Life in the Community College
Laying on my office floor this morning (a truly comfortable way to read in my eight by six foot cell, though I am sitting up to type), I am trying to make sense of Heidegger's Dasein, which I hardly understand at all; then I suppose I don't need to understand it because I am immersed in its being-stream, and his Geschichte, which I sort of understand from reading biblical criticism if nothing else.
The question is how am I going to, at 1:00 today (and with a composition class in between) tie what little I know of Heidegger into the idea of the hermeneutic circle, then into Gadamer's idea of tradition; above all, how to contrast this with the 'conventional' criticism of the American E.D. Hirsch. (In case I sound like a scholar, all this is in fact taken from Chapter 2 of Terry Eagleton's remarkable little book Literary Theory). That the questions these individuals pose about textual meaning are genuine I have no doubt. And so I'll start here: does the author's intent matter? Could Frost's "Stopping by Woods" be about, say, football?
The good thing is that the foray into the ivory swamp of literary theory is a side project within my Am. Lit. class, and the main topic for discussion, Emerson's "Self-Reliance," I know well enough: "whim."
Funniest of all, after my Am. Lit. I trot over to a basic grammar course where we are learning about fragments. (Let's see, oh yes, the object case of the relative pronoun can begin a dependent clause...)
That is community college English life. In two years I'll probably lose Am. Lit. and be teaching the British seminar, or Shakespeare, or maybe Mythology again. In many ways, I love this. I'm getting the education I was once denied. And Eagleton is making sense in a way he didn't in college (how did I not see, then, what a raving Marxist he is). In another sense, I wish I taught three classes instead of five and had more time to concentrate on one area, to actually play scholar, though if I could pick right now, that area would be NT studies and I'd have to teach in an entirely different environment.
That's all I have time for right now. Shouts out to all. It's been a very tough week emotionally, but it's been as much growth-pain as stuck-pain and I'm feeling over the hump. My EFM group is awesome once again; I told them about my OCD and depressions of the past when I did my spiritual autobiography for this year and they were quite cool. I can't express how good that support feels, or how long it's been since I felt it in a group. OCD, shit life, can't be managed in isolation, without support. In contrast to the great people in the grouop, the readings for the second year in EFM, the NT year, so far suck doorknobs, but since we all feel that way (including the rector) it helps. The OT material was much, much better (and I hear the NT is being revised again). I do find myself disagreeing with my rector over all kinds of things...the level of Hellenization in Palestine, especially in the gospels...but since we are all learning and everyone's attitude is good, I believe this is healthy.
Learning is one of the great pleasures in life; I'm glad to be here.
Have to run. Two minutes to showtime.
t
The question is how am I going to, at 1:00 today (and with a composition class in between) tie what little I know of Heidegger into the idea of the hermeneutic circle, then into Gadamer's idea of tradition; above all, how to contrast this with the 'conventional' criticism of the American E.D. Hirsch. (In case I sound like a scholar, all this is in fact taken from Chapter 2 of Terry Eagleton's remarkable little book Literary Theory). That the questions these individuals pose about textual meaning are genuine I have no doubt. And so I'll start here: does the author's intent matter? Could Frost's "Stopping by Woods" be about, say, football?
The good thing is that the foray into the ivory swamp of literary theory is a side project within my Am. Lit. class, and the main topic for discussion, Emerson's "Self-Reliance," I know well enough: "whim."
Funniest of all, after my Am. Lit. I trot over to a basic grammar course where we are learning about fragments. (Let's see, oh yes, the object case of the relative pronoun can begin a dependent clause...)
That is community college English life. In two years I'll probably lose Am. Lit. and be teaching the British seminar, or Shakespeare, or maybe Mythology again. In many ways, I love this. I'm getting the education I was once denied. And Eagleton is making sense in a way he didn't in college (how did I not see, then, what a raving Marxist he is). In another sense, I wish I taught three classes instead of five and had more time to concentrate on one area, to actually play scholar, though if I could pick right now, that area would be NT studies and I'd have to teach in an entirely different environment.
That's all I have time for right now. Shouts out to all. It's been a very tough week emotionally, but it's been as much growth-pain as stuck-pain and I'm feeling over the hump. My EFM group is awesome once again; I told them about my OCD and depressions of the past when I did my spiritual autobiography for this year and they were quite cool. I can't express how good that support feels, or how long it's been since I felt it in a group. OCD, shit life, can't be managed in isolation, without support. In contrast to the great people in the grouop, the readings for the second year in EFM, the NT year, so far suck doorknobs, but since we all feel that way (including the rector) it helps. The OT material was much, much better (and I hear the NT is being revised again). I do find myself disagreeing with my rector over all kinds of things...the level of Hellenization in Palestine, especially in the gospels...but since we are all learning and everyone's attitude is good, I believe this is healthy.
Learning is one of the great pleasures in life; I'm glad to be here.
Have to run. Two minutes to showtime.
t
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