Thursday, April 07, 2005
"Ha ha! I do twenty points of damage to drain the last of your life with my Extreme Anti-Capitalist Argument Power!"
We're reading Judith Butler's Bodies That Matter right now, and really it's quite good.
I wrote on William Sharpe, who wrote under the name Fiona Macleod. Interesting, really, that a man would write using a woman's name; usually it works out the other way around. But Sharpe wrote about Celtic mythology at the time when the female was the symbol for Ireland. It's especially important to understand Ireland's feminization from the colonial standpoint, as in colonial discourse of Sharpe's time there was a consistent drive to depict the colonized as feminine and the colonizer as masculine. Butler writes on the passing down of the Name of the Father as the imposition of law, so in this way it makes much sense that the Irish voice of rebellion took a female form in its refusal of its English colonizers.
William Sharpe fits the bill for the time--he doesn't seem to be overtly writing on Irish rebellion, because the Anglo-Irish literati weren't convinced that violent uprising was the way to go, but his work on Irish legends was the sort of stuff that was rebellious because it reclaimed and gave voice to the native mythologies. Check out Fiona Macleod; it's interesting enough, at least.
In class Susanne mentioned the Theory Trading Cards website to tell us all that there is a site where we can see our favorite critics, like Judith Butler, on trading cards. I asked if you could play Magic with them, and felt reminded in my head that for some reason, in that class jokes swim through a bog with rocks in their pockets. It could have also been a not funny joke.
Anyhow, I still bore the idea in my head that there was a game somewhere, and I felt somewhat validated when I saw Judith Butler's trading card:
The best part of this card is her "Weakness," but this fits fairly well into how we discuss logic and arguments, anyhow. But did you notice her "Special Skill?"
Special Skill? That sounds like a game feature to me! Need proof? See Simone de Beauvoir's card:
See her Special Skill? "Cast existential dread, crisis." Ah! It is a game after all! I had in my head that you could really put together a deck filled with these, and you could play a game! I was already writing it in my head, how the different suits could be the different schools of theory, and that your "land" or resource cards could be different works of art or something.
Then I saw they actually have a game. And then I read the rules. And then I realized that these trading cards are great, but in some way a joke, and that developing a CCG based around critical theorists would REALLY out me as a dork.
And we couldn't have that, could we.
I wrote on William Sharpe, who wrote under the name Fiona Macleod. Interesting, really, that a man would write using a woman's name; usually it works out the other way around. But Sharpe wrote about Celtic mythology at the time when the female was the symbol for Ireland. It's especially important to understand Ireland's feminization from the colonial standpoint, as in colonial discourse of Sharpe's time there was a consistent drive to depict the colonized as feminine and the colonizer as masculine. Butler writes on the passing down of the Name of the Father as the imposition of law, so in this way it makes much sense that the Irish voice of rebellion took a female form in its refusal of its English colonizers.
William Sharpe fits the bill for the time--he doesn't seem to be overtly writing on Irish rebellion, because the Anglo-Irish literati weren't convinced that violent uprising was the way to go, but his work on Irish legends was the sort of stuff that was rebellious because it reclaimed and gave voice to the native mythologies. Check out Fiona Macleod; it's interesting enough, at least.
In class Susanne mentioned the Theory Trading Cards website to tell us all that there is a site where we can see our favorite critics, like Judith Butler, on trading cards. I asked if you could play Magic with them, and felt reminded in my head that for some reason, in that class jokes swim through a bog with rocks in their pockets. It could have also been a not funny joke.
Anyhow, I still bore the idea in my head that there was a game somewhere, and I felt somewhat validated when I saw Judith Butler's trading card:
The best part of this card is her "Weakness," but this fits fairly well into how we discuss logic and arguments, anyhow. But did you notice her "Special Skill?"
Special Skill? That sounds like a game feature to me! Need proof? See Simone de Beauvoir's card:
See her Special Skill? "Cast existential dread, crisis." Ah! It is a game after all! I had in my head that you could really put together a deck filled with these, and you could play a game! I was already writing it in my head, how the different suits could be the different schools of theory, and that your "land" or resource cards could be different works of art or something.
Then I saw they actually have a game. And then I read the rules. And then I realized that these trading cards are great, but in some way a joke, and that developing a CCG based around critical theorists would REALLY out me as a dork.
And we couldn't have that, could we.
Comments:
I know, isn't it great? Isn't the guy on the right just sitting there, saying, "Yes, see, dear reader? Of course you and I know that the poxy Giddons is not nearly as powerful, but HE's just stupid enough to believe it!"
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