Subject to Change Liveblog 5

Sharon Kunde (UC Irvine)


“Slimed! Meshy Baptisms in Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘At the Fishhouses’ ” 



Bishop, At the Fishhouses
mesh
human bleeding into the environment
symbolic violence << overfishing
Baptism: symbolism that transforms matter
attempts to baptize the seal fail: netting
seal as symbol, emblem, mark
“diving into the narcissism of anthropomorphization” (Morton)
true escape is to extend narcissism: seal regards the speaker while the speaker sings hymns to it
free swinging indifferent element of temporal horizon
speaker imagines water contact as threatening
Derrida: possibility of sharing possibility of nonpower
language as a kind of net: not the same as knowing
not the original thing but a new thing or experience
something that escapes 
the flowing element in which we are immersed misses something
figure of the water as a figure of knowledge
speaker keeps bumping up at the edges of finitude
as an act of dark ecology