"Some collaboration has to take place in the mind..."
Funny, I never considered this site to be a blog, yet in spite of myself that is what it has become. What is a blog? Going by the blogs I've seen and not necessarily the accepted definition of "blog," it is a personal chronicle that may or may not emphasize a particular theme. It is also commentary on aspects of shared experience or hobbies, e.g., being a parent, politics, academia, photography, travel. And often, particularly in academic blogs, it is a place to vent frustrations that might not be acceptable to air to one's real-life colleagues.
It is in this last way that this site fulfills the criteria for a blog. I write as one who is frustrated with aspects of academia, while simultaneously loving academic work and discourse. Because, as a mere grad student, I am not in a position to change academia's approach to humanistic study but rather must adapt to its dictates if I expect to succeed in my studies, I invented Academy of Readers in order to articulate how I wish humanistic study could be in hopes that clarifying what I want will help me adapt to what is. Thus on these pages I am both wistful (idealistic) and pragmatic, and correspondingly the concept of an Academy of Readers is both a eulogy to a cherished way of thinking even while it gives voice to certain aspects of this way of thinking that refuse to die.
In one sense, therefore, this site is a crutch upon which I lean while I undergo a difficult process of intellectual development and the personal adaptations that must be made in its wake. When I move beyond my present challenges, I will no longer need Academy of Readers. It is a transitional object that will become de-cathected of its meaning, the husk of an idea out of which a new idea with more highly adapted configurations will develop. Yet there is an element of the notion of an Academy of Readers that rather than a crutch constitutes a vision of what kind of scholar/artist ("scholartist") I aspire to become.
As a vision, then, Academy of Readers is the following (I'm working on articulating in my own language what I conceptualize Academy of Readers to be, playing around with statements until I settle upon one that feels 'cinched'):
Academy of Readers is a utopia of scholarship and artistry in which a humanist approach to literature celebrates nuptials with a postmodern approach, producing a discourse florid with the passion and sensuality of readerly pleasure, yet unburdened by solipcism. It works text as though text were clay, dirtying arms, lodging under fingernails, splattering surfaces, baking in kilns of hearts aroused. It also reaches through text as though text were mist; it dons special goggles to see into the ineffable, naming what appears, interrogating what stubbornly hides until its concealment evaporates. All this is circumscribed by a single discourse....
It is in this last way that this site fulfills the criteria for a blog. I write as one who is frustrated with aspects of academia, while simultaneously loving academic work and discourse. Because, as a mere grad student, I am not in a position to change academia's approach to humanistic study but rather must adapt to its dictates if I expect to succeed in my studies, I invented Academy of Readers in order to articulate how I wish humanistic study could be in hopes that clarifying what I want will help me adapt to what is. Thus on these pages I am both wistful (idealistic) and pragmatic, and correspondingly the concept of an Academy of Readers is both a eulogy to a cherished way of thinking even while it gives voice to certain aspects of this way of thinking that refuse to die.
In one sense, therefore, this site is a crutch upon which I lean while I undergo a difficult process of intellectual development and the personal adaptations that must be made in its wake. When I move beyond my present challenges, I will no longer need Academy of Readers. It is a transitional object that will become de-cathected of its meaning, the husk of an idea out of which a new idea with more highly adapted configurations will develop. Yet there is an element of the notion of an Academy of Readers that rather than a crutch constitutes a vision of what kind of scholar/artist ("scholartist") I aspire to become.
As a vision, then, Academy of Readers is the following (I'm working on articulating in my own language what I conceptualize Academy of Readers to be, playing around with statements until I settle upon one that feels 'cinched'):
Academy of Readers is a utopia of scholarship and artistry in which a humanist approach to literature celebrates nuptials with a postmodern approach, producing a discourse florid with the passion and sensuality of readerly pleasure, yet unburdened by solipcism. It works text as though text were clay, dirtying arms, lodging under fingernails, splattering surfaces, baking in kilns of hearts aroused. It also reaches through text as though text were mist; it dons special goggles to see into the ineffable, naming what appears, interrogating what stubbornly hides until its concealment evaporates. All this is circumscribed by a single discourse....
posted by Carroll, Violinguist @ 3:37 PM
1 Comments:
how can you disprove solipsism?
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