The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 15.1373 Thursday, 1 July 2004
[1] From: R. A. Cantrell <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004 08:27:22 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
[2] From: Todd Pettigrew <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004 11:12:58 -0300
Subj: RE: SHK 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
[3] From: Norman Hinton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004 10:38:00 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
[4] From: Philip Weller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004 09:22:31 -0700
Subj: Re: SHK 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
[5] From: Kevin De Ornellas <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004 16:48:57 +0000
Subj: RE: SHK 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
[6] From: Pat Dolan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004 11:50:25 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
[7] From: W.L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004 15:41:36 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
[8] From: David Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004 15:42:59 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: R. A. Cantrell <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004 08:27:22 -0500
Subject: 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
Comment: Re: SHK 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
>"Thirty years have passed since Julia Kristeva argued that the
>intertextual transference of text between signifying systems complements
>displacement and condensation as fundamental signifying processes in the
>unconscious.... At the same time, studies of colonial and postcolonial
>Shakespearean impositions, adaptations and appropriations have led to
>dynamic debates over the use of intertextual strategies by postcolonial
>writers seeking to deconstruct canonical givens and to destabilize
>Eurocentric epistemological power in order to build decolonizing
>counter-discourses."
This passage defies transliteration, but the meta-textual message is, or
should be; run away, run away, run away. I don't recall whether it was
Richard Levin, Brian Vickers, or Alan Sokal who did the best send up of
Kristeva, but there are any number of works by substantial scholars that
adequately deal with Kristeva and the school of French Ninnies to which
she belong (s?)(d?).
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Todd Pettigrew <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004 11:12:58 -0300
Subject: 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
Comment: RE: SHK 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
The status of Shakespeare in Canada is a complex one. Canada's best
known and most influential theatre company is located in Stratford,
Ontario, which already says a lot about Canadian cultural identity.
We happily name our towns after English towns and are happy to leave
them that way (Berlin, Ontario is now Kitchener, by the by); Queen
Elizabeth II nobly adorns our currency, and we kick off the summer (such
as it is) with Victoria Day.
But at the same time, Canadians are fiercely defensive about their
status as a full-fledged nation of the world and we see ourselves as
having grown up from the days of Empire. Gone is the Union Jack from
national buildings, replaced by the Canadian Maple Leaf; "Dominion Day"
has been renamed "Canada Day"; I don't know anyone who knows the words
to "God Save the Queen"; and pants are NOT what we wear under our
trousers, thank you very much.
Canadians, in other words, value things that are English because they
set us apart from our US neighbours who we both idolize and fear, but we
are simultaneously suspicious of things English because they imply a
second-rate status in the world.
So it is perhaps fitting that our national theatre is in Stratford, is
devoted mainly to Shakespeare, and caters to Americans from New York and
Michigan.
Now, is Shakespeare "English" in the national sense? Does modern
England have a greater claim on Shakespeare than other English-speaking
nations? Perhaps not. Canada did not descend from modern England, after
all, it descended from an England that is long gone just as modern
England did. So Canada is not really the daughter of England; Canada is
the sister of England. England just happens to still live at home. Thus,
Shakespeare is arguably the greatest author in Canadian history.
Now, let us turn to the matter of French translations...
t.
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Norman Hinton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004 10:38:00 -0500
Subject: 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
Comment: Re: SHK 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
At least back in the days of New Criticism we conducted our discourses
mostly in English (except for Empson, of course).
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Philip Weller <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004 09:22:31 -0700
Subject: 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
Comment: Re: SHK 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
I wouldn't even try to translate the passage about Kristeva because I
don't trust the judgment of anyone who uses such language and who thinks
the point of talking about Shakespeare is "to build decolonizing
counter-discourse."
--Philip Weller
[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Kevin De Ornellas <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004 16:48:57 +0000
Subject: 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
Comment: RE: SHK 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
>Can someone translate this passage?
I should think that most of us (if we had the time) would be able to
paraphrase that passage with considerable ease. I think that it is a
rather lucid set of sentences. There are accessible ways into the
thinking of Julia Kristeva and her followers. A preliminary list of
useful sources would consist of Graham Allen, 'Intertextuality' (1999),
from Routledge's splendid 'New Critical Idiom' series; Peter Barry,
'English in Practice' (Arnold, 2003), pp. 37-49; and the entries on
'Intertextuality' in Jeremy Hawthorn, 'A Glossary of Literary Theory'
(4th edition; Arnold, 2000), pp. 182-84 and R. Murfin and S.M. Ray, 'The
Bedford Glossary of Literary Terms' (2nd edition; Bedford/St. Martin's,
2003), pp. 219-20.
Regarding Canadians' complicated responses to Shakespeare see, to begin
with, D. Brydon and I.R. Makaryt, eds, 'Shakespeare in Canada: A World
Elsewhere?' (Uni. of Toronto Press, 2003), and Ric Knowles, 'Shakespeare
and Canada: Essays on Production, Translation, and Adaptation' (Peter
Lang, 2004).
Kevin De Ornellas
Queen's University, Belfast
[6]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Pat Dolan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004 11:50:25 -0500
Subject: 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
Comment: Re: SHK 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
Taking the second question first. I googled "Shakespeare, Canada, First,
Nations" and came up with the Internet Shakespeare Editions, affiliated
with the University of Victoria as the first hit. Here's what they had
to say:
"Reinforcing the mobilization in the 1970s against British and American
cultural influences was a groundswell of alternative theatres with their
political and artistic revolt against large regional theatres, which
represented the bulk of professional theatre in Canada and most of the
dollars. Surprisingly, however, alternative theatre has been very
receptive to a re-reading of the classics, including Shakespeare, and
has often quickly blurred into the mainstream, as may be seen by the
example of Quebec actor, director, and filmmaker Robert Lepage, who
quickly moved from alternative to mainstream commercial theatres and
became an internationally-acclaimed theatre wizard. Protesting against
the "colonial" attitudes and traditions of British and French-born
directors, against American imports, alternative Shakespeare has often
been "de-stabilized" or "de-centred"; that is, contrary to the populist
desire for entertainment found in summer Shakespeare, alternative
versions staged a politically-charged and serious Bard."
This version of Shakespeare is in implicit contrast to the outdoor,
canonical Shakespeare exemplified by Stratford. (Think of a First
Nations version of the Tempest that present Ariel & Caliban as victims
and Prospero as a colonial aggressor. Trite maybe, but...) The point is
that Canada has always been ambivalent about England and now the U.S.
and Shakespeare has always been bundled up with those countries
cultural/ideological identity. (Did anyone see the Aquila version of
Othello, with the multiple mentions of Laura Bush in the introduction?)
As for the Kristeva, it's hard for me to translate, because it seems to
me that it's in plain English already. What's being said is that 1.
Thirty years ago Kristeva identified intertextual transference as a
process the unconscious uses to process and transform ideas, along with
processes familiar from Freud, such as displacement and condensation.
(I'll bet, although I do not know, that the Freud here is the Freud of
Interpretation of Dreams. The question that I'd ask Kristeva--or this
writer--is how exactly intertextual transference differs from
displacement.) 2. Meanwhile writers opposed to colonialism began using
Shakespearean texts against institutions they took to be colonial, and
arguments arose about whether such interventions could succeed and which
versions of them were appropriate.
I think the problem may be that the writer here assumes that her
audience knows Kristeva well--text, context and influence. It certainly
sounds as though she's going after other game and setting the scene.
Just by the way, I had occasion to spend the last school year as a
social work intern in a VA hospital. If you want to look at truly
impenetrable, jargon-filled prose, check out physicians' charting.
Cheers,
Pat
[7]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: W.L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004 15:41:36 -0400
Subject: 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
Comment: Re: SHK 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
>"Thirty years have passed since Julia Kristeva argued that the
>intertextual transference of text between signifying systems complements
>displacement and condensation as fundamental signifying processes in the
>unconscious.... At the same time, studies of colonial and postcolonial
>Shakespearean impositions, adaptations and appropriations have led to
>dynamic debates over the use of intertextual strategies by postcolonial
>writers seeking to deconstruct canonical givens and to destabilize
>Eurocentric epistemological power in order to build decolonizing
>counter-discourses."
Perhaps this passage would be easier to interpret if it were translated
into French -- or if it contained a few concrete, specific details.
Bill Godshalk
[8]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004 15:42:59 -0400
Subject: 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
Comment: Re: SHK 15.1368 CFP - Shakespearean Intertexts in Canada
Marry, this is miching malicho. It means mischief.
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