As a preface to my response to our reading, it must be said that I, as a fellow reader and an author, value highly the interpretive power of both roles in literature and study thereof. After all, one of my most favorite philosophers of the Western Hemisphere, Soren Kierkegaard wrote famously, “Truth is subjectivity.” As […]
Which Comes First: The Metaphor or the Metonymy?
The Theory Toolbox asks the important question of how we read: is it, as the book says a dig through the “social meaning to get to the real…essence of the word” or is it the way we take into account other aspects of a work and how we use that work in different ways? Interestingly […]
queer in context
The “Working Question” on page 28-29 in the chapter “Reading” caught my attention. The section states that words like “queer” and “dyke,” which were used as harmful slurs in the 1950s (and for many years surrounding the decade), have since been “reappropriated by the homosexual community itself.” The author questions how these things happen over […]
Reader as Interpreter
The reading for today poses an interesting theory that questions not only the capacity of authorship but more importantly, of the reader. To quote TT quoting Friedrich Nietzche, “facts… do not exist, only interpretations.” While one may blindly assume reading is nothing more than a means of consumption, it is ignorant to assume that anything can be consumed […]
The Subjectivity of Language
While making my way through the assigned readings for today, one subject in particular stood out to me: the arbitrary nature of language. I was already familiar with the idea prior to reading, as I had an anthropology class last semester that studied the relationship between language and culture. One of the first things we […]
Towards a Better Understanding of Metaphor
I like what is mentioned in The Theory Toolbox text book, “We tend to understand interpretation or reading as a metaphoric process, which is to say, we understand interpretation as allegorical rather than literal” (30). I read this as a statement saying we are programmed to communicate in metaphor. It reminds me of the film Trainspotting. It […]
Multiplicity of Meaning
As I’m reflecting on the assigned readings for this post, my head is spinning in an attempt to detangle new threads of information into a recognizable fabric on the screen before me. I’ve always been in wonderment of change, how things transform into something new, like the color of a leaf, my grandmother’s skin, my […]
Turning our Cannons from the Canon
What stood out to me in the chapter “Author/ity” was a distinct distrust of the notion of the Western canon. Obviously the writers think much of Foucault’s hegemonic conception of discourse, as the chapter seemed to be largely founded upon its implications. While I don’t feel as though I have any right, having never read […]
The Precarious Hunt for Meaning
As a recently declared English major still adjusting to the type of out-of-class work I will be frequently drowning in from here on, I have taken to spending great amounts of time at coffee shop tables next to a tedious stack of books. Today, as I cracked the Theory Toolbox, the friend across from me […]
A Sudden Doubting of My Own Uniqueness
Chapter 4, “Subjectivity”, really affected me in a way I wasn’t necessarily expecting. I had just been reading about what divides the idea of a “writer” and an “author”, with respect to the construct of the literary canon. Really, this sudden self-deprecating chapter on uniqueness came as an utter surprise. I hadn’t previously considered these […]