Modes of Reading – Seminar Handout
Week 2 – Williams and Spivak
Housekeeping
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Next essay due Term 3, Week 2, 30th April, 2013
Lit theory component lecture – venue change – H051
Room change for office hour H528
‘In Praise of Folly’ – politics and positionality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyLGIH7W9Y
Williams
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Perspective – changing agriculture –
diminishing agricultural community –
the problem of perspective is one the
environmental community still has to
deal with (2)
Williams’ reflection on how the land
shaped him – formative imaginative
space (3)
The city – two ideas in tension
‘where do is stand in relation to
these writers..?’ (6)
‘the life of country and city is moving
and present’ (7)
“the change is very recent” (9)
Validity of perspective? – ‘What we
have to inquire into is not
…historical error, but historical
perspective’ (10)
Uneven development – the enclosures “turn all
dwelling places and all glebeland [land for
cultivation to support the priest] into
desolation and wilderness” (11)
Spivak
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“Why not develop a certain degree of rage against the history that has written such an abject
script for you that you are silenced?” (597)
“Who should speak?” I less crucial than “Who will listen?” (594)
I’m always uneasy if I’m asked to speak for my space (601)
Others
Veracity is disliked by kings [yet from fools] not only true things, but even sharp reproaches,
will be listened to... [A] statement which .... from a wise man's mouth, might be a capital offence,
coming from a fool gives rise to incredible delight [voluptatern]. Veracity... has a certain authentic
power of giving pleasure [delectandt], if nothing offensive goes with it: but this the gods have granted
only to fools (Erasmus, In Praise of Folly).
‘Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life’ / ‘…the author's purpose is to create the
vision which results from that deautomatized perception’ / ‘…defamiliarization is found almost
everywhere form is found’ (Shklovsky, ‘Art as Technique’)
Foucault wanted to write a history of madness itself, that is madness speaking on the basis of
its own experience and under its own authority, and not a history of madness described from within
the language of reason, the language of psychiatry on madness. It is a question, therefore, of
escaping the trap of objectivist naivete that would consist in writing a history of untamed
madness.., from within the very language of classical reason itself... Foucault's determination to
avoid this trap is constant. It is the most audacious and seductive aspect of his venture... But it is also,
with all seriousness, the maddest aspect of his project. (Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference)
[Science fiction is] a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence
and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative
framework alternative to the author's empirical environment (Darko Suvin, Definitions of SF)
In 1982, Michael Vaughan had also been keen to place J.M. Coetzee within a literary
classification whose ‘whole project…is in crisis, at question’, and whose ‘language has no universal
competence. It can exemplify, but not explain…It can say next to nothing, and certainly nothing
reliable, about experiences outside the modality of its own racial-historical dialectic’. Again it is
the silence, the apparent refusal to give his subaltern characters depth that forces Coetzee ‘not adopt a
stance of protest, but of analytical exemplification’. The assumption here seems to be that Coetzee is
choosing – idealising even – aporetic analysis over direct political action.
Questions
My question with Williams' 'The Country and the City' is about his references to the University of
Cambridge. He seems to contradict himself by connecting the country with birth and the city with
learning, and then undermining one of the most venerable places of learning by quoting Young (344)
who discusses 'the utter neglect of agriculture' at University. Why is this included? Is Williams
suggesting that the culture of the city is flawed, and is he in favour of the more natural country way of
life?
How does this relate to 'The Lonely Londoners'? ...is there a movement from innocence to experience
as the immigrants move from their rural Caribbean island communities to the metropolis of London?
Is the city associated with learning, or is it presented as an inferior way of life compared to their
original country?