tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post3453121382504253958..comments2024-03-10T23:01:51.493-05:00Comments on Stupid Motivational Tricks / Bemsha Swing: Prosody of the CitizenJonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-10445037339503810852017-03-02T10:57:16.921-06:002017-03-02T10:57:16.921-06:00No taxation without representation.No taxation without representation.Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-68715218958388965822017-03-02T10:40:56.701-06:002017-03-02T10:40:56.701-06:00No prosody without scansions. No prosody without scansions. Jonathanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-23495452562389325012017-03-02T10:40:35.199-06:002017-03-02T10:40:35.199-06:00No ideas but in things. No ideas but in things. Jonathanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-79043109837837918302017-03-02T10:37:40.845-06:002017-03-02T10:37:40.845-06:00I think it's William James who first suggested...I think it's William James who first suggested that philosophical problems arise because people don't describe all the concrete intermediaries that occupy the space between their "clear and distinct" abstractions. You get the "mind-body problem" only because you refuse to actually pay attention to the parts of your mind that are intimately involved in the motion of Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-3095955786954222242017-03-02T10:22:20.306-06:002017-03-02T10:22:20.306-06:00Right. The concrete examples are not as compellin...Right. The concrete examples are not as compelling for someone else, potentially. Yet...<br /><br />Isn't that really the test of whether we are talking about the same things? So, if I see her examples I could be even more swayed by her argument, or else think that she is bullshitting me, or anything in between. That is the space of dialogue, in precise terms, that only arises if people Jonathanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-18073722839396371772017-03-02T10:16:17.733-06:002017-03-02T10:16:17.733-06:00I can grant her the anachronism. She's reading...I can grant her the anachronism. She's reading Dante almost as a contemporary (him as hers, not her as his). And I think she assumes it's obvious that she's developing Dante's ideas on prosody, not adding the theme of prosody to her reading of Dante on the vernacular.<br /><br />I agree with you about concrete examples. But I think that would be a very risky thing to do Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-33511932476967312017-03-02T08:36:02.829-06:002017-03-02T08:36:02.829-06:00Does she mention that Dante's work is itself a...Does she mention that Dante's work is itself a treatise on prosody (among other things)? Does she stop to consider that the dichotomy between conservative / radical has nothing to do with Dante's worldview, and hence the deconstruction of those terms is not particularly pertinent? Those are categories that have relevance after the French Revolution, maybe. <br /><br />I'd like to Jonathanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-77480478785230990532017-03-02T04:55:56.746-06:002017-03-02T04:55:56.746-06:00PS. You say that literature should "kick our ...PS. You say that literature should "kick our asses". Robertson says it is a "shapely urgency". You are obviously the more vernacular one there. But you say it "rewrites our subjectivity", while she says it "innovates the receiver". Out of context, her phrase is plainer there.<br /><br />Of course, yes, she does install "the subject's desiring Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-49640104009841367962017-03-02T00:10:57.511-06:002017-03-02T00:10:57.511-06:00I'm also tired of deconstruction. Or, rather, ...I'm also tired of deconstruction. Or, rather, I'm tired of <i>what passes for</i> deconstruction. But I continue to give Robertson the benefit of the doubt.<br /><br />It's worth imagining what her essay would sound like in plainer speech. Here's her most direct statement of the title concept, a passage that I'm willing to defend as a efficient use of language, i.e., not as Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-82951458487010806482017-03-01T16:55:26.879-06:002017-03-01T16:55:26.879-06:00For example, "a matrix of potential resistanc...For example, "a matrix of potential resistance." Resistance to what, exactly? Of course, since it is only potential resistance, a statement like this is unverifiable. That somebody in the 14th century could use the vernacular instead of Latin in a way that was resistant to some other power... I think I am questioning her text on prosodic terms. <br /><br />Since I am teaching a Jonathanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09371893596402673898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1055932257464975902.post-78088801062601468382017-03-01T15:27:40.661-06:002017-03-01T15:27:40.661-06:00Robertson masters the discourse that incompetents ...Robertson masters the discourse that incompetents have a given a bad name, i.e., postmodernism. My first reaction to the essay, if I hadn't already been sold on Robertson's poetry, would have been John Latta's: "Uncanny how Robertson is willing—against such deft lyricism—to weight the prose, too, with such abstruse and tedium-inflected verbiage," <a href="http://Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.com