Goldsmiths: ‘Jacob Vaark’s Ghost’

Jacob Vaark being the (absent?) protagonist of Toni Morrison’s 2007 novel, A Mercy.

For your enlightment and deliction: a decidedly odd essay on something I decided to ‘the haunted domestic’ in American fiction post-2000. Mostly concentrating on the Morrison , but also drawing on the excellent Lunar Park (soon to be a film) and Don DeLillo’s Falling Man. Probably the best course that I’ve taken during my time at Goldsmiths – helped, no doubt, by a tiny class size and excellent teaching from Dr Rick Crownshaw. Bears almost literally no relevance to the rest of my Masters degree, but does mesh rather nicely with my undergrad dissertation.

Also recommended is this NPR interview with Toni Morrison, which sheds a great deal of light on some of the novel’s subtleties:

Goldsmiths: ‘Advertising, Screens and the Airport Chapel’

The first (assessed) essay for my Masters degree, deploying the work of French anthropologist Marc Augé in relation to a key site of modernity – the airport terminal. The first half is a work of ethnographic ‘thick description,’ which is then subjected to a critical analysis:

photo credit: irina slutsky

Goldsmiths: ‘Virtuality and the Mouse’

So, here’s the first (diagnostic) essay from my Goldsmiths MA. Submitted unfinished, it stands as an attempt to bend my head round literary critic Katherine Hayles‘ work on virtuality, focusing in on (1) a piece of video footage taken up by the mainstream scientific press, and (2) the Virtual Boy – Nintendo’s ill-fated attempt at consumer VR.

Gobbledegook or genius? There are some minor spelling and referencing issues, sure, and – in her comments – my course tutor suggested that the writings of biologist/cyborg feminist Donna Haraway might have filled the gaps in my argument. Since submitting, I’ve devoured a book-length interview with the woman, and got my hands of a copy of When Species Meet (2008) as part of the Christmas loot, which is high on my dead-tree reading list for 2010.

In the meantime, any comments or questions?

The Limitless Threat

I’ve restructured one of my undergraduate dissertations as a hypertext, mixed in some video footage and CC-licensed images, and thrown it up as its own site.

‘Containing the Uncontainable: Guantánamo Bay and the Limitless Threat‘ – it’s about terrorism, geography, theology, aesthetics and the apocalypse.  It might be a bit dense, and I admit to have been a bit overkeen on the subheading front, but there’s definitely some good stuff in there.

F3: ‘Silver Eagle’

For me, it’s been a fairly odd few days, and I thought I’d try something different. As such, this week’s F3 is rooted firmly in truth.  Behold!  Friday Flash Non-fiction:

SILVER EAGLE

It’s dusk and I’m outside the library, watching the skies. A temporary reprieve from tales of the American Empire, urban ghosts, and sweatshop cyborgs unable to wash the blood from their hands. She said it’d be soon, but I still don’t know what I’m looking for.

Even now, the bald-headed Frenchman stalks the corridors of my mind, filling the air with his musings on life and death. Slumped against a wall with needles in my feet, I can but scream.

Trying to shake the image, I stretch my limbs and continue the sweep. Will I even see it? Through last night’s cider-fuelled haze, I should have thought to ask for more details. Instead, I left with the name of a Slovakian sociologist. Brilliant.

After a couple of minutes, I’m joined by L – a friendly face from a class I took last term. We chat about essays. Thoughts of my unwritten tale. Of pirates, terrorists and criminals – hiding in a shell they forged from the discarded fragments of a dying nation-state. She smiles. I tell her how, yesterday, a seagull stole my lunch – plucked from my hands with a flapping of wings. She seems suitably outraged. It’s cold, and I worry that I’m talking too much.

Then we see it. A light out to the west, where the twilight fades to sapphire. We watch in silence, L and I, as – wings outstretched – it cuts an arc across the heavens.

__________

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.