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Author Topic: Iris Murdoch
Trespasser
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1204

posted 19 February 2002 08:17 PM      Profile for Trespasser   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The other night I was watching Judi Dench being interviewed by Charlie Rose about her title role in the recent Brit movie Iris. I've read mixed reviews (here's the positive one, and here's a quick and deadly barb, for instance) but I feel so good about the movie already, without even seeing it. And here is why.

It reminded me of a brilliant mind, rekindled my interest in her work. Before this, I've read only her novel Sandcastle and one or two essays on the sovereignty of Good and against dryness in moral philosophy, which I learned about second-hand (through Rorty's references). Now I am enthusiastically reading several of her books (the recent collection of her philosophical essays Existentialists and Mystics with George Steiner's preface is worthy of separate mention). Even if I don't necessarily agree with everything she writes (esp. in epistemology; her essays in moral philosophy, otoh, are 'timeless classics' for me)her erudition, wisdom, brilliance, imagination are endless.

And a therapy to the soul: remember what Gilbert and Gubar wrote about women's fear of authorship, a difficulty that any woman at any time encounters if she dares to grab a pen and a piece of paper? There are no predecessors, no protective shadows of other Great Women behind women who think and write, no paved roads, no history. Rarely does a woman feel entitled to a pen.

Women like Iris Murdoch, though, make things look a tiny bit better. (And women like Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, Mme de Stael, Mary W... who else comes to mind? Whom else could we recover?) It might have something to do with the scarcity of women-authority figures, but when I saw that clip from Iris in which Judi Dench/Iris stands up to speak to a group of people sitting at the table about her faith in education and among other things says Education is the means by which we realize we are happy - I swear, I couldn't stop the tears.

"We have yet to see a woman philosopher", Arendt has allegedly said. We have yet to see a free woman, others would say. The two may be connected. And most importantly, it has happened before.

Can't wait to see Iris.

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: Trespasser ]


From: maritimes | Registered: Aug 2001  |  IP: Logged
nonsuch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1402

posted 20 February 2002 01:36 AM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Should be a good one - i like both of those women.

Philosophers - hm. Interesting question. My first reaction was: because women don't have time for that shit! But that's neither fair nor accurate. Most of the philosophy i've read (back when i had time for that shit) was damn silly. On the other hand, we think about basic questions all the time, while scrubbing the stove or filing autopsy reports - tedious tasks require only a few braincells, leaving the rest free to roam about the galaxy - but we hardly ever write down our conclusions. And when we do, it comes out bed-time stories or blues lyrics or novels, none of which could ever be taken seriously by certified philosophers. Then again, do you care?


From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 20 February 2002 09:51 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I'm looking forward to the movie, too. I'm reading John Bayley's first biography of her and her illness, Elegy for Iris, right now. It is often very moving, but mainly it's got me itchy to be reading her instead (which I've never done).

I have some critical interest in the professionalization of learning. In and of itself it's both a historical phenomenon and a problem, as are both most women's exclusion/alienation from it until recently, and the rapid advance of some within conventional professional categories over the last generation. Sheesh: big topics.

But there have been other pens to pick up, and remarkable numbers of women have wielded them well. Maybe in the unconventional, unauthorized status of women's meditations there is a special kind of potential? Well: feminism is the means by which we argue/realize that, no?

And that is indeed a beautiful line about education.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Trespasser
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1204

posted 20 February 2002 02:07 PM      Profile for Trespasser   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Nonesuch, I LOL-ed while reading your post. I perfectly understand what you're saying. Feminists (Nancy Hartsock, for instance) have written interesting stuff about why women have historically been removed from the mastery over abstract thinking and argued that that position actually carries more accurate knowledge of the world. That those who clean toilets have more to say about the quest for meaning than professors cocooned in their cabinets. bell hooks also wrote about attempts to speak from the margins... but what am I saying, that is one of the hottest issues in theory/thinking/writing today. It is also the issue that Skdadl mentions, the criteria of professionalization and excellence...

A (Black) friend of mine has told me once how enraged he was when he first heard bell hooks giving a talk. She actually told people not to read Plato, ever. And many other canonized thinkers. It could have been an overkill that she used in order to encite the debate, but my friend and I agreed (and went on and on about it, from all possible angles) on how wrong she was in suggesting that. On the other hand, I perfectly understand the motive. "We have difficulty making our lives believable", Hartsock once paraphrased Marques in one of her essays on feminism, "and that is the crux of our fight." Under those circumstances, you haven't got much time left for worshipping the Always Worshipped.


From: maritimes | Registered: Aug 2001  |  IP: Logged
nonsuch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1402

posted 20 February 2002 09:13 PM      Profile for nonsuch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I was just being flip there, of course.
Still, my problem with the Always Worshipped is that they tend to use altogether too many words. If an idea (and, let's face it, in some cases it is a silly idea) can be expressed in ten pages, a philosopher will expand it to 300.

If i ever finish my philosophical masterpiece, it'll start out as a heavy tome and, after merciless editing, end up as a pamphlet.


From: coming and going | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged

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