Intertextuality

The following post comes to us from Dr. Tribbey. Thanks!

A handout appropriated from the Princeton Poetics handbook which may contribute to the Sigma Tau discussion yesterday. With regard to the McCaffery quotation, remind me to tell you about the time I almost [took] him out of this material realm with a rogue van door.

DEFINITION OF INTERTEXTUALITY:
Without an ultimate referent (center) that would make possible the self-presence and meaning of a text, texts are by definition fragments in open and endless relations with all other texts.

7 MAJOR PREMISES OF INTERTEXTUALITY
(1) Lang. is not a transparent medium of thought or a tool in the service of communication; it is arbitrary and dense, and its very excessiveness leads to an infinite number of interps.
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(2) Texts are fragments, without closure or resolution. No text is self-sufficient; each text is fraught with explicit or invisible quotation marks that dispel the illusion of its autonomy and refer it endlessly to other texts--like the entries in this Encyclopedia, referring parenthetically to other references, except that there is no way to contain all possible references in any encyclopedic "whole."
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(3) Given the above, no writer can ever be in control of the meaning of the text. I. does away with the concept of "author" in its conventional meaning (authority, property, intention), supplanting it with the concepts of "author-function" (Foucault) or "subject" (Lacan).
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(4) Meaning is supplanted by the notion of "signification" (a sign is composed of signifier and signified, but in poststructuralist thinking the signified is lost, leaving the signifier in search of a referent it can never find). Poststructuralism thus discards the humanistic version of human beings as creators of meaning, and proposes them instead as creatures (effects) of lang.
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(5) Crit. is no longer an ancillary activity, but is now considered part of the poem, creative of its meaning or signification. In formalism and humanism, the task of crit. is "explication" (q.v.), which distinguishes the reading subject from the literary object and defines lit. as a discipline and a mode of knowledge. I. stands in direct opposition to explication, with its explicit distinction between primary and secondary texts, and instead opens up literary, critical, and indeed many other texts to illimitable relations.
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(6) Disciplinary boundaries are erased: such fields as philosophy and psychoanalysis are all considered discursive practices and ultimately inseparable from lit.
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(7) Finally, poststructuralist crit. defies the rules of reason and identity and suggests instead the idea of contradiction. "Contradiction," says Adorno, "indicates the untruth of identity, the fact that the concept does not exhaust the thing conceived." Adorno's "contradiction" is very close to Derrida's "differance."

2 KEY FEATURES OF INTERTEXTUALITY
1. ABSENCE OF AN ORIGIN
2. FUNCTION OF RANDOMNESS

In the absence of an origin that would guarantee presence, meaning, and voice, there can be no originals [alas, our periodical is a doomed logocentric enterprise]--only copies.
And without a univocal and transcendent referent, all texts refer to one another--in infinite and utterly random ways.

INTERTEXTUALITY AND PATRIARCHY
Representation and reference, the mainstays of traditional humanism, underwrite a patriarchal "logocentric" ("phallocentric") order in which a work or a referent functions as a stabilizing ("seminal") source and provides the authority of meaning. Explicit in intertextuality is the dismantling ("dissemination") of paternity. Barthes claims that "there is no father-author"; Derrida argues that "writing is an orphan." Intertextuality underwrites a critique of logocentrism and of patriarchy, substituting for patriarchal self-presence the feminizing "otherness" of intertextual "lapses." [An important point when we get to the poetry of Susan Howe & Joan Retallack.]
[from The New Princeton Encyclopdia of Poetry and Poetics, pp. 620-621]

STEVE MCCAFFERY ON THE VIRTUES OF JACKSON MAC LOW'S POETRY AS CREATED BY SYSTEMATIC-CHANCE PROCEDURES:
. . . , the systematc exclusion of the subject permits a degree of semantic indeterminancy that is unobtainable in coventional (i.e. authorially directed) composition. The freeing up of textual space to establish itself as a random economy. denying the writer a personal intervention into the scene of meaning, permits a quality of verbal combinations (clashes, junctures, intersections, incompatibilities) that could not be arrived at through the controlled ordering of an intentional agent. Word order is supplanted by word distribution, and the chance juxtapositions create texts that escape the finality of logical value.

IMAGE SOURCE: http://www.chinesenewear.com/wolfenstein/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/derrida.jpg

Another Creative Writing Festival: March 27th!

Oklahoma City University is hosting a Creative Writing Festival, March 27, featuring novelist/screenwriter Lou Berney, poet Douglas Goetsch, and other writers. You will have choices of workshops on writing fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and screenplays.

The festival also includes a high school writing contest with scholarships as prizes.

For details, go to http://www.okcu.edu/writingfestival/

Pan's Labyrinth: Monday, March 1st at 7 p.m.

The ECU Film Club presents Pan's Labyrinth, Monday, March 1 at 7:00 p.m. in Tiger Cinema. Admission is free.

Are you too old to understand?

The following article by Laura Miller appeared on Salon.com on February 16th. Thanks for the link, Dr. McMahon!

Plagiarism: The next generation

A 17-year-old novelist defends herself in the latest copycat scandal. Are we just too old to understand?

BY LAURA MILLER

Recent plagiarism accusations against the 17-year-old author of a German novel feel like déjà vu all over again, with one key distinction: Helene Hegemann, who wrote the best-selling tale of drugging and clubbing, "Axolotl Roadkill," is defending the practice, telling one German newspaper, "I myself don't feel it is stealing, because I put all the material into a completely different and unique context and from the outset consistently promoted the fact that none of that is actually by me."

Hegemann lifted as much as a full page of text from an obscure, independently published novel, "Strobo," by a blogger known as Airen. Another German blogger, Deef Pirmasens, was the first to point out the passages from "Axolotl Roadkill" that are said to be largely duplicated from "Strobo," with small changes. Despite the uproar caused by this revelation, "Axolotl Roadkill" has been selling better than ever and has been nominated for the $20,000 fiction prize at the Leipzig Book Fair. "Obviously, it isn't completely clean but, for me, it doesn't change my appraisal of the text," a jury member and newspaper book critic told the New York Times, explaining that the jury knew about the plagiarism accusations when it selected the novel for its short list. "I believe it's part of the concept of the book."

To read the rest of the article, click here.

U.S. Poet Laureate to Visit Rose State College in March

Kay Ryan (that's Ryan on the right), United States Poet Laureate, will be the guest poet March 5 at Rose State College’s annual “Poetry at Rose” event, 7 p.m. in the H.B Atkinson Theatre on campus.

Ryan’s reading is to be followed by a reception and book signing.

Ryan said her visit is part of her efforts as poet laureate to promote community colleges nationwide. In a recent interview in Inside Higher Ed., Ryan said that she is a product of community colleges herself, both as a graduate and as a long-time instructor.
“…At community college, all of my instructors knew my name; I had a personal relationship with them, which is beyond price,” Ryan told Inside. "I’m doing the project…just by shouting from the rooftops, 'I spent my life teaching community college, I graduated from one, and I think they’re great!' "
“A poet of Ryan’s stature visiting our campus is an honor,” said Rose State President Dr. Terry Britton. “To have the country’s poet laureate here will heighten awareness of the importance of poetry.”

Ryan's awards include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Union League Poetry Prize, the Maurice English Poetry Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. Her work has been selected four times for The Best American Poetry and was included in The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997.

Ryan's poems and essays appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, The Yale Review, Paris Review, The American Scholar, The Threepenny Review, Parnassus, among other journals and anthologies. Ryan was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2006. In 2008, Ryan was appointed the Library of Congress's sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Since 1971, she has lived in Marin County, California.

Admission to the event is free, but seating is limited and reservations are requested. For more information or to reserve seats, contact Dianne Krob, 405-736-0323, or email dkrob@rose.edu.

Funding for this program is provided in part by a grant from the Oklahoma Humanities Council (OHC), the Oklahoma Arts Council (OAC), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Dr. Davis makes beautiful music

The English Department's very own Dr. Kevin Davis will be playing with the Oklahoma Community Orchestra in Norman (not so far away) at 3:00 (not so late) this coming Sunday! Children are welcome.

On the program you will find Joyeuse Marche - Emmanuel Chabrier, Serenade in E-flat major for 13 Winds - Richard Strauss, Don Giovanni Overture - W. A. Mozart, and the incredibly wonderful Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43 - Jean Sibelius--that's Mr. Sibelius in the photo at right. (Check out the clip at the bottom of this post to hear the first movement of his Symphony No. 2. as performed by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra)

The concert will take place at the
Nancy O'Brian Performing Arts Center
Norman North High School
which is located at
1809 Stubbeman Avenue
Norman, Oklahoma 7306
(Take I-35 to the Robinson exit; head east; turn north on Stubbeman, just past Flood).

Tickets, $10, are available at the door or on the orchestra's web page: http://www.okorchestra.org/schedule.htm

Going Postal / Going Professor

Hear about the biology professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who recently "went postal" on her colleagues? Click here for details.

Click here for reflections.

Thanks for the reflections link, Dr. Grasso.

Call for Student Papers / Films!: Deadline: March 12, 2010

Oklahoma Film and Video Studies Society Annual Conference on
Undergraduate and Graduate Research
In Film and Media Studies
SPONSORED BY UCO FILM STUDIES IN ASSOCIATION WITH OKFVSS
Saturday, April 3, 2010
All events held in the Liberal Arts Building on the campus of
The University of Central Oklahoma,
Edmond, Oklahoma

We are inviting all Oklahoma undergraduate and graduate students who have produced written essays for any film and/or media studies class to submit their work in the following categories: film and media criticism; film and media history; film and media theory. We are also inviting film and video production students to submit short films or excerpts from longer films limited to 10 minutes in running length (VHS or DVD formats).

The Oklahoma Film and Video Studies Society aims to provide undergraduate and graduate students with a forum to present their work, meet and exchange ideas with other students and film educators, and gain valuable experience by presenting their research in a conference setting. This one-day event will bring together student scholars and filmmakers from across the state of Oklahoma. Keynote speaker will be Professor Al LaValley, former head of the Department of Film and Television Studies, Dartmouth.

The Oklahoma Film and Video Studies Society is a state-wide association of film and video studies/production educators committed to building relationships between institutions and related disciplines with the goal of strengthening the film culture of Oklahoma. The Society welcomes the participation of scholars, teachers, filmmakers, writers, artists and anyone involved in or connected to the production and study of film and media. Our mission is educational: to support and expand the study of film and media in Oklahoma and to guide and encourage students entering this field.

Oklahoma Film Educators: Please encourage your outstanding students to submit their work and participate. You are invited to become a part of the OKFVSS which is dedicated to furthering cooperation and communication among Film Studies educators and programs across the state of Oklahoma.

Papers should be completed at the time of submission (no abstracts) and presentable in a twenty minute time period. Deadline for submission: March 12, 2010.
Registration: $15 for students; $25 for faculty. Due on or before April 3, 2010.
Address all correspondence to:
Dr. John Springer, University of Central Oklahoma, Department of English, 100 North University Drive, Edmond, OK 73034-5209. Or submit electronically to jpspringer@uco.edu

Otoliths is here!

The summer 2010 edition of Otoliths is now out. It includes work by our very own Hugh Tribbey. Check it out!

The Big Lie About the Life of the Mind

The following was published "Thomas Benton" (the pen name of William Pannapacker--see image at left, an associate professor of English at Hope College, in Holland, Michigan) in The Chronicle of Higher Education on February 8, 2010:

"A year ago, I wrote a column called "Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go,"advising students that grad school is a bad idea unless they have no need to earn a living for themselves or anyone else, they are rich or connected (or partnered with someone who is), or they are earning a credential for a job they already hold.

"In a March 2009 follow-up essay, I removed the category of people who are fortunately partnered because, as many readers wrote in to tell me, graduate school and the "two-body problem" often breaks up many seemingly stable relationships. You can't assume any partnership will withstand the strains of entry into the academic life.

"Those columns won renewed attention last month from multiple Web sites, and have since attracted a lot of mail and online commentary. The responses tended to split into two categories: One said that I was overemphasizing the pragmatic aspects of graduate school at the expense of the 'life of the mind' for its own sake. The other set of responses, and by far the more numerous, were from graduate students and adjuncts asking why no one had told them that their job prospects were so poor and wondering what they should do now.

"I detected more than a little sanctimony and denial in most of the comments from the first group and a great deal of pain and disillusionment in the latter. The former seem used to being applauded by authorities; the latter seem to expect to be slapped down for raising questions. That's why they write to me, I believe. They want confirmation that something is wrong with higher education, that they have been lied to, systematically.

"Some people have mistaken my position that graduate school in the humanities is fine for the rich and connected for the view that that's how it should be, as if I am some kind of smug elitist. It often happens that readers—looking only at an excerpt from a column—mistake practical advice about coping with a harsh reality for an affirmation of that reality, instead of a criticism of it."

To read the rest of the essay, click here.

College and the Well-Lived Life

The following commentary by Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University, was printed on January 31st in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Doug Paulin for The Chronicle

"Students come to universities with a remarkably materialistic view of what a college education can provide. It was not always thus. In the 1960s, entering freshmen were chiefly interested in developing values and a meaningful phi losophy of life. Only 40 percent felt that making "a lot of money" was a "very important" goal. By the mid-70s, their priorities were reversed. Making "a lot of money" was now "very important" to 75 percent of entering students.

"Since then, making money has continued to be the pre- eminent reason for attending college. But much research has shown that people who set great store by becoming rich tend to be less happy than those who have other goals. If that is the case, most college freshmen are already on the wrong path to a full and satisfying life."

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Music by Theodor W. Adorno

Theodor W. Adorno - Studies for String Movement 1 (Leipziger String Quartett)

1947: "Dialectic of Enlightenment" by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer

The Authors:
Max Horkheimer
Born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1895, the son of upwardly mobile Jewish textile merchant, Horkheimer (on the left in the image at right) rejected plans to run the family business because he believed it exploited workers. In 1923, he completed his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Frankfurt, and in 1930 he became director of the Institute for Social Research, a. k.a. “The Frankfurt School,” which, under his leadership, became famous for its ideological analysis of modern culture (what Horkheimer called “Critical Theory”). He died in 1973.

Theodor W. Adorno
The son of a wealthy Jewish wine merchant, Adorno was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1903. After getting a doctorate in philosophy at University of Frankfurt in 1924, he moved to Vienna where he studied musical composition with Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. In 1933, the Nazis revoked his teaching credentials and he moved to Oxford, England. Five years later, he joined Horkheimer in the United States at the relocated Institute for Social Research (a.k.a. the “Frankfurt School”). After World War II, Adorno and Horkheimer returned to Germany and reestablished the Institute in Frankfurt. Adorno died in 1969.

The Text:
Dialectic of Enlightenment
This jointly authored text attacks “the notion that the Western world has been progressing since the Enlightenment” and asserts that the leading broadcast firms, publishing companies and motion picture studios serve the totalitarian impulses of modern capitalist societies by transforming “art into commodities and people into complacent consumers.” (1221-1222) The image at left is the original poster for Frank Capra’s 1947 film classic.

Excerpts:
“The sound film . . . leaves no room for imagination or reflection on the part of the audience, who is unable to respond within the structure of the film . . . without losing the thread of the story; hence the film forces its victims to equate it directly with reality.” (1226)

The movies are designed so that “sustained thought is out of the question if the spectator is not to miss the relentless rush of facts.” (1226)

“Pleasure always means not to think about anything, to forget suffering even where it is shown. Basically it is helplessness. It is flight; not, as is asserted, flight from wretched reality, but from the last remaining thought of resistance. The liberation which amusement promises is freedom from thought . . .” (1232)

“. . . the popularity of the [movie hero] . . . comes partly from a secret satisfaction that the effort to achieve individuation has at last been replaced by the effort to imitate . . .” (1237)

Adorno disses Joan Baez

Viewer alert: the first 54 seconds of this two-minute documentary clip are in German with no subtitles. Then Adorno comes in and an English translation of his commentary is provided on screen. It's worth the wait.

Yale on the Frankfurt School

Yale's Paul Fry on The Frankfurt School (Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer, etc.)

1939: "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck

The Author:
John Steinbeck
Born in Salinas, California in 1902, Steinbeck attended Stanford University intermittently between 1919 and 1925, before finally leaving without a degree. Four years later, he published his first book—a work of historical fiction about the pirate Henry Morgan. It was his fifth book, however, the novel Tortilla Flat (1935), that brought him his first critical success. Twenty books and more that twenty-five years later, Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He died in 1968.

The Text:
The Grapes of Wrath
Set during the Great Depression, the Pulitzer-Prize winning The Grapes of Wrath focuses on a poor family of sharecroppers, the Joads, driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in the agriculture industry. In a nearly hopeless situation, they set out for California along with thousands of other “Okies” in search of land, jobs and dignity. The images below are from the celebrated Hollywood film version, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, which was made in 1940; the endings of the book and the movie differ greatly.

The Reception:
One writer's opinion: “Any reader who has his roots planted in the red soil will boil with indignation over the bedraggled, bestial characters that will give the ignorant east convincing confirmation of their ideas of the people of the southwest. ”
(Shockley, qtd. 353) Many were concerned about the novel's “obscene, vulgar, lewd, stable language.” (354) Some libraries still ban it from their sacrosanct shelves. In spite of this outcry against Steinbeck's portrayal of Oklahomans, book sales escalated. Sales in Oklahoma were second only to Gone With the Wind. One salesman is reported to have said, “people who looked as though they had never read a book in their lives came in to buy it. ” (351)
Despite his sympathy for poor farm laborers, Steinbeck offended many, but any “honest literary interpretation of a region seems to offend the people of that region.”

Excerpts:
“Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry n’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there. See? God, I’m talkin’ like Casy. Comes of thinkin’ about him so much. Seems like I can see him sometimes.” (Tom Joad, after the death of Jim Casey)

“An’ now I ain’t ashamed. These folks is our folks—is our folks. An’ that manager, he come an’ set an’ drank coffee, an’ he says, ‘Mrs. Joad’ this, an’ ‘Mrs. Joad’ that—an’ ‘How you getting’ on, Mrs. Joad?’” She stopped and sighed. “Why, I feel like people again.” (Ma Joad)

SUBMITTED BY: Ken Hada

WORKS CITED:
Shockley, Martin Staples. "The Reception of The Grapes of Wrath in Oklahoma." American Literature. 15 (1944), pp.351-61.

IMAGE SOURCE:
blog.syracuse.com/shelflife/2008/02/steinbeck.jpg
http://www.doctormacro1.info/Movie%20Star%20Pages/Fonda,%20Henry-Annex.htm

Steinbeck speaks on "The Grapes of Wrath"

Tony Scott on "The Grapes of Wrath" directed by John Ford

California Academics on Steinbeck

Thirty minutes from the University of California on The Grapes of Wrath.

Woody Guthrie: "Talkin' Dust Bowl Blues"

The R. Darryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest Deadline Has Been Moved to Feb. 12, 2010

The 6th Annual R. Darryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest
Oklahoma’s Most Prestigious High School Writing Competition

Prizes to be awarded at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, April 1-3, 2010


Fiction: 1st Place $250 Poetry: 1st Place $250
2nd Place $150 2nd Place $150
3rd Place $100 3rd Place $100
12 Honorable Mention Awards of $25 each

Guidelines:
* All Oklahoma high school students (9th - 12th grade) are eligible.
* Poetry (up to 100 lines) or Short Fiction (up to 5,000 words) is acceptable.
* Limit 5 poems and 1 short fiction piece per student.
* All entries must be the original work of the student.
* All entries must be neatly typed; please double-space fiction entries.
* Entries will not be returned, so keep your originals.
* No identifying marks should be on the manuscript itself, except for the title.
* Provide cover page with contact information: 1) Student’s name; 2) Teacher’s name 3) School 4) Classification 5) Phone number, Email and mailing address.
* Work may be submitted through conventional mail or email.
DEADLINE: Conventional mail must be postmarked on or before February 12, 2010. Email entries must be sent by 11:59 p.m. on February 12, 2010. There will be no exceptions.
* Winners will be notified by March 8, 2010. Winners must attend the award ceremony at East Central University.
Poetry Submissions: send work electronically as attached files to jgrasso@ecok.edu or mail to Dr. Joshua Grasso, East Central University, Dept. of English & Languages, 1100 E. 14th St., Ada, OK 74820
Fiction Submissions: send work electronically as attached files to mwalling@ecok.edu or mail to Dr. Mark Walling, East Central University, Dept. of English and Languages, 1100 E. 14th St., Ada, OK 74820
Contest Information: Dr. Joshua Grasso (580-559-5430); Dr. Mark Walling (580-559-5440). Scissortail Creative Writing Festival Information: Dr. Ken Hada (580-559-5557)

Monday, February 8th: White!

The ECU Film Club will show Krzystof Kieslowski's film White, Monday, Feb. 8, at 7:00 p.m. in Tiger Cinema. White, which won international acclaim upon its release in 1994, is the mysterious tale of a man whose life disintegrates when his beautiful wife of six months deserts him. He rebuilds his life, only to plan a dangerous scheme of vengeance against her. The film stars Julie Delpy, is in color, and runs 92 minutes. Admission is free.