Oh mia mamma...
Said the tiny girl from Firenze... and my heart did a flip flop for the inversion of the possesive adjective from what I would have expected to hear. Little I. has been playing witht her older sister Silvia, a beautiful child, her blond hair and delicate features acccentuating her mischeivous and secretive grin. She speaks no English, and I.no Italian (though she insists that we must learn) but somehow they are able to play for hours with no parental intervention. Of course when asked if she wants to learn from her new friend, she says, no, she wants to learn from her mother.
Ah, la mamma... Always the mama. She focuses her chocolate gaze on mine, home late as is typical of Tuesdays. How long will you be gone? A few days. I miss you. How can you miss me, I haven't left yet? I miss you while I am at school. I forced myself to be the good mama and read books of poetry with her before she conked out at 10. I know most parents would be horrified that I don't have a set schedule for her, or that she stays up late watching "grown-up" movies (through mama's fingers if the scene is too violent of sexually explicit for her to see, but I can't help wanting to be with her, and short of sedatives or large bumps on the head, her policy is to be with me every possible waking minute.
So I was particularly elated leaving class yesterday. We spent the time discussing Eco's thoughts on tempering radical reader-oriented theories of literary interpretation and slipped into an analysis of current cultural problems (no solutions, little boys with Sig-saurs, polarizing forces and fundamentalism etc.) I came to the conclusion that human stupidity is boundless and eternally expanding. We were also discussing the falacy of authorial intent and the "intentio operis"... how the text's intent is to elicit its model reader. However, if there is no empirical reader of said text (hmmph) there is no opportunity for a model reader to conjecture about its semiotic possibilities.
But the despair that I felt just a few weeks before has been replaced by fascination, this professoressa is brilliant, if a bit anarchist, (and it turns out studied with Eco before he was as famous as he know is) and I am reminded (not painlessly, but also not without certain pleasure and awe at all that I have left to read) of how truly paltry my educational formation really was. I should have studied philosophy. Ah well, can't abandon what I've started, guess I'll just have to include more.
I was also amused this morning to read Jenny's (darling Idealist Savant) thoughts on Baudrillard and the equal repulsion and appeal of an aging dirty Frenchman philosopher with deep accent. It may just be "accent goggles", but heck it is funny that we can be playing with the same thoughts at such a distance.
Ah, la mamma... Always the mama. She focuses her chocolate gaze on mine, home late as is typical of Tuesdays. How long will you be gone? A few days. I miss you. How can you miss me, I haven't left yet? I miss you while I am at school. I forced myself to be the good mama and read books of poetry with her before she conked out at 10. I know most parents would be horrified that I don't have a set schedule for her, or that she stays up late watching "grown-up" movies (through mama's fingers if the scene is too violent of sexually explicit for her to see, but I can't help wanting to be with her, and short of sedatives or large bumps on the head, her policy is to be with me every possible waking minute.
So I was particularly elated leaving class yesterday. We spent the time discussing Eco's thoughts on tempering radical reader-oriented theories of literary interpretation and slipped into an analysis of current cultural problems (no solutions, little boys with Sig-saurs, polarizing forces and fundamentalism etc.) I came to the conclusion that human stupidity is boundless and eternally expanding. We were also discussing the falacy of authorial intent and the "intentio operis"... how the text's intent is to elicit its model reader. However, if there is no empirical reader of said text (hmmph) there is no opportunity for a model reader to conjecture about its semiotic possibilities.
But the despair that I felt just a few weeks before has been replaced by fascination, this professoressa is brilliant, if a bit anarchist, (and it turns out studied with Eco before he was as famous as he know is) and I am reminded (not painlessly, but also not without certain pleasure and awe at all that I have left to read) of how truly paltry my educational formation really was. I should have studied philosophy. Ah well, can't abandon what I've started, guess I'll just have to include more.
I was also amused this morning to read Jenny's (darling Idealist Savant) thoughts on Baudrillard and the equal repulsion and appeal of an aging dirty Frenchman philosopher with deep accent. It may just be "accent goggles", but heck it is funny that we can be playing with the same thoughts at such a distance.
posted by ilana at 7:19 a.m.
1 Comments:
Is this thing on?
Ilana, I'm delighted that we think the same way about dirty philosophers and are as fascinated by these theories. I haven't read yet Eco yet, to my eternal shame, and I need only walk as far as my private library to do so... My brother more or less said I was disgusting for my Baudrillard post -- but I could tell he was actually scandalously amused.
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