Another gem

Hey, now is my chance to make up for having written so little about my academic life this semester. This morning's struggle brought to you, as usual, by our pal Derrida:

An allegorical metonymy, too, which says something other than what is says and manifests the other in the open but nocturnal space of the agora - in its plus de lumiere: at once no more light, and greater light. It speaks the other and makes the other speak, for the other will have spoken first. It has no choice but to let the other speak, since it cannot make the other speak without the other having already spoken, without this trace of speech which comes from the other and which directs us to writing as much as to rhetoric. This trace results in speech always saying something other than what it says: it says the other who speaks "before" and "outside" it; it lets the other speak in the allegory. Whence the structure of the "rhetoric of temporality." But what defies the simple and "objective" logic of sets, what disrupts the simple inclusion of a part within the whole, is what recalls itself beyond interiorizing memory (Erinnerung), is what recalls itself to thought (Gedaechtnis) and thinks itself as a "part" which is greater than the "whole." It is the other as other, the non-totalizable trace which is in-adequate to itself and to the same.

I tried to cut it down, but then it makes even less sense....

I know...

Two posts in one day can only mean one thing: procrastination. But I'm lonely at my desk and my paper is still hard and I need to share this important bulletin from the front lines of what I think we are now calling postmodern deconstruction (Derrida, at any rate):

Already installed in the narcisssistic structure, the other so marks the self of the relationship to self, so conditions it that the being "in us" of bereaved memory becomes the coming of the other. And, however terrifying this thought may be, the first coming of the other.

That is all.

Death of the Author

You know what's hard? Writing about intransitive, authorless writing. Have you ever tried to write about writing? If you want a headache and writer's block, you should give it a try. If you just want the headache, I recommend reading Roland Barthes writing about how writing is performative (something where the action is the saying of it or its name - like how saying "I thee wed" when you get married makes you married, except that when you are writing you are working with syntax and grammar and meaning, unless you are a) Mr. Barthes, in which case your hand takes over and writes without you, which is clear BECAUSE YOUR TEXT MAKES NO SENSE, or b) me, writing "writing" over and over and getting NOWHERE.). See? Headache. And I haven't even told you about intransitive writing, or gotten you tangled up in memory and subjectivity and all that.
The good news? I'm already on page 3 of my 25 page term paper, and I think I can easily fill up 22 more pages repeating this simple formula over and over with different fancy and/or made-up words: How can this theory possibly make any sense at all? Then, in the end, I get to say that the questions it raises are beyond the scope of this paper, although I'm already tempted to end it by saying that I would write more, but it is my authorial duty to die.
The bad news? There are quite a few other things I could/should/would rather be doing right now, like baking cookies or reading a book that's not for school or cleaning the bathroom or Christmas shopping. More bad news: if I don't get this paper done by Tuesday, when I leave for Wyoming, you'll probably get a shot glass from a truck stop in South Dakota for Christmas. It's the thought that counts, right?
On the other hand, Christmas shopping usually requires that I a) leave the house and b) spend money, two things which I am not very interested in right now. For one thing, money is tight. As for leaving the house, there was a cold snap here on Sunday, followed by a bunch of snow, and even though the sun is out and it is all of 5 degrees, my boogers still froze when I went out to shovel this morning, and I think it's reasonable to expect that all those idiots who had the bright idea to buy Mini Coopers in August for the fuel efficiency are still out there, skidding to a halt in the middle of busy intersections while trying to make illegal U-turns and then just sitting there, through 3 stoplight changes, not moving, with that grim, blank "I-have-no-idea-what-all-that-honking-is-about" look on their faces, refusing to make eye contact with anyone or to move OUT OF THE INTERSECTION but hopefully remembering to count their blessings (1. My brakes work really well, 2. Minnesotans are too passive-aggressive to confront a stranger).
Now, doesn't that make my term paper seem more appealing? Yes, yes it does.

The trenches

It's that time in the semester that makes me refer to campus as "the trenches." It's a bad time (if you couldn't tell by my last post), one for slipping and nearly breaking my neck on icy sidewalks, for vitamin D deficiency, and for obligatory why-am-I-doing-this-to-myself anxiety. This is always accompanied by vivid fantasies of Other Things I Could Do, along with a very Eeyore-ish moping that I am utterly unqualified to do anything but this. This year's fantasy is a bookstore/coffee shop. I have already scanned a number of help-wanted ads on craigslist and established that no one in their right mind would hire me for anything. So I guess I'll stick around.
Things look grimmer than ever for academia, which has something to do with my fantasies. Funding at public institutions is getting slashed, there's a hiring freeze across the entire university, and there's so much infighting and competition for funding that many great ideas and projects never get off the ground. Meanwhile, I'm reading Derrida and Barthes and some other French guys (despite the fact that I'm in German Studies) who all write about the inability of language to convey meaning, authors to write literature, and literature to hold value.
BUT! This is so far my most humane finals period so far. Teaching has given me much better balance in my life, and while I'm worried about my finals, I'm more focused at the moment on getting my kids ready for theirs. I'm also writing a final paper which is both difficult and interesting (it's about memory, authorship, and trauma), AND is relevant to my long term research plans.
So I'm sitting on a vaguely uncomfortable office chair instead of a throne, wearing pretty worn-out clothes that I can't really afford to replace at the moment, instead of a drapey gown and tiara, and I only have a slowly dying laptop instead of a scribe monkey. Oh well. I'm pretty lucky to be here, instead of sitting in an even less comfortable chair in a cubicle somewhere, in pantyhose and high heels, typing expense reports on a machine running Windows 97. I guess I'll save the bookstore for when I really need it....