Gilbert and Gubar

Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue that women writers have "an anxiety of authorship." They claim that this anxiety is different than the anxieties male writers have, because while men are anxious in living up to their precursors, women really don't have any percursors to refer to. Woman has to instead worry that her writing will be deemed as unworthy to be read because man will not be able to understand the way in which the woman has written. As a writer, I can say that I am certainly anxious in how my work compares to the works of others, but I have never felt anxiety that my work would be viewed as less because of its distict feminine viewpoint and way of thinking. Was Gilbert and Gubar's statement more applicable in 1979 than it is today? Have any of you experienced what Gilber and Gubar define as the male "anxiety of influence" or female "anxiety of authorship?"

A portrayal of women Simone de Beauvoir might approve of?

I decided to see if I could find an example of contemporary culture that tried to fight agaisnt the myth of woman as the other. The Dixie Chicks are often considered for songs about woman empowerment, and I think that Simone de Beauvoir might agree with their songs to a large degree. For example, the songs "Cowboy, Take me Away" and "Wide Open Spaces" are primarily about a young woman wanting to be free. Even the song "Cowboy, Take Me Away" is not so much about being with a man as it is about being free. In fact, no males appear in the music video. Woman is seen first as a free being in and of herself, and is not defined based on her actions or relation towards man. What do you think de Beauvoir would see? Would she agree with what these songs are trying to do or still see too much evidence of the myth of women as other in our culture?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hntXAO_Rq7c

Woolf and the Bechdel Test

In response to today's musings as to whether Virginia Woolf's ideas are still relevant in light of new research (and, of course, the ubiquitous "isn't-femenism-kind-of-over" question), I'd like to take a look at Woolf's "Chloe Liked Olivia" section. Woolf talks about the way literature and media so rarely portray female homosocial situations. When we come across a scene in which Chloe is free to like Olivia, we are startled. Shocked, even: "Do not start," says Woolf, "do not blush.  Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen.  Sometimes women do like women" (899). And though we know that life might work in this way, that women actually do have positive relationships with other women, we've come to accept that movies (or books or anything else) usually do not.  Women are shown only in relation to men, only as the Other to men. Woolf suggests that this is the product of fiction written by men who are "terribly hampered and partial in [their] knowledge of women" (899).

And, as we all know, this is absolutely still a thing. In film, especially, women are shown and defined only through their relations with men, which in reality are very small parts of life.  So, in response, I offer you The Bechdel Test

Some of you are probably pretty familiar with this test, but I put it here because it changed the way I looked at movies. It's a test used to identify gender bias in fiction, and was created by Alison Bechdel in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For.  Here's how it works: for a film to be free of male bias it must 1. contain two female characters [with names] 2. who have a conversation 3. that is not about a man. 

In 2011, of all of the films nominated for Best Picture, only The Help passed.

Here's a website with listings of different films. Do your favorites pass?

An Explanation of Spittin' Hard

           It’s not quite Hegelian to maintain that each generation of theorists reacts to the excesses of its predecessor. The flow chart of criticism follows this principle. There are, of course, a few basic equalizers. You either read Plato or are Plato. You are either male or de Pizan or Wollstonecraft. The next large shift is simply a function of whether or not you are going to pay attention to social tensions (a product of economic tensions) as the governor of human action. If you are, then you are going to be a Marxist, and if you are not, you are either going to have to turn to created objects or the natural world. The former will make you more interesting, the latter will make you Wordsworth.

           Criticism is neither meliorist nor dialectical. It is the via negative, determining new theoretical movements based upon the failures of Plato and then everyone else.

The Critics Spittin' Hard

Digressions on a Diagram

This diagram is of a tree, but don't be fooled. At first it may seem like those strangely large seeds are growing the tree of thought, and the higher or lower level of thinkers has something to do with progress. That's just Hegelian insistence on some positivistic dialectic model of reality. The tree just has to do with passing time, and is subject for my authorial quips concerning the placement of various thinkers in and around the tree. Also, those seeds, you may notice (as Blaine Eldredge first did) have a level of similarity to the appearance of testicles. That is an unfortunate accident.

I think it's important to note the way that they are in a sort of unified dialogue despite, or perhaps because of their differences. I also notice that's important to not over-value their thoughts. There's this idea that these thinkers are gods, but really there are times when they happen to be petty, or make mistakes, or say things they don't mean. In short, they're human beings. That's a big part of why I made this with a kind of satire or mockery in mind. Many of the catchphrases being over-simplifications or things of the sort. Think of Sidney, who is relegated to a stone beneath the earth. It's not about the insult, its about the realization that these people aren't more than other people.

Theorist Diagram

Tragedy

Plato -> Aristotle -> Nietzsche -> Freud -> Lacan -> Horkheimer/Adorno

Symbolism/Author’s intentions

Plato -> Augustine -> Maimonides -> Hume -> Kant -> Schleiermacher -> Emerson -> Nietzsche -> Freud -> Lacan -> Eliot -> Wimsatt/Beardsley

Genius

Maimonides -> Hume -> Kant -> Hegel -> Wordsworth -> Coleridge -> Emerson -> Nietzsche -> Horkheimer/Adorno

Education/Societal Impact

Plato -> Aristotle -> de Pizan -> Sidney -> Wollstonecraft -> Hegel -> Emerson -> Marx/Engels -> Horkheimer/Adorno -> Althusser -> Eliot

Most theorists consider tragedy to be one of the greatest art forms, and they usually look to Plato and Aristotle’s parameters for what is a good tragedy. Freud and Lacan take a slightly different approach, as Freud connects tragedy to the Oedipus complex and Lacan has a more tenuous connection between the imitation and mimicry in the mirror stage and Aristotle’s definition of tragedy as a representation of an action. However, neither Freud nor Lacan argue with any of Aristotle’s rules about good tragedy, and theorists such as Horkheimer and Adorno have returned to Aristotle and now complain that tragedies have become more about just punishment than about reversals and the suffering of good men. A constant problem for theorists is how to interpret symbolism in art, and how much the author’s intentions matter. Some theorists, such as Hume and Schleiermacher, think that the author’s background and intentions are vital to an accurate interpretation of their work, while others, such as Eliot, Wimsatt, and Beardsley, think that the author is irrelevant once he or she has finished the work. Augustine and Nietzsche both say that words are metaphors for other things, and both theorists have theories on how to interpret the metaphors. Freud and Lacan also believe that almost everything is a symbol representing something else, often revealing something about the author’s subconscious. Many theories have been presented regarding symbolism and how an author impacts his or her work, but none have been proved to be better than all of the others yet.

The concept of genius has been a steady theme throughout the works of many theorists. Some theorists directly use the term ‘genius,’ and some simply state ideas that match other theorists’ definitions of the term. Most often, a genius is defined as someone who is separate from most of society because of some superiority, whether it is innate or whether they were chosen to be superior. From Maimonides’ assertion that only a few can understand to Nietzsche’s Übermensch, most theorists have some theory of genius. When this theory reaches Horkheimer and Adorno, these theorists take the idea of genius in a different direction. In an attack against capitalism, Horkheimer and Adorno say that individuals are chosen to be special and admired by society, but they are chosen completely at random and so are in fact not any different from the rest of us. Finally, the question of how art affects society and how society affects art has been discussed for centuries with conflicting results. Plato believes that poetry brings out inappropriate emotions that will hurt society, while Sidney thinks that poetry supports virtue. Wollstonecraft claims that society educates us, and Horkheimer and Adorno say that society manipulates and controls us.