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Why tell this story in a graphic form? Why in a digital form? Can you think about either of those questions in relation to a passage or graphic from the narrative?

How would you describe Ahmed's use of graphic and comic book form to tell the story of asylum seekers at Villawood?

What does this mean, and how does Kincaid's use of language respond to this conception of it?

"The Antigua that I knew" -- What are the differences between the use of the first person in this section and the second person in the previous section? How might they operate together?

End of reading for Nov 17, 2020

End of reading for Nov 12, 2020

which war

Suddenly Julius realizes he has subconsciously connected Farouq's face with one from a film. He describes this act as "reading" his face. Where else do you read after-effects of lingering and resonating impressions in the text? Is there some sort of similar effect when words from a passage repeat in another passage?

Here is a reference to the title. What does this explanation mean for our understanding of the novel?

What is special in this scene about communing in wordlessness? For a novel, a work made of words, what kind of challenge does the idea of wordless connection pose? On the one hand, many things can be concealed in silence. On the other, a wordless connection can trespass boundaries of language or other divisions, such as Julius's with his unfamiliar German grandmother.

It takes some time in the novel before we meet our narrator by name. How does its being withheld until this point affect our relationship with the narrator?

"The ability to trace out a story from what was omitted" - this seems like a useful reading practice, especially since the narrator attributes the lesson to an English professor. How might the narrator elsewhere be tracing out a story based on omissions? How might the novel ask us to also listen for its omissions?

For 10/15: pp. 1-37

For 10/20: pp. 38-76

For 10/22: pp. 77-116

For 10/27: pp. 117-151

For 10/29: pp. 152-196

For 11/5: pp. 197-135 / end

End of reading for 11/5/2020

End of reading for 10/29/2020

End of reading for 10/27/2020

End of reading for 10/22/2020

End of reading for 10/20/2020

End of reading for 10/15/2020

"I'm your memory!" By calling herself his memory, what claim is Mrs. Gresham making on Dr. Kerry? On a figurative level, she is self-identifying as a metaphor - not as a person but as Dr. Kerry's past. If we take this to be a metaphor of the play's, in what ways might the "memory" that her character embodies be a version of history that is haunting and difficult to shrug off?

Nkosi deploys many stereotypes and cliches in the play. Here, Mrs. Gresham uses hostile language that reduces Dr. Kerry to a racial identity ("Just because you're black") and uses it to make an accusation against him ("you think you can get away with murder"). How would you describe a line such as this one; what sort of social script is Mrs. Gresham reciting?

"Your teacher must have been a good woman to share everything with you. No, Margaret said, surprised. She was not good. She was rich. She kept on throwing things away. I used to feel myself catching them, and that is how I learned."

If the teacher was rich but not good, and Margaret describes her way of learning from her as catching what she threw away, what is the range of what the teacher's wealth consisted in? How do these reflections respond to Dikiledi's questions about how Margaret learned to draw? What does Margaret express in drawing?

What kind of language do these voices speak? Speaking of tomorrow, it is a kind of prophecy. What sort of prophecy? How might it be comprised not only of religious and moral elements but also creative?

"Creative imagination he had in over-abundance. Moleka had none of that ferment, only an over-abundance of power. It was as though Moleka were split in two - he had the energy but someone else had the equivalent gifts of Maru's kingdom: creative imagination."

What is creative imagination? In what sense does Maru or Margaret have it? This description of Moleka being split in two with Margaret (as well, the description below of Moleka's sun and Maru's moon) seems to be an incredible formulation of creative imagination. In the above sentence, there is Moleka, and there is the simile of what his inner kingdom is like. Perhaps it is this creative mode of metaphor that opens the doors (that is another metaphor in these pages) of understanding other people, which Maru finds himself able to do.

How does this idea of books compare with the kind of book Head is writing?

What do you think is the role of definition in the social matrix of this novel, and how does Head push against it?

Do you see places where Khapil "expand[s] the image environment"? How might that happen in the form of the poem?

"I am writing this spell." How is Khapil's language performative (here or elsewhere)? What might the poem/spell be performing and for whom or how?

Here Manto gives the young men a line of dialogue. Its tense is the future simple. What are the valences of that choice, given its place in the course of the story or the past tense of the story?

This is a spoken command, from the doctor to the father. What other meanings does it seem to have? (There are a range of ways to think about it.)

I love it! In terms of the queer potential of touching (digital) data, what is the difference between abstracting and processing data?

What is in trouble? Perhaps heteronormativity?

This is good

This, and the rest of the paragraph, is exciting!

What is the difference between data that is abstract because it is digital and data that we perceive "directly"? Is analogue the obverse of digital? I start to get confused, for example, is analogue then not queer?

So interesting!

Can subjectivity ever be engaged with directly?

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Why are the clothes white that Delia washes? Is it symbolic? It seems to resonate with the imagery of purity, since she is washing and on Sunday she goes to church. She washes on Sunday night too. We learn that in the first paragraph. A few paragraphs above here, we also learn, from Sykes, that she is washing for "white folks." Race is part of her occupation. So the description of the clothes is complex. Sykes is undermining Delia's work! By stepping on the "whitest pile," he makes her work that much harder. He seems to be fighting her by targeting the fact that she works and her subordinate position to white people.

ANNOTATION FROM JULIETTE:

The character describes how he is constantly living with the fear that he will be possibly be a victim of cannibalism. When reading this, I thought the character himself was very odd and delusional mainly due to the way he would often describe his surroundings as well as different individuals he meets or walks by in the street. Often times, when someone smiles at you, it is seen as a kind gesture and something heartwarming, however, his reaction and perception of a smile was completely different. From this, it seems that his mindset was very distinctive from a common individual; it seemed that all individuals whom he meets or sees are to be blamed for being a cannibal (even his own brother).

This is a strange line! It is clearly figurative, in that it is a series of similes, "like" comparisons, with the word "as." But WHO is savage as a lion, timid as a rabbit, or crafty as a fox? In contrast with this sentence, in most of the short story it is unclear whether the meaning is figurative (somehow symbolic) or literal, and that very tension is important! We cannot easily believe the cannibalism is real, since the narrator is unreliable in his exaggerated rationalizations. On the other hand, we can't dismiss it, for the "madman" seems to understand when he describes cruelties. So, how might cannibalism be allegorical? This explicitly metaphoric line, "savage as a lion, timid as a rabbit..." suggests that cannibalism is an allegory for savage and timid social relations. But between whom? How might we understand the claim that people are being 'eaten up' in society, in the social contexts that the story insinuates?

Date of publication for the English translation from German (1979).

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