supervisory meeting p1 of 2 (4 apr 14)

The nature of these meetings I understand is to have everyone meet at once; in this case, I’m working on my RDC2, and need to be able to work toward a very rapidly approaching deadline, so, I’m meeting with my supervisors separately, because of complicated travel and teaching schedules, and also because there’s a lot of material to cover (60 pages or so), and individual conversations are necessary (but everyone is talking to each other, we’re all conferring in loops so that eventually we’re all participating in the same conversation).

This morning I met with Debbie, and had a wonderfully illuminating discussion of the report and the first chapter.  We’re discussing the structure of the whole; I have a Cortazar-like  (and a little of Barthes) glossary to begin, and am thinking of how this might manifest into thinking about the thesis as a whole.  A document that’s based in a structure, Debbie is suggesting, found somewhere in Lukumí oral tradition.  So I’m thinking about the Odu, the Ifa corpus of oral knowledge, and how that structure might suggest a structure that could guide this whole thing (and it would, by nature of the Ifa corpus, lend itself readily to post-structuralism, because it is already post-structural).

The intro (which I have a draft off, but not a draft I like yet) would in part explain the reasoning for the structure, in order to help the reader along, but also to position the work philosophically in an African-based and art-based system, which already has political implications which with I am very comfortable, because it is a subversion of traditional academic thought from the get-go.

We also discussed the interview process with the performers, and I’m thinking of ways of capturing their words on video and audio, according to psychoanalytic theory (by that I just mean setting the stage so that they are not looking me in the eye, like on the analyst’s couch, so that they are more likely to speak as if speaking into a mirror).

The mirror.  She suggests I look at two books, Marina Warner’s Phantasmagoria and Maillet’s The Claude Glass. I ordered both.

Yes, things are rolling along very nicely right now.  More after the conversation with Laura next week,

tschussie!