deconstructing mark
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Thursday 15.1.04 | FIRST play rehearsal last night went surprisingly well. It involved, at various times, me clambering over furniture and running along one wall of the room we were on shouting CHUGGA-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-bonk (got so into trying to pretend to be a train that I didn't notice the television in my path) so it was great fun. Long may the chaos continue... Friday 16.1.04 SAW a programme on Channel 4 last night about the problems of sexual abuse by the Catholic Church; it being Channel 4, it wasn't perhaps the *most* unbiased of viewpoints, but what came across to me is just how sad the whole situation really is; the Church is terrified of sex and any manifestation of it, and tries to clamp down on it as much as it can because it's always been viewed as something traditionally 'bad.' But if you look at sexual desire as a natural human urge, an urge which you can't expurgate, the situation suddenly becomes a lot more simple; the situation would be so much better were priests allowed to marry and have children and have a life which didn't involve loneliness. A priest is, when all said and done, a human being, far from perfect, which makes the Church far from perfect too. Time they started to acknowledge the fact and get a grip on reality. Saturday 17.1.04 LAUGH at me if you will: I know that a Kings Cross club packed full of full of people sweatily jiggling away to Michael Jackson and Tatu on a Friday night isn't perhaps the most probable place for philosophy, but, for some reason, whilst there last night, I couldn't help wondering, somehow, what it's all about. Similarly on the night bus home, cruising along Oxford St. I wasn't the least bit drunk, just feeling more than averagely introspective. Having said that, I didn't really reach any conclusions, apart from that that I'm definitely getting older; I know this because, whilst I enjoyed last night and it was good to get out, I'll be quite happy not to do it again for at least a month. I don't mind clubbing, but get drawn to doing it less and less frequently these days. Pass the dentures. On a completely separate note, it's a glorious day, which is clearly why I'm still sitting here in my dressing gown at midday. Suddenly realise that I haven't seen proper sunshine for months now, and, while most of the time I'm happy to do without it, it's bloody lovely to have it streaming down my street. It may be a cold Saturday morning in January, I may feel shattered from last night and be unbreakfasted, unshowered and generally unprepared for the day/week/month/life ahead, but somehow, it all feels OK. Maybe a day for turning over new leaves. Will all fall together somehow. Yes. :-) Monday 19.1.04 IN this discussion, however, I want to work with the notion that if, in the book, Guibert privileges a vision of medical topography that chimes with Foucault's exegesis of disciplinary power/knowledge, this is in part at least a function of the fact that (a tiny aspect of) Foucault's own dream of medical space -as it is creatively refashioned in Guibert's AIDS-text, via an observation of Muzil's- holds a reflexive clue to the resistance the books mounts against the power-saturated pratices its narrator is subjected to in the medical realm. In the section of this chapter that follows, I shall engage with this notion at some length, addressing three key questions. These are (i) What kind of resistance inheres in Guibert's narrative? (ii) How does it relate to the 'Foucauldian' vorstellung of the medical environment that that narrative proffers? and (iii) What type of dynamic prevails between the Guibertian-Foucauldian and 'Foucauldian'-Muzilian visions of medical space in evidence in the book? This is the sort of academic writing which I detest - why use one word when six flouncy, poncy, air-fairy, art-fart ones will do? The points this author makes are, for the most part, valid, but more importantly, they're not complex. But because they're couched in such unnecessarily dense and complicated prose, it makes working out what the hell he's warbling on about problematic and exhausting. AAAAGH makes me CROSS. | ||
