Pyn's Privacy

[Matthew Cissell]

Good lord, Alice, what time do you get up? Where I'm at it's now nearly noon so it must be early over your way. Bom dia. Tudo bem?

Ah yes, M. Foucault and his author function. I still admire much of his work, but with time I have come to see it a bit differently, primarily due to the influence of Pierre Bourdieu, a friend and colleague of Foucault. In The Rules of Art Bourdieu writes that Foucault "explicitly refuses to search outside the 'field of discourse' for the principle which would elucidate each of the discourses within it" and he goes to write more on the next page. http://books.google.es/books?hl=es&id=5cgxLnbZjhcC&q=foucault#v=snippet&q=foucault&f=false

In the same book Bourdieu writes: "Trying to understand a career or a life as a unique and self-sufficient series ofsuccessive events without another link than the association with a 'subject' (whose consistency is perhaps only that of a socially recognized proper name) is almost as absurd as trying to make sense of a trip on the metro without taking the structure of the network into account, meaning the matrix of objective relations between the different stations" p. 258-9. The parenthetic statement seems like an allusion to what Foucault states in The Author Function.

Bourdieu respected Foucault more than some of the other maitre penseurs that came to the fore from the 60's on, however, they did differ in the way they studied things e.g., education, literature, etc. I now lean more towards Bourdieu (and others like Raymond Williams) but that has to do with my own background.

ciao
mc otis

________________________________
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 11:18 AM
Subject: Re: Pyn's Privacy



http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/Foucault-AuthorFunction.html



On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 4:53 AM, Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es> wrote:

Right on.
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Rev'd Seventy-Six <revd.76 at gmail.com>
>
>To: bandwraith at aol.com; "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Cc:
>Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 4:44 AM
>Subject: Re: Pyn's Privacy
>
>"This is America. You let it happen."
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>We differ. I believe it's a wretched error to confuse the artist with
>his work. The fascination with Pynchon only enriches his work to a
>certain degree. Past that it is his life, and I see no reason he
>shouldn't be able determine our interactions with it. That goes double
>for cretins with cameras ambushing him when he's trying to have a
>pleasant day with his son.
>
>
>On 5/9/13, bandwraith at aol.com <bandwraith at aol.com> wrote:
>>
>> Please. This is America. Get used to it. If the man is worried about his
>> family, let him return to engineering or technical writing. I'm sure he'd do
>> fine, and perhaps we'd all be spared more embarrassing Simpson's episodes.
>> Don't get me wrong, I'm glad for his art, but he deserves no special
>> treatment. He lives better than most of us.
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Rev'd Seventy-Six <revd.76 at gmail.com>
>> To: malignd <malignd at aol.com>; pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Thu, May 9, 2013 9:35 pm
>
>> Subject: Re: Pyn's Privacy
>>
>>
>> Again, I think it's as much about sparing his family as it is about
>
>> paring himself the press. Yes, he's created this relatively novel
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>> ituation. He didn't create a society based on commodifying celebrity,
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>> ut he has to live in it if he's to be an American author. It's what
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>> e wants to be in the world he wants to live in, yet we as a culture
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>> nd homo sap in general are notoriously nosy, and American fandom in
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>> pecific is the pits when it comes to digging through people's trash
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>> nd brandishing overweened entitlement all the while. He hasn't posted
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>> arbed wire but he's put up rather a lot of signage indicating Keep
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>> ut. His self-image may have informed this drift into hermitude but
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>> hy question his position? Am reminded of how creeped-out I felt
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>> atching The Life of P.: here was a black market in a living man's
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>> orrespondence. Some call it study, but it seems to have more to do
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>> ith 'solving' an artist rather than comprehending his works--
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>> articularly those works formulating a Theory of Disappearence.
>> --
>> tt
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>>
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>
>--
>http://posthistoricpress.blogspot.com/
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>