Tuesday, October 25, 2005
(9:02 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
What is left to do this semester
For Patristics, I have to read selected texts from Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzen, then compile notes from which later lectures may be derived. This would bring my total reading in Patristics to the Apostolic Fathers (Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Barnabas, et al.), Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, and the three figures mentioned above. This seems to be a fairly decent start in historical theology.For Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, I still have the entire Kierkegaard half of the class, comprising Fear and Trembling, The Sickness Unto Death, Either/Or, and Concluding Unscientific Postscript. My paper for the class is going to be on the use of Fear and Trembling and the second essay of Genealogy of Morals in Derrida's The Gift of Death. (After the class is over, I plan an additional section on Derrida's additions to Donner la mort in terms of his displacement of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard in that later section. This whole project will be a "rewrite" of the original portion of my thesis in the same sense that the second edition of Barth's Romans was a rewrite of the first.) So I do need to re-read The Gift of Death, as well as pay special attention to Fear and Trembling; sadly, I don't have time to gain a useful reading knowledge of Danish, though I have a friend who, somewhat improbably, does have the complete works of Kierkegaard in the original.
For Hermeneutics, I have one in-class presentation next week, which will consist of guiding class discussion based on the reflection papers that the students will submit to me ahead of time. This is a week from Thursday, and I am somewhat ahead of schedule on the book for that session. After that, it's just a matter of keeping up with the reading (three more books) and writing reflection papers. Just as it was a blessing to have done a significant portion of the Patristics directed reading during the summer, it is a blessing that this class (a degree requirement) has a lower workload than I had expected.
For Nancy and Agamben, I need to read Agamben's Potentialities, at which point I plan on going through and taking notes based on my underlinings in all the Agamben books I'll have read thus far (Coming Community, Man Without Content, Means without Ends, Remnants of Auschwitz, State of Exception, and The Open) in order to do some consolidation and analysis before tackling Homo Sacer, after which I will take a look at the new edited volume on that work. I've probably mentioned before that a primary goal for this semester, to ensure that I am still worthy to be doing serious academic work, is to attain a rigorous grasp of the argument and the stakes of Homo Sacer. With Nancy, my reading has been somewhat haphazard so far, at first dictated by the need to write a review of Déclosion (i.e., reading through the other works looking for premonitions of the themes of that work), so now that I'm treating Nancy as such, I feel I need to reread Inoperative Community and Being Singular Plural. I have already read The Experience of Freedom post-review, and I am working on A Finite Thinking, albeit extremely slowly. I would like to read La création du monde: ou, la mondialisation as well (which to my knowledge has not been translated), and I have a book of Nancy interviews arriving in the mail sometime soon. I actually hope to do much of the work on Nancy in French, especially since the gods of translation have not shone as much on him as on some of his contemporaries (such as Agamben). You all are free to come to my house, look at my bookshelf under "N," and hate me. It's not yet clear what the written work for this particular directed study will be.
I'd also like to learn Latin before next semester, because I'll be taking a course on Augustine.
All of this seems manageable -- Hermeneutics will absolutely be over as soon as the semester is, and barring disaster, so will Patristics. We're doing Fear and Trembling in class a week from Wednesday, so starting some serious work on the paper for that class will naturally follow immediately on that, likely allowing me to finish the paper before the end of the semester. The only coursework that seems to be in real danger of stretching beyond the end of the semester is the Agamben and Nancy directed study, particularly if a paper topic really jumps out at me (I've proposed one, but it's fairly artificial).
One potential complicating factor would be employment. I've got enough cash on hand right now to cover basic expenses over the next two months (I think), but I was actually hoping to be working and saving up at this point. I'm grateful for the time off so far in that it has left me feeling like I'm on very solid footing right now, rather than experiencing the kind of stress that usually starts to set in toward the middle of the semester (followed by panic and despair at the end), but I'm not going to be pleasant to be around in January if I have to go through a repeat of this summer. To some extent, working might not end up producing a significant net loss in schoolwork time, since I find that it's often difficult to motivate myself when I feel like I have infinitely vast expanses of time in which to do all this stuff.
I've got some leads, and it's certainly not an urgent situation right now. I just hope that I can get my emotional shit together so that I can actually do the work I know I'm capable of doing right now, rather than moping around the house cursing the cold. Hayley and I made a joint declaration that The Heat Is Going On Because Man It's Cold In Here tonight (we have a veto-proof majority -- it doesn't matter what Anthony thinks), so that should help. I also bought this really cool space heater today, along with a snow shovel for my truck (always thinking ahead, that's Adam Kotsko for you!).
I'm still trying to figure out what exactly my declaration yesterday was supposed to mean. It definitely didn't mean that I am quitting or commiting blogicide. It was more a way of giving myself some freedom to step back the pace if I need to (along with getting some long-standing complaints about blogging in general off my chest). But obviously the rate of posting has been even higher than usual since then, so I don't know.
