Events and Publications | LAURA WETHERINGTON

Diversity vs. Inclusion

August 26, 2016 by Laura Wetherington

I went to a talk today about social justice in the classroom. The speaker explained the difference between diversity & inclusion by telling us that when Harvard Law School began admitting women into the school, the women were frequently chastised for being late. There weren’t women’s restrooms in the law quad yet, so they were scrambling across the street between classes. The school was practicing diversity but not inclusion. I’m glad to think more about the ways in which groups and individuals might have barriers that are invisible to me or the institution. If we want to create equity in higher ed, we’ve got to identify the barriers and help lift people up.

IISC_EqualityEquity

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New Artaud Post @ Jacket2

August 21, 2016 by Laura Wetherington

Artaud’s separation from the Surrealists was not amicable. A rough break was perhaps inevitable considering the Surrealists’ tendency toward confrontation and disruption, a disposition further provoked by the view that Artaud was a sell-out.

Artaud and the surrealists

July 18, 2016 by Laura Wetherington

Costume_design_by_Pablo_Picasso_representing_skyscrapers_and_boulevards__Paris_18_May_1917

http://jacket2.org/commentary/artaud-and-surrealists

From the latest post at Jacket2:

“Even further, Artaud sets Marxism against poetry. He declares: “I call poetry today the understanding of this internal and dynamic destiny of thought.”[11] He goes on to say that “poetic understanding is internal, poetic quality is internal. There is a movement today to identify the poetry of the poets with that internal magic force which provides a path for life and makes it possible to act upon life.”[12] For the Surrealists poetry was synonymous with Surrealism, which is why in the beginning of his essay, Artaud makes a point to differentiate Surrealism’s beginnings from where it eventually headed. He describes “that hunger for a pure life which Surrealism was in the beginning” and maintains that this initial impulse “had nothing to do with the fragmentary life of Marxism.”[13]”

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Artaud & Jacques Rivière

June 29, 2016 by Laura W.

https://jacket2.org/commentary/artauds-correspondence-jacques-rivière

from the latest installment on Artaud at Jacket2:

“Still, by arguing for an enactment of a fractured mental state, Artaud is making a case for modernism. These letters, then, along with the poem “Cri,” all of which were eventually published in the Nouvelle Revue Française, are a tremendous set of cultural artifacts. The Romantic ideal is based on assumptions of, to borrow from Delaney again, “the unproblematic transparency between life and language, presentation and representation, intention and effect, and our ability to locate and respond to the ‘parts’ of themselves, as well as a psychological autonomy and a psychological malleability to the subject represented that flies in the face of practically any materialist critique.”[6] Artaud’s work—Artaud’s life—is an attempt to infuse language with the unrealized aspects of life—with the bodily experience of fragmentation.”

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Antonin Artaud’s First Years in Paris

June 21, 2016 by Laura W.

https://jacket2.org/commentary/artaud-arrives-paris

Photo: Édouard Toulouse, editor of Demain

From the latest Artaud installment:

A handful of Artaud’s poems were published in Demain including “Night,” which appeared in the issue pictured above, in 1921. In this poem we glimpse a bit of the journal’s ethos, including the advice to approach reading and ideas slowly, a sentiment which Bernard Baillaud situates in opposition “to the rapid reading speed imposed on [the reader]. Far from representing a constraint or form of self-censorship tending to force a choice among the headlines, this method allowed for everything to be read.” Reader as flaneur as slow movement advocate. In “Night,” Artaud declares:

Poet, those things preying on your mind
Have nothing to do with the moon,
The rain is cool
the belly is good.

Deep down in the swollen sheets
Where the whole night breathes,
The poet feels his hair
Proliferate and grow.[4]

Here the poet relishes in the body and pleasure. The slow accretion of time becomes the subject of observation. Imagine how much you’d have to slow down your focus to feel your hair growing. For the review, this calculated pacing was a protection against “hasty and excessive information, from too much empty documentation, and from futility in all walks of life.”[5]

Filed Under: Events and Publications