Friday, December 26, 2008
There was an article in the front pages of the newspaper today, but I had already heard about it from Kevin yesterday: Harold Pinter has passed away.
Critics, intellectuals, artists and even the French President (!?) all over the (Western and Anglophile) world have been paying tribute to the late British playwright, but I'm not going to join in and say something of the likes of, "We mourn the passing of a great artist" or "Pinter will be remembered forever for his profound and powerful plays" for one very simple reason. I have read only three of his plays, and only one of which was a 'seminal' work, and I can't remember what they were like at all.
I'm not saying that Pinter was not a great artist. Neither am I saying that I do not personally think that Pinter was not a great artist. And I'm certainly not saying that I don't remember what his plays were like because they were all forgettable fluff. All I'm saying is that I can't justifiably say that he was a great artist if I can't even remember what I've read; that would be intellectual poseurism.
I know I sound like a total loser of a Lit student. When Kevin spoke to me about "the final pause before the resolution", my mind drew a total blank. Was Pinter famous for using pauses in his plays? LIT STUDENT INTELLECTUAL CREDENTIALS: GRADE F MINUS TO THE POWER OF TWO HUNDRED.
Reading the Straits Times article this morning, a few things are coming back to me from the far-off days of the level 3000 "The 20th Century" module. Dr Y bouncing around in front of me in the tutorial classroom, "absurdism" (the requisite big word), different types of silences, a cheese roll, and oh yes, Dr Y bouncing around in front of me in the tutorial classroom.
Everytime this sort of thing happens, I feel slightly disturbed. Aren't Lit students supposed to be able to go on and on forever about how a work is Aristotlelian, Sartrean, Marxian, Lacanian, Derridean, Deleuze-and-Guattari-ian, Jamesonian etc and how the author employed allegory and bathos and circumlocution and intertexuality to paint compelling visions of a universe devoid of God devoid of meaning devoid of "the centre" with nothing but the void of nothingness and difference and differance and the infinite substitution of signifiers down the endless metonymic chain of desire/signification?
I remember reading lots of books, I remember liking some of them, but sometimes I can't really remember why I liked them (strangely, the opposite is not quite true). The same goes for theoretical works I've read. I'm always impressed when people can tell me exactly which theorist said what in which part of which essay. Just a few days ago I was wondering which theorist was the one who wrote about the subsitution of signifiers - was it Lacan or was it Derrida? Or was it both of them?
Sometimes I wonder whether this memory loss of mine is something I should worry about. Is it a prerequisite for an academic to be able to quote stuff off the backs of their hands? Apart from the obvious boost this would give to my intellectual credentials, I think it would be extremely useful if I didn't forget so much of what I have read before and have to re-read texts and essays again and again. Think of all the time that would save!
I really hope I'll learn to be better at retaining information, but ultimately there is a limit to how much a human being can remember at any point in time. I can only hope that even though I can't remember exactly who ate whose cheese roll in The Homecoming, that play has made an impact on me in some way and will become part of the myriad experiences that have contributed to the way I live now. Perhaps nothing is truly forgotten in this sense.
kaoru said at 5:39 PM
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