Tuesday, November 25, 2008

pretext. He himself declared, as we

One is thus inaugurating another word, in sum, a homonym that must be put forward cautiously between quotation marks. Another word-concept is thus staged whose event one causes to come about.”16

Whereas Sontag concerns herself with how quotation marks make camp, or camp the quotidian, Marjorie Garber, in her essay “ “ ” (Quotation Marks),” highlights authenticity as a central problem for quotation. Garber notes that “paradoxically … quotation marks, when either written or spoken, can convey both absolute authenticity and veracity, on the one hand, and suspected inauthenticity, irony or doubt, on the other.” 17

The crowd to her, so
many marks

*

Individious

*

“Fabulous, fabulous”

*

If smoothness is to be a criteria
Then you’re definitely inferior

The researchers quoted prominent jazz critics, such as Barry Ulanov, in support of the thesis that the musicians’ supposed lack of training in moral philosophy and the liberal arts contributed to their “immaturity and disorganization.”4 Moreover, displaying extreme naivete concerning black musicians’ access to white media, the two scholars maintain that the jazz musician was “relatively illiterate in respect to the verbal expression of his own art … the musician has remained silent and allowed others to do the talking for him,” thereby colluding in his own isolation from the world.

Up until then, everything had been for me one of a kind. I could not conceive of different examples of the same thing existing simultaneously in more than one place at once. Thus in my dream, all bananas belonging to the class of bananas had had to be contiguous. Bananas existed at my behest and without that there could be no place for them. Annie Sullivan expresses concern in one of her letters about my number obsession:
June 12, 1887
I am teaching Helen the square hand letters as a sort of diversion. It gives her something to do, and keeps her quiet, which is desirable while this enervating weather lasts.

Zygogynum trees produce many flower buds, but only a few open each day. Consequently one small tree may remain in flower for months, despite the fact that each blossom lives no more than two days. This is a common flowering strategy of many tropical trees, as we saw in chapter 1. Each flower usually has two rings of stiff petals. The petals of some species have a pinkish tinge while others are yellowish-orange or a deep burgundy.

The pollen-making stamens and seed-making carpels live together in the same Zygogynum flower, but they mature at different times…. By isolating the sexual organs from each other in this way, Zygogynum trees avoid accidental self-pollination.

In the 1920s, Blue Tit birds in Southhampton learned to tear the tops off milk bottles and drink the cream inside. Soon, Blue Tit birds more than a hundred miles away were exhibiting the talent -- even though the birds rarely flew more than fifteen miles -- and by 1947, the habit was universal among the species. This owed to morphic resonance, a collective memory held within a planet’s morphogenetic field, and passed on to each new generation of life. The same effect was witnessed in monkey creatures four million years in the future, on the planet Endarra.814


*****

1 - Jennifer DeVere Brody, Punctuation: Art, Politics, and Play. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2008.

2 - Charles Bernstein, The Sophist. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon, 1987.

3 - George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

4 - Madeline Gins, Helen Keller or Arakawa. Santa Fe: Burning Books, 1994.

5 - Peter Bernhardt, Wily Violets and Underground Orchids: Revelations of a Botanist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

6 - Lance Parkin, Ahistory: An Unauthorized History of the Doctor Who Universe (2nd Edition). Des Moines IA: Mad Norwegian Press, 2007.


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