tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55396222011-06-19T15:07:27.855-07:00Annotation for Les GuérillèresNotes on all the names mentioned in Monique Wittig's <u>Les Guérillères</u>, radical feminist novel from 1969. Building a Digital Feminary.Liznoreply@blogger.comBlogger471100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1082223214559970212004-04-17T10:23:00.000-07:002004-04-17T10:51:33.420-07:00one thing is clear to me. in order to know, I have to know from a variety of sources and those sources can be trusted to greater or lesser degrees. I trust the accuracy of the encyclopedia britannica 11th edition in one way: that things like dates and names will be accurate and that they will include a certain range of people or events as important. but for example I might find "mrs. bernard Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1082222090642225722004-04-17T10:06:00.000-07:002004-04-17T10:23:32.950-07:00Meeting with Professor Peel thurs. a.m. Next meeting to be determined as I can send her updates thru email. Pseudo-assignment for me to find out for sure what I am doing for the OTHER class that isn't this one - by next tuesday evening - and email her.
Her comments on my essay outline draft were helpful. I feel like I know what I am doing and I am confident and have plenty of things to sayLiznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1082006437784874672004-04-14T22:19:00.000-07:002004-04-14T22:23:29.360-07:00Did I mention that I've now gone through Z-R, backwards? Most everything has a little information. I figure as long as there is a pointer that might be useful to someone, that is enough. At least it's clear that there ARE pointers out there if you look hard enough. I'm halfway through P, still going backwards. Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1081814649641535912004-04-12T17:02:00.000-07:002004-04-12T17:06:59.216-07:00Progress: Cleaned up a few more source entries. Finished "B". Started going through Salmonson's Encylopedia of Amazons, backwards. I'd like to get the works cited list into decent shape by Thursday's meeting with Prof. Peel.Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-108155955472507802004-04-09T18:05:00.000-07:002004-04-09T18:22:45.873-07:00procedure lately has been:
(look in specific source if it's obvious, like a biblical name)
Look up name in columbia encyclopedia
then Britannica
then Wikipedia
Then google it with "french" "feminist" or if I have a good guess for the ethnicity I try it: name + feminist + chinese
Then a googling with other possibilities: +woman +goddess +amazon +female
I also have many reference Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1080887386515328232004-04-01T22:20:00.000-08:002004-04-01T22:32:24.950-08:00Meeting notes (will type them later).
I worked all day putting in names from the chapter on feminists associated with Saint Simonianism from around 1830 (from the 19th Century French Feminists book). That book is great. I recommend it to everyone.
One note from the meeting I don't have to look up. Ellen asked me these very good question. "How will you know when you are done? When do you Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1080834586355682152004-04-01T07:49:00.000-08:002004-04-01T07:52:23.903-08:00"false" or madeup definitions will be in red, the traditional color of the correction of errors.Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1080833668956124502004-04-01T07:31:00.000-08:002004-04-01T07:37:06.700-08:00thinking too of Deep Rivers - a wonderful book - and the way the main char. uses different names for people depending on how their relationship is. When he begins calling his friend by his quechua nickname but still calls him the spanish name to everyone else and then when he stops the quechua nickname out of anger with him but instead calls him the spanish version of the nickname.
Aliases and Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1080796689094280452004-03-31T21:12:00.000-08:002004-03-31T21:47:46.200-08:00Instead of writing the quote-filled primer on feminism and naming, I ended up writing a very personal statement. so be it. I will work tomorrow on the more academic end of things. i felt that trying to write this woudl clarify my thoughts. It is a draft. It had large gaping holes. I just asked for comments, but don't be all picking this to pieces, please, or correcting my grammar or Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1080763322189467282004-03-31T12:00:00.000-08:002004-03-31T20:33:01.263-08:00here is my first stab at the longer essay where I'll talk about the project. I thought it might be good to take Ellen Peel's advice and start from my personal relationship with the text.
After that bit I ahve written I will go into some feminist theory stuff about names and identity and talk about the experience of researching some of the individual names and what that was like and where it Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1080763137644045562004-03-31T11:58:00.000-08:002004-03-31T12:06:39.200-08:00here is my draft of what will go on the intro page to the project. (by the way, the project is here:Building A Digital Feminary.
Monique Wittig's book Les Guérillères creates a mythopoetic realm in which women instigate a violent revolution. She invokes the first names of approximately 585 women in the main body of the text and in lists of names in capital letters, set off from the body, a Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1080753026341304712004-03-31T09:06:00.000-08:002004-03-31T09:13:03.530-08:00methodology notes:
One thing that got in the way of the project was that John and I wanted (uncharacteristically) to make a general tool that I could use or that anyone could use to annotate a book and to make hyperlinked glossaries or indexes or databases. We tried to make this, but got very bogged down. I kept wanting similar tools for annotating the mahabharata or icelandic sagas or dream Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1080715521714744902004-03-30T22:44:00.000-08:002004-03-30T22:47:57.950-08:00this always cheers me up:
"The bricoleur is adept at executing a great number of diverse tasks; but unlike the engineer, he does not subordinate each of them to the availability of raw materials and tools, conceptualized and procured specifically for this project; his instrumental universe is closed, and the rule of his game is to make do with the means at hand." -- someone or another's Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1079859495860059342004-03-21T00:47:00.000-08:002004-03-21T01:05:24.450-08:00Some realizations.
I am better at the name research than I was last summer - my intuition and my detective abilities are better. I attribute this to my genealogical researches into my own genealogy and that of several friends, last fall.
I know that if I look at a name and think "Hmm, that sounds like it could be Persian" - look up "persian goddesses" "persian feminist" "persian feminist Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1079421791428316262004-03-15T23:22:00.000-08:002004-03-15T23:25:33.030-08:00What I really wish for is that I could get the rights and could publish the whole book online in french and english with the footnotes tastefully at the bottom of each page and everything hyperlinked all to hell and back.Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1079417080474720432004-03-15T21:43:00.000-08:002004-03-15T22:47:58.733-08:00It's not even just invididual women who were lost. What is making me very sad and really, grieving, is that clearly they didn't exist just as individuals but for every fabulous feminist there was a fabulous circle of feminists. Whole communities blinked from existence so that the women look like odd blips in history, exceptions to The Rule. Take Helen Blavatsky's mom. I stumble across her as Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1079381448510153132004-03-15T12:07:00.000-08:002004-03-15T13:03:03.233-08:00Another thought about the spelling and translation of names. I think when first reading this book I was happy to see a variant of my name in there (Elisabeth) but was minorly disappointed that it wasn't "really" in there as it was spelled differently. I wonder if a Michelle feels vaguely disappointed when she sees MICHAELA. In the French version it is MICHÉLE and the Michelle might feel closerLiznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1079379580509770112004-03-15T11:36:00.000-08:002004-03-15T11:46:50.233-08:00Here is a good one: "LOYSE" in the french translated to "LOIS".
Is anyone really named "Hegemonie"? That would be a great name for my kid. maybe virtue-names will be back in fashion someday with someone other than pop stars and hippies and instead of little Briannas and Hannahs and Emilys we will get some Libertys and Liberacions and Hegemonys and Revolutionarys and Enlightenments. "Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1079378256211684592004-03-15T11:14:00.000-08:002004-03-15T11:20:05.030-08:00sister, mother?
I am pondering whether to make Isabelle Our the twin sister (very Irigaray) or the mother or daughter of Iris Our. In the french there is a sudden apparition of Isabelle Our and the English version leaves it out. Reading the french it seems like a mistake there, although I originally thought it must be a translation error. That I should play with this seems obvious. The Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1079377158317140802004-03-15T10:58:00.000-08:002004-03-15T11:10:01.873-08:00Prof. Peel was right: the two English language editions both have the same pagination. So the index of names will work for either edition! Joy.
Yes, "joy", I mean it seriously... Years of noticing that women's names being left out of the indexes of books of history... Mentioned in the book, but left out of the index.
Sometimes I look immediately in a book's index to see if they have someLiznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1079228004637862332004-03-13T17:30:00.000-08:002004-03-13T17:35:43.860-08:00Another mistake I made: I realized somewhere along the way that I should have kept the capitalization of the names the same as it is in the books. If it's ZITA or FLORA I should have entered it that way - rather than as Zita and Flora. That way, information would have been preserved about whether it's one of the names on the pages of names in all caps. I didn't quite realize it until I came Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1079227623825701052004-03-13T17:20:00.000-08:002004-03-13T17:32:37.686-08:00 It certainly helps my productivity that I have a laptop and can be in bed now with my feet up, doing the data entry for the French names. It was a long afternoon of shopping, cooking and cleaning.
I typed up about half of them in the format [name, page:page] because I thought I would be able to add them in a big batch to the database. But then realized I would have to enter each one so that Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1079208912361374892004-03-13T12:14:00.000-08:002004-03-13T12:17:31.610-08:00I'm still in The Office Of My Own. I am wishing heartily for a Bathroom Of One's Own. Because if I go out there into the house, my kid will see me and realize I am actually here and he will want to play with me.
Oh for a Bathroom of One's Own! Perhaps a Chamberpot of One's Own?
Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1079206857147215252004-03-13T11:39:00.000-08:002004-03-13T12:25:54.840-08:00I am using this site fairly heavily: Sunshine for women. It is working well for me to go to this sort of source - feminist biographies and encyclopedias - and look to see if any names intersect. If they even slightly match, I am putting them in.
This is also quite useful
http://home.infionline.net/~ddisse/index.html
and I am using the 1911 Britannica as well. I have it in print but the Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1079204363636774242004-03-13T10:53:00.000-08:002004-03-13T11:02:54.810-08:00The translation of names is very important - makes a huge difference.
For instance I think of myself as a fairly sophisticated reader. But when I first recorded the english names from the translation of Les Guerilleres, I wrote "Simona" into the database. And thought to myself, "Gee, it's actually odd that Wittig would have put in a Simona, but not a Simone. Was she actively trying to avoid Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1079200918238703902004-03-13T09:59:00.000-08:002004-03-13T10:13:42.700-08:00I have to say it's kinda hard having my husband work on the code. When I have to ask him for help I feel bad. he is quite helpful. I used to be at least a passable programmer, but i don't understand his methods and he is a lot faster than I am with his lightning emacs. It has always been instructive for me to watch the things that he has mastered with programming and the things that he has Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1079199940939215612004-03-13T09:45:00.000-08:002004-03-13T09:47:59.670-08:00madame des roches and othersLiznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1079197670943590702004-03-13T09:06:00.000-08:002004-03-13T09:10:10.170-08:00There's nothing like a little radical feminism in the morning every morning. I feel a scary clarity of vision lately. The people around me, like zombies. Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1077841133670040332004-02-26T16:13:00.000-08:002004-02-26T16:20:57.093-08:00Meet with E: Thursday March 11 at 10am.
on names: "Aimé" = loved one (masculine)
"Aimée" = loved one (feminine) both look that way because it's how you make the past participle (like "amado")
Suggestion: put the alternate history or made up stuff in pink or something. Or indicate at some minorly obscured level which things are alternate/madeup.
Take a look at Wickedary - Mary Daly.
Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1077735658126873832004-02-25T11:00:00.000-08:002004-02-25T11:11:06.763-08:00french naming conventions - useful
My question here was this, a nd I think this naming explanation has answered it. In the english version I was certainly struck by t he appearance of Orpheus and I thought "hmm here is the first named male." and figured that I must ponder the significance of that. but in the French version it is Orphée which I think would be the feminine form of Orpheus. Is Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1077734310131748112004-02-25T10:36:00.000-08:002004-02-25T10:40:32.140-08:00it gives me great pleasure - the pleasure of a plodding pedant - to find an error in the English translation of L.G. On page 56 of the French version is the story of Iris Our and then also Isabelle Our. The English version has just Iris Our and then Iris Our again. Isabelle, the long lost sister of Iris!
It could perfectly well be an error in the French version that I have that was changed Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1077733929868748192004-02-25T10:12:00.000-08:002004-02-25T10:35:30.390-08:00I have a new idea for the project. As I type in the french names and mull over the "Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary" I was thinking that for some of my name definitions, I will make up stuff and cite as sources the imaginary sources in Lesbian Peoples. I will refer to the imaginary countries and history. This when I can't find anything good on a particular name or just when I Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1076836537701541112004-02-15T01:03:00.000-08:002004-02-15T01:17:29.513-08:00I am also thinking as I look back over past entries here about
Ceza, the writer and magazine publisher in Egypt. Just a little digging and there is the tip of her iceberg of what could well have been something quite amazing and someone amazing. The way my publishing projects, magazines, start up with great excitement, and vanish, and 10 years later, someone writes a history of that movement, Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1076835648175301202004-02-15T00:59:00.000-08:002004-02-15T01:02:40.170-08:00Cross-posting with my bilingual poetry project.
Not that direct of a link, but I can't help but think of my other project on Monique Wittig as I read Gómez Peña.
I will repeat again for myself:
"The artists and writers who inhabit the Fourth World have a very important role: to elaborate the new set of myths, metaphors, and symbols that will locate us within all of these fluctuating Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1075748980666904412004-02-02T11:09:00.000-08:002004-02-02T11:11:19.843-08:00ability to Delete entries
add language field (french and english)
mark everything in there now to be english
have alphabetical index across top of "listwords.cgi"
search box where I can type a name and hit search.
might also be able to search on page number
returns the full entries of both the french and the english
change wording "appears on page"
ability to page through by page, click Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1075655019867378952004-02-01T09:00:00.000-08:002004-02-01T09:06:11.106-08:00I'm back in the saddle with this project as of January 2004.
Today I will add commenting to this blog and will start typing in the French names.
I am feeling a bit daunted by the task. I think the first order of business should be to get a basic "name definition" for each name, using ONE source book. Last summer I got very bogged down by surfing names and finding things like whole networks of Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1059924113985845632003-08-03T08:21:00.000-07:002003-08-03T09:10:36.446-07:00A book to look up: Sixteenth Century French Women Writers Marguerite d’Angoulême, Anne de Graville, the Lyonnese School, Jeanne de Jussie, Marie Dentière, Camille de Morel
Åkerlund , Ingrid
This would be helpful:
The Feminist Encyclopedia of French Literature. Ed. Eva Sartori. Westport, Connecticut: 1999. Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1059891738319173942003-08-02T23:22:00.000-07:002003-08-02T23:30:11.660-07:00sadness
As I keep working I feel overwhelming sadness at the loss from history of these women; politicians, writers, freethinkers. All we hear is "the scribbling trollope" or "courtesan and mother of Agnathocleia, mistress of Ptolemy", and until I dig deeper I can't find the powerful person underneath. What is rape if not a denial of agency, of existence? Simultaneous denial of worth and Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1057894506515773182003-07-10T20:35:00.000-07:002003-07-10T20:59:29.733-07:00I find a lot of names on Google by searching on the name along with one or several of these words: woman, feminist, french, lesbian, famous. By doing this I am slanting the definitions ideologically. It helps me filter information. For example, if I search on "Ceza" I get 162,000 hits which seem to be mostly Turkish web sites. I conclude that ceza is a common word or name in Turkish. "Ceza Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1057260475688678202003-07-03T12:27:00.000-07:002003-07-03T12:27:55.736-07:00There are around 580 names. I entered them all but must delete a few accidental duplicates. Yay!Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1057208703016750612003-07-02T22:05:00.000-07:002003-07-03T12:27:16.980-07:00I will make a separate page for other words, places, or things that could use some notes.
The Internationale - 144 (put all the words)
Funeral March - a specific one?? 144
évohé - 144
lacunae - 143
trismagesta - 142
PUnic wars - 140
stupas 136
dagbas 136
chortens - p. 136
Sporphyra - 119
army of Wu - 119
Perségame 119
Seumes 119
Apone 119
Gathma 119
Rome 120
Amazons - 85
bohemia 114-115
Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1057206916738735242003-07-02T21:35:00.000-07:002003-07-02T21:35:16.793-07:00I keep thinking it would be fun to make a "Feminary Purity Test" where the test-taker can go through the whole list of names and check off which ones they think they "know" or recognize and which names they don't. It could be simple recognition with checkboxes for "know a specific example" or "have heard the name" or "no clue". Then you get a Feminary Knowledge score back. And your curiosity Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1057206049676848302003-07-02T21:20:00.000-07:002003-07-02T21:27:17.373-07:00Will read this Article on Wittig translated with online tool...
Hrmm, I see right away that I was right, the English translator messed with the names. "Des personnages comme Koue Fei, Blanche Neige, Nu Wa, Hippolyte, Minerve..." Blanche Neige = Snow White. Grrr.
Perhaps adding a new field, a checkbox for "french" or "english" version of the name. If I don't have that, then I throw off my Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1057202530353377272003-07-02T20:22:00.000-07:002003-07-02T20:22:10.400-07:00Must get my hands on the French version. Did the translator change any of the names? I have my suspicions of the names in the vignettes. I doubt Wittig wrote "Snow-White" in the original, but it's not impossible. If names are different, I shoud add them somehow, either at the top level or in the English definitions.Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1057200436219529082003-07-02T19:47:00.000-07:002003-07-03T11:17:05.896-07:00Another issue: Why? Why am I doing this? I'm not sure.
Part of the point of the lists of names in capital letters is, I think, their anonymity. The inclusion of women's names from many places and times, mixing the everyday with the mythological, brings the everyday to the status of myth and the goddesses down to earth. The real/historical names mix with the fictional. Full or last names haveLiznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1057199268741393262003-07-02T19:27:00.000-07:002003-07-02T19:27:48.773-07:00I have settled on typing in all of the names and page numbers first. I've researched about 50 names so far. It is clear that I will be able to find most, maybe 75% of them, in standard name dictionaries, so that will be my first pass through the library.
I am wondering if I should have separate fields for various bits of information, like country of origin, language of origin. That seems Liznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5539622.post-1057198910972490722003-07-02T19:21:00.000-07:002003-07-02T19:21:51.016-07:00This blog is to hold my notes and ongoing thoughts on Monique Wittig's book Les Guérillères. I am annotating the proper names in the book. The working annotations will be available as soon as I have password protection in place for the editor.Liznoreply@blogger.com