Posts By Penciltwister
Gender seminar – day 3
(Introduction: some of this is written on day 4, because my laptop died on me before I had a time to finish it, and so it will not, as later stated, be a short post.)
Yet another day packed with activities. Today, three of the nominees for the Montana literary prize were introduced to us – Harald Voetmann’s ‘Vågen’, Hans Otto Jørgensen’s ‘Sæt Asta fri’ and Majse Aymo-Boot’s ‘Ødelæggelserne 1-11’. Then Lilian Munk Rösing held a lecture on Antichrist titled “To free (oneself from) mother’s desire”. After dinner we went to listen to the panel discussion of the nominees and later this evening we are going to a reading and a concert. As my computer is dying due to lack of juice, and every socket in the room is leased on a more or less ongoing basis, this will be a short post.
Lilian Munk Rösing’s lecture was really interesting and a very different take on the movie so many have either had physical or/and emotional reactions of a very loud character. So many have criticized von Trier and seen a clear misogynistic message in the movie. Rösing proposes a different stanze which bases itself in the tension between the bestial/brutal and the beautiful/pleasing, rather than seeing the movie as an image of nature versus civilization. She reads the movie as a dream, an in-between place where tragedy lies between two deaths; the social and the physical. There is of course lacanian/freudian psychology all over the lecture, but since I am prone to this myself I don’t mind it one bit 🙂 One of the things she lays emphasis on, which I also felt was a strong point in the movie, was the (excuse the choice of wording) nature of the anti-romantic universe. We are beyond the understanding of nature as essentially good and welcoming to humans, and in its place is nature as indifferent. There is no meta-order, so everything is a possible sign. And von Trier’s movie is a continuous string of signs that can keep its viewer up and scheming for hours.
The presentation of the three nominees for Montana’s literary prize was informative, packed with laden sentences and well articulated views to say the least. So much that I had a cold sweat just thinking about standing up and asking a question in front of these übermenschens of cultural intelligentsia. You are really on your toes the whole time, and at the same time there is so much room here for different views and thoughts on the same subjects. It is so interesting to see how different people interpret something you have fixated on for a while.
Montana literary prize podium pre-presentation
She's a show
She's a show
Gender seminar – day 2
Here I am: day two and experiences richer. The day started with breakfast and morning song – just how højskole is supposed to start, and I think I will introduce this into the morning ritual at home, it’s so refreshing 🙂 On today’s schedule were two lectures and one movie interspersed with meals and coffee breaks every hour (I am almost not kidding you – am starting to get a Hansel-paranoia over all the good food that is being offered).
Dag Heede - Lecture "Queer eyes on Danish literature"
The first lecture was by Dag Heede, ph.d. in comparative literature at SDU, who’s speciality is Karen Blixen, H.C. Andersen and Herman Bang. His lecture was very captivating and it was dangerously easy to let oneself fall into believing everything he put out. He started with a critique of the notion of sexuality, and very explicitly and smilingly advised us all to read Foucault‘s History
of Sexuality Volume 1″ as otherwise we could not talk about sexuality with any real knowledge on the case. He used Foucault to explain just how modern the notion of sexuality is and how sexuality is constructed by history, posing that sexuality is a radical and historical incident that we must rid ourselves of. The construction of sexuality is misunderstood in our days – it is not an essence that is being repressed and needs to be set free, but an suppressive installation set up by governing power structures that we must rid ourselves of in order to go beyond being constructed sexualities! All very Foucaultian and theoretical. I have yet to read HoS in its whole, but if it is anything like Heede put before us, it is something I will look forward to dive into. After Foucault he introduced us to Judith Butler. Her theory is on how ascertaining is an act of speech, and it sets in motion an iterative action called ‘girling’ and ‘boying’ (the meaning pretty much lies in the words). Gender is always a process and we can never be perfect genders, because there is no original. So we are always copying the copy of a non-existing original. As we continue to quote this in repetitive motion it is true that we cannot not be gender. However some take it to extremes and “over-quote” or “mis-quote” their gender identity. He then went on queering both Karen Blixen’s “Seven Gothic Tales” and H.C. Andersen.
Sjón
Then came the lecture with Sjón, the Icelandic writer, who wrote the preface to the Danish translation of SCUM-manifesto by Valerie Solanas. He called himself ‘the retarded brother of Sara Stridsberg’ (as she knew more about VS, and in essence of him being male, hence inferior). It was very interesting seeing someone so passionate about this person most people have written off as being a crazed loner with a crazed text that offered a solution to harmony as the killing of all the male sex. He quoted Solanas: “Male is an incomplete female. A walking abortion.” And she posed that a structural problem in our patriarchal society was that men wanted to be women and thus created women in the image of how they imagined themselves to be if they were women – hence a perversion of female. He talked about his experience with Solanas’ text, which he told us, at first came at him with a screaming anger, but in the text he also found humor. Not the kind of slap-stick humor of comedy, but the humor that turns the world as we know it upside down, and shows its darkness. He talked a great deal about the notion of utopia and how many have described this place as an ultimately good place, but few have depicted the road to utopia as he means Solanas does. In the evening we saw ‘Antichrist’ by Lars von Trier as a prequel to the lecture tomorrow by Lilian Munk Rösing. I had seen it one time before, but this time I really had the time to read into it, and decode it. But more on this tomorrow.
Gender seminar – Day 1
9.30 a.m: Frantic re-packing, hauling sweaters and hairdryer out of one bag into decidedly larger bag. Have to be on train at 11. No sweat, I even managed to eat breakfast, pack a lunch, and throw in an extra pair of shoes and two packets of gum. I am multi-task genius.
11 a.m.: Train platform is overcrowded to the point that I am afraid people in mass numbers will fall on the tracks if someone sneezes. Board in wrong end of train which means I have to get out at later station and run frantically alongside train to no. 21-22, where I have to stand up for the remainder of my 3 hour trip.
So what’s the hubbub?
I am currently at Testrup Højskole attending a seminar on gender in literature. I decided to sign up around Christmas time and today the day has finally arrived. The schedule looks really promising and I feel the nostalgic vibe of ‘højskolestemning’ in the air. People are all here for one reason – to debate, discuss, listen and challenge each other.
Mads Eslund and Christian Dorph, the course leaders, started the debate with positioning themselves in two different directions. But they both had good points on feminism, the blurry lines of gender, biological versus social constructions in gender and how literature can display or talk about gender.
Lars Bukdahl
10 p.m. – Lars Bukdahl, critic, author, critic and editor, gives us a summoning up of the year 2010 in books. As well as being immensely passionate, very buzzy on stage and a in dire need of a second mouth to let out all his thoughts, he also possesses a certain infectious stance to literature. He spoke of his role as reviewer, or critic, and described situations of panic or restlessness when confronted with a work that in both ways pleased and puzzled. He talked about the furious women and weak men as tendencies in Danish literature 2010. But rather than just labeling men and women as such, his main focus lies with language – its being as poetic, unraveling, sensuous, hilarious, furious and weak – as means of defining the work of authors.
Tomorrow we will dive into some Michel Foucault and Judith Butler right after breakfast – what a way to digest your tea and buttered buns! 🙂
Good night from the theatre auditorium at Testrup.
Google eBooks
Yes, yes, yes. The Americans have it all, nevermind us bottom feeders once known as the Glorioussus Conquistador’ Speciexus Europedales Grandes (just made that up, but for you history buffs out there I will have you know that once, a long-long-looong time ago, Europe was actually not that bad at inventing and thinking – now, innovation is left to the US and education to Asia, oh well).
So what is it this time? Google eBooks is what it is this time! Google has launched their very own cloud-based online e-bookstore and what is the message I get when tiptoeing my way through the digital candy store?
Quote:
“The latest Google eBooks are not available for sale in your location, yet… Google is working with publishers around the world to let you buy the latest ebooks from top authors. In the meantime, you can still browse millions of free and public domain Google eBooks and read them effortlessly across your devices.”
Damn it to blitzing high waters and a splash of disturbing x-rated words!!
I want to see what’s going on, I want to get on the ebook tidal wave. I too have needs!! And I need to be updated on the services and possibilities that are out there so that I can critically, and with a diversified background, form an opinion. And I cannot do that when my whole project is being sidetracked by stupid, ancient geographical barriers and short-sighted prioritising. Yes, I am aware of the immense judicial process that goes before a project of this sorts, and yes, I know that e-books has proven to be an immense market in the US, but can we please get on the bus here!?! Is it impossible to start something of this sort up in Europe? Or am I just looking in all the wrong places? In the US there are strong pushes towards a new market: Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble etc. have all seen to it that they are in the right place, and they are pushing their agenda strong.
The difference and the exciting part with google is compatibility: the readers today are often locked to their respective bookstores, making it hard to be as flexible as one is used to, and really is a pain in the but. But Google promises to transgress all that, yey! (the excitement is fleeting, because, as previously stated, I cannot make a really and truly informed decision when I cannot be part of the fun!)
In my opinion the process of breaking e-books out in the European market (at least from where I am standing) just seems too slow. It is commendable of the few who are trying to push e-books and who really make an effort of getting the word out. But there is just one problem: they are too few. And maybe the recession has got a lot of businesses second-guessing their aggressive marketing when it comes to breaking out into full blown e-book alert. But there is a market, yes! I am the market! And I live in Europe. It’s logic and it’s simple. So get more to going with the innovation and the thinking Europe!
Additional reads:
- Google ebookstore
- Look Out Amazon, Google eBooks Has Arrived
- Getting Goole to notice your ebook
- Google enters e-book market, with a few hiccups
- Google Opens Doors to E-Bookstore
Come prima delle madre
Simona Vinci - Inden der var mødre
But don’t be fooled, I read it in Danish – although I am seriously in the mood to learn some Italian as it sounds so passionate, I make no pretense of knowing the Italian language past ‘ciao bella’- but a good language to scold someone in.
The novel takes place in Italy and reeks of Oedipal confrontation with a twist.
Come prima delle madre begins with the little boy Pietro, who is sent off to boarding school after his childhood friend Irina mysteriously dies.
He has angst – concerning his relationship with his mother, as she grows more and more distant and cold towards him, concerning his friend’s death, concerning the boys and the teachers in school, and pretty much his whole existence. He is at a turning point in his life, the shift from childhood to adulthood, and he is confused. He has terrible abandonment issues that manifest themselves when the symbiotic bond between mother and child is severed. Incidentally this takes place during the last throws of WWII and Pietro comes home from boarding school after an incident with a nearly half-dead boy leaves him to blame, and the school is also forced to close down because of the war. When he comes home, his longing for his mother is not set at ease. There is no turning back to the comforting arms, that are now drunk, drugged and caressing a man that is not his father. His innocence is being chipped off him, bit by bit, with death, abandonment, sexual debut and betrayal going through the story like rings on still water. When he finds his dead friend’s diary and letters, he is let into a world of deceit and behind the scenery of family ties.
The story’s point of view makes a shift halfway through the novel to the mother and her story. Which is interesting, because it seems like Vinci doesn’t want Pietro’s mother to go unexplained – maybe because the harsh criticism of a mother’s role would be to detrimental to the storyline – so she gives her a voice. Turns out she has had quite her own turbulent life – leaving her mother and brothers behind she goes off with a homicidal maniac to Berlin (not that she knows that at first, but he does carry a gun, so she cannot act the part of complete innocence). He ends up incarcerated, she is left pregnant with only the man’s accomplice as a ‘friend’, and somehow married off to a wealthy man like some sort of bargaining calf. Her story is as such no fairy tale, but one that rings of familiarity – you know the one; a woman, naive and victimized, is forced to make the best of it, ends up brutally cold, deteriorating from the inside and fighting hands and claws to secure herself, her position and her kin. Which is questionable, a bit tiresome, but in the end makes for a good storyline.
The main conflict – the one between the boy and his mother – has a very sinister ending. Pietro’s feelings for his mother, the nostalgic memory of comfort tied up with the very harsh abandonment, leaves him disguising his wrath as a form of pious righteousness. And in a way, the abandonment has struck so hard that he takes steps to resolve and stand up against this mother figure he no longer feels ties to that maybe he cannot foresee the consequences of.
I won’t go to much into all the nooks and crannies because I do think it is worth a read without me recounting all the details.
I sense through the translation that is is a beautiful language, very cold – in a way like Oksanen, although not as brutal, more verging on the poetic side. I would maybe have liked the ending to be maybe 5 pages longer, it is a bit too abrupt for my taste. But all in all worth a read and a debate.
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