Powerless

"Faced with those who do not want or do not know how to read, I confess I am powerless" --Jacques Derrida "Biodegradables" (1989).

Sad but true, my dear Derrida. Not only am I powerless but I am one of them--not because I rebuke your theories (quite the opposite) but because I still haven't read enough. I cannot interpret your meaning or articulate my own. Therefore, I am powerless as well.

Perhaps I am hindered by my reading of the work through the reading of the man. when I read Derrida's works or texts about his theories, I always have the image of him--the stern one, where he does not smile but looks both knowingly and quizzically at the camera, like the one on the cover of Cixious' Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint. That's the stare I'm talking about. This image is almost immediately broken into many imges from the documentary. Thank God for that documentary! Otherwise I would never have seen him. Heard him. Stood several thousand million degrees removed from him and yet close enough, close enough to be touched. Touche!

But that's the problem I'm having. I'm reading his work through his image, his signature, which he tells us in The Post Card to be wary of. A work, once written, no longer belongs to him, to the him that wrote it. Death of the Author, Death of God, Death of One Truth, of Unity. All of these themes come into play. I cannot ignore the man digitally captured and broadcasted with his careful supervision and approval. He knows/knew this, but it's still a problem, of course.

Is deconstructionism really destined to fall misappropriated to the right? Will it be a tool used to laugh at him, to mock him?

I must keep reading, otherwise i am destined to be powerless too.

And the Semester's Over. . .

The whirr of computers is not a new sound for me. Today, as I sit in the graduate lounge, a Sunday, I hear the hum of machinery and no hectic clicking on the keyboards, no curses muttered under breaths, no print jobs jamming--hell, it's like a christmas miracle!

Perhaps the reason I love Christmas so much has nothing to do with the "tis the season for sharing" business (and I do know it's a business). More likely, I love Christmas because my last papers have been turned in, my grades are finished, and the time to relax and read whatever is upon me. The anticipation about what to teach and how to teach next semester pulls at the back of my mind, and I get excited, thrilled about the prospect of a fresh start, a new set of minds, different ways to approach things.

One of my professors gave me one of my response papers back, my last one for her and the one that caused me the most grief. On the top of the page, she wrote "I love this response and your attention to language. This is one of my favorites." Naturally, this is the sort of thing a graduate student loves to hear, it's like academic crack and what keeps us going--or it does for me, anyway.

Oddyly, when I started the paper, I was sure I hated Walcott and Omeros, but as I wrote it, my mind changed--in spite of me. This is why I love writing. Thinking is writing and writing is thinking: a phrase told to me by my advisor and that always surprises me and thrills me each time I sit down to respond to a work.

Below you'll find the excerpt from Omeros that meant the most to me, that made everything click: my a-ha moment.

Walcott asks: “When would it stop , / the echo in the throat insisting, ‘Omeros’; / when would I enter that light beyond metaphor” (271). I suppose the answer is never, for even at the end when he tries to “exorcise” Omeros from his past so that it would not impact his narrative’s future, he ultimately fails. He looks to the ocean, which

had no memory of the wanderings of Gilgamesh,
or whose sword severed whose head in the Iliad.
It [the sea] was an epic where every line was erased
yet freshly written in sheets of exploding surf
. . . however one read it
. . . It never altered its metre
to suit the age, a wide page without metaphors. (295-6)

Thus, the ocean is the only way one can enter “that light beyond metaphor” because, for the lyric I here, the ocean is “a wide page without metaphors”: it is. The ocean has no memory yet transports those who journey over its waves. The sea is where the epics take place, where every line is written only to be “erased.”

Naturally, Walcott’s lyric I or narrator never does exorcise Omeros "out of his throat," because his story cannot be “freshly written in sheets of exploding surf”; the very materials prove this to be so. We hold in our hands hundreds of papers filled in with ink. We cannot erase the lines, nor can we alter the text except maybe to superimpose our own notes, our own histories, our own fictions onto the page. But try as we may, once a thing is read, it is ingested and becomes etched onto our memory; even when the specific reference might fail, the souvenir itself remains in our own internal margins, tugging and plugging in here and there so that we may not even know that we are being infiltrated, influenced, our very beings constructed. And even if we do recognize it, there is no way back, no way around it, and definitely no money-back guarantee.

The New Las Vegas Marathon

26.2 miles down, 0 to go! Yeah!!!!! I did it. When Heather W literally forced me to sign up-ok, not forced, I never thought I could really do it. After running 20 miles in Jean, NV, I really started to doubt myself, but, thankfully I didn't give up, because I finished it baby! And partied like it was "1999"--it seems appropriate to quote Prince here, since the afterparty for the Marathon was at the House of Blues and the Prince tribute band, Purple Rain, put on one hell of a show. . . granted the rest of the team left around 10:30 because they were beat but not us; we stayed til midnight, baby! Sigh. Fabulous show.

I got home, thanked the academic gods that I didn't have to give my final until 100pm today and set off to sleep. Around 3:00 a.m., I woke up with a throbbing knee. Around 3:00pm, I got a knee brace for immobilization, crutches, and some ibuprofen. All I have to say is: the marathon was totally worth it, and THIS SUCKS!!!!

Sigh. Back to paper writing.

Study Week

It's study week here at UNLV. Students cram, instructors cram and grade and edit and grade and revise and edit and grade. You get the point. I sit here at my god-post in the gradulate lounge, listening to my ich-pod, occasionally glancing up to see the handfull of graduate students working. It seems like I'm the only one exhausted and easily distracted. There is one guy, though, he's reading now. A few minutes ago, he read, slouched over, left hand brushing his hair back. Seconds later he was out--powernapping, I suppose. Wish I could nap. . . Wish I could think clearly.

The marathon's this Sunday. Pretty nervous about that.

So here's a question for/about academia. If we are so entrenched in our studies, in our time periods, in our novels, in the gossip of the era, do we then also take on these attributes?

Lately, I've been making rash decisions, caring little for rationality, acting on impluse. Guilt follows shortly thereafter. This Thursday night: possible social nightmare at the poker table.

Tidbits and a little remark about Modernism

The National Finals Rodeo is in town. Yes, this means that once again parking at UNLV results in, what we academics call, "a cluster fuck." Oh yes, academics have filthy mouths. . . or maybe it's just me.

Anyway. I went into the Coffee Bean to order myself a reward for being up at the crack of dawn on a Friday morning (French oral exam). I walked in, ordered my latte and then, as I sauntered dreamily over to the counter where I awaited my 16 oz. cup of wake-the-f-up, my eyes drifted over to one of the tables. What met my eyes jolted me awake and for a fraction of a second, I experienced extreme disorientation. There, at a tiny table, sat two of the biggest cowboys I have ever seen. (And I've been to rodeos).

They wore their cowboy hats, blue jeans, leather coats made from cow hide, no doubt, sipping their coffee, and silently reading their respective sections of their respective papers. An odd scene for Vegas. But this wasn't what struck me about them.

There were quite a few people ahead of me, so I had a few moments to truly take in the spectacle before me. When the first cowboy (the one with his back to me) decided it was time to go, he merely finished his coffee, stood up, without looking at his "pardner" waited there patiently, gazing out the window. Cowboy number 2, finished reading the article, closed the paper, stood up and the two of them headed for the door.

The girl behind the counter called "Have a nice day!" to which Cowboy number 2, turned, waved, and said "Thanks." Cowboy number one turned and smiled.

That was it. The two never spoke to one another. And yet, they understood one another perfectly.

I have never experienced silence in that way. What I mean is, I have never been comfortable enough with silence to use it as a means of communication. Perhaps I should say instead, I have never been comfortable enough to use my body as my only means of communication. And here's where I stop before I tumble into psychoanalyzing myself.

So, I also promised a brief tidbit on the state of Modernism. There are rumblings going that Modernism, as a movement, has not come to an end. Modernism continues on to this day.

My issue is this: if Modernism didn't stop in 1939 (publication of Finnegan's Wake), and we are opening this term to include contemporary writers (who generally fall into what is talked about as postcolonial) then doesn't this empty the very meaning ascribed to Modernism itself. Modernism becomes modernism, which in turn seems like the term itself would become pointless.

Naturally, this sent me into a dizzying spell of "But wait!" and viscious denial: "No way! That's ridiculous!" Then to this: "Well. . . what if it is. What now? What then?" So. This will preoccupy the rest of my studies and quite potentially the rest of my life. It seemed only fitting that this space should also be used to muddle over these issues.