Here’s something I wrote to Jordan on “psychological” “criticism” (sorry JD, I know you don’t like scare quotes, but I dig them. You might even say I “dig” them.) (Indeed, “commentary” or “reading” are far preferable terms.):
It’s CONTEXTUAL criticism, situational, only the context is inside and between people. How can “the social” NOT be considered to be what is inside and between people as much as whatever “external” forces and strictures we deem it to be? All these fucking false binaries make me want to… sigh, I guess. I wish I had time and space and half the brain to be more critically concise about tearing them down; that takes some serious philosophizing tho. I guess I only can do that poetically right now, brick by intransigent brick.
Like just about everything else I say, this smacks of a kind of femme-y essentializing. That is, the men have always known how to talk rather well about what they perceive to be outside. Outsideness (Camille Paglia mentions the arc of male urine, etc., shooting out into the world). They have a harder time with what they see as “insideness” — what Gary called last night, “processing.” Marianne and I can talk for hours, for example, without the slightest sign of fatigue, about the nuances of relationships and perceptions. I asked Gary, would it be easier to talk about your emotions if you thought about them as something outside you, something rare and obscure perhaps, that you could collect?
This is the fundamental difference in approach between an “Elsewhere” — analysis mainly of Things Outside — and a “Ululation” — Internal Roilings escaping bodily through vocalization.
Two headed pure love monster! Maybe, yes, but with very different sorts of heads. Hee hee. Jim, I love it.
I have to work focusedly on developing a class I am teaching at Pratt today and not allow myself to be seduced by bloglandia.
But I do want to say a word about what Nick has been doing at Fait Accompli — these early notebooks of his are making my jaw drop, as did the piece about poetry he posted a few days ago. Nick, sometimes I just want to lift you up out of the crowds and hold you high for everyone to see!
