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arguchikmmm. just dropped off my friend L at the airport, and i'm now house and dog sitting for her in west seattle until wednesday. it's so quiet here, and lovely, sidewalks galore for walking the dog--a little buff-colored terrier named mitzi (sp?), aka miz biz--and running myself. my plan is to stay in west seattle for the entire 4-5 days, mostly in seclusion, so i can finally finish a good prospectus draft.
there's a PCC less than a block away. easy street records is within walking distance. i can walk to some breathtaking views of the sound. i think i can walk to alki too, where they probably don't allow even little dogs in the sand but where there is probably a nice sidewalk for the walking of dogs.
i'm sitting on the couch surfing the news sites while mitzi snores next to me.
i brought my juggling balls with me; also a knitting project and my running shoes. but mostly i'm going to be writing while i'm here. for the first time in a long time i have both the time and the strong inclination to write. i actually feel inspired by my work, mainly because i have finally figured out how to approach a key problem that i have with intellectual work in general: how to make it DO something; how to make it engage more immediately with my political and activist commitments. (more about that in a future post...)
i brought a bag of books with me--stuff on embodiment, subject formation, and some marxism/cultural studies stuff. i'm reading terry eagleton's "the function of criticism" right now. i also have going susan squires' "liminal lives" (which is about the biotechnological imagination, including science fiction) and elizabeth grosz's "volatile bodies." i also have her book on evolution out on interlibrary loan, but i didn't bring it with me. i *did* bring frederic jameson's new book, "archeologies of the future," which is his "thing" on science fiction. i absolutely *love* "the political unconscious: narrative as a socially symbolic act," so i'm looking forward to reading his more current theories of utopian narrative. while i was reading "the political unconscious," i saw a lot of connections and synergies between his work and butler's "bodies that matter" (also "the psychic life of power, though that connection will take more explanation i think), also raymond williams' theories of emergence and structures of feeling from "marxism and literature." basically i'm going to be working on emergent forms of embodiment, embodied subjectivities, the body *as* ideology and cultural intervention (not as a "site for inscription," but as material culture--i am a materialist marxist at heart), and literary interventions into scientific discourses of evolution and heredity--such interventions as theories of the subject formed "in and through" cultural practices and discourses including (but not limited to) "science." obviously i still have a *lot* to work out here.....but i feel like i'm zeroing in on a manageable topic, anyway. literarily, i'm fascinated by the concept of "reproducing and parenting emergent subjects," and the whole imaginary around *how* human beings as a species might become something "other," and how we imagine ourselves contending and negotiating with the new and/or the alien (which obviously engages the whole history of racial science too--and gender science when you bring in the question of producing and reproducing a newly emergent *species* and the eugenics of trying to control such an emergence). historically, this imaginary has mostly been worked through in science fiction, but with the emergence of the broadly configured field of genomic technosciences, these themes have also been showing up in "mainstream" or "realist" fiction. i'm trying to avoid getting too far into narrative theory with this dissertation (i wrote my M.A. thesis on narrative theory, epistemology, and the early novel). but any time you're dealing with emergence, narrative will come into play i guess.
anyway, i should save this for the prospectus... i'm nervous about publicly airing ideas that are still forming in my mind, because what if they're crap and i just can't see it yet?? lol--where's a good chrysalis when you need one?
hermitage: bring it on!
there's a PCC less than a block away. easy street records is within walking distance. i can walk to some breathtaking views of the sound. i think i can walk to alki too, where they probably don't allow even little dogs in the sand but where there is probably a nice sidewalk for the walking of dogs.
i'm sitting on the couch surfing the news sites while mitzi snores next to me.
i brought my juggling balls with me; also a knitting project and my running shoes. but mostly i'm going to be writing while i'm here. for the first time in a long time i have both the time and the strong inclination to write. i actually feel inspired by my work, mainly because i have finally figured out how to approach a key problem that i have with intellectual work in general: how to make it DO something; how to make it engage more immediately with my political and activist commitments. (more about that in a future post...)
i brought a bag of books with me--stuff on embodiment, subject formation, and some marxism/cultural studies stuff. i'm reading terry eagleton's "the function of criticism" right now. i also have going susan squires' "liminal lives" (which is about the biotechnological imagination, including science fiction) and elizabeth grosz's "volatile bodies." i also have her book on evolution out on interlibrary loan, but i didn't bring it with me. i *did* bring frederic jameson's new book, "archeologies of the future," which is his "thing" on science fiction. i absolutely *love* "the political unconscious: narrative as a socially symbolic act," so i'm looking forward to reading his more current theories of utopian narrative. while i was reading "the political unconscious," i saw a lot of connections and synergies between his work and butler's "bodies that matter" (also "the psychic life of power, though that connection will take more explanation i think), also raymond williams' theories of emergence and structures of feeling from "marxism and literature." basically i'm going to be working on emergent forms of embodiment, embodied subjectivities, the body *as* ideology and cultural intervention (not as a "site for inscription," but as material culture--i am a materialist marxist at heart), and literary interventions into scientific discourses of evolution and heredity--such interventions as theories of the subject formed "in and through" cultural practices and discourses including (but not limited to) "science." obviously i still have a *lot* to work out here.....but i feel like i'm zeroing in on a manageable topic, anyway. literarily, i'm fascinated by the concept of "reproducing and parenting emergent subjects," and the whole imaginary around *how* human beings as a species might become something "other," and how we imagine ourselves contending and negotiating with the new and/or the alien (which obviously engages the whole history of racial science too--and gender science when you bring in the question of producing and reproducing a newly emergent *species* and the eugenics of trying to control such an emergence). historically, this imaginary has mostly been worked through in science fiction, but with the emergence of the broadly configured field of genomic technosciences, these themes have also been showing up in "mainstream" or "realist" fiction. i'm trying to avoid getting too far into narrative theory with this dissertation (i wrote my M.A. thesis on narrative theory, epistemology, and the early novel). but any time you're dealing with emergence, narrative will come into play i guess.
anyway, i should save this for the prospectus... i'm nervous about publicly airing ideas that are still forming in my mind, because what if they're crap and i just can't see it yet?? lol--where's a good chrysalis when you need one?
hermitage: bring it on!
