Hi all,<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to contribute some ideas I\u2019ve been toying with since Tuesday about our Bakhtinesque reading of Money: A Suicide Note<\/em>. I\u2019m pretty familiar with Bakhtin\u2019s theories of the grotesque and the carnivalesque, and I\u2019m likely reading into this too literally but hey, at least it might provide some more context about these ideas.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been thinking in particular about the conflicted gendering of John\u2019s body given the introduction of the grotesque and carnivalesque in Begley\u2019s \u201cSatirizing the Carnival of Postmodern Capitalism\u201d and our conversations in class. Bakhtin\u2019s notions of the carnivalesque and the grotesque bodies are largely indebted to Renaissance French writer Fran\u00e7ois Rabelais and his work Gargantua and Pantagruel<\/em>, which, as Dr. Dick mentioned on Tuesday, is about giants. Begley points to\u00a0\u201cSelf\u2019s hedonistic cycle of accumulation, consumption, and gratification [which] exists as a grotesque celebration of a proliferating commodity culture\u201d in Money<\/em> (86), the\u00a0\u2018grotesque celebration\u2019 of which is derived from the motif of surplus in Gargantua and Pantagruel<\/em>, whose physical sizes, actions, and consumption of food is nothing short of\u00a0excessive.<\/p>\n However, the idea of the grotesque complicates\u00a0this reading. In his book on Rabelais, Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin introduces the concept of the grotesque body. The grotesque body is the abject body; it is open, incomplete and leaks internal fluids\u00a0into the outside world. Due to the extra genital orifice and activities such as childbirth and\u00a0breast-feeding, the grotesque body is characterized as feminine. While\u00a0the women in Rabelais inhabit the grotesque, they are often barred in various ways from accessing surplus; they are either punished for participating in festivals (or what Bakhtin would call\u00a0\u201cpositive hyperbolism\u201d (Rabelais and His World<\/em> 278)), or they die in childbirth.<\/p>\n As John partakes in both of these\u00a0activities, he could be read as both Bakhtin\u2019s grotesque body or the complete body (masculine, with closed off boundaries to the external world). Begley states that: \u201cSelf\u2019s carnival involves neither a\u00a0suspension of, nor liberation from, hierarchy\u201d, but is more: “a\u00a0desperate cycle of accumulation and gratification\u201d (91-92). He further suggests that John\u2019s concern with decay is in opposition to this surplus. If we consider Rabelais, John\u2019s abundant consumption aligns with that of the masculine giants, while his abjection (vomit, semen, tears at the royal wedding) sees him “embodying the\u00a0degradation and\u00a0\u2018material bodily principle’ of grotesque realism\u201d or the\u00a0feminine body (Begley 91).<\/p>\n I know this might sound super far-fetched, but let me know what you guys think! I\u2019m also trying to work out some ideas about the connection between the grotesque and the\u00a0potlatch, so any thoughts about that would also be great.<\/p>\n Also: the idea of the abject is from Julia Kristeva’s book\u00a0Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hi all, I\u2019d like to contribute some ideas I\u2019ve been toying with since Tuesday about our Bakhtinesque reading of Money: A Suicide Note. I\u2019m pretty familiar with Bakhtin\u2019s theories of the grotesque and the carnivalesque, and I\u2019m likely reading into this too literally but hey, at least it might provide some more context about these … Continue reading