Even though in our reading I tend often to regard much of this theory as, whether it's intended to be so or not, having more to do with other theory than real life, ultimately one has to compare theoretical ideas with lived experience. It's always nice after all to be able to sort of have an idea of whether what you think someone is arguing squares with your impression of reality or not.

...you can join the Judith Butler is my Homegirl facebook group, or just print out the Judith Butler theory.org.uk trading card, which lists her "strengths" as: "groundbreaking, constructive critical skills" and "weaknesses" as "increasingly impenetrable writing style".

Something I found interesting was Huyssen's statements about the institutionalization of the avantgarde. While this is an idea that we've run into before, reading Harraway gave me something of new take on the phrase "the dialectic between the avantgarde and mass culture". This is something we've kind of discussed in class, maybe less in the Adorno high/low culture sense and more just in general belief that someone, somewhere, must give a challenge to the inequalities of late capitalist cultural production methodologies.

It was very interesting to see Anderson's discussion of the arc of Lyotard's work, and I felt that it helped put a few things in perspective for me. Upon going back and looking closely at his essay with the aim of comparing his ideas to those of later writers, I read a few things into his essay that I hadn't previously. Primarily, what was of interest to me this time around was his take on history, and the impact upon it of the loss of hierarchy within language games.

I felt extremely challenged by today's reading, in part because I wasn't aware we had to do it until last night. That said, I found the concepts explored to be fascinating stuff, and I am glad I at least tried to make sense of it all before class. What is most compelling to me right now is the connections between the ideas proposed in each work; I am in part seeking to make a coherent whole, to decipher a "school", to isolate a discourse that could be called postmodern. But from the very beginning of my attempt to make meaning out of these works I encounter a challenge from Derrida.