Searching For Meaning in Virginia Woolf's Between the Acts
I wanted to examine the states at the limits of language; The moments where language breaks up...I wanted to examine the language which manifests these states of instability because in ordinary communication--which is organized, civilized--we repress these states of incandescence. Creativity as well as suffering comprises these moments of instability, where language, or the signs of language, or subjectivity itself are put into "process". (Julia Kristeva)
Any attempt to study the complex layers of the human endeavor of "meaning-making" should include an examination of those places where the spoken word (or articulation itself) "breaks up" or fails. Woolf's Between the Acts is itself a study of the struggle of relying on language to act as the sole currency of significance in a world which refuses to be contained. The novel does in fact put language, the signs of language, and subjectivity into "process". Consequently, "meaning" becomes complicated as it often falls outside, (but not entirely), of ordinary discourse and speech. "Meaning" wedges itself in between words; it is found in the silences between two characters, in the interruption of a speech by wind, in the social taboos which make the unsayable so much louder than the said. " kind of meta-discourse emerges in Between the Acts, one which pushes the conventional foreground (i.e. the characters themselves and their conversations) of a novel into the background. This inversion places humans in a broad dialogue that the characters themselves, (and even we the readers), may fail to recognize as a dialogue because it does fall outside of normative, controlled language. It is in this larger context of silences an...
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...ess process.
In the traditional narrative of resolution, there is a sense of problem solving...a kind of ratiocinative or emotional teleology... "What will happen" is the basic question. In the modern plot of revelation, however, the emphasis is elsewhere, the function of the discourse is not to answer the question or even to pose it...It is not that events are resolved (happily or tragically) but rather that a state of affairs is revealed.
(Seymour Chatman)
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implacability of the natural world, the impartial perfection ofscience, the heartbreak of history. The narrative is permeated with insights about language itself, its power to distort and destroy meaning, and to restore it again to those with stalwart hearts.
...nd usually the institutions and churches do not have the resources to provide a safety net for starving people. What we have found when working with the World Bank is that the poor man's safety net, the best investment, is school feeding. And if you fill the cup with local agriculture from small farmers, you have a transformative effect. Many kids in the world can't go to school because they have to go beg and find a meal. But when that food is there, it's transformative. It costs less than 25 cents a day to change a kid's life.” (Sheeran)
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Many people believe that the problems associated with hunger are limited to a small part of society and certain areas of the country, but the reality is much different. In many ways, America is the...
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