Over the past few months, we have dove head first into literature by A.O. Scott and Stephen Greenblatt, analyzing each paragraph, each sentence, and each individual word. The discussions we have in class not only provide a space to understand the writing better, but also pushes me to think deeper and more open mindedly. I write and draw in my commonplace book during class whenever I get a strike of inspiration, which is often thanks to our thoughtful conversations. Although I was very confused over the summer when I had to read Scott and Greenblatt on my own. It was a struggle to continue reading when I did not completely understand the text, but I feel more confident now. In the first and second pictures are the first and second drafts of our purposes per audience. We outlined who Greenblatt’s many audiences and discussed what aspects of the writing appealed to each of them. It was very helpful to go back and revise them because we kept uncovering more perspectives to take into account. The wording of the purposes improved as well, for we began using more advanced vocabulary in class like “dialectics.”
The third picture shows my first attempt at illustrating the process of self-fashioning as it is explored in Greenblatt’s 10 governing conditions. The top left depicts the relationship between a self and an authority. When the self looks at itself in the mirror, it sees itself being willingly controlled by the authority. The top right depicts the relationship between the authority and the alien. When the authority looks at itself in the mirror, it sees itself struggling with the alien as it is being controlled. The drawing on the bottom shows both of these relationships plus more. In the sections where the self and the authority overlap and the authority and the alien overlap have a check or an X showing whether the relationship is willing or reluctant. The arrow pointing from the authority to the alien shows that the authority tries to destroy the alien, but accidentally threatens itself in the process due to excess power (as depicted in the arrow from the alien to the authority). A circle labeled “power” is also separating a portion of the self to represent the tenth condition requiring a “loss of self.” The fourth picture shows one of my more recent pages of my commonplace notebook. At the top are my overall questions about both Scott and Greenblatt. One of which has been pinging around in my head for weeks: Is learning about self-fashioning self-fashioning us? We began discussing it yesterday in class and the conversation has grown to reveal more and more questions. Do we have agency? Did Greenblatt give us agency or did he simply make us aware of our agency? Was his purpose for writing Renaissance Self Fashioning to self fashion his readers? On this same page is a drawing of an alien. I began drawing it when Elizabeth mentioned how everyone has different authorities and aliens. So could Renaissance Self Fashioning be Greenblatt’s alien? Or our alien? These are questions that I hope we continue to explore. I do not believe there is a single answer for each of them, but I also don’t think the answers are subjective. I hope that through what we talk about in class, I will be able to not only understand the text, but also understand Greenblatt himself.
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AuthorJo Palisoc Archives
November 2019
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