Midterm Part 1-Diagram

Art Does Not Lead to Truth                 |                           Art Is Useful for Learning of Reality
Plato                                                        |                                                                
Women's Education                               |                          Allegorical Interpretations
de Pizan                                                   |                              Augustine
Wollstonecraft                                          |                               Maimonides

No Preexisting Structures                     |                          Preexisting Sturctures in Mind
Hume                                                                                       Kant

Progression of History                           |                        Psychoanalytic Theory
         Hegel                                                                                 Freud
 /                        \                                                                         |
Marx/Engels            Wordsworth               |                       Psychoanalytic Applied to Language
      |                             Coleridge                                        Lacan
Adorno/Horkheimer      Emerson               |                               |
Althusser                                       |                                                           
                                      Nietzsche            |                              De Saussure
                                     
                                       New Critics       |                                |
                                        Eliot                                                  Barthes
                                        Wilmsatt/Beardsley                      Interpreting Texts
                                                                                           Schleiermacher

My diagram is meant to demonstrate the connection between theorists in a format similar to a family tree in which the dashes indicate which theorists’ ideas are built upon and expanded by subsequent theorists.  The dash down the middle represents the idea of truth or reality that all of the thinkers are trying to find in some form. Aristotle and Plato are placed on opposite sides of the trunk (dash center line) because they had opposite views on the same idea. While Plato believed art did not give insight to truth, Aristotle believed truth could be found in art, especially tragedy.  Sidney is placed with Aristotle because he also believes in the value of art, particularly poetry, stating that it can give more insight to truth than philosophy and history can.

Once Hegel comes on the scene, it seemed that more of the theorists were interrelated, directly building upon the ideas of others. Hegel’s interpretation of the dialectical movement of history with each event joining with its antithesis and his idea of positivism are utilized by many later theorists. For example, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels applied the dialectical movement of history to their theory that eventually the proletariat would revolt against the bourgeoisie, dissolving existing capitalist institutions and creating a new world order. Marx and Engels ideas gave birth to Adorno and Horkenheimer, and also Althusser’s application to culture, conveying how capitalism is evident in all cultural entertainment and institutions.  Branching in a different direction, Hegel’s concept of positivism influenced the romanticists, Emerson, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. All three theorists believed in the power of the individual to find truth inside himself and believed that man should not copy history, but only refer to it, in order to create better works. Stemming from this, Nietzsche also believes an individual should act for one’s self,and illustrates this with the thesis and antithesis of Dionysian and Apollonian characteristics. This diagram is intended to show that the theorists’ ideas are not separate, but many originate from the concepts of other critics.

HORKHEIMER and ADORNO: "BABIES" (DOCUMENTARY or PORNOGRAPHY?)

BABIES—a documentary?
A few years ago I watched a french documentary, with almost no words, that chronicled five-ish babies over the course of the first year of life. It features predominately different cultures treating children in different ways, but also the kind of similarity from baby to baby.

At first horkheimer & adorno, I imagine, are almost fooled by the movie, the lack of dialogue and the straightforward style of everything makes them think that this may be accurate and healthy cinema.
But no!

Look at those carefully prepared camera angles! Think about all the cuts to all the cute or funny things babies do! This is just a derivation of the machine! Ordinary life repurposed into a "documentary" which actually promotes the classic themes of tantulus! This is no better than pornography. This simply promotes an idealized sense of procreation and a false positivism for today. Having babies won't solve anything, but now we believe that they might. But especially for parents, these are knowingly not the whole picture of baby-hood. Sure there's some breast feeding and one or two messes but by and large this is a distorted and not totally attainable picture. The only way to get "satisfied" is to come back for more which is also incomplete, and leaves you wanting.

In fact, the episodic style of each clip furthers the ability to re-watch and to feel as though you could endlessly desire more baby clips. It's like someone put high-quality youtube into a film. It does nothing but poorly re-iterate an idealization of your machined and alienated lifestyle! Marx 4 Life!

ALTHUSSER TALKS ABOUT PITCHFORK

Ever heard of Pitchfork? I assume a lot of you have. If not it's a notoriously snarky and elitist music review website. It's a tastemaker. An example of theme tearing apart music can be found

here.

At first glance I recognized Pitchfork according to Althusser as another form of the ISA. People are operating under the common idealogy: music can and should be reduced and quantified by its social and musical quality then compared to discern what is "best" and "worst." What is "new" and "derivative." These ideologies are increasingly complicated then by the subsidiary ideologies as to what constitutes these descriptors, what makes it good or bad.  In any case by sharing these Ideologies there is an apparatus by which people create a community which controls and manipulates its members. Saying what should and should not be done, exiling those who don't do it, and including and lauding those who do. Its a classic example of how any society of any level of freedom creates Ideologies that bring people together.

But there was a problem. I realized that although Althusser traditionally relegates the RSA to the national government, and its subjugation or repression through violence, within a subculture of the music world Pitchfork and taste-making websites like it are that government. They're reviews are often violent, willfully repressing that which people create or make in an attempt to create the best possible situation for themselves, that is, they're continued authority in the music world. The review then becomes the same as a chopping block or a guillotine where they have the final word and on which bands live and die. Let's be honest thought, Pitchfork doesn't quite have that power, people like Mumford and Sons will continue to be popular without Pitchfork. But when taken with other websites and promoters like this one, there is a serious repressive authority at work, wouldn't you say?

ELIOT on TWITTER!

In all cases the use or the ordering of words is of utmost importance. In particular, while or a use of language can reference another thing, good poetry, and good writing for that matter, should exist on its own, whatever referenciality contained. In short, the thing should have value in and of itself.

That is why I have been so peeved about this late development: "The Twitter" in particular, the posts by someone calling himself "The Snoop Dogg."  First things first, his disregard for tradition, which is the word as the agreed-upon symbolic representation of meaning, is disturbing. Even in his own naming. Why would he not write Dog? What does Snoop mean? They seem like choices without an obvious meaning. Or without a hidden intrinsic meaning. But enough of that criticism, if his rhetoric allowed for deeper meaning, this could be forgivable.

But tweets are notoriously short, and their endless referenciality is disturbing. It is not quality allusion but rather they are consistently reliant for their meaning on an outside thing, like his endless reminders to get "tix" or brief descriptions of concerts or festivals like the cryptic "#Lionfest 2013 !! we went hard !! #Reincarnated." Here again, there is no respect for the tradition of punctuation and creation of intrinsic meaning.

Even when he's not relying on an outside event for meaning, the weight of the tweet is so small it might as well be called worthless. Think about this tweet reading only "Vaporize 2 start tha day."  What value does this hold? Get high to start the day? Why? These fragments aren't shorn against my ruin! or his ruin!

IT'S A PHALLUS SHAPED LIKE A TIRE!

WATCH THIS trailer for the movie rubber!

Watching this movie for the first time, there's an obvious connection to post-modernism, the defusion of narratives, the false-hood of the metanarrative, the confusion of conflicting views, the arbitrary nature of the movie and the plot-creation.

However, in re-thinking this movie after reading Lacan, I was considering the phallus as the power structure, and the process by which he abstracts it out of gender, no longer "penis or clitoris" as Lacan would say.  In rubber, a tire in the desert mysteriously comes into an animated life, and discovers a telekinetic power to make living things explode. Not combust. Explode.  He then essentially attempts to enter into relationship with an individual whom he follows.  However, with no ability to talk or act beyond rolling and killing, things turn predictably messy.  All of this messiness is performed in front of an on-screen audience, but that is another matter.

For Lacan (via me) the tire is the new phallic symbol. It is the thing which enters into relaionship through direct power symbology. That is, his process of interpellation (Althuisser) or interruption of the self in relationship for another is so complete in power and subjugation that it's totally destructive.  It is the symbol-replacer of the phallus.  But it is genderless, and with violent manifestations as opposed to sexual manifestations.

Nothing's perfect I suppose.

TS Eliot Finds Himself

Looking to catch a flick? Well, have I got news for you. At the Wandermere theater here in Spokane you could see The Call (its got Halle Berry), The Croods (Nicholas Cage is a caveman. Type casting?), a little something about Oz or Olympus Has Fallen (Girard Butler as himself).

It’s all a little depressing, I know. But before you decide not to have Spring Break because there’s just nothing to see, consider this:

While none of those films fits very well is a larger aesthetic tradition, they do fit in the minor tradition from which their structure is borrowed. TS Eliot is clear that a work of art is not good simply because it fits in. It will fit in, later, on account of its excellence. If this is the case, does TS Eliot take issue with Adorno? For Adorno avers that cultures essentially recreate themselves, producing the same narratives over and over because they are the kinds of narratives the capitalist system is designed to produce. And if Adorno is right, the canon is itself a capitalist construction. It is not a mark of excellence. It is determinism. Excellent texts will be considered excellent because they fit inside the system that built them.

I do not think Adorno and TS Eliot can be right at the same time. I do think neither would go see the movies at Wandermere. One because the films do not fit into the canon and the other because they do. In the interest of democracy and simplifying our critical canon, I think we should vote. Who is more right? Adorno or Eliot?

Lacan Listens to Music! He Is Happy!

Well, its only a cover, but here is Ryan Adams song “Words.” Watch it, don’t watch it, the point is the chorus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVK8em5cHyw

“Don’t worry up your mind, people are sick and mean sometimes. They’re only words”

Ignoring, for a moment, Ryan Adam’s utterly vacuous writing, I can only imagine Lacan is rejoicing. Because it is only a system of signification, a semiotic world. By it I mean of course myself, and you, and the space between us and everything else. And I think that Lacan should have been a physicist: he has created a perpetual motion machine. The desire to use language creates its own system, which is a participant in (and creator of) signification, and so the whole thing fuels itself. We want symbol, so we use symbol and create symbol. Begin the system anywhere you like. They are only words.

I have, however, a lingering question. I must use signification to communicate the interrogatory symbol, and I beg my readers forgiveness for the irony. No self-contained system can energize itself. If it could, it would be necessary that any isolated part account for itself, and a symbol cannot self-generated and self-reference. That being the case, I wonder what is outside Lacan’s system. That is, what thing outside the system of signification motivates the structure.

Or, is it phallus ex nihilo?

Holy Motors

Here’s the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWu9WjEcdbk

Now that you’ve watched that and have absolutely no idea what’s going on, Althusser.
The film follows Le Dormeur (The Sleeper) played by Dennis Lavant, who is driven in a white taxi to various “appointments”. At each appointment, Lavant dons a costume and performs a ritual action. Each action is without context; the intentions orienting the actions appear in the context of the scenes themselves. While the film is, apparently, a exploration of film itself, Lavant is an excellent example of interpellation.

Interpellation is hailing into a system. While it would seem that we draw various ideologies into our lives, it is in fact the case that those ideologies have been calling to us. Socially, psychologically, and politically, we are drawn into pre-existing systems that have been calling to us. Le Dormeur’s movements around Paris are a marvelous example of this hailing. The scenes Le Dormeur creates are Absurd (traditionally Absurd, not so much absurd). He is a businessman, a peddling gypsy grandmother, a stop-action stand-in performing a sensual alien dance. And in each scene, bystanders eventually play into the construction as though it were a reality. Dressed as  a made gnome dashing about a graveyard, Le Dormeur stumbles upon a fashion shoot. The photographer responds with horror and fascination, asks to photograph Le Dormeur, and has his assistant’s fingers bitten off. Each time, bystanders believe they are organically responding to unfolding events, when they are in reality playing the part that has been built for them. They are actors in a drama designed by Le Dormeur. Interpellated!

What a Trip to the Wood Recycling Tells You About Wordsworth

It’s a simple question: before Wordsworth wrote his parts of Preface and ruined everything, was simple living actually an exploration of transcendence?

It’s a Tuesday morning and Matt and I are digging through the wood recycling in the mud when a white truck spilling old wood shakes up and the passengers get out to unload. It’s rather a fascinating dialogue. A sort of rapid-fire exchange of contractions. Some highlights: ‘el not want that f***r. ‘pen the gate. S***er’ll lie.

Metrically but not metaphysically interesting.

And then after, I go home to a housemate reading Wendell Berry, rhapsodizing about the socio-economic implications of agricultural done well, and the transcendent truths brought to us by rivers. Wordsworth seemed to think that education by the woods happened on accident. Or it happened all the time, and all someone needed to do was jump into dirt to find Nature God. The conversation I overheard at the wood recycling suggests that this is not the case. But then, there is Berry, and the fact that nature interpreted can provide certain instructions.

Let’s ignore, for a moment, that it might be the case those values are layered onto nature and not drawn out of it.

Wordsworth is rather a tricky rhetorician: he suggests that Nature be chosen over urban complication for its ethical instruction. But Nature only works if the urban model of inquiry is brought into it. That being the case, Wordsworth is almost a brilliant chap: in writing Preface, he establishes a structure according to which his point is true. Not true because working at the wood recycling will make you a good poet, but true because a person who has already been in the city, a person who would read Wordsworth, would likely find philosophy in the woods.

Footnote, Belated

Footnote
The film applies to everything. Because it is about philology, the science that takes as its premise cultures and language inform one another. It is mutual construction. There are several disastrous implications, among them the fact that a researcher seeking to uncover the presuppositions of a culture could either study the language or the culture’s history and know everything about the other.

Thus: language is a reflection (or incarnation) of the metaphysical assumptions of its author. It’s a claim that everyone--everyone--who is going to write about aesthetics, is going to have to address. Still, beyond drawing attention to on of the central divisions of literary criticism, Footnote also ticks Maimonides right off.

The academy is about record and dissemination. Eliezer and Uriel are both, by Uriel’s declaration, teachers. No problem so far: the teacher-student relationship is key to Maimonides. They are also writers AKA indiscriminate teachers. It is their mission to make the esoteric known. Big mistake. Key to Maimonides is the idea that the sacred is guarded from the profane by ambiguity. Thus, texts discussing divine knowledge and tradition (such as the Talmud) should deliberately obfuscate their own meaning, thus ensuring that only by divine revelation will a reader understand. It is a pedagogy that ensures God will determine who learns God’s secrets. But Footnote considers scholars. Not only scholars, but teachers, and teachers of the tradition of YHWH. 

Bad move, Shkolniks. Bad move.
 

T.S. Eliot Obituary

Hey, people! If you have some free time, go to this awesome and kind of hilarious obituary of T.S. Eliot in the New York Times! (I was minding my own business, surfing the web, when I saw a link to this article. I was really confused at first because I didn't read the date of the obituary. Be not confused; it is merely an article they transferred to their online database.)

I took two sections in particular to be quite amusing. First, the one on tea:

"In that sojourn he lived in an undergraduate house near the Charles River and entertained students at least once a week at teas. The tea was always brewed and he poured with great delicacy, his long and tabescent fingers clasping the handle of the silver teapot. The quality of his tea, the excellence of the college-provided petit fours and the rippling flow of his conversation drew overflow crowds of students who sat on chairs, on the floor and on windowsills."

As well as the one on Shakespeare:

"He had a strong dislike for most teaching of poetry, and he once recalled that he had been turned against Shakespeare in his youth by didactical instructors. "I took a dislike to 'Julius Caesar' which lasted, I am sorry to say, until I saw the film of Marlon Brando and John Gielgud, and a dislike to 'The Merchant of Venice' which persists to this day.'"

All humor aside, I thought this obituary was fascinating. I think it lends even further to our ideas of who Eliot was, and more so, how people saw him at the time of his death. Is he overly idealized? Is he misconstrued? I don't know; probably, at least from Doug's perspective. However, I do think that reading this obituary made Eliot seem more like a person than anything else I've read about him.

Thoughts? Opinions? Favorite part of the obituary? Least favorite?

How Seriously Do YOU Take Freud?

Whilst reading for this class, I have had a number of interesting conversations with fellow Whitworth students  from various majors about Freud. Some were psych majors, who mentioned that they tended not to take too much of Freud too seriously. Which makes me think...

How much of Freud do you/we take seriously? As individuals, and as literature people, how much do we really use Freud? Is this different from how much we believe Freud? What parts of his ideas do we focus on most?

(Also, does anybody else feel really uncomfortable reading Freud in public?)

Freudian slips

It was mentioned in class that cultural interpretations of Freud are not always accurate representations of what Freud actually believed. Do you think that this song, "Freudian Slip" by Ray Stevens, is an accurate representation of any part of Freud's ideas?

The Gatorade Conspiracy: Freudian analysis of Gatorade

http://basketbawful.blogspot.com/2006/03/gatorade-conspiracy.html

The biggest problem I have with Freud is the importance he places on the phallus. He assumes that everyone needs to have some sort of a phallus. This is very androcentric, emphasizing maleness as power. This leads into fetishes where "the fetish is a substitute for the penis"(Norton, 842). If you buy into this, then you start seeing penises everywhere. The gatorade bottle is a good example of this. It would make sense to put sexual imagery onto packaging to sell more, but I think that if you see every object as sexual, that leads to a very distracted life.

Horkheimer and Adorno on Bad Adaptations

Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno argue that the purpose behind art, films, and in fact all technology in society is just the goal of making money. It its for this reason that filmmakers will adapt a book, play or movie that has been done several times before. The reason for remaking a popular story is not to give the audience what they want, but rather just to make money. One of the examples Horkheimer and Adoeno give is "a Tolstoy novel is garbled in a film script. Having watched the most recent film of Anna Karenina with Jude Law and Keira Knightley I have to agree with Horkheimer and Adorno that the movie cannot be intended to truly capture the novel. Instead, it is merely an ingenious way to make money, telling a story that has remained popular over time.
Below is a clip of the film trailer. Does this adaptation exactly fit the description given by Horkheimer and Adorno in the 1940s?

Contemporary Nietzsche tragedy

I was reading Nietzsche's thoughts on tragedy, and trying to figure out what we have today that might fit his view of a good tragedy. Since Nietzsche wants everyone to suffer and die for a tragedy to be good, and most of our literature and films do their best to have happy, feel-good endings, there aren't very many examples that I could find that would fit. However, in my opinion, horror films, and Joss Whedon's "Cabin in the Woods" especially, are the closest we come to matching Nietzsche's ideal tragedy.

Nietzsche likes "Oedipus Rex" because the main character tries to do everything he can to avoid his destiny, makes all the right choices and tries to be a good man, and still ends up suffering and dying. It was inevitable. I think that "Cabin in the Woods" fits this type because the main characters don't really do anything wrong, and they try everything to get out of their situation, and they still suffer and die. It was inevitable that they were going to end up dead as soon as they left for the creepy cabin in the woods, and no matter what they do, they end up dead. While some horror movies have happier endings than others, all of them have certain inevitable patterns. If there is a blonde, she will die. If they decide to split up, someone will die. If they say "what could possibly go wrong," everything will go wrong. As soon as you sit down to watch a horror movie, you know someone in the movie will die, probably in agony and with lots of fake blood. These movies fulfill Nietzsche's requirements: people trying to make the right choices, people suffering, and people inevitably falling to their doom.

So, in my opinion, Nietzsche would approve of these films. Do you agree?

Rachel Means

C.S. Lewis lecture

Dionysus in C.S. Lewis and Nietzsche

Oxford professor Jonathan Kirkpatrick came to Whitworth last Tuesday and gave a lecture on “C.S. Lewis and the Classics of Greece and Rome.” Specifically he discussed Bacchus, or Dionysus, in Narnia. Generally Lewis fans take The Chronicles of Narnia to be a purely Christian allegory. However, while it does contain a picture of what Christianity could look like in an alternate world, it also has numerous references to Greek and Roman mythology, especially to Bacchus, the god of wine. This interest in Bacchus is because Lewis believed that for religion to be real, it had to be a mixture of what he called ‘Thick’ and ‘Thin’ religion. ‘Thick’ religion, in Lewis’ opinion, was a religion like the African tribal beliefs—dark, mysterious, and filled with passion and blood. ‘Thin’ religion was the Christianity of Lewis’ day, very formal, exact, and completely passionless. Lewis at this point in his life was a Christian, but he did not approve of the watered-down religion of that time, and his answer was to bring in the passion of Bacchus.

Nietzshe also called himself a follower of Dionysus. However, unlike Lewis, Nietzsche did not believe that Dionysian energy should become part of Christianity, as Nietzsche rejected Christian beliefs. Nietzsche instead wants to meld Dionysian chaos with Apollonian systematic calmness. He also celebrates the Dionysian theme of suffering, death, and rebirth as true tragedy and therefore necessary. According to Nietzsche, Dionysus reminds us of suffering, and suffering is an inevitability that shows us that we are alive. In contrast to this view, Lewis believed that Dionysus’ theme of dying and rising again was a hint of the Christian resurrection and is therefore joyous.

Rachel Means

Are we still in the Romantic Era of Emerson's Time?

I think that in the United States, ideas from the Romantic Era of the Transcendentalists stil heavily influence thought today. For example, the value of each person's own thoughts and acts of creation is highly valued. Most people today believe that they're expressions of creativity have value and that one can express himself without conforming to any existing rules or precedents. For example, modern art breaks all conventions, relying on the active and creative spirit within the individual self, rather than examples of art that have come before. Also, I think the (618). The reading of texts from the past is an essential role of a college education, but one is not supposed to believe the text contains all truth and is the only way to express one's self. In college today, students are encouraged to wrestle with the text and critique the ideas, then deciding for oen's self which view is the best.

What do you think Emerson would say about this time period? Would he agree that key Romantic values are still present?