73 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2023
    1. cnmr, observe. asse<s, sp11hes1ze. and managernc.1'urernent> of I ar1h proce sc

      Perhaps this is the relationship that is materialized in a post-media world that Maiello was speaking of. We have relegated some of our sense to technology as they enable us to access perceptions that our bodies are unable to. Maybe the differences is translational rather than relational. In this instance with seismic sensors, we can translate senses we do not posses to senses we do possess. Maiello was talking more about the relational sensing that we cannot replace with technology (although it may be tempting).

    1. How, you wonder, can you be here, in place and at home in yourbody, and at the same time inhabit an atmospheric world that returnsthe body to you as a spectre? In that existential doubt lies the engine ofperception.

      This idea ties to the subjectivity and objectivity as mentioned in class. Rather the objectivity and subjectivity of sensing and perception can exist simultaneously. It reminds me of the Daoist work of Zhuangzi. This work is comprised of various parables on natural and humanist reflections. A very fundamental principle of Daoism is the mimicry of nature as it exhibits the Dao, or the Way. One such parable depicts Zhuangzi and Huizi, a prime minister, strolling along a dam. Zhuangzi makes a comment that the minnows are so joyful as they "dart around where they please." Huizi rebuts saying "You are not a fish -- how do you know what fish enjoy?" Zhuangzi eventually concludes that he know what the fish enjoy simply by standing by the river. The parable gets at the subjectivity of his observations intertwined with the objectivity of the fish's actions. They are existing together much like the observation of a stars light and the objective luminescence of a star. It gets slightly at perspective but creates a fascinating tension between the objective and subjective. If you want to read the parable is is here: https://terebess.hu/english/tao/Zhuangzi-Burton-Watson.pdf on page 276.

  2. Sep 2021
  3. inst-fs-iad-prod.inscloudgate.net inst-fs-iad-prod.inscloudgate.net
    1. The very choice of what facts or events are relevant is amatter of pure arbitration.

      Reminiscent of the sort of determination or discernment that Cooper talks about.

  4. static1.squarespace.com static1.squarespace.com
    1. Finally, rhetorical situations come into existence, then eithermature or decay or mature and persist—conceivably some persistindefinitely.

      I'm anticipating Boyle's "Rhetoric as a Posthuman Practice" having something to say about rhetorical situations outliving the people having them

    2. None, to my knowledge, has asked the nature ofrhetorical situation.

      I'm having trouble distinguishing between the rhetorical situation that's failing to be sought after and the parts-- audience, subject, speaker, occasion, etc.-- that seem to collectively comprise that situation. It seems that a rhetorical situation is the interplay of those parts, perhaps in a manner similar to the Bakhtinian chronotope? I.e., a sort of contextual intersection?

    1. Since the world's big bullies and bulletproof forms of power thrive on this oscillation between loop and binary, it is as if there is nothing to counter them -only more ways of fighting and being right and providing the rancor that nourishes their violence.

      This smacks of Cooper's, Deleuze's, and Whitehead's departures from Hegelian dialectic.

    1. "hidden transcript.

      The hidden transcript is reminiscent of the the "hidden curriculum" that Jessica McCrory Calarco aims to shed light on in her A Field Guide to Grad School. Although McCrory Calarco's binary is more about those with access to knowledge of the ins and outs of academia vs those who don't, the dynamic for Scott is similar in its separating those for whom the system works and those for whom it outwardly seems an obstacle to education.

    2. with, not for

      I think these prepositions are important because, otherwise, the dynamic that puts the professor lording over the student similar to the banking model could just be perpetuated in a new guise.

    3. One reason that Freire's pedagogy has so much appeal is that it comes armed with a rhetoric that overwhelms and neutralizes any effort to point out this tension between the Freirian insistence on a collaborative methodology, where people are taught not what to think but how, and a practice that, almost magically, produces peo- ple who know exactly what to think about injustice and how it should be redressed

      I think Cooper goes along with this as well. That is, like Freire, she holds the overwhelmingly positive belief that if teachers just show students how to learn, then they will "know exactly what to think" about an issue. Such a philosophy is partially troubling because it implies that there is only one "correct" way of thinking, and that it is relatively easy to convince students to accept it.

    4. Freire

      Nearly all our readings are responding to Freire's claim that the "banking concept" of education is extremely wrong and ineffective. In her book, Cooper provided ways for teachers to divorce themselves from tradititional pedagogy teaching practices. One of the biggest ways is through classroom discussion, where everyone, not just the teacher, has a chance to talk and voice their opinions. This overrides the assumption that the teacher is the only person with knowledge and intellect in the class.

  5. Feb 2021
    1. Just as there are charismatic megafauna, there are charismatic mega-ideas. “Flatten the curve” could be one of them.

      "Most of our philosophy, our epistemology, and our definition of science come from pictorial representations, not from an experience of vision or from an experience of actually seeing the world." (Latour 319) Things like pandas and graphs which represent ideas and goals could fall under Latour's "pictorial representations", which they argue drive most of our worldviews

  6. Feb 2019
  7. Aug 2017
    1. Subtle tango, I lean away

      Describing how even in an uncomfortable position, there is a dance beyond that of merrymaking. A figurative dance, of moving in sync but away.

  8. Apr 2017
    1. Therefore, meaning is not discovered in situations, but createdby rhetors.

      I think Nietzsche would agree with this. Nietzsche said that language (and by extension meaning) was subjective and could not be truly universal because individuals (in this example, rhetors) would apply their own background and experiences to a particular word in order to determine its meaning. Also mirrors Locke's idea that language is not universal.

    2. situationis rhetorical only if something can be done, but apparently itis only rhetorical also if something should be done.

      "Should be done" in this context is relative to the individual who is engaging rhetoric in a certain situation. One person might believe something should be done, while another thinks that the status quo is sufficient. This reminds me a little of Hume's theory of taste, in which he argued that certain people had "better" or "superior" taste to others. In reality, taste is subjective and is in the eye of the beholder.

  9. Mar 2017
    1. But whereas litera-ture was the chief opponent of rhetoric in America, linguistics and semantics opT posed rhetoric in European intellectual life at the beginning of the century.

      References the Rickert piece, which stated that the rhetorical/cultural environment influenced the rhetoric that was produced. Similarly, the rhetorical culture of America and Europe differed, and the primary opponent of rhetoric changed as a result of the different rhetoric produced (due to different rhetorical environments). This web of rhetoric is kind of confusing, but also makes sense because rhetoric is everywhere.

    1. The implicit rendering is usually through some kind of figuration because it is the nature of this meaning to be ineffable in any other way.

      Reminds me of Burke and his elaborations on the role figurative language plays in rhetoric - and how that impacts such ratios as act-scene, agent-scene, agency-purpose, etc.

  10. Feb 2017
    1. that two-thirds of the teach-ers in these schools are women; that nearly three-fourths of our church members are women; that through the modern Sunday-school women have already become the theological teachers of the future church; and that, per mntra, out of about sixty thousand persons in our penitentiaries fifty-five thousand are men; that whiskey, beer, and tobacco to the amount of fifteen millions of dol-lars worth per year arc consumed almost wholly by men;

      Women are much more saintly and spirited than a vast majority of men, so why can't they be the clerics?

      Reminds me a lot of Stewart's argument for greater female participation in the Church, despite St. Paul's often-referenced passage. I do think it's funny just how much power this one passage has, and how it is so often either challenged or cited by Christian feminists or Christian traditionalists, respectively.

      On a side note, I also find it a source of pride that it was through Christian theoretical rhetoric that women began the push for greater equality and independence.

    1. After these convictions, in imagination I found myself sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed in my right mind. For I had been like a ship tossed to and fro, in a storm at sea. Then was I glad when I realized the dangers l had escaped; and then I consecrated by soul and body, and all the powers of my mind to his service, and from that time henceforth; yea, even for evermore, amen.

      It's interesting how both Astell and Stewart, two of the oldest female rhetoricians we have studied, were very overt in their expressions of Christian spirituality, something that their male counterparts were less keen to do in comparison.

      I wonder if this may have had something to do with their (relative) success as rhetoricians? Being female, especially one of color, is challenging enough, but bringing Christianity into it may have granted them an avenue to be discussed hundreds of years after their words first graced paper...

  11. Nov 2016
    1. Chapter 20: The Sculptor's Art

      It is surprising that Wilde’s story concludes without seeking to incorporate some of the more flamboyant elements of Hawthorne’s novel, such as Donatello and Miriam’s disguised travels, or the carnival along the Corso. It may be that he had left behind his source material, although there is sufficient resonance in these last few chapters to suggest that he was referring to at least the earlier portions of Volume 2, although perhaps he was simply relying upon his own excellent memory.

    1. sad of mouth and eye

      This description of Kenyon’s travels resembles, particularly in this phrase, William Morris’ description of Launcelot’s quest to reach Guenevere in Glastonbury in King Arthur’s Tomb (1858). In his ‘Garden of Eros’ of 1881, Wilde paid tribute to Morris as a poet who “with soft and sylvan pipe has oft beguiled / The weary soul of man in troublous need”.

    1. Salomé

      Wilde wrote his one-act play Salomé much later, in 1891. The subject began to fascinate Wilde, it seems, after Pater introduced him to Hérodias (one of Flaubert’s Trois Contes) in late 1877. The mention here thus seems to be, by and large, following Hawthorne’s own description of Donatello considering some of Miriam’s sketches, which Wilde had omitted from his Chapter 4 but perhaps did not wish to abandon entirely. It is worth noting that Hawthorne does not name Salomé, but refers to her through her father and the story. Wilde’s reframing of the description shows a sensitivity to the tale that was later to show in his play.

    2. you must resign yourself to conduct inferior work afterward!

      All three of the artists in Wilde’s novel are at the height of their powers, it seems, and this feature is more pronounced than in Hawthorne’s novel. Wilde sharpens the contrast between the three artistic friends, achieving great aesthetic feats, and Donatello and Miriam’s still-nameless model, who both lack such skills or outlet, and so wreak change in the world instead.

    3. that was all

      The phrase “that was all” is used by Dorian Gray as he attempts to reason with the supernatural nature of his picture. There are many echoes between how Miriam reconciles herself to her past acquaintance’s death and how Dorian behaves. It may be that Wilde had in mind, consciously or unconsciously, some of the phrases and ideas expressed in this work when writing the only novel he published during his lifetime.

    1. “Do not scowl upon me so, Donatello,”

      A similar line is spoken by Hawthorne’s Miriam to the corpse. The continued blurring of her persecutor and her friend, begun with Hilda’s rendition of the Guido sketch, is an important facet of the remainder of Wilde’s novel.

    2. before Saint Francis

      The church contains, in the first chapel, Gherado delle Notti’s Christ Mocked alongside the St Michael of Guido, which is not mentioned in the narrative. In the second chapel, which Miriam and Donatello have apparently passed over. is a Transfiguration (Mario Balassi) and a Nativity scene (Lanfranco). It is to Domenichino’s Saint Francis receives stigmata that Donatello turns. There is a certain similarity to the structure of the two paintings, which feature an upright principal figure and a secondary figure in the bottom-right corner, but while St Francis turns his face upwards to the heavens, St Michael’s face is turned downwards at the devil whom he tackles. St Francis, the first to receive the stigmata, died while reciting Psalm 142, which has as its closing lines “In the path where I walk people have hidden a snare for me”. One may speculate about whether Donatello recollects this fact, as the innocent ensnared by people around him is a facet of the Donatello character in both Hawthorne and Wilde’s novels (although Hawthorne makes it more explicit by blaming Miriam’s look for Donatello’s murder of the model). On the other hand, the turn to St Francis may be a commentary by Wilde on Donatello-as-Faun, as St Francis was known for preaching sermons to animals.

    3. The Monk

      This is the third chapter title that refers to Miriam’s old acquaintance, after “The Model” and “The Demon”. This layers yet another parable of development upon Wilde’s novel, which like Hawthorne’s focuses on the development of Donatello and Hilda in particular, as the novel’s two figures of innocence transfigured by the real world.

    1. Corinne and Lord Nelvil

      In the novel Corinne, Or Italy by Madame de Staël.

    2. gaze

      Hawthorne waxes about the “delightful” nature of believing in these drawings’ “authenticity”, as such sketches “make the spectator more vividly sensible of a great painter’s power” than the completed work. Wilde attributes less import, as well he might, in the circumstances, to provenance; Donatello’s enjoyment is, instead, purely of the form.

    1. or marry a perfect husband and feel themselves punished for it

      This echoes Wilde’s later epigram, in An Ideal Husband.

    2. care and thought

      There is a certain echo with the method of art-viewing described by Michael Field in the Preface to their volume of ekphrastic verse, ‘Sight and Song’, published in 1892. Wilde would not have met Michael Field (Edith Cooper and Katharine Bradley) at this stage, and they did not develop their keen interest in ekphrasising art until much later in their careers. However, the resonance between Hilda’s approach to Guido Reni’s Beatrice and Michael Field’s approach to, for example, Botticelli’s Venus, invites some interesting comparisons about women looking at women and the female gaze. We know that Wilde had many a conversation with Cooper and Bradley, about many topics, and it is interesting to speculate about whether he may have, at one point or another, mentioned The Faun of Rome and its dedicated copyist.

    3. Chapter 8: Palazzo Cenci

      This chapter replaces a walk on Pincian Hill, from where Kenyon and Hilda observe Donatello, Miriam and her model, with narrative felicity. Wilde instead encloses Kenyon and Hilda, in contrast to the long walk that Kenyon and Miriam make to visit Hilda, and the similar walk that Miriam and Donatello make in the grounds of Villa Borghese.

    1. all the risk of its sweet music still being her own

      Hawthorne’s original makes a passing reference to “persons with overburdened hearts” making confessions to “holes in the earth”, an oblique reference to the fable of the king with a donkey’s ears, whose barber tells the secret to a hole that is later discovered by children. In an Irish variant, the king’s barber tells a tree, which is then chopped down and turned into a harp, which retells the king’s secret in its first melody in front of him. Wilde renders more explicit the danger that Miriam might invite upon herself by warning Donatello of her own unsuitability.

    1. producing a photograph so true to life

      Beatrice Cenci was a figure of much interest in the mid-nineteenth century. Juliet Margaret Cameron produced a set of photographs, not of Reni’s picture, but of contemporary women portraying Cenci in various poses.

    2. as they seem to be, not as they are

      Wilde expounded on this idea in his lecture to art students from the Royal Academy in June 1883, as part of his argument that artists have to deal with the effects of nature, appearance, rather than the real conditions of an object.

    3. clavigera

      Wilde uses the word in the sense of ‘key-bearer’ here. It is most commonly recognised as part of the title of John Ruskin’s series of letters to working men, Fors Clavigera, in which he provides three definitions, ‘key-bearer’ being the third.

    4. coterie

      Wilde abandons Hawthorne’s “confraternity”, a religious and gendered term, in favour of an Aesthetic one. Although Hilda remains associated with the Virgin Mary, her religiosity, and in particular her Puritanism, is all but washed away in Wilde’s new version.

    5. Dovecote

      In Wilde’s story, Hilda has no actual doves. The naming of Hilda’s home thus seems to suggest an ironic jab at Hawthorne’s original, although Wilde does go on to associate Hilda with doves elsewhere throughout the novel.

    1. “Would that I knew how you might, Kenyon.”

      Wilde removes all of Kenyon’s doubts about his capacity to understand and sympathise with Miriam, instead figuring this moment of missed understanding—in reality a moment for Wilde to signal a secret—as one of uncertainty in Miriam.

    2. hoop-petticoat

      Wilde retains the wry amusement of Hawthorne’s idea of a sculpture wearing a hoop-petticoat,

    3. “It is strange that, with all her delicacy and fragility, Hilda makes the impression of being utterly sufficient in herself, and so I suppose has little care for seeking out the immortalisation of your art, Kenyon.”

      Wilde takes part of a line from Kenyon—lamenting that Hilda will never be his wife—and grants it here to Miriam instead, as a reflection on Hilda’s unavailability as a model. This condenses Miriam’s speech in Hawthorne about women who “have other objects in life” and so “are not apt to fall in love”. Love features nowhere in this chapter; rather, the feminine behaviour that Hilda and Miriam avoid is the “mere projection” of their beauty.

    4. I stole it from her in a sketch, there on the wall

      Wilde reduces the original Kenyon’s worship of Hilda’s hands at work into a practical exchange between friends. In turn, this also reduces Miriam’s condescension to her American friend as a “maiden”, elevating Hilda instead to a more mutual friendship.

    5. Tyrrell

      The person named in Hawthorne’s novel is Powers. This may be a tongue-in-cheek reference to Robert Yelverton Tyrrell, who when Wilde was at Trinity had just been made professor of Latin there, at the age of 25. It is as though Wilde imagines for Miriam a slightly different tour of classical Italy and Greece than the one that Mahaffy was leading him on.

    6. renowned

      Wilde omits Hawthorne’s cutting commentary regarding whether sculptors’ renown—oft based on their fashionable appearance—would survive the widespread knowledge of the means of production of such sculptures.

    7. whitewash of the wall

      Wilde uses many of the elements of Hawthorne’s generic description of a sculptor’s studio and concretises it in this description of Kenyon’s studio before he arrives. Kenyon’s studio appears in the first instance a homosocial space, unlike Miriam’s solitary studio.

    8. The Sculptor's

      In Hawthorne’s original (as the visualisations show), Kenyon is the least-referred to of the four friends, and is often referred to as “the sculptor” instead of by his Christian name. Wilde puts greater priority on Kenyon as a character than Hawthorne, but continues the habit of referring to the character more or less equally as “the sculptor” or “Kenyon”. This duality of cognomens allies Kenyon with “the model” and “the Faun”, Miriam’s other male attendants.

    1. Heu Miserande Puer

      This poem about Keats was accompanied by a short article regarding Keats’ grave, which Wilde drew to the attention of several literary figures, including WM Rossetti, with a view to improving the memorials to Keats by way of a statue. That scheme was not encouraged by Wilde’s correspondents.

    1. might more easily combine personality with perfection

      Wilde had read Swinburne’s Essays and Studies when it was first published in 1875, and the combination of personality and perfection was one that stuck with him throughout his life and career.

    1. or else the story would be all conversation

      There is an increase in the dialogic quality of the novel as Wilde retells it. This remark echoes one by him to Beatrice Allhusen that Dorian Gray was “like [his] own life—all conversation and no action” because he “can’t describe action”. Interestingly, however, many of the visualisations of Hawthorne’s novels and their treatment of the Christian names of the characters indicate a dialogic focus, with the names most often associated with speech tags or punctuation relating to direct address.

    1. Satyrs

      This reference draws Wilde’s notice in his 24 April letter to Tafani, reproduced following this chapter.

    2. shade⁠

      Wilde changes Hawthorne’s “wretch” to “shade” here, emphasising the supernatural element of the guide’s story, as well as creating a starker contrast between the supposedly lost fellow and the sunshine that penetrates only the shallowest regions of the catacombs.

    3. The singular nature of Miriam’s model’s first appearance, and the way in which he had become one of Miriam’s train of followers, had little attracted Kenyon’s sympathies

      Wilde in this chapter bundles up two separate episodes of Hawthorne’s text. As the text proceeds, the direct structural linkages between Wilde’s novel and Hawthorne’s fall away, revealing a pattern entirely of Wilde’s own making. Here, his decision creates a greater link between Kenyon’s attitudes towards Miriam and her model, and the scene in the catacomb, than existed in Hawthorne’s work, strengthening the attachment between Miriam and Kenyon. The change also defers contemplation of Miriam’s “ambiguity” until after the events in the catacomb, increasing our sympathy with her.

    4. “Even from hour to hour, in canvas or in flesh” Miriam agreed.⁠

      There is a certain banal facticity about the changing appearance of painted figures as paints dry, both oil or watercolour. Miriam’s remark, Wilde’s addition, is suggestive of his only other novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the idea seems prioritised by Wilde’s decision to remove the remainder of Miriam’s remarks and attribute them to Hilda, leaving the comment as a conversational road not taken.

    5. “Quite so!” Miriam parried at the branches of the thicket once more. “For instance, a painter never would have sent down yonder Faun out of his far antiquity, lonely and desolate, with no sympathetic offering to the need to keep his simple heart warm. Ah, that poor Faun! I have been looking at him too long.” In truth, her eyes had barely left the Faun, even as the group had moved towards the Dying Gladiator. With a little gesture of impatience, she added, “Now, instead of a beautiful statue, immortally young, I see only a corroded and discoloured stone. This change is very apt to occur in statues.”⁠

      In this passage, Wilde takes various sections of dialogue and transfers them from one character’s mouth to another’s. This begins a long chain of authorial decisions in which Hawthrone’s characters are blended and transfigured, culminating in a fascinating character-switch towards the end of the novel.

    6. Chapter 2: The Model

      Again, Wilde’s merging of content from several of Hawthorne’s chapters leads to a structurally distinct way of understanding the tale; “The Model” combines “Subterranean Reminiscences” and “The Spectre of the Catacomb”.

    1. Kenyon

      Wilde changes the addressee here from Hilda to Kenyon, again suggestive of the reorientation of relations to come.

    2. cat⁠

      Hawthorne writes “dog”. The change is insignificant and whimsical, but also suggestive of Wilde’s different attitude to his characters.

    3. stands on the very edge of Nature, with both feet in it but his toes straining at the circle that bounds him

      Miriam repeats Kenyon's metaphor of the Faun both unveiled—at the very edge of Nature—and restrained.

    4. takes the pure image of a young man

      Wilde here eschews Hawthorne’s apologetics regarding the inadequacy of ekphrasis to capture the “magic peculiarity” of the sculpture. What follows echoes the short commentary of Wilde’s first letter to Tafani.

    5. New England

      Wilde jabs here, we may deduce, at Hawthorne himself, born in Massachusetts, whose novel Wilde interprets as overly certain and lacking in the romance and mystery of the Old World.

    6. touch

      Touch, rather than measurement, becomes “absolute” in Wilde’s version. It is the senses, rather than objective facts, that hold the final truth of any artefact.

    7. “Cunning a bust-maker as you think yourself, Kenyon,” the tall, dark-eyed young woman of the company said, “you must needs confess that you never freed from marble, nor wrought in clay, a more vivid likeness.

      Wilde again reorders, more than rewrites, Hawthorne’s original. Here, Miriam emphasises Kenyon’s self-image, as well as setting forth a strengthened theory of the mode of sculpture recovering, rather than producing, forms from marble.

    8. a pretty figure of a child contends with the symbols of Evil and Innocence, assaulted by a snake, but clasping a dove to her bosom

      Again, Wilde reorders the symbolism of Hawthorne’s rendition; the snake is here prioritised, and the dove of less importance. The insertion of a paragraph break here draws attention to the symbol of the Soul, inviting the reader to dwell on how it might “complete” the moment that the four friends inhabit.

    9. Chapter 1: Four Friends

      Wilde’s preferred title, for a chapter that blends material from Hawthorne’s “Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon, Donatello” and “The Faun”, helps solidify the affiliation between Donatello and The Faun: both form one of the four friends.

    1. preparing a canvas

      Wilde omits Hawthorne’s paean to the “feminine task” of needlework and places Miriam instead within the tradition of artists whose concern with their materials extends to all aspects of the artistic production.

    2. The windows were half-closed with shutters, leaving the far side of the room with a surfeit of light that could not seem to breach an invisible divide along the length of the room.⁠

      Hawthorne presented Miriam’s studio as always in a necessary sort of shadow, “the first requisite towards seeing objects pictorially”. Wilde rejects this description of artistic working conditions in favour of an implicit preference for light except where shadow may produce some particular effect in the expression of a sitter.

    3. that sculptor

      Wilde places Kenyon in Donatello’s place here in this visit to Miriam’s studio. The painting of Donatello’s portrait—with Kenyon present—occupies a latter position in the chapter, but the interposition of Kenyon both of the shifting relationships between the characters in Wilde’s novel and of a long-standing fascination for Wilde in the moment of production of art.

    4. fragments of antique statues, headless and legless torsos, and busts, pieces of marble and granite that have invariably lost one or two or more of their constituent parts

      In this passage, Wilde removes some of Hawthorne’s more hyperbolic descriptions, such as of an Egyptian sarcophagus holding “the rubbish of the courtyard”. In doing so, he blurs the supposedly generic description of an archetypal Roman palazzo with an actual description of Miriam’s home.