Imprint
6
Friday,
News
April 2,1993
Accomodation ccwtinued
from pg 4
First and foremost, they must be Ontario students living “within reasonable commuting distance of an Ontario university or college.” Families of applicants must realize the program is an exchange, which means that in return for someone housing their son or daughter, the other family’s son or daughter will be toming to stay with them. As well, the program itself provides the applicant with a list of abut thirty questions which it considers necessary for potential exchange partners to ask each other.
exchange Some important considerations in choosing a partner are the availability of transportation or parking, food,and whether the student wants to live in a religious or non-religious household. Finding these things out and making arrangements are the responsibility of the student. Information on and applications for this program can be found at the Off-campusHousing Officelocated in the Village 1 Complex or by writing to the Accommodation Exchange for Ontario Students at P.O. Box 25063, Stone Road Mall P.O., Guelph, Ont., NlG 4T4.
turkevs 1) Turnkey turkeys kidnapped by unknown suspects (probably IW) 2) Turkevs miraculouslv escape and 3) Courageous imprint staffers rescue turkeys and counsel them out of post trauma stress svndrome PTSS)
TORONTO MONTESSORI INSTITUTE established in 1971
Toronto Montessori Institute specializes in preparing aduIts to work with chikkm in the Montessori yethod of education. TMI is now accepting applications for the Primary and Elementary Teacher Training Course for working in Montessori environments with chikben from ages 34; 6-12 years inclusive. The course is a graduate programme and a Bachelor degree is a pre-rquisite. Course offering: 3rd August, 1993 until the end of June, I!?%. Enrolment is limited. For further information, please call Pam Debbo at 8894882. TORONTO
MONTESSORI
INSTIlUTJZ
Richmond Hill, Ontario
8569 Bayview L4B 3M7
Avenue,
Susan Sontag speaks by Ken Imprint
Bryson Staff
American cultural and literary critic Susan Sontag came to Toronto to lecture at the Winter GardenThea-
tre last Monday. Speaking on “The Writer’sFreedom: literatureand literacy,” Sontag impressed the mixed audience with her propensity to orate her thoughts on topics ranging from censorship to surgery to group versus individual rights. Assembled in the upper reaches of the Winter Garden Theatre, the audience varied from artsy U of T students to suited and hair sprayed Rosedale residents. Obviously there to see different sides of Sontag (the art critic or the established writer), the suits were likely the most appeased by her lecture. Promoting a very modernist ideal of literature, Sontag outlined her personal experience with writing and culture. Literature, to her, is a cultural foundation wholly subjugated to history. She believes that it is ill-advised to consistently be looking to the future and relying on the present, ignoring where we have been. This is how she sees North American culture at the moment. Sontag views her writing, then, as being literary because it is historically based, not dependant on the void of the present and future. The problem that Sontag sees with contemporary’ North American culture is the conformism and commercialism inherent in television and mass communication. Noting that some American libraries have recently been renamed “communication centre’s,” with “book sections,” she sees the decline of written culture as a type of conformist censorship of those wishing to continue the literary tradi.tim. From there, Sontag moved into ier views on censorship and rights. In considering censorship, said Sontag, we must consider the issue of group rights over individual rights. As she sees it, individual rights must always take precedence over group rights dtie to the often sadistic practices of some cultures (such as genita1 mutilation in African cultures), With the fulfi’;lment of individual rights, says Sontag, such cultural sadism need not occur. In defense of individual rights, she cited the necessary existence of a moral code which compels people to
-
not
act
sadistically.
This is where the incongruency in her argument began. In discussing censorship, Sontag argued that there can be no democracy without
diversity, no diversity without contrdversy, and no controversy without offensiveness. Thus, she believes, it is fundamentally contrary to democracy to censor offensive material. Also, most offensive material is simply irrelevant (such as Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho) because it is too poorly created for anyone to take it seriously. However, any correlation between her textual and cultural beliefs does not hold true. If she believes in non-censorship, to then argue thatother culturesshould not be allowed, because of some moral law, to practise their culture, is in itself censorship and prejudiced. Beyond her logical lapses, Sontag consistently betrayed her modernism throughout the lecture. At one point, when someone cornplained about the rise of “reader criticism, she jumped response” aboard and began to ridicule the possibility of a non-text based criticism. If people begin to judge a text by how it “makes them feel,” she said, what is to stop surgeons in medical school from judging their surgery by how they felt during it. This embarrassing correlation between art and science, however, ,doomed Sontag to modernist conservatism for the younger of those in the audience. Sontag’s insistence on the authority of constructed texts over the self is just as conformist as the commercialism of North American culture. In fact, the dominance of the past within literature today ties writers to follow conventions, not deconstruct their authority. AIL in all, Sontag seemed set on espousing her views and not opening them up to criticism. The pedagogical nature of the lecture lent itself well to her hiding behind the lecternandbrushingoffseriouscriticism. While I went inhoping to hear some decent cultural-literary criticism, all I got was an abundance of modernism and an insistence that everything outside the self has authority over us. In fact, everyone is the author of their own reality, culture is relative, and all outside authority is to be
questioned,
ture so steeped
especially
a litern-
in history.
Susan Sontag certainly so impressive after all.
wasn’t