For those discussing Lit Crit...
john v. omlor (omlor@packet.net)
Thu, 09 Jul 1998 11:22:22 -0500
Hello,
I've been reading the recent discussions on the list about Literary
Criticism and deconstruction and other assorted academic topics. I thought
I might share with those interested the title and the first line or two of
the paper I'm just finishing for SAMLA (the big Lit. Crit. conference this
Fall here in the South).
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-- "You Bastards!": Kenny as Christ and the Myth of Repetitive Resurrection --
>From Northrop Frye's *Anatomy of Criticsm* and the circles that weave myth
into culture in Joseph Campbell through Derrida's *Circumfession*,
Delueze's *Difference and Repetition* or Foucault's re-writing of
Nietzsche's genealogical histories; from Medieval theology to Jung's
mythological structures of the unconscious; and from Disney's *Snow White*
to Disney's "The Circle of Life", narratives of repetition and resurrection
have been inevitably linked to literature, psychology, history, theology
and cute little cartoon characters. This entire progression, so Hegelian
in its movement and yet so resistant to and even subversive of the
transcendentalizing triangles of dialectics, reaches its historical and
theo-philosophical climax in the excessive deaths and spec(tac)ular
resurrections of the new Christ of our age, the mysterious, parka-wrapped
Kenny, whose very voice positions itself problematically between the
intelligible and the unheard, between the innocent and the obscene, between
the manic fast-forward of hyperspeed and the naive yet ironic child-like
blindess of the sage.
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It could go anywhere from there...
OB Salinger Comment: So what do you think... *Is* there an American
*Zetgeist*?
Your hard working section-man,
--John