The Gathering

I haven’t completely finished the novel (about half way done) but this is by far the most powerful piece of Irish literature that we have studied throughout this course (at least for me).

I feel a sort of kinship with Veronica that I can’t describe. After the death Liam, she is in shambles. In Chapter 4, Veronica explains that everyone has lost someone that they love. Everyone has lost someone. But it affects us all differently, in ways we may never understand.

“There is something wonderful about death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important. Your husband can feed the kids, he can work the new oven, he can find the sausages in the fridge, after all. And his important meeting was not important, not in the slightest” (27).

After Liam’s death, his suicide, Veronica obsesses over Lambert Nugent and her grandmother, Ada. After Liam is gone, Veronica stays awake at night, writing and re-writing the meeting of Ada and Nugent at the Belvedere Hotel. This story and initial meeting between Nugent and Ada, determines the fate of Veronica, and her family (like the butterfly effect). I wonder if Veronica had given Nugent much thought prior to her brother’s death.

In the beginning of the book we learn that Nugent virtually sexually abused his own sister. (Am I reading into that right?) We know that she is dead. We don’t know how she has died. At least I haven’t gotten to that part in the story. We later learn, (I flipped ahead a few chapters because the suspense was killing me) that Liam was also sexually abused by Nugent.

“There are things I do, actually know. I know that my brother Liam was sexually abused by Lambert Nugent. Or was probably sexually abused by Lambert Nugent” (224).

I think we can conclude that Liam’s past led him to commit suicide. The entire book Veronica has to make sense of what led him to take his own life. She has to put together remnants of the past.

For this blog, I watched the Youtube video of Sinead O’Conner on SNL. I had never seen the clip before, and I was stunned to see how powerful its message was. Upon some research, I discovered that Sinead O’Conner had experienced abuse as a child and his known for her protests over the sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

Fairly recently (last month) Sinead appeared on Anderson Cooper to speak out about the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Ireland.

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/27/video-sinead-oconnor-on-the-catholic-church-abuse-scandal/

I hope I don’t offend anyone, but I agree with Sinead O’Connor in this particular interview. How can these particular priests consider themselves to be holy or moral Christian people? And the scandal of the clergy trying to cover up the cases is just making them look worse.

Just recently, Pope Benedict XVI released an apology to the people of Ireland. The Pope said he was "truly sorry" for the harm done to Catholics who suffered "sinful and criminal" abuse at the hands of priests, brothers and nuns. He acknowledged the "serious mistakes" made by the clergy. S

Sinead also recently had an opinion piece in the Washington Post about the sex abuse scandal and commented back towards Pope Benedict’s apology. She believes that the Pope is mocking the Irish peoples’ intelligence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/25/AR2010032502363.html

Child abuse seems to be very prevalent in Ireland. The Prime Minister of Ireland, Brian Cowen recently apologized to victims of child abuse for the government’s lack of interference in sexual abuse and severe beatings in Irish schools. He also promised reform for Ireland’s social services. Further investigation will take place against members of the Roman Catholic Church. Something definitely needs to be done to stop this horrible issue. I don’t know how the government has let it get this far.

To end back with the novel, it is sad to think that in cases of poverty, such as Veronica and Liam, little is done to prevent the issue.

Desire

I just got done reading “Lacanian Pussy” and I’ll be honest, my brain is fried! I had a difficult time trying to keep up with Peter Mahon and Jacques Lacan’s theories about ‘the unconscious is the discourse of the Other.’ In order to assist my comprehension I looked up several vocabulary definitions. I learned that Phallocentric means, centered on men or on a male viewpoint, especially one held to entail the domination of women by men. According to Mahon, Breakfast on Pluto, re-inscribes Lacanian thought ‘beyond’ itself. And that Breakfast on Pluto also encompasses a non-phallic strategy for intervening in the rhetoric of sameness as neither apolitical or non-violent. I also did a little bit of web research on Lacanian psychoanalysis and this is what I found;

Lacan rejected attempts to link psychoanalysis with social theory, saying 'the unconscious is the discourse of the Other' -- that human passion is structured by the desire of others and that we express deep feelings through the 'relay' of others. He thus saw desire as a social phenomenon and psychoanalysis as a theory of how the human subject is created through social interaction. Desire appears through a combination of language, culture and the spaces between people.
Lacan focused largely on Freud's work on deep structures and infant sexuality, and how the human subject becomes an 'other' through unconscious repression and stemming from the Mirror phase. The conscious ego and unconscious desire are thus radically divided. Lacan considered this perpetual and unconscious fragmentation of the self as Freud's core discovery.

I don’t know why, but I imagine the “Other” as the evil shoulder conscience that whispers impure temptations into the character’s ear.





So basically the author believes that the novel claims to be apolitical and remaining outside of politics when in fact many features, events, and comments from the novel are very political statements and this is due to the discourse or fantasies of the Other. So I ask you Mahon (and blogger friends), huh? I’m still trying to decipher what point Mahon is trying to say. To try to understand, I took Colleen’s suggestion and visited the following website; http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/psychoanalysis/lacandevelop.html

Desire is a main theme within the novel because Pussy is completing driven and deranged by desire. Constantly longing for that feeling of belonging. The website suggests that we have no control over desire.

Desire, in other words, has little to do with material sexuality for Lacan; it is caught up, rather, in social structures and strictures, in the fantasy version of reality that forever dominated our lives after our entrance into language. For this reason, Lacan writes that "the unconscious is the discourse of the Other." Even our unconscious desires are, in other words, organized by the linguistic system that Lacan terms the symbolic order or "the big Other." In a sense, then, our desire is never properly our own, but is created through fantasies that are caught up in cultural ideologies rather than material sexuality. For this reason, according to Lacan, the command that the superego directs to the subject is, of all things, "Enjoy!" That which we may believe to be most private and rebellious (our desire) is, in fact, regulated, even commanded, by the superego.

Throughout the novel we see that Pussy has a strong desire to feel love. He/she desperately seeks the love of his/her parents. I agree that desire is something that we can’t control. And sometimes are actions are led by this unconscious or conscious desire. Therefore, maybe that is why Pussy wanted to be a woman. By being maternal and nurturing to her lovers, perhaps Pussy was trying to create the mother she never had. So the other, is designed around cultural ideologies. Pussy also claims to be apolitical when clearly she is not. The nationalism and gender boundaries that Pussy medals with are construed from her desires.

Final Project Idea

I'm taking this week to use my freebie not to do a blog post. I'm student teaching full time for the next two weeks so I'm using this week to focus on designing Lesson Plans. Wish me luck because I'm super nervous but also excited :)

For my final project, I would like to further explore The Picture of Dorian Gray. I enjoyed reading and analyzing the novel, therefore I would like to revisit the novel. Since I’m an education major, I think it would be fun to design a lesson plan around the novel. My objective would be for the students to be able to read, interpret, and critically analyze the novel. After reading students will be able to identify the defining features and structure of literary texts, such as conflict representation of character, character vs character conflict, character vs world conflict, and character vs self conflict, and point of view. After reading the novel students will be able to analyze the effect of characters, plot, setting, language, topic, style, purpose, and point of view on the overall impact of literature. Identify common historical, social, and cultural themes and issues in literary works and selected passages.
To successfully and effectively teach the objectives to students, I will design a thorough lesson plan describing the procedures for instruction. I will plan instruction prior to reading, during reading and after reading. I intend to include comprehension assessment strategies among other ideas…so far this is what I have in mind. Any suggestions? What grade level do you think would be appropriate to teach the novel?

Good luck everyone! Can't wait to hear everyone's ideas

Time

What an interesting lens to view the novel through! While reading this article my mind kept flashing to the concept of time. Time is everywhere. Time is consistent. Time is always present. Time is continuous. Time is relative. Etc etc…I am studying to become a teacher and this semester I’m taking a social studies course aimed at, “how to teach social studies.” We are learning that one of the main aims of teaching history is to help students develop a concept of time. Historical evidence itself obtains its meaning from the time-frame in which it is set. Without a concept of time there can be no real understanding of change, development, continuity, progression and regression. As an educator I have to aim to teach my students to learn how to take on the attitudes and understanding of a past age. In the novel, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man what does Time really mean? What is the relevance of time within the novel? How are time and the concept of epiphany linked? There are many instances in the novel and from the article that dwell on this concept of time. I’m going to try to stay on topic here (which is often hard for me to do) and bring forth some instances that correlate with this concept.

The first instance is from the article, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the Individuating Rhythm of Modernit. Tobias Boes describes the novel as “leaping and bounding” through time. Boes brings forth many terms pertaining to the concept of time; linear and cyclical temporalities, individuating rhythms, polyrhythmic, etc. The terms are subjective and therefore open to interpretation. Linear time is sequential. Cyclical time is relative, pertaining to its surroundings. Individuating rhythms is the time spent in relation to a backboard of time as a whole. Perhaps polyrhythmic is the whole. I’m not entirely sure what these terms mean. I can break apart these terms and analyze but that might take too much time for right now. Boes says,
“Like his Russian contemporary, Lefebvre regarded time and space as inextricable from one another; he was well aware, for example, that the temporal rhythms pulsing through the boulevards of a colonial city can be very different from those that hover in its back alleys. In his most extensive project of “rhythmanalysis,” a study of the patterns of everyday life in Mediterranean cities, Lefebvre concluded that, “the large Mediterranean towns appear to have always lived and still to live in a regime of compromise between all the political powers. such a ‘metastable’ state is the fact of the polyrhythmic.”16 “Polyrhythmicality” in this context should be understood as the simultaneous existence in close spatial proximity of life-worlds that place differing emphases on the linear and cyclical elements that constitute historical experience” (770).

From this passage about time and all of it’s terms and how they affect one another I have concluded that much of the novel is about how time, time affected change, time metabolized Stephen’s current state, present time is affected by past time..etc.

“Stephen is constantly struggling to synchronize his internal beat with an ever-changing environment” (772).

We are always fighting time! I found it interesting in the above quote where is says that, “Lefebrve regarded time and space as inextricable from one another” Throughout the novel we see Stephen bounce back and forth between memories, at Clongowes, university, home, etc..each time his mind is changed. New times bring forth new identities, past times and experiences constitute identity. This is where the concept of epiphany comes into play. Epiphany can be described as something becoming clear. This occurs when you look at the concept of time. The article describes when Stephen is on the Dublin-Cork night train. It describes how as the train leaves the station, the boy overcome by a curious feeling of detachment that enforces a definite rupture between his present self and his personal recollections. (Reflecting back in time)

“As the landscape that he has known for all his life fades into darkness, his primary markers of experience become the passing “telegraphpoles,” which no longer frame recognizable vistas, but instead measure out the relentless advance of empty time at the rate of one bar every four seconds” (775).

In this passage his experience is measured in time. He begins to measure the time between the passing telegraph poles, and as he is doing something, something new becomes clear to him. At night he watches is father sleep and he remembers how at one time he regarded he greatly respected his father, and at this exact moment in time on the train as he watches his father sleep he looks small and weak. But as the evening moves to day, The Irish landscape becomes visible as something more than a mere abstraction, something more than a dark mass of shades broken up every four seconds by a pole. Suddenly, the previous feeling of detachment and disjunction gives way to a definite sense of place; the experience of locality that is steeped in custom, organic social experience, and instransgent historical continuity. Stephen’s sense of his own position in the world changes in accordance with the landscape that he glimpses outside of his window.

“Suddenly, his father’s presence—so easily dismissed just a few hours ago—takes on an almost claustrophobic heaviness, and the dim outlines of the fellow passengers in his compartment inspire in him a strange dread. His experience of time changes as well. His attention is no longer held by the passing telegraph poles, which measure out the advance of historical time in a relentlessly repetitive mechanical continuity, but by his father’s heavy breathing and occasional sleepy movement. The mechanical thus yields to the biological, and mere repetition is replaced by the organic cycle of pulmonary activity. Time no longer progresses, but appears almost at a standstill” (775)

It’s almost as suddenly in this moment, Stephen has an epiphany that time and space are linked. And that with each passing moment, visions can be blurred or they can be made clear yielding to some new realization. With a new realization it is almost as if time is put on pause and for that moment, even if it’s just an instant, by putting time on pause the mind becomes clearer. Your thoughts belong in that moment and nothing else. Time affects everything.