Free money, bay-bee ...

[d_aulnoy]

So it looks like the Fantastic Discussion Group is a go. Let's hear it for departmental spending! Luckily, we got word in time to be able to schedule the first meeting for Halloween, early enough that serious revelers will have time to make the rounds, with the option of the first meeting turning into a free-for-all after we get basic business like regular meeting times and a schedule of papers to be workshopped organized. I'm really happy about this ... Columbia has many things working in its favor, but a space for discussion of the fantastic isn't one of them. Yet. That's where *I* come in ... if all goes according to plan, I'll have finished converting the heathen around the same time that I get my doctorate. Then, and only then, will my work truly be done. [bwahahahahahahahahahahaha...]

Comments

Foucault; Fire and Books

[mrendon.livejournal.com]

Helen,

I'm new to livejournal, so I'm not sure I'm posting this comment correctly. Nevertheless . . . stumbled across your journal through a series of clicks that commenced with a comment I think you posted elsewhere in which you mentioned Foucualt. Then, read your interesting profile/bio and saw the strange yoking of books and fire, and had to ask, do you know Gaston Bachelard's, The Psychoanalysis of Fire? Among my favorites. From the first page: "Among all phenomena, it [fire] is really the only one to which there can be so definitely attributed the opposing values of good and evil. It shines in Paradise. It burns in Hell. It is gentleness and torture. It is cookery and it is apocalypse. It is a pleasure for the good child sitting prudently by the hearth; yet it punishes any disobedience when the child wishes to play too close to its flames. It is well-being and it is respect. It is a tutelary and a terrible divinity, both good and bad. It can contradict itself; thus it is one of the principles of universal explanation." Do you know Bachelard?

Mark

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Well, I didn't before ... but now I have to look him up. Pyromaniacs of the world, unite!