1/01/2006
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A few panel highlights remembered two days later.

-Lee Edelman arguing against the politics of reproductive futurity, i.e. family values as embodied in the image of the innocent child. This guy thinks it is cool that children keep getting attacked in The Birds. He wants nothing to do with the politics of hope as currently claimed by both political parties. (Following Edelman's logic, it is necessary to kill the kid in Syriana because the narrative must illustrate the link between the nuclear family and western imperialism). I'd never heard of Edelman before, but Aaron tells me that his earlier work was on Hart Crane and John Ashbery. Judith Halberstam, another panelist, appreciated the force of Edelman's position but wanted to widen the canon of viable queer positions. She rattled off a huge list of potential subjects. She also wants us to listen to more Sex Pistols ("No future"). Another panelist turned to Schuyler for an anti-camp aesthetics.

-Sianne Ngai on the minor aesthetic concepts of interesting and curious. Her examples ranged from Whitman and Henry James to Oppen. Hopefully her forthcoming study will have something to say about terrific too (Berrigan's insistence).

-Tim Redman on Pound's St. Elizabeth archive. Six boxes to be mined! Should be a fascinating chapter in the forthcoming biography. Noticed that Pound adds drug dealers to his list of enemies in later Cantos.

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