ATDTDA (5): Rival systems might be acknowledged now and then, 131-134

[bekah]

Please, please keep doing these little summaries.   It gets me back 
to the overview.  Thank you so much!  (Especially do them next 
section because I might stray from major points of interest.)

Bekah



At 6:06 PM +0000 3/24/07, Paul Nightingale wrote:
>Vormance's speech projects a narrative of progress, one thing leading to
>another. Following a series of rhetorical questions concerning the future
>(what will God do?) he is interrupted and argument ensues: hence a closed
>narrative is replaced by an open narrative. This is "[a] recurring
>argument": so again repetition, the unending rehearsal of fixed positions.
>Rao's point about "the possibility of linear time becoming circular" (132)
>concerns the 'opening up' of a closed narrative, certainty replaced by
>uncertainty. According to Vormance, "the Brits" are prone to irrational
>belief, although we are later told: "Icelanders ... had a long tradition of
>ghostliness that made the Brits appear models of rationalism" (133). Hence,
>judgement is relative; and if rationality is measurable, it is therefore
>open to dispute.