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we spend a lot of time talking about how things ought to change, but the irony here is that our vocabulary doesn't. to be honest, i was really disappointed after class today because i think our way of speaking has gotten much, much too narrow. we've developped specific, unusual definitions of narrativity and non-narrativity, defining narrativity as positive, because everything must be in flux for change for learning to occur, and defining non-narrativity as negative, as when we describe "non narrative" stories about evolution. there is no reason we should have these connotations, and there is also the idea of a-narrative that we haven't touched on. but more importantly, not every philosophical subject can be encapulsated in these two rigid words we've created and this is the only way we're speaking. if you consider howard's perspective to be limited, ours has become worse, and this comes from the one person in the class who thinks specialization is fantastic.

i think it's strange we're reading "on beauty" in this class because we attend a particularly intellectual school. we're not here to criticize intellectuals and they have a lot to offer us. i can't tell you how much i've learned from people who are academics in the strictest sense of the word. that is why i'd go so far as to say that this book is offensive and the ending is the most malicious thing i've ever read. i know i'm getting intense here, but i did not come to bryn mawr to look at a painting and think about how i feel, i came here to learn art history, literature, french, to learn new methods of analysis. when i look at rothko, i think of the holocaust and problems of representation. i think of how he wanted to convey the human figure, how he sought to imply it in his work but didn't feel it could be represented anymore. i want to ponder these things, i don't want to see green and blue. the reason i like to study strange-looking, non-aesthetic art is because i find beauty boring: there are conventions that make something look beautiful to us and i am used to them, i want to see them subverted, manipulated. i read part of a zadie smith interview and she said she likes rembrandt because his work is "fleshy and so full of love." is this bland characterization superior to howard's fictional work? absolutely NOT.