The final session in a series of three online workshops hosted by Maya Popa’s Conscious Writers Collective and inspired by French poet and essayist Paul Valery.
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The music that is inside me.
The music that is in silence, in possibility
May it come and amaze me.
— Paul Valery, Notebook VI, 292 (1916) author's translation
December Session: THE NARRATIVE SELVES AS BEAUTY IN FRAGILITY
This session will focus on the construction of authority in essays and humility as the opening that treats the text as part of what we are learning and sharing. We’ll draw from Paul John Eakin on conceptual self as the “version of ourselves that we display not only to others, but also to ourselves, whenever we have occasion to reflect on, or otherwise engage in self characterization.” Identity is the part of this conceptual self that involves self-characterization, as when I identify as a writer, a mother, a woman, a dog, owner, etc. We will consider the question of cultural sensitivity and solidarity in writing as well as the idea of cultural construction.