Post Bloggernism

            On Wednesday morning I didn’t work on any translations or memorization and I did a shortened song practice because I wanted to have more time to work on my Brit Lit 2 essay. Other than to post my daily tweet I didn't go on social media. 

            I weighed 89 kilos before breakfast. I had cinnamon toast and spoon size shredded wheat for the first time in a month. 

            I worked on my essay for an hour. 

            I logged on at noon for my Brit Lit 2 tutorial. 

            April 11 is the deadline for the essay. Carson will still accept papers after that point but his absolute cut off has to be April 19. The exam is on April 13 and the professor has posted an instructional video. 

            The union has reached a tentative agreement with U of T and so there will probably be no strike.

            The tutorial was on up to halfway through On Beauty by Zadie Smith. 

            A discussion about the differences and similarities between modernism and postmodernism. I said my Short Story professor Andrew Lesk offered the view that all post modernists are just modernists. Carson finds that compelling. 

            Francois Leotard says what we call post modern has a relationship to grand theories. What happens after modernist political projects of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries have setbacks. Postmodernism is a period of questioning. A Marxist theorist named Jameson says postmodernism is the cultural logic of late capitalism. There is a focus on technological, historical and economic changes in the last few decades of the 20th Century. Post industrial capitalism. Most of us will never work in factories. I've been there and done that. 

            Postmodernism is a politically charged word and there are a wide range of views on what it is. The newspapers have articles on postmodernism by people that never studied it. 

            Thomas Pynchon fits stereotypical definitions of postmodernism but Carson doesn’t think he is unmodernist. 

            There is a lot of irony and intertextuality in postmodernism but that existed in modernism and even before that. Tristram Shandy is post modern but written hundreds of years ago. One could even go further back to The Canterbury Tales. Philip Roth is considered to be post modernist. There is a new sincerity associated with the term. David Foster Wallace rejected post modernism. Take any definitions of postmodernism with a grain of salt. 

            Zadie Smith is often considered to be a post post modernist author. Her first novel in 2000 was White Teeth. There is a bit of a return to narrative realism. She uses intertextuality and there is an emphasis on hybridity. 

            Smith was born in 1975. She is best known for White Teeth but Carson thinks it’s overrated and prefers her later novels. 

            On Beauty constantly demonstrates attitudes grounded on social tensions.

            I said that the character of Victoria draws her power from emulating pornography. 

           Monty Kipps possesses and collects art but sees himself as a preserver. By contrast Howard hates all representational art. Zora says her father believes one must be eviscerated by art. Howard hates Rembrandt and dislikes what he represents. Howard is a postmodernist. There is an ironic detachment and Howard is being satirized. 

            “Prettiness is the mask that power wears”. I said this could be tied directly to Victoria. Howard is suspicious of beauty. I say this is ironic because he becomes a slave and puppet to beauty in his life.

            Smith uses rich depictions of social interactions that are aesthetic interpretive practices. 

            I point out that Kiki is an outsider at her own anniversary party. All of the guests are academics and she is uninitiated. There is a social division. She is a black woman serving drinks to her guests even though she has a maid. There are aestheticized racist tropes. 

            I weighed 88.6 kilos before lunch. 

            I had peanut butter on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread and washed it down with lemonade. 

            I took a bike ride.

            When I got back I took a one hour siesta. 

            I worked another hour on my essay and by 17:30 I had it down to less than eight pages and I was only about 1000 words over. By 19:00 I’d knocked another hundred off. By 19:45 I was down to seven pages and only 718 words over. 

            I weighed 88.4 kilos before dinner. I had beans from a packet with toast and my first beer in a month. 

            I worked on my essay until 22:00 and then was too tired to continue. I went to bed.