Category Archives: Uncategorized

Unending Uncertainty

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Francois Lachance

Charles Taylor The Language Animal It belongs perhaps to the very nature of rituals of repair that their outcomes can never be certain. But in any case, they appear to be a perennial feature of human life. Forever without the … Continue reading →

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Scaffolding Conversation

Posted on February 9, 2015 by Francois Lachance

[An off-list epistle (or a short note) about an objection to a move in post on Humanist] Dear X It may be viewed as a bit of stretch to go from Eskelinen to Barthes. I could have occluded the writing/reading … Continue reading →

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Sontag on Barthes on Meaning

Posted on February 7, 2015 by Francois Lachance

Susan Sontag “Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes” intro to A Barthes Reader reprinted in Where the Stress Falls She has just remarked on Barthes’s subversive use of classifications. Barthes enlists ideas in a drama, often a sensual melodrama or a … Continue reading →

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Emergence and Explosion

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Francois Lachance

By chance these two quotations come to settle here. What came surreptitiously into being between the age of theatre and that of the catalogue was not the desire for knowledge, but a new way of connecting things both to the … Continue reading →

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Word of the Day

Posted on February 2, 2015 by Francois Lachance

Nandini Das on BBC series Rainsong in Five Senses curates essays from across the globe on differing sensory responses. It was through the episode on Australia which introduced me to the word that I never had before and responded truly … Continue reading →

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Hello to a Foreshortened Farewell

Posted on February 1, 2015 by Francois Lachance

Lord Dunsany “Poltarnees, Beholder of Ocean” A Dreamer’s Tales https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57277/57277-h/57277-h.htm Poltarnees is a mountain and beyond that mountain is the sea. [S]uddenly the west wind would bestir himself and come in from the Sea. And he would come cloaked and grey … Continue reading →

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The Numinous Without the Divine

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Francois Lachance

Brian Fawcett “Robin And Me; The New American Poetry and Us” Robin Blaser In his introduction to The Shadow Line (1920) Joseph Conrad put it in writers’ terms better than I can: “All my moral and intellectual being is penetrated … Continue reading →

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Words in the Weeds

Posted on January 17, 2015 by Francois Lachance

A whiff … As a beautiful flower that is full of hue but lacks fragrance, even so fruitless is the well-spoken word of one who does not practice it. from The Dharmapada in Walpola Rahula What the Buddha Taught A … Continue reading →

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Tintin Theme

Posted on January 15, 2015 by Francois Lachance

Gary Thomas Morse Safety Sand from Section 3 of “Safe Spaces” call to mind an occasion when tintin lets you down when tintinnabulations of “bakhtinian carnivalesque” (not to mention                          rings within ethnohistory mug) leave a tinny echo                          or a taste … Continue reading →

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Joy & Resistance

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Francois Lachance

From the introduction Pleasure and fun, once widespread, even defining qualities of the site, can now feel like acts of resistance. From the conclusion (last sentence) By holding on to and choosing to amplify joyful expression, play, and sociable intimacy, … Continue reading →

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