my virtual notebook

Sick & busy-not a good combination....

I'm sick...that's what I get for actually thinking out loud about not having been sick in a while....and this is not a cold but a strange little flu--not much sniffling, but weird and quite severe body ache and fatigue...I AM already getting better--the pattern is that I feel worse at night, but I have found a med that helps with the pain and so I am doing better overall.

One main difference between a flu and a cold--the loss of appetite! Seriously I could never have eaten as little as I have today if I were feeling better! (I have eaten, just not very much).  

What being sick does it that it forces me to prioritize -- and this week that means two things: send the article out and get ready to teach! I am progressing slowly on both fronts--tomorrow I will finalize course prep in between naps.  And regarding the article--I need to generate a works cited list and fix the formatting, and perhaps address some of the issues Ian raised, they are all extremely thought-provoking and will I think make the paper better in the end.  I am so grateful to have gotten this input at this stage.  But I might - for health reasons- just have to send it out without having addressed all the issues....at this stage sending it out is taking precedence.

After that I'm going to dive into the book review that is due by the end of January, and the MArie Sibylle Merian project looms....Apparently her most well-known book was originally published in Dutch. Hmmm. (She lived in Amsterdam). 

Progress report

Slowly editing the article, changing things around, tightening up the writing. Tomorrow I want to go back and look at the other theoretical texts I want to make references to in the article, which include an article on the “Ethics of Self-Fashioning, which makes specific references to Foucault and Rorty and their concepts connected to this topic (aesthetics of existence, technologies of self, the “strong poet”) which means I have been looking at various texts by those two—specifically Foucault’s late essay on “Technologies of Self” where he elaborates on the idea of “self-care” and some chapters Rorty’s book Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, plus other texts coming at the whole thing from a Feminist “Life-Writing/Autobiography perspective. (There is a whole slew of texts out there that deal with the issue of “Foucault and Feminism”, a few of which I have looked at).

 

Still not entirely sure how I will bring these in—I might leave the Rorty out, but some mention of Foucault will be made—I do refer once to Greenblatt’s introduction.

 

An earlier incarnation of this article was going to focus more overtly on issues in von Arnim relating to “the female/gendered body” before I got caught back up in issues of subjectivity/self—of which the body seemed to be a sub-topic.

 

I also need to get cracking on Spring course prep…

Today

Today: Up, shower, breakfast, New Years call to sister, blog, professional membership renewal, article editing (what I’m doing is reading through the article and checking to see that I really do what I say am going to do) and as I read I am also seeing where I need to add stuff, especially theory references or a reference to a secondary source, lunch, on-line shopping, procrastinating & Foucault, dinner, “Our Mutual Friend” (bbc), chores, blog and bed.

 

Tomorrow: more work on article—I should work out, write reference letters.

Here's an abstract of the article (from which I will extract a presentation for the 2009 NEMLA in Boston).  I'm probably going to change the title, since I'm not even sure I will use the snippet from Bettine that was its inspiration (she climbs up a tree and has deep thoughts)

Going out on a Limb:

       Eccentric Self- Representation in Bettine von Arnim’s Epistolary Memoirs

 

In her epistolary memoirs, 19^th Century German woman writer Bettine von Arnim created a fictional, aesthetic version of herself that allowed her to reframe her own past,  thereby allowing her greater control over her identity in the present. By creatively re-writing and re-creating the world she once inhabited, von Arnim not only constructed an alternative life but she also, to paraphrase Helene Cixous’  “put herself into the text—[…] by her own movement.”  In this sense her first three published books represent a specific form of textual emancipation. As Walter Schmitz states: “Im Freiraum der Bildung entwarf Bettine ein eigenes Wunschleben.”

In this paper I would like analyze how this projection of a female Wunschleben constructs subjectivity in general, as well as the individual subject of its main protagonist. Recent work by Ulrike Landfester has established a clear connection between von Arnim’s literary and social project and a Platonic notion of self-care. (Selbstsorge) In this presentation I would like to draw attention to motifs I see as complementary to the notion of self-concern, namely those of self-revelation and self-confession. ( Selbstenthüllung / Selbstentblößung). Throughout her first three published works we see the Bettine character both literally and metaphorically unveiling herself on numerous occasions.  Publicly “revealing” herself through her writing can be understood as both an act of self-creation and self-fashioning. By uncovering herself in public through her writing, to what extent was she actually creating a new and different type of public persona? And how can such self-revelatory moments be linked to a concept of Romantic self-fashioning.

Research thoughts and a link to Wilhelm Dilthey

Wilhelm Dilthey infos can be found at that site... (I'm getting back into the research/writing of my 2007 article--it was going to be on embodiment in Bettine von Arnim's works, but I'm drifting away from issues of embodiment--now I'm more focused on/ interested in issues pertaining to the textual self -- what is its relationship to the non-textual self? - of course this is Bettina von Arnim's textual self so issues of gender will also be pertinent.

And in the on-going game of "six degrees of seperation from Bettina von Arnim" it turns out Dilthey was heavily influenced by none other than Friedrich Schleiermacher--who was of course very good buddies with Bettina...

Tuesday, 03/20/07 My books for the new paper: Project 365: #141

Tuesday, 03/20/07: Project 365: #141 
Originally uploaded by cathie.

I'm still slogging away at this paper: I've presented it twice and am now transforming it (slowly slowly) into a publishable article. The focus may be moving away a bit from "female embodiment" and towards issues of agency and autonomy, but the feminist stuff will still play a role.

Hemlock/Schierling

I'm working hard on my new paper describing the way in which Bettine von Arnim depicts a poeticised version of her own body in her epistolary memoirs and the repercusssions of that depicition. (Notoriety, a tendency to not be taken seriously etc...) Here are some links's from Wikipedia about Hemlock/Schierling.  Von Arnim, describes this version of herself wandering through a wood at night and taking a hemlock leaf and pressing it to her lips...I'm not sure how dangerous it would really be to do this, or whether it is merely another example of the Bettine figure "flirting with disaster" - which probably would have been a snappier title for my paper....oh well maybe thats what I'll call the article!

Schierlingsbecher

Schierling

Hemlock/Conium

On the way to the Albion College library: project 365 #44

n
Taken on Tuesday, December 12, 2006.

Not much to say about this one. I was on my way to pick up some MelCat  (regional interlibrary loan) books and some films to preview for my German film course. The campus has emptied out and everything is very quiet...

Research links

Clemens Brentano (English wiki entry)

And here's the German entry.  I haven't checked how good these are yet.  The German wiki entry on Bettina von Arnim is not good-one day if I get a chance I should improve it.

Link

Joseph Görres

looks interesting

Women and nature