pre-post for 11/2

This week as I read the Jameson reading I was extremely caught off guard. While the reading spoke to me in certain places I felt disconnected with the majority of the reading. I am hoping after we discuss this further in class I will have a better understanding of Jameson’s intentions for his audience and his personal beliefs. The part of the reading that stuck out to me the most is the quote that follows. “Theories of difference, however, have tended to stress disjunction to the point at which the materials of the text, including its words and sentences, tend to fall apart into random and inert passivity, into a set of elements which entertain purely external separations from one another. In the most interesting postmodernist works, however, one can detect a more positive conception of relationship which restores its proper tension to the notion of differences itself.” (p. 503) The way I interpreted this quote was that although differences seem to be a trend and perhaps even greater than intentional one can find understanding in such disharmony. Similar to that of Jencks’ disharmonious harmony, it is different but as readers and active people in our society we find understanding in the opposite spectrums. I find it interesting that this quote comes from the section Jameson titles, “Collage and Radical Difference.” I see this is in a very general way, a collage the way I know it are pieces of things that separately don’t mean much but together represent something significant. When I was a kid I would have to make collages that represented me so I would include elements of different things I like. Radical difference represents exactly the elements of the collage that together mean something. Perhaps Jameson is onto something with this that can actually be applied to things happening in the now.