Sunday, December 9, 2012

Suspicious Of My/Mine

Although I don't think Nussbaum is anything like correct in her criticism of Butller in her essay "The Professor Of parody"--she seems to majorly underestimate how intimately linked JB's work is to "lived," off the page experience--I do like this point quite a lot, and it seems to me to be a good take on a dynamic one can get at some literary blogs (probably, eek, this one among others!):

"When ideas are stated clearly, after all, they may be detached from their author: one can take them away and pursue them on one's own. When they remain mysterious (indeed, when they are not quite asserted), one remains dependent on the originating authority."

Citation is interesting: it so often seems to be a matter of calling attention to persons not only ideas, to ideas as property of persons rather than ideas as dynamics which cannot be owned.  This may or may not relate to my wondering whether one can ever be true enough responding that someone has misread their point, has not gotten a meaning; how can a person own a meaning?  Not all readings are as strong, but to state someone has not gotten what they're doing freaks me because it privileges the author, and suggests that they are in control of their meaning, that they have done a great job at articulation and that any flaw in thought lies with the reader not the writer.  Another formulation could go like this: is this phenomena (overblown word choice, true-true) more accurately one of occluding egotism rather than generous engangement?  Note: ego is not an energy I wish to perma-diss; my point, instead, is that not all forms of egotism are exciting.  And can an idea be mine?  Can I possess one, or only--gorgeously--live in constellation with one or ones.

No comments:

Post a Comment