I appreciated the personal insight to the piece at the very beginning called "Preface Diary." I think this section helps the reader to understand where the author is coming from and it sets the stage for the whole essay. I found Acker's wording interesting in the diary. She has an abstract way of describing things that is intruging and different from other authors we've read so far.
Her language of bodybuilding is described in "A Language Which is Speechless." This section is dedicated to trying to describe how she feels when she is in the gym. "Imagine that you are in a foreign country.." is a neat way to start off the section because it really gets the reader in the mindset of not knowing how to describe something you're experiencing. It shows the confusion of the author.
Next Acker describes "The Richness of the Language of the Body." In this section her main purpose is relating this language she has learned to the readers in order to describe it. "bodybuilding (a language of the body) rejects ordinary language and yet itself constitues a language, a method for understanding and controlling the physical which in this case is also the self." This shows that bodybuilding is a more physical language of controlling the self, rather than of manipulating the meaning of words as other authors do.
"The Repetition of One" paints a picture of a typical work out session with Acker. But in a more personal way. "For though I am only repeating certain gestures during certain time spans, my body, being material, is never the same; my body is controlled by change and by chance." This excerp puts us in the mind of the author who is finally able to describe the language of bodybuilding. Her body is different every day she goes to the gym even though Acker repeats the same exact motions.
Acker's essay is set up in a way that builds up to the final insight into bodybuilding as a language. The different parts all come together to paint a picture of the way Acker communicates with her body.
That is an interesting way of interpreting "The Repetition of One", Ackers writes a lot about repetition in her workout, but its purpose is to changer her body
ReplyDeleteI liked the Preface Diary as well, because I thought I might be very lost without it. It set up the tone and the purpose of the essay very well.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I also noticed that she writes in a way that demonstrates the overarching theme of her body changing despite the repetition of her workouts. She repeats the words "failure," "strangeness," and "foreignness" over and over again, which goes to show how even though she's repeating the same words over and over again, there is still that sense of change and difference
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