I’ll keep this post brief. And I probably should given the distinctly cheezy riff on Wilde’s “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” I chose this title for the first, administrative post, since the default wordpress title, “Hello World!” carries a hint of reproductivism (isn’t that what babies are imagined to say? or is it a campier, “busting open the closet doors” remark that grasps at that Sedgwickian epistemology?).jpg)
One of the reasons I chose to evoke “socialism” as “SoCalism” is to launch this blog as a collective enterprise of all the participants in this summer’s “Victorian Afterlives” graduate seminar. There will be no leaders. Occasionally some will emerge with a flourish of Wildean fabulousness or Carlylian cantankerousness, whereas others might feel their way through a bout of Philistinism. In short, each of us will post remarks on this site–some casual, some more formal–to keep the conversation alive even when we are not forcibly gathered in our institutional setting instead of frolicking across the southern California landscape at a distant remove from Victoria’s empire. Or is it?
Beyond posting assigned “responses” to our weekly readings, I ask that each of you envision this as an opportunity to launch inquiries, dialogues, triangulations and (if we are to believe what Kipnis, Sedgwick and Girard have to say about the “triangle”) other artful forms of discourse.
A note on etiquette: please add your initials to the bottom of each post, for while we shouldn’t necessarily believe in ownership (in the spirit of “The Soul of Man…”) it’s nice to know who’s doing the talking when, just so our modes of response and address can be more intimate and thoughtful. So, Hello World! And welcome to our afterlife…
KT
