Ugh, what a book! I already cannot wait to return to this delicious conversation between two incredible minds. I am going to stick with the theme of "conversation," as it is again what has struck me throughout this half of the book (probably because it is what they wrap up on, so to speak). hooks states that she wants to close their conversation by "talking about where is the place of love in all this" (119). Hall responds: "...love is many things. It is also a conversation, the right kind of conversation. It is also a pleasure in the fullest giving birth to conversation. It has something to do with the nature of the inventiveness...that somehow can get lost, and its boundaries dissolve as something new arises which is neither one nor the other, but a space in between" (120). This blurred form is what I am interested in, as they continue to discuss the form of jazz and improvisation in line with the conversation. How can we hold space for these forms of conversation when we so often get into the routine of academic discussions? Furthermore, in a time when going "back to the couch" and our personal lives are so intertwined with our politics, how can we hold space for the kind of self-reflexivity and vulnerable discussion of experiences that Hall and hooks demonstrate throughout their conversation?
My two questions from this week have emerged from the Judith Butler piece, A 'Bad Writer' Bites Back , both centered around the journal, Philosophy and Literature —which Butler describes as the self-proclaimed “arbiter of good prose.” I agree with Butler’s staunch defense of questioning common sense and provoking “new ways of looking at a familiar world”, and was reminded of David Harvey’s quote in the introduction to his Companion to Marx’s Capital : “Real learning always entails a struggle to understand the unknown.” Butler describes Philosophy and Literature as a “culturally conservative academic journal” which naturally led me down a longer-than-anticipated visit to the journal's website . I was greeted with a video presented by the Philosophy and Literature’s editor Garry L. Hagberg, who rails against the “jargon infested” work that litters the journal’s field, locating Philosophy and Literature in clear opposition to such bothersome clutter. However, Hagberg...
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