tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post4497930644272835816..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Dissertation Fragments III: The ProspectusCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-6876400499822339572008-01-11T10:04:00.000-05:002008-01-11T10:04:00.000-05:00Thanks for the clarification, MKH, and I think, al...Thanks for the clarification, MKH, and I think, also, that if, as you say,<BR/><BR/>"histories go on not only to do things in the world, but to function as representatives of their progenitors...re-writing history, then, actually rewrites the ways in which a culture long past can continue to function in the world,"<BR/><BR/>then this raises certain ethical questions, too, about how to approach "original" texts through their re-writings, while at the same time, since in our period, we are often only left with rewritings or copies or transcriptions, it's tricky. But then, there's the fun of the work you will be doing!Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-3904618573950009922008-01-10T16:52:00.000-05:002008-01-10T16:52:00.000-05:00Eileen> Thanks for the fantastic comments. Your p...Eileen> Thanks for the fantastic comments. Your point on using Beowulf with the other texts I'm planning to address is well taken -- on the one hand, I don't want to leave it out (given that it's a major text I'll be teaching in a few years, hopefully...), but I also don't want to pull myself in too many directions at once. If my current reading and work on the Orosius chapter is proving anything to me, it's that I do see the ways in which Beowulf might function connectively in the dissertation as a whole. The connections are there -- I just need to articulate them clearly within each chapter.<BR/><BR/>The bibliography you give me is fantastic -- thank you for that. I've been meaning to get Chris Cannon's book for awhile now, and this is a perfect opportunity to do so. <BR/><BR/><I>I think you mean more that texts, once written & in the process of being read [and I imagine, even in their physical movements--in translation, from library to library, etc.] actually "do" things in the world.</I><BR/><BR/>I think that's at least a part of what I mean -- I guess the other part has something to do with how books -- and particularly historical books -- have lives beyond their proper time, in that histories go on not only to do things in the world, but to function as representatives of their progenitors...re-writing history, then, actually rewrites the ways in which a culture long past can continue to function in the world. <BR/><BR/>If that makes sense. My brain is a bit slow from lack of use over this break...Mary Kate Hurleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14892991966276345782noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-49766707336641588732008-01-07T10:43:00.000-05:002008-01-07T10:43:00.000-05:00Mary Kate:your prospectus looks wonderful. I can s...Mary Kate:<BR/><BR/>your prospectus looks wonderful. I can see how "Beowulf" could, indeed, be brought in to several of these chapters, and while five chapters would likely overwhelm you, time-wise and otherwise, "Beowulf" could certainly warrant a separate chapter, but it is also very different from all of the other texts you want to look at: it is, in other words, pure fiction [with only a very few "events" or "persons" that could be called tangentially "historical"]. Obviously, all of your primary texts are "fictionalized" in some manner--that is part and parcel of your point here. So, the Orosius, AElfric's "Lives of Saints," the Chronicle, and the Lives of Edward all participate in fictional techniques but they purport, on the surface at least, to be historical "accounts" [as opposed to fabulous narratives], and so they seem very well-suited to your project's aims. "Beowulf" would add the dimension of poetry to your primary focus, but it might also pull you in theoretical directions that would be very different from what you set up for your other chapters. I guess that's why I like your notion of using it *within* the already-projected chapters as a kind of "linking function."<BR/><BR/>I also wanted to say that I like very much the idea you raise in one of your response comments to responses to this post by JJC and Karl of a history of Anglo-Saxon England that would allow for a "democracy of objects." Whether or not you could ascribe "agency" to texts outside of their contact with human writers and readers, I don't know, but I think you mean more that texts, once written & in the process of being read [and I imagine, even in their physical movements--in translation, from library to library, etc.] actually "do" things in the world. Of course, this would accord well with the notion put forward by many historians of nation that nations only really begin to emerge with a clerk-driven bureaucracy [paperwork, forms, files, etc.]: on this point you might look at the recent book by a geographer, which includes a chapter on the Middle Ages:<BR/><BR/>Rhys Jones, "People/States/Territories: The Political Geographies of British State Transformation" [Blackwell, 2007]<BR/><BR/>Also, for your chapter on the A-S Chronicle, you will find extremely useful [if you haven't already]:<BR/><BR/>Christopher Cannon, "The Grounds of English Literature, 1006-1300" [Oxford, 2008]<BR/><BR/>He devotes a lot of space here to the Peterborough Chronicle and his work will help you immensely with what you are wanting to do vis-a-vis the intersections, through the process of translation & writing, of different temporalities, especially in relation to a notion of collective "Englishness."Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-57480678991510306482008-01-03T21:34:00.000-05:002008-01-03T21:34:00.000-05:00Karl> “Collectivities” is actually the word I’m pl...Karl> “Collectivities” is actually the word I’m planning to use, quite possibly in the prospectus version – I think at the last minute I felt awkward about using terminology I’ve clearly garnered from Latour in the description of the project <I>as a whole</I>. An act of cowardice on my part. <BR/><BR/>re: Anglo-Latin texts in ASE, you’re entirely on-target there with something I always conveniently manage to forget. I have a lot to learn about it, really, not least of all because it would complicate the nationhood-vernacular connection Adrian Hastings is so reliant on. Duly noted. Even if I end up limiting the discussion to vernacular texts, it’s something I definitely need more familiarity with.<BR/><BR/><I>And could you maybe remark on what distinguishes a "nation" from other kinds of collective identities?</I><BR/><BR/>Very good question. I’m not entirely sure how to answer that. My instinct is to say that if I introduce the idea of a “nation” it is more to break it down into component parts, examine the way in which different actors – human and non-human, so I’m relying somewhat heavily on Latour here) – interact in such a way that produces a network linking language, genetics, mythology, land, etc., into a formation we might call a “nation”. I’d imagine it’s not linear in terms of chronology as well – as Kathleen Davis and others have pointed out, a lot of the work in establishing a concept of Anglo-Saxon “nation” was done after the fact, in the totalizing work of later writers who created from some of King Alfred’s “finer” aspirations (if indeed they were) and later chroniclers and biographers, who were also working with a different conception of politics and social structuring, some of which is, I think, predicated on Roman models that Anglo-Saxon writers claim to be following (but aren’t). The trick, as usual, is to think about how this particular network functions – which actors are involved, and what they do, and then perhaps how they move about in the plane we’d call time...<BR/><BR/>And I’m degenerating into babble at this point. Does that makes sense?Mary Kate Hurleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14892991966276345782noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-18927093020967153812008-01-02T15:30:00.000-05:002008-01-02T15:30:00.000-05:00Finally getting back to this post after finishing ...Finally getting back to this post after finishing up that essay I've been working on (but more on that later). I'd actually started writing this at home but left my laptop when I decided to come over to Wake's library. So here's what I can remember.<BR/><BR/>JJC> In answer to the first question...I'm not entirely sure. I think part of what I've been thinking of using is in <I>A Thousand Plateaus</I>. I'm interested in the structure of the rhizome, and perhaps in the ways in which the process of translation could be considered "rhizomatic" in some ways -- partially because I'm trying to break down the distinctions between what is "original" and what is "translation," arguing for a more complex interrelationship between the two. At some point in the project I was referring to something I was articulating in "shorthand" as a "Becoming Old English," which I think is the process by which certain texts and even the cultures that produced them get connected to a group (or network) of other texts and cultures by virtue of their inclusion in the same "framework" of translation into Old English. By trying to think through what it would mean for translation to be considered creative and generative -- i.e., not derivative -- I'm wondering what happens to these texts when considered in the networks they form with both contemporary texts <I>as well as</I> texts from cultures that both pre and post-date the Anglo-Saxons, if something more complex than emulation or simple (if that's possible) <I>translatio studii et imperii</I> is going on. <BR/><BR/>That's where the Latour comes in. I'd imagine what he would say about my dissertation as currently framed is that it assumes a certain linearity -- it moves forward in time and is clearly invested in chronological relationships. I think what I was hoping to do (and this is the pie-in-the-sky version of the Dissertation I Would Write Were there but World Enough and Time) by thinking through Latour with some of these texts is to actually break down the temporal relationships between texts in translation and their "originals". Part of how I want to do that (if it works, which I'm still not sure it will) is to allow for a "democracy of objects" as regards the creation of the idea of "Anglo-Saxon England" and "English". To take the long view, of course, it would mean examining the records for weather patterns, settlement remains and agricultural patterns for the period -- things I'm not sure we still have, or would even know how to get (although I know Kenneth Addison does a lot of work with a sort of "historical" geology and climateology, because he's a colleague of one of my former advisers). For the current phase of the project, though, I'm trying to think through what might happen if texts were given the same agency as human forces, and if they worked in ways that were not strictly bound to chronological succession. The rest is for if/when it becomes possible/necessary. So (to make a VERY long story short) I think I finally am more interested in his work on agency -- but I'm not entirely sure it's a wise move for my project to separate the two until I've done a more thorough reading of his work (am in the midst of Aramis, and am picking up the Pasteurization of France today, I hope, as well as whatever else we have here at Wake. And some Merleau-Ponty for good measure). <BR/><BR/>Does that make any sense? <BR/><BR/>Karl -- will have to answer you in another comment, as the library's to close fairly soon and there's other work to be done before I go!<BR/><BR/>Thank you both for your comments and encouragement. It's really useful to be talking about this stuff, rather than going over it repeatedly in my head.Mary Kate Hurleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14892991966276345782noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-81951546639984227452007-12-31T14:06:00.000-05:002007-12-31T14:06:00.000-05:00Seconded on the terrific thing. And happy new year...Seconded on the terrific thing. And happy new years. I'm especially pleased by your discussion of discussing the whole of the AS Orosius translation: that examination of material outside the "original" inclusions is a very smart idea.<BR/><BR/>What follows is <I>not</I> meant for inclusion or alteration to your prospectus, as that thing just needs to be turned in. So: <BR/><BR/><I>My dissertation will explore the ways in which historical literature, broadly defined to include chronicles, world-histories and saints’ lives, functions in the construction of collective identities in the Anglo-Saxon period. </I><BR/><BR/>Could I suggest 'collectivities' instead of 'collective identities' (as you do in your discussion of Chapter 1, e.g., "Drawing on Latour to argue for the Orosius as part of a collectivity formed in and by the different cultures and times represented in the various texts of the Alfredian corpus of translations" and elsewhere)? The problem with "identity" is its suggestion of "self-identical," and thus--here I put on my Lacanian hat (<I>chappeau</I>)--its occlusion of the inevitable misrecognition in any (claim to) identity. Moreover, "identities" might tend to freeze the mobility of collectivities (and subjects) into some core "Anglo-Saxon" "present" quality that can be arranged too neatly, even if dialectically, with a core "Latin" "past" (and here another caution: what Latin works being (re)produced contemporaneously with Aflredian translation project &c? Presumably the same scribes doing the translations are also continuing to generate Latin mss: in other words, I don't think Anglo-Saxon collectivities should be thought to inhere <I>only</I> (or even primarily) in the vernacular). So: knowing you and your work already, I <I>know</I> your project is going to be more complex than this: so my cautions about the word "identity" (borrowed, I should say, from our mutual PD) are only cautions against accidental drags on the precision of your project.<BR/><BR/>And could you maybe remark on what distinguishes a "nation" from other kinds of collective identities?Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-6184101030590665352007-12-31T06:51:00.000-05:002007-12-31T06:51:00.000-05:00Mary Kate, this looks terrific.I know you want the...Mary Kate, this looks terrific.<BR/><BR/>I know you want the theory to come second (emerging from your engagement with the medieval materials) ... but can you say a bit (1) how this might be a deleuzoguattarian project [I have a suggestion or two about Deleuze and translation, but I'm wondering what you're thinking) and (2) what Bruno Latour -- an obsession of mine -- might have to say to your dissertation as framed? Are you thinking of his thinking on agency, or temporality?<BR/><BR/>Happy new year!Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.com