Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Nonsense and Insensibility

This is post 18 of Section III. To begin at the beginning, go here. Section II begins here. Section III begins here.

Bennett retreated to his study. He opened a volume on Jane Austen. She was a favorite of his, and integral to his study of pastoralism and the nation-state, but he had a feeling that this critical tome, Undoing Jane Austen: Non-Sense and Post-Semiotic Sensibility, would do little to enhance his appreciation. Indeed, he had been putting it off for weeks. “Introduction,” he read cautiously, and then continued . . .

This work is predicated on the premise, now widely accepted, that “Jane Austen” operates within the semiotics of postmodern Western (and by imperialist extension, global) culture as at once a symbol of the hegemonic norms of British imperialism, and, through the heterosexualist conspiracies of her plots and their various perpetuations (in films, “critical editions,” etc. . . . ) as a naturalizing fetish of Western romance, or rather, the naturalized power relations purporting to operate as “romantic” signifiers within the imperialist, heterosexualist matrices of the postmodern West.

Bennett slammed the book shut, his stomach churning like the writer’s prose. He heard Chloe and Lizzy come in.
“Do we have to?” Lizzy was whining.
“Come on. He owes us this,” Chloe said grimly, and a moment later she presented herself and daughter in the doorway of Bennett’s study.

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4 Comments:

Blogger Doug The Una said...

Thanks for the insight into the reading of scholars. The next line's going to be "Dad, we have to talk" isn't it? My skin's crawling in sympathy.

9:57 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

To the extent that it's saying anything, it's saying that Jane Austen is just a tool for oppressing people with Western culture and prescribed sexual roles.

10:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Chuckling at the "erudite verbosity" of that Austen paragraph. It fits your story.

9:49 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks. And it's not far from reality, unfortunately.

12:06 PM  

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