Comments for Paredolia

Comment on Thoughts on love by Barbara

Barbara — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:42:26 +0000

I don’t think the two are necessarily separate from each other, but I wanted to make a distinction between self-centered (“you are a part of me”)love and other centered love (“I give myself to you”). In the poets I am studying some use a concept of love that is more self-centered while others use one that is more other-centered.

Comment on Thoughts on love by Frank

Frank — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:33:54 +0000

Erotic love is *not* completely self-centered because it necessitates the desire to give another pleasure. Erotic love does hope for gratification from another, but it isn’t necessarily conditioned on receiving that gratification.

Eros, philos, and agape can be distinguished by their desires for the beloved. Eros desires pleasure for the beloved. Philos desires happiness for the beloved. Agape desires ultimate good for the beloved.

Comment on The Althusserian Subject by Jon

Jon — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:15:33 +0000

Yes, Althusser is best-known for his critique of the subject–for his notion that “history is a process without a subject,” because subjectivity is simply an effect of ideology.

I’d have thought that the very notion of commitment espoused by your authors rather went against this idea.

Comment on Feeling and Time by Jon

Jon — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:13:32 +0000

I wonder if temporality might come into your project in so far as you considered, beyond the notion of a “socially-committed” poetry, what’s meant by a “revolutionary” poetry. The notion of a revolution, after all, would seem to point to a new time to come.

Or what do you think might be the relation between temporality and commitment, as you propose to discuss it in your dissertation?

Comment on I love Terry Eagleton by Jon

Jon — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:10:53 +0000

Eagleton is reasonably good as an introduction; he’s essentially a popularizer. Fortunately, I’m not sure that the concept of ideology is ultimately so very important for your project… I note that it doesn’t figure in your proposal, for instance. We’ll see how things turn out.

Comment on Break Time: ……Not impressed by Kathleen Lundquist

Kathleen Lundquist — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 04:03:55 +0000

Thanks for this post, Barbara – what you say is very important.

You describe how passionate beliefs become fossilized into ideologies, which then can be used to justify killing people in the name of “saving humanity”. How many times have we heard that before?

Once again, great post.

Comment on I Love Terry Eagleton…part deux by Barbara

Barbara — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:28:21 +0000

I hope it works in the actual proposal, I was working on the proposal and decided to use the blog as a way to have some fun with the concepts. Also for whatever reason your comment ended up in the spam pile…wierd.

Comment on I Love Terry Eagleton…part deux by Jon

Jon — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 14:50:50 +0000

I’m not entirely sure I get the Eagleton quotation… I think I would need to see it in context. And are you using “political” for “committed” here? After all, something can be political in a broader sense without its author (or even anyone else) intending it to be so. But “commitment” does imply agency or intention of some kind.

Meanwhile, I have some technical problems commenting on what you sent me. I will try to solve them soon.

Comment on I love Terry Eagleton by Barbara

Barbara — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:08:44 +0000

Heehee, thanks.

Comment on About by Fatal Paradox

Fatal Paradox — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:44:21 +0000

Fascinating blog (and thesis topic!). Currently I’m writing an honours dissertation on Huidobro and Neruda and feel even that can be a little overwhelming at times, but my mind boggles at the number of poets and thematic scope being contemplated here…

Especially interested in what you have to say about Neruda – he is as you say fundamentally a sentimental rather than ideological poet, although he did try to force himself into the latter box with poems España en el Corazón and Canto General (with decidedly mixed results, I feel). I guess this makes his poetry harder to assess in terms of the various “-isms” (vanguardism, surrealism, social realism etc) – certainly a lot harder than say Vallejo or Huidobro, both of whom had plenty to say about not only their own aesthetics but those of other poets as well…