ciao manhattan: "Normal people are so hostile"

That's a quote from Dexter, my favorite show and my ultimate hero. If you've never seen the show, he's a serial killer who only takes out bad guys. But mainly he's incredibly hot, and smart, and just all around fabulous. He often says fabulous things, like the title of my post. It fits today but I won't bore you with details.

Next, to the real world. Last weekend turned out to be a complete blast, only to be followed by this week which has also been amazing. I'm finished for the year! Yippee! All that is left to do is to finish the dissertation and I'm golden. Life is good.

I'm working right now on a chapter on theater and mimesis, focusing on Genet and Artaud in general and Les Bonnes in particular. It's added a whole new dimension to the dissertation, which feels much richer now. If only I could make all the chapters feel like they fit together. But they all seem almost independent of each other. Chapter one covers the traditional murder narrative, the expectations of readers and analyses of a few early stories. Chapter two discusses the Papin sisters, their crime, testimony and trial, looking at how this true crime refuses incorporation into any traditional murder narrative. Chapter three examines the killer and the female as other, beginning with Aristotle's designation of female as monstrous and working towards other types of alterity created by/confirmed in their crime. Chapter four discusses theater and its ability to incorporate this monstrous other into the self, thus being the sole medium able to tell the story of the Papin sisters in a way that captures the essence of the women and their crime. Anyway it's exciting to get back to writing and to leave teaching behind for a while.

Here are a few images from various productions of Les Bonnes. The first is from a Theatre des Halles in Avignon's 2006 production of the play: