tychoish, now without a net

So, I decided to change the name of the TealArt blog again, as I’m sure you’re all aware. While I liked the firefly reference (You Can’t Take the Sky from Us”), and the cool grammatical insights of the newspaper like title (The Times of TealArt), the newest title is a reference to a class discussion I was part of earlier in the semester concerning “work in the generous sense.” Since then a few of my friends have taken this modifier, and used it whenever we are bending the meaning of a word a little more than perhaps is necessary for the sake of argument. Examples include: Activism in the generous sense, resistance in the generous sense, truth in the generous sense, women’s studies in the generous sense and so forth.

The thing is, that it makes sense for TealArt. I’ve owned the TealArt domain for more than five years at this point, and while I’ve grown quite fond of the color, I must say that the only reason I have the domain is that some fairly random person on a Greymatter discussion board gave it away for free. By this point, I think we are as much a part of it as it is of us. While I may have made allusions to being an artist (at least in the context of TealArt) at one point, I certainly don’t now. Art in the generous sense, indeed.

While the recent transition to word-press 1.5 necessitated a little redesigning, for the most part, TealArt has remained quite consistent over the past year. But I’d like to submit for your approval, a new banner. Nothing radical. Just a change. It’s about half the size of the current banner (kb wise, same visual size). It also uses a font derived from Jane Austen’s hand writing. How cool is that? Thanks to fellow blogger Neil (Gaiman).

Which one do you like more? I’ll orient the winner the right way when I decide, I’m partial to the second: I think the lines look confusing in the first.

Cheers, Sam

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We’ve been working on having some sort of mission statement as a way of demarcating and outlining our purpose as a way of giving us structure to work from.

So first off, we have Heather’s original mission statment from a few months back. (which yes, I did have to dig through months and months of lj archives.)

We’re going to be looking at feminist poetry, how it has evolved alongside post modern studies of identity, and how that in turn complicates its usefulness as activism. It’s also going to touch on the presence of radical lesbian feminist poets as theorists in the ‘second wave’ and their comparative absence in ‘third wave’ feminism / queer theory. What does it mean that our poets are no longer some of the dominant theorists? How does that impact theory / our identity as a movement? etc. We’ll probably have to narrow the scope of this project when it comes time to write our paper / (symposium?), but this is where we’re begining.

Now we have a more refined one that we’ve been working on this very morning…. (Mostly of Heather’s Creation)

This special project will examine selections of lesbian-feminist poetry from the ‘second wave’ to the ‘third wave’ / era of queer theory. We will examine how lesbian-feminist/ queer poetry has evolved (or in some cases, refused to evolve) alongside postmodern theories of identity, and how that in turn complicates its relationship to activism. What does it mean when our poets are no longer some of our dominant theorists? How does that impact theory / our identity as a movement?

Finally I took a hack it, and got this:

The rising popularity of postmodern identity theories within the feminist/queer movement, primarily in the academy, has had a profound impact on the ways in which poets align their work with identity categories. In that direction we are interested the deveoplment of “queerness” as a category in tension with iconic kind of lesbian-feminist. These questions force us to examine how feminist and queer oriented identity poetry has moved out of the academy, and ways that identity alignment is both reject and remains a driving framework for feminist and queer theory and poetry.

Then Heather (who came in to my room to use my long mirror, but I’ll pretend it was for the discussion) was like “great, but you know being historically prescriptive without actually researching it, isn’t really A GoodThing(tm), and I thought she had a really good point, so I’m going to change it some more:

The rising popularity of postmodern identity theories within the feminist/queer movement, primarily in the academy, has had a profound impact on the ways in which poets align their work with identity categories. In that direction we are interested in determining if the deveoplment of “queerness” as a category is actually in tension with the lesbian-feminist poet/theorist who has reached a semi iconic status within feminist and queer ‘political’ movements. Specifically, we seek to unpack the disavowal of identity alignment in contemporary poetry, complicate its rejection and see if and how identity alignment remains a driving framework for contemporary feminist and queer theory and poetry.

Now admittedly, I’m still a bit proscriptive here, but leave it too open, means it’s hard to get a good structure, and I think generally we know what’s going on, right now we need to having something to work with; it can always change later

Cheers, sam

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These are collaborative. It’s awesome. Just the kinds of issues that we’ve been thinking about, and the questions that we’ve thought about:

How has feminist oriented poetry changed in reaction to changing theoretical and ‘political’ trends; in particular, as second wave lesbian poetry and theory gave way to third wave/queer poetry and theory? How does identity continue to be an important and centering feature of feminist/queer poetry and theory in spite of, the problematic tendency of identity categories to privilege and essentialize arbitrary structures?

and…

• Historically, how has poetry been used within the feminist movement?
• How has the “I” of lesbian feminist /queer poetry evolved alongside and in response to post-modern theories of identity?
• What factors played into the prominence of lesbian-feminist poets during the second wave, and their comparative absence in the era of queer theory? (How was this change influenced by evolving notions of identity?)

More coming momentarily.

Cheers, sam and heather

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For those of you who don’t know I’m working on a special project with my next door neighbor and co-conspirtor. We had set up a livejournal community for this project, but quickly came to the conclusion that that wouldn’t be the right place for that. So I’ll offer you the little description I came up with when I made the category. And then we’ll get start postings really without much further ado.

I like having projects like this at TealArt, it makes the site useful in a practical sense, and I think it’s entertaining because you get to see a certain level of back and forth with our thought processes, and that’s cool. That’s why I think collaborative blogs rule, and why all of my independent blogging projects inevitably fall on their faces. So sit back, and if we seem to be starting in the middle, it’s because we are, Though I will attempt to mirror some content that I have lying around.

Home of Sam and Heather’s lovely Special Project! (Doesn’t “Special Project” sound secretive and scandalous? Oooh.) Basically the shtick is that we’re really intrested and amazed by the agency and creative power that identity and identity communities can provide people. We also have a great love for pre ‘third wave’ pre queer theory, feminisms and lesbian and gay studies (the discipline as a whole isn’t very good at chosing gramatically correct titles.) We’re asking questions about poetry, theory, identity, how the’ve been historically intertwined, and the shape that that connection takes in contemporary movement(s). This category will contain everything from summeries of articles that we read and feel as if they need to be indexted here, to larger guiding questions that we run into. We’ll also post, messages to ourselves. It will be grand. Some will be private, some will not. You’ll get to see our trains of thought. Enjoy!

Cheers!

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One Star Reviews.

This is really amazing. I mean really. Let’s call it, Literary Criticism in the Trenches.

Thanks Jeff for the link.

Enjoy Everyone!

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tagged: interwebs

What do you call a Freudian Slip, if it happens when you’re reading. A Freudian Shuffle? Because I don’t have the time or the energy to do better at this point, here are two recent textual slips/shuffles that I’ve made of late. I promise I’ll be back with real content at some point.

I was writing a paper about depression, but kept writing oppression instead.

Just now, I was reading a blog that mentioned “Delay” (as in the former house majority leader) which I totally read as “Delany,” as in Samuel R. Speaking of which, I need to add Delany material to my Amazon Wish-list (which I’m not going to link to here out of taste, but you can feel free to find it on your own.)

Cheers, Sam

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