The above is excerpted from the notes I took in Cultural Studies seminar yesterday. The gaps represent nasal distractions more than any difficulty I was having with the any of the critical theorists/philosophers, etc. to whom I've always been quite resistant and closed-minded. Profe. Robert opened the seminar with a brief recorrido of the French structuralists, post-structuralists, etc... beginning with Saussure and Levi-Strauss. In the middle of the Lacan description above, he interrupted himself in response to my sneezing fit, "Val, ¿estás alérgica a la realidad?" I tried to joke, but refrained from actually saying aloud that I actually did have a bit of an aversion to Theory. I kept my sinuses under control through Barthes, Althusser, Deleuze, Foucault and Kristeva.
I tensed up a bit when it came to Derrida, but Robert's description was clear and I became fascinated with the idea of APORIA, or these sorts of holes in communication or anything, I guess, where language can't enter, so language rebels and produces things like binary oppositions. I was even beginning to see that Deconstruction in some ways was a productive thing. But as he began to explain the term differance any tentative understanding disappeared as my eyes and nose suddenly began to water - uncontrollably. It was as though my sinuses had sprung a leak and I had to get up and leave for a few minutes to get myself under control. I wonder what Freud or Lacan would make of that. And speaking of Lacan...below, in 1931. ¿Charol para la baba? ¿o para los mocos?
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