Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id MAA06966 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 10 May 2001 12:31:16 +0100 Content-return: allowed Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 10:46:38 +0100 From: "Ryan, Angela" <ARyan@french.ucc.ie> Subject: RE: memetics of the heroine To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Message-id: <49AB9D0C6521D84ABD017BF83CDF44C408D751@xch1.ucc.ie> X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
<I am using inscription in the general sense of inscription
culturelle, in
> which 'literature' includes (putatively) any trace écrite of human
> interaction, and text, whether as individual object or as rumeur mondiale,
> is cultural inscription.>
>
In one sense this depends on whether one views texts as memes (or
memeplexes) themselves or reflective of memes in culture- some would say the
former, some the latter, others both, and some neither! Cultural
inscription is reasonable IMHO.
>
I don't know that I have a position on that: other than the obvious fact
that, whatever the relationship between text-as-meme and
text-as-reflection-of-meme-in-culture, these processes, if they happen, do
so in that order. This is another D Adams idea (incipit to Mostly Harmless,
I think) but it goes back further. My theory is that the relationship
between time (consequent event) and text is that one mirrors (sometimes with
ludic play on chronology) the beginning-to-end structure of the other.
Beginning-to-end, that is, as we seem to perceive event; it seems as if we
order lived time like a story to put some kind of sense on it: we have the
illusion that we understand our past better once it is gone, and that what
we are doing in the present makes sense in terms of future benefit,
(survival, fufilment, or other perceived objective); paradoxically, since
the one clear fact about the past is that it is not present, and that the
future is theoretical.
My point is that if we stigmatise our present in favour of a past which we
somehow perceive as being more easily grasped when it is gone, and sacrifice
it to a future which may or may not happen, this may be because we like
stories, which also order themselves in a post hoc, propter hoc structure.
They attempt to explain the present in terms of the past and describe the
present as causing the future. ( I think this was Adams' point, and the
reason Dent was such a waverer: Proust's Recherche is rather similar in this
respect). Or, of course, vice versa; our cultural inscription is heavily
narrative because we like to assimilate order = direction and order =
organisation, meaningful structure. Either way, I think the text / society
relation (text as meme, text as meme reflected...) is
structural-counterstructural.
I hope this is clearer - or at least definitively opaque...
Yours sincerely
Angela
-----Original Message-----
From: Vincent Campbell [mailto:v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk]
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2001 10:06 AM
To: 'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'
Subject: RE: memetics of the heroine
>>Following this, comes my other question- what does 'memetically
inscribed'
>>actually mean anyway?
<... seeing them, I suppose, rather as
> the mice in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy saw Arthur Dent's
> brain.>
>
Surprising, perhaps, how many people into memes are familiar with
Douglas Adams.
Vincent
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