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Spring brings evidence of a winter’s worth of dog poo and blue elastics, among other litter. At least we know where all the blue elastics come from, don’t we? —Garbage picker-upper, but not by choice
This article appears in Mar 20-26, 2014.
9 Comments
ummmm lobsters?
I think Matt Anderson does Blue Elastic Blues….
my depends have a pretty blue elastic waistband
op has me wondering…maybe not the blue elastics from the lobster claws that i am thinking of. because i KNOW why i see a lot of blue plastic, they fall off the boats and wash up on the shore. i spend a lot of time by the water. doing the warsh.
but where is op? and if in the city, what are the lobsters doing hanging about down there? it’s today lack of morals is what it is! dammit! no discipline nowadays. these young lobsters should be at home helping chop kelp. or minding the spry. not lounging about like good for nothing lizards on the peninsula, clacking their tumescent claws at all the girls.breakdown of family values. where is the wbc leader when you need him? hmph…death is no excuse.
With the murder rate in Halifax soaring, most of the blue plastic garbage is probably discarded gloves worn by the forensic teams.
Blue elastics come from Canada Post.
I wash my hands of this problem. I dont buy my blue elastics from a dealer, i get them from a friend.
A PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH
“Spring brings evidence of a winter’s worth of dog poo and blue elastics, among other litter,” Garbage picker-upper
The poster’s modernist approach to dog poo and blue elastics is evident. An interpretive framework has been placed upon them resulting in a disparaging judgement as to their worth. Such an interpretive framework embodies the modernist approach. In order to have meaning, the objects of perception must be placed under an aspect. They must be conceptualized and to conceptualize something is to place it in an interpretive framework. But is this necessarily the case?
A phenomenological approach would eliminate that interpretive framework. The observer would confront the object directly. To ask not just whether this makes sense but whether this is even possible arises. For the phenomenologist however, to ask whether his approach makes sense is misguided. It is a modernist approach to that which, by definition, is post-modernist and so must be rejected out of hand. But, short of psychopathy, is the approach even possible?
It was Susan Sontag, of course, who popularized the phenomenological approach to art in her “Against Interpretation.” For Sontag the spiritual importance of art – its sensuous and magical qualities – was being smothered by intellectualist interpretation. The abstractions of “form” and “content” constituted, as Sontag put it, “intellect’s revenge on art.”
But Sontag was a philosopher and philosophy, “par excellence,” inhabits the realm of intellectual interpretation. In other words, her rejection of interpretive frameworks undermined her own philosophical position. Her phenomenological approach rejected that upon which philosophy rests. It became meaningless as, philosophically speaking, did Sontag herself.
But what does this all have to do with dog poo and blue elastics? It demonstrates, among other things, that whatever might be the case with art, one cannot coherently export the phenomenological approach to everyday objects. Such objects necessarily have meaning and the poster was quite right in his disparaging judgements as to their worth. His modernist approach was correct.
New Avatar Alert! Nova Scotia 1 cent black
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
Blue elastics – aren’t they broccoli bondage gear?