tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post3842219105747676840..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Erotic Animals II: Adam in ParadiseCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-4807048293738653202008-11-18T09:31:00.000-05:002008-11-18T09:31:00.000-05:00To remind you Nicola, yes, please!Eileen, thanks f...To remind you Nicola, yes, please!<BR/><BR/>Eileen, thanks for the clarification/elaboration. It good to have the words.<BR/><BR/>And Jeffrey, from what I read, Lilith--or some kind of proto-Eve--was one of the suggestions for what Adam meant by "this one."<BR/><BR/>I'm still interested in the dynamic of sameness and difference: while we can understand the eros here as negotiating between exogamy and endogamy (marriage with the radically other or the radically same), there's a sense in which Adam's frustration stems from the workings of desire itself. I wonder, then, if the unsatisfying sex with animals is a mask for the fact that Eve, to the extent that she is her own person, is <I>not</I> quite flesh of his flesh, that Adam's eros <I>always</I> requires him to give himself to an unknown?<BR/><BR/>By the way, Prince, let him be blessed for his (early) funk forever, is a raging weird homophobe, but a homophobe in a way <A HREF="http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2008/11/24/081124ta_talk_hoffman" REL="nofollow">relevant to this discussion</A>:<BR/><BR/><I>When asked about his perspective on social issues—gay marriage, abortion—Prince tapped his Bible and said, “God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, ‘Enough.’ ”</I><BR/><BR/>"Cleared it all out": that would seem to be the only way to get Adam's eros under control.medievalkarlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12440542200843836794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-48906468456264730022008-11-17T17:06:00.000-05:002008-11-17T17:06:00.000-05:00Nicola: where have you been, darling? Salzburg? I ...Nicola: where have you been, darling? Salzburg? I thought so. Welcome back.<BR/><BR/>Karl: as to thinking about what else might be lurking within the phrase "this time" in Genesis, that is a bit of a brain teaser, and I thought of Lilith, too, which Jeffrey has mentioned, but I mainly wanted to also jump in and qualify a bit your qualification of my belief [which you pretty much get spot-on] that we are all "hetero," or as I put it more specifically, "heteroqueer." No one can ever be "homo" in my mind, not *just* because we are never even the same to ourselves [although that is a really important point], but also because even the very notion of "same"--either with ourselves or anyone/thing else--is terribly hard to pin down, as is "difference" [because difference, in the end, is dependent upon some kind of notion like "same" which itself depends on certain "stabilities" of identity that just aren't there]. But this does not mean that there is not difference--I think, actually, desire [sexual or other desires] depends upon it and I've always hated the terms "homosexual" and "same-sex" anything because those terms, historically, have always under-estimated & under-described the complex trajectories of both "gay" *and* "straight" sexuality/affections. "Hetero," further, cannot just mean opposite: that is idiotic and banal, and also calls into question, of course, how any gender/biological sex can be only one thing which could then be opposite to some other "only one thing." There are orientations, of course, but even an orientation is fraught, not with sameness, but with differences of a certain sort [with "sort" being my cowardly way, at present, because I am rushing out the door to an "engagement," of delineating the idea that there are indeed particular "attractors," in any given temporal moment, that exert some force on each one of us]. Whew. Ciao.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-22911133253583966562008-11-17T16:51:00.000-05:002008-11-17T16:51:00.000-05:00Karl, A student of mine wrote on this topic using ...Karl, <BR/><BR/>A student of mine wrote on this topic using Lawee's article for my English 2 course on animals last semester, remember? If you want to see his paper email me and I will procure.<BR/><BR/>NicolaNicola Masciandarohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01279665722551517693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-4197059515893703522008-11-17T14:46:00.000-05:002008-11-17T14:46:00.000-05:00This is great! Thank you for a welcome break from ...This is great! Thank you for a welcome break from writing about Mandeville and evaluating a journal proposal and ... well anyway, thank you for letting my mind drift to Adam's first desires.<BR/><BR/>And one of those, in some medieval Jewish traditions, is Lilith, the possible first wife of Adam ... and a woman associated with animals and the monstrous. So I wonder if Rashi isn't substituting an animal (or a whole series of animals) for a woman in this case. I don't know commentaries on the passage or its interpretation history well enough to speculate. But I do know -- as does everyone else, I am sure -- that Lilith was rescued via feminist intervention and rendered a kind of saint after the fact. <A HREF="http://www.lilith.org/" REL="nofollow">Lilith magazine</A> anyone? And remember <A HREF="http://www.lilithfair.com/" REL="nofollow">Lilith fair?</A><BR/><BR/>So I don't know, Karl: an animal rights magazine called, um, Rashi? A musical festival called Rashi fair?Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.com