#kamila shamsie if youre in the market for more book recs
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violentdevotion · 1 year ago
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Hi. Op of the college post. I wanted to extend my apology for your friend's death (i actually made the post in memory of a friend who also died) and to ask what major you were in? An essay on hauntology sounds intriguing, id be curious to know more. Well, sorry if this is random and sudden, your tags just jumped out to me in the notifications as the most interesting thing someone left on that post. I hope you have a lovely day!
thank you for your thoughts. i want to extend the same to you, i feel losing a friend so young at such an already tumultuous time in your life is one of the most difficult things to go through, but we did it 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
i studied english literature at uni. the class i wrote the essay on was contemporary world literature and the prompt was 'discuss the importance of grief or loss in contemp world lit and I chose the books Autumn by Ali Smith and Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing (which if you haven't read already id really recommend). i think the conclusion sums up what my thesis was better than i can now 2 years after writing it
In conclusion, grief and loss within these texts are tied to nostalgia, of either objects, memory, or people. However, this grief disrupts the memory and the linear narrative, and as such time bleeds into eachother. Events from the past cannot be remembered without knowing what is to come, whereas idealisations of the future must be rooted in something from history, the consequence of which is that ‘the futuristic now connoted a settled set of concepts, affects, and associations.’ (Fisher, 2012, p.16). Difficulties arise however when these concepts and associations are established in a history of violence and loss. This exchange expresses the continuous feeling of grief, as characters are repeatedly acknowledging and ‘burying’ what ‘haunts’ them while unable to live in a future without what they have already buried. Evidently, like a leaf ‘so stuck that when it eventually peels away, it's leafshape left behind, shadow of the leaf, will last on the pavement till next spring.’ (Smith p. 259) Contemporary World Literature must constantly acknowledge the past and present while looking to the future, forcing all three to exist concurrently.
dont worry about it being random, i made the joke that the post was made in a lab for me when its actually two people coincidentally relating over similar life experiences. i hope you have a lovely day also :))))
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