Critial Studies Week 1-2
Critical Studies Journal
[weeks 1-2]
The Mapping Impulse in Dutch Art
First of all I really love Vermeer, despite what the artless heathen Hockney has to say about it. I could give a crap what the master used to create the work, if Dali says Vermeer is the best painter, that is enough for me. Also engaging is the continuious return to more and more detail about the Vermeer painting "The Art of Painting".
From a knowledge point of view I appreciate being enlightened about entymoloogy. Thus the origins of words important to me like picture (pictura, schilderij) and graphis (graphikos) are very interesting to my and will likely be of use in the future.
Also of interest to me are Hooke, Huygens, Newton and all the progenitors of modern scientific research. This interest began while reading Neal Stephenson's sweeping novel Quicksilver which is a work of the most amazing historical fiction taking place around the time of the great fire of London.
However it worries me that Prof. S.E refered to Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" as full of great ideas but that he is not a very good writer. This is patently untrue in my opinion. It all depends upon what you consider good. (like everything) Could this be a kind of intellectual chauvinism? I am accustomed to "literary types" disparaging speculative fiction out of hand, but this is a little different. Guilty pleasure perhaps? Statements like this make me wonder what actually the professor considers "good" writing. (and can students measure up?)
Cervantes possibly, the obfuscator Joyce? Certainly not Svetlana Alpers, our first assignment from the reader. I would counter that "The Mapping Impulse in Dutch Art" is so dreadfully dry and pedantic that it bordered on boring. If not for the inclusion of Vermeer, I would never have bothered to read it further after the first five pages. This is writing without passion, without any handle to criticize,(neutral) without any flair or contemporary context, written for the few.
What is good writing? Does good writing emerge from academia? From the legions of Iowa MFA grads who pump out the sad fiction that dwells on the same sordid events of the human condition with a perverse fascination? What is required to make "good" writing? In my opinion Svetlana Alpers would NEVER have an audience past a few academics if it was not required reading in this and other courses. Neal Stephenson's ideas (and riveting prose) are enjoyed by literally millions of people all over the world.
In my cosmos, someone who writes in simple prose understandable to most readers WHILE putting out amazing ideas is as good as it gets. The author not only gets the word out, but inspires and expands the minds of the reader. Svetlana Alpers inspired me only to fight off the wall of sleep. Her observations are too finely grained and obscure to be useful, and too dry to be entertaining. What purpose could this serve other than academic prurience, and surely the same material could be presented better?
Regarding "The World as Foreign Land"
This chapter was much more to my liking, but fraught with vagaries (I have notes on specific citations), incongruencies and outright bias. Passion!
I love it, even if it does deliberately attempt offence to half the readers by villifying the masculine personal pronoun in favor of the feminine. This is oldschool, and what exactly IS the purpose of this strategy? I suppose the writer has to be forgive for being oldschool because the article was in fact written in 1991, and we all know that was a different time.
Also... who is this writer anyway? On nearly every page there are vague statements and out of context quotes. If this writer was a student in ANY class I have ever been in that required writing, they would be hammered to pieces by the instructor. Their pages would literally bleed with red ink! I have learned enough in my writing classes to know this. Definitely third string compared to the writers of my last semester: (Barthe, Butler, Foucault, Harraway etc.)
And another thing....While many were studying Western primary sources, I was studying the Sufis. Does this writer think that there would be nobody reading the chapter that would recognize Idres Shah? Having read many of his books, I can tell you that the quotes the writer uses seem quite out of context with the sprit and intent of Sufism, and fail to substantiate the ideas or the writer. This incongruency bothers me because I think Indres Shah presents significant spiritual memes to the world and I am shocked to witness knowledge abusing wisdom being hawked as understanding.
I could go on, but I know the reader has other things to do do than to indulge my rant.
My only concern in keeping "critical theory" log is that I might be misunderstood, and that my intellectual exercises could be taken in a negative way. A journal by it's nature is a candid thing. I reserver the right to go back and edit what I put publish, one of the many advantages of the medium. Ideas can have real life in blogosphere, they can evolve.
Cheers!
End----
[weeks 1-2]
The Mapping Impulse in Dutch Art
First of all I really love Vermeer, despite what the artless heathen Hockney has to say about it. I could give a crap what the master used to create the work, if Dali says Vermeer is the best painter, that is enough for me. Also engaging is the continuious return to more and more detail about the Vermeer painting "The Art of Painting".
From a knowledge point of view I appreciate being enlightened about entymoloogy. Thus the origins of words important to me like picture (pictura, schilderij) and graphis (graphikos) are very interesting to my and will likely be of use in the future.
Also of interest to me are Hooke, Huygens, Newton and all the progenitors of modern scientific research. This interest began while reading Neal Stephenson's sweeping novel Quicksilver which is a work of the most amazing historical fiction taking place around the time of the great fire of London.
However it worries me that Prof. S.E refered to Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" as full of great ideas but that he is not a very good writer. This is patently untrue in my opinion. It all depends upon what you consider good. (like everything) Could this be a kind of intellectual chauvinism? I am accustomed to "literary types" disparaging speculative fiction out of hand, but this is a little different. Guilty pleasure perhaps? Statements like this make me wonder what actually the professor considers "good" writing. (and can students measure up?)
Cervantes possibly, the obfuscator Joyce? Certainly not Svetlana Alpers, our first assignment from the reader. I would counter that "The Mapping Impulse in Dutch Art" is so dreadfully dry and pedantic that it bordered on boring. If not for the inclusion of Vermeer, I would never have bothered to read it further after the first five pages. This is writing without passion, without any handle to criticize,(neutral) without any flair or contemporary context, written for the few.
What is good writing? Does good writing emerge from academia? From the legions of Iowa MFA grads who pump out the sad fiction that dwells on the same sordid events of the human condition with a perverse fascination? What is required to make "good" writing? In my opinion Svetlana Alpers would NEVER have an audience past a few academics if it was not required reading in this and other courses. Neal Stephenson's ideas (and riveting prose) are enjoyed by literally millions of people all over the world.
In my cosmos, someone who writes in simple prose understandable to most readers WHILE putting out amazing ideas is as good as it gets. The author not only gets the word out, but inspires and expands the minds of the reader. Svetlana Alpers inspired me only to fight off the wall of sleep. Her observations are too finely grained and obscure to be useful, and too dry to be entertaining. What purpose could this serve other than academic prurience, and surely the same material could be presented better?
Regarding "The World as Foreign Land"
This chapter was much more to my liking, but fraught with vagaries (I have notes on specific citations), incongruencies and outright bias. Passion!
I love it, even if it does deliberately attempt offence to half the readers by villifying the masculine personal pronoun in favor of the feminine. This is oldschool, and what exactly IS the purpose of this strategy? I suppose the writer has to be forgive for being oldschool because the article was in fact written in 1991, and we all know that was a different time.
Also... who is this writer anyway? On nearly every page there are vague statements and out of context quotes. If this writer was a student in ANY class I have ever been in that required writing, they would be hammered to pieces by the instructor. Their pages would literally bleed with red ink! I have learned enough in my writing classes to know this. Definitely third string compared to the writers of my last semester: (Barthe, Butler, Foucault, Harraway etc.)
And another thing....While many were studying Western primary sources, I was studying the Sufis. Does this writer think that there would be nobody reading the chapter that would recognize Idres Shah? Having read many of his books, I can tell you that the quotes the writer uses seem quite out of context with the sprit and intent of Sufism, and fail to substantiate the ideas or the writer. This incongruency bothers me because I think Indres Shah presents significant spiritual memes to the world and I am shocked to witness knowledge abusing wisdom being hawked as understanding.
I could go on, but I know the reader has other things to do do than to indulge my rant.
My only concern in keeping "critical theory" log is that I might be misunderstood, and that my intellectual exercises could be taken in a negative way. A journal by it's nature is a candid thing. I reserver the right to go back and edit what I put publish, one of the many advantages of the medium. Ideas can have real life in blogosphere, they can evolve.
Cheers!
End----
posted by DanCoyote at 2:36 PM
<< Home