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Rubenadriaan Posted 12 years ago
Vocabulary
"Resistance" in this context?
In a chapter on the definition of literature there's:
The qualities of literature can't be reduced either to objective properties or to consequences of ways of framing language. (...) Language resists the frames we impose. It is hard to make the couplet 'We dance round in a ring...' into a fortune-cookie fortune or 'Stir vigorously' into a stirring poem. When we treat something as literature, when we look for pattern and coherence, there is resistance in the language; we have to work on it, work with it.
I semi understand the concept/idea of this passage, but I don't get what "resistance" means? Enduring? Opposition? It's a bit abstract.
Can anybody explain what "resistance" in the context of language means?
Thanks a real lot!
The qualities of literature can't be reduced either to objective properties or to consequences of ways of framing language. (...) Language resists the frames we impose. It is hard to make the couplet 'We dance round in a ring...' into a fortune-cookie fortune or 'Stir vigorously' into a stirring poem. When we treat something as literature, when we look for pattern and coherence, there is resistance in the language; we have to work on it, work with it.
I semi understand the concept/idea of this passage, but I don't get what "resistance" means? Enduring? Opposition? It's a bit abstract.
Can anybody explain what "resistance" in the context of language means?
Thanks a real lot!
Top answer
I think the writer is using the term in its context of psychoanalysis. com/dictionary/english/resistance Italics are mine: (in psychoanalytical theory) the tendency of the language of literary works to prevent the translation of repressed thoughts and ideas from the unconscious (unwritten or implied in the text) to the conscious and esp to resist the analyst's attempt to bring this about
- I think the writer is using the term in its context of psychoanalysis.
- com/dictionary/english/resistance Italics are mine: (in psychoanalytical theory) the tendency of the language of literary works to prevent the translation of repressed thoughts and ideas from the unconscious (unwritten or implied in the text) to the conscious and esp to resist the analyst's attempt to bring this about
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1 Answers
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I think the writer is using the term in its context of psychoanalysis. See definition #5
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/resistance
Italics are mine:
(in psychoanalytical theory) the tendency of the language of literary works to prevent the
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/resistance
Italics are mine:
(in psychoanalytical theory) the tendency of the language of literary works to prevent the
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