Option 1 — Do a close reading of the following passage from William Carlos Williams’ Spring and All (1923), a major American modernist work. (By close reading, I mean focus in on particular words and phrases and the way they build a symbolic pattern that supports the writer’s meaning.) Quote one of the readings for this week (Jones, for example) to explain how Williams conceives imagination and poetic composition in gendered ways, related to waste, efficiency, and flow.

Option 2 — Compare the two versions of modernity presented this week: the earlier European versus the later American version. What does waste represent in each context, and is it more or less valued in the European or American context? Use quotes from at least one of the readings to support your argument.

Prompt 1: Does psychoanalytic thought (Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, etc.) construe waste as a necessary “other” to psychic health in a consistent way? Or is there a break between Freud and later psychoanalytic theorists in their approach to waste?

Prompt 2: How is waste gendered in the different psychoanalytic thinkers we’ve read this week? Is this gendering consistent? Is there a politics behind this gendering, and if so, is it positive?

Prompt 3:  Can Ana’s crisis in Clarice Lispector’s story “Love” be elucidated through Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection? Does waste at either the conceptual level or the material level play a part in her crisis?

Class: reminder there’s no class next Monday. Instead we’ll meet on Wednesday, 2/15 at 6:30.

Here are next week’s prompts. Choose only one of the three prompts below. (And even within each prompt, you do not need to consider every question posed — just the ones that are more productive for you.) Reply in the comments below.

One of the tenets of structuralist anthropology is that the structures of behavior (rituals, symbolism, etc.) are similar across cultures, even if the details differ. For example, in Purity and Danger, Mary Douglas argues that rituals of dirtiness and cleanliness recur in all cultures, whether or not they are “primitive” or modern. While the particular object or behavior that is considered “dirt” or “dirty” may differ, the underlying structure is essentially the same.

1. Do the tenets of structuralist anthropology outlined above—that common structures recur across cultures—also hold true within Tom McCarthy’s novel Satin Island, about an in-house corporate anthropologist called U? For example, does U.’s style of anthropology at the corporation differ from the ways that classical anthropologists would characterize their work (as beginning with “field work” in an “exotic” location)? What’s similar and what’s different? You can draw on U.’s own views for your response (though bear in mind that he is often an unreliable narrator).
2. Why do you think the author Tom McCarthy makes his protagonist an anthropologist? What special meanings and vantage points does it provide him? What if anything does it say about the relationship between fiction and fact as we normally think of these categories?
3. What meanings do figures of excess and pollution hold in the novel (for example, the oil spill)? What if anything do they help U. understand about the systems he is trying to describe? Do they help us understand anything about the world the author is describing?

Class,

Just to let you know that I shared the Dropbox folder with all of you after Monday’s class, so if you didn’t get a notice via email, let me know ASAP and I’ll connect you.

Also, I just wanted to alert you to events with Mierle Laderman Ukeles at Queens Museum this next two weekends. The exhibit closes in mid-February so your chance is soon.

Prompt 1: In her article, “The Death of Nature and the Apotheosis of Trash….,” Patricia Yaeger writes:

[A]n old opposition between nature and culture has been displaced in postmodern art by a preoccupation with trash: the result of weird and commodity-based intermingling. If nature once represented the before (creating culture as child, product, or second nature) and if detritus represented the after (that which was marginalized, repressed, or tossed away), these representations have lost their appeal. We are born into a detritus strewn world, and the nature that buffets us is never culture’s opposite. (Yaeger 323)

How do you make sense of what Yaeger means by this? In your analysis, pull in an example from elsewhere in her essay, or from the Calvino or Cohen/Jonhson readings.

Alternative Prompt: Write a self-portrait as a waster or garbage producer. Some thing you might include (though you can approach this however you like and you do not need to answer all – or any – of these questions): What do you collect and why? What do you throw out that other people might keep? What do you keep or buy or find that other people might throw out? What makes you decide to value something? Have you ever changed your approach to waste? You may think of the Calvino article as a kind of inspiration.