Ouroboros

April 30th, 2007

I dislike summer classes. There is always a feeling of suffocation, of being crammed into a cage and then force-fed; as if you’re drowning in information or too much air — all this taking place at break-neck speed, so that not only are you deprived of intellectual breathing space, you don’t have time to think.

This coming week I have three exams: one individual report, one take-home exam/paper, and one group report. The individual report is actually a joy to work on; my problem is I want to write about too many artworks and topics and it’s driving me nuts. The paper, though–

It sounds simple enough. Critique Simone de Beauvoir’s Personal Freedom and Others using the philosophies of John Calvin and Augustine. When I start getting to the details, though, things get more complicated: de Beauvoir is not a very clear writer and frequently gets lost in her own ideas; also, I would rather not have to interpret “critique” as “polite term for childish squabble.” I can do better than that. I should be able to do better than that, at least. It’s just confusing considering that this is an exam for Social Science 2 and I don’t see how philosophical critique is going to help me understand political theories and social interactions.

Then again, I remember that this was one reason I decided not to shift to Comparative Literature: I find a lot of analysis self-serving, redundant, and more often than not verging on the absurd. Perhaps my experience as a physics major has given me a more critical eye and a more cynical outlook on the humanities; certainly the Sokal affair cured me of any naive idealism in that regard. The mistrust of over-intellectualizing an object, topic, or idea, though, is something I’ve had since high school.

It’s strange. I’m an academic at heart, but I don’t like what most academics do. I come away with the expression that they’re just taking concepts and spinning them in circles, words building upon more words without any real substance as a foundation, ideas eating themselves in a grotesque imitation of the ouroboros, symbol of cyclicality and unity/wholeness.

Ah, well. Academic freedom…! –Is a prison of the mind.

Tonight I’m writing a paper on this Sinfest strip, in preparation for my individual report tomorrow. I was planning to report on the art of Granado Espada but I thought the comic strip would make for a more interesting discussion. Sinfest actually has a lot of discussion-worthy strips; it’s much more intelligent than it initially lets on.

So, to begin… Are webcomics a form of art?

(Of course they are, but a lot of people would disagree.)

Entry Filed under: academics