Death of the Author

My first reaction upon reading this essay was to ponder to the fact that Barthes managed to stuff almost all of what I know about postmodernism into one very short essay. Language is the only source of meaning, with each text "eternally written here and now." Each re-reading is a new reading, with language impressing itself upon the reader and vice-versa. I would, however, like to know where this leaves the critic. How can one ascribe a meaning to a text that has meaning only in the reactions of its readers (and is eternally in the moment, eternally changing)? This essay seems to reject the concept of a single explanation (and therefore almost the entirety of New Criticism and to some extent Structuralism), and in some ways redefine the purpose of criticism.

Levinas

I really enjoyed what we did on Monday. I feel like now I have a better grasp on what the "face" Levinas talks about is. It's almost as if his intent was to make his point(s) hard for normal readers to comprehend. What's confusing about this idea of the "face" is that it's both immanent and transcendent in nature. But how? How can something both exist, and go beyond existence? Still pondering that...
I feel like we should go back over how time works as well. The notes I have over it are slightly confusing because they lack content.

Space, Trace, and Face

Dividing into groups to focus on individual questions generated some excellent discussion. We talked about what poetry is according to Levinas. He calls it "the Exit," but we were uncertain from what we are exiting. Immanence?

We also contrasted Poetry with Not Poetry. Poetry, we think, opens the space between signifier and signified, while Not Poetry seeks to close this space. One thing I'm not totally clear on: there is a distinction between signifier and sign, but what is it, exactly? Is the space between signifier and signified where the other that is not the same is? Is transcendence in that space?

I'm realizing that the more I think about Levinas, the more I go back and read again, the less I feel like I understand. There's a duality to everything (the face, time, the trace) that I can't quite grasp. This is almost certainly intentional, but knowing that doesn't make dealing with it any easier.

All of the discussion of the "face" also makes me wonder about the difference between the actual, living face and the virtual face, the face on the television. If the living face is naked and obligates us, what does the virtual face do? Both speak, both are ostensibly other; is reality requisite to obligation?

Deconstruction and Art

Long before I had ever heard of deconstruction in literature, I knew about deconstruction in art. The most famous piece of deconstruction in the art world is easily the Guggenheim museum. Deconstruction is everywhere in the world of architecture. Anytime you see a building that is highly asymmetrical and non-linear, you are probably looking at a building that was influenced by deconstruction. Kendall Hall is actually probably not deconstruction, as it predates the movement in architecture, by the way.

While deconstruction is usually associated with architecture within art, it is not limited to that field. Dada can be seen as a sort of precursor to deconstruction. Dadaists announced that they were against art, against meaning, and against Dada itself. They sought to change what all of these things meant.

Because of this, I have to admit that I am going into this unit with a lot of preconceived ideas about what Deconstruction is which may not actually be correct. I am biased against it (I really don't like Dada) but I am willing to keep an open mind. In fact, it might be this unit makes me reevaluate what I think of deconstruction in the art world, since it will give me a better idea of what deconstruction actually is--where it emerged from, what its original purpose was, and what significance it has today.

The Other and the Self

Much of what Levinas wrote reminded by of Freud. I'm not sure it was anything specific, but the idea of the self being partially defined by the Other seemed rather Freudian to me. I realize that this is not exactly what Levinas meant, and I may be misinterpreting what he wrote, but it seemed to me that part of what allows you to defined yourself is how you define others.

It's very hard to define oneself without introducing negatives into the description. When a person says "I am an Christian" they partially mean "I am not Jewish or Muslim or Hindu." And indeed, if Christianity was the only religion in the world, calling oneself a Christian would be unneccesary. It could be assumed.

But it is not, and so it cannot simply be a background detail. The existence of the Other is what allows the existence of the Self. Try to come up with a complete definition of yourself in which you in no way refer to what you are not. Really think about all the words you choose to use in your definition. The simplest descriptive words seem to be where this will become a problem. What is good? The opposite of evil. What is red? It isn't orange, yellow, green, blue or purple.

This ties into Freud because I see parallels with the idea of the child developing its view of its self by its relationship with its parents, and the division of the self into the Id, the Ego, and the Super-Ego seems to be a sort of othering of the self. I may be misunderstanding Levinas, but the way in which the other defines the self really intrigued me.

Marx and Shakespeare

Last semester, I was in British Writers I, and we naturally spent time on Shakespeare and his plays. Specifically, we read "Twelfth Night," and I was shocked to realize to what extent class informed the work. Malvolio is essentially a villain because he is a social climber. From the very beginning of the play this is set up as being one of his central faults, and is the reason he is the target of the prank that forms the center of the subplot. this discovery led me to wonder how much of Shakespeare's work was informed by class consciousness and conflict.

As a side note, the very idea of a twelfth night is rather intriguing, from a Marxist perspective. The Shakespearean twelfth night had its origins in the Roman Saturnalia, which was essentially a holiday of inversion. Fools are made kings, and kings are made fools. Why would such a rigidly class focused society highlight this tension? Why did Shakespeare choose to focus upon it in the subplot of this play?

Also note that "Twelfth Night" is not the only Shakespearean play in which a social climbing is looked down upon. In "Julius Caesar" the sin of Cassius and Julius is specifically ambition, the "hungry look" identified in Cassius's eye. Antisemitism is obviously a major part of "the Merchant of Venice" but so is disdain for a rising middle class--Shylock practices usury (making loans with interest) which is a fundamental part of modern capitalism. Shakespearean literature can be seen as supporting the pre-capitalist superstructure, and is thus hostile to what would eventually become the bourgeoisie.

Continuing on the theme of class struggle, many of his plays are about the upper classes, and feature lower class characters only tangentially. This is despite the fact that theater, during Shakespeare's time, was essentially popular entertainment. Consider the rude mechanicals in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," for example. Even when Bottom's curse is removed, he could never be with Titania--she was a fairy queen, after all.

Again, also note that many words we now associate with negative traits (villain, knave, rude) were originally terms for the lower classes, while words with positive traits (noble being the most obvious example) derived from the upper classes. (See the Oxford English Dictionary for more examples)

Shakespeare is not the only reading where one can find a shocking amount of classism. I've seen class-based interpretations for Harry Potter, after all. Have any of you ever found unexpected class-based themes in a work that you hadn't seen before?

Stumbled on this

Hey guys, I found this article while doing some research for my paper. It distracted me quite well for a while. Can't say I read the whole thing, but this guy's argument is very well put. He talks about a lot of the theories we're discussing in class. It's available in PDF from this link.
Enjoy!

Hybrids are all the rage right now..

Something that I've been wondering for some time now is how Lacan might find his way into Levinasian theory. And the diagram that was drawn on the board during class on Monday got me thinking: is it possible that when Levinas envisions his servile obligations to the Other that we encounter the Lacanian conception of the Lack?

The way that I understood it was that, as it stands, we hold an innate, infinite obligation to the Other. We can't escape this obligation, so that the Other continually demands the same level of respect and consideration today tomorrow and forever. Consequently, we are perpetually subordinate to the Other and can never be equal, let alone masters, over the Other. Here is where I think that the Lack would enter the scene. In terms of the power relationship between myself and the Other, I do not hold the reins. I will always desire what the Other has in terms of myself, ie control over my ethical freedom. Consequently, whenever I engage with the Other, I make a mad dash for the throne of power over my own ethical free will. But, according to Levinas (as I understand it), we can never really achieve that ethical free will. We complete the ethical action, wanting to control ourselves, but in the end the Other retains control; we will perpetually lack that control, and consequently will perpetually desire the control because we lack it.

Am I making a radical misinterpretation/bastardization of either theory here? This is making sense in my head, but perhaps it's not translating to the keyboard.

Levinas and defamiliarization

As I was reading "The Trace of the Other," I noticed a few sections that reminded me a bit of the idea of defamiliarization.

"The relationship with another puts me into question, empties me of myself, and does not let off emptying me--uncovering for me ever new resources. I did not know myself so rich, but I have no longer any right to keep anything." (page 350-351)

"A face enters our world from an absolutely alien sphere--that is, precisely out of an absoluteness, which in fact is the name for fundamental strangeness." (page 352)

"Consciousness is put into question by the face." (page 352).

Obviously there are still huge differences in between Levinas and defamiliarizaton--after all, I think the idea of defamiliarization still relies on the idea of the self, because the poem or painting changes the world primarily for the self. I'm not exactly sure what the Russian Formalists thought the art was, but it seems that Levinas says art comes in the form of faces, others, and traces.

In "The Servant and Her Master," Levinas also says that "Artistic activity makes the artist aware that he is not the author of his works." This is peculiar because we so often consider works in the context of their authors; but I'm not sure that Levinas is saying not to do this. It also makes me wonder what the exact role of the artist is--does she create the face, or highlight the area around the face?

I think that what I find most difficult about many of the authors that we are reading is that they are all quite field-specific. They are pulled so tightly into their own worlds of words and phrases that there is no blending between them and the outside world. To understand sometimes requires a sort of immersion in a new theory. It's at once fascinating and a little intimidating. In particular, Levinas has a very lyrical quality to his work that I found mildly disconcerting.

So... with that in mind, I did have a few questions about today theorists and hoped that I might get a little outside input.

My specific concern was with the concept of the 'Other'. If I understand it correctly, this is vaguely the heart of what Levinas is talking about. It seems to be both the self and rather what distinguishes the self from the rest of humanity... therefore allowing Otherness to be shunned? Or is this referring exclusively to the latter, where Otherness is something both in the self and in other people that must be contained and shunned? Again, or is this just a sort of reworking of Freud's idea of the subconscious, where a part of the self remains hidden, locked away from the conscious mind only to manifest its power in all sorts of strange ways? I find the last concept rather intriguing in a way (it has so many possibilities), so... help?

Some thoughts/questions about Levi-Strauss

Here is a quote from Claude Levi-Strauss's "Structural Anthropology":

"From Lang to Malinowski, through Durkheim, Lévy-Bruhl, and van der Leeuw, sociologists and anthropologists who were interested in the interrelations between myth and ritual have considered them as mutually redundant. Some of these thinkers see in each myth the ideological projection of a rite, the purpose of the myth being to provide a foundation for the rite. Others reverse the relationship and regard ritual as a kind of dramatised illustration of the myth. Regardless of whether the myth or the ritual is the original, they replicate each other; the myth exists on the conceptual level and the ritual on the level of action. In both cases, one assumes an orderly correspondence between the two, in other words, a homology. Curiously enough, this homology is demonstrable in only a small number of cases. It remains to be seen why all myths do not correspond to rites and vice versa, and most important, why there should be such a curious replication in the first place."

This is part of his project to structuralize the study of myth. I find it very interesting. He schematizes myth interpretation by deducing that, like language, myth is formed of units, that these units are more or less arbitrary, and that what gives them meaning are the way that they are put together. For example, he will break the Oedipus myth into small parts, arrange them in a grid (columns of themes, rows more or less chronologically) and see what he can find out. More on this later, because it is a bit thick, and I need to do more research and see if I can find some illustrations.

Example of the Frankfurt School

I was a bit curious as to what the works of the Frankfurt school entailed, as it was discussed only briefly in our text and I found the concept of extreme commercialization intriguing. I went looking for some examples a bit ago... and subsequently forgot to post... whoops.

This is a piece by Theodor Adorno called 'Enlightenment as Mass Deception'. I found this quote particularly interesting after we read the article by Benjamin. It shows the profound effect that growing technology was having on, well, everyone:

"The whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry. The old experience of the movie-goer, who sees the world outside as an extension of the film he has just left (because the latter is intent upon reproducing the world of everyday perceptions), is now the producer’s guideline. The more intensely and flawlessly his techniques duplicate empirical objects, the easier it is today for the illusion to prevail that the outside world is the straightforward continuation of that presented on the screen. This purpose has been furthered by mechanical reproduction since the lightning takeover by the sound film."

Source: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm

Zizek's Lacanian reading of Hollywood

Cory's post on Zizek spurred me to try to find some examples of his writing online.  Since he likes American pop culture, some of his writing is fairly accessible.  Try this article, "The Family Myth in Hollywood", a Lacanian-Marxist reading of recent Hollywood films, like Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and Michael Crichton's State of Fear.  The article appeared in Cinophile magazine in 2007.

Synthesis of Marxism and Psychoanalysis

As we close out our second section, I find myself thinking more and more about Slavoj Žižek. He is many things, including a cultural critic and a social commentator. However, he is also a philosopher who calls himself a Lacanian Marxist. Since we've gone over both Marxism and Psychoanalysis, I've reread some passages from his books and garnered a better understanding of it. No matter the subject, I find a lot of what he writes very interesting, and perhaps you ladies and gentlemen will as well since we've been through the two sections. Just thought I would pop in him as an example of the interconnectedness of the theories we've been studying.

Here are some links:
His wikipedia page- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek

A clip of him discussing Children of Men from a Marxist/Psychoanalytic view- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbgrwNP_gYE

And finally, the google books fragments from "Welcome to the Desert of the Real!"- http://books.google.com/books?id=N4ZOTlBZieoC&dq=welcome+to+the+desert+of+the+real&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=CN9wS-HnFcWknQfjypGeCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Hopefully you find him as interesting as I do.

Dream Interpretation

For several years, I have had a recurring dream. The details vary each time, but the gist of the dream is always the same.

I am in an undeveloped, usually wooded area, surrounded by a developed, usually suburban area. For an unknown reason, I need to leave the undeveloped area and get past the developed area. However, I have to do so without being seen. Inevitably, I will be seen, and at that moment I lose all power to move. The dream typically ends soon after that.

While the core of the dream never varies, the details almost always do. Typically, there I have no reason for needing to avoid being seen. However, once the dream did provide me with a reason: a van had gone from house to house in the developed area, and done something to the inhabitants within that I knew was bad. Whatever the people in the van did, I knew that it meant I couldn't be seen. I can't relate exactly what was done, however.

Other details vary as well. Once, I am seen by a bear in the undeveloped area, and even though every single part of me is screaming "run" I am unable to do so. Another time, a child playing in his backyard sees me, even though I had desperately tried to conceal myself within the underbrush. Both times, I was struck with the same sense of the dread, the same urge to escape, and was unable to do so. Usually I end up forcing myself to awaken.

A psychoanalytic interpretation of this dream could probably focus on a few questions:

1. Why is this a recurring dream?
2. Why do I need to escape the undeveloped and developed areas?
3. What do the things that seem me represent?
4. Why do I find myself unable to move?
5. Do the varying details hold any significance?

My own interpretation of the dream, from a psychoanalytic perspective, is that it is a manifestation of my general anxiety. I fear being noticed, and I must escape attention of both the undeveloped and developed areas. The undeveloped area, of which I am the only inhabitant, could be my own consciousness; the part of myself that is critical of the my identity as a whole. In contrast to this the developed area is the attention of others. However, it is ultimately impossible for me to escape everyone's attention, and when I am noticed, I don't know what to do--hence the paralysis.

Formalist/New Critical Reading of Keats

Keat’s poem, “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer” is a poem of discovery. The opening line, “Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold” establishes the narrator of the poem as an explorer—but he may not have been to the places that he describes in the poem. Instead, he has experienced them vicariously, through the works of Homer or, most importantly, of Chapman’s translation of Homer.
When the poem reaches Chapman, the topic becomes rediscovery; the narrator experiences the islands of Greece for the first time. Ambiguity thus is of utmost importance in the poem, as the poem does not specify whether the narrator has been to the lands described earlier, or if he has only read about them. Both seem to be possible. The line, “Oft of one wide expanse, had I been told” could be read as either the narrator being told the history of the expanse while present there, or hearing the expanse described elsewhere. If the former is true, the work of Chapman becomes even more remarkable, as the narrator experiences the places more vividly when Chapman describes them than when he actually traveled to them. The paradox of multiple readings is essential to Formalist understanding of a work. The text does not explicitly say who the narrator is, or whether he has actually been to Greece himself. To assume that he has or has not is, from a New Critical point of view, fallacious. To even assume that this is Keats speaking is fallacious if the poem does not spell this out. Even if Keats says that this poem is written explicitly from his point of view, it does not matter. The author’s opinion on the meaning of the work is not privileged over anyone else’s. There is only the text, and nothing more.
The language of the poem further reinforces the theme of discovery, while reinforcing the paradoxes present within those themes. The narrator invokes the lands of the Greeks, an astronomer discovering a new planet, and Cortez’s presence in the New World. At first, the language of the poem almost seems as if the narrator has experienced the land of Homer’s epics personally—perhaps to the point where he may actually be the subject of said poems. The flowery language seems to be evocative of an ancient epic, calling upon the “bards in fealty to Apollo” and “realms of gold.” But the mention of Homer, and later of Chapman, seems to break this illusion.
The narrator speaks of everything in such a literal fashion it is hard to determine; for example, the poem describes Chapman speaking “loud and bold” while referencing a new reading of his work. The poem thus uses language that would normally be ascribed to someone speaking to someone writing. Not only does he speak, he speaks out loud. By blurring the line between reading a text and hearing it spoken aloud, the poem reinforces how Chapman’s translation is like going to a place for the first time. This is the purpose that all of the ambiguities in the poem serve. Reading about a place is not the same as actually visiting a place, but by describing them in similar ways, the poem reinforces how amazing Chapman’s work actually was.
Discovery is the central factor of the poem “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” The poet discovers new places, and discovers a new translation of Homer. Homer’s work is itself about discovery. All these different ideas are blurred together in order to reinforce how amazing the translation is, to the point where finding Chapman’s translation stands side by side with finding a new planet or a finding new continent.

Imago and the Mirror Stage

I had a great deal of trouble understanding what on earth Lacan was talking about, until I was able to link it to the concept of an Imago, which I am familiar with from various philosophy and theology classes. Hopefully, I can translate that concept into something more generally helpful in understanding the Mirror Stage.

Imago, loosely translated, means "image" or "likeness," but it has a specific connotation in Christianity, since in Genesis we read that mankind is made in the "image and likeness of God." Before we get bogged down any further, there is an essential distinction between the Imago, and an image. The Imago is much, much more than an image, especially for theology, and plays a very different role than a mere likeness.

The best way to describe the difference between what we mean by image and the meaning of Imago is to think in terms of casting or sculpting. Or, perhaps, take a quarter from your pocket. This quarter is in the "likeness" of a much larger engraving which has been quite accurately transcribed onto a die, and stamped out in batches by the thousands. The initial engraving is done by an artist, and cannot be re-created, much less mass-produced. This initial engraving is the "thing" that we see a likeness of when we look at a quarter. But, importantly, quarters are "images," not the Imago.

In this rather desperate analogy, the Imago is the die that is used to press thousand upon thousands of quarters every day. Each die is simply a reverse of the initial engraving, but it can also be thought of as inseparable from that initial engraving itself. They are fundamentally the same, serving the same purpose; one is made of clay, the other practically indestructible. The engraving, like the mind, cannot accomplish what it wants to do, nor impact the world outside itself, without recourse to an Imago: an externalized image of itself that is capable of interacting with the material world far more practically than the internal self is capable of.

If the coin example is still confusing, think perhaps of an artist in bronze, who may sculpt a figure in wax, create a plaster shell around that wax (this plaster shell would be the Imago) and finally use that plaster Imago to create in bronze a likeness of the original sculpture in wax. In each case, perhaps the most interesting part of this analogy is that the original work of art is in almost every case too fragile to interact with the world, or to reproduce its central idea without the help of a sturdy, external representation. This is part of what the mirror stage does when it externalizes the self; by creating an Imago, the interior self can interact with the world.