Submission Requirements

Submit your complete collection of blogs (one for each session, plus a concluding blog) in hard copy to the School Office on Friday 13th January if you are full-time, or Monday 16th January if you are part-time.

Final Session

The final session covers this blockbuster of a read, Dos Passos's USA. You should not fear the length, for the format is such that the text is split up in to many semi autonomous elements - biographies, newspaper clippings, and poetic description as much as the novelistic drama- so you can almost dip in. Wherever you do dip, I can assure you of likely tragedy unfolding on the page, beautifully but unconventionally written.

This volume ends, yet also in a way grounds our previous investigations, for here you have it; a new nation, a new century, a new technology, and a new population, and their adventure, all in one book. You will find the recurrent image of capitalism as inherently tragic unfold in now familiar terms, simply because you have encountered so much subsequent material, and hopefully you will see, in context, perhaps suddenly, both the incongruity of Ayn Rand, and the essential efforts of Eagleton, along with much more.

Monday28th & Friday 2nd

We are nearly at the end of the road, and will take on modernism via two popular texts, the novel Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh and the film 'The Fountainhead' by Ayn Rand. Although this blog is very late, I think I've hopefully flashed these items around enough for you to know.
Hopefully it's not difficult for you, in your ingenuity, to download the Fountainhead film. As a side benefit, it is hilariously funny for such a high minded melodrama so worth the money.

An Apology and Notes

Once more I am indisposed. I've had a nasty relapse. Of course I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired, but there's nothing I can do but program this virtual session for Friday 25th November.

Your task, over the time of the session but with a deadline of 7pm Friday, is to submit to me via e-mail your post on Ginsberg and Burroughs. You can use your own laptops or the computer room, and I'll be asking Mathew to set up the computer in VG11 at 3pm to this blog.

There follow some notes below which would mirror those I'd use tomorrow, plus some additional YouTube sites that I encourage you to look at together (nominate somebody to operate the computer) that show Archigram at their most feisty. Simply tap in to the YouTube search 'Archigram' 'ICA' 'David Greene' then try the archigram, ICA plus 'Mike Webb' and as many others from the series as you like. Hopefully you will see some correspondence with Burroughs as you watch this rather strange even unfold.

This is a week where we deal in total alternatives, extreme rejection of the 'normal'. You might ask your self what brings this on in terms of physical and cultural context (cars, drugs, jazz, electricity, Senetor McCarthy, sexual repression, The Bomb, wealth, parents, DH Lawrence, Jackson Pollock and so on) you might ask your self what such expression means to you now, is Glastonbury the same as it used to be? Do people get high to reach a state of higher consciousness....or not? Essentially these are the questions I want you to broach in your blog.

I wonder to how many of you this kind of material feels totally foreign?

I will be reading all the blogs you send in from my armchair, under half a blanket, and will provide feedback.

Best

Paul

Session VI

Howl

The texts this week are the poem Howl and William Burrough's 'The Job'. 'The Job' is a compilation of material, so it can be skimmed for the salient issues. Burroughs of course, does not hold back. The issues we will be addressing are those of 'the machine' (both physical and metaphorical) and paranoia, plus of course, the sixties revolution in general.

Session V

Henri Lefebvre's approach to 'social space', a term we continually abuse, deserves repeated reading. Where with Goethe's Faust, we see the transcendental nature of man, the powers he can employ and abuse, as central to a 'tragedy of development' here Lefebvre attempts a more materialist analysis of compromise and ambiguity, starting with a discussion of the difference between a work and a product. When you read this piece, it might be a good idea to watch Gardeners World or Autumn Watch, followed by Grand Designs, since while you note they appear to employ the same language, that of things being 'beautiful' it should be clear to you that a 'beautiful' petunia is not the same as a 'beautiful' kitchen. Lefebvre would undoubtedly be startled by contemporary kitchen design, with it's inherent division of labour, it's obsession with hygiene and invisibility, of the relationship between the 'natural' food stuff and and the artificially satisfying 'clunk' of a drawer, the exacerbation of the perfection in the machine.

Next week

I think I shall be well enough to hold next weeks session in person! I'm very sorry that since my inconvenient hospitalization, recovery has not been as fast as I would have liked. Please make every effort to read the Berman text, and those of you thinking ahead get hold of Henri Lefebvre's 'The Production of Space', refering specifically to the chapter 'Social Space'.