I blog the body electric. Wait, Mary Godwin probably said that. Mary does “theory.” That has to crack you up: “theory.” Like it stands alone. But here’s the deal: “pomo” is so NOT Italian for “apple,” yet if you google “Italian for apple” the first link there might give you the wrong impression.
Already I’ve strayed off topic. Here’s a fascinating and nuanced experience in the apprehension of voice and language. First, you have to go to ze Frank and catch today’s riff. Pay particular attention to the part where he’s learning to speak nerd. Did you laugh? Well, next go read Dorothea Salo’s “Quick anti-splog kludge.” Dorothea has an advanced degree in nerd, speaks it like a native. But tell me, while you’re reading Caveat Lector on anti-splog kludges for your DSpace, do you hear the voice of ze?
I did. That seems very postmodern.
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[In the humanities, theory is often used as an abbreviation for critical theory or literary theory, referring to continental philosophy's aesthetics or its attempts to understand the structure of society and to conceptualize alternatives. -- Wikipedia]
[On The Show, starring ze Frank, Knowledge often appears as the protagonist in the schizophrenic bits.]
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
In order to understand critical theory, you must first realize that there is the apercu, the inapercu, the apparent apercu that we think we might be able to know, but that we know we don’t know and, finally, the inapercu that we don’t know we don’t know.
In the past, Frank, you have dismissed my excursions into theory as a “landscape worthy of cement overshoes in the classic topography of philosophy”, but I find in this post an encouraging sign of a willingness to rethink that harsh judgement.
I have been spending too much time with loving friends and the wooden stake I had sharpened has grown dull, the hammer: misplaced.
I would have expected such a response from Susan Sontag — and where is her commentary, on this vexed and vital issue? — but from you, Frank . . . it crushes my Tocquevillian jouissance.
“With my mind I can see, I can hold all that in my mind. Everyone says [Rome]’s so beautiful. I’ve looked at the pictures, the engravings. Yes, Piranesi”
occasionally i use the theory.
[Update... ignore the comment below. It's not as funny as I tried to make it.]
WHICH theory??? WITCH theory? You bunny lovers are driving me batty. I’ll never understand all this antifoundational, antitotalising, and demystifying stuff. Rather, I hold these truths to be self evident: that all communities are created with a need for big-box stores just outside the tax district boundaries; that corporations are endowed by their shareholders and the state of Delaware with certain inalienable rights - that among these are eternal life, untrammeled freedom to control customers, and the pursuit of profit. That to secure these rights all government must be destroyed, all discipline must be devalued, and private security forces must be put in place with cool thigh high shiny leather boots and masques and shit.