Thursday, September 15, 2016

Joyce Van Drost Week 1 Analysis

Difference and Repetition was an interesting piece in the sense that it made me think about the two words in a much different way then I had before. Firstly, I previously didn't think the two words had any relation at all to be written about in a cohesive yet distinct manner. The fact that they aren't completely related, but can be used to explain each other was a really intriguing thought to me. 

One of the topics that interested me the most was the order of laws and how that system works in accordance with laws. I liked how the author included “resemblance” as a factor because it speaks truth into how cases are judged in today’s society. We use laws as guidelines, in a sense, to give us a basis before judging the particulars of the situation in question. The author states, “So, at each level, it is in relation to large, permanent, natural objects that the subject of a law experiences its own powerlessness to repeat and discovers that this powerlessness is already contained in the object, reflected in the permanent object wherein it sees itself condemned.” I thought this quote was very interesting because of the analogies that it utilized and that it explains, in a way, the reason behind the repetition of laws. The use of the word “powerlessness” conveyed the compliance of how a law is treated, in the sense that, the corruption in the system roots back to a law being repeated and returned to each time a case needs to be checked against it for resemblance, even if that law is dishonorable. I feel the use of the word “natural” was also significant because while reading, the use of that word made it seem so readymade or traditional that it was such an immediate response to go and look at a different law.

One other topic I found interesting was when the author was talking about theatre. When I first read the first few sentences, I was confused because I didn’t understand what the significance of the word “movement”, especially because he uses it a few times. However, I started to grasp the idea near the end of the passage where it describes how repetition affects theatre. It states, “We have in mind the theatrical space, the emptiness of that space, and the manner in which it is filled and determined by the signs and masks through which the actor plays a role which plays other roles; we think of how repetition is woven from one distinctive point to another, including the differences within itself…In the theatre of repetition, we experience pure forces, dynamic lines in space which act without intermediary upon the spirit, and link it directly with nature and history, with a language which speaks before words…” I feel that repetition in regards to theatre represents cohesion and also the dynamic of how repetition relates to difference in the sense that different things create and contribute to the cohesion and repetition in the theatre.

This reading definitely made me think, not only because I had to read it over to get some type of grasp of the meaning of it all but also because of how analogies were used in this piece. Like I said in the beginning, it surely made me think not only differently about different concepts in general but also specific words as well and how they can make an impact.

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