Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Bloody Hell

After my last lite postings, I thought i'd better add something a little more readerly.

My favourite South Australians rightly observed that according to my wordle analysis - my posts seem to be punctuated with "bloody" and "Hell". i'm still a bit suss about the whole wordle thing - like why aren't prepositions included? Surely "the " "It" and "at" are important? not to mentioned pronouns?

Hmmm - maybe thesis editing is getting to me......

In the last 48 hours I've been struck by bloody hell of the painful variety. I was so proud of weaning myself off painkillers and chocolate, and feeling whole and hearty and sentient... and then the pain struck - in the back of my neck and left me tormentedly writhing and unable to sleep for 2 or 3 nights - save short bursts where I'd collapse only to be woken again by the pain.....the age bored me to a level of despair even greater than scrolling through the status updates of every single one of my facebook friends so I dug out Michelle de Certeau's the practice of Everyday Life to cheer me up.

It did... especially the bit about the brownian motion of tactics by which ordinary people embed a sense of agency and meaning in their negotiations with fairly large manifestions of institutionalised power. It made me feel happy about my own insistence on a stochastic framework for the analysis of power/culture/discourse/phenomenology/etc. in the TOME rather than a proper linear narrative.......

And then flipping through the blogroll I came across Jebni's latest post - whihc is more of a powerpoint-cast:
where things are at goes for 20 minutes but is worth every second,,,,, it is calm, mediated engaging delight......

4 comments:

Skanky Jane said...

i love the way you share stuff that folk can learn something from Mayhem...I've only ever read "Walking in the City" from the Practice of Everyday Life - plus bits and pieces about his work by other writers - as found online. I'm on a trail now though, following Brownian motion and stochastic frameworks!

Cheers! SJ xx

Mel said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Skanky Jane said...

i (finally - after quoting it a million times) bought myself a copy of The Practice of Everyday Life! Oh, how I would love to be able to read the French edition - as well as the English one.

"...[t]he art of translation smuggles in a thousand inventions which, before the author's dazzled eyes, transform his book into a new creation". de Certeau (x)

i can't think of another (non-fiction) book as exciting as this ... a delight to read, it articulates observations and experiences, of survival, and its strategies, that loitered, half formed and unspoken, espied in 'defiled', in-between spaces ...when hitching, snowdropping, sleeping under bridges and generally making-do-(it-myself)!

Mel said...

I've listened to 'where things are at' twice now - it's great - thanks for sharing the link.