I have two ideas I want to post. One is that I read Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers with my technical writing class just now and among his claims and statistics, I've been thinking about data he presents about students losing a lot of ground over the summer. It makes me think that having spent the summer at SCT gave me some momentum that I've been able to use.
Which leads to the second idea. I'm well into many revisions on my dissertation prospectus (which I had a complete first draft of in May ... so you get the picture of what I mean by "many") and I find myself relying on lots of concepts from our course. One key idea is that I argue for replacing identity (I work in ethnic American literature) with subjectivity and thus an emphasis on metaphysics. Plus that substitution entails a methodology that is Bergsonian in that I have to deal with trajectories and movements and not points and articulated concepts.
I'm sure this post will be widely read and widely commented on, in this very active blog with a huge readership.
Hi Merton and everyone else. I'm also incorporating Bergson into my Queer Ecology research. It's clear (to me) that Bergson's Creative Evolution allows for a theory of ecological production that doesn't require Gaia or any other heteronormative model of the earth or evolution. It also provides a theoretical/philosophical space to ask questions about environmental justice--questions that I haven't clearly articulated to myself yet, but I know they are there!
ReplyDeleteGreat to hear from you. Tell your pretty lady friend I said hello.