From: V200KG6U-AT-ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 23:30:27 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: more on French avant-garde Yes, Mr. Free, you misunderstood me. I was resppnding to someone who signed her remarks "Karen," who had commented on the rather constricted frameworks within which questions and issues may be explored within the American academy. Her point, if I recall correctly, was that the configuration of periods and specializations within the academy precludes much, if not all, interdisciplinary, as well as comparative discussion, and that this tightening of institutional and professional boundaries explains, at least in part, the unreceptiveness in this country to most of the currents within the French avant-garde(s). Shocking staid 19th-century American literature specialists is hardly a worthwhile endeavor. However, conceeding Melville to the confines of either Civil War specialists, cultural studies and its variants, etc., etc. is similarly remiss. I was merely trying to underline--perhaps too glibly--the narrowness of the American academic establishment, and its unwillingness to consider heretofore unsanctioned critical perspectives (of course the irony in what I said is that Blanchot's writing, at least in France, is hardly unsanctioned. And yet here, the conjoinment of *desouevrement* and Melville's writing is viewed as either heretical or just plain nonsensical). Christopher Devenney Dept. of Comp. Lit. SUNY -AT- Buffalo --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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