Re: For those discussing Lit Crit...

WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Fri, 10 Jul 1998 09:46:19 -0600 (MDT)

John, I'm a section man too but for the life of me, I can't figure out
what you are really saying...perhaps because I ignorantly don't know who
"kenny" refers to...maybe that will start me on a more clear reading
path...will

On Thu, 9 Jul 1998, john v. omlor wrote:

> 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).
> 
> ******************************************
> 
> 
> -- "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.
> 
> 
> ******************************************
> 
> 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
> 
> 
>