tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post114113842519859296..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Soupe au Cochon (or, A Wrinkle in Time)Cord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1141411304970195832006-03-03T13:41:00.000-05:002006-03-03T13:41:00.000-05:00Re: soup nazis, biy was it tough to refrain from u...Re: soup nazis, biy was it tough to refrain from using the line "No soup for you!" in that post.<BR/><BR/>Thanks, Karl, those are useful references. I like your emphasis on the pig's homology -- its initmate anatomy if you will. And I suppose it work two ways, in that there are trult porcine homo sapiens. When it comes down to it all of us mammals can (size aside) be tough for an outside observer to tell apart.<BR/><BR/>As to the Judensau ... wish I had an easy answer for that. Jews could be owls, maybe hyenas in England, but not pigs. That non-equation does deserve thought.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1141340999329241232006-03-02T18:09:00.000-05:002006-03-02T18:09:00.000-05:00I got the HD joke too, but I keep getting Hilda D....I got the HD joke too, but I keep getting Hilda D. mixed up with Eliza Doolittle. Can you set any of her works to the songs of <I>My Fair Lady</I>?<BR/><BR/>--<BR/><BR/>Wow. Great stuff. Nothing to say about 'time' except a happy memory of yesterday, where, while teaching Darwin's <I>Voyage of the Beagle</I> yesterday, I got a legitimate chance to write “polychronicities” on the board next to “anti-teleological”...<BR/><BR/>Thanks for the props, JJC (as I begin to unmask myself, a little, but only here). I'd say that so far I've <I>presented</I> clumsily on anthropophagous pigs, but if anyone's <I>written</I> on this problem, it's Claudine Fabre-Vassas, who may well have anticipated me on nearly every point. Thank goodness for my career that she's not a medievalist and apparently unable to read Latin. If she's still kicking and has written nothing about these appaling--forgive me for a Seinfeld reference that also violates Godwin's law--soup nazis, I'll eat my hoof.<BR/><BR/>And here I don't make an argument so much as I throw a lot of material out to see what sticks to your mind: The pig's close association with humans is also an inner (I say hah! in reference to the post I just threw up on your 'Against Allegory') homology with their human masters. Its anatomy is troublesomely similar to ours: hence the medieval medical pun on <I>corpus</I> and <I>porcus</I>.* Perhaps because of this internal similarity that allows it to eat everything (and a great deal more) that we do, the pig's a symbol of gluttony, and hence also a manifestation of eating itself. From this moral meaning, the pig's necessary eating—for what use is a pig that won't eat?-- becomes an excess of pleasure. So too is the necessity of eating pig (against the Jews, against the Muslims) also an excess (among other ways, in being an symbolic addition to an eating morally respectable when done merely to sustain the body), and hence a pleasure, and hence to be resisted even as it must be indulged in. When a pleasure is compelled, what kind of pleasure is it?<BR/><BR/>And what do we do with a required identity marker for (Gallic) identities that should already be known? What do we do with an identity marker that disappears into, and forms, the body of the eater?<BR/><BR/>On the Judensau: any ideas on why this image appears only in the areas around the Rhine (and Germany otherwise?). It's surprising that this porcine imagine shouldn't be in Britain, given the great popularity there of the story of the young Jesus and the Jewish pigs in the oven.<BR/><BR/><BR/>*See Pastoureau, Michel. "L'animal et l'historian du moyen âge," 13-28. In Berlioz, Jacques and Marie Anne Polo de Beaulieu, eds. L'Animal exemplaire au Moyen Âge (Ve - XVe siècle). Collection "Histoire." Rennes: Rennes UP, 1999. See, in the section "L'animal le plus semblable à l'homme: le cochon," "le jeu de mots ana-grammatique porcus/corpus revient plusieurs fois dans certains de ces textes" (19 n20)Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1141229705393991292006-03-01T11:15:00.000-05:002006-03-01T11:15:00.000-05:00you're funny. oh, i am familiar with that hd... i...you're funny. oh, i am familiar with that hd... in college, i would use a strategically placed copy of "helen in egypt" to scare the bejebuzes out of male suitors. then, in grad school, i thought it gave me some sort of cache. sadly, i've never READ it; i've only used it as a prop. but, considering your musings on objects... i now realize that, somewhere along the way, i've lost it! i wonder where it is? <BR/><BR/>(and your stunning productivity has made me wonder how to start writing every day in some hybrid format. my defunct blog, however, was about the very un-hd topic of knitting.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1141228512564318412006-03-01T10:55:00.000-05:002006-03-01T10:55:00.000-05:00I don't mean to be so flippant: the ideas have bee...I don't mean to be so flippant: the ideas have been going around in my head for a while, and the catalyst was the NYT article.<BR/><BR/>Really I should clarify and state that in my career I have had only one idea and I keep reissuing it with spanking new packaging.<BR/><BR/>My other fault is that my attempts at jokes are so obscure that they are not remotely funny. Here is the <A HREF="http://www.imagists.org/hd/" REL="nofollow">h. d. I was talking about</A>, the one you are clearly not. Some people look back on the 1980s as a time when they liked the synthetic beat of New Wave music, others (like my students) fondly remember the 80s as the decade they were born in. I relate to them as the time period when in college I had an intellectual crush on H. D.<BR/><BR/>Among other things.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1141173686984457512006-02-28T19:41:00.000-05:002006-02-28T19:41:00.000-05:00you wrote this today? off the top of your head? ...you wrote this today? off the top of your head? damn.<BR/><BR/>and, you can see why one might want to seem anonymous when working on apish rapish foxes. i fear i'm going to become known as the crazy ferret lady. (or, more realistically, as the bad speller.)<BR/><BR/>Thanks!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1141171846430710072006-02-28T19:10:00.000-05:002006-02-28T19:10:00.000-05:00HD? Weren't you that modernist poet who was a pati...HD? Weren't you that modernist poet who was a patient of Freud? I like your stuff.<BR/><BR/>(Though I admit it was always obvious to me that hd is an admired colleague).<BR/><BR/>I would cite the post by its title and URL, in this case http://jjcohen.blogspot.com/2006/02/la-soupe-au-cochon-or-wrinkle-in-time.html I think that's fairly standard practice (?)<BR/><BR/>This post wasn't composed apropos of anything, just off the top of my head this morning after reading the NYT. I may use it, though, as part of my Afterword for <EM>Reality, Television and the Middle Ages</EM> -- I'm not really sure.<BR/><BR/>Glad it was of use to you!!<BR/><BR/>And please share your rapist animals stuff with me.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1141165921782321312006-02-28T17:32:00.000-05:002006-02-28T17:32:00.000-05:00hey, JJC. If one wanted to quote from this post, ...hey, JJC. If one wanted to quote from this post, how would one do this? Is this still part of the opening to your book? Is this the keynote to the conference? Do you prefer that we cite the blog? I'm working on my lovely piece on raping animals, and hope to use your stunning quote about animals, embodiment, and exclusion to open a discussion of raping apish foxes.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com