radiant fracture

( Thrilled by the new ideas surrounding him, our hero makes them manifest. In his fashion. )

It was this or get a tattoo. I've been wanting a shirt with Something on It, like all the cool kids have. This shirt had something on it, but it was grease stains.

I taped out the letters with green non-stick painter`s tape and used an ancient can of spray fabric paint I've been hoarding for Just the Right Use. Hence the deeply fashionable crappy industrial lettering.

I'm thinking I'll put the signified-tree on the back. If I spray the paint into a container and put it on with a toothpick I'm able to get some fairly good detail.

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First week's readings:

Required:
Saussure. "General Principles." Course in General Linguistics. pp 65-98
Foucault. "The Order of Discourse." Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader. pp 48-78

Optional:
Macdonell. Theories of Discourse: An Introduction.
Pecheux. language, Semantics and Ideology: Stating the obvious.

I scored this latter couplet from the third floor only moments ahead of another student. I half-heartedly offered to give her one of the two, but she said any excuse not to have to do the extra work was okay with her. Still, I feel a twinge.

The course is carefully thought out. By which I mean I approve of the structure. The professor's given consideration to the pacing of a semester and the relative likelihood of readings' getting done. She's ensured our reading by requiring short responses each week in the form of a set of questions. There's a website participation component (that might be a bit tricky from home, though I guess I could do it from work, or go up to the university library) and a seminar presentation and a research paper and an exam. She said that she'll direct the discussion for the first five weeks, and then turn it more over to us, whereupon our seminar presentations will begin.

I like the professor. She's subtle and alarmingly attentive. I'm used to offering a professor a kind of magic-lantern narrative of facial expressions in response to their lectures. I think of it as a reassuring dumb show, a sort of mimetic reinforcement. She, however, actually reacts to and addresses these responses as though they were utterances.

Unsettling!

She seems very accessible, in terms of taking any response and making it work in the context of the discussion. I felt as though my contributions were a bit stupid in the first half, but I rallied a little later on.

Summary: daunting and exhilarating. I'm excited, in the way you are just before a rollercoaster starts. Already short of breath in anticipation.

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