Thursday, September 14, 2006
21st birthday party is over and it's been a really harum-scarum week, getting up at 3.30am to finish reading To The Lighthouse and Written on the Body and all that... So I didn't have much time to savour the delicious moment of turning 21 at all! :O
Schoolwork is getting really tough now. In an average week, I have to read at least 1 novel, write my notes, prepare 2 lessons of Japanese for the lecture (which is at the ungodly hour of 8am on Thursdays), complete 2 sets of Japanese vocabulary, comprehension and summary exercises, post stuff on the Feminism forum and ponder over what I shall write for my myriad essays and projects... Perhaps taking Japanese 5 was an even bigger mistake than taking that Computational Science module last semester.
Hmm, recently, I have noticed a tendency in Lit students to 'drop' critics' names in their discussions. I find that I experience a slight prickly feeling whenever I hear "Althusser says..." and "Cixous says..." and "Derrida says...". One of my non-Lit classmates used to call it "intellectual snobbery". Well, I'm not against literary theory but I don't like the idea of prostrating oneself before the grand altar of theory and merely parroting the views of critic Mr So-and-So. As they say about fashion, you wear the dress, rather than let the dress wear you. I think it's the same with theory: you should speak through the critics, rather than let the critics ventriloquize you.
I guess my main requirement is that I should be convinced of the critic's views when I express them in my argument. Being a post-modernist, I won't presume to claim that any discourse is objective, verifiable 'truth' (for I believe there is no such thing), but at the very least it should sound convincing to me before I employ it.
But then I catch myself talking about "phallogocentric language" and the "materiality of the body" as if I was Kristeva and could wax lyrical about the patriarchal symbolic and the feminine semiotic. And the truth is I don't know how much I agree with the French feminists' concept that the feminine condition is one that is, in a sense, closer to "the Real", the materiality of the body and existence, the so-called "free play" of multiple meanings beyond signification. It is commonly believed that men think linearly, logically, concretely and women think in an unstructured, fluid manner, but are the French feminists then playing into the old stereotypes and binaries? And based on personal experience, I'm afraid I can't really tell whether I am closer to "the Real" or not. I've also asked several guy friends for their opinion but they were unable to tell me much too... =____=
So perhaps the annoyance I feel at the constant recourse to theorists may be partly due to... envy? Envy that I am no expert on modern critical theory, envy that I can't rattle off all the names of the psychoanalysts and deconstructionists, envy that I can't formulate my views into smooth, eloquent, elegantly-turned phrases and expressions? For my presentations in class (especially the informal ones) tend to sound like Joycean interior monologues: disjointed, circuitious, sometimes tautological and hardly ever explained adequately to address the point. (So perhaps there may be some 'truth' to ecriture feminine in this case, since I obviously fail at "phallogocentric" language.)
I don't think I've ever been assaulted with this much self-doubt before. I suppose it may come from becoming a 3rd-year student, with all its attendant expectations, and I find that now, before I speak, I falter, I wonder: am I making sense? Is this an appropriate point? Is this an intelligent point? What would Lacan/Kristeva/Derrida/Foucault say...?
And the point I was trying to make would hover in the air momentarily, then fall flat in the face of silence from the class, and I would feel just a little... stupid.
But I still hold tight to what my JC Lit teacher told me before I took the 'A' Levels; she told me to have confidence in my own views, that my essays were most "scintillating" when I anchored my arguments in my own conviction rather than in repeating what the teachers wanted me to say. And so I will stay true to this advice, which has been my guiding principle these past 2 years, and come what may, I will speak and I won't be silenced.
kaoru said at 7:14 AM
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