Megan Cross

My college course required me to make a Twitter account. So if I tweet something that's academically misinformed or offensive, I'm sorry.

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

(Sonny Liew) It's interesting how we get a story filtered through a fictional(?) cartoonist through a real cartoonist. What effect does this double-narrative have? Initially I was confused about what was autobiographical and what was fiction. Maybe that's the point?

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

(Goh 239) We get a throwback to Anderson's idea of imagined communities. In a revised text, Anderson says "bounded serial representations" are what structure "imagination of nations." I don't get what this means, or how it differs from Anderson's previous argument.

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

(125–126) It's fitting how you have to flip the page to get the English translation, and you discover that the text is talking about the past being behind you. It's kinda like when something is culturally translated, you can't (easily) get back to the original meaning

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

I'm noticing a emphasis on the color white on pg 113 and 96. Why white? "The screen fades to white" (96). Don't screens normally fade to black?

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

pages 94 and 96 are hyper-detailed like a screenplay. It reminds me of postcolonialism's hyper-detailed effort to systematize everything. But maybe, like a screenplay, it's all artificial entertainment?

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

@QuetzalWoomy apparently a dictee is a French spelling test done in school. So there's an instructive tone. Usually in school, there's a power imbalance between student/teacher. But here it's ambiguous. It's not just about different ways to write, but about mutual mimicry/cultural learning?

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

Dictee 8–9 has three school-style quizzes. Two of them have French instructions with English sentences. I wonder why the third quiz is, by contrast, entirely in French. Is the third quiz for someone who already speaks French?

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

Dictee, page 1, has a french passage, and an English passage below it. Much of the text is distractingly literal, drawing attention to the structure of the text. Period, comma, etc. Is the first passage directly dictating to the second? Are they both dictating each other?

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

@Anna44332211 literature, has fought over the meaning of what woman is and how woman should be. The meaning has shifted, but--much like the moon--you can't notice it overnight.

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

@Anna44332211 and implicitly call for revolution. To use a simplistic US-based example: In the 1960's, what does it mean to be a woman? Is a true woman destined to be a housewife? Or can a woman, say, enter the workplace and still be a woman? Discursive production, in the form of art and...

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

"To disrupt the existing systems... is to see through the revolving door of all rationalizations and to meet a truth of that struggle between fictions" (6). What is "truth of the struggle between fictions?" That one of the stories is true? Or is the truth that there is no truth?

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

"subjected to a... process of re- and de-territorialization, she bears both strong positive and negative social connotations" (Yellow, sprouts, 5). This description of the moon could also be applied to any sort of socially-constructed identity. Different groups fight over meaning

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

"The interstice between the visual and the tactile is perhaps the (nothing-)spiritual conveyed above..." (Yellow Sprouts,4) What is this "nothing" gap between the visual and tactile? Is this paragraph saying that Western discourse ogles at faraway things but can't touch them?

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

@Anna44332211 "naming critically" means "invent terminology for something, in the context of academia." So there's marxist criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, etc.. poststructuralism dislikes the limits of labels and names, but poststructuralism is itself a "box" for an abstract concept.

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

I’m curious about the symbolism of this movie. With the virus being fake, I wondered if it was an allegory for political scapegoating—ie, seeing the “other” as a disease. But there’s also a very-much real, non-imaginary monster. I suppose it can still be about scapegoating.

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

In "The Host," The U.S. releases a deadly virus/monster into Korea. At first I was expecting a simple "Bad U.S. vs. Good Korea" binary. So I was surprised at 26:50, when the Korean government guy was comically inept and couldn't explain the situation.

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

Kwon 74: historicists tend to "order the differences in social formation according to an evolutionary temporal scheme." What exactly is that, and why is it a bad thing?

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

@avaleonardsmc So yes, a nonimaginary and total war would mean one with physical violence that you directly experience. This is based on the assumption that a "real war" must involve physical violence, and the politics and intimidation doesn't count.

[Megan Cross @MeganCurmudgeon]

@avaleonardsmc iirc Anderson's imaginary means that you feel kinship with a group-member even if you haven't directly met them. But I think that's distinct from how imaginary is used on Kwon 67. There, imaginary means "the politics of preparing for war... in hope of avoiding an actual war."..