#Insomnia Staying up all night eating mini Chupa Chups and drinking chai. If I go to bed this late Ill risk sleeping through my alarm and being late for work. Today I managed to learn more about Foucaults influence on the New Historicist school of literary analysis than I thought Id ever even need to know, and Im not even an English major. If youd like to know how to relate the Foucauldian concept of epistemes to the works of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens feel free to ask. (Its actually a lot more interesting than I thought itd be). I also need to really get cracking on finishing Ursula K Leguins Left Hand of Darkness, because I RSVPd to go to a book club meeting about it which is in seven days and Ive hardly started reading it. I figured going to a book club meeting would go some way to assuaging my absence of a social life and dealing with my social-phobic tendencies. I guess well see. At times I am also trying to ponder the Marxist concept of surplus value and its theoretical intersection with conceptualising systems of capitalist production that are so knowledge intensive that the informational commodities and services produced seem immaterial, ephemeral, but where the very necessity of the unpaid segment of the working day is still a necessity for their production in both an abstract and concrete sense. But (I think) one of the key points is to understand that the ideas of immateriality and ephemerality, in relation to our information-intensive industries, is initially more of a First World concept than a Third World one. It is for good and readily comprehensible reasons that the ideas of spectacle, deconstruction and simulacra, as theoretical motifs, firstly arose in the academes of Europe, rather than those of the Third World, to where we have transferred so much of our high-polluting production apparatuses and hyper-exploitative labour practices. (To be sure, hyper-exploitative labour practices still exist in the West as well, sometimes right under noses, you dont necessarily have to look very far). I hope one day, perhaps, to condense ideas like these into a more formal and peer-reviewed dissertation. OK, I think Ill stop now. The sparrows outside have started singing to each other, so Ill open the curtains and let in the dawns light. Time for another cigarette, a coffee, a shave and a shower. Ill put on my mask and deal with the day. Wish me luck.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 18:18:36 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015