Sophocles and Dollhouse

I have been struggling to revise an overlong conference paper I gave, or gave part of, a few years ago in Seattle, trying to see if I can turn it into an article; or, failing an article, a draft I can link on academia.edu in the "conference paper I don't plan to publish" category. So far, I'm failing dismally. The subject is in what ways the character "Echo" in Joss Whedon's series "Dollhouse" is a Sophoclean hero, and how that matters. But this subject leads me apparently unavoidably into philosophical questions that I really don't want to engage, at least not in what was supposed to be a light-hearted pop culture paper (What is reality? Do souls exist? Is chocolate a necessary food group?)
At the very least, I don't think there's any way I can revise the paper, which should probably have been titled in its original form "every single thing I can think of that interests me about Dollhouse, in no particular order", to make it answer the original question. I can start a new paper on that question, but I don't think I can revise this one to fit.
On the other hand, I have always hated revising more than anything. I would far rather write a new thing than revise an old thing so that it actually works. So perhaps I shouldn't throw in the towel yet.

I have, I think, thought of the solution: more research! Or to quote Matt Groening's advice to grad students on how to avoid the agony of writing: when all else fails, "Read another book". I'm sure someone out there has already answered all the interesting philosophical questions in Dollhouse, and I can just cite them, and get back to Sophocles.

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Sophocles, Dollhouse, and academia.edu

Cover of Dollhouse Epitaphs (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I spent Thursday evening updating my listing on academia.edu, and decided to upload a few conference papers, if I had any lying around that I was unlikely to write up for publication, but that people might be interested in reading.  In the end I settled on a few that were more likely to be of interest to non-classicists.  So I have uploaded one on Helen in the Penelopiad, and one on Atanarjuat and the Oresteia, in addition to the old "Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Greek Hero Revisited" which is by far the most widely-read piece I have ever written.  On looking through my other conference papers I found another that might interest Whedonites, on Sophocles and Dollhouse, but it isn't in shape to be seen yet (quite literally; I can only find the outline, and it needs rewriting).  So that's what I've been doing today.  

Was this what needs to be done? Or, to put it another way, was it the most urgent of the tasks before me? Well, hardly.  But in fact that paper raised some very interesting questions, at least for me, and it is a pleasure to think through some of them again.

Thank you, JSTOR

And thank you, "articles that cite this article", in JSTOR.  And thank you, JSTOR beta-search:

• Detienne, Marcel (1968:2012), ‘On Efficacy in Practical Reason: Comparative Approaches’, Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, 20 (1), 43-60.
• Gaskin, Richard (1990), ‘Do Homeric heroes make real decisions?’, The Classical Quarterly, 40 (1), 1-15.
• Jones, PV (1996), ‘The independent heroes of the Iliad’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 108-18.
• Rosenmeyer, TG (1990), ‘Decision-Making’, Apeiron, 23 (4), 187-218.
• Sharples, RW (1983), ‘’But Why Has My Spirit Spoken with Me Thus?’: Homeric Decision-Making’, Greece & Rome, 30 (1), 1-7.
• Wilson, Joseph P (2007), ‘Homer and the Will of Zeus’, College Literature, 34 (2), 150-73.

This gives me enough to begin with.  Especially Rosenmeyer.  Thank you, Rosenmeyer. And Sharples.

decisions, decisions

Once it had crossed my mind that the depiction of decision-making in narrative was an

Zeus, about to make a questionable decision

extraordinarily important part of pretty much every story, or at least every story I've ever been interested in reading, beginning with the Iliad, or possibly with the Epic of Gilgamesh (well, to be honest, more the Iliad), I assumed that I could not be the first person who has ever noticed this, and that there would be a large body of literature on this precise point.  There should be loads of theory on this subject, I thought cheerfully.  I can find the theory, read it, apply it to the Iliad and to Alice Oswald and see what I get (presumably something different for the two works).  And I can do this by March, before the conference. Piece of cake. So I looked around a little.

So far as I can tell, no one has ever noticed that the depiction of decision-making matters in narrative.

I've asked my friends in philosophy.  Why yes, there is a HUGE body of work on decision-making in philosophy - whole departments are built around studying this question. It all has to do with rational actors, and what such an actor would do and how they would make their decisions.  Has anyone ever met a rational actor? I asked, momentarily diverted.  Well, no, my philosopher friends admitted.  The theory is about what they would do if there were any.

I asked friends in communications theory, which seems to have a lot to do with theories of narrative.  They pointed me to the same books, plus some rather more practical stuff  that described how people actually do make decisions.  This was more entertaining, but just as irrelevant to my project.   And there is a lot of work done in the business schools on how to make good decisions, i.e. ones that will keep you making money.  This is eminently useful to some people, or it is if it works.  However.

I am still searching for anyone who has published on how people DESCRIBE the decision-making process.  Possibly there's something in psychology.

I cannot believe there's nothing out there, and I don't want to reinvent the wheel.  Onward.

fine, here's the actual outline

We bow to the protestations of numerous colleagues and here post the uncensored, unadulterated outline of our paper, just as it appears in our own notes, minus the variables (for which you will wish to substitute your own).

We trust others will find this as useful as we have in the generation of creative thought.

Whedon meets Euripides, redux

Finally having some time free, after teaching, marking, submitting, seeing family, and collapsing,  my colleague and I are tackling our "Sacrificial Virgins" paper again.  For some reason this has been surprisingly difficult to finish; after 3 days' work we realised this was because we were trying to fit in every single thing either of us had ever thought about Buffy, Euripides, or Sacrificial Virgins.

On reflection, however,  it is quite possible that we will write again on tragedy, pop culture, virgins, or some combination thereof, so some of  these thoughts can surely go in the next paper.

We have therefore after long and careful thought produced an outline for the current paper, which I shall reproduce here since, as article outlines go, it is a model, a succinct template which I am sure will be useful to many others.  In the interests of serving the needs of our colleagues, as little as possible has been withheld to protect our results before publication:

Happy New Year, all.

Abstract for the CACW

English: intrpretation of the Shield of Achilles design described in the Iliad, by Angelo Monticelli (1778-1837) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I spent three months working on a grant proposal, but come to the conclusion that I'll be in a better position to successfully apply for a grant next year, so didn't submit it after all. So back to Oswald! 

The CACW/ CAPN conference this year is on the subject of "decisions in antiquity". Legal scholars are organizing it, and no doubt that's what they had in mind. However, that's not what I work on. I thought about submitting an abstract on Iphigenia at Aulis, which after all is all about the decision to sacrifice Iphigenia, something no one wants to do, but somehow it happens after all. However, although it's an interesting subject, I haven't been working on it, and I'm not sure I have anything to contribute on the I.A. at this point.

 So I thought, instead, about Memorial. And it immediately occurred to me that a very interesting thing about Memorial is that all of the decisions of the Iliad  have been omitted from Memorial, along with the narrative.  And that I would like to talk about.  So here is the abstract I submitted: we'll see if it flies ...

 The Decisions of Memorial 

 Alice Oswald's poem "Memorial", a re-translation of the death scenes in the Iliad, highlights the decision-making processes in the Iliad, by their absence in the modern poem.

 Decision-making processes in the Iliad are given prominence. Important decisions governing the entire narrative are made by those high in the social hierarchy – gods, kings, and aristocrats – and the process by which they arrive at decisions is shown in detail. Achilles chooses glory over a long life, and then changes his mind; Zeus chooses whose death, Achilles or Hector's, weighs more in the balance at the critical moment; the Shield of Achilles displays an alternative decision-making process for the peaceful settling of disputes.

 "Memorial", which removes the overarching narrative, the gods, and the major aristocrats, also removes all the points of decision of the Iliad, except for those small decisions individuals make which contribute to their own deaths. These omissions make each individual death seem inevitable, and the decision-making processes of the narrative illusory. For all the importance given to decision-making in the Iliad, argues "Memorial",the end was always known, and only the deaths were real.

***
I am not sure that the observation that when you skip the story, you also miss out on all the decision-making, which is (after all) part of the story, is a deep insight into the nature of narrative.  But it will be fun to think about.

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