Well, I’m almost done with my foray into Grad School. I took Literary Theory as the only class that (1) had room and (2) fit my schedule. I went to UNH as they let me in without requiring a writing sample and the commute wasn’t too bad; plus, I’ve been getting my haircut in Portsmouth, and as an added benefit, visits to Exeter were convenient. The drive to camp was a little bit long, but doable. The Prof, PR, kindly gave me permission to attend and was welcoming to an older student in the classroom. Not sure how my 5 classmates felt about my presence, but they were nice. It just took awhile for us all to click, so that it felt like our best discussion was the last class.
About the class itself…phew! I’ve never worked so hard on anything, at least not since I took the Series 7, over 20 years ago (that was a big waste of time!). I had to read every article three times in order to be ready for class and participate in the discussion; with only six of us in the class, there was nowhere to hide. The most challenging authors were the French intellectuals: Lacan, Irigaray, Derrida, Foucault, but Homi Bhabha (not the scientist) was the most difficult by far…well, not more than Lacan, but close. I still don’t quite get Lacan and he keeps showing up in other people’s work. Learning the jargon was another task. Beware, I shall now “foreground” or “foreclose” arguments; ‘privilege’ different authors; ponder how “the center is not the center”…in fact, “the concept of centered sturcture–although it represents coherence itself, the condition of the episteme as philosophy or science–is always contradictorily coherent.” (Derrida) I can’t find the Bhabha article, or I’d quote something really tricky!
Well, it’s easy to make fun of the jargon and theoretical language, and in fact, there have been many parodies of theory. I have to admit, however, that I loved the class and feel thrilled to finally know more about Derrida and Foucault and others, whose names I had heard of but never quite knew what they were famous for. For some reason, I never ran across any theory in my undergrad years. It was truly an education, and of course, I’m not done yet, since I still have to write my final paper which is 60% of the grade. So, that’s what I’ll be doing for the next two weeks….oops, arg, now 10 days as I’ve wiled away a few days without working on it and am having trouble diving back in, hence the sudden outburst of blogging.
BookishCook 