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Fucking fucking fucking quotation marks fucking AAAARGH

  
  

Page: 12(3)

 
 
Linus Dunce
19:29 / 20.05.03
Well, actually, I was just having a bit of a laugh. And it was all very profitable in that I got a response, though I was disappointed by the tone. Do you really think I have never written, "So-and-so writes" or care which you use?
 
 
Cat Chant
19:41 / 20.05.03
Thanks, haus, interesting. (Sorry, am writing a chapter on techniques of reading which are going to link in with the lustrum as iterative practice of bounding (as opposed to once-and-for all moment of founding) Rome,* so the collocation of 'reading' and 'iterative' was irresistible. I like the virus thing as well.)

*why? why am I doing it? why?

Though I have the minor niggle that, as I was told by an EFL book last week, the perfect is a present tense in English, not a completed action in the past a la past simple ("I have lived in London for a year" vs "I lived in London for a year").

And Ignatius, re

Do you really think I have never written, "So-and-so writes" or care which you use?

I don't believe that Haus was drawing any inferences of belief about your practice as an embodied subject existing in time, who might have written things before or have an emotional policy determining whether you will write them in the future, I suspect he was just responding to the textual manifestation he had before him.

God, I'm tired. I'm going to bed.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:24 / 20.05.03
Dude, totally. Funnily enough, somebody is using the "I don't care about this really" gambit in the Head Shop right now as well.

Deva - was "bounding" a mistype of "founding", or am I missing something here? Sounds fascinating, mind - I've been reading Met.1 lately and trying to work out parallels between the presentation of the four aeva and the ktism and development of Rome - you have the quasi-founding of Aeneas, then Romulus, the kings, the republic, and the new Golden Age of Augustus - except of course it isn't a Golden Age in the Saturnian sense, but rather an alloy... the idea of Rome being constantly recast by - well, at first I thought rulers, but actually that doesn't really make sense. By representations?

Oh, and sleep well.
 
 
Linus Dunce
20:30 / 20.05.03
Hehe. Haus' lines, "if you're just going to get upset" doesn't really read to me as though he has the level of text/author disassociation you think he may. Neither does, "You're discussing style, Ignatius, and are more than welcome to do so." Haus says I am welcome to do so? Christ, what a relief.

And as for, "Don't tell me. Having gotten out of the right side of the bed, you and your beautiful girlfriend then went to see a real live tiger?" Well.

But here we are again ... frankly, I can't be arsed.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
22:53 / 20.05.03
Who knew there could be so much rage towards punctuation?
Have you ever met a subeditor? ROTHKOID PUNCTUATE!
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
22:59 / 20.05.03
Gosh. From wrong to rude. That happens so *rarely*.

Let's trace the paths, shall we?

"Actually, x."

"No, x."

"Well, even if not-x, I don't like not-x. So there."

"I never even cared about x in the first place."

"God, look at you lot, getting all bent out of shape about x. Saddoes."

"Taxi! To the tiger enclosure!"
 
 
Cat Chant
07:01 / 21.05.03
Ignatius - sorry, don't know what came over me. Suddenly seized by violent conviction that it was very wrong to present as writing as biographical subject in this context. Was very tired.

Haus - no, bounding - unless [sudden panic] the lustrum isn't that thing where you walk round the boundaries every five years? is surely iterative practice of boundary-purification in manner of 'beating the bounds'? (related to founding not only through a really ugly rhyme but also cf Romulus, founding as bounding, ie in order to found a thing you have to mark it off as an entity.)

You could relate rulers & representation via something like a master-signifier a la Lacan, or by things happening "under the sign of" Romulus/Aeneas/whoever (slightly astrological metaphor but I rather like it). Problem with the four aeva is at what point do you have to situate yourself in order to be able to draw parallels on such a cosmic scale - outside history? No longer governed by the sign of any of the four kings? ('fourkings' is a good word... oh God, I'm going away again.)
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:48 / 21.05.03
Forkings! Poke Romulus....with a fork!

Ahem. Sorry.

For some reason when I read "boundings", I thought of Tigger, and bouncing, rather than boundaries, so forgive my dull-wittedness there. Does one walk around the boundaries of Rome at the lustrum? I'm sure you're right. All I know about the lustrum is that they happened every five years, except when they didn't (they skipped one in the fifth and third centuries, didn't they?) and Augustus gets all boasty about how he called on in the cos. of M.Agrippa (Roman god of aqueducts) after, like, forty years, which would be more impressive if the general chaos and lack of census-taking weren't his bloody fault. Well, OK, not entirely, but he's an irritating man...

But girding sounds like a perfectly sensible thing to do - I'm sure you know more about it than I do, since (a) you're studying it and (b) I know absolutely beef about Roman history.
 
 
Ganesh
14:05 / 21.05.03
A real live bounding Tigger?
 
 
Jack Fear
15:21 / 21.05.03
To weigh in briefly on the "So-And-So writes..." vs. "So-And-So wrote..." question: I'd go with the present tense under the rationale that Art is long though Life is short, and, as a wise man says, "Hamlet will be stabbing Polonius and Charlie Chaplin will be eating his shoe long after your grandchildren have forgotten your name."
 
 
Linus Dunce
17:34 / 21.05.03
I like that Jack and, of course, it's true.
 
 
Cat Chant
18:00 / 21.05.03
Cool, we're still on what I wanted to talk about. Ignatius, can I ask you something about this, please?

Same for "Haus says" or "Haus argues." No he doesn't, unless he will live forever without changing his mind. He may well do, and I hope he enjoys it but, for me, Haus said, and Haus argued. Anything else is a newspaper headline or an academic affectation designed to make tilting against the contents of dusty, old books somehow contemporary, punchy, sassy and modern.

I'm supposed - as we speak, as it were - to be writing a chapter on aural and visual modes of apprehension of a written text, and I'm fascinated by your take on the present tense here as "an academic affectation designed an academic affectation designed to make tilting against the contents of dusty, old books somehow contemporary, punchy, sassy and modern". Because - and I might be wrong, but if, say, you wanted to refer to the Robbie Williams song "Angels" you wouldn't say "It's the one that went [bursts into song] 'urr urr urr, offers me proTECKshun, liddleloveanaFECKshun' etc", you'd say "It's the one that goes [etc]". The past tense there seems to me to be totally counterintuitive, even though, just as Haus said or argued at some point in the past, Robbie Williams sang the song once in the past. So maybe the academic use of "Haus argues" is annoying because it's miming an aural form of encounter and hijacking the connotations of copresence, immediacy, etc, that such aural (more obviously bodily - vibrations of air/eardrum, etc) encounters have?

Maybe I have stopped making sense forever. Again, going now.

Haus - re bounding & Tigger - did the Salii or "Jumping Priests Of Mars" take part in the lustrum? If so, we're both right.

And don't slag off Augustus, he's one of my imaginary boyfriends. [The deadest one.]
 
 
Cat Chant
19:11 / 21.05.03
More topically, I notice that if I don't think about it I default to using double quote marks, and punctuating speech as if it were a citation. I wonder why.
 
 
Linus Dunce
20:56 / 21.05.03
Deva -- I'm not sure I find it annoying, just one of those things that doesn't make sense if I think about it.

I think perhaps you are right, it may well be that it is an imprecise, though not necessarily aural, turn of phrase used in text that otherwise apparently strives to be exact. For example, we may write in the twenty-first century, "Marx writes that religion is 'spirit in a spiritless world,'" but probably not, "Marx reads away his days in the British Library." Why is that?

For lack of anything else to hand on holiday recently, I tried to read for the first time a Jackie Collins novel. "Christ," I thought, "the woman writes like some boorish, Tory housewife with an ill-founded reputation in her god-forsaken Surrey village for being a raconteur." Couldn't bear it -- far too many words and clever phrases. It wasn't the plot or the narrative structure but the style. It just wasn't "proper" novel writing for me. But then they aren't "proper" novels. (That reminds me of something else -- when I was at school, starting a sentence with "but" was looked down upon. However, "however" was OK.) And that's it I think -- just as we expect businessmen to wear suits and hookers to wear fishnets, we expect text to have "the look" as well. Which I'm OK with, except academic writing pretends to be above that sort of thing.

And, though I haven't written about them before, quotation marks. Again, they have to look the part. If we are trying to come across as English and proper, we use singles. If we just don't care or have one eye on the rest of the world's typesetting practises, we use double, right? What makes the English version correct, given that so many people go the other way? We can hardly claim, like we do with so much else, that history is very much on our side.
 
 
Cat Chant
21:14 / 21.05.03
Is it "imprecise" to say that the Robbie Williams song "goes" a certain way, though? Because to me, to say that it "went" to a particular tune, say, suggests that it might "go" to a different tune now, which is clearly not true.

This book has ten chapters, and is red.

This book says that men are from mars and women are from venus.

Is there a difference?

Sorry, I'm obsessed with this now. When does the present tense work and why?
 
 
Linus Dunce
21:46 / 21.05.03
Yes, you've got me going as well.

I think the Robbie Williams tune goes a certain way, but that Robbie went a certain way when he recorded it.

And the book does still say that men are from Mars etc. But if that "John Gray, PhD" mofo comes round here I will give him such a slap he will repent and make sure everyone knows it was something he used to say. :-)
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
22:01 / 21.05.03
I deal with this 'said/says' dilemma all the time, and it is at the forefront of my mind because I am revising my dissertation paper at the moment. This is an immensely depressing process, and is doing little but illustrate the sad fact that I am incapable of writing elegant prose.

Anyway, my point is that I automatically use the past tense for everything except discussions of the content of a work (sucha s a pamphlet). So I always write, 'Johnston's notorious pamphlet, The Dear Bargain, was used as a source by many Jacobite controversialists.' And I always write, 'In The Dear Bargain, Johnston says that the intention of the Dutch is to enslave the English...' But, 'It was said, in Hollandophobic pamphlets such as The Dear Bargain, that the intention of the Dutch was to enslave the English.'

Perhaps this is because, as Haus has suggested, my reading of (and interlocution with) the pamphlet takes place in my present (I am recounting its contents for the benefit of my reader), whereas my analysis of its meaning takes place in my past (I have concluded that such-and-such is the case) and I am presenting it as a finished process... or something.
 
 
Linus Dunce
22:20 / 21.05.03
It could be so, Kit-Cat, but I'm thinking, prompted by Deva, that there may be more to it. Is it something in the hooman bwain that makes us talk of Robbie as if he himself sings every time we play his CD? Anyone know what happens in other languages?
 
 
Cavatina
03:33 / 23.05.03
Deva: When does the present tense work and why?

I think it's an interesting question, and would need to take into consideration use of the present tense *without* reference to a specific time -- of stative and dynamic verbs associated with 'universal time' and 'habitual time'. For example, 'Two and two make four'; 'rotten potatoes smell vile' (stative verbs); 'the sun sets in the west every day'; 'I drive my car to work every day' (dynamic verbs).

Regarding the comment --

... for me, Haus said, and Haus argued. Anything else is a newspaper headline or an academic affectation designed to make tilting against the contents of dusty, old books somehow contemporary, punchy, sassy and modern.

-- I think that here Ignatius pinpoints the important idea that frequently the present tense does more than simply signal time relationships in the textual world being created. It also cues the relationship of the communicative situation to that world.

So, for instance, 'Sir James Entwhistle Dies.' as a newspaper headline actually means that Sir James has just died -- i.e. it signals *past* time, but draws attention to the recency and newsworthiness of the event. Present tense can also signal past time but assist in initiating or negotiating dialogue in some contexts as in 'Mary says you want to talk to me'. This use of simple present with past time reference is in fact very common with 'communication' verbs such as tell, hear, write, learn, say, argue etc. and *not only* in academic writing. I'd argue that it performs a valuable function in everyday exchanges. For example, if I say 'Haus tells me that that line is from Virgil's Aeneid' (rather than 'Haus told me that ... ') I'd do so in the hope of prompting further information.

Think also of the communicative contextual/speech genre work done by the simple present in statements like:

'Ignatius passes the ball to Haus' (sports commentaries)
'I now place the lobster in boiling water' (cooking demonstrations)
'Here comes the winner!' (exclamations -- events/occasions)
'I acknowledge your letter of ...' (performative declarations)

In similar vein, sometimes we use the past tense as a form of politeness, of humility or tentativeness, rather that to indicate time relationship. 'I was wondering if you could help me with this' is a case in point.

In English ( and other languages) we frequently use adverbs if we want to be really precise about time relationships per se.
 
 
Cavatina
23:36 / 28.05.03
Ignatius: Is it something in the hooman bwain that makes us talk of Robbie as if he himself sings every time we play his CD?

Ahem. So to conclude my two cents worth (as usual, long after any interest in the topic has has vanished) ... I think that if we say 'how does that tune go?' or 'Robbie sings it like ...', we're simply using these verbs in the stative/'habitual time' way to suit the situational context. Of a particular gig or occasion, however, we might use the past and say 'Oh he sang it differently'.
 
 
alas
03:54 / 29.05.03
I'm going to the death on this one.

Anyway, my point is that I automatically use the past tense for everything except discussions of the content of a work (sucha s a pamphlet). So I always write, 'Johnston's notorious pamphlet, The Dear Bargain, was used as a source by many Jacobite controversialists.' And I always write, 'In The Dear Bargain, Johnston says that the intention of the Dutch is to enslave the English...' But, 'It was said, in Hollandophobic pamphlets such as The Dear Bargain, that the intention of the Dutch was to enslave the English.'

Perhaps this is because, as Haus has suggested, my reading of (and interlocution with) the pamphlet takes place in my present (I am recounting its contents for the benefit of my reader), whereas my analysis of its meaning takes place in my past (I have concluded that such-and-such is the case) and I am presenting it as a finished process... or something.

I think the first part is right--reading as an iterative process, always in the present, and what Jack Fear said about the life of art always being in the present. Lora Romero is a dead scholar, but she still "argues that blah blah blah." But the other two examples listed (and I know you were tired!) are actually in passive voice, as well, which I think muddies the waters slightly. Let me try it in active voice: "Jacobite controversialists used Johnston's . . ." and "Hollandophobic pamphlets, like 'The Dear Bargain,' suggested that it was the intention of the Dutch to enslave the English." In both cases, the past tense is appropriate because rather than being interpretations of text (always present), your sentences are now narratives of historical actions/ events, which may include textual actions/ events.

History is always narrated in the past tense, no? And it's tempting to use a lot of passive voice in historical narrative because it is a rhetorical device designed to promote (an illusion of?) objectivity--perspectiveless writing: "George W. Bush's presidency was punctuated by statements that were lampooned as 'idiotic' by those whose brains had not been entirely addled by corporate-dominated media."

Quoting conventions brought to you by the MLA Handbook, fyi. Which, I believe, would required that The Invisibles be underlined, as a title. I think.

Ok, now *I'm* going to bed.
 
  

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