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POETRYETC  2002

POETRYETC 2002

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Subject:

Re: What language?

From:

Erminia Passannanti <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and poetics <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Tue, 28 May 2002 19:37:46 +0100

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (153 lines)

I am back from college. I have taken down the shelf my copy of the wind
dog iwth my mind to Muldoon''s 'Meeting the British', and
Heaney's 'Kinship'.


In  "And Where Do You Stand on the National Question?" Paulin is
questioning Gramsci's old marxist notion of the between the State and the
Intellectuals.

In being a critical approach to historical matrxism, it has amomng the
other various specificities a critique of the historical referent which
defies both the real presuppositions of its genesis and the hoistorical
processes in relation tow hich it develops itself.


It is a kind of critical marxism based on the observation that the social
historical conditions have changed. See Paulin's lines:

>    I imagine him
>    as the state's intelligence,
>    a lean man in a linen suit
>    who has come to question me
>    for picking up a pen
>    and taking myself a shade seriously.
>

Paulin ‘belongs’ to Northern Ireland (he is very  critical of any notion
of  belonging and bare identification of the intellectual with the reasons
of the State : see his idea of a Fifth Province). In this is very close to
Muldoon’s Quoof and its sense of projected expatriate condition.

The State they are both talking against is the English Government. They
are both equally  criticizing the postcolonialist affair in the Ulster
from a  non –orthodox Marxist perspective.

So, the discourse Paulin  is making is not dissimilar from what I was
saying, actually, it is pretty the same… indeed, as far as his  texts
show - and also as far as I am concerned, knowing Tom Paulin quite well,
as an intellectual and a friend.

But here now I have a problem….

If this list will keep suffering such an unbalance of information among
members - if most of the ongoing threads keep amounting to a vagueness of
ideas and a knowledge of poetics and literary theory, people might no
longer be interested in participating.

I thought the present themes we are discussing of postcolonial policies
were by now an established notion, especially among the English writers
with a due awareness of the Irish, Welsh, Scottish  quest for cultural,
linguistic and political autonomy.

An European intellectual would not  expect to still find this kind of
recrimination about language purity and integrity. All these questions are
a worry.

Pirity in linguistics is a non existent notion. It is a totally misguiding
principle: languages evolve on the base of contamination and impurity: say
exchange. But enough with this: I am not here in the role of a civic
pedagogue.
Erminia


On Tue, 28 May 2002 16:53:10 +0100, Robin Hamilton
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>> On Tue, 28 May 2002 14:11:29 +0100, Robin Hamilton
>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >
>> >                                    Is'nt there
>> >    this local stir in us all? --
>> >    flick of the thumb, a word's relish,
>> >    the clitoral tick of an accent,
>> >    wee lick of spit or lovejuice?
>> >
>> >Copyright forbids me to quote more, but the whole poem could stand as
>both
>> a
>> >meditation on and an acting-out of the point dave raises.
>> >
>> >Robin
>>
>>
>> Impossible! out OF QUESTION! Tom Paulin would never state such
>trivialities.
>> ((have you seen the question mark? at the end of the stanza?)
>
>Indeed -- I included it in my transcription.  (And, incidentally, it's
+not+
>at the end of the 'stanza' -- the 'speaker' [the second quoted voice to
>appear in the poem] continues with a further line:  .... / I'd call that a
>brave kindness."  before we switch to the overall Speaker again.)
>
>I could (and perhaps should) have noted that the passage (not stanza --
the
>poem isn't written in stanzas) is enclosed in quotation marks, and is the
>response of the "Lagan Jacobin" to the "Orange dand[y]".
>
>The poem begins with the Speaker (I chose this as a neutral term), who
says:
>
>    ...
>    I imagine him
>    as the state's intelligence,
>    a lean man in a linen suit
>    who has come to question me
>    for picking up a pen
>    and taking myself a shade seriously.
>
>I take the first quoted voice -- "Paisley's plain tongue, his cult ..." as
>being the the flinty mandarin.  To which there's no reply:
>
>    I've an answer ready in the sun
>    but [sic] my eye tines the grass ...
>
>The flinty mandarin continues: "Your Lagan Jacobins, they've gone ..."
>Then the second (quoted) speaker begins the passage which I excerpted
>earlier:  "Why not, though?  Isn't there / ... " And so on.
>
>There are at least three registers at play in the poem (and obviously I
>wouldn't suggest anything so simplistic as to identify any of them as the
>Unmediated Historical Tom Paulin).  However, there's nothing in the poem
to
>suggest an attempt at distancing the author from the speaker.  They may
not
>be "identical", but we're not in full-blown persona territory here.
>
>I'm sorry that my ignorance of "postmodernist and postcolonial linguistic
>theory" prevents me from coming out with something as sophisticated as:
>
>> Impossible! out OF QUESTION! Tom Paulin would never state such
>trivialities.
>
>As to:
>
>> But Randolph would better qualified to speak for the Irish....
>
>Indeed, I'd love to hear what Randolph has to say (especially on the use
of
>the word "wee" in the original passage I quoted).  Ever since I read this
>poem when it was first published in the TLS years ago, it's intrigued and
>fascinated me, but I still don't think I follow all the references.  On
the
>other hand, "Call him Sir Peregrine Falkland", with it's neat
juxtaposition
>of _The Alchemist_ to contemporary politics, seems to me +exactly+ the
sort
>of linguistic game Tom Paulin likes to play.
>
>Robin

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