Week of November 18, 2013

Although having a rough start, I feel like after getting into the text, the initial toughness of Stein has mostly faded and it’s becoming easier to read and to analyze. I’m actually able to look through what is going on in the text and figure some things out instead of being confused trying to understand the wording and language usage. While focusing on my section for our discussion, it was interesting to see how the ideas were developing and what was going on in the message she is trying to convey. The brief departure from human nature and human mind into a related discussion of the comparison of identity and superstition was really neat.

It’s interesting to see how Stein gets her message across through irony and the exposure of truths in the dissection of superstition and identity. In bringing her example of having money all year after the cuckoo bird into light and stating that it is a fact because it happened and that she could see it and know it so it must be the truth, she exposes the faults of identity in being a construction of what we see or know about people and claim them as fact with the label of identity.