I do not have time to work on POV and I have to store the notes I'll need when I can get to the manuscript.
"Visions of the Northern Mind" also needs its own organization, the course is new (special topics) and asks for a place in the field of film studies.
Third, my own reflections (side-thinking)...
[ Also, as I said somewhere, I need to take some issues out of the classroom -- take a look what happened to Realism Page in script.vtheatre.net directory! ]
600 Notes, Quotes & Thoughts
[ written and read somewhere in the past ]
"The film will be approached as a process. And the process will be seen as one of integration--of a multiplicity of levels, matters, qualities, and movements, each of which retains a certain autonomy as a distinct stratum at the same time as entering into composition with the others to form a totality. What distinguishes a process of structuration from the realization of structure as understood by psychoanalysis is that in the latter the instantiation of the constituent elements is preceded by their totality, if only an imaginary one (one all the more insistent for being imaginary). The elements are nothing outside of the totality, which they in turn instantiate as splitting (one all the more inescapable for being symbolic). In a structuration, elements are not fully subsumed in their failed totality. The totality comes after, and in addition to, its constitutents, as an excess effect (reflection) of their differential relating. That effect is both real and impossible. Real because it expresses an integration of actual levels, matters, qualities, movements; impossible because this expression unifies what is by nature multiple (as opposed to split). The unifying expression is self-expiring, and leaves two remainders: Its constituents, again, in their diversity, in other words minus one, minus the vehicle of unification (the autonomy of the constituent, resurfaced; post-apocalyptic survival of the different). And the likelihood of its own repetition (the once-and-for-all, or the one-for-all, turned automatism; the one-after befored; by force, not by imagination). The survival, or residual autonomy, of the constituent elements expresses something besides: the potential for any and each of them to be -- in addition to (in-under or in the trees) -- the point of departure for other differential relatings, other integrations, leading elsewhere (deflection) than murderous totality. Just as really and impossibly ... (Massumi pp.110-111)
[ I have to work on this new bar "topics" I am placing everywhere -- the wrong subjects! I have to take another pomo approach... ]
"West" -- Final Reterritorization
The biggest loser of the end of the century wasn't the Soviet Union or communism, it was Europe. The American Age finally conquered the Old World culturally. America even apropriated the name "West" which in European values system had no much power.
Insisting on being "Western" is an indication that America never was truly European culture, more so -- the break away from the culture, which nowadays commonly called "western civilization." America is a product and rejection of the European modernity. The idea of the American West is something which never could be born in city-centered mind of an European. Why not to call it anti-European? Yes, the same way we recognize the anti-European spirit in communist doctrine. "Globalism" is not European concept; maybe, imperialism or colonialism, but Europe was always Europe, separate from the rest of the world (very much similar to the ancient Greek mentality).
1968 was that year, the summer of agony. Not anti-war or anti-nuclear protests, but anti-"American" war (the Vietnam war was a "new" war in its nature, never declared, when the civil war was turn into American war, because America never knew borders, never understood European craving for national culture, limited and self-contained).
When I look back at the sixties I know that the "freedom" I have today is not what we wanted. What I have is "American" freedom, which Europe never envied. It's freedom from, instead of freedom-within. I wanted my freedom within my culture, not outside of it. The biggest sorrow I have realizing that American Freedom is not a rejection of Russian, French of German culture, but the culture of cultural rejection. Instead of planning a "new" culture a la communist utopian dreams, America does it. That was the time, when the two USA and USSR clashed in their competition for post-European one world.
The war is over. So called "Western Europe" is a part of America. Europe killed herself in two world wars -- why didn't they fight their European wars, as they did it for centuries...
What about those NEW American (global in nature) values?
First, this American notion of "democracy"... Totalitarian Freedom, Dictatorship of Freedom, when I am forced to be free. I am not required to seek and fight for my freedom, I have no choice, but to be "free"!
What about my need for dependency, loyalty, attachment to "mine"? I didn't want to be free by leaving Russia, I wanted my freedom within my family...
Listen, American values are never family values, but of a single soul.
600 Notes & Links :
Philosophy of Film
... How could they write about others? I can't even imagine what I feel!
It was written a century ago. No, a millennium!
"...let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident." 1984. Thomas Jefferson to Ebenezer Hazard, Philadelphia, February 18, 1791. In Thomas Jefferson: Writings: Autobiography, Notes on the State of Virginia, Public and Private Papers, Addresses, Letters, edited by Merrill D. Peterson. New York: Library of America
... ghosts of the past. What about ghosts of future?
