Comments on: Dies the Swan

By: fathima

fathima — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 18:23:55 +0000

thanks bdr! (god, this was so long ago. i can’t even get back to people on my own website. how indescribably sad.)

By: bdr

bdr — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 06:51:45 +0000

“…measured up to Calculusâ€™ romanticism, its unfailing belief in the unknowable: the infinitesimally minute and the infinitely large. It was poetry in numbers, the way we moved in small steps from the mundanely numerable to quantities incalculable. It was theory parading as practise and I rejoiced in it, the way we spoke so casually of things we could never really, never properly describe.”

that was great description.

By: fathima

fathima — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 04:18:39 +0000

Ali: I think I can safely that I turned to English with a heightened sense of security, a self-confidence that spilled into self-blindness sometimes. And by “hijack” I mean that I was often dissatisfied with class discussions, because in previous years, but particularly last year, I was obsessed with “disconnects” and isolations and I turned to literature to bridge those isolations. It was Queen’s. It became my crusade to be everything minor in texts, to hyperbolise and complicate.
At least, that’s what I think in retrospect. I’m probably romanticising myself. Ick.

basit: thanks, b. I will definitely check it out. And I was reading Spivak and that was very slow reading, but illuminating when it wasn’t frustrating. So maybe I’m prepared for Dewey.
Also, did you know Langston Hughes wrote essays? A friend recommended “The Negro Artist and The Racial Mountain.”
And names are good. Drop them all you like.

By: basit

basit — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 23:55:07 +0000

you might be interested in an article by maria lugones…can’t remember the exact title, but i think the word “world-travelling” was in there. (multi-lingual/ world-traveller)

and…though reading dewey is “like swimming through porridge”, he might be relevant? on subjectivities.

there, that’s my name-dropping for the day.

By: Ali Eteraz

Ali Eteraz — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 14:39:53 +0000

This is tre interesting. I really gotta run & dont have much time to comment these days but I have to say something.

I love the part about passing something off with bravado. I concur with you. My degree was in Philosophy and I quickly found — via Nietzsche I suppose — that in the end, it wasn’t the cogency of any particular syllogism that mattered. Rather, people were persuaded, even philosophers, by the ‘gentle nudges’ of style. That’s what N. called it: style. I call it rhetoric (maybe because I am still a bit unwilling to accept that). So, I know where you’re coming from.

The difficulty I think you have, is that so far you’ve used this power — this recognition that its not what you say but how you say it, to “hijack” discussions, and in addition, I assume, to prop up your ego whenever it faltered, to keep yourself safe from criticism by others, and other such ventures. Maybe you haven’t, but it was what I certainly did.

I think you are on the right track here:

So if language is instrumental in recognising and realising change, and if language is defined by personal experiences and personal biases, then I need to be able to speak in multiple languages. And I donâ€™t mean that I need to be multilingual, but that my knowledge and my empathy need to be multifaceted.

Now you need conviction.

All that is bad in this comment has come from me; same goes for what’s good.

Goodbye & Goodluck.

By: fathima

fathima — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 17:35:19 +0000

“Confused” is too strong a word. I hadn’t meant for this post to be depressing, so much as contemplative. Because I’m not so much unsure what I want to do as unwilling to limit myself to the choices given. I intend to make a career out of working outside the boundaries, and grad school applications wouldn’t be the first place I’ve done that.
So yay diversity. :)

By: Maliha

Maliha — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 12:25:58 +0000

Salaamat,

I can really relate. I remember just how anticlimatic graduation from under grad was. It was like this is it? and all those things I thought i would do were that much further away.

i have dabbled in one masters; and looking into another. And I am still stuck at that same point…of having too many interests and not finding a way to reconcile all of them *and* channel them into one (several?) areas.

Don’t mean to depress you more…but perhaps the whole notion of what being educated means needs to be revised. Kheir, wish you all the best and keep us posted on which direction you choose to go.

May your path be filled with beauty and peace (amin).