March 09, 2006

Apropos the show catalogue

Today I recieved the following e-mail ( I have substituted the names for anonymity):

Dear Nicole and Ferdinanda

Urgent

Please send a short statement of your dissertation for the Summer Show
Catalogue. The deadline is now and it it absolutely imperative that all
students who intend to graduate are in this publication.

Thank you.

Jeremiah

Apart from the fact I had actually submitted the darn thing a couple of days ago, anticipating the 'subtle' threat of flunkation like an arthritic anticipates rain, I must say this is one of my all time favourite RCA correspondences.
And this is why: In literary terms, it has a Hemmingwayesque consciseness about it which is laconic and violent while retaining a masculin aloofness. Academically, it demonstrates both rigor and relevance. A Foucaulian analysis clearly demonstrates the discursive unities and discontinuities by which the e-mail extends older technologies of surveillance in determining knowledge-power relations between Jeremiah (as the warden of the panopticon) and Nicole and Ferdinanda (the carcerals).
I paid so much money that if they flunk me for misspelling my profession in the catalogue statement or some such nonesense I fully intend to go to court. Furthermore, I have my wittiness to comfort me in my times of bewilderment. I am only afraid that upon graduation I will have metamorphosed into the full Kafkaesque expression of the past two years: nothing says 'RCA Fun' like a cockroach.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home