Feb 192010
 

Regine Olsen

A few posts and comments back, I counseled people to step back from taking sides in certain sorts of public cultural debates, to take the Hegelian approach and rise above and restructure the argument itself. I just reread Georg Lukacs essay “The Foundering of Form Against Life, Søren Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen” which, as you might expect given Kierkegaard’s antipathy toward Hegel, suggests the opposite view, or at least constructs an opposite view. (Full disclosure: Lukacs was an Hegelian.)  The opposite view is that the gesture (form) can crystallize or shape life, or attempts to do so, while mostly life presents itself as a muddle of motives and options. This is the germ of the  Existentialist idea of creating value by making choices, by committing oneself. The bulk of the essay is an analysis of Kierkegaard’s gesture of renouncing his beloved Regine Olsen. Not only did he renounce her, but he pretended to be a cad, an inveterate seducer, so that she could more easily give him up in her own mind and get on with her life. If there was a chance that she thought Kierkegaard really loved her, she might wait for him or be uncertain about getting into another relationship. Kierkegaard loved her all the while. The gesture was a concrete act, a kind of heroic pose, and a choice he made. But Lukacs is cagey about tracking the uncertainties and ambiguities in the situation (this is where life beclouds the gesture). Kierkegaard performed the gesture because he thought he would ruin Regine’s life, but it seems also clear that he realized that she might clutter his life with pleasure (possibly happiness) and domesticity. So the gesture wasn’t entirely self-sacrificing. Through the rest of his life Kierkegaard waffled in his heart. He never wanted to see Regine because he didn’t ever want to remind her of the happiness they had hoped for or in case she might doubt that he was a cad and seducer; but it seems clear Regine never really quite bought his story and at least sometimes suspected that it was all a pose (Kierkegaard starts to look a bit comic). And once Kierkegaard wrote her a long letter explaining everything (was he hoping to reignite the old passion?), but Regine discussed the letter with her husband and decided to send it back unopened. So the gesture, examined in its particulars, seems less monolithic, less heroic, and less pure than when viewed from afar.

Reading this story from a contemporary standpoint, one is also surprised at the male comedy of Kierkegaard presuming to decide what is right for Regine without, um, actually talking to her. We don’t ever do that today, do we?

Also this is my sly way of introducing Lukacs who was an interesting thinker. See his book The Theory of the Novel which he tells you himself not to think of as a guide.

—Douglas Glover

Feb 162010
 

I’m still reading Eagleton and have moved into the post-structuralism chapter.  I wish I had more time to spend studying theory.  I also wish that I had studied it before now.  Watching my daughter (she’s in third grade) work on her spelling lessons tonight made me think about the idea of signifier and the thing signfied.  There is something very powerful about watching Maggie work out parts of speech, about watching her form the connections with language in this very basic, very primal sort of way.  Store.  Order.  Board.  These were some of the words tonight.  I was also reading E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel this morning. His humor surprised me, and the discussion of cavemen sitting around listening to the first stories again makes me think about how we (humans) acquire language and how our desires for stories is so deep-rooted in our consciousness.  Now it’s time for reading…Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIIMH.

—Richard Farrell

Feb 032010
 

Funny how ideas seem to develop threads of their own. The theoretical subject is important to writers because it has an impact on ideas of self, soul, character, and society. The subject here is what we used to call the self, Descartes’ thinking self, that which is conscious (of something). More and more it is thought of as a relation and not an thing itself. That’s because it is difficult to imagine being conscious without being conscious of something. Hence consciousness (the subject) somehow resides in the object (the thing you are conscious of). I come into focus the moment you (the Other) are on the scene. This is much like what happens in a story or an essay in which characters come to life as soon as they are in action (relation, conflict) with other characters or society (or some force or rule which begins to define the subject in opposition).

“I don’t think there is actually a sovereign founding subject, a universal form of subject that one might find everywhere. I am very skeptical and very hostile towards this conception of the subject. I think on the contrary, that the subject is constituted through practices of subjection, or, in a more autonomous way, through practices of liberation, of freedom, as in Antiquity, starting of course, from a number of rules, styles and conventions that can be found in the cultural setting.”

Michel Foucault. (1996) [1984]. An Aesthetics of Existence. In Foucault Live. collected Interviews, 1961-1984. Sylvère Lotringer (Ed.). New York: Semiotext(e), p. 452. Translation modified.

In this regard, here’s a link to the famous Roland Barthes’ essay about the Death of the Author.

I got set onto this little meditation looking at Andrew Gallix’s blog. See the blogroll for the site.

I also realize we seem suddenly to be descending into Theory in a big way. Not to worry–it is a temporary fever that will pass.

dg

Feb 022010
 

Interestingly, from the point of view of a writer creating an objective correlative, there are places language can go that are impossible actually to think. They are like Black Holes in the text, haunting, uncanny. Fascinating to contemplate and try to get into a piece of fiction not just theoretical nonfiction as here.

“All theoretical projects require a subject that can conduct the project. At least this is a marker of all successful theoretical projects. One can imagine a theory which cannot be conducted by a subject, but any elucidation of this project would be–in Austin’s terms–infelicitous.” Geoff Wildanger See full post here.

“And this brings me to a possible Lacanian definition of auratic presence: it is simply the fantasm, the fantasm as – for Lacan – an imaginary scenario which stages an impossible scene, something that could only be seen from the point of impossibility.” Slavoj Zizek. See full excerpt from Lacanian Ink here.

dg

Feb 012010
 

We advisees have grown very quiet on this page of late.  I’m in the midst of some final editing right now (well, I’ve walked away from it for a moment) and thought I’d add my comments from the weekend.  Spent large chunks of time Saturday and Sunday at the University of San Diego Law Library.  I tried their undergraduate library too, but it was louder than hell.  I was surprised by how many people were on their phones or just engaged in loud conversations.  Maybe I’m just getting old.  The law library was much more quiet.  They post signs forbidding phone use and talking but permit food and drinks, so it’s beocme the new go-to.  I get very little done in my house.  Too many distractions.

I’ve been reading Francine Prose’s book, Reading Like a Writer.   I find it a bit tedious at times, but she has some great things to say about reading.  I also picked up the Best American Poetry anthology and I’m looking forward to reading some of that once the packet is in the mail.  With Doug’s postings on Lish and Shklovsky, I’m tempted to try to read Francois Cusset’s French Theory, a book I purchased last year and which has been gathering dust ever since.  (My daughter and I are flying to Amstredam next week for her swim meet…I’ll have a lot of time to read.)  I should get back to my editing and printing.   Hope to be more active on this sight in a day or two.

—Richard Farrell