March 16 08
i’d like to formally welcome myself back to the internet, and to all of you.
as some of you might recall, long ago i gave up on the concept of the personal blog. there were many reasons to do so, but i left mostly because i was overwhelmed by the simulacra of all my friends [...]
August 28 07
Presented today, as a brief lesson in elementary Saussurian structuralism, and post-structuralism, is an excerpt from Umberto Eco’s 1980 novel, Il Nome Della Rosa (tr: The Name of The Rose, 1983). Any semiotician or Eco-fan will be familiar with the text, and with the excerpt, as it is one of any number of pages from [...]
August 17 07
This is an addendum to a post I began last week on the enthusiasm inherent in postmodernism, as explicated by Linda Hutcheon in her Poetics of Postmodernism (1988). In this, another long excerpt, Hutcheon explains what “meaning” in a postmodern world (that is, in our systems, our philosophies, our politics, our art forms, etc) [...]
August 11 07
There is a lesson at hand today, on the nature of post-modernism and its place in society today. It is not so much a lecture as it is a reminder of some important words written by Linda Hutcheon in 1988. [Recent talk on pomo has kick-started my summer studies into high gear, it [...]
August 9 07
Reading and responding to a recent blog post on post-modernism at Tales From The Reading Room has got me thinking about the current state of post-modern criticism within our own culture. Although some of PoMo’s “big names” such as Jameson and Hutcheon are still alive and well and kicking the theoretical can around the [...]
By mitchellirons
Posted in ecrits
Also tagged Edward Said, Fredric Jameson, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Linda Hutcheon, literary theory, postmodernism, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontage, Theodor Adorno
June 4 07
W.G. Sebald is known for his unique narrative style, and his untimely death. The German emigré to the UK died in a car accident in December, 2001, not long after the publication of his last novel, Austerlitz. The academic-turned-writer wrote in his original German tongue, but found fame in several languages, largely on the [...]
November 5 06
Some thoughts on adaptations: the original, the altered, and the aura.
We appear to live in a culture that values the “final original” version of a work (“Art” may be freely substituted if so desired). Galleries, libraries and museums promote and covet their artifacts, and the people in turn covet the institutions. [...]
October 15 06
Contemplating some considerations about creating shadowy, maligned images of ourselves in the non-physical world of the internet, and its ramifications, I began to realize that the development of false representative identities on a large scale is not without precedent. This does not alleviate the anxiety of existence, though.
Stereotypes show the inaccuracies of representation We [...]
October 9 06
It is Thanksgiving, and in the spirit of things, I thought I’d give the internet something.
I’m actually giving something back – a crude semblance of my being. For a time resident in the cyber realism of weblogs, I grew frustrated with the medium, and abruptly left. There were too many issues in the [...]