Speak, Maria!

Your turn to speak about Maria for tomorrow's class.

Children of a Lesser God + Silences

We'll be watching "Children of a Lesser God" over the next couple of classes. Feel free to post your 'provocations' to the blog on a rolling basis. Consider connecting this movie to the other works -- cinematic and otherwise -- we've consumed this semester. You are also welcome to engage the Tillie Olsen essays on silence and its varieties scheduled for discussion on Tuesday.

"Mute Phone Calls"

Post your questions on Zernova's story here!

"Pkhentz" by Andrei Sinyavsky

Post questions below. Try to connect this reading to the more recent critical pieces we've read by Shklovsky and Sontag, if you can.

"Art as Device"

Post your questions below.

Susan Sontag's "Aesthetics of Silence"

You will encounter many unfamiliar names in Sontag's essay, but these shouldn't deter you from grasping the main points of her argument. Over the next few readings we will be exploring some of the issues called up in this piece, namely, the relationship between speech, silence and (re) estrangement or alienation. Particularly in _Deaf_ and in Sinyavsky's short story, "Pkhentz," we will consider how silence and broken speech butt up against the dead or tone-deaf language of the modern state and its bureaucratese.

As we figure out what exactly Sontag means by an "aesthetics of silence," we should think about both of these terms. What are the forms and purpose of art /and/ silence per Sontag? In order to put our composition exercises on clarity and concision into practice, I have assigned each of you one section for which you must provide a one-sentence distillation of the main argument. Be sure to get these up by 1 pm, since I will be making a masterlist for the class, which will form the basis of our discussion.

_Deaf_

Post your discussion question about Liang Xiaosheng's novella _Deaf_ below.