Your Scholar or Theorist Mt. Rushmore

[rosales]

If you had to make a monument to the four faces that are attatched to the bodies of the four scholars or theorists whose work you most admire or has most influenced you, who would they be? I'll start.

 

Gloria Anzaldúa

Édouard Glissant

Frantz Fanon

Walter Mignolo

Edited December 21, 2012 by rosales

[NowMoreSerious]

Love this question and it's a tough one for me. Some theorists have been so foundational to my thinking even though I no longer subscribe to most of their theories. Freud, for example. I cannot even imagine getting interested in academics at all if not for reading Freud as a young teenager.

Off the top of my head and subject to change:

Giles Deleuze

Foucault

Louis Althusser

Fredric Jameson

[practical cat]

I love this question. It is so difficult. Like above, do I go with my origins or the people that best inform me today? Tough stuff.

Michel Foucault

Judith Butler

Gayatri Spivak

Derrida

Edited December 21, 2012 by girl who wears glasses

[Two Espressos]

Great question, rosales!  Frankly, I don't think I've read enough theorists to build up a "Mt. Rushmore" of names.  I of course have read lots of theoretical books and articles, but I can't say that my thinking, at this point, is predicated upon any solid set of names.  So I'll just list four intellectuals whose work is trending with me as of late:

 

Michel Foucault

John Stuart Mill

David Hume

Hans-Georg Gadamer

[lisajay]

this is hard, but for shits & giggles:

 

barthes

agamben (meets haraway, meets deleuze & guattari)

mcluhan

DFW

[DontHate]

Am I the only person who really prefers primary texts to theory?

[IG-88]

I see plenty of authors of primary texts being listed

[DontHate]

I mean like fiction. I guess DFW counts. I can't really bear to read him though.

[lisajay]

Am I the only person who really prefers primary texts to theory?

 

not at all. in fact, i didn't engage with any secondary sources during my undergrad. that being said, now that i work with theory, turns out i really dig (some of) it. & *that* being said, my preference for primary texts is why i threw a novelist in there (who admittedly wrote criticism, but i've only read his fiction to date).

[NowMoreSerious]

Am I the only person who really prefers primary texts to theory?

Maybe somebody should make an author Mt. Rushmore. Obviously, in a "scholar or theorist" Mt. Rushmore nobody is going to list their favorite authors who primarily write fiction.

[lisajay]

I mean like fiction. I guess DFW counts. I can't really bear to read him though.

 

he's definitely not everyone's cup of tea. & he's pretentious as hell. but when you're that good, you sort of have license to be as pretentious as you want to be.

 

broom of the system is a good read. & i lied, i have read some of his nonfiction—everything & more: a compact history of infinity. so, so good. but i'm a math geek from way back, so that might be why i like it.

[practical cat]

No. I tend to blur the distinctions between the two (I mean, duh, I listed a ton of poststructuralists, I don't like categories) but I have more fun with fiction. I produce better work with theory but bygones.

[DontHate]

I want my work to be it's own theory.

[NowMoreSerious]

he's definitely not everyone's cup of tea. & he's pretentious as hell. but when you're that good, you sort of have license to be as pretentious as you want to be.

 

broom of the system is a good read. & i lied, i have read some of his nonfiction—everything & more: a compact history of infinity. so, so good. but i'm a math geek from way back, so that might be why i like it.

Not to sidetrack, but my favorite from DFW is Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. But I saw the movie adaptation and I didn't like it. Did you see it and if so what did you think?

[lisajay]

Not to sidetrack, but my favorite from DFW is Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. But I saw the movie adaptation and I didn't like it. Did you see it and if so what did you think?

 

haven't seen it, & haven't read it yet. but now i'm all intrigued!

 

thus far i've read IJ, which figures into my writing sample, broom, everything & more, & some of the stories from girl with the curious hair, but not all of them yet. i also used clips from an interview he did on the charlie rose show for a video project & paper. i predict that suicide studies is the wave of the future.

[DontHate]

Suicide studies? Go on

[NowMoreSerious]

haven't seen it, & haven't read it yet. but now i'm all intrigued!

 

thus far i've read IJ, which figures into my writing sample, broom, everything & more, & some of the stories from girl with the curious hair, but not all of them yet. i also used clips from an interview he did on the charlie rose show for a video project & paper. i predict that suicide studies is the wave of the future.

It's one of the few adaptations that's true to the book, and yet still somehow managed to suck.

Well I'd rather not talk about suicide on here but between rising suicide rates and the cultural fascination with the end

of the world, I say we have a cultural conundrum on our hands whose textual representations need further study. Who do you call for that? Ah yes, us. Only we have the superpower to publish an article in an obscure journal, that maybe, hypothetically if anybody read, might save a life. Sorry I'm being flippant. But I agree that suicide is a big topic right now.

Edited December 21, 2012 by ImWantHazPhD

[lisajay]

in the past several years, i've become much more attuned to representations of suicide in books, film, television, &c. then this past semester, one of my professors joked that literary theory & criticism is logically progressing toward death, so i say, why not specialize in suicide studies?

 

this is outside the scope of my SOP, but it's definitely something gnawing away at the back of my brain.

 

if you're really interested (& at the risk of overdisclosure), here.

[practical cat]

Suicide is one of the things that I'm not much sure how to even approach academically. (That and eating disorders. I really want to teach an eventual class on celebrity memoirs and Portia de Rossi's is so relevant to my interests but how?) I also have a DFW tattoo so this is relevant to my personal interests too.

[Two Espressos]

Suicide studies, eh?  Thanks for the heads up.  As an undergraduate, I can't really keep up with the pace of our discipline, so it's good to know of new progressions.

[DontHate]

Oh god, celebrity memoirs? Seriously? That isn't literature!

[NowMoreSerious]

in the past several years, i've become much more attuned to representations of suicide in books, film, television, &c. then this past semester, one of my professors joked that literary theory & criticism is logically progressing toward death, so i say, why not specialize in suicide studies?

 

this is outside the scope of my SOP, but it's definitely something gnawing away at the back of my brain.

 

if you're really interested (& at the risk of overdisclosure), here.

I don't have my earphones right now but I will give it a listen/look later, thanks. Is the title a reference to Ray Carver's "What we talk about when we talk about love"?

[lisajay]

Is the title a reference to Ray Carver's "What we talk about when we talk about love"?

 

it is! well, actually, it's a reference to murakami's "what i talk about when i talk about running," which is a reference to carver. wheels within wheels...

[practical cat]

Oh god, celebrity memoirs? Seriously? That isn't literature!

Oh shit, better change fields.

[Two Espressos]

in the past several years, i've become much more attuned to representations of suicide in books, film, television, &c. then this past semester, one of my professors joked that literary theory & criticism is logically progressing toward death, so i say, why not specialize in suicide studies?

 

this is outside the scope of my SOP, but it's definitely something gnawing away at the back of my brain.

 

if you're really interested (& at the risk of overdisclosure), here.

 

That was a neat video; thanks for sharing!  I'm assuming it's yours?  If so, do you mind telling me what music you used?  I liked it lots.  The music towards the end was Dylan, right?  Which song?