Saturday, April 03, 2010
life as literary psychology
Thursday morning, 4/1
The New York Times reports on recent interest in bridging cognitive psychology and literary studies, something that’s been going on for many years. But commonly in interdomainal inquiry, there are new vistas to explore. I think it’s a can of worms, but I wouldn’t want less for my leading edges. The Times article has many aspects that are valuable to me, so I’m going to use themes from the article for a series of five postings.
Friday, 4/2
The first part is titled “Self/personal difference irt multiple perspectivity.”
The second part is titled “textual intimacy.”
Tuesday, 4/13
I’ve decided to do the remaining parts after finishing the “conceptuality...” project, probably early May.
From earlier daynotes leading to parts 1 and 2...
Thursday, 4/1, afternoon
I recall a posting of mine from 2005, “evolving in ‘Literature’” that’s inspired by one of the authors back then who is featured in the Times article today.
In 2005, I was making a connection to evolutionary psychology that’s central to today’s Times article, but I was back then implicitly interested in memes, though in terms of re-conceptualizing archetypal literary criticism. It was just a posting—but prescient (I’ll show).
That’s very different from the kind of discussion I want to do soon—and very distant from my near obsession with narratability mentioned lately.
Anyway, there’s a lovely context to cross-pollinate soon.
Thursday evening
My interest has flowered a bit unmanageably. Could I pursue it in terms of several projects I’m fermenting? Some short storyline?
Now’s coming the weekend, whose free time I’ve expected to use for the “conceptuality …” project.
I stay away from autobiographical things, confession. My days are barely suggested here, deliberately. That’s a story, the days themselves, this staying away that becomes a narrative motif of its own.
O dear, wouldn’t it be sweet to die happy you’re a lasting motif.
Friday evening
Part 1 was done this morning, part 2 this evening.
Saturday evening, 4/3
I recognize now that the appeal of the Times article was what made the general area interesting to me four-plus years ago: the same as what made the crude idea of literary anthropology interesting in my ‘20s! It implies the humongous conditions of bridging the human sciences and humanities that has been with me most of my adult life, an interest which looks very different to me now than it did five years ago. I feel desire to account for the difference, but that would be to just continue with what I’m doing, without giving special attention to the inspiration of a newspaper article. The article is affirming in ways I don’t want to take time to detail. It’s self esteeming, which is great.
So, an intent to do brief response grew into five parts, but the anticipated third part implies such a large portion of what I’m generally giving free time to that I just want to move on. I can’t just use the article to inspire interesting commentary. The appeal is insatiable.
But I’ll finish it, later than I anticipated.
I bother with all this process commentary because it’s pertinent to my standing intent to write generally about project development.
Monday evening, January 2, 2012
Over a year and a half has passed. The improvised intention of this little project flowered into major projects on literary discourse, intimacies of flourishing, and discursivity (as such) that I haven’t fleshed out into presentational parts yet, and may not do so for some years. But all that will come to fruit online. The entire point of developing things is a furthering.
Anyway, it’s now part of the larger Project of the past decade, which I discussed briefly today on a page titled “singularity,” which ends this project’s inspiration: “intimacies.”
