red hills of georgia (sweltering with the heat of injustice)
In a literature class I am taking we began with general questions. What is literature. What is American. What is Contemporary.
Like any sentence (word) that you look deeply into for an extended period of time, all definitions start to seem a little silly. If not silly, then at least unstable, and any construction that you attempt to erect based on your brainstorming takes said instability and uses it as the glue for your new structure. So of course I've been thinking about what these mean to me, and more importantly, what relationship I want to have to literature when I graduate.
Perhaps most interesting of my thoughts has to do with my (and I believe a lot of my generation) relationship to the civil rights movement. Much of the programing on NPR today, MLK jr. day, was geared towards the status of civil rights in America. Most apparent in many of Neil Conan's discussions was the desire to separate "the civil rights movement" from "Civil Rights" or individuals' reluctance to claim a part of "a present movement." For me, the civil rights movement is over, sadly relegated to a past time period blanketed with achievements and shortcomings, but that by no means is to say that those individuals fighting for civil rights now are less important or less impactful. It just seems difficult, especially with the assassination of such a well-know figurehead, not to point backwards to a period of years where things were more concentrated. On one level it makes it easier for us to look back on (say everything before MLK's death) the movement and easier to identify how it points to us, how it affects "that thing that happened the other day."
Then again, this logic seems to be playing into the hand of James Earl Ray. Because he killed MLK and thus what many individuals constitute the most popular and effective means of protestating for civil rights, to refer to his death in such a succinct and definite way seems not only sad, but unfair to all that happened and has happened afterwards. And for those who don't stop there, the breakup of the black panthers in the early 70's would be a place, but even then the proximity to MLK's death and even Malcom X's makes it so easy, and yet intuitive to group "the civil rights movement."
I'm sort of getting lost. I just relistened to MLK's Dream speech, and having just seen Brokeback Mountain, the sadness in this period's bigotry is overwhelming. I just want to say that this is what I have been thinking about when I think about contemporary; the civil rights movement is very important to me, my generation I believe, and yet it seems the reason has to do with its removal from the present, that there is only this proximity to equality and that people are just moving their pawns around on the chessboard. It really feels like the attitude is "They were so close to doing it; it needed to be done in one fell swoop" which, of course, is a completely depressing and whole-heartedly unproductive way to think.
I don't know- Contemporary, at this moment, feels like something that is "with" you that you have no control over. It's all the stuff that you can't get off of your mind, that you can't do anything about, but that you feel compelled to associate yourself with. Association in both a masochistic, natural-depravity way, and an "I have something to say about this that's going to be on my mind for a long time and I'm going to keep changing my opinion about it."
Like any sentence (word) that you look deeply into for an extended period of time, all definitions start to seem a little silly. If not silly, then at least unstable, and any construction that you attempt to erect based on your brainstorming takes said instability and uses it as the glue for your new structure. So of course I've been thinking about what these mean to me, and more importantly, what relationship I want to have to literature when I graduate.
Perhaps most interesting of my thoughts has to do with my (and I believe a lot of my generation) relationship to the civil rights movement. Much of the programing on NPR today, MLK jr. day, was geared towards the status of civil rights in America. Most apparent in many of Neil Conan's discussions was the desire to separate "the civil rights movement" from "Civil Rights" or individuals' reluctance to claim a part of "a present movement." For me, the civil rights movement is over, sadly relegated to a past time period blanketed with achievements and shortcomings, but that by no means is to say that those individuals fighting for civil rights now are less important or less impactful. It just seems difficult, especially with the assassination of such a well-know figurehead, not to point backwards to a period of years where things were more concentrated. On one level it makes it easier for us to look back on (say everything before MLK's death) the movement and easier to identify how it points to us, how it affects "that thing that happened the other day."
Then again, this logic seems to be playing into the hand of James Earl Ray. Because he killed MLK and thus what many individuals constitute the most popular and effective means of protestating for civil rights, to refer to his death in such a succinct and definite way seems not only sad, but unfair to all that happened and has happened afterwards. And for those who don't stop there, the breakup of the black panthers in the early 70's would be a place, but even then the proximity to MLK's death and even Malcom X's makes it so easy, and yet intuitive to group "the civil rights movement."
I'm sort of getting lost. I just relistened to MLK's Dream speech, and having just seen Brokeback Mountain, the sadness in this period's bigotry is overwhelming. I just want to say that this is what I have been thinking about when I think about contemporary; the civil rights movement is very important to me, my generation I believe, and yet it seems the reason has to do with its removal from the present, that there is only this proximity to equality and that people are just moving their pawns around on the chessboard. It really feels like the attitude is "They were so close to doing it; it needed to be done in one fell swoop" which, of course, is a completely depressing and whole-heartedly unproductive way to think.
I don't know- Contemporary, at this moment, feels like something that is "with" you that you have no control over. It's all the stuff that you can't get off of your mind, that you can't do anything about, but that you feel compelled to associate yourself with. Association in both a masochistic, natural-depravity way, and an "I have something to say about this that's going to be on my mind for a long time and I'm going to keep changing my opinion about it."