BABY FOUCAULT [knocks over blocks]: anarchy
BABY FOUCAULT [kicks blocks into corner]: post-anarchy
WOMAN: who’s the baby?
whooooo’s the baby?
BABY FOUCAULT: I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am
MAN [ducks face behind cloth]: peekabo!
peekabo!
I see you!
BABY FOUCAULT: visibility is a trap
WOMAN: can you say ma-ma?
MAN: can you say da-da?
WOMAN: can you say ba-ba?
MAN: he won’t say anything
BABY FOUCAULT: there is not one but many silences
WOMAN: that’s a BAD BABY
look at this mess
we DON’T DO THAT in this house
BAD BABY
BABY FOUCAULT: there is no glory in punishing
MAN: have a little bite
BABY FOUCAULT: no
MAN: just one
BABY FOUCAULT: NO
MAN: what’s wrong
BABY FOUCAULT: it’s bourgeois
WOMAN: uh oh
did somebody make a mess?
does somebody need a diaper change?
BABY FOUCAULT: do not glory in your state
an instant suffices to disturb and annihilate that supposed wisdom of which you are so proud
an unexpected event, a sharp and sudden emotion of the soul will abruptly change the most reasonable and intelligent man into a raving idiot
MAN: can you say da-da
can you say da-da for me?
BABY FOUCAULT: discourse is not life
“Discourse is not life” – not a toast official stance
This baby makes way too much sense to be Foucault
Dear Mallory,
Marry me. I will provide you with many cats and much hot cider.
BRB, teaching my 2 year old how to say, “bourgeois.”
teach her to say it with the world weary ennui that ‘bourgeois’ requires
She already does a pretty good eye-roll, so I think this can be achieved.
The last exchange made me realize that a baby Dadaist would be unintelligible from a regular baby. Well played, Dadaist baby.
By contrast, little Léon is a joy to care for. Just hang a pendulum over his crib and he keeps himself busy all day.
Keep doing this, and you might make me hate theory a little less.
NO, THEORY IS THE WORST
It’s like you don’t even care about whether tenured professors can publish meaningless, obscure stuff and insulate themselves from criticism by rolling their eyes and saying, “You just don’t understand. You wouldn’t say that if you understood.”
so in essence, (some) professors are…emo?
all
ALMOST makes up for the terror Foucault puts me through in Intro to Queer Studies.
Almost.
I kind of want you to do Baby Lee Edelman, just for his stuff on reproductive futurism, but there are some jokes that take too much effort and I’m pretty sure that’s one of them.
Oh my god, Baby Edelman and Baby Bersani would be the ACTUAL FUCKING WORST. But Baby Muñoz would be AMAZING. “The future is only the stuff of some children,” indeed, Jose.
It goes down a little easier with those itsy baby toes, though. All theory should be taught by babies, with built-in nap time.
I really want to hear Baby Foucault’s commentary on a Raffi tape, though.
Raffi: If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands! [clap clap]
Baby Foucault: Knowledge is not for knowing or clapping; knowledge is for cutting.
Raffi: Baby Beluga in the deep blue sea
Swim so wild and swim so free
The heaven above and the sea below
See the little white whale on the go
Baby Foucault: He is a prisoner in the midst of what is the freest, the openest of routes: bound fast at the infinite crossroads. He is the Passenger par excellence: that is, the prisoner of the passage.
Raffi: Gotta shake, shake, shake my sillies out
Shake, shake, shake my sillies out
Shake, shake, shake my sillies out
And wiggle my waggles away
Baby Foucault: People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what what they do does
In my history grad program, we had a joke. All papers should be begun with a formal opening invocation, a la correspondence under the Sultans and the Ottoman empire.
“In the name of Foucault, the beneficent, the merciful, who mystifies clarity, and clarifies mystery. To continue…”
Do you refer to the adults as Man and Woman because of postmomdadism?
I had to summarize and present a Foucault article for one of my grad classes and the professor complained that my “summary” was as long as the original article but it was the only way I could explain what the hay he was talking about in order to present something coherent.
I have just realized, and am pleased to report, that I’ve forgotten all the reams and reams of Foucault I had to read in undergrad. I feel light and free, if indeed freedom is something that can be felt.
The main textbook in my big, basic undergrad introductory overview of the history of India at UC Berkeley in the 90s was …
…
Foucault’s History of Sexuality.
I can’t explain this to you, I can only report it to you with mute, remembered despair.
D:
Oh Berkeley ^_^ (I’m so sorry this happened to you)
Ooh! Can we have Baby Roland Barthes next?
all
I would like to request Baby Emmanuel Levinas. 🙂
I just noticed this here: the i’s in the new font beings used are really really hard to distinguish from an l 🙁 makes for hard reading.
*squee* I want to make a knowing jibe about subjectivity and the means of correct training but it’s been too long since I’ve lovingly stroked the spine of one of his tomes.
This reminds me of Jess Walter’s short story Cheston, the existentialist toddler.
This reminds me of Jess Walter's short story Cheston, the existentialist toddler.