
Rorty's essay "The Inspirational Values of Great Works of Literature" in Achieving our Country
Richard Powers Plowing the Dark
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