Category Archives: Uncategorized

Spectatorship

Posted on February 21, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Dionne Brand in a piece in Brick: a literary journal (Winter 2005, Number 76) writes of women and boxing, women in the ring and in the crowds. In a set of remarks following the description of an outburst from the … Continue reading →

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Smaller for longer

Posted on February 20, 2007 by Francois Lachance

The little red book of quotations from Chairman Mao provides an excerpt from On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People The only way to settle questions of an ideological nature or controversial issues among the people is by … Continue reading →

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Signature Exhortation

Posted on February 18, 2007 by Francois Lachance

For a while I incorporated a catchphrase in my signature block for email messages: connect sometimes by disentangling I blew it up and produced a printout and tacked it to the wall as a kind of sampler since it deserved … Continue reading →

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Objects of Mind, Objects of Language

Posted on February 17, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Just in case you didn’t think that words are objects. How can language acquire a “reality” if it remains outside the realm of objects? […] Words become symbols; language is symbolic: although words are not things, and things are not … Continue reading →

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Sized Symbols

Posted on February 14, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Reading a topographic key, I was struck by the small size of the symbols for school and church and the larger dotted rectangles for cemeteries. By a sort of inversion it reminds me of a phrase that Laurie Anderson makes … Continue reading →

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See Think

Posted on February 13, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Allow me to draw your attention to Adam Mars-Jones’s essay “Cinematically Challenged” in the collection Blind Bitter Happiness. The author picks up the description of a film scene to reflect thus : The character is in a wheelchair, essentially, because … Continue reading →

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Conception

Posted on February 12, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Rudolf Arnheim moves in Entropy and Art from describing to prescribing. Capture the reader by the move from a description of an artefact to a description of values and principles. Spot the reader a drink, saddle up a pony. The … Continue reading →

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coil

Posted on February 11, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Copy cat strategems, the blues of trading one tender mercy for a whole pack of signifying woes… From “Rhetoric of the Image” Roland Barthes translated by Stephen Heath The denoted word never refers to an essence for it is always … Continue reading →

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Chiasmus

Posted on February 9, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Command the comma, cede the caesura. Give the pause, take the break. Cherish cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die promises extracted by children more conscious of on what than to whom. Favour form over function. Vow making, X mapping. Bound for fealty, faithful to the … Continue reading →

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Care

Posted on February 8, 2007 by Francois Lachance

A.J. Ayer summarizing Bertrand Russell on Christianity does a splendid job in three sentences This is not to argue that the moral failings, which Christians share with others, prove Christianity untrue. On the theological side, the grounds for not believing … Continue reading →

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