Foucault discusses breakfast

From Michel Foucault’s masterwork, Bacon & Eggs:

The ease with which these foods [bacon and eggs] are prepared, combined with their atemporal deliciousness (they are good to eat at any time, really), ensures that they are often prepared in the morning when one is groggy, uncoordinated, and above all, hungry.  This has given rise to the discursively formed notion that they are, always have been, and always will be “breakfast foods”.  But this is of course untenable in the long run; breakfast — or what I have renamed “the breakfast-function” — is only a signifier that floats partially, its signifieds (in this case, bacon and eggs) being constantly and perpetually malleable.  How often do we have pancakes for dinner, or perhaps an omelete for lunch?

The existence of breakfast, and in fact of any other meal, is far from immutable.  We can easily imagine a culture where the discourse of mealtime has been done away with altogether, and we are free to eat all delicious foods, whatever their status, form, caloric content and regardless of whether or not they are really sandwiches or maybe roasts or casseroles, without the need of an arbitrary label based on the time of day we are dining.  When someone decries that he or she is hungry, no longer will we have these tiresome exchanges:

“I am really in the mood for an Egg McMuffin.”

“Dude it’s like three in the afternoon, McDonald’s stops serving breakfast at like 10:30 or 11.”

“But I really want a McMuffin.”

“Then wait until tomorrow.  Right now if you wanna go eat we’ll have to hit up like Subway or something.”

“What about Wendy’s?”

“The only good thing at Wendy’s is the Frosties and you know that and I only eat ice cream after dinner.”

“Fuck it, I’ll microwave some pizza rolls.”

Instead, in this new world, we would need only one sentence to spell out all our possibilities:

“Hey, let’s go to Denny’s.”

 

Excerpt uncovered with the help of noted Foucault scholar Jeremy Miller.

Rolling Along with the Tumbling Tumblr Weed

You know what there are a lot of these days?  Tumblrs.  There are so many Tumblrs, guys!

So in order to deal with the three billion (ie, 9) Tumblrs that I want to follow I have broken down and made my own.  It will not overtake this blog, though, because I’ll still use this place to post longer updates (as they come) and probably still do my lit crit quotes.  Tumblr will be a place mostly for dumb pictures.  Have fun!

PS Next weekend is Halloween?  Do you like Halloween? i bet you do SO you should probably keep an eye on this space next week when I will post a special HALLOWEEN STORY (woooo spooky!)

from ‘Who Is Responsible for Ethical Criticism, and for What?’ by Wayne C. Booth

No authority in the worlds can force to to take these données [assumptions] in the offered way; we can always refuse to grasp the story as a story and turn it instead to other predetermined purposes.  Those who hail the indeterminacy of all “texts” are thus quite right, up to a point: readers must always in a sense decide whether to accept a given responsibility.  We can if we choose, as Rabelais and Swift remind us, employ the pages of the greatest classics as bumwipes.  Nor is the intimacy of our engagement with these implacable données, when we do surrender, the sort of thing that can be demonstrated by argument: it is known only in experience.  But it is hard to imagine any human being who has not known on many occasions the kind of submersion in other minds that we are considering.  Though academic study of literature too often seems designed to make such fusions of spirits impossible, turning every “text” into a thoroughly distanced puzzle or enigma, the fact remains that even the impassive puzzle solver or symbol hunter or signifier chaser is to some degree caught up in patterns determined by the puzzle — the tale as told.  The only way to avoid “thinking the thought of another” — that mysterious quite-probably-dead “other” who chose to tell this tale in this way — is to stop listening.

Addendum: this is me

me

This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine

I’ve written an autobiographical poem:

It is okay
to take a shot of whiskey
at 3 am
when you are awakened
by a false fire alarm.

So that’s me, channeling my inner Bukowski.  I’m sorry to say that I don’t have any choice historical literary criticism to dish this week, although I’ve been reading some Stephen Greenblatt and some Frank Kermode and there are bits in there I like.  They may find their way here for my future reference and your momentary enjoyment.

I’ve also got the Patrick Stewart Macbeth in my backlog — it aired on PBS’s Great Performances this week but I couldn’t catch it at the time.  Anyway, it ought to make a good addition to what seems to be Macbeth-a-Thon 2010 — and I have a friend haranguing me to watch Throne of Blood, so that may end up falling under the same banner.  Anyway, if this latest Macbeth raises any points for me, I’ll address them here, as is my wont.

In the meantime, though, let’s take a look at this:

Hey guys I go to college

And sometimes, my college has problems.  Like, let’s say my college is a dry campus, but people drink alcohol all the time anyway.  And they get in trouble.  And then they write two dozen op-ed pieces in the campus paper talking about how they should be able to drink if they want and not get in trouble even if campus policy clearly states otherwise.

And then I write an op-ed piece where I solve the problem once and for all.

Hippolyte Taine and the History of English Literature

The family is a natural state, primitive and restrained, as the state is an artificial family, ulterior and expanded; and amongst the differences arising from the number, origin, and condition of its members, we discover in the small society as in the great, a like disposition of the fundamental intelligence which assimilates and unites them.  Now suppose that this element receives from circumstances, race, or epoch certain special marks, it is clear that all the groups into which it enters, will be modified proportionately.  If the sentiment of obedience is merely fear, you will find, as in most Oriental states, a brutal despotism, exaggerated punishment, oppression of the subject, servility of manners, insecurity of property, an impoverished production, the slavery of women, and the customs of the harem.

The mirror up to nature

From Matthew Arnold‘s 1866 essay, “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”:

But let criticism leave church-rates and the franchise alone, and in the most candid spirit, without a single lurking thought of practical innovation, confront with our dithyramb this paragraph on which I stumbled in a newspaper immediately after reading [the speech of the politician] Mr Roebuck:–

“A shocking child murder has just been committed in Nottingham.  A girl named Wragg left the workhouse there on Saturday morning with her young illegitimate child.  The child was soon afterwards found dead on Mapperly Hills, having been strangled.  Wragg is in custody.”

Nothing but that; but, in juxtaposition with the absolute eulogies of [the politicians] Sir Charles Adderley and Mr Roebuck, how eloquent, how suggestive are those few lines!  “Our Anglo-Saxon breed, the best in the whole world” — how much that is harsh and ill-favoured there is in this best!  Wragg!

More Macbeth (because why not)

So now I have seen four (4) productions of Macbeth this year.  This latest one was community theater, and about as good as you can expect from free community theater Shakespeare in a park, but it still managed to be more entertaining to watch than the Cheek by Jowl production I saw, even if it lacked the strange insights into the play CbJ (quite boringly) presented.

That’s not to say there wasn’t some thought there.  This production was set, rather vaguely, in Colonial America at about the time of the Revolutionary War.  The witches, for instance, were Native Americans, and there were lots of bayonets, and so on.  The fact that I watched this production on September 11 probably affected by reception of it a bit, too, but regardless of all of that, it put me into the state of mind in which I consider American (US) literature and what’s important about it.

I don’t talk about US lit a lot, mostly because I find it substantially less interesting than other things, but that doesn’t mean I have Opinions, by god, because if I ever manage to make a name for myself I’ll definitely be a part of the US literary tradition more than, well, whatever-the-hell-else.  So anyway, I think that if there is a Shakespeare play that comes close to being an “American” play, it probably really is Macbeth.

This sounds a bit nutty, I know, but Macbeth in my mind has always seemed like a deeply nuanced reworking of Marlowe’s Faust.  And if there’s any European myth that I think has some special claim on America, it’s Faust.  I am very cagey about people (including me) making sweeping statements about “American” literature or a great “American” novel, but if there is a recurring motif in what we seem to consider great US fiction, it’s this notion of a deal with a devil, a fascination with things that have the power to make us great or destroy us, and the choices we have in relationship to these forces.

Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” is the prototype for this in my mind, but I also see it in Moby Dick, in Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Great Gatsby, All the King’s Men, Beloved, and on and on.  My own Gothic predilections are obvious here, but I think there’s something worthwhile in the notion of our national myth, so to speak, being one of great power and ability bought at a terrible (usually bloody) cost.  I’m kind of a pessimist, too, so there’s that.

give your life for rock’n’roll

As I sit here listening to the new Lordi album, it occurs to me that I had at one point planned to do a blog on grad school.  Not necessarily grad school as an institution, but what it means to me to go to graduate school, being the first person in my family to complete college, and the sort of crazy-ass anxieties I’m subject to when it comes to anything regarding higher education.  I’m normally not vocal about this, mostly because it doesn’t matter in a lot of situations.  It’s also really boring.

But I still feel the weird urge to write about grad school, or at least the application process, sometime — probably in the near future.  Until then I’m scrambling to get application materials together, take my GREs, etc.  This is by no means simple, since I have a pretty full schedule — lots of reading, mostly, like the theory stuff I mentioned last time, but also things for the class I TA, and my normal class reading, and also writing essays and things that are not essays for the creative writing workshop class I’m in.

You, being the bright little star-child you are, probably have figured out that this means shorter and/or infrequent blogs.  Good job!  Just keep an eye here and we’ll see what happens.

How to Read (My Blog) and Why

I have started my fourth year of postsecondary education, my senior year of college.  Since that is really about as interesting as my life gets, that’s about as much as I’ll blog about it.  This space is more for me ranting about pop culture and trying to sound intellectual, anyway.

What I am getting at is that, since this is my senior year, I have a senior seminar, which means I am going to be reading a shit-ton of Theory.  This will probably leak over into my habits here.  I’m not going to, like, give you a crash course in semiotics or anything (unless you really want me to I guess, just ask), but it’s just a warning that I may be doing a lot of rumination about the study of literature in and of itself.

Also I will share stupid links, as they intrigue me.  I’ve already talked about Satoshi Kon and his influence on me, and my feelings about his death, so I feel it is appropriate that I follow that up with his goodbye letter.  The final farewell really makes it for me — sorry to be leaving before you, indeed.  Heh.