Yes, it’s that time of year when lectures end, deadlines loom and exams come rushing towards you with all the speed and vicious enthusiasm of a particularly mindless and vicious cavalry charge. In these circumstances, the most trivial of activities, from blogging to su dokus to rearranging paperclips take on a new and fascinating attraction.

But to be honest, things aren’t going too badly. My English essays are due in next Tuesday, but I’ve already got my Creative Writing portfolio (3,500 words) in the can, have only a bit of redrafting to do on my John Donne essay and wrote around 900 more words today of my Myth & Saga essay, leaving only 400 of the 1600 left to write.

So if I can keep up today’s level of work, I’ll be almost finished on my English work tomorrow, which will leave me free to get down to my History revision for my two exams on the 2nd and the 8th of June. Although this will, to be honest, be fairly intense because they’re worth three-quarters of each module, covering the year’s work, and I’ve not really done much revision yet.

One thing I’ve found helpful is being able to go to the Chaplaincy to work, since Lorraine Cavanagh has kindly said that anyone who uses the chaplaincy is welcome to come in and use it as a quiet place for work when it isn’t in use. Having somewhere quiet to go, without distractions – no Internet, none of my books or magazines lying around, very few people coming in and out – is very welcome. Even the library can have its distraction, such as the newspapers which contain those deadly diversions: crosswords and su dokus. Today I stayed down there much of the day, since the weekly £1 lunch in the Chaplaincy saved me having to leave to get food, and I enjoyed chatting with Lorraine over lunch, though only two other people came this week, presumably because fewer people are around the university buildings now that lectures have finished.

Well, I’m looking forward to the summer, and have begun looking for work over it. I’m looking forward to staying around in Cardiff for a bit, and while I do so, hopefully earning some money in more interesting ways than working in Somerfield in Dolgellau!

Author Mark Twain is said to have read his own obituary in a newspaper, and sent a telegram to the paper to assure them that “The rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated”. In literary theory the question is not whether any particular flesh and blood author is dead or alive, but whether the Author functions (or should function) as the source of a text’s meaning. Roland Barthes famously announced “The Death of the Author” in his essay of that title, claiming that:

“…literature (it would be better from now on to say writing), by refusing to assign a ‘secret’, an ultimate meaning, to the text (and to the world as text), liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases—reason, science, law”

This is clearly a very big and important claim to consider, especially for Christians such as myself who believe both in God and knowable truth. In one of my English essays last semester, I gave my response to his arguments. Barthes’ essay can be read online here, and to read my essay discussing his ideas, click here.

Sorry that I’ve not posted for a while – thanks to those of you who have pestered me about my blog! Things are rather busy, with approaching deadlines and exams and stuff. Updates might be infrequent in the meantime. Also, I accidentally saved this as a draft rather than publishing it, even though I wrote it a week ago – whoops!

A post by John Ferrer on his blog IntelligentFaith discusses Postmodernism and the Entertainment Death of Man, and I’d like to discuss some of the ideas there, many of which are very good and intelligent observations. This is also tied in with my thoughts following discussions at Word Alive with some people about the challenges of being a Christian in academia and at university, though I’ll return to that in a later post (hopefully).

The question I’d like to pose, though is this: Is the best Christian response to postmodernism, basically, a return to modernism?

It seems to me that there is some grain of truth, and some measure of error, in both. Modernism very generally and broadly emphasises the divine side of humanity, those elements of human nature that derive from our being made in the image of God, such as our ability to discern truth. But it takes it too far in not taking account of our fallenness, and denying a God above us – it goes from recognising those things that are marks of our being image-bearers of God to making man into his own God. The mistake of modernism is to believe that man by himself can provide a unified answer and philosophy to life, can perfect himself, can decide morality and so on, all without God.

Postmodernism rightly criticises modern man’s pretentions to God. It recognises human fallibility and fallenness – but to the extreme. Not only are we unable to know truth completely objectively, we are completely unable to know truth objectively, for example. Postmodernism takes us away from one wrong extreme – man as God – to another wrong extreme – man as not even bearing the image of God. Postmodern theorists and philosophers don’t quite put it in these terms, of course, though their language can often be surprisingly theological.

A Christian philosophy will therefore agree with modernism on some points (e.g. objective truth exists), postmodernism on other points (e.g. we perceive through the filters of our culture, assumptions, language and so on), and will disagree with both on other points (e.g. both reject God).

Our response should not be to seek to turn the clock back to an earlier flawed human philosophy, nor to accomodate Christianity to the current intellectual fads, but seek to move forward striving for an ever more Biblically based worldview. Rather than simply seek to “defend Christianity from the challenge of postmodernism”, as one book put it, let’s seek to “face postmodernism with the challenge of Christianity”.

I think this can be best achieved by a Biblically-based, academically rigourous Christian post-relativism. It’s a challenge, but one I want to work on and encourage other Christians in. Weneed to gain a vision of each area and profession as a mission field. Yes, we desperately need to take the Gospel to far-off places, but the ungodly lands of Westminster and academia are also in as much need of the Gospel.

What’s more, as Christians we need to be working out the lordship of Christ in every area of life. Our mission is not just to speak the Gospel, but to live it, to embody Christ to the world around us. That means working out what it means to be a Christian academic or a Christian politician or a Christian windowcleaner or engineer or whatever. That’s not an easy thing, and it requires us as Christians to serve God rigourously with our minds, applying a Christian worldview to whatever we are doing so that we are serving Christ and demonstrating his love, power and holiness before a watching world.

If I can find an angle on the subject acceptable to my tutors, I hope to write my dissertation on Christianity and literary theory next academic year. I wrote my Critical Theory essay on Roland Barthes’ influential essay The Death of the Author and I think Christianity makes sense of so many of the puzzles raised by literary theory and postmodernism and so on, as I hope to uncover over the coming months. Even today at Mack, Dave Williamson’s sermon on Ecclesiastes 1 was opening up new possibilities in my mind for the exploration of the interchange between Christian truth and literary theory. So stay tuned!

Well, here I am on Word Alive! It’s pretty hectic, but I’ve managed to grab a few minutes before the next seminar (Social Action vs Evangelism: A false dichotomy?) to note a few thoughts here.
The talks have been very good – I’ve been following the thematic overview stream (Be)longing, which has so far covered our relationship with God, with each other and with the world, looking at how the fall has affected them, but also the restoration that salvation in Christ brings. The evening talks, going through Colossians, have also been very good – some really exciting stuff.
There’s loads of choice of seminars and things – it’s quite overwhelming! I’ve been to some really good ones on things like our responsibility for justice and social action as Christians, and a question and answer session on politics.
Just being here and living with and having fun with my friends from Cardiff CU is great – picnicking on the beach, playing Uno, going to the sessions together and so on. It’s also been great to see some friends like Matt Costen and Hans from Southampton Navs group again, and some familiar faces from Contagious such as Lisa, Claire and Matt Archer (though so far I’ve only seen him at a distance and haven’t had a chat yet). One slight downside of something like this though is that with lots of people coming in university groups, there’s a tendancy to stay in those groups rather than socialise with people you don’t already know. That’s what I’ve found to be the temptation, anyway.
But yeah, it’s a good time so far, and I hope to write it up more fully sometime soon, though it’ll be a while before I’m back at the keyboard, what with visiting London and stuff. But keep reading!

Blimey, it’s been busy. I’m now mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted! I’m now looking forward to a quiet weekend before heading off to Word Alive on Monday as part of a group from the Christian Union.

I’m trying to edit a story I’ve been working on for Creative Writing into shape to submit to SFX magazine’s “Pulp Idol” short story competition. I’m finding the word limit of 2000 words rather tight though. It’s a good exercise in trying to cut the story down to the real core of what’s necessary to tell it, and in “killing my babies” by taking out bits that I really like but don’t really add anything. The story is called Death’s Dawn, or maybe Death at Dawn or if I want to be a bit retro, The Dawn of Death. It’s just a matter of shaping it to the new length, really, which I should be able to do by 5pm on Saturday.

The Doctor Who coverage is kicking in now, and rumour has it that trailers will be starting on Saturday. I made the news page of Outpost Gallifrey with my review, which I find rather cool. My hits have gone through the roof today with Who fans swarming to read about New Earth. Watch this space for more from me about the press launch!

Just got back a little ago from the press launch. I enjoyed the evening – great entertainment, and an interesting all round experience. More on Thursday (yes, I know it’s a wait, but I’ve got an essay deadline tomorrow and there’s an embargo until then anyway!)

Just to establish a couple of important things: I was invited to the launch to write for Gair Rhydd/Quench, and there’s an embargo on everything for 24 hours (to give time for everyone to write things up, or some such odd reason). So there’s obviously a limit to what I can talk about on my humble little blog.

The actual interviews, previewing and the like are headed for Gair Rhydd, but hopefully I’ll still be left with plenty to talk about here about my experience of the evening’s event and various interesting stuff that doesn’t make it into the student paper. I’m not going to be giving a detailed plot breakdown of the first episode – what would be the point of that? – but I plan to tell you a bit about the evening and whet your appetite for series two once I am able to.

Anyway, in finest Doctor Who Magazine tradition, three words for you: “gollum”, “decontamination” and “hub”. Stay tuned!

My alarm goes off, and I leap out of bed, already quivering with nervous anticipation. Today is The Big Day, when I get to report on the press launch of series two of Doctor Who. This evening I’ll be seeing the first episode. I’ll be hobnobbing with the cast and crew, and trying to get good quotes and pictures for Gair Rhydd and Quench. It’s great experience for me from a journalistic point of view, as well as indulging my Who obsession!

Anyway, preparations are well underway… charging the batteries for my camera, jotting down questions to put to David Tennant and Billie Piper should I get chance, gloating on the Doctor Who forums (sorry, did I just say that last one out loud?)

But by now, paranoia begins to kick in – what if the BBC find out that I am, horror of horrors, a fan?! I can just imagine being searched by security guards for concealed sonic screwdriver toys (got one of those for my birthday) or illictly smuggled in copies of Doctor Who Magazine for the stars to sign. BBC heavies would descend on me, chucking me out into the cold night. Perhaps even just wearing my leather jacket would be enough to set alarms ringing – “Alert! Alert! Fan-intruder detected!”

If the BBC secret service wanted evidence of my fanishness, then they’d only need to have a quick look in my room to find me guilty. there are a number of Doctor Who posters up – a new series Dalek above my bed, a mini-poster of that publicity shot used on the billboards last year of the Ninth Doctor and Rose, and one with Peter Cushing’s Doctor with movie Daleks (Look, I also have other posters up including Lord of the Rings, The Incredibles and a world map, I’m not exclusively Who-obsessed, right!?)

Come to think of it, there’s more than enough on this blog to incriminate me. Oh dear. Any BBC bods thinking of barring me, I’m Joel Evans from Swansea University’s student paper The Waterfront – get it? got it? Good!