literature
A Dinner Table: Eggs
At the beginning of this class we were shown The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, an art display immortalizing women Chicago thought were the most influential to the feminist movement. I felt there were many problems with this kind of depiction, but after reading Three Guineas I felt an even greater negative reaction to it. Chicago's Woolfe plate made Virginia Woolfe seem like the climax of a great tradition of feminist thought- not an evolution in the scientific sense of the word, but a slow build up to a lauded, supposed-perfect feminist. And not just any kind of feminist, but a feminist explicitly defined by and given such status by her [white] ciswoman body. This hardly felt appropriate to me. Virginia Woolfe's writings exclude more than they embrace, and attempt to instruct women what they should do with themselves (to be what, precisely?) in a way that can be especially harmful. Why should she remain such an iconic representation of feminism when feminism as a movement, as a word, as a lifestyle and perception has moved beyond what she imagined or, maybe more importanty, deemed appropriate? There are, however, pieces of Three Guineas that I believe can still be found useful. So what is Virginia Woolfe now? Who is she meant to be to us?
I've thought about that, and I've come up with my own imagining of The Dinner Party. I consider this an initial draft of what it will become, and have many ideas for its next incarnations.
A word worth a thousand pictures?
I was sort of musing after class about the phrase, "a word is worth a thousand pictures" and am not sure I fully agree with that statement. The phrase agrues that a picture can be more directive for the imagination, invisioning for the onlooker, while words leave room for the imagination. However, I would partially disagree. Firstly, imaginative thought inspired from words or pictures isn't necessarily reproduced as just a vision or reciprocal image in the mind, but also in words. The way words may inspire an image in the mind, a picture may inspire words; which is also of an imaginative kind. Secondly, words aren't always so vague as to inspire just any interpretation; they contain associations, connatations, and produce feelings within a reader, just as a symbol in a painting holds a particular layer of meanings to the person observing. I always felt that word choice within a text was anything but random; specific to whatever statement or meaning the author desires to convey. Perhaps a word is worth a thousand pictures in terms of it's significance in transferring meaning to a reader, but I am not so sure words have so much less control that they are unable to strongly direct and influence the reader into a particular frame of mind or imaginative state.
Academic Essays in English
As an English major, the college essays that I have thus-far written for my field have all been based on other people's work. The topic may be as specific as a single poem, or cover several different works of literature, but the point is to make an argument about a specific idea or theme found in the work(s) being written about. The style is very detached; while I am putting forth my own opinion, I still need to write in an unemotional way, basing my statements on quotations and facts. The paper is my own interpretation of the work(s) involved, and it is written to be -- if not outright persuasive -- at least a sound argument. Still, everything is far more clinical than, for example, the Jonathan Lethem essay that we read in class, "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism." Like an academic essay on English literature, Lethem made an argument and supported it with literary examples, but his tone was far warmer and more informal that both anything I have found myself called upon to write and the vast majority of academic essays that I have read -- though it was similar to non-fiction books, which generally have more of their authors' personalities than do essays.
