Not to mention shifting paradigms ...
Candice Ward wrote:
>
> I know what you mean about the theory trends as reflected in titles with
> "body"/"bodies": before that it was "desire" in every title (and an
> unsatisfying read to follow in many cases!). Still earlier, I overheard one
> of the Duke English Dept. old guard muttering to himself as he tottered down
> the corridor: "Everywhere you go, it's nothing but lesbian, lesbian,
> lesbian." And in the mid-'80s, while attending a conference and listening to
> a paper by a very well-known film theorist sporting a Marlene Dietrich
> hairdo and a silver-lame dress, a friend sitting next to me leaned over and
> whispered, "If she says 'gaze' ONE more time...." It's the fashionableness
> that's annoying, isn't it--not the theory per se?
>
> Last year an academic friend (with pretty impressive theoretic creds.
> herself) predicted that the Next Big Thing in theory would be--yup,
> fashion--so there you are....
>
> Candice
>
> on 8/21/01 7:38 PM, Matthew Francis at [log in to unmask]
> wrote:
>
> > I meant in English Departments, of course, Josephine. In my first year at
> > Southampton, not one of the English Dept postgrad seminars was devoted to
> > poetry, and the rest of literature was easily outweighed by film and theory
> > (much of which could not accurately be described as *literary* theory). The
> > word 'body' or 'bodies' seemed to be in the title of every paper
> > (transgressive bodies, political bodies, economy of the body etc), to the
> > extent that I was beginning to think the subject should be renamed Anatomy.
> >
> > As for tattooing, I have nothing against it except that I wasn't planning
> > to study it (and it sounds painful). It does get into _Moby-Dick_, after
> > all.
> >
> > Best wishes
> >
> > Matthew
|