Luce Irigaray.

Why is she so impossible to track down? I'm assuming it's not because the majority of her work has been discredited, or because people think that her work on Plato's Cave was utterly ridiculous. I'm guessing that she's so awesome that people have hidden her away and that her anonymity is a product of her awesomeness. In case you're interested, which you aren't, but I'm going to tell you anyway. The story of Plato's Cave runs very briefly thus:

• People all in cave. All they know.
• Someone leaves cave.
• Is scared of world outside.
• Adjusts.
• Goes back to cave to get people out.

Irigaray's reading goes something like this:

• THE CAVE IS DEFINITELY A WOMB. THE PASSAGE TO THE OUTSIDE IS QUITE CLEARLY THE VAGINAL OPENING AND BECAUSE ALL THE NON-GENDER SPECIFIED PEOPLE INSIDE THE CAVE ARE CLEARLY ALL MEN (BECAUSE ONLY MEN WOULD GET TRAPPED IN A CAVE - HOW DUMB ARE THEY?) THE CAVE IS CLEARLY A METAPHOR FOR THE WOMB. THEY ALL LEAVE THE WOMB AT SOME POINT, BUT ARE ATTACHED TO IT STILL. GESTATION AND OTHER THINGS THAT MAKE NO PRACTICAL SENSE AND AFFECT NO READINGS OF ANYTHING. YAY.

Still though, at least the library is opening for three-hours today! Congratulations to them, given that the whole of the university is closed bar that.

Incidentally, if anyone does know anything about either of the two concepts discussed above, or has ever read A Sicilian Romance by Ann Radcliffe then feel free to leave a comment and I will bash some stuff out with you. That might help get my juices flowing. I'm not optimistic, however.

Here's a question for you, too: is it possible to be bored? Or is it only possible to be under the illusion of boredom? What necessarily is 'boredom'? I don't know why I care; though it's likely to be because I feel as though I'm incredibly bored. I remember reading something, however, which suggested that boredom was merely an illusion and that because it works around the axiom of thought you cannot inherently be 'bored'. That seems logical, but arbitrary. I never really got on bored with these kind of demarcations: what difference does it make if you are bored, or if you feel bored? That seems like a pointless division merely meant for people who have nothing better to do. I guess the person who came up with that opposition was incredibly bored themselves. It reminds me of a lot of Gothic literature criticism, and how it revolves entirely around binary opposites (good/evil, right/wrong, women/men, north/south, science/religion, etc.). I've always had a problem with this, because surely defining these categories undermines the idea of categorising something? Arbitrary, subjective divisions cannot surely be held us as demonstrable criterion upon which you can base a judgement? That makes no sense at all.

/End rant.