Sunday, December 02, 2007

i'm still thinking about borges a lot

Anyhow, my studies are shifting and now I'm taking courses more on subjectivity and the creation of humans than on systems. I hope that tort'luminaries won't find me snobbish or ineffectual or boring.

Borges is trippy, everyone knows that. But trippiness isn't the Borgesean end-all and the questions that arise from readings of Borges (and often historical specificities of some value) can be applied politically and are as political as anything else. I'm basically making an apology now because I feel vulnerable to attacks of apolitical work.

Short paper on escaping time (AKA THA GRIND)

Also, I like to always work to undermine christian scriptural interpretation, which I think is political, right?
A paper on "Bible [sic] prophecy" Edit- I just realized I don't have this whole thing on googledocs so I'll look for the complete paper.

Anyway, I put some stuff up here for fodder to hopefully engage y'all (I hope there's a y'all to us) and obviously--obvious both because of the embarrassing quality of what's here and because it's obvious that weezall (again, I hope there's a we to we)intimate/comfortable--there's no need to be to polished with you guys 'cause we tight like that.

My cohort is full of good people by the way and I'm having another good ann arbor community experience and happiness, etc. It seems like everyone is fixated on Mediterranean literature, but it's just half of my cohort (Turkish, Cypriot and Arab-European respectively) but we're tight anyway. I have to wait until the summer, though, to have picnics with them, and maybe I shouldn't encroach on that social space with another social group anyway. But what am I supposed to do when I can't go to new york for Ben's birthday?

happy birthday Ben btw

5 comments:

elsie said...

Chris! It's good that your cohort is good. The nicest/best person in mine is dropping out because it's so awful here (applying to other places). If things are not better next semester I might consider leaving, too, except that I like the community center.

I'm not sure I can take the Marx class anymore because Michael Hardt just completely abused his relationship with some people I know (it's really bad). There's a Marx student reading group next semester but they're starting with Capital II, so I might just have to read on my own. Well, I haven't officially dropped the class, yet. Will see how things are in two weeks.

I don't think there's any such thing as apolitical work. It's just what politics you use and how you use them. (I think.) Borges is definitely applicable to extra-aesthetic discussion. Hooray, I had my last aesthetics class this morning. Now it is over.

You should have picnics. Tortugas are so understanding about this.

Hope you're approaching the end of the semester in cheer. I'm looking forward to reading your papers (when I finish mine).

--E

C Meade said...

Elsie,

obviously, you should come back here if you do leave--we could have a very (or not at all) exclusive latinamericanist club. There aren't really others, although I'm probably going to joint-author a paper on justice and la muerte y la doncella with Ramon, whom you may remember from his visit to anton's 492 class (the session of in the mood for love viewing). (he's chilean but works mainly in jewish diaspora literature. anyway,
zingerman's
washtenaw dairy
gallup park
amer's
leopold's
ashley's
...
although of course the first preference is that your current program is perfect, for which I have every hope. ;)

C Meade said...

oh, and write me an email sometime outlining the hardt thing and also we can start to reconsider marx interuniversitarial reading group stuff.
I'm laughing all the way to the deadlines. Like a mad bank-robber, actually.

elsie said...

I like your Borges paper! Got really interested this semester in how Western Time made itself into the progressive, modern Time and everything else got "antiquated." (You build over a functioning city, except for one corner, and you call that corner "The Old City," so city becomes museum.)

ALSO: Someone told me that I get confused because Time might be imaginary, but not temporality. We can say that there is no linear time, but there is still a "before" and "after." Events can hit the fabric and change it.<--An idea that has been very useful in my life so far.

Man, Borges was criticizing the university way before I was born. He did so much for the world's understanding of itself.

cristina's butterflycakepan said...

i LOVE the borges paper!

again sorry for my blog disappearance.

and i live by the moto of bringing people together in any way with good food and drink. because without my other favorite things- words and music, i just don't know.