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jrf's picture

Discomfort with in-betweens

In thinking more about and sharing the images we read in class on Tuesday, I found that the in-between nature of the images seemed to cause discomfort to me and others. Why should the existence of in-between objects elicit disgust? Similarly, our readings mentioned historical attempts by Westerners to either make other cultures' literary works fit into Western genres or establish those other cultures as deficient for not matching the Western pattern closely. Why is maintaining the open mind to the evolution of genre that Dimock and Owen call for so difficult? Do we need computers to do this for us? Does the emergence of technology that eliminates the idea of an "authoritative" version of a particular story or work, such as that behind the Walt Whitman Anthology, make it more possible for us to wrap our minds around the existence of "in-between" objects and stories?

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