Zizek: film reviewer

kelley kwalker2 at gte.net
Thu Apr 27 19:41:54 PDT 2000


Cat writes:


>kelley flatters...
>
>we once argued quite heatedly about people you identified as 'litcritters' indiscriminately 'reading' things, which you saw as a decontextualisation and lack of respect for various social elements of the object being studied

oh dear. i just recall not understanding what a reading was. i'm sure i could easily have said this. however, i've learned much since then and i honestly can't recall what my problem was and if i still have it--this particular problem at any rate. this is troubling. in part, i think it's the language (disciplinary and geographical [perhaps]) that i don't understand. how you've phrased. but i think i remember the threads or series of them. i know i asked insistently about "readings" and i also got snippy about litcrit with annalee. but that was annalee. :)

well, obviously and quite seriously, i have a lot more knowledge of what literary critics do now. i didn't years ago, not at all. so maybe it's just that i can't rememeber where i was at, what bothered me because i've worked it into my own way of thinking about what i do. perhaps in the way you feel about your intellectual relationship to luce irigaray's work now when you look back on it?

at any rate, we're having a discussion of lesbian/dyke desire at pulp. if'n you're interested it would be great if you'd join up. we're thinking through the essentialism issue, hollywood v. "real" desire, etc.

majordomo at infothecary.org s*bscribe pulp-culture

not to drag you away from dougdaddy's list but, if i could entice you for a bit. traffic is about a third of what it used to be.


>i'm sending myself up too i suppose
>given that i give lectures on what's wrong with 'textual analysis'
>but i don't think there's anything much at all wrong with reading, and indeed don't think there's a better way to account for how we interpret absolutely everything we observe or think about

no. i don't think there's anything wrong with it either. and i don't think you're sending yourself up. i give lectures on what's wrong with sociology. none of the courses i teach leave that out of the mix and i often begin the course with hints at the theme. but, at the same time, the criticism isn't meant to trash it altogether. i have little tolerance for uncritical acceptance of anything, especially with my own field. so, frankly, i admire that ability to be both critical and appreciative. i guess i'd rather have to hold that tension--much more productive.

kelley -- To weave: the present shuttles through a past that would be through an always is through a presently was Weaving: a force-field simultaneity of attractions and repulsions forward-moving-anticipation and back-through-drumming past Woven.

Again.



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