Discontinuity

Apparently the trick to getting kids to talk is...make them read something they hate? I assigned an essay by James Gunn on the definition of science fiction, some aspect of which most of them disagreed with, and paired it with Italo Calvino's "A Sign in Space," which all of them were confused by (I expected this). Since the story an allegory of the evolution of thought and language, I had to invoke Derrida as I explained it,* and...I think most of them got it, and some of them got it enough to actually ask questions that took it further, like, "So does Qwfwq want to return to a pre-symbolic state?" which is in fact one of the big points of all the stories in Cosmicomics as a whole--postmodernity is partially the state of nostalgia for a pre-symbolic past, and partially the recognition that without language there is no thought.

Then they were able to use the Gunn essay to argue for why the story isn't science fiction (and I used other parts of it to argue right back to them that it is, 'cause I think I spend most of my time in the classroom playing devil's advocate). We decided that definitions of SF tend to be personal and based on what a particular person enjoys, even if they do usually have some component of "change."

So that was nice. Definitely made up for the whole "making a kid cry" thing on Tuesday.

And now I dive back into my studying and defense-prepping. I decided to take a break from that this afternoon by looking at the job boards I've been avoiding, and while, yes, on the whole it was overwhelming and anxiety-inducing, at least it looks like there are jobs out there that I could probably do, and that are in places I'd like to live, so yay to that.


* WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME?