Thinking Culture

Marat/Sade Play Review (Sana)

2004-12-11T20:26:00.000-08:00

Sana Haque
Play Review: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charendon under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade
Playwright: Peter Weiss
Performance: The Shakespeare Theatre Company - Phoenix, AZ (October 2003)

Peter Weiss' play The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charendon under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade is a fascinating starting point for the analysis of many poststructuralist concepts and themes. Among these are the multiplicity of narratives and voices, the body as a site for the construction of identity, the deconstruction of authoritative truths, the exercise of power, structures of authority, and the ultimate ambiguity of all textual "meanings".
The play utilizes a complex structure in which the audience in the theater observes a play within a play that already has an "audience" present on the stage, as the inmates of the asylum at Charendon attempt to perform a play directed by the Marquis de Sade and focused on the life and times of the revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat. This element of "stories within stories" reflects the poststructuralist emphasis on multiple narratives and voices, destabilizing essentialist truths such as the ideology of the French revolution advocated by Marat in the play, which itself mirrors the revolutionary social ferment of the 1960's at the time Weiss wrote the play. As in poststructuralist thought, the diverse narratives that claim to speak the truth about the world (Marat's revolutionary fervor versus Sade's anarchistic nihilism, for example) are allowed to compete for the audience's attention without any one "truth" being established with absolute certainty. In fact, the verbal articulation of these narratives is itself often drowned out by the sheer physicality and incoherence of the inmates and their distracting actions and utterances (squeals, hysterical laughter, masturbation, facial tics, etc.).
This emphasis on the body and its materiality is another poststructural preoccupation that is amply explored in the context of the play. The inmates embody various forms of physical and mental disorder, sickness, and neurosis that reflect the chaotic breakdown of meaning and order in other aspects of human society, whether at the time of the French revolution or in the present day. The inmate who plays Marat, for example, is convulsed by severe itching and skin inflammation that obliges him to remain in a bathtub in order to find relief for his symptoms. The body also serves as a site for the exercise of power, as witnessed in the beating of inmates by prison guards who repeatedly intervene to assert their authority over them, the priest imprisoned in a straitjacket and physically silenced and constrained, and the chaos that breaks out when the prisoners revolt at the end, inflicting violence such as rape and assault upon the bourgeoisie family witnessing their stage performance. Power is also an element in the class struggle championed by Marat, the Marquis' desire for sexual sadist/masochist games, and the complex relationship between audience and performers throughout.
The confusion of identities and roles is another key theme of the play. As the audience, we are drawn into the "madness" on stage, as it becomes difficult to differentiate between the actors and their roles as asylum inmates playing additional roles, or between ourselves and the other audience present on stage for whom the secondary performance is ostensibly intended. This reflects the poststructuralist view that meaning is contingent and dependent upon interpretation, as texts are always ambiguous and open to multiple possibilities and that our social roles and identities are constructed by means of discourse and our placement in structures of power and relationship. Both the process of writing and performance are also deconstructed in a self-reflexive manner, as we witness Marat's struggle to develop his writings within the text of the play and the Marquis' attempts at staging a production in the context of a staged performance itself. This self-consciousness about process and the disruption of both narrative and audience identification that it entails is characteristic of the construction of postmodern texts.
In conclusion, the Marat/Sade play is a valuable complement to serious study on poststructuralism as it constructs a complex narrative that explores key elements of poststructural thought through its physical structure as well as themes in the stories it portrays.

The Concept of the Foreign (Sana)

2004-12-10T22:54:00.000-08:00

Sana Haque
Text - The Concept of the Foreign: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue
Publisher - Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (2003)

This text is an interdisciplinary exploration of the "concept of the foreign", i.e. expressions of alterity, the strange, and the "Other", viewed through the lens of disciplines such as Anthropology, Literary Studies, Psychology, and Social Work, among others. The first section, entitled "Theoretical Dialogue", is an explication of qualities that define the foreign and the various methodologies and approaches taken by the book's contributors to the study of this concept. The second section, entitled "Local Manifestations", is a series of essays contributed by a range of academics on the topic, treating the notion of encountering and defining the foreign in specific contexts ranging from foreigners in the Egyptian nation-state to the construction of the artist as explorer of unfamiliar realms to the metaphysical experience of alien abduction.

Part One: Theoretical Dialogue

Rebecca Saunders explores the theoretical underpinnings of this investigation into the concept of the foreign in four introductory chapters, introducing key terms, definitions, and theories. In "Instability and Discipline", she explores the volatility of what constitutes the foreign in differing contexts, its capacity to unsettle and disturb orderly categories of thought, the attraction it possesses as the "dark" and secretly seductive side of human nature/culture, and its "propensity for inhabiting its antonyms - such as nations, homes, and selves" (Saunders, xi). In "Belonging, Distance" she examines in greater detail how the foreign is defined by notions of belonging and relative proximity, its inverse relationship to biological, familial, and "group" unity, and its connection to metaphors of dependence versus independence. In "The Pathologized, the Improper, and the Impure", she looks at the connections historically drawn between foreignness and other categories of disorder and darkness such as insanity, poverty, homelessness, and criminality, as well as its metaphysical status as "impurity, unconsciousness, irrelevance, and error" (Saunders, xi). Finally, in "The Present: Temporality and Materiality", she explores the intriguing connections between foreignness and temporality, from the past as foreign territory to its perpetually "translated" and mediated nature, and its troubled relationship with globalization, modernity, and the space of the present.

Part Two: Local Manifestations

- The Exile of Anthropology (Anthropology)
Peter Redfield and Sylvia Tomaskova examine the related experiences of ethnographic fieldwork and political exile as inverted images of one another. While the ethnographer makes a conscious choice to embrace the experience of cultural alienation and dislocation in an unfamiliar geographical location, the exile is involuntarily displaced from his or her "authentic" home and attempts to recreate images of lost familiarity in foreign territories.

- Foreign Bodies: Engendering Them and Us (Women's Studies)
Margot Badran uses her personal experience as the wife of an Egyptian man and a naturalized citizen to discuss metaphors and mechanisms for constructing notions of the foreign in Egypt. She explores how the foreign is gendered as female, whether it is the "foreign within" in the form of the indigenous woman who represents "nature", "instinct" and "earthiness", or foreigners from outside the bounds of the nation such as expatriates or new citizens who are excluded from full participation in national life.

- Expedition into the Zone of Error: Of Literal and Literary Foreignness and J.M. Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians" (Literature)
Rebecca Saunders looks at three representations of the "zone of error" that constitutes the foreign - i.e. the difference between "literal" and "literary" foreignness, specific explorations of both in J.M. Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians", and an application of this theoretical perspective to the South African system of apartheid. The "zone of error" is a space of doubt and metaphorical complexity that facilitates both the interpretation and construction of allegorical meanings.

- Encountering Alien Otherness (Philosophy)
Michael Zimmerman undertakes an exploration of the philosophical issues raised by the experience of alien abduction as abductees describe the intense psychological experience of being abducted and probed by aliens (as the ultimate non-human Other). He sees alien abduction narratives as a vehicle to examine the nature of encounters between human beings and radically different forms of alterity, whether psychological, material, or spiritual in nature, and the stimulus these provide to intellectual and moral growth for humankind.

- Xenotropism: Expatriatism in Theories of Depth Psychology and Artistic Vocation (Psychology)
Coco Owen looks at the work of four major psychologists, Freud, D. W. Winnicott, Kohut, and Hillman, to explore their usage of metaphors of the foreign to represent artistic activity and the realm of creative thought. This association of art with the foreign reflects its association with liminal, intuitive, and defamiliarizing modes of representation, which connect to the "id" or hidden depths of the human psyche and to the estrangement and alienation associated with the state of being "foreign".

- War to the Death: Nativism and Independence in Latin America (History)
John Chasteen provides an overview of the construction of identity and nationhood in Latin American countries following independence from Portugal and Spain. He describes the complex mix of racial and ethnic identities (African, Native American, European, etc.) that played a part in the formation of the contested concepts of "native" (Native American tribes, mestizos, etc.), "European" (i.e. those of Spanish or Portuguese descent) and "foreign" (the French, British, etc.).

- Changing Images and Similar Dynamics: Historical Patterning of Foreignness in the Social Work Profession (Social Work)
Izumi Sakamoto explores the historical development of the "foreigner" in the social work field in the United States, from the 19th century to the present day. The construction of parallel groups of "similar others" (e.g. Western European immigrants) and "dissimilar others" (e.g. African- or Native- Americans) largely determined access to resources, government support, and programs of assimilation.

Mythologies: Roland Barthes (Sana)

2004-12-08T20:22:00.000-08:00

Sana Haque
Text: Mythologies
Author: Roland Barthes
Publisher: Hill and Wang (1972)

Roland Barthes' Mythologies consists of two sections, one containing a series of short essays on different aspects of French daily life written in a humorous journalistic style, and the second containing a longer theoretical essay entitled "Myth Today" that explores the methodology behind this deconstruction in greater detail. Barthes attempts to unravel the layers of meaning that lie behind seemingly innocuous everyday texts. His definition of "text" was one of the early formulations that expanded this notion to include any aspect of daily life with the potential to signify meaning (in the same way as a conventional linguistic sign). The texts that he "reads" in Mythologies include soap powders, children's toys, iconoclastic celebrities, tropes such as the idea of the "writer on holiday", women's magazines, and professional wrestling, among others. He deconstructs each image, product, discourse or act to reveal the ways in which it recreates and strengthens societal norms and values, reinforcing the hegemonic petit-bourgeoisie ideologies that dominated daily life in 1950's France.

One example of this method is the first essay "The World of Wrestling" in which he identifies the tawdry spectacle of pro-wrestling as the modern equivalent of ancient Greek drama performed in the amphitheater: "What is portrayed by wrestling is an ideal understanding of things; it is the euphoria of men raised for a while above the constitutive ambiguity of everyday situations and placed before the panoramic view of a univocal Nature, in which signs at last correspond to causes, without obstacle, without evasion, without contradiction" (Mythologies, 25). Barthes deciphers how wrestlers take on tragic or comic "stock" personas for the benefit of their fans and how their exaggerated gestures, drama, and Good vs. Evil conflicts perform a cathartic function for the audience, a venue through which frustrated emotion can find a release and the complexity of modern existence revert to black and white simplicity. As a result, "what is displayed for the public is the great spectacle of Suffering, Defeat, and Justice" and it can be said that "wrestlers [are] gods because they are, for a few moments, the key which opens Nature, the pure gesture which separates Good from Evil, and unveils the form of a Justice which is at last intelligible" (Mythologies, 25).

Another essay, "Novels and Children", explores how a feature story in the women's magazine Elle equates the literary output of women novelists with their corresponding domestic output, i.e. number of children. This serves to reinforce the traditional roles of housewife and mother even for those women granted success in creative pursuits. In "The Brain of Einstein", Barthes looks at society's fetishization of the great scientist's brain as an object possessing both exceptional mechanical power and an aura of esoteric energy. And in "Wine and Milk" the construction of French nationhood is examined through the symbolic vehicle of red wine, the consumption of which is indelibly tied to the concept of "Frenchness", while milk as the "anti-wine" is linked to strength, purity and traditional American values. The other essays deconstruct images along similar lines.

In the theoretical essay "Myth Today" Barthes builds on the ideas of linguists such as Ferdinand Saussure with his concept of the linguistic sign that consists of a signifier (the vehicle for the meaning) and the signified (the meaning being conveyed). In Barthes' application of this notion to the objects and practices of everyday life, he takes the analysis a step further and invests a further layer of meaning in each sign - the mythological meaning or cultural subtext that underlies the primary linguistic meaning. He names the language system that myth appropriates the "language-object", while myth itself is termed the "metalanguage", i.e. that language which is used to structure and manipulate everyday language. On the level of everyday language, the signifier is the "meaning" but on the level of myth, it becomes the "form". The signified remains the "concept" in both cases. That which is the "sign" on the first level, however, is equated to "signification" at the level of myth. For example, he deconstructs a photograph of a black man saluting the French flag on the cover of Paris-Match and explores the layers of meaning this image conveys, with the physical image on the paper serving as the original signifier and the signified being the literal reading of patriotism in terms of a loyal citizen saluting the flag, while the deeper or "mythological" meaning of the entire sign becomes a reinforcement of French imperialism by implying that France's non-White "citizens" in colonial territories were content and fulfilled in their role relative to the Empire. Myth being a "second order semiological system", the sign in the first system, which in this case is "the purposeful mixture of Frenchness and militariness" embodied in the figure of the black citizen saluting the flag, becomes a signifier in the second system that represents a bourgeoisie ideological glorification of Empire.

There are three potential ways to relate to myth, according to Barthes, as a producer, reader or decipherer of mythological speech. The task of the mythologist is to delve beneath several layers of meaning to uncover the ideological structure at the base, exposing the deceptive innocence of mythical speech as a sham. This process restores a sense of "history" and political relevance to naturalized images such as the "Negro-giving-the-salute" in the example above: "As the concept of French imperiality, here it is again tied to the totality of the world: to the general History of France, to its colonial adventures, to its present difficulties" (Mythologies, 119).

This mythological layer of meaning, then, despite its seemingly ahistorical "naturalness" and innocence, is determined by historical processes and motivated by the desire of dominant groups to maintain their ideologies and power. Myth, therefore, reflects the power structure in society at any given time. The hegemonic influence wielded by the petit-bourgeoisie, in Barthes' view, lies in their ability to construct an image of reality that seems most natural and "real" to the rest of society, even if it represents an ideal unattainable by these other segments of the population. It is the manufactured and ideological aspect of this taken-for-granted sphere of daily life that he wishes to reveal for what it is: "In the account given of our contemporary circumstances, I resented seeing Nature and History confused at every turn, and I wanted to track down, in the decorative display of what-goes-without-saying, the ideological abuse which, in my view, is hidden there" (Mythologies, 11). In keeping with this analysis, he goes on to delineate the difference between myth on the political Left and on the Right, noting that the Right is better at appropriating and manipulating mythological imagery. Myth is therefore "stronger" on the Right. It is weak on the Left because language on the Left is political and action-based, spoken "in order to transform reality and no longer to preserve it as an image" (Mythologies, 146). As the language of the oppressed, it lacks the richness and suppleness of myth on the Right, which is exemplified by the practices of inoculation, removal of history, absorption and neutralization of the Other, tautology, the promotion of mediocrity, the quantification of quality, and the "common sense" statement of fact.

Deleuze and Guattari: A Thousand Plateaus (Matt)

2004-12-08T19:19:00.000-08:00

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus displays what may be characterized as a proto-hypertextual form insofar as it is organized as what the two term a rhizome, with a series of plateaus (chapters) that "can be read starting anywhere and can be related to any other plateaus" (22). This organization, along with the depth and complexity of the concepts that the two employ, renders the question of how one proceeds in reviewing the text somewhat difficult. In light of this difficulty, I will thus begin simply by identifying many of the more important concepts that the two employ throughout the text.

The authors develop a series of important binaries, though they are often careful to minimize the problematic implications of such an approach by emphasizing that such a method is an unfortunate necessity that must be passed through as one seeks to escape from such dualisms. The binaries frequently represent the virtual poles of a continuum that is actualized in mixtures, as when they note that "[t]here are knots of arborescence in rhizomes and rhizomatic offshoots in roots" (20). This arborescent/rhizomatic binary is perhaps one of the most important, with the former model, which Deleuze and Guattari claim has long dominated Western thought, being characterized by a strong principal unity, stratification, and hierarchic organization, while the rhizome is defined by its heterogeneity and its absence of hierarchy or unity. The latter is composed not of points and positions, but the dynamism of lines and trajectories and contains multiple points of entry.

Another key opposition that is developed throughout A Thousand Plateaus is that of the war machine and the State apparatus. This opposition is overlaid upon the rhizomatic/ arborescent, smooth/ striated, and nomadic/ sedentary oppositions developed elsewhere. The distinction is developed, in part, through reference to game theory; "[c]hess is a game of the State" that codes and decodes the striated space of the polis, while the war machine is more closely aligned with the game Go and its territorizlizations and deterritorializations of the smooth space of the nomos. The authors stress that the war machine does not in itself aim at war, but "necessarily adopts it as its object when it allows itself to be appropriated by the State apparatus" (513).

Issues of linguistics and semiotics play an important role throughout the text. In their prior work, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Deleuze and Guattari developed a rather systematic attack on psychoanalysis, which the two came to understand as merely one, though perhaps, the prime example of a type of linguistic and semiotic modeling underlying general formations of power within the West. Deleuzoguattarian semiotics is influenced heavily by the work of Louis Hjelmslev, who proposes the expression/ content distinction, which Deleuze and Guattari utilize as an alternative to the Saussurian understanding of the sign as the signifier/signified couple. The expression/content distinction is further complemented by the concepts of matter, form, and substance (Hjelmslev's 'net'). Matter refers to the plane of consistency or the Body without Organs, the "unformed, unorganized, nonstratified, or destratified body and all its flows" (43). Content is composed of formed matters, and has two primary aspects: substance, which relates to the the selection of matters, and form, referring to the order of selection. Expression refers to the functional structures with the two aspects of form, referring to organization, and substances referring to the compounds established. "Content and expression are two variable of a function of stratification" (44).

Thinking about The Mouse (Cherie)

2004-12-07T20:07:00.000-08:00

Title: The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence
Author: Henry A. Giroux
Pub.Date: 1999
Key Words: Cultural Studies, Popular Culture, Mass Media, Film, Television, Feminism, Postmodernism History, and of course Disney.
Pages: 186
Henry Giroux currently works at Pennsylvania State University. He received his doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1977 and formally held a professorship at Boston University and residency at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He also served as Director at the Center for Education and Cultural Studies at Miami University. His main objective in study is integrating Cultural Studies into to the study of Education.
The Mouse that Roared is a critical look at Disney and how it has become synonymous with childhood innocence, fixed history, and polished fantasy. Giroux presents the argument that Disney is a powerful corporation whose ideology is based ultimately on the control of consumerism and that the altruistic attempts made to give “good clean family fun” are predicated on a false sense of a scrubbed history and controlled environment. Within this text Giroux tackles the subjects of Disney within the public setting, in theme parks, in education, and in film. He imposes that the Disney legacy is a controlling monolith of the marketplace which deteriorates democracy and endangers the unsuspecting youth.
Giroux shows that Disneyland and Disney World have painted an idealized history of the American past. In Disney there is no “other”; no slavery, civil unrest, racial tension or war. It is a controlled atmosphere at the cost of dominance, where regulation and homogenization are par and parcel for the employees as well as the “guests”. Giroux analyses several Disney movies including Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Good Morning Vietnam, and Pretty women. He warns that the stereotypes presented in these films are representative as fact to a child’s mind. For example “bad characters” speak with thick foreign accents, or jargon and are often portrayed darker than other “good characters.” Also there is a demeaning view of female characters; however strong, or independent, they ultimately defined by the men around them. Giroux states that children learn are learning more and more from popular culture and corporate consumerism. This is epitomized in the private town, Celebration, whose link I have provided (http://www.celebrationfl.com). This small town suburbia is nothing more than a Stepford Wives community that markets control over reality. Check out the website if you don’t believe me. Giroux points out the control of this homogenized culture that controls everything from color to education to contract (even buying out the secrecy of its residents).

Giroux presents in his conclusion three easy facts that are hard to establish in today’s corporate controlled society:
• Create a public awareness of controlling corporations and the media they produce – “critical consciousness”
• Close the gap between wealth and poverty
• Link public media spheres in order to create a democratic environment.

Linked (Matt)

2004-12-06T13:24:00.000-08:00

Mathew Gacy
Albert-László Barabási. Linked.
Plume, 2003

Albert-László Barabási's Linked provides an overview of the scientific research into the nature of networks, beginning, for the most part, with the random network theories of Erdős and Rényi, formulated in 1959, and extending to Barabási's research as recently as 2003. Barabási finds that most of the complex networks that have been studied, including the internet, aspects of the metabolic and regulatory functions of cells, aspects of language, social webs, and the networks of Hollywood actors share a generic, scale-free topology. While the various quantities found in most naturally occurring phenomenon follow a bell curve, which would, for example, yield a characteristic scale or average of node connectivity, with a rapidly decaying curve preventing nodes with a degree of conectivity that deviates signifantly from this scale, the quantities describing the connectedness of nodes in a large network instead conform to power laws. Histograms characterizing power law distributions display a continuously decreasing curve that, in the case of networks, imply a large majority of nodes with small, relatively similar degrees of connectivity with a small number of nodes with far more connections. For example, while Barabási's measurements of a sample of 203 million Webpages indicated that 90 percent of those pages had fewer than 11 links pointing to them, 3 pages were linked to by more than a million others. Such nodes are known as hubs and help to hold the network together.

These findings lead me to question whether the apparent ubiquity of scale-free networks is merely a consequence of a functional superiority that nevertheless leaves the door open for actualizations of other kinds of topologies, or whether the apparent laws of large networks do, in fact, rule out large, socially relevant actualizations of Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomatic networks.

Index on Censorship: Writing on the Walls (victor g.)

2004-12-06T13:00:00.000-08:00

Index on Censorship: Writing on the Walls
Vol. 33, No. 3, July 2004, Issue 212, 224 pgs.

Index is a London based quarterly journal. As the final page states, “Index remains the only international publication devoted to the promotion and protection of that basic, yet still abused, human right—freedom of expression”. This particular issue deals with walls-literal and figurative. Walls are ambiguous constructions; they keep in as they keep out. In our current global political climate, they have become even more ubiquitous. In this issue are found contributions by such folks as Umberto Eco, writing on the need for the dismantling of national walls in order for a (re)unified European state to emerge and continue in a key role on a global scale; on to lesser known folks, such as Mehrak Golestan, a musician and writer, covering the latest rap music video by Sheikh Terra and the Soul Salah Crew, a group of unknown British-Asian Muslim rappers promoting the political ideology of the Arab world with imagery of a Iraqi men gunned down by US Marines superimposed over Al-Qaida training camps and Hezbollah factions (as well as the subsequent censorship meted out to US teenagers who hosted the video on their blogs by both unknown parties and official bodies “instructing” the removal of the offending material).
Marcel Berlins, a visiting professor in media law at Queen Mary College, covers the topic of libel tourism taking place in England, a country know for its claimant friendly stance. What is at stake here is not simply the freedom of expression and the press within the borders of England itself, but across international lines. In an age where transnational corporations are more the norm than the exception, the publication of material in one country, then published in England, and then subjected to a lawsuit there, not only endangers those who produced the material, the writers/journalists/etc. in England, but in their own home countries. These writers are placed into a position wherein they must provide even more supporting material for the claims made in their writings. Even more troubling is the “outbreak of cold feet among publishers of vaguely controversial writings”. If publishers are unwilling to publish this material, then litigation in pursuit of economic compensation will effectively hinder the flow of ideas and thoughts challenging the status quo, and strengthening the state’s resolve to allow its populace to know only so much, or at least what it deems necessary.
Rubén Martínez, author of The New Americans, writes in “Fortress America” on the state of American citizenship in regards to a more global citizenship. The US-Mexico border is nearly a 2000 mile long, 4 mile wide line in the sand that is for all intents and purposes, not only meant to keep out the illegal immigration of Mexican nationals, but to keep at bay all of the developing world. As Martínez points out, “Americans do get around … as tourists, as consumers of the ‘other’”. Immigration laws, and national borders are constructs of the state, however, as Martinez points out, they are not of the natural order, “US immigration policy seems to be breaking the laws of nature—or at least globalization”. Which is ironic in lieu of the US need for a globalized economy; a globalized economy that fuels the machinery of US dominance abroad while maintaining an ever increasing isolationist stance here at home.
Wendy Pullan discusses the historical (and present) relation walls have with the notion of citizenship in “A One-Sided Wall”. According to Pullan, a senior lecturer of architecture in the U of Cambridge, “one’s right to reside inside [of walls] offered the freedom, and the responsibility of, to participate as a citizen”. However, historically, walls were not impassable, but permeable. The cities they circumscribed sometimes, if not always, extended beyond the city walls. The city did not stand alone, “commerce, politics, friendship, cultural exchange and war depended upon what lay beyond the walls … as much as the wall demarcated and separated, it was also a means of connection and mediation”. In contrast, today, walls today are more abstract, meant to demarcate nation-states in an ever more globalized and electronically linked world. And yet, Pullan concedes that the absolute removal of all walls is undesirable as well, “no one wants to live in a featureless and homogeneous world. Identity requires some form of recognition or attachment to place which in turn depends on structure and differentiation”. If identity, then, is somehow tied to location, how then, can identity be claimed as a fluid construct, when the location by which the identity is recognized by, remains stubbornly stagnant?

What attracted me to this journal? I saw three copies of it on the bookstore shelf for three months, and I imagine, I am perhaps the only person who bothered to pick one up. Perhaps it was the image on the front cover of a young boy walking between what appears to a 10+ high foot wall and a tangled webbing of barbwire that made me pick purchase this slightly expensive publication. In any case, what I have briefly touched upon above is a small sampling of the theories we have discussed in class being played out in the “real” world. We have discussed such issues as post-colonialism in the third world; how then, can we begin a discussion on the colonialist thug-like tactics being employed now by a once state-less people? How does the idea of a strictly Western, post-Renaissance invention that is “originality” give rise to patriotism and nationalism? And how does this notion tie in with the historical culture of a nation today? Theory, be it modern/pomo, post-structuralist, post-colonialist, feminist, queer, and media studies (the meat and potatoes of any respectable academician), I believe, offers us incredible and ingenious ways by which to cipher though the multitude of layers and meanings present and constantly being added upon in the world today. However, much like Sontag criticizes such intellectual luminaries as Jean Baudrillard, for espousing the belief that experience can be anticipated (a characteristic of modernity), that only images and simulated realities are all that exist now; I too, wanted to step back from the labyrinth that was becoming all these new theoretical ideas explored in that dank basement of a classroom and “see” for myself how they are enacted out and applied to in the “real” world. Furthermore, the reading of this journal is not just simply the result of pretty colors and pictures attracting the eye, but more so an investigation into what Toby Miller in Technologies of Truth. Cultural Citizenship and the Popular Media defines as technology and truth: “A technology is a popularly held truth, and a truth is an accepted fact. Their combination … with the political is intended to signify the abstraction of logic, the qualifier of struggle, and the genitive of reality.” I wished to explore how far the truth could be stretched while its mechanism of dissemination, technology, was hampered by walls; and in turn, how a publicaton such as this goes about furthering it's own non-state sanctioned truth.
This journal provides a lean and mean look to those (such as myself) interested in how borders and proverbial lines in the sand intersect with and affect/effect contemporary social, cultural, economic and political issues on both a local and global scale.

Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag (victor g.)

2004-12-06T08:25:00.000-08:00

Title: Regarding the Pain of Others
Pub Date: 2003
Length: 131 pgs.

Sontag’s project in Regarding the Pain of Others is to do just that, regard the pain of others; or more precisely how we (me, you, the intellectual, those safe from harm Americans, the West, everything that is not the abjected other). Sontag, for the most part, employs photography in her elucidation of how it is exactly the pain of others is taken in, consumed, and likewise, what effects, if any, it has upon the viewer. This text is not an analysis in the strictest academic sense. It is more of an attempt by Sontag herself to come to grips with the prevalence of the world’s atrocity so commonplace today because of photography.
Regarding the Pain of Others pores over representations of atrocity from Goya’s The Disaster of War to the photographic documentation of the American Civil War, black lynchings in the South, Nazi death camps, to current day images of Bosnia, Serbia, Rwanda, and New York City on 9/11.
Sontag endeavors to answer crucial questions regarding not just about the intersection between spectator and representations of atrocity (war), but with the spectator and war itself. The following are a few of the key ideas that Sontag proposes:

-Grisly photographs confirm peoples’ previously held opinions – to this she employs the propagandist photography used by either side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “To the militant, identity is everything.” Depending on which side you are on, it is simply a matter of identifying with the victim and knowing who is culpable, thus perpetuating a cycle of violence goaded on by images.

-Intentions are not inherent in photography, meaning is situational and in flux – this is in keeping with the previous key idea. The photograph itself is capable of “speaking” for itself only so much. It requires an interpreter. And it is the agenda of this interpreter that the photograph assumes. The photograph itself has no agenda, it takes on the one of who is interpreting for it. Photographs of New York City on 9/11 can be viewed as an unwarranted and heinous assault upon the homeland by forces of evil. They may also be viewed as a striking back, justifiable retribution for long running penetrative American foreign policies.

-Photographs do not assist in the comprehension of a situation, that is up to writers to create narratives that help in understanding

-Meanings from photos are free floating, and can only be grounded by words

These two ideas of Sontag are somewhat contradictory to what has been previously been thought of a photograph capable of providing a sense of its own meaning. However, she is not entirely off the mark, photographic meanings are free floating, they do take on whatever definitions the spectator wishes to engender it with. And yet, by simply saying that the meanings can be grounded by simply attaching words to it, is rather naïve. Words themselves, unless they are stating the “facts” of the photograph, their meaning in turn, is just as suspect as the free floating meanings of the photograph, and by no means assisting in the comprehension of the photograph.

-The photograph is not an objective mirror, but an expressive medium capable of portraying multiple realities.

This text is useful in that it can serve as a primer for a “better” understanding of not only representations of atrocity, but in comprehending the after-shocks, the aftermath of viewing such atrocities within the spectator. What is roused within the spectator? Is she compelled to action? Or is he given to the shrugging of the shoulders because it is simply a photograph? How can we now think of the meanings and uses for these images? And of course to an extent, and Sontag’s underlying premise for this text, how do we come to think of war?
Regarding the Pain of Others closes with a description of Jeff Wall’s “Dead Troops Talk (A Vision After an Ambush of a Red Armey Patrol near Moqor, Afghanistan, Winter, 1986)” A made up scene of a real event, this photograph, as proposed by Sontag, does not attempt to offer an explanation. The dead and (just slightly) living characters within the photograph are either incapable or unwilling to provide the spectator with any reading of themselves. As Sontag writes, “These dead are supremely uinterested in the living: in those who took their lives; in witnesses—and in us. Why should they seek our gaze? What would they have to say to us? “We”—this “we” is everyone who has never experienced anything like what they went through—don’t understand. We don’t get it.”
This is a contemporary text, very much in keeping with the texts Sontag herself cites: Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory Through the Camera’s Eye, Barbara Zelizer; Body Horror: Photojournalism, Catastrophe, and War, John Taylor; A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis, David Rieff.
Much like On Photography, this text would be a prudent choice in not only understanding war photography per se, but such topics as the spectacle that is made of conflict, those forced to endure relocation, right on to the suburban prime-time television viewer.

Marat/Sade (Callen)

2004-12-05T20:02:00.000-08:00

The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charendon under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade
Written by: Peter Weiss
Directed by: Wes Martin
Performed by: The Shakespeare Theatre Company
Venue: Phoenix Theatre’s Little Theater
Reviewed by: Callen Shutters

Attending the Marat/Sade play offered me a direct application of key elements of post-structuralist theory we have focused on this semester. By transporting me beyond the pages of a philosophical text, the play enabled me to experience first-hand an active portrayal of the deconstruction of Enlightenment norms in a play set, with purposeful irony, at the end of the Enlightenment. Specifically, Marat/Sade highlights, among many other elements, the breaking down of structures by critiquing and questioning norms about representation, power, and narrative form.
Representation plays a key role in the action of the play. One source of commentary on representation stems from the very format of the play. Marat/Sade is a play within a play, a metanarrative, in which the audience is actually the audience of the production that is put on by the asylum Charendon and directed by the Marquis shortly after the French Revolution. Players with The Shakespeare Theatre Company are actually residents of the asylum who perform as Revolutionaries in Sade’s play. Therefore, players and audience members have multiple roles in the action. Audience members are directly addressed and engaged by the chorus, players, and patients and also act as the audience in the actual play. Players are Revolutionaries, asylum residents, and actors. By forcing audience members and actors to take on multiple personas and simultaneously sort and analyze these roles, Marat/Sade creates tension and reflects the crumbling of structural norms about identity and representation. Other post-structural elements of representation in the play include objectivity, identity, spectatorship, and the notion of the gaze. Post-structural elements allow audiences to take in all the information and create their own descriptions of what is seen and unseen.
Another element the play highlights, which correlates to ideas about representation, is a concentration on real people and human nature. By giving voice and action to lower classes - even the “lowest” rung on the social ladder - the play allows the voiceless to be heard. One case in point is Duperret, who is in the asylum on charges of sexual predation. His needs as a patient overwhelm his role in Sade’s play and he masturbates throughout, not being capable or willing to mask his human desires. Strikingly human aspects of the play reflect other post-structuralist notions of representation including difference, being, and the science of humankind.
Power is also an important post-structural aspect of the play. Though the director of the asylum holds a position of control over the inmates, he lacks all ability to manage the activities of his patients. In fact, after the play about Marat concludes, the patients beat the director and ravage his wife and daughter as they conduct their own revolution on stage. Another stunted figure of power within the play is the Priest. As an icon of the church and religion, the priest continues to preach, though in the confines of a straightjacket. Presumably once a commanding figure in shaping morality, the priest is now subject to the guards of the institution who create order through muscle power. The priest’s limited movement and interrupted sermons cripple his influence over people and he is often the target of laughter on stage. Figures of authority are unable to contain the activities of those under their control, thus reflecting the inability of certain power structures to function in society.
Power is also correlated to post-structuralist ideals in the reintroduction of history through a new lens. As already stated, the history surrounding the events of the French Revolution are told and represented in a new perspective, through the eyes of people who experienced it and were imprisoned and defeated. This brings about a critique of Enlightenment political values, which are presented through the political discourse between Sade and Marat. These elements in the Marat/Sade play all serve to decentralize the rigid power structures of the Enlightenment.
A final example of how the play resonates with post-structuralist ideas is the restructuring of narrative norms. In addition to offering a play within a play and thereby altering roles of actors and audience members, other narrative norms of theatre production are played with and critiqued. For instance, the set of the internal play is forced to be imprisoned within the confines of the insane asylum. Political rhetoric spewed by Marat and Sade is surrounded by madness that resulted from these political stands, the French Revolution, and the Enlightenment. The “tools” to cure and deal with this madness, such as straightjackets, nurses, and bars, all are required to enable the players to cope and show the results while simultaneously showing the causes of the “madness” in the asylum. Even internally, the players are imprisoned by their maladies. Of the many examples include Marat’s relentless twitching and Corday’s inability to stay awake, not to mention Duperret’s powerlessness to keep his hands off himself. These elements all serve to destabilize preconceived notions of narrative by intermixing many layers of personas and narratives. Another element of the play that redefines notions of narrative is the division of the play. Specifically, the intermission is not in the middle but rather at the climax of the inner play, which serves to heighten tension and speculation within the audience. The many choices about narrativity in Marat/Sade serve to destabilize norms of narrative exposition.
Representation, power, and narrativity are just a few of the many elements of post-structuralism revealed in Marat/Sade. This play offered me a unique opportunity to see how some of these elements can be revealed through a narrative piece that, although set in the past, reveals much about a state of mind that resonates today.

Tuchman, Practicing History (Rachel)

2004-12-05T15:37:00.000-08:00

Rachel Moe
Barbara Tuchman, Practicing History
Published 1981, 306 pages

Practicing History is a collection of essays by Pulitzer prize-winning historian Barbara Tuchman. The first section of Tuchman’s book is titled The Craft and emphasizes the various aspects of historical writing. The second section, titled The Yield, is a collection of her historical essays while the third section, Learning from History, touches upon the premise that history is not quantifiable. Tuchman writes for the general reader and is not concerned with the writing and research process used by the academic world. Her approach is refreshing and she gives valuable guidance on writing. Tuchman’s tips for writing historical accounts are of interest to me, because I will probably conduct a historical analysis of some aspect of the Hispanic media as part of my applied project.

In Practicing History, Tuchman dismisses any notion of pure objectivity and says that there is no such thing as a neutral or objective historian. She hesitates to answer the question as to whether her book offers any philosophy of history. She believes that philosophies “contain a risk for the historian of being tempted to manipulate his facts in the interest of his system, which results in histories stronger in ideology than in ‘how it really was.’” She does believe that the material must precede the thesis because the result will be invalid if it is written from hindsight instead of what was known and believed at the time.

Tuchman emphasizes the importance of using primary resources such as private diaries, letters, messages, and reports. She believes using secondary sources, other than to gain initial knowledge of a subject, is rewriting someone else’s book. She believes it is important to know when to stop researching and to have the ability to discard irrelevant information, because the selection of material determines the ultimate product. As a historian, it is important not only to be enthralled with the subject but also to know how to “communicate the magic.” Although research provides material and theory, she thinks that it is through communication that history is heard and understood. Tuchman gives numerous tips for writing history and uses selected essays to exemplify her advice.

Tuchman believes history is not quantifiable and she is suspicious of prefabricated systems of history. The systematizers “arrange systems and cycles into which history must be squeezed so that it will come out evenly and have pattern and a meaning.” She does not think history is a science because man is what she calls the “Unknowable Variable.” Human behavior is not predicable and illogical and includes a number of variables that are “not susceptible of the scientific method nor of systematizing.” It is impossible to isolate or repeat a given set of circumstances in history, which makes it difficult to use history as a way to predict future events.

Tuchman’s book has given me insight into the process of writing a historical analysis, which will be invaluable to me when I begin my own research. Her self-proclaimed lack of higher education (beyond her bachelor’s degree) gives her writing an interesting perspective that the academic world does not have. This perspective has allowed me to see the downfalls of trying to quantify history and the importance of communicating history clearly and concisely.

Many of Tuchman’s thoughts parallel Foucault in his book The Order of Things. For instance, the classification of history into systems and the idea that history is not a science are both topics Foucault examines. Tuchman also discusses the impact of narrative and the power of language, which are topics we have touched upon in class. Overall, in Practicing History, Tuchman shares an interesting and practical perspective about historical writing. Although we will never be able to escape biases and actually write an accurate account of “history”, we can continue creating stories that may give people a glimpse of the past, even if it is based upon the interpretation of the historian.

Campbell, David and Michael Shapiro (eds.). Moral Spaces. Rethinking Ethics and World Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. (Maria)

2004-12-04T15:49:00.000-08:00

This is a project that examines the possibility for a relationship between ethical theory, ethical relations and world politics. In orthodox International Relations (IR) theory (realism, liberalism and their derivatives), ethical concerns are largely ignored and overlooked, that is, ethics and morality are seen as inappropriate in discussion of national interests, questions to security and sovereignty. In the discipline, normative theory is opposed to empirical theory and the guidelines of the former demarcate very clear boundaries for inquiry. The authors of the present volume argue an opposing view, namely, that territoriality, subjectivity and ethics are dependent on each other and inter-connected and thus, moral discourses have to allow for moral spaces of engagement between actors and states. They advocate move beyond a “theory of ethics” and towards an “ethical relation” in which the subject’s responsibility to the other is the basis of reflection. That is, the development of a theory of ethics might end up “eliding the ethical relation” in a way that the “concern with Ethics obscures the contingencies and complexities of the ethical” making “the striving for the rules and principles of justice, especially those that demand impartiality, effects injustice” (x-xi). Ethical inclusion and exclusion both imply a state of interdependence between moral obligations of agents and the spatial orderings of the world. Otherwise, as is practiced by Realism, geographical imaginaries only are maintained at the expense of an ethics of encounter in that “the state model continues to dominate both moral spaces and the mata-ethical thinking of those who analyze global interactions” (xii). More specifically as it pertains to migrants and refugees, an ethics of encounter would suggest an ethics of hospitality toward those who cross state boundaries. Because the refugee unsettles accepted modes of subjectivity, she requires a more sophisticated response away from a commitment to closure or resolution. For the purposes of this summary, I will only concentrate on the essays that were of importance to me and that pertained directly to my own research.

In his essay on “The search for responsibility/community” (pp. 1-28), Daniel Warner explores the relationship between the responsibility an individual has towards others both in a community and outside of it. The essay begins with Weber’s take on the ethics of responsibility built on an image of an individual responsible only to himself and to his perception of his responsibility. Thus is created a picture of the sovereign individual who is ‘by nature’ not bound by any authority. “The condition of being under authority is something that has to be created” (4-5). Weber’s choice for a charismatic leader is Matin Luther, but he is an asocial leader for “he has no understanding of the consequences of his actions for others” (5). Thus, in Weber’s ethic of responsibility judgment for one’s actions remains within the consequences of self-understanding only. Then he moves on to walk about Michael Walzer’s idea that the state and the individual within are inseparable and thus, outside intervention in the internal affairs of the state is unacceptable. What happens then to the individuals when they are expelled beyond the borders of the state? In search of an answer to this question, Warner brings Levinas’ idea that responsibility to the Other necessarily implies an engagement, an actual relation, a response to the call of alterity without necessarily reducing responsibility to the territorial limits of a state. Once we leave the confines of the state, the relationship between community and responsibility, for Warner, becomes crucial, the two are inter-definitional. Against an essential and general understanding of responsibility, there is a need to consider the situational and temporal implications of individualism vs. communitarianism. For Warner, the idea of responsibility re-situates the individual in her relation to the sovereign state. Warner brings forth William Connolly’s idea that the search for a territorial place is itself a highly problematic and probably irresolvable search. For Connolly, after Nietzsche, there is a very real separation between the physical sense of home and feeling at home. “We are necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not comprehend ourselves, we have to misunderstand ourselves, for us the law ‘East furthest from himself’ applies to all eternity – we are not ‘men of knowledge’ with respect to ourselves” (19). For Realism, the concept of a politics of place limits itself to the confines of the sovereign state and there are few moral dilemmas that cannot be resolved within the confines of the nation-state, now become “a community wherein the desire for self-knowledge can be most easily integrated and fulfilled” (18). The possibility for exclusion is here possible only within the confines of a definite home space. However the latter, for Nietzsche, is beyond the territorial implications of territorial belonging as the human condition is defined by an inherent state of homelessness. That is, community cannot do away with homesickness as cannot responsibility with its dependence on “existential resentment” in the search for identity/agent. Furthermore, Connolly refers to an “an-arche – being without first principle – and the constitution of subject in relation to Other through heteronomouus and not autonomous responsibility” (21), the latter being Weber’s ethics of responsibility. In conclusion there is, contrary to what orthodox IR would suggest, in the relationships between subjects and states a constant refiguring of subjectivity, a contestation in the spaces between self and Other that is always implied in a relationship of responsibility. For Warner, contrary to Weber and Walzer, it is “in the workings out of the dimensions of response to the Other, that responsibility becomes meaningful and moral spaces opened” (23).

In Chapter Two (pp. 29-56), David Campbell continues the argument with a call for a deterritorialization of responsibility (theory) called for by the deterritorialization of states. For Campbell as well as for Levinas, responsibility comes before the very possibility of responsibility, that is, it is inherent in “being.” The totalities of modern political discourse are exposed for their failure to address the specific implications that any ethical theory needs to have for reality. Political totalitarianism thus allows for the privileging of certain groups over others and for the justification of subsequent use of violence in erasing difference and opposition. Being as a responsibility to alterity refigures subjectivity in relationship to alterity. Interesting here is to note that such a conception of responsibility puts into the question the very possibility of subjectivity outside of responsibility. Thus, Levinasian ethics suggests that “the ethical “I” is subjectivity precisely insofar as it kneels before the other, sacrificing its own liberty to the more primordial call of the other” (33). It seems to me here that Levinas is almost calling for a universal responsibility grounded in a very particular obligation to the other. Interestingly, it is through the other, through him who is alien, that man is not alienated. Thus Levinas bets on antihumanism because it “clears the space for subjectivity positing itself in abnegation, in sacrifice, in a substitution which precedes the will” (35). Humanism, for Levinas, fails to address alterity because it is not sufficiently human, even though his philosophy is situated within the logic of an individual, one-to-one relationships with the Other (36). No matter how inhumane and violent relationships between people can be, Levinas maintains that the self cannot opt out of a relationship with the other, it has no choice but to care, even in a politics of warfare. The entry of a third party poses a dilemma for Levinas and now the ethical relationship is complicated by the fact that the third, as an other, makes the self part of alterity too. “When others enter, each of them external to myself, problems arise. Who is closest to me? Who is the Other?” (37). Levinas brings the idea of proximity, both spatial, cultural, political and temporal one, that is, the entry of the third party makes ethical relationship with the other a political one, implicated within the relationship with the state. Interestingly, that allows Levinas to overlook the instances of injustice and violence that the state imposes not only on others but also on its own subjects. Here, in reference to the Palestinians Levinas admits that there are, indeed, those who are wrong and alterity is thus made into enmity. That idea poses an interesting question regarding the degrees to which the state can be challenged in defense of our ethical responsibility to alterity. In order to supplement Levinas’ thought, Campbell refers to Derrida and to the ethical basis for deconstruction in its orientation toward the call of the other, thus defying all attempts at totalization (by uncovering the mystical foundations of authority). Yes, there is a need for a decision that would combat any attempt at domination. Derrida’s concept of undecidability comes as a prerequisite for responsibility in that it allows for the possibility of a decision without the need to establish a monopoly or a closure on justice. Justice extends beyond the law; as the “pre-original, an-archic relation to the other, it challenges the unproblematic nature of any commitment to a decision and to non-violence (44). Thus, “the instant of decision is madness” where one must necessarily provide an account of the decision in order to combat theoretical as well as political violence and domination (45). The failure to do so confines ethics and theory within homogeneous territories of dichotomous, rather than a responsible, relationship to alterity. Derrida invokes the concept of “aporia,” an undecidable and ungrounded political space allowing for a moment of political hesitation implied in every decision. The specific prescriptions for action following introduce a double imperative: on one hand, there is the foreigner who need be integrated and on the other hand, there is always the need to recognize his alterity (49). The need to speak and act, for Derrida, is inherent in the reality of this “double contradictory imperative” (50). What is important for Derrida is that politics respond to the call by the other not by trying to eradicate and destroy his being, but by embracing and fighting on behalf of alterity. He calls for a politics that “will demand – and thus do more than simply permit – the decision to resist domination, exploitation, oppression, and all other conditions that seek to contain and eliminate alterity” (51). The importance of deconstruction, in the end, lies in its promise to fight both ontological and political totalitarianism through its “affirmation of alterity deterritorializes responsibility and pluralizes the possibility for ethics and politics over and beyond (yet still including) the state” (51).

To follow: the summary of one more chapter dealing with the relationship between states and refugees.

The Question of Modernity Pt. III (Darren)

2004-12-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

Charles Taylor:
Two Theories of Modernity, 2001, The International Scope
Modern Social Imaginaries, 2002, Public Culture

Quentin Skinner:
Modernity and Disenchantment: Some Historical Reflections, 1994, Philosophy in an Age of Pluralism

These three essays were gathered together in an attempt to get a better handle on the phenomenon of modernity. As I kept coming across Charles Taylor’s name in current debate on the issue, including in Jameson’s A Singular Modernity I decided to turn to his work for insight and further exploration. I was not disappointed although I was left with the impression of Taylor of a man of great intellect and good intentions trying to buttress the crumbling walls of the great fortress that was once modernity against the enemies of post-modern skepticism as to its contents and accomplishments.
I have to admit that I remain unconvinced of Taylor’s assertions but I do feel I have a better grasp of what it is that certain people find worth defending in the modernist project as well as an understanding of what modernity must come to terms with if it is going to reinvent itself as a viable and desirable meta-narrative.
The first essay is actually a commentary and critical examination of Taylor’s earlier work by the philosopher Quentin Skinner. Written in 1994 it certainly demonstrates a particular commitment by Taylor to the lineage and ideals of the enlightenment as embodied in the modernist project. Skinner notes that Taylor conceives of modernity as a western centered cultural structure, thus giving it a location in both place and history, but also sees it as a movement that radiates outwards and downwards to the whole of the world. It is this second aspect that marks Taylor so strongly as a modernist. Further, Taylor sees that there are real and incontrovertible gains that have come about as a result of the modernist project. Taylor does not situate these gains as being either historically or culturally specific but instead posits them as real epistemic gains. Thus, for Taylor modernity has an inherent force that drives it out and down to the rest of the world. As of 1994, Taylor does not make an important differentiation that he comes to later; that between cultural and acultural modernity.
By 2001 Taylor has moved to making a clear distinction between cultural and acultural modernities. Cultural modernity is that which has arisen within a specific culture, namely western Europe and Anglo-America. On the other hand is acultural modernity which sees the time and place specific changes of modern transformation as culture neutral as a teleological point that all developing and advancing cultures have and will go through on their way to the wherever they are going to go. Taylor rejects this second form of modernity and its lack of subtlety and sensitivity. Taylor also rejects the majority of negative modernities, or those accounts that deny modernity in its entirety because he believes that the majority of them fall prey to the same totalizing and universalizing impulse as the dominant acultural theories of modernity. On Taylor’ account any account, positive of negative, that adheres to this claim of universality is dangerous and lacks reflective sensitivity to its own historical and cultural origins. In particular Taylor sees that acultural theories foreground and screen out in very revealing ways in regards to the underpinnings and tacit ontological commitments of modernity and that they have a vested interest in denying all form of contingency since any admission to it undermines their universal claims.
At this point it might be tempting to say that Taylor has taken a hard intellectual left in the direction of post-structuralism but this would be premature. What Taylor reveals in his 2002 article is that his modernist impulses are alive and well even if his vocabulary is highly sensitized and his appreciation of the difficulties that the modern project faces is refined. While still admitting of the two forms of modernity he notes in his 2001 article Taylor now wants to talk of modernity in its social sense as a new conception of societies moral order that, like the modernity he described earlier in his career, moves out and gains in intensity as it goes forth into the world. Taylor’s modernity may be social in origin but it is still striving for the universal and has real normative, and now Taylor adds ontic, force. This takes the form of three moves of the modern social imaginary that occur in the public, economic and political spheres. In all these spheres changes have occurred that can be traced directly to the rise of modernity and their effects have been moving out into the world ever since changing the world in their own image.
What ensures that Taylor remains a modernist and not a post-structuralist is that these events he describes hold no problem for his philosophy. Rather than finding the modernity he describes either suspect or corrupt he lauds the accomplishments it has achieved and in the end fails to turn a truly critical gaze upon the foundations of the project as a whole and all that it has claimed to achieve and in whose name. m. As long

The Production of Space by H. Lefebvre (Aloy)

2004-12-01T13:28:00.000-08:00

Book Report
Aloy Canete

The Production of Space
By Henri Lefebvre, Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith
Blackwell, Oxford, 1991, 454 pp.

In this book, Lefebvre makes a critical departure from the neo-Kantian and neo-Cartesian conceptions of space. Focusing on social space, Lefebvre argues that space is not an inert, neutral, and a pre-existing given, but rather, an on-going production of spatial relations. Lefebvre’s emphasis on the production of space situates himself firmly in a post-structuralist or post-modern critical discourse. He writes: “social space is not a thing among other things, nor a product among other products: rather, it subsumes things produced and encompasses their interrelationships in their coexistence and simultaneity—their (relative) order and/or (relative) disorder” (p.73). Lefebvre objects to the reification of space by rejecting the Cartesian model, separating “ideal space” from “real space.” Instead, space is a product of something that is produced materially while at the same time “operate[s]…on processes from which is cannot separate itself because it is a product of them” (p.66).

Lefebvre develops what he calls “a conceptual triad” in explaining how space is produced:

1. Spatial practice refers to the production and reproduction of spatial relations between objects and products. It also ensures continuity and some degree of cohesion. “In terms of social space, and of each member of a given society’s relationship to that space, this cohesion implies a guaranteed level of competence and a specific level of performance” (p.33).

2. Representations of space “are tied to the relations of production and to the ‘order’ which those relations impose, and hence to knowledge, to signs, to codes, and to ‘frontal’ relations” (p.33). They also refer to “conceptualized space, the space of scientists, planners, urbanist, technocratic subdividers and social engineers, as of a certain type of artist with a scientific bent—all of whom identify what s lived and what is perceived with what is conceived” (p.38).

3. Representational spaces refer to spaces “lived” directly “through its associated images and symbols and hence the space of ‘inhabitants’ and ‘users’…” (p.39). These are the lived experiences that emerge as a result of the dialectical relation between spatial practice and representations of spaces.

Lefebvre deploys this triad in analyzing the history of spaces. He argues that “social space is produced and reproduced in connection with the forces of production (and with the relations of production).” These “forces…are not taking over a pre-existing, empty or neutral space, or a space determined solely by geography, climate, anthropology…” (p.77). For Lefebvre, there is a parallel development between the hegemony of capitalism in the modern West and the production of “abstract space” (to which a large part of the book is devoted). Like abstract space, capitalism has created homogenization, hierarchization, and social fragmentation. For example, the spread of capitalization globally has engendered similarities than differences. While differences of local culture, history, and natural landscape are suppressed, spaces of modernity are divided into grids of private property, market and labor. However, Lefebvre does not at all see modernist spaces as an end of history. As Lefebvre puts it:

From a less pessimistic standpoint, it can be shown that abstract space harbours specific contradictions. Such spatial contradictions derive in part from the old contradictions thrown up by historical time. These have undergone modifications, however: some are aggravated, others blunted. Amongst them, too, completely fresh contradictions have come into being which are liable eventually to precipitate the downfall of abstract space. The reproduction of the social relations of production within this space inevitably obeys two tendencies: the dissolution of old relations on the one hand and the generation of new relations on the other. Thus, despite—or rather because of—its negativity, abstract space carries within itself the seeds of a new kind of space. I shall call that new space ‘differential space’, because, inasmuch as abstract space tends towards homogeneity, towards the elimination of existing differences or peculiarities, a new space cannot be born (produced) unless it accentuates differences. p. 52

In other words, Lefebvre sees the prospect of an emerging new spaces—a differential space—that serves as a resistance to the forces of homogenization present in abstract space. As such, in the contemporary moment, Lefebvre shows the dialectical conflict between abstract space and differential space.

The Country and the City by R. Williams (Aloy)

2004-12-01T13:22:00.000-08:00

Book Report
Aloy Canete

The Country and the City
By Raymond Williams
Oxford University Press, New York, 1973, 335 pp.

In The Country and the City, Raymond Williams explores the ways in which images of the country and the city in English literature since the 16th century and how these images become central symbols for conceptualizing the social and economic changes associated with capitalist development in England. Williams debunks the notion of rural life as simple, natural, and unadulterated, leaving an image of the country as a Golden age. This is, according to Williams, “a myth functioning as a memory” that dissimulates class conflict, enmity, and animosity present in the country since the 16th century. Williams shows how this imagery is embedded in the writings of English poets, novelists and essayists. These writers have not just reproduced the rural-urban divide; their works have also served to justify the existing social order. The city, on the other hand, is depicted in English novels as a symbol of capitalist production, labor, domicile, and exploitation, where it is seen as the “dark mirror” of the country. The country represented Eden while the city became the hub of modernity, a quintessential place of loneliness and loss of romanticism. In the novels of Hardy and Dickens, there seems to be a feeling of loss, and at the same time a sense of harmony among the lonely and isolated souls. For Williams, “the contrast of the country and city is one of the major forms in which we become conscious of a central part of our experience and of the crises of our society” (p.289). What kinds of experience do the ideas appear to interpret, and why do certain forms occur or recur at this period or at that? To answer these questions, Williams argues that “we need to trace, historically and critically, the various forms of the ideas” (p.290). It is this historical perspective that makes Williams work essentially important for it rejects a simple, dualistic explanation of the city as evil in search of peace and harmony in the countryside. Instead, Williams sees the country as inextricably related to the city. In search of the historical, lived form, Williams distinguishes two of his best-known categories: “knowable communities” and the “structure of feeling.” Over the centuries, Williams describes the prevailing structure of feeling—traces of the lived experience of a community distinct from the institutional and ideological organization of the society—in the works of poets and novelists. In the same vein, Williams sees most novels as “knowable communities” in the sense that “novelist offers to show people and their relationships in essentially knowable and communicable ways” (p.163). In sum, Williams notably said: “It was always a limited inquiry: the country and the city within a single tradition. But it has brought me to the point where I can offer its meanings, its implications and its connections to others: for discussion and amendment; for many kinds of possible cooperative work; but above all for an emphasis—the sense of an experience and of ways of changing it—in the many countries and cities where we live” (p.306).

"International Relations in Uncommon Places" by J. Marshall Beier (Maria)

2004-11-30T14:25:00.000-08:00

J. Marshall Beier, International Relations in Uncommon Places: Indigeneity, Cosmology, and the Limits of International Theory (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2005). – presented by Maria B. Stoianova

In his book, International Relations in Uncommon Places: Indigeneity, Cosmology, and the Limits of International Relations, J. Marshall Beier exposes the ways in which International Relations (IR) has internalized many of the enabling narratives of colonialism in the Americas, evinced most tellingly in its failure to take notice of Indigenous people (Lakotas in his case). Beier identifies the master discourse guiding the discipline of IR as the “hegemonologue: a knowing Western voice which, owing to its universalist pretensions, speaks its knowledges to the exclusion of all others” (3). The hegemonologue works by effecting violent erasures on all knowledge that does not fit within the dominant discourse of the discipline. Thus, indigenous people’s self-knowledges are ignored or, if addressed, they are subsumed under the general heading of a master narrative informed by colonial modes of understanding.

The colonial practices that have guided our understanding of post-colonial subjects are mimicked, in academia, by a similar system of “advanced colonialism” that perpetuates “the reproduction and reinstitution of hegemonic cosmological commitments” that are, by extension, “complicit in the denial of Lakota cosmology as well” (4). Beier’s work contributes to the resistance against the violences of advanced colonialism by pointing to the necessity of an “ethics of responsibility,” that is, an ethics that understands our responsibility to the Other as “the founding condition for our own subjectivity, itself possible only as an outcome of a relationship with the Other” (37-8). Postcolonial theory, for Beier, gives political meaning to an ethics of responsibility by engaging unequal relationships between people and by critically interrogating the cultural outcomes of those relationships (41). Postcolonial theory destabilizes the “hegemonologue.”

Beier recognizes his own position within academia as a privileged one, that is, he is always immediately implied in sustaining and perpetuating the violences inherent in teaching, writing, researching, and publishing. His recognition of his complicity with the colonial project’s practices of oppression does not, as is often the case with academic writing, stop short of moving beyond self-criticism. He manages to salvage his academic endeavor, though he is highly critical of conventional IR and its methodologies, and extend it beyond the boundaries of the discipline and into the cosmology of the indigenous people themselves, that is, the Lakotas. Conversation is his preferred way of engagement because simply representing Others leads to a situation where “voices speaking from the margins become audible only when they mimic those of the centre – when they retain too much that is ‘foreign’ or arcane to the Western ear they are typically reduced to artifacts of the exotic, charming perhaps bur hardly authoritative” (46). Through conversation, Beier hopes to find a dwelling place for the security of the “self” that does not automatically suppose the insecurity of the “other.”

Beier juxtaposes learning to understanding, the former being a passively acquired and communicated knowledge, academic terms presupposing certain modes of knowledge acquisition. The former, on the other hand, is an interchange, an exchange and itself always a subject to change, it defies its own authority to speak as “ours can never be a substitute for the voice of the Other” (48). Relying heavily in Derriderian deconstructionist strategies of critique, he reviews some of the objections raised against poststructuralism and in the end, though with some reservations, he argues that post-colonial theory, infused through an ethics of responsibility, furnishes the needed corrective. The unreflective reproduction of authoritative voices within the discipline, Beier argues, has left students and scholars of International Relations ill-equipped to the kind of field and ethnographic research that “refuses the pretension to appropriate the voice of the Other, working instead toward its audibility alongside our own” (10).

Beier’s work is a cautionary tale of the dangers inherent in the academic tendency to speak from the position of a knowing subject by referring to the findings of participant observation in ways that serve only to advance the authority of a master narrative within Western discursive spaces. More specifically, he examines the ways in which popular culture (re)presentations of Indigenous North Americans impart knowledges which, rendering them as spectacle, contribute to their consummate objectification, essentialization and commodification. He exposes such practices for being inherently violent in that they promote the confinement of Indigenous people(s) to a limited range of temporal and spatial contexts of popular imaginary (11). The voice of the hegemonologue is found to be active through popular culture and orthodox social theory alike in ways that render traditional Lakota lifestyles as implausible.

Interestingly, Beier suggests that even the terms of engagement are suggested from the relatively privileged position of critical theory, that is, critical approaches are also in need of deconstruction as far as they tend to substitute one master narrative with another, reverse categories of opposition without always problematizing the legitimacy the concept of the category as such, and deny “subjectivity” altogether in somewhat of a nihilistic manner (Irrigaray 1985, Sokal 1996, Hartsock 1987, Krishna 1993). Following Derrideian deconstruction, Beier maintains that, in the end, “all knowledge is violent” and that only by deconstructing binary oppositions can this violence be interrupted. The binaries that command our understanding of the world enable definitions of rational, masculine, civilized, orderly Self in opposition to emotive, feminine, savage and chaotic Other. The ways in which these binary categories map onto each other lead to the creation and justification of unitary categories of belonging that normalize opposition and alterity. Again, he calls for an “ethics of engagement.” An alternative approach to understanding difference would be to approach it with the understanding that “every text is inherently intertextual, bound up in a complex web of referential and deferred meaning. . . If texts are not hermetic, nor is international theory” (24). Thus, categories of belonging are exposed for their arbitrariness, for their historical insensitivity and for their artificially-hierarchical camps.

The discourse from within which we operate and from within which we understand others is the same discourse, the same territorial space that imprisons us within its epistemological and ontological commitments. In the end, all theory is violent and we would do well to dispel the “damaging and self-defeating assumption that theory is necessarily the elite language of the socially and culturally privileged” (283) and move beyond the usual predisposition of emancipatory discourses in favor of empowerment. As Beier puts it, “the task ahead is to work for polyphony” and not egocentrism (284).

Story and Discourse, by Seymour Chatman (Callen)

2004-11-30T13:53:00.000-08:00

Callen Shutters
November 29, 2004
Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film by Seymour Chatman
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978
267 pages

In this invaluable text to the fields of narrative theory and film/narrative studies, structuralist and film theorist Seymour Chatman offers an analysis of narrative by detailing the clear distinctions between story (what is told) and discourse (how it is told). Broadly, Chatman attempts to draw connections between narrative and the effect of narrative on audiences by breaking down the elements that create a story. He does this by describing key elements within narratives and providing examples from a broad range of text, film, theater, and other narrative outlets which serve as examples to highlight specific elements that create a narrative. I decided to format this review in a chapter by chapter summary, as I will certainly use this text in future analyses of film narratives and will also revisit it for my thesis.

In chapter one, Chatman offers a definition and discussion about the notion of story, which “exists only at an abstract level; any manifestation already entails the selection and arrangement performed by the discourse as actualized by a given medium” (37). In this introductory chapter, a comic strip is broken down into “reading-out” and “reading.” Reading-out is an ‘interlevel’ term that includes the readers’ assumptions and knowledge of other events/states/implications that contribute to the plot of the narrative (41). In Chatman’s words, “…the interesting thing is that our minds inveterately seek structure, and they will provide it if necessary” (45). Conversely, reading is ‘intralevel’ and audiences understand a narrative based solely on the information about the plot related by an author (41).

Chapter two breaks down events in a story and how these events are understood by readers/audiences. Naturalizing is the way in which “audiences come to recognize and interpret conventions” (49). That is, to incorporate conventions of narrative into a language that is understood by and, later, applied by readers/audiences. For instance, in the language of film, when one watches a character on screen write in a diary and hears a voice-over of events that fit as an entry in a diary, viewers connect the image and the voice. Naturalizing is activated in narratives as a result of intertextuality, intersubjectivity, and verisimilitude (50). Chapter two also details atypical narrative forms such as antistory, “an attack on…convention, which treats all choices as equally valid,” and antinarratives, which question “narrative logic” (57). Narratives by authors Borges and Robbe-Grillet are cited as examples of alternative narrative forms. Also, in chapter two, Chatman outlines conventions of narrative form including suspense, surprise, flashbacks, flashforwards, time, plot, order, duration, and frequency. Imperative to Chatman’s arguments are his notions of ‘kernels’ and ‘satellites.’ Kernels are the major elements of a plot and are “narrative moments that give rise to cruxes in the direction taken by events” and are essential to understanding a story (53). Satellites, on the other hand, are minor elements that are made up of “the workings-out of the choices made at the kernels” and are important, though not required, in the relation of a narrative. Also, vital to Chatman’s discussion of these terms include his notion of discourse-time, “the time it takes to peruse the discourse,” and story-time, “the duration of the purported events” (62). Also important in this chapter are Genette’s categories of relations (order, duration, and achrony) between story and discourse time. Chapter two ends with a discussion about how time distinctions are manifested (language tense system, montage in film, etc.).

The third chapter highlights ‘existents’ in a story by introducing different arenas of story-space. In a cinematic narrative, story-space is the “spacial parameters that communicate story in film” (97). In a verbal narrative, story-space is developed by a moving focus of direction developed through descriptors. This chapter closes by focusing on the character as an existent, highlighting different understandings and descriptions of characters (traits, settings) by Aristotle, Propp, Todorov, Barthes, and A.C. Bradley.

In chapter four, nonnarrated stories are introduced as an offshoot of discourse. Chatman presents the different roles of the real author, implied author, narrator, real reader, implied reader, and narratee. Two indispensable roles in a narrative are the real author and real reader. The narrator and narratee are optional depending upon the narrative. Finally, though the implied author and implied reader are immanent, they are not required in the creation of narrative. Chapter four also discusses the many possibilities of point of view in film and the various channels, visual and auditory, that act as different ways to create written and speech records. Two such examples include a diary and a soliloquy. Finally, converging point of view and speech records, chapter four concludes by providing descriptions and examples of stream of consciousness, free association, and interior monologue in narrative.

Chapter five discusses covert v. overt narrators. Covert “occupies the middle ground between non-narration and conspicuously audible narration” while overt narrative forms offer straight-forward set descriptions and temporal summaries (197). Especially interesting in this chapter is a discussion about how unreliable narration in film forces viewers analyze the situation and character in-depth and come to one’s own opinions, involving audiences on a higher level (235). Chapter five closes with a discussion on the commentary and interpretation of events in the story. Factors such as self-conscious narrators and general truths and scientific facts introduced by the narrative are important in discussing commentary and interpretation of narrative.

Finally, the short conclusion offers readers a series of open-ended questions that inspires deeper thought on the topic. Chatman wonders how useful a distinction between story and discourse can be for analyzing narrative form. Also, Chatman ponders the role of narrative causality, cultural messages subsumed by narratives, and the influence of the media on abstract discursive structures.

Overall, this text was probably the most helpful guide in my quest to learn about narrative theory because of its dissection and description of the vital parts of a narrative. Chatman is easy to comprehend and offers a broad range of readers a terrific and crucial analysis of the complex system of a narrative.

An Experiment with Time, by J.W. Dunne (Callen)

2004-11-30T13:50:00.000-08:00

Callen Shutters
November 15, 2004
An Experiment with Time by J.W. Dunne
London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1927, 3rd Ed. 1958
249 pages

Inspired by vivid dreams he was having that seemed to precipitate waking events such as volcanoes and fishing adventures, J.W. Dunne decided to conduct an experiment where he (and eventually others) logged their dreams for a period of time and tracked the content of these dreams. Subjects would then reread their logs within a week or so and note whether the events that occurred in their dreams were in the past, had happened in the short time since the dream, or had never happened. Often, subjects would find a mixing of past, present, and future events in a single scene. The connection of waking events to dream-state events was the heart of Dunne’s experiment with time.

Dunne considered himself an ‘abnormal’ subject, but found that his dreams equally consisted of past and future events. Dunne believed that the time humans understand and live in during waking consciousness is Time 1, which follows a linear path, and the state of dreams existed in a separate consciousness, Time 2. This dream-state of consciousness was composed of a mixture of past, present, and future events. Based on this ability to foresee future events, Dunne believed this was a proof to support a theory that humans were able to obtain an immortal state. Dunne argued that, though it was always possible for some to see future events in dreams, the aging process limits the ability to see these events. Dunne relates that at birth, humans have few past events and their possibility to see events in Time 2 is limited to future events. Conversely, when humans approach death, they had few future events remaining and their experiences were mostly composed of past events. Thus, the frequency of past and future events one could experience in Time 2 depended upon the age of the dreamer. However, Dunne found that this varies from subject to subject.

One of Dunne’s key terms is the notion of association, where one links events in their mind to other events or images because of possible similarities or connections in the mind of the subject. Also, Dunne believed that humans were capable of a fourth-dimension, a time/space state that does not correlate to a directional or observable scale. This dimension held that “neither past nor the future was observable” and that “all observable phenomena lay in a field situated at a unique ‘instant’ in the time length,” or, as we know it, the present (109). Dunne believed that, “the Time dimension, for any given observer, is simply the dimension in which his own world-line happens to extend through the four-dimensional continuum” (123). Finally, imperative to Dunne’s thesis is the notion of a series, which “is a collection of individually distinguishable items arranged, or considered as arranged, in a sequence determined by some sort of ascertainable law” (132). Time 2 connects events from different series’ and rearranges them in a revised order that does not correlate with any ‘ascertainable law’ that we, as humans, have created in Time 1.

Dunne was an engineer, he designed ships and, therefore, is not connected to any school of thought. As stated above, he considered himself abnormal and wished to understand this abnormality by ‘scientifically’ examining dreams and different time-states. Dunne’s methods and beliefs might be considered experimental.

I read this text because time and the connection of time with the presentation of narrative is currently a big topic in film narratives and many directors are experimenting with time-states and the development of plot in film. In one example, in Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible, the main character Alex reads Dunne’s text during the film and has dreams that precipitate horrific events that happen to her in the film. In addition, this film is played in reverse order with 12 different time-states starting at the end of the day and moving on to events that occurred earlier. In this film, Noe plays with the ability of Time 2 to predict events in the future, the connection of audiences to the action on-screen in light of showing effects and then causes, and offers some experimentation with dramatic form so standard in film (introduction, problem, development, climax, solution). J.W. Dunne’s text and other ideas about time-states and association is creating opportunity to develop radical narrative techniques. This is very exciting for any creator or admirer of narrative form.

Screening the Novel: The Theory and Practice of Literary Dramatization by Michael Green

2004-11-29T19:16:00.000-08:00

Michael Green

Screening the Novel: The Theory and Practice of Literary Dramatization
By Robert Giddings, Keith Selby and Chris Wensly

After books that cast a wider net over theory, I chose to get a little more specific with “Screening the Novel.” My MA thesis at this point might be something about adapting literature to film. As a creative part of that thesis, I might even adapt some of my own fiction. “Screening the Novel” was helpful, as its title suggests, into giving insight into both the theory and the practice of adaptation. It is a lucid, well-researched and well-written text.

The book is divided into these parts: “The Literature/Screen Debate: an Overview,” “The Re-creation of the Past,” and “The Classic Serial Tradition.” Then there are two sections that analyze the novel and the screening of “Great Expectations,” and two sections that look at the Dramatization and Production of “Vanity Fair.”

As the sections suggest, the authors generally only discuss classic novels and their film and television adaptations in the book, including the works of Charles Dickens and “Vanity Fair,” among others.

In “The Literature/Screen Debate: an Overview,” the authors detail some of the issues regarding the transfer of novels to film and television. First, the section examines the essential differences between literature and film that make the consumption of each such a specific experience. For example, both a novel and its filmed adaptation may have essentially the same story, but many other elements besides the basic story cohere to make the work complete. Just because a film features the plot of a novel it does not mean that the theme, meaning, or ironies of the novel—which arise from the particular application of language and literary craft--will immediately transfer to film.
In an explication reminiscent of Foucault, the authors break down the way we understand things in terms of three types of signs: icon, index and symbol. An icon is a sign that represents an object mainly by its similarity to it, for example, a photograph of a man will resemble the man himself. An index is a sign which points to another object, that suggests an existential bond between itself and the object, for example, a “torch of knowledge” sign that used to indicate a school. A symbol has no immediate relationship to an object, other than the agreed upon one among the users of the sign, for example, words.
In film and television, the main language is iconic and indexical, while in prose the sign is used exclusively. The authors show how this difference in the way we understand our stories is one of the fundamental differences between film and literature and one of the great difficulties for adaptation. The differences are also at the heart of the debates about realism and expressionism in the cinema.
The authors admit that because of these and other differences between the media, there is no universal adaptation formula. Still, they identify three types of adaptation. 1.) The film that attempts to be “faithful” to the novel, by giving the most literal translation possible, such as “The Hours,” or “The Lord of the Rings” (my examples) 2.) The film that maintains the basic source material of the novel while significantly reinterpreting or even deconstructing the next to generate some alternate meaning (“Barry Lyndon”), and 3.) The film that regards the source text only as raw material for an original work (Apocalypse Now). The authors then give a long section in which they debate the flaws and merits of each of these adaptation strategies.
Next, the authors discuss literary methods that are almost impossible to transfer literally from novel to film, including point of view (how do you represent a first person P.O.V on screen, for example), metaphor and interior thought. On the other hand, film is good at some things that are difficult to convey in literature. For example, a landscape that might take pages for an author to render in a reader’s imagination comes across immediately in one shot of a film.

In the section, “The Re-creation of the Past” the authors explore the audience’s historical relationship to texts. A main point they make is that our perspective of the past is too skewed too ever accurately reproduce a text set in the past, though ironically, authenticity is one of the things that filmmakers strive to capture when they film period novels.

The authors see the attempt to adapt classic novels as part of a larger obsession by the media in general to reconstruct the past. They assert that we are far better equipped than any other age to recreate the past because of our storehouses of historical artifacts and documents and our amazing technology. Yet, ironically, they say, the past constructed by the media is a forgery. There is no way we can really reconstruct the past; our reconstructions are rife with misconceptions and inaccuracies and by the narrative of history that we create for ourselves may or may not have anything to do with how things really were. In other words, we can’t escape from our modern story of things to get the distance that we need to see from outside of our own perspective (the authors specifically discuss this in terms of our Enlightenment thinking.) All this ties in neatly with all the texts on modernism and postmodernism that I’ve read this semester.
The authors give some nice examples of this throughout the section (indeed the entire book is very good about providing concrete examples). One example is a 1983 BBC drama in which Donald Pleasance appeared as Samuel Johnson. In the program Pleasance spoke with an upper class (proper) accent, though it was known that Johnson has a Cockney-like accent. But because Johnson was one of England’s great scholars, the authors assert that British TV audiences never would have accepted him speaking in a Cockney accent. In other words, they imposed their own ideas about things should have been, based on current culture mores, rather than how things really were.
The authors finish up this chapter with a discussion of the post-modern nature of our culture. The very fact that everything is now in the stew pot makes it very difficult to separate out specific ingredients. One of the reasons that the adaptation of classic novels is so difficult is because it’s hard to extract some of idea of “classic” from the postmodern goulash.

In the next section, “The Classic Serial Tradition,” the authors compare the serialized novels of the nineteenth century, particularly those of Charles Dickens with 20th century radio and television serials. They make the interesting point that Dickens and other novelists from the era who amassed a large readership were assisted by technology, not unlike the way in which the technology of film and television have provided authors with large audiences. Except in this case the technology was the mass media of an earlier generation: modern print technology and the steam press which allowed much cheaper publishing and helped open up literacy to all strata of society.

In the next section the authors provide a thorough analysis of “Great Expectations.” They look at how it works as a novel, how Dickens constructed the narrative, what his themes were and how he incorporated them, and other aspects. They give a very thorough and insightful (and long) analysis. Ultimately they show how Dickens constructs his fictional world and renders profound themes with words, with language. They do this so they can underscore, in the next section, how difficult a film adaptation of a novel is.

Again, in this next section, “The Screening of Great Expectations,” the authors give a thorough analysis on the transfer of the novel to the film. Since—as the authors have already thoroughly documented—hundreds of adaptations of Dickens’ novels exist (and scores alone of “Great Expectations”) the authors choose one version, the 1946 David Lean version with Alec Guinness. But even though this version is widely considered among film critics and scholars to be a great film, the authors illustrate in great detail the many ways in which the film fails to communicate the themes, relationships and meaning of the novel. They do this to show the difficulty of adaptation, and the traps that the adapter can fall into, without even realizing it, simply by not being completely aware of the differences between the two media. They also point out what the film adaptation does well. Overall the comparison of book to film is very illuminating. This is a great text for potential adapters out there like myself.

On the Postcolony (Dynanada)

2004-11-29T16:15:00.000-08:00

Mbembe, Achille
On the Postcolony
Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001

Mbembe brings the philosophical insights of Hegel and Nietzsche to understand the ethics of the postcolony. Mbembe is very precise and succinct in describing the place marked by the colonial domination and is trying to reconceptualize itself.

According to Mbembe, “the notion of postcolony identifies specifically a given historical trajectory - that of societies recently emerging from the experience of colonization and violence which the colonial relationship involves. To be sure, the postcolony is chaotically pluralistic; it has nonetheless an internal coherence. It is a specific system of signs, a particular way of fabricating simulacra or re-forming stereotypes. It is not the economy of signs in which the power is mirrored and imagined self-reflectively. The postcolony is characterized by a distinctive style of political improvisation, by a tendency to excess and lack of proportion, as well as by distinctive ways identities are multiplied transformed and put into circulation.” ( Mbembe 102)

It is here in Mbembe's text one finds the political economy and aesthetics coming together on an axiological terrain. He recruits the Bakhtin's notions of obscene and grotesque in order to understand the banality of power in Cameroon. Mbembe argues that obscene and grotesque are indeed the characteristics that identify the postcolonial regimes of domination. Mbembe intends to explore why and how the “zombification” of the dominant and dominated has robbed the both of any ability to have an impact.

Mbembe very critically looks at the spectacles of the postcolonial government that commands its subject to participate in the displays of power. Analyzing the regime of Biya, the Cameroonian leader, Mbembe demonstrates the agonizing political realities of the place.

What is most relevant in Mbembe's analysis is his use of literary sources in order to understand the politics of the place. Though my reading of Mbembe's “On the postcolony” was centered on his essay entitled “The Aesthetics of Vulgarity”, his other essays give an in-depth analysis framing the postcolony as a space for ethnographic inquiry. Mbembe's analysis for the first time combines the ethnographical elements with the philosophical analysis in order to understand the contemporary complexities of the sub-Saharan realities.

Mbembe opens his text by critiquing the discourse about Africa. According him, it is part of the meta-text about animal-to be precise about the Beast- Its experience, its world and its spectacle. Mbembe argues that the discourse of the Africans unfolds under two signs: First is the sign of the strange and the monstrous and second the discourse of our times, under which African life is interpreted is that of intimacy. In this perspective , according to Mbembe, Africa is the object of experimentation.

Mbembe's text though is markedly different from this point of view. He is successful in his project to”'write Africa', not as a fiction, but in the harshness of its destiny, its power, its eccentricities, without laying any claim to speak in the name of anyone at all.” Mbembe's political and ethnographical analysis of the subject formation in the postcolony is extremely relevant to my project. Mbembe actually has taken a step towards Bhabha's project to write he histories of the dehistoricized.

The Question of modernity pt.II (Darren S.)

2004-11-29T11:27:00.000-08:00

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures
Jurgen Habermas
MIT Press, 1990

Like Fredric Jameson and Charles Taylor Habermas is concerned, one might say intimately concerned, with the concept of modernity. But where Jameson tends to allow his focus to encompass if not fix on artistic modernity, Habermas like Taylor is most concerned with the social and cultural trope of modernity; of modernity as enlightenment reason. In The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity Habermas attempts to recover the project of modernity, one that he sees as unfinished not bankrupt, from the specters of post-modernity; from Derrida, Deleuze and Foucault. On Habermas' account the project of modernity needs to be reconstructed not deconstructed, and those who critique it are correct on nearly every technical point but wrong in the most important way. They are wrong as to what it means, and they are wrong in which direction they take in trying to deal with the very real problems they see. For Habermas it is clear what fork they come to and what path they wrongly choose; the philosophy of the subject. Even clearer for him is the path they came across and did not take; the path of intercommunication, of intersubjectivity of what he has called in other and equally famous books communicative action.

On Habermas’ account the project of modernity is not exhausted. It has not as Lyotard says “been abandoned…destroyed, liquidated” (The Post-modern Condition, 1984, 111). This point of divergence is central to Habermas’ deconstruction (although he would never use this term) of post-modernity and the thought of its proponents. Habermas commits much of the space of this book to a critical examination of the thought philosophers who form the core of those critical of the enlightenment project and the modernity that sprung from it. Habermas’ method is to point out the performative contradiction of all those who critique the rationality and reason of modernity with the very tools of reason that this modernity (and their privileged educations and status) has given them. For Habermas, to bastardize a famous saying appropriated from Derrida, there is no outside of modernity. He states plainly that “I do not believe that we can distantiate Occidental rationalism into an object of neutral contemplation and simply leap out of the discourse of modernity” (PDM, 59). What is needed instead is a critical re-examination of the central thesis of modernity up to now which Habermas believes is the philosophy of the subject, a philosophy he sees as ‘exhausted’.

It is this exhausted philosophy of the subject thatHabermas sees all supposed critiques of modernity as such as being addressed towards. For Habermas the problem in the end “is too little rather than too much enlightenment, a deficiency rather than an excess of reason” (PDM, xv). This is why he posits the project of modernity as unfinished rather than exhausted, it is simply this one aspect; subjectivity, that requires reformulation, indeed on his account it needs to be abandoned for another and more palatable philosophy; that of communicative action, of intersubjectivity. For Habermas the escape from the morass of subjectivity is not an abandonment of modernity nor its refusal but a movement of the focus from the individual and the internal to the social and mutually shared. This is a decentering of the type that post-structuralists might carry out but while their project is self-conceptualized as deconstruction, an activity I believe that Habermas himself engages in here, Habermas sees his work as therapeutic and rereconstructive. In this vein Habermas adheres strongly to the emancipatory ideals of some of his Frankfurt School predecessors, particularly Herbert Marcuse and even Erich Fromm. What Habermas does reject is the radical critique carried out by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Habermas is a therapist of modernity not its executioner. Since on his account modernity is not to be escaped easily if it can be escaped at all it must be dealt with understood and come to terms with. In the end it is this stance; that of trying to perform therapy on the modern project while admitting its faults, indeed its deep philosophical failings as it has been expressed up to now that sets Habermas apart from many of his contemporaries and certainly, at least in his own view, from those he sets out to critique.

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity is a modernist project through and through. Habermas believes in the emancipatory power of reason and the compelling metanarrative of the enlightenment. His commitments to both of these ideas make him a foil for many poststructuralist theorists but his ideas demand both response and serious consideration. On Habermas’ account the radical critiques of modernity all contain at least an element of truth, and their compelling power comes from their recognition of the dead end of the philosophy of subjectivity. What Habermas offers instead of their totalizing critique is perhaps another totalizing modernist narrative but with this work Habermas puts the theoretical ball back in the post-structuralist’s court. The onus now falls on them.

Camera Lucida -- Roland Barthes (Victor G.)

2004-11-28T19:44:00.000-08:00

Name: Roland Barthes

Title: Camera Lucida, Reflections on Photography

Pub. Date: 1981, translation

Length: 119

<>Barthes’ project in Camera Lucida is to establish a new means of observing and, in effect, a new consciousness through photography. <>

This text is divided into two wholly different, yet entirely dependent, sections. The first section attempts to offer a new definition of what photography is, can be, or should be. The second section is more of a search for his deceased mother amongst the lingering photographs of her. This latter section builds upon the former in order to arrive at a new understanding of photography and of the self. <>

In the more personal examination of photography, Barthes proceeds to distinguish between a characteristic of duality, “a co-presence of two discontinuous elements”, what he terms the studium and the punctum. The studium is the “application to a thing, a general enthusiastic commitment”; the studium refers to that range of meanings that are universal to anyone and everyone. This studium implies that a photograph can be taken in, may be consumed without any great expenditure of thinking; it is the desire to study the meanings in the photograph. The punctum is a “sting, peck, cut, little hole, a cast of the dice”. This is the private meaning, it is not easily communicated via language. This is the detail that attracts and holds the spectator’s gaze. <>

Barthes takes the “study” of photography out of the realm of analysis, and devises a new science of photography—a framework that moves beyond the classifications of art, technique, etc., and draws upon “absolute subjectivity”. <>

Camera Lucida is a slight departure from Barthes’ previous analysis of photography in Image-Music‑Text, and more in line with his analysis of photography in Mythologies. However, CL is a departure from the analytical endeavor, and more of an introspection. This text works for me in the sense that it provides me an alternative means by which to view and consume photography. <>

The following simply are outtakes of Camera Lucida; rather profuse, but ones that will provide a more in depth view of Barthes’ text as opposed to the above: <>

Part 1. <>

Photography (the photograph) captures a moment in history, keeps it keeps it current, keeps it in the now. This is an exploration of what Photography is “in itself”. A photograph is a duality (signifier and signified). By nature, the Photograph … has something tautological about it. (tautologous: true by virtue of its logical form alone) A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see. The writing of Photography falls between the expressive of writing and critical writing; and this critical writing lay the discourses of sociology, semiology, and psychoanalysis. The Photograph can be the object of three practices: to do, to undergo, to look. The Operator is the Photographer; the Spectator is ourselves … the person or thing photographed is the target, the referent, a kind of little simulacrum, any eidelon… The subject-target while posing derives its existence, metaphorically, from the photographer. The photo-self never coincides with the actual-self, thereby taking on a (signified) life of its own. The photograph is the advent of the self as other; a dissociation of consciousness from identity. The subject photographed suffers from inauthenticity. Multiple readings of the same subject. Interpretations dependant upon context. Death is the eidos of [the] Photograph. (eidos: the distinctive expression of the cognitive or intellectual character of a culture or a social group). It is through studium, that interest lies in so many photographs; a photograph’s punctum is the accident that pricks (studium: application to a thing, taste for someone, general enthusiastic commitment; punctum: sting, speck, cut, little hole, cast of the dice). Culture is a contract arrived at between creators and consumers. The Photograph is dangerous. Photographs contain within them, certain biographical features (named biographemes). Photography has the same relation to History that biographemes have to biography. Photography is a cover, a mask, for death. Since every photograph is contingent (and thereby outside of meaning), Photography cannot signify except by assuming a mask. In the realm of Advertising, the meaning must be clear and distinct only by reason of its mercantile nature; in the rest, the object speaks. It causes thinking. Ultimately, Photography is subversive, not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks. The studium is ultimately always coded, the punctum is not. The punctum is an addition, and nonetheless, it is already there. <>

Part 2. <>

Attempting to “find” his mother amongst photographs. History separated him from the many photographs of his mother. (anamnesis: a recalling to mind) Could he recognize her. All the world’s photographs formed a labyrinth; at the center, the one photograph of his mother would fulfill Nietzsche’s prophecy: “A labyrinthine man never seeks the truth, but only his Ariadne.” (Ariadne: a daughter of Minos who helps Theseus escape from the labyrinth). From hereon, the investigation of Photography must not be done from the viewpoint of pleasure, but in relation to what is called love and death. Photography offers an immediate presence to the world—a co-presence. The Photograph does not necessarily say what is no longer, but only and for certain what has been. Photography never lies: or rather, it can lie, as to the meaning of the thing … Every Photograph is a certificate of presence. The photograph has no future. Not only is the Photograph never a memory, but it blocks memory, quickly becomes a counter-memory. The Photograph is violent. The Photograph cannot say what it lets us see. (oneiric: of or relating to dreams; ecmnesic: hallucinations)

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Dumbing Down (Cherie)

2004-11-28T18:49:00.000-08:00

Dumbing Down: Essays on the Strip Mining of American Culture
Eds. Washburn, Katherine and John Thorton
Copyright 1996
Pages 329
Good for all area of study

This book admonishes the “dumbing down” of American life and culture. The essayists argue that while they were hung-up over the events of the Vietnam War, studying Middle High German, or minoring in Women’s Film Studies - they were actually counting on someone else to maintain what they had inherited. They state that we as a society have become creatures of the marketing masses with countless investigations into our lifestyles and preferences. Ultimately, they feel that we have as a society squandered knowledge, tradition, and competency. They hope to arise some awareness through the culmination of these essays, however they never produce a singular cause or solution. There are good points in these essays; however they often fall under the complication of their own admission of looking back to a “better time.” It is a romantic retrospct that fails to see the events that were probable causes for the very things they denounce. I decided it would be easier to brake down the essays into short synopses, since there are many diconnected views in this book set off in five sections.

Education

John Simon
He argues that there is a prevalent dumbing down in the fields of art, theater, and science. He cynically (and somewhat accurately), states that all other animals except the humans are getting smarter. This cynicism is driven by the love of culture and sense of loss. He points to many ideas of standardized “culture” and feels that they are simply lost; ranging his arguments from ideas on language use to classicism. To John Simon popular culture has overridden historic classics, “art and ephemera are indeed not comparable.” Any reference to history or the historical is understood only by a handful of “Luddites and desperadoes.” The reflection of society is ultimately the image seen between a computer monitor and a television screen.

Gilbert Sewall
His essay is on the postmodern curriculum changes in academia. He feels that academic programs are a failure, existing of a collage of relativism and radical individualism. He exaggerates the exploitation of oppression and feels it is a weakness of the overly virtuous and sensitive. In age of diversity and multiculturalism, it is the Western “feel-good” subjects that are invading the program instead of the hard sciences and grammar.

Cynthia Ozick
This essay argues about speech and the formulation of the filtered American voice through a tale of a young girl and the weaning out of anything outside of the prescribed status of “good” accents. Through twists and turns of speech to literature it ultimately boils down to inheritance of manners and who shapes culture. She uses Henry James to exploit that his world revolved around the written word and that today’s culture is not a reduplication of his era. It is instead a place where language is fluid and is not bound by the walls of literature, and cannot be judged by the buildings of the past.

Heather MacDonald
MacDonald argues that the teaching of writing and similar skills has been replaced with expressionism. The basic skills are not taught for literacy and the expectation of skill is lowered. She argues that the scholastic system is too worried about getting in touch and not worried enough about getting the facts and skills right.

Steven Goldberg
This essay is one of many that he has written about the aspects of the logic and the empirical sciences on social issues. The central theme surrounds the psychological and ideological needs for science over the actual reality of the event or hypothesis. I feel his quote summarizes the piece best. “In other words, the very purpose of science, the separation of the true from the non-true – and the limitations on belief that this entails – is jettisoned.” I guess watching the Oprah show doesn’t make me a humanitarian after all (said with sarcasm). That is because truth and education are not handmaidens, but the ultimate goal for any individual seeking fulfillment and understanding. “It is precisely the fallacy on which the conservative view of cultural relativism rests.”

Brad Leithauser
His essay is a focus on the loss of rhythms and vocabulary necessary for the understanding of poetry. A solution he proposes is that the educational system should turn back the clock and teach the Classic skill of memorization and grammar. The true reward is the exonerating moments of the poem that remain long after death.

David Slavitt
This self proclaimed elitist essay brings up the issues of the “better life,” and mixed blessings found within technological and social advancement. The possession of classical learning and high culture has disappeared. He remarks on the change of socialization of the country after the Vietnam War. The ability to go to college became easier and the requirements for learning dropped. It has devalued the diploma in a societal goal of “middle class,” an egalitarian sense started by the need of Theodore Roosevelt. His argument is that the desire for learning is only within the procurement of jobs and economic wealth at the college level. The joy of learning in a person’s youth becomes the bitter reality of a set curriculum with an ultimate destination of a mediocre job. I think he paints a good and realistic argument; however the outcome is rather bleak. The pages of Marx, Freud, and Proust are often left unturned in a modern college classroom for the attempt to give everyone a fair shot has rotted into a loss of learning anything at all.

Arts and Science

Ken Kalfus
Ken Kalfus takes us to childhood and tours us through the amazing planetarium of his youth. How fascinating everything was become of science. It was explainable and attainable, and that is what made it amazing. Now in adulthood, he shows us that science fiction has taken over for fact. The imagination must have no limits in fact, and the most important thing to rely upon is the hope of the next Star Trek movie to tell us how to dream. Even these fantasies have taken over the minds of the youth and the place of “real” science in the museums. He feels it is a reflection of a pop culture and confusion that is spread throughout the American landscape. The science of the museums is pretty buttons that launch unexplainable objects (I laugh as I think of how true this is) and fake television screen to replace the actual presence of the stars. This is a good essay on the departure of the universe into the realm of the technological mind.

Robert Park
His essay explores the postmodern “new era.” His claim is that the purists want to destroy all the scientists since technology is taking over, but technology as he shows is a benefit and that there is no appeal in return to the dark ages of death and human sacrifice. It is a movement of anti-science where the ideological rules. Fantasy and homeopathic healing rules the minds of the masses and the scientists are afraid of being cast into intolerance. Basically, he feels the scientific mind is a reducing commodity an the only way that can identify the benefits of our universe.

Anthony Decurtis
“The native intelligence and an open mind are insufficient tools for maintaining a culture of endearing values.” He argues that there is no simple or pure understanding, and the elite are not made of those who have intelligence or merit. He merits popular culture alongside of high culture and stands behind the argument that it is society’s opinion that to be truly great must follow aesthetic values of the past. However, it does not accept these as means of attainment in our modern culture. Therefore he believes they must be placed on a level field to be enjoyed and used to enrich and not elevate.

Philip Lopate
This essay focuses on modern film. He argues that it is a marketable farce with an absence of skill and language. It simply is an explicative and has no sense of reality. It glosses our views of that which we criticize in a false state of empathy. He agues against such movies as I.Q., True Romance, Forest Gump and Pulp Fiction stating there are simply a celebration of nothingness and mindlessness. It is the allure of the impossible pipedream. This is a very interesting article for anyone interested in modern movie criticism and offers a wide arrangement of film critique.

Joseph Epstein
As a former member of the NEA, Joseph Epstein attacks the very system that funds this board. His strongest argument is that we produce teachers of art and not artist. We no longer understand high art, instead replacing middle art (with its inner confusion) within that heightened group. He attacks the universities for promoting the propaganda by employing those poets and artists who need to teach others there own works. Lastly, he shows the ironic state of the NEA. To become great or unique, you must be marginalized and make a statement against the political system, just so that you may attain money from that system. The government should not be a part of fueling individual art, only if this takes place can some great creations be made that do not follow what he believes to be the ‘shock them’ factor.
The Media

James Twitchell
This essay deals with what James Twitchell calls Adcult: our culture dependant upon advertising. He states that money is valued over time and that has gone to the advertisers advantage. “We consume the products as much as we do the advertising.” He states that the Industrial Revolution was a result of our love of shopping and attaining stuff, and it has been that way since the ancient Egyptians. He points to pure advertising as it started in books, then developed into magazines such as Colors and Sony Style, then onto the TV, and then finally the internet. He continuously shows how the advertisers target the youth and their unending time and money, time being the more powerful of the two. His solution is to cut the kids purse strings and try Colgate on your next shopping trip instead of Crest.

Sven Birkerts
Intriguing essay. Sven Birkets presents an essay on the realities or shall I say the ‘unrealities’ of the NET. He uses metaphors and images of life and religion to demonstrate the growing human metamorphosis to an online mentality. This very balanced argument also brings into question the boundaries of law. For example what would be the restrictions on entry of zones, rape, and murder? Are there such things? Lastly, he presents Nietzsche’s vision of deitism: when we become Gods, and how we slowly approach that collectively through removing the boundaries of time and space. How valuable is the presence of the body next to you? Does it make difference in the evaluation of what is real?

Kent Carroll
This essay calls for an authentic voice to filter the fantasy and lies that are delivered to the general public as truth. Ha calls them gatekeepers. The problem is that the reading public desires the fantasy and the publishers want the money. It is ultimately what the public wants. There is no need for the classic authors to build our fiction, the T.V. and movies have built up enough shocking deplorability that it is not necessary to have it in books when it instantly surfaces on the screen. It is a “measurable and quantifiable” corporate business that does not seek talent, but the dollar returns from a housewife who has decided that she can write the next great romance and then does.

Public Life

George Kennan
This essay explores the ideas originally presented by Alexis de Tocqueville. Equalitarian and democratic are synonymous features of American cultural desire. George Kennan questions the desires of the general public through the explorations of equality, elitism, and representative government. His ideas are not focused on the individual, but the society as a whole. Today’s society is lacking the leadership that makes great man and the individual leaders who will make tough choices without consulting the will of the crowd.

David Klinghoffer
Art and Kitsch culture take a twist in this essay on the multiculturizing of religion, particularly the Catholic and Jewish faiths. The Church like the public media redefines themselves on the simplicity of process. People do want the complications of understanding that are required of the Orthodox practices however they do not like the current state of practice and that is why so many youth are leaving these less substantial “new age” churches in return of what they think is the true religion. He finally makes the point that the short cuts do not define transcendence.

Carlole Rifkind
The shopping mall is the artificial reality of American reality. Carole Rfikind explores this fantasy environment from its inception up to modern times, and breaks down the falsified towers of this ‘central and safe social suburbia’. She states that “the mall is the TV you walk around in.” This private realm is controllable and not social and is as controlled as an advertisement.

Jonathan Rosen
This essay surface the question of reduplicating tragedy and human suffering, in particular the Holocaust. He states that the Disney like surroundings of carefully laid out museums and happy ending movies cause more harm than good, and do not adequately translate the experience of tragedy. It is simple a symbol that is often misinterpreted by the audience who experiences it. He particularly shows this effect in regards to Malcom X. American culture wants to experience the hero, not know the horrors that only leave twisted minds and hatred.

Armstrong Williams
Through the issuance of a letter Armstrong Williams blames the young “black American” problems on self-esteem. The messages from role models such as Malcom X have incited violence and a struggle for identity among these youths. He feels the responsibility is not simply about change, but knowing why that change is important. He does expect the receiver of the letter to be “changed by his message,” but seeks to recover the sons and daughters for the future. This essay is largely about instilling desire for goals and cultural values among youth.

Private Life

Paul McHugh
This essay discusses the problems that arise as psychiatry tries to place a story on mental illness. Through cases examples and colleague reviews Paul McHugh reveals his fear that today it is far easier to classify problems or repression onto a cultural narrative that blames the surroundings rather than the illness. It is a problem of overgeneralization and mixed metaphors that tend to loose its subject amongst the masses opinion, since that is far easier. This essay oversimplifies the problem, but does bring to head the attempts of most people to look for a blanket answer rather than seek individual enlightenment.

Michael Vincent Miller
This essay explores the diffusion of passion in society, taking the word “fuck” as its metaphor. No longer are the days of Lady Chatterly’s Lover, the word itself has been dumbed down by overuse. It is a collapse of the passionate erotic life an emergence of the desperate pathway to find ourselves as he puts it “out of breath.”

I have to admit, I used to say “She wants to have her cake and eat it too.”

The Question of Modernity Pt.I

2004-11-28T14:33:00.000-08:00

Fredric Jameson
A Singular Modernity
Verso 2002
250 pages

Jameson is an American literary theorist of the Marxian (Jameson’s own use) school. He deliberately situates himself as a postmodernist and allies himself with the post-structuralists. He is using as well the methods of Marxian ideology critique and his work although explicitly about literature extends from literary theory into cultural criticism and thus into the political. He is particularly concerned, in this text and others, with the infiltration and colonization of both life and art by capitalism and the way in which capitalism represents itself as different ‘events’ while continuing the same trajectory and project.

Put simply this book is a deconstruction of modernity, an “ideological analysis, not so much of a concept, as of a word”(13), that Jameson carries out through an analysis of artistic and cultural modernity. In Jameson’s view he fight over modernity is a ‘discursive struggle’ with great political and ideological import (9). Further, modernity itself is a narrative category; “’Modernity’ then, as a trope, is itself a sign of modernity as such”(34). This pattern of recapitulation is noted at multiple places by Jameson and seems to act as a thread that weaves throughout the book as evinced in one of the central ideas of the book; that all attempts to escape the narrative of modernity step back into modernity, indeed all attempts to escape narrative lead back to narrative itself. Recapitulation and attempts to escape it are just alternate descriptions of the typologic/cyclic pattern that Jameson notes, a relationship that takes the various forms for Jameson of,

typologic/cyclic = period/break = continuity/ rupture = identity/difference

For Jameson this very relation is mirrored once again in the modern/postmodern formation so any understanding of modernity thus requires some reckoning with post-modernity as such. This idea is included in Jameson’s four maxims of modernity that read as follows;

Four Maxims of Modernity:
1. One cannot not periodize
2. Modernity is not a concept but rather a narrative category.
3. The one way not to narrate it is via subjectivity (thesis: subjectivity is unrepresentable). Only situations of modernity can be narrated.
4. No ‘theory’ of modernity makes sense today unless it comes to terms with the hypothesis of a postmodern break with the modern.

From these four maxims Jameson proposes three guiding rules meant to perform therapy on the method of framing any discussion of modernity.

Methodological Correctives:
1. Periodization
2. Narrative
3. Depersonalization

With these four maxims and three methodological correctives in hand Jameson proceeds to re-view the modernist movement and those that followed in its wake through the particular framework his ‘therapies’ offer. What Jameson finds in this exploration that “modernity is always a concept of otherness” (211). He finds that modernity is useful for performing archaeology on the past, for producing “alternate historical narratives” (214). On the other hand Jameson believes that “Radical alternatives, systematic transformations, cannot be theorized or even imagined within the conceptual field governed by the word ‘modern’.” (215) All of these points taken together lead Jameson to posit, as the final statement of the book, that “ontologies of the present demand archaeologies of the future, not forecasts of the past.” (215)

Philosophy of Education by Nel Noddings (Elle)

2004-11-27T14:00:00.000-08:00

Thinking Culture

Elle Wolterbeek
November 27, 2004
Book Review #5
HUM501

Philosophy of Education
By Nel Noddings
Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1998.

This book is an introduction to the philosophy of education. As an instructor, I felt that this book was fascinating and highly informative. I read this book while reading Applied Grammatology by Gregory Ulmer and found it helpful in my understanding of the more complex concepts that Ulmer presented. That isn’t to say that this text is not complex, but the organization is more conducive to forming a foundational knowledge of educational philosophy. I highly recommend this text to anyone who is interested in education, as it has been extremely thought-provoking and insightful, as well as informative, for me.

In this text, Noddings covers the philosophy of education historically, moving from Socrates and Plato to Aristotle, Rosseau, Pestalozzi, Herbart, Froebel, and on to Dewey, and on to traditional philosophies which have informed and influenced education over the past centuries. Moving from continental philosophy, epistemology and education, ethics and moral education, social and political philosophy and feminism, philosophy and education, this text covers a great deal of information. Here is a limited discussion of each chapter and the main points that I believe it would be beneficial for others to be aware of (although the people in this class probably already know most of this).

Chapter One: Philosophy of Education Before the Twentieth Century
This chapter addresses such questions as:
• What should be the aims or purposes of education?
• Who should be educated?
• Should education differ according to natural interests and abilities?
• What role should the state play in education?
• Who should be educated?
Looking at Socrates and Plato, particularly in regards to the dialogue from Republic, book I, the author presents their educational philosophies. The Socratic method is regarded as more of a method of learning or inquiry than a method of thinking. Socrates tended to ask the great questions of life, such as, “What is truth? What does it mean to know something?” He did not charge his students and met with them in public places or private homes. They were free to come and go at will and were not forced to answer questions, as his method of inquiry was voluntary. Plato, on the other hand, believed that students should be educated according to their capacities and that not all students should have exactly the same education. This belief was admired by John Dewey, although the remainder of the chapter is focused primarily on the arguments others (such as Jane Roland Martin) have with the philosophies of these two men.

Aristotle, like Plato, believed that people should be educated or trained for their appropriate place in life. He believed that each person developed various skills particular to their tasks and functions and should be trained for the roles they would fill, with their ability and excellences (skills) in mind. Rousseau believed strongly in free will and in different education for boys and girls. The majority of Rosseau’s best ideas were intended for boys, although some have been integrated for both; such as the idea that children are naturally good, that the task of teachers is to preserve and encourage this goodness while facilitating the growth of various competencies required for a successful adult life. Rosseau had a great influence on Pestalozzi, Herbart and Froebel, who are also discussed.

Chapter 2: The Philosophical and Educational Thought of John Dewey
Since Darren discussed John Dewey in class, I have been looking forward to learning about him. I found this chapter particularly interesting, not only because I was excited to learn about Dewey, but also because I found his ideas and thoughts quite informative and interesting!

John Dewey believed that education is synonymous with growth and growth is one of his most common metaphors in his writings (his bibliography is 150 pages long!). Dewey believed that growth (education) is its own end and that it is not always necessary to have an aim for educational growth and experience other than the experience and growth itself. Dewey believed that experiences are educative only if they produce growth-if, that is, students leave the experience more capable or interested in engaging in new experiences. Ultimately, Dewey believed that the aim of education is more education, and that education is both an end and a means.

Chapter 3: Analytic Philosophy
This chapter focuses on Bertrand Russell and his version of analytical philosophy. Russell believed that mind and matter are two distinctly different things and that both material entities (objects) and products of mind (language and mathematical expressions) can be analyzed into their basic elements and relations. Part of the analytic philosopher’s task is to analyze language and mathematics. This depends on the idea that reality is analyzable and that every configuration of language points to something in that reality. The 1950s, ‘60s, and 70’s were primarily devoted to the analysis of educational language and concepts and this ended in many philosophers believing that it is not worthwhile to develop a philosophy of education that is coherent and consistent.

Chapter 4: Continental Philosophy
This chapter addresses the role of Existentialism, Phenomenology, Critical Theory, Hermeneutics, and Postmodernism in education. I am not going to summarize each of these because everyone else in the class already knew all of these terms, however this helped me to put my knowledge in each of these areas into the context of education, which was highly relevant and very much informed my understanding of these concepts, once I had the context.

Chapter 5: Epistemology and Education
Noddings presents this chapter with an introduction to Epistemology and why it is important for educators to understand before discussing the primary questions of educators and the responses of philosophers. These questions are:
• Should we insist that the material we teach be true, and if so, what do we mean by “true”?
• When should we credit a student with knowing-what does it mean to know?
• Should we make all knowledge accessible to all students?

Chapter 6: Philosophy of Social Science and Educational Research
This chapter introduces social science and educational research, providing an overview of the debate in philosophy of science over the nature of knowledge, the quantitative and qualitative research in education, and application of the thinking of these two questions in the case of educational research.

Chapter 7: Ethics and Moral Education
This was one of the most interesting chapters of the book. Noddings presents the views of philosophers on moral and ethical education and then reviews current educational practices with commentary on what she believes Plato, Socrates and Aristotle would have to say about current practices. She also reviews the criticism surrounding ethics and morals in education and the role of pre-enlightenment ethics in our current educational setting. Also covered are Enlightenment Ethics, Utilitarianism, Deweyan Ethics, Moral Education, and Cognative Developmentism.

Chapter 8: Social and Political Philosophy
The problems of social and political philosophy are presented with references to Socrates (primarily, although other philosophers are discussed) and the current role of liberalism-particularly individualistic liberalism-in this chapter. Noddings suggests that the problems presented are primarily problems in Western education. This uses Kant’s notion of the individual and considers the role of ethics in current educational settings, suggesting that the church, community and educational settings are no longer the “appropriate” place for educating and discussing ethical and moral attitudes. Noddings believes that these are the only places for such instruction and discussion and talks about the role of morality and ethics in our society and the role of the individual as a moral and ethical member of society. She presents this debate extremely well, and ties the entire book together here by covering each area again in regards to the philosophy of education and morality and how inseparable these are.

Uses for the text:
This text is extremely useful for me for a variety of reasons. Again, as did Ulmer’s text, this text provided me with a foundation of knowledge on the philosophy of education. It also provided a context for a great deal of other information I’ve read about these philosophers. Before reading these books, I was not particularly interested in philosophy because it seemed rather dense and not particularly applicable for my situation and interests- however, I see now that I was wrong. Philosophy is directly related to education! This book had discussion questions at the end of each chapter which I reviewed and this, as well, ensured my understanding of the reading as well as its uses in my life and in my career. This book provided a variety of wonderful ideas and thoughts, and made me think a great deal about my own education and my beliefs about what a perfect education would be like.

Applied Grammatology: Post(e)-Pedagogy from Jaques Derrida to Joseph Beuys (reviewed by Elle)

2004-11-27T13:59:00.000-08:00

Thinking Culture

Elle Wolterbeek
November 27, 2004
Book Review #4

Applied Grammatology: Post(e)-Pedagogy from Jaques Derrida to Joseph Beuys
By Gregory L. Ulmer
The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1985.

Book Review:
Paul suggested that I read this book to better inform my understanding of composition studies in the current culture, as well as to further understand philosophy in education. I found this book to be both fascinating and dense at once. To help my understanding, I read the book Philosophy of Education by Nel Noddings concurrently, and this helped me a great deal. I used the second text for my fifth book review (also posted) and found this to be a great combination. While the books are quite different, the second text helped to form a foundation of knowledge that was quite applicable to the first text. So, if you are like me, and do not have a foundational knowledge of Derrida and his ideas of education, or the ideas of other philosophers (Dewey, Socrates, Plato, Rousseau, etc.), and you plan to read Applied Grammatology, than I would suggest reading both books, either at the same time (so that you can refer to different sections of each), or to start with Nel Noddings text and then move on to Ulmer’s. With that said, I will break down the primary ideas of Ulmer’s text in parts and chapters below. As I mentioned, the text is quite dense and presents a multitude of ideas and concepts, so I will share what I found to be the most influential and thought provoking.

Part I.
Grammatology is defined, in this text, as a new organization of cultural studies. This text looks at grammatology as a new mode of writing, one that could bring the language and literature disciplines into a more responsive relationship with the current era of communication technology. Ulmer recognizes three theories/phases of writing:
• History of writing
• Theory of writing
• Application of both history and theory of writing (this would be considered grammatology).
Grammatology hopes to provide a theory for a mode of research that goes beyond the norm, which currently includes only the history of writing. During the 18th century (modernist) period it was realized that the science of writing occurred in literature, which caused theorists, philosophers, and educators alike to reconsider the manner in which writing was taught and considered. The metaphysical tradition is the primary obstacle of grammatology and Western metaphysics/thought leads to an instrumental and technist view of writing.

At this time, Derrida began to practice a mode of writing which is no longer subordinated to speech or thought- a writing no longer functioning as a representation of speech, in which the hierarchy of thought, speech and writing is collapsed. The evolution of writing is covered, with a discussion of the development and perfection of the alphabet by the Greeks, and in its earliest stages of development, writing was associated with drawing and the visual arts in general, never having more than a loose connection with speaking until phoneticization transformed it into a representation of the spoken word. (Isn’t that fascinating?!!)

The above covers the Grammatology section which introduces the reader to the history, evolution and development of Writing and the role which Grammatology plays and what it is. The continuation of this section (Part I) reviews writing as practiced by Derrida, meaning that it is more than simply deconstruction (which would be composition) and is also a mode of analysis. Derrida’s exploration of nondiscursive levels of images, puns, models and homophones is presented as an alternative mode of composition and is intended to be applicable to academic works, which creates invention. This invention differs from the typical analysis or criticism and relies heavily on images, which relates to current Western thought in that now (following Derrida’s theory of writing) thought is investigated at two levels, words and things. And so, grammatology is “not confined to books and articles, but is addressed more comprehensively to the needs of multichanneled performance- in the classroom and in video and film as well”, which Ulmer goes on to suggest may actually mean that when Derrida discusses Writing, he is actually discussing Scripting.

Part II.
In this section, Derrida is further summarized and discussed in his relation to pedagogy and the implications of his ideas. Jacques Lacan, Joseph Beuys, and Sergei Eisenstein are also discussed and used as models of the application of grammatology in the classroom. Their role in historical grammatology (the scientific study of the history of writing) is also reviewed, but introduced as incomplete. The main idea of this section is that grammatology requires the introduction of the subject into the teaching, and each teacher must put their own stamp of authenticity on the curriculum, which would depend on the instructor/teacher’s areas of knowledge and expertise. “We must begin wherever we are and the thought of the trace which cannot take the scent into account, has already taught us that it was impossible to justify a point of departure absolutely. Wherever we are: in a text where we already believe ourselves to be” (162).

This section of the book is also focused on putting speech back in its place while looking at the current scene of writing, and identifying the pedagogical principles associated with applied grammatology, particularly in regards to the current state of electronic media-which is primarily considered as the television. Ulmer addresses Derrida’s essay on education in Politiques, further examining Derrida’s direct statements on education, in particular in regards to the idea that “deconstruction has always had a bearing in principle on the apparatus and the function of teaching in general.” Derrida believed that while deconstruction had a role in education, limiting education to deconstruction made the teacher’s job particularly easy and did not encourage the building of knowledge in the classroom. He also felt that it did not allow for the privacy of his teaching practice. Actually, I don’t really understand what Derrida is saying in this section and I did try to further my understanding of his idea of publicly vs. privacy in teaching practice, but I was not able to further my understanding. So I just included this for those of you who know everything about Derrida. I do, however, understand the relation this has to Derrida’s idea of the institution as a political body, and his idea that by deconstructing the institution (as a political body), we introduce heterogeneous forces that both deform and transform it, with the risk that such forces may be unreceivable.

The most interesting idea in this section of the book was, to me, the discussion of the debate between C.P. Snow and F.R. Leavis, which involved the distinction between knowing “the truth (discovered dialectically) and presenting this truth, once known, in a way that would convince or persuade others (rhetorically)” (160). This section discusses the break between philosophy and literature and the consequences of this rupture which broke into two styles- plain/scientific, and rhetorical/literary. Another interesting discussion-and the one that was most relevant to my own experiences and career-is the section addressing the challenge of presenting-in teaching-the “essentials of the humanities to a non-specialized and untrained public in a way that involves “real knowledge,” rather than mere spectacle of the same.”

Ulmer completes the text by reviewing Post(e)-Pedagogy in Seminar (looking at Jacques Lacan), Performance (using Joseph Beuys as an example), and Film (reviewing Sergei Eisenstein). Ultimately, Ulmer makes the argument that Derrida’s texts already reflect “an internalization of the electronic media.(303)” Ulmer believes that Derrida has made a deliberate choice to accept the new challenges, insights and the paradigm that electronic media presents in current teaching and pedagogy, particularly in Derrida’s understanding and negotiation of the transition between the print and media eras.

How I can use this text:
Overall, I am inclined to say that I need to read the book again before I can actively use the knowledge I gained from this book. At the very least, I need to read my pages and pages of notes from the text. I do think that I have a much clearer understanding of pedagogy in an electronic era, and I have a greater understanding of the philosophy of education, which is something I am lacking. I found quite a few interesting areas in the text that I would like to learn about further, particularly in regards to the section on Seminar and the discussion of Lacan, who sounds quite interesting. I also felt that the first part was of particular interest for me as it presented different views of writing and the use of deconstruction. At the very least, this text has provided an opportunity for me to reconsider my current teaching practices and pedagogy and my use of the electronic media in my teaching.

Orientalism - Edward Said (Sana)

2004-11-27T13:06:00.000-08:00

Sana Haque

Text: Orientalism

Author: Edward Said

Publisher: New York: Pantheon, 1978. 368 pp.

Author:
With the publication of this book, Edward Said had an impact on fields ranging from literary studies to political science to postcolonial studies. Said, who died in 2003, was a Palestinian-American professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University. In his later life, he became a controversial figure for expressing radical political views on the Israel-Palestine conflict. He wrote Orientalism while at the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford University in the 1970s.

Text:
Orientalism examines the Western academic field of "Oriental Studies" in terms of how its discourses have shaped and structured a fictionalized and exoticized "Orient" that serves as the subaltern Other for the West. It states that Orientalist academic discourse served political and imperialist ends, despite its claims to "objective" neutrality. It specifically examines British, French, and American constructions of the Middle East and North Africa from the 18th century to the present, but is applicable to discourses on other parts of the Orient (China, India, etc.) as well. In Said's words, Orientalism is the Western "corporate institution for dealing with the Orient -- dealing with it by making statements about it, authoring views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short... a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient" (Orientalism, 1978: 3).

Key Words/Terms:

Orientalism - A set of discursive scholarly and literary practices with political motivations that create an image of the mysterious, feminine "Orient" as the Other to the rational, articulate, masculine West.

The Orient - The "Orient" is less an actual geographical or cultural territory than a fictional construction of the Western world's subaltern mirror image, propagated by means of representations in various forms of media.

Knowledge as power - A concept from Foucault, implying that the production of bodies of knowledge acts as a site for power in its impact upon the world.

The "Other" - The oppositional image of the "foreign", i.e. the representation of
alterity that negatively defines an individual or culture's sense of "Self" by contrast.

Affiliated Discourses & Historical/Cultural Context:
Some of Said's influences in this work include Foucault, Gramsci, and the French socialist author Anwar Abdel-Malek. He particularly uses Foucault's ideas about knowledge as a site for the production of power. Said writes from the starting point of the tradition of literary studies and criticism, but with an interdisciplinary perspective that covers representation in fields such as history, anthropology, and visual art. He writes with a stated personal interest in the issues at hand, as he identifies himself as occupying the dual identities of both an "Oriental" and a scholar within Western academia. The book is credited as a major influence on the burgeoning field of postcolonial studies that was prompted by the emergence of newly independent Third World countries in the mid-twentieth century.

Applications/Thoughts:
Said's critique has a continuing applicability to the contemporary political and cultural scene, i.e. Western attitudes towards Arabs and the Middle East (or the Third World/Global South in general) as they show up in distorted media biases and pop culture depictions, political commentary based on stereotyping, paternalistic economic and "development" policies, and so on. The level of controversy that surrounded Said's political activism and the extent to which this was used to discredit him as a scholar is interesting as it relates to the questions he raises in the introduction to this book about the viability and truthfulness of academic "objectivity".

Spivak, Death of a Discipline (Dnyanada)

2004-11-22T16:34:00.000-08:00

Death Of a discipline

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Columbia University Press, 2003.

These are three lectures delivered by Gayatri Spivak in the University of California, Irvine under the auspices of the Critical Theory Institute. Spivak’s concerns are three fold;

∑ Disciplinary
∑ Methodological
∑ Linguistic-axiological

The three essays deal with the issues relating to the problematic and politics of the disciplines making them inefficient to understand and compare the cross- cultural realities. She argues that the disciplines such as Comparative Literature founded on inter-European hospitality, as area studies had been spawned by interregional vigilance. Area Studies departments in the US Universities were federally funded by the title VI and title VIII grants which were distributed in the wake of the cold war.

As the disciplines themselves get situated within the larger political framework, the possibilities of the “knowledge production” get punctuated by the concerns of that politics. Spivak argues not for the politics of hostility but rather towards a politics of friendship that has potentials to shape the knowledge production within the context of these disciplines.

The three lectures delivered by Spivakk are titled

1. Crossing Borders
2. Collectivities
3. Planetarity

Spivak argues that the instruction of axiology is disappearing in the Universities and at times it gets taught in an implicit way. For example the marked erasure of any Marxist critique of capitalism from the syllabi of any business school.

In the first lecture, Spivak sets the stage for the argument demonstrating how the disciplines frame the discourse. She argues that, “ In order to reclaim the role of teaching literature as training the imagination- the great inbuilt instrument of othering-, we may, if we work as hard as old fashioned Comp. Lit. is known to be capable of doing, come close to the irreducible work of translation, not from language to language but from body to ethical semiosis, that incessant shuttle that is a ‘life’.”

Spivak pursues this argument as she claims that the “Comparative literature and Area studies can work together in the fostering not only national literatures of the global south but also of the writings of countless indigenous languages in the world that were programmed to vanish when the maps were made.”

By looking at the languages and the politics of naming and erasure of those languages Spivak tries to contextualize the politics of globalization. The other two essays deal with the comprehension of the collectivities in the post-structuralist context. Is it possible to understand communities or we have to develop a more comprehensive notion of planetarity that can offer critical insights into the formations of transnational linkages in the context of globalization.

I found this text extremely relevant in order to frame the context of postcolonial understanding of the Bollywood films. As the production and consumption of Bollywood software involves global and virtual locales.

Spivak’s essays inspire to frame the lens to look at the possibility of politics of friendship between film studies and area studies.

Elizabeth Dauphinee "Reflections on a past that is always present" - Maria Stoianova

2004-11-22T15:23:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Dauphinée. Reflections on a Past that is Always Present. (Doctoral Dissertation: York University, Toronto, 2004).

This dissertation, in the words of the author, is an effort at reflection, at a conversation, at humbling. The main character is a Serbian man by the name of Stojan Sokolovic; the place: Bosnia and the time: the years after 1992. Elizabeth reflects on the (im)possibility of representation, on the injustice inherent in any effort of containing the “other” within a familiar scheme of knowing. Her academic research in Bosnia uncovers for her not only the academic violence inherent in field work, that is, a violence sustaining above all else the discipline of political science, but also the very real perpetuation and dissemination by scholars of “appropriate” forms of discrimination, differentiation, and exclusion. She suggests that the desire to know ourselves is directly dependent on the ability of others to know us, on their unspoken willingness to recognize our claims to subjectivity and on their hospitality (though often ignored) toward a humanity that is homeless in its origins.

Elizabeth questions the authority of expert knowledge and uncovers the very practices by which it is acquired in field research: the mind-numbing interviews, the theoretical commitments, the tourist gaze that consumes, changes and normalizes the object of study; the crippled attempts to speak a foreign language, the ethics board reviewers’ stringent and dehumanizing requirements and the disciplining practices guiding the translation of first-hand “expertise” into articles, books, tenure. In order that one is positioned within the discipline of International Relations, she maintains, one has to find a place where to fit and align oneself within the scientific commitments of research. The very possibility of presenting the truth delivered from the mouth of the field researcher is exposed for its arbitrariness, its momentary and fluctuating nature, and in its instability. She juxtaposes imagining and seeing in attempts at reconstructing and organizing experiences into an orderly story, “because darkness is something Other” (12).

Academic writing is revealed as being overly committed to achieving the potential for knowledge, that is, scientific knowledge: “Knowledge manifests itself as a grasping – a groping – of perception, comprehension, repetition, a subsuming of the Other into a framework of intelligibility that orders alterity into a category of taxonomy” (29). Elizabeth’s ‘methodology’ is derived from a Levinasian responsibility to alterity she posits as ethically prior to any ontological commitment or certitude. For her, “Impressions are knowledge . . . the taste left in the mouth from a half-remembered conversation is knowledge . . . my grief and the grief that others have allowed me to see is knowledge . . . love and the ability to love is knowledge” (16). The idea of thinking past opens boundaries and does away with the concept of boundaries altogether, with the ontological certitude that is inherent in their protection, construction and imposition. The work of a field researcher, in order that it does not commit injustice towards its subjects, must understand itself as originating within economies of violence. That is, the researcher studying a Serbian man guilty of murder, too, is “an injurious one, a perpetrator” (14) who, nevertheless, cannot keep silent for silence is also a decision; it is complicity that allows for the perpetuation of physical, emotional and discursive violence.
Elizabeth turns to an ethics that is beyond the discipline of International Relations, an ethics that is drunk with a love grown sour from too much analysis, from too much positioning, from too many accusations. “That is a love that is not bankrupt of justice . . . It is a love that contemplates the possibility of forgiveness” (25). In an attempt to position herself as a subject ethically responsible to its others, Elizabeth calls for a responsibility to the guilty, to the murderer, to the monster who is also locked within a violence that knows him only as guilty, a murderer, a monster. “I am not burdened by my love of the innocent . . . The burden lay in the love of the guilty, in the love for the guilty. . . And this binds me in measure beyond measurement, because of my love, because of my lack of it, and because grief, like violence, is not a think that can be washed from the skin like salt” (26). Her search is not for an external generalizability of conclusions for spanning the central questions that define the discipline of International Relations lies the responsibility to see beyond ethnic conflict and the boundaries of the state, that is, beyond natural categories of opposition between a Self and an-Other, between the citizen and the foreigner, between the victim and the perpetrator. “I am responsible to speak to him, not of him, not about him, not for him, I am responsible not to silence him, but to regard him with silence – to stand in silence for the suffering he has caused and for the suffering caused still. I am obligated to silence before the perpetrator in the space that awaits justice. Silence accuses without formulating a narrative on the violence which struggles always to justify what is not justifiable – which is to say, itself” (199).

Importantly, the ‘other’ is a break in the cohesion of the world, a call to ethics at the border crossing. Elizabeth deconstructs the fluid, stable and immobile categories defining the main debates within International Relations, debates that understand identity to be based on past conceptions of itself only so that it can situate itself within present anti-historical commitments and political agenda. For her, deconstruction is useful precisely because “its very character is to avoid totalizing, exclusionary goals” (44) legitimizing the advancement of political goals. Deconstruction makes it impossible to decide who the victim and who the victimizer is, the relationship cannot be established a priori, it exists only in the moment of encounter.

Elizabeth draws an interesting analogy between fieldwork and tourism, uncovering a parallel between the prying gaze of the former into what are perceived as exotic and authentic worlds, and the latter’s claim to scientific authenticity and authority by virtue of having been there. That is, having the academic credentials to interview, the money to purchase a plane ticket and the right passport to enter the war zone does not change the fact that the academic as a witness reminds of the tourist, the consumer. BUT, the ‘other’ also has the force to resists so that witnessing goes hand in hand with being witnessed. The academic gaze is also the gaze of the institution: “the technology of the gaze allows for both the representation and the disciplining of the object of study, which no longer had anywhere to go to get out from under it” (63). Thus, the scholar as an expert is called to make sense of people, a place, a custom, a culture by containing them within an ontological straightjacket. The academic as a tourist understands the native always from the lens of Western engagement, through guidebooks, maps, agents and translation and thus, he essentializes, totalizes, consumes and represents the native as a spectacle, a thing. Additionally, the claim of having been there allows for the production of knowledge based on some sort of authoritative actual physical engagement and partaking with the Other. The tourist gaze is professionalized by academics; it is “a detached and superficial process” inventing places to suit its purpose and its research agenda. Adventure tourism, once turned into academic fieldwork, soon yields itself to being “war tourism,” a spectacle, “a quest for the extraordinary – for the extraordinarily exterior” (81).

Casting a critical eye on accepted practices of doing field research, Dauphinée suggests that any level of ethical sensitivity and responsibility necessarily leads to estrangement but that, precisely of this estrangement, the researcher is obliged to re-examine her role as an unproblematized middleman between theory and the real world. The self is always inherent and present between the lines of writing and mainstream scholarly research is disillusioned in thinking itself immune to subjectivity, partiality and disorder. “Meaning is fundamentally betrayed by the opacity, the undecidability, and the inscrutability of fixing meaning in time, space, and temperament” (102). Order, as suggested also by Zygmunt Bauman, is a myth. The researcher and the subject are engaged in a relationship of power precisely because the former has the ability to decide what shall be written and what will count as a legitimate narrative. Because only certain stories are chosen and only certain testimonies are represented, “things are vested with significance through the identification of their relationship with other things, events, people and places” (93).

Importantly, representation is bound in trust – and in its lack (118). Trusting that representations are true ignores the fact that they are, indeed, exchangeable for the realities which they claim to uncover. With this in mind, it is clear that a recognition and care for the pain of others obliges the researcher to understand justice outside the imperative of the written law. Justice is, on the other hand, reliant on the impossibility of making a decision, “undecidability points to the impossibility of decision without ordeal – without suffering – without that any number of possibilities may be chosen and may injure, or may be ignored and injure worse. . . . The moment of decision becomes a madness that has no anchoring rationality . . . and justice is always ‘to come’” (129-30). This is not to suggest that justice and representation are impossible, but that it is important to realize that there is love in violence and pain in happiness and that there is no one master narrative, that language is contingent and always oppressive but that, additionally, the choice to break the silence is a responsibility inherent in the human condition and in interacting with Others. Justice requires action and the pain of others, precisely because it weighs on us; it requires that theory recognize it as suffering clothed in human tears, sweat and blood. It is not enough for the researcher to recognize that “I am implicated in the power and power relations simply in the act of writing, and of representing” – it is imperative that one writes with whit self-accusation in mind, and write responsibly and well, though often from the politically bankrupt and ethically empty space that is sometimes the academic one.

Play Review (Rachel)

2004-11-15T15:59:00.000-08:00

Rachel Moe

The title of the play, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, is about as difficult to say as it is to deconstruct. The infinite array of signifiers in this post-structuralist play lend themselves to various interpretations, one interpretation not favored over another. Although the play occurs during the French Revolution, parallels can be made between the play and various past and present events. For example, the cultural revolution of the 1960’s parallels the madness of the characters and the search for “reality”. The criticism of the bourgeois made by the inmates is as applicable today as during the French Revolution. Currently, the political climate in the U.S. is a mixture of distinguishing between classes, name-calling, and exertions of power.

A variety of post-structuralist themes can be seen throughout the play, some of which include power, politics, simulation and sexual objectification. Power is a main theme in the play and is exhibited through how the social orders are arranged. Socially constructed notions of power are brought into question through the interesting power arrangements. The bourgeois think they have power over the lower class and come to watch the entertaining antics of the inmates. The Marquis de Sade and the inmates have power over the bourgeois using the play to direct criticisms at them. Marat is powerful in some senses but powerless in others. He has intellectual power that he uses to try to affect changes in society, although his skin disease makes him physically powerless, as he has to remain in his bathtub. The guards have authority and exert it throughout the play, beating the inmates with clubs and punishing those who get out of hand. It is interesting because traditionally the arrangement of an asylum would give the inmates a sense of “how” they should behave and what is appropriate behavior for madmen. The arrangement of this particular asylum does the opposite, and allows the inmates to act out the behaviors of their assigned characters. They are given power to “simulate” the behavior of their characters, as dictated by the Marquis de Sade. The sexually charged “orgy” at the end of the play breaks through the socially constructed views of power and parallels the sexual revolution of the 1960’s. Everyone is sexually objectified; even the bourgeois cannot escape it.

For me, the most intriguing part of this experience is our role as the “audience.” The actor’s interactions with us allow us to become a part of the madness and not just covert observers. We are pulled into this simulation of the French Revolution created by a man in an asylum (Marquis de Sade) who projects his views of the world through insane people who get his message across to those who think they are in power (the bourgeois). You may think you have it all figured out, yet every turn taken in this play leads you in a completely different direction in your thoughts. The beauty of this post-structuralist drama is that you do not know what is real, and you try to make sense out of a senseless world through the analysis of crazy people.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and Postmodernism & Pedagogy (Elle)

2004-11-11T18:37:00.000-08:00

Thinking Culture

Elle Wolterbeek
Book & Articles
Submission #3

Articles: Postmodernism, pedagogy, and philosophy of education by Clive Beck, President of the Postmodern Educational Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1994.

Notes of Critical Literacy Philosophy and Pedagogical Practice, by Ann Woodlief and Marcel Cornis-Pope, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2002. Also published as a chapter in Intertexts: Reading from a Writer’s Perspective, 2002.

Freire, Paolo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed New York: Seabury, 1974. Translated from the original Portuguese (1968) by Myra Bergman Ramos.

I found these articles and the book the most stimulating, thought-provoking reading I have done since I began my graduate school career. As I sort of fell into teaching, I really never had the educational theory in school that many others have, so I always wonder if my ideas about teaching and education make any sense, if they work, etc. These readings gave me a great deal to think about as well as more confidence that although I do not have the background in education that I wish I might, other people are looking at education through the same lens as I am- particularly in regards to composition studies, which is where my interests lie. This combination of reading worked particularly well together as the authors shared many opinions and ideas but also differed in their styles of presentation and the subsequent discussions. I really enjoyed these readings and highly suggest them to anyone else who is interested in educational theory- particularly Liberatory Theory, which is a focus of Freire but is discussed in the two articles as well.

Freire suggests that every person can look critically at his world throughout a process of dialogue and can gradually come to understand his personal and social reality, think about it, and take action. Through this process, an oppressed person is transformed and no longer responding to social forces. Education is an either/or; Either the conditioning of the younger generation to accept things as they are, or the practice of freedom which prepares the younger generation to deal critically and creatively with their worlds and realities. These ideas, among others, form the basis for Freire’s suggestion that literacy can be-and is-an agent of social change. The main problem, according to some of the criticism I read, is that the book and Freire’s ideas are revolutionary and political and go against many of the prevailing American beliefs. These American beliefs would include ideas such as “banking education”, that the teacher teaches and students are taught (as opposed to the idea that both the teacher and the student bring something different and equally worthwhile to the classroom and that knowledge should be shared, both sides/ideas given equal respect), the idea that the teacher knows everything and that the students know nothing, the idea that only what the teacher teaches is correct, that the teacher chooses what to teach and the students adapt, that the students are only the objects while the teacher is the subject of the learning process, etc.

Everyone in this class, given that we read Foucault and discussed the process of naming, might be interested to know that Freire is also interested in the process of naming and thinks that the action of naming directs social action. “Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words… To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. Men are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection” (60-61). This relates to Freire’s ideas about critical reflection, which should constantly force each human being to assess and reassess their situation, actions, and positions.

In any case, this was all extremely relevant to me because I am very focused in writing for social conscience. Freire is highly interested in the personal narrative which is the focus of my ENG101 courses and because I believe that only through expressing ourselves and sharing our knowledge can we further our collective understanding, I was really excited by this book. I learned about Freire through the articles I read about postmodernism and pedagogy (discussed below), so it was great to have started with the articles because they gave me an understanding and foundation for some of the ideas Freire presented.

Beck defined postmodernism as “not just a philosophical movement: it is also, for example, in architecture, the graphic arts, dance, music, literature, and literacy theory.” I am just sharing this because I have found so many different definitions for postmodernism and so I like to write them down and compare how many different definitions exist for this…

Here are the main points of the article that I found to be of particular interest:
-Postmodernist insights require a shift in our conception of inquiry. We should consider knowledge to be constantly creating and recreating and, given purpose and context, recognize that often knowledge is in part autobiographical as it reflects or personal narrative or our particular site in the world.
-We should question expertise. In particular fields, some people do know more than others; but the difference, insofar as it exists, is usually one of degree. “Expert knowledge” can not always be applied, it must be modified between cases.
-Language affects our understandings and creates a constant play of interpretation.
-We must recognize that “there is no center” and no traditional central tradition of scholarship (ie. Eurocentric, middle-class, predominately male) we should consider Native American, Afro-American, Feminist, etc., as more than colonies.
-gender, class and ethnicity bias does not describe everything that an individual or group does.
-Individual scholarship should be recognized more seriously as each individual is constantly questioning, observing, theorizing, and assessing their lives and situations.
-Learning should foster cultural-political understanding while supporting students’ continued perception of the world as value-neutral, unproblematic, and unchangeable.
-Schools must encourage and assist students to engage in general theorizing about reality and life; postmodernist emphasis on concrete, local concerns is important and should be applied in education.
-Students of education should be helped to see that knowledge is value dependent, culture dependent, and changeable- that we are not searching for a fixed, universal philosophy of life and education.

The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image (Elle)

2004-11-11T18:35:00.000-08:00

Thinking Culture

Elle Wolterbeek
Text #1, 1st Half
September 20, 2004

Text: The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image

Author: Leonard Shalain

Publisher: Viking Penguin, Penguin Putnam Inc. 1998

Major Ideas: Shlain’s thesis is that “Writing of any kind, but especially in its alphabetic form, diminishes feminine values and with them, women’s power in culture”. Shlain goes on to suggest that characteristics of a feminine outlook would include holistic, simultaneous, synthetic and concrete views of the world while masculine characteristics would include linear, sequential, reductionist and abstract. He does, of course, recognize that both men and women have both sets of these characteristics, but that feminine characteristics are more prevalent in women, etc. Shlain goes on to suggest that while literacy created major changes and benefits in society, it also had negative effects. He reviews the Hunter/Gatherer societies looking at the value men and women were given for their roles (pretty equal) and moves into a discussion of right brain/left brain to give the reader understanding of the differences and how the brain works together. From here, Shlain explains the correlation between Males & Death, and Female & Life, and how Greek mythology held women in high esteem. Comparing the Greek mythology, mythology in Mesopotamia and among other primitive civilizations, he concludes that with the creation of a monotheistic faith and Western civilization, Goddesses and the role of women faced certain demise. Shlian reviews this demise and relates how the alphabet and the role of literacy promoted masculine ideals and demoted any suggestion of power, sexuality and women. In addition, the idea that the value of the image has decreased with the growing value of the word is fascinating.

Application Value: As I am only halfway through the book, I am not necessarily sure that I am able to apply the ideas yet however the discussion of women and their role of equal and demotion throughout history-I am not yet convinced that the demotion directly correlates with literacy-is fascinating. I am interested in women, gender roles and society and so this fits in well with my interests. Also because the text comments a great deal on history, philosophy and religion I am able to more clearly understand the roles of women during these times and how gender roles have changed throughout history. I’ve been discussing ideas from the book quite a bit so I think that must have some application value- it is definitely promoting me to think about my beliefs, ideas and understanding. As well, the correlation between image and word is fascinating and may be useful later in my studies. Unfortunately I am not yet sure of a direct application of my reading but clearly it will be useful in my future studies.

2nd Half:

Shlain continues to make his case that the alphabet has, in fact, been a detriment to women. Looking at Israelite culture, politics, Greek gods and goddesses, and the evolution of Indian culture moving from Mohenjo-Daro to the ritual of Sati (a widow being expected to take her place on her husbands’ funeral pyre with his corpse). Shlain also addresses time periods, religions and ideas such as Chinese history, Jesus, Buddhism, slavery, Christianity and philosophy (particularly existentialism) in regards to the role that introducing the written word and the subsequent results for women, which were often degrading and demoralizing.

The book concludes that we are moving back into a time of compromise between the right and left brains. Shlain suggests that with the advent of computer (focused on images), television and the great use of images within current culture, the divisions between men and women are closing and that we will, again, see the benefits of a goddess. He does not, of course, mean this literally (that people will start worshiping goddesses again). What he is saying is that we are moving back towards right brained thinking which will have profound changes in personality, including a focus on compassion, with holistic, simultaneous, synthetic and concrete worldviews making a return in the global society.

Shlain states (p.431), “I have tended to characterize the right-hemispheric attributes as purely positive. But it is no less true that relying on them without the ordering balance which is the forte of the left hemisphere leads to a different kind of disarray and can result in mindless anarchy and sensuous excess. Emphasis on one hemispheric mode at the expense of the other is noxious. The human community should strive for a state of complementarity and harmony.”

Overall, I think this book is excellent because it covers such a vast amount of information about historical periods, including discussions of literature, image, culture, and philosophy. The thesis that Shlain presents, that the alphabet and written word have hurt women, is not proven, but I felt his argument is strong. Everything that benefits us also has consequences, and I am not sure if this has been considered before. I even found, in the conclusion, a section that relates to my own research. Shlain suggests that computers are furthering the image (over the written word) which promotes (in his opinion) women and the ideals of the right-brain. This is interesting in light of my interests which focus on college women and their success and persistence in computer science programs which is typically quite low. If the computer is promulgating the image, right-brained ideals and equality between the two hemispheres of the brains, why aren’t women drawn to computers naturally?

In any case, overall I thought the book was really interesting. As I mentioned in class, I ordered a bunch of books that sounded interesting but had no central theme, but even in this book I was able to find information that is applicable to my thesis, so I see this as a good choice. I also think this book was beneficial because I have a hard time choosing one area to be interested in and this book covered so much information that I feel I’ve learned quite a bit from it. I’ve been discussing different things I read in some of the classes I teach, with coworkers, and have been boring anyone else who will listen with different ideas that came from the book.

A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue, by Wendy Shalit. (Elle)

2004-11-11T18:34:00.000-08:00

Thinking Culture

Book Review #2
Elle Wolterbeek
ewolterb@uat.edu
October 11, 2004

The book I read is A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue, published by Simon and Schuster in 1999, written by Wendy Shalit. Shalit proposes that the major problems in our society stem from the sexual revolution and the change that has resulted from a healthy, socially acceptable point of modesty to sexual experience and the embarrassment now predominant in women who have little sexual experience- a change which she proposes happened as a result of the “gender equality” that now exists in our society.

Shalit argues against a culture which she views as riding “girls of their romantic hopes and natural embarrassments” and suggests that our society was more respectful of women when it was the norm to wait until marriage to become sexually active. Shalit has three sections of the book, with the middle section being the most scholarly and, in my opinion, backed by any evidence.

One of Shalit’s main points is the role of pornography in our society and it’s “normalization” which, Shalit suggests, gives society an abnormal view of the female body and that, in turn, even strippers have become “a kind of cultural wallpaper, and are present to such an extent that they are no longer shocking”. With this review of pornography and the historical changes leading from modesty to a more modern time of immodesty Shalit also reviews the role of co-ed dormitories and how this, as well, objectifies women.

While the book is not anti-male, it does openly embrace patriarchy as something that was inherently good for women (regardless of their stance on modesty). Shalit provides evidence such as higher rates against violence towards women over the past thirty years and continues by suggesting that women’s clothing objectifies women, “inviting” the objectification which greatly detracts from value of modesty which, in her opinion, was protecting women through a patriarchal society. Shalit also suggests that as men no longer have to marry a girl to sleep with her, a greater hostility towards the institution of marriage exists now more prominently than ever before in the past.

The most interesting question Shalit asks is “Why is sexual modesty so threatening to some that they can only respond to it with charges of abuse or delusion?” She never answered her question. While Shalit has interesting research and it is, in my opinion, well presented, the book lacked any response to the actual question she posed in her introduction- the question, she said, that made her write the book to begin with. Her commentary, while interesting and insightful at times, also seems (again, this is just my opinion) to be rather one sided. She states clearly that she believes women should wait until marriage to have sex and that this is what she is doing, and while that is fine and interesting, I would like to know more about the research she has done that proves that a return to modesty would actually improve our society for women, which is her main claim. She does not discuss why it is more acceptable in our society for a girl to have lost her virginity than to be waiting for marriage, which is what her opening questions suggest. Shalit does believe that a return to modesty might place women on equal footing with men, and while she has interesting research that builds a unique case based on the cultural history of sexual modesty for women and if this virtue would or would not be beneficial for women in today’s world, she does not answer her original question which was why I chose to read the book to begin with.

Using the book in my research:
Hmmm. I am not so sure that I will be able to use much of this reading in my thesis although my thesis does deal with women in the 18-24-year range. I mostly just read the book because I felt that Shalit’s original question was valid and interesting, and something that I wondered about in high school myself. I did learn quite a bit in regards to the history of modesty and have a more clear idea about how women have permitted-if not furthered-the objectivity of their gender. All reading is interesting, but if you don’t think the history of modesty and sexuality (particularly over the last 40 years) is interesting, than I would not recommend this book. I started Modernity and Self-Identity by Anthony Giddens last week also (I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to present, but I finished Shalit’s book first, so I am sharing that one) and I think that overall the members of this class would be more interested in that book. So far I am really enjoying it and I think Giddens provided the best definition of modernity that I have read so far… So if you needed help understanding precisely what modernity is, you might want to look at this book. He also has some great discussion on self-identity, social inequalities and intimacy, so this book does sort of relate to Shalits’. So far if I were going to suggest one of the two, I would say Giddens’, although Shalit wasn’t so bad. I will post a review of Modernity and Self-Identity in a few days as well, just in case anyone was interested in that.

Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form (Rachel)

2004-11-08T21:31:00.000-08:00

Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form
Rachel Moe
1974, 146 pgs.

Television: Technology and Cultural Form is a comparative analysis that investigates various aspects of British and American broadcasting. Williams examines the role of communication technology in modern culture. He strongly opposes the technological determinist school of thought and argues against it throughout his book. Williams believes that texts (television, novels, etc.) contribute to our social construction of reality. Media are part of historical material processes not just economic and political forces, thus most likely changing over time. Williams believes that political and economic goals guided the development of broadcast technology. For example, television was created with certain military, administrative and commercial intentions that interacted with scientific intentions. During a transitional stage in the invention of television, the commercial intentions came to dominate the other intentions.

He argues that we are used to viewing broadcasting as a major social institution, which seems to have been predestined by technology. “This predestination, however, when closely examined, proves to be no more than a set of particular social decisions, in particular circumstances, which were then so widely if imperfectly ratified it is now difficult to see them as decisions rather than as (retrospectively) inevitable results.”

In the comparative analysis of the British and American programs, Williams examines the “flow” of unrelated texts such as advertisements, programs, and promotional material. This flow of information creates the overall experience of watching TV. He believes that cultural differences are demonstrated through the flow broadcasters choose. Concerning the various combinations of flow, he states that, “In all these ways and in their essential combination, this is the flow of meanings and values of a specific culture.”

Since Williams believes that intention is involved in the creation of communication technologies, he offers suggestions for improving the future of broadcasting. He thinks we should seek equal access to media production to allow for a more democratic culture in which people have the opportunity to discuss issues, formulate ideas and creatively envision their lives. He projects that the future technologies ranging from “general television through commercial advertising to centralised information and data-processing systems is now or is becoming available and can be used to affect, to alter, and in some cases to control our whole social process.” If we do not use these technologies to shape the future into a participatory democracy, then they will become tools of a few para-national corporations that will limit choices to their programming decisions.

After reading Marshall McLuhan’s technological determinist view in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, I thought it would be interesting to study William’s opposing view. For me, William’s theory that we choose the direction of a new communications technology is more realistic than McLuhan’s theory of media as psychic extensions of man. However, this “choice” for which Williams discusses is not as simple as he describes. When a communications technology is at the point where its future uses are developed, the public does not usually have a voice in the process. Furthermore, technological developments can occur so quickly that it may be difficult to see this turning point. William’s optimistic ideas about a democratic culture where people have equal access to media production is almost obsolete in this day and age. It is interesting to look back at the progression of communication technologies and find where choices were made that led us to our current commercially driven media system. William’s sense of optimism is contagious, yet I have a hard time believing that the people can take back the media from the clutches of corporations.

Posthuman

2004-11-03T19:26:00.000-08:00

Among other elements, postmodernism is about enabling technologies; it may even be a technology itself. From artificial life to quantum physics to cognitive psychology, psoptmodernism is grounded within the construct of a computational universe. Everything computes; everything is code. And as N. Katherine Hayles argues in How We Became Posthuman, the metaphor is undermining "human being," leaving the Enlightenment behind for silicon of the posthuman

A little background. Hayles spent much of the 1990s tracing the history, philosophy, and literary permutations of cybernetics, an interdisciplinary science of control and communication first articulated by Norbert Wiener. Her How We Became Posthuman is the result of a Foucault form of her archeology. Her concern: "Increasingly the question is not whether we will become posthuman, for posthumanity is already here. Rather, the question is what kind of posthumans we will be."

One of the central threads in Hayles' text is how information lost its body -- that is, how information came to be seen as an abstract, almost transcendental stuff that could "circulate unchanged among different material substrates." Once we begin to believe that information is more essential than material forms, we vacate the old cosmos defined by presence and absence, entering a world characterized by the binary feedback of pattern and randomness, signal and noise. We leave the clearing and enter the screen.

The posthuman is thus not some Edward Scissorhands amalgamation of gizmos and flesh, but a new kind of subjectivity, one that privileges informational pattern-play over embodiment. With clear if technical prose, Hayles unearths the overlapping cybernetic histories that lie behind this psychic shift, a shift reinforced by our media and technological practices. The first cybernetic wave, exemplified by Wiener and the legendary Macy Conferences, used a language of circuits, feedback, and information flow to describe how systems -- both organisms and machines -- kept their act together in the face of entropy. By eroding the distinction between man and machine, cybernetics not only welcomed technology into the loop of being, but undercut the coherence of the consciousness we used to think was in control. Though Wiener himself was an ardent humantist, Hayles shows how cybernetics inevitably put the "liberal subject" on the block.

For if cybernetics unveiled a new vision of complex systems, what happened when the observer was factored into the system under observation? According to Hayles, this ouroboros-like question inevitably led to the highly reflexive "second wave" cybernetic theories of Gregory Bateson, Humberto Maturana, and Francisco Varella, which reached their peak of influence in the 1960s and 70s. This material can hit the mind like an acid grok, and proves that "holistic thought" has more philosophical backbone than many kneejerk anti-Californians realize. Indeed, it's a pity that Hayles did not spend more time tracing Bateson's influence, which runs from the Whole Earth Review to American Zen to Deleuze and Guattari, who nabbed their notion of "plateau" from the philosopher.

We live in more pragmatic and cut-throat times, of course, and the "third wave" cybernetics that dominates the scene today has jettisoned such epistemological meditations. Contemporary heirs to Wiener are more interested in creating Darwinian simulations that exploit the emergent and out-of-control properties of self-organizing systems. The archetype here is artificial life: the computational attempt to reproduce the logic of life by allowing codes to "evolve" inside the petri dish of a PC. As the name alone tells you, artficial life gets loads of mileage out of metaphor, and as such is ripe for deconstruction. Hayles obliges, showing how the technological rhetoric that inflates the field systematically erases the role of embodiment in real life. While acknowledging the heuristic value of A-Life's "Platonic backhand", Hayles, who has programmed computers herself, rightly attacks its idealogical pretensions. "Just because information has lost its body does not mean that humans and the world have lost theirs."

Hayle's embrace of the "resistant materialities of embodiment" not only pits her against information dualists, but against many a trendy theorist. One can only applaud when she writes that future generations will be stupified by "the postmodern orthodoxy that the body is primarily, if not entirely, a linguistic and discursive construction." But in her turn toward the flesh, Hayles unfortunately can't get much farther than the more "embodied" texts of fiction. Though her discussions of Philip K. Dick, William Burroughs, and Neil Stephenson are engaging enough, and her critical splice of The Ticket that Exploded particularly inspired, I wanted cultural material more meaty than semiotic squares or Richard Power's clever recursive sentences.

After all, now's the time for some real cyborg handbooks, and Hayles only leaves herself enough room for a few tips. Though she recognizes the techno-transcendentalist nightmares tucked inside the computational universe ("a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories"), Hayles is open to a future populated with increasingly brainy machines. Refreshingly, Hayles also suggests that the art of embodiment could be well served by some lessons of evolutionary psychology, which many pomo science types write off as an evil blasphemy. In a word, Hayles is willing to give up some of that much-vaunted human control. "The very illusion of control bespeaks a fundamental ignorance about the nature of the emergent process through which consciousness, the organism, and the environment are constituted." So how do we live with creative intelligence and awakened senses in a groundless world beyond our control? How We Became Posthuman does not provide any easy answers, but it does help clarify the question that all of us should be asking.

Postmodern Journeys: Film and Culture 1996-1998

2004-11-01T11:13:00.000-08:00

Michael Green

Postmodern Journeys: Film and Culture 1996-1998
By Joseph Natoli

This is an interesting well-written book with a lot of good points. Natoli is well-versed in theory, film and contemporary culture and connects the three subjects expertly. Other books I have read talked about the need for art and literature to find its way to the postmodern, to something transcendent and new for humanity. This guy actually tries to go on that journey—in this book and previous ones. He actually tries to work out some of what we might need to do to jump one reference point to another.

Natoli opens the book with a discussion of his philosophies of modernism and postmodernism and, particularly the concept of a postmodern journey towards some kind of transcendent understanding, that he believes he—and our culture—is trying to undertake. Then he uses contemporary films of the mid to late 1990s, such as Titanic, Good Will Hunting, Jerry Maguire, Saving Private Ryan, and Fargo, and the events in contemporary culture occurring at the times of these films, such as Clinton and Ken Starr, the Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, Newt Gingrich, etc., to explore his ideas.

He begins with a difficult opening section in which he discusses the concept of a postmodern journey, which he says he’s ripe for. Consciously he yearns to go to places he’s never been to before and even unconsciously he says he’s travelling through a Borgesian garden of forking paths. He doesn’t fear wondering. He fears stagnation, not just his own, but everyone’s. He says that when a “order of things” (referencing F, of course) presumes to stand for the world “just as it is” and himself “just as I am” then he becomes troubled.

He says that we are thrown into a world always already in motion. And so that the image of ourselves situated someplace—centered for dominating viewing in Focualt’s panoptican, taking in a world that is somehow “out there”—that image and the story it tells is a modernist way of journeying. But how do we journey towards a postmodernist story of how we travel from self to world? You have to begin by recognizing that you have been thrown into a modernist story of things and not the world itself. We are now living at the crossroads of both kinds of awareness, “although only the postmodern awareness allows us that awareness.” Natoli says that we journey in a different way as postmodernists than as modernists and that the postmodern way of trying to understand identity and difference necessitates a whole new way of studying other cultures and peoples.

Living in the modern world, he says, since the Enlightenment, we have been striving to transcend stories of worldly attachment, trying to disconnect storymaking from reality. He says that he is an adjunct lecturer and he occupies an “adjunct lebensweld,” or lifeworld in which one’s connection with the center is marginal, and with the social order subordinate and temporary. The lifeworld is the result of our being thrown into the world at an accidental, though specific time and place. The lifeworld “promises the sedentary in a nomadic world, tries to fix the location of time and space and mark our location at every point and moment.” He says that we live in a myth that we can understand or objectively observe the outside world as it separated from ourselves, “remove the lens of the lifeworld from our gaze.”

He had tried to get outside the lifeworld in previous world journeying in which he examined identity and difference. He asked himself a lot of questions about things that “previously had no existence in the mind of the traveler and thus toward extending the panorama of human awareness.” He found what he thought were answers to the questions that emerged from a postmodern way of knowing the world but because the questions emerged from a modern way of knowing the world, a “reasonable” way, the very nature of his questions constrained him back to the lifeworld. He says he faces a paradox that the modernist has no trouble resolving: just because he sees modern reasoning does not mean that he can discount it because it is the way that his reasoning has been sculpted throughout his life. What he can do is deny its Kantean foundationalism while still recognizing that it operates as a force in the everyday. But as the world is shifting into a postmodern way, he is also trying to figure out how to “reason” in a postmodern way. He says the postmodernists need to figure out a way to jump from one way of knowing to another, to another frame of reasoning, while the modernists stay behind and critique and question the journey the postmodernist has taken.

The modernist also has a story of journeying and Natoli asks how do you know which journey to take. The postmodern journey is the one that validates itself by saying that since we live in stories of reality we are bound to journey out of the limitations of our own stories by journeying into other stories. But how do you journey if you have no reason to do so? He says that we, as an American culture, are already in a postmodern way of storymaking. As a modernist he says he had no reason to recognize this postmodern journeying, though he is clearly already on it. He just doesn’t know the point at which it started which is the familiar idea of not having a clear demarcation between modern and postmodern.

Somewhere along the way he became suited for the postmodern journey. How? It has to do with lifeworlds, he says.

A lot of our images—Victor Turner’s sense of the “liminal,” the postcolonial sense of the “subaltern,” the ethnic/racial/gender view of the “marginalized, the necessity of always being on the “border between worlds advocated by Henry Giroux and the Deluszian view of the “nomad”—are all images of space. But in his mind, he says he doesn’t occupy one space, he occupies time. If he had a spatial sense of where he was positioned, he would be leading a sedentary mental life and couldn’t journey.

Time is the “nomadic, post modern, post-Enlightenment space.” Postmodern time does more than just make spacing or distancing possible. It also fills space with the stories that fill time, that give us our sense of time passing. “Time moves in stories and stories configure space,” he says, and “We are in the world in a particular way shaped by a particular time, so that travel in space is nothing more than travel between different temporal configurations of the world, differing reality frames.” He gives angels as an example. In the Middle Ages, so many of them could fit on the head of a pin. In that time they occupied real space. In this time, they occupy no space. He uses the American poor as another example of people who are being given less space in our story of things, and indeed class is a big issue in this book, as it is in the other books I’ve read about postmodernism.

Here are a few examples of his discussion of film and culture: “The journey from modernity to post-modernity, a journey in which displacement replaces hierarchy, has proliferated the number of dissenting cultural narratives, expanded the geography of the clash , and riddled the present with culture wars that have provoked a pressing needs to reassert the social order of things. Of course, only one side feels that pressing need, while the other, the postmodernists, want to augment the number of cultural narratives and thus augment the maziness of the world through which we journey so that lifeworlds can never rest in their sedentary complacency.

Tin Cup: Natoli discusses Tin Cup, the 1996 film that features Kevin Costner as Tin Cup, a talented but undisciplined golfer who makes his way from obscurity to the U.S. Open. Natoli calls it the “epitome of democracy” and a “microcosm of free market play within which we all have an equal opportunity to play.” Natoli asks if, in this contemporary culture, this dream of Americanism, particularly financially, is still possible.

He says that Cup’s actions replay the theme of rugged individualism which seems at first to be a refreshing resurrection of personal values in the face of global-market values—until we realize that Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber are awaiting down that road. There is—at this point in our history—a desire to break free of something constraining that threatens our individual freedom. But no matter how mystical, romantic and visionary Cup’s quest is, he is still in danger of being marginalized and silenced. Natoli goes on to tie this into the gap between rich and poor and says that no democracy can survive the economic inequality that we now face.

Some other examples of essays:

He discusses Fargo in terms of experiencing the “other” and how our journeys intersect, how our “lifeworlds follow different roads on different journeys.” If an aspect of the postmodern journey is our leaping to new reference points—“not merely from one set of coordinates on the same to another set of coordinates, but a shifting of the gaze to another may--then Fargo is a catalog of criss-crossing post-modern journeys.

He discusses Tarantino’s Jackie Brown in terms of narratives and meta-narrative, how we construct the narratives of our life, and how in Jackie Brown Tarantino underscores the moments of our experience that manifestly don’t conscript into narrative. It’s almost as if he’s subverting the meta-narrative of film by including so many moments of regular life, non-plotted life, that seem to have nothing to do with the forward motion of the plot. He is the anti-Hitchcock.

Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity (Sana)

2004-10-31T18:00:00.000-08:00

Sana Haque

Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity
• By: David Morley
• Publisher: London ; New York : Routledge, 2000.
• ISBN: 0415157641 041515765X

Author and Text:

David Morley is a professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths College at the University of London. He has collaborated with Stuart Hall and worked at the University of Birmingham's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1970s. His research interests include audience reception of media messages, cultural constructions of "Home" and "Nation", and the impact of globalizing trends on traditional national and domestic spaces.

This book is an interdisciplinary look at the complex constructions of both "home" territories (or zones of safety) and the "unheimlich" or "uncanny" spaces of the unfamiliar, at the macro (Nation) and micro (Family) level. It examines how these are impacted by the new spaces and routes of communication and forms of community engendered by globalization and new technologies. It also considers the impact of the tenacity of "rootedness" and Home/Nation spaces in the flux of the postmodern era.

Introduction
Challenge of understanding the de-territorializing culture of postmodernity in the context of enduring and resurgent urges towards stability and "rootedness".

Chapter 1: Ideas of Home
Historical background on the meaning of "home" as both physical space and rhetorical territory. Increasing historical trend towards privacy and isolation as components of the ideal home.

Chapter 2: Heimat, Modernity, and Exile
Nation as magnified version of the family. Site for exclusion and boundary-making. Rootlessness as disorder. Exile as physical and temporal dislocation.

Chapter 3: The Gender of Home
Gendered constructions of "home" as sedentary feminine space. Male anxieties surrounding the constrictive space of home. Domesticity and dirt.

Chapter 4: At Home with the Media
Central place of TV in the modern home. Media's construction of domestic routine. Blurring of boundary between inside and outside - cyberspace.

Chapter 5: Broadcasting and the Construction of the National Family
Role of national broadcasting in construction of national iconography. Shows and audiences - symbolic comfort zones. Multiple and fragmented public spheres.

Chapter 6: The Media, the City and the Suburbs: Urban and Virtual Geographies of Exclusion
Suburbs as models for "home" - conflict avoidance and absence of strangers. Suburban space as "privatised, feminine, consumerized". "Ecology of fear”.

Chapter 7: Media, Mobility, and Migrancy
Mobile privatization. Media encounters with alterity - race/immigration. Circulation of both media and viewers. Migrants as scapegoats.

Chapter 8: Postmodern, Virtual and Cybernetic Geographies
Communications technologies - new modes of mobility. Bifocal vision (global and local). Homes with permeable boundaries. Tourists vs. vagabonds.

Chapter 9: Borders and Belongings: Strangers and Foreigners
Question of borders in the contemporary world. Post-modern nomads vs. Modern pilgrims. Breakdown of stable "home" territories. Alien threats at the margins.

Chapter 10: Cosmopolitics: Boundary, Hybridity and Identity
Immigrants as "homeless". Exoticization of travel. The Western/masculine cosmopolitan figure. Cities as sites for forced confrontations.

Chapter 11: Postmodernism, Post-structuralism and the Politics of Difference: at home in Europe?
Revival of ethnocentrism. Xenophobia and cultural difference. Identity politics. Flexible construction of community. Europe and immigration tensions.

Author's Stated Aims: "to open up the analysis of... rootedness, exile, diaspora, displacement, connectedness and/or mobility" as well as "to offer an analysis of the construction of national (or pan-national) identities... grounded in an understanding of the (domestic) micro-processes through which the smaller units" of that community are constituted in turn. He seeks to articulate the different discourses that run through a particular conceptual space (in this case, that of "home") in a multidisciplinary perspective.

Key Words/Terms:

Heimat (symbolic Homeland, emotive territory of belonging)
Fremde (alterity and the foreign)
Heimlich (belonging to the household, familiar) / Unheimlich (uncanny, unfamiliar)
Geographical "monogamy" and "promiscuity"
Mobile privatization (bubble of safety)
Umwelt (populated by "consociates") / Mitwelt (larger world of contemporaries)
Power-geometry (levels of access to mobility/connectedness).

Affiliated Discourses & Historical/Cultural Context:
Interdisciplinary Studies, Birmingham School of Cultural Studies, Media and Communication Studies, Cultural Geography

Applications/Thoughts:
This is an intriguing multidisciplinary text that pulls together various sources of critical thought on how representation and imagery construct the Other and the familiar. It also highlights issues relating to the impact of media on everyday life in both the domestic and national spheres. Due to the breadth of its scope, there are analytical points that could use further study and illustration, including a closer study of the concept of the "foreign" and of "rootlessness" as the oppositional categories to those of "home" and "rootedness" (the central focus here).

The Postmodern Condition - (Cherie)

2004-10-26T21:28:00.000-07:00

Name: Lyotard, Jean-François
Translator: Bennington, Geoff and Brian Massumi
Date: 1999
Title: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
Pub. Date: 1979
Length: 110

Keywords: Postmodernism; Science; Knowledge; Legitimation; Anti-Marxism, Capitalism; Social Reproduction

Hypothesis: "that the status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter what is known as the postmodern age" (1999: 3).

School/Discourse: Postmodernism, Commercialism, Scientific theory, Academic Studies

Synopsis:
Lyotard's analysis is an interpretation of the status and development of knowledge, science and technology in today’s modern societies.

The Postmodern Condition describes the state of knowledge and the problem of its legitimatization. Lyotard states that the two main principal functions of knowledge are research and the transmission of learning. He demonstrates that this utopian path is inoperative in today’s economy of progress and market production.
Lyotard attempts to place the transformation of knowledge within the context of the crisis of the narrative, making note of the Enlightenment metanarratives concerning meaning and truth. It is a representation in line with what Foucault had described as an “archaeology" in The Order of Things, which sought to discover the relations between the origin of knowledge and how it is represented today. Lyotard states, “a collectivity that takes narrative as its key form of competence has no need to remember its past”(22, 1979).
This search for origins is lost within a collective demand of productivity tied to what he terms as language games. The Charlemagne’s and Alexander’s of the past are no longer recognizable since the order is of importance or better put, the ideal society is complete. There is the individual that makes the society, but the great hero is the society and not the individual. Foucault‘s succession of "progress" or lack there of is the deterioration of Lyotard’s metanarrative. The support for that lies deep within the subconscious of society’s past. Even the leading sciences and technologies are based in language games or theories of linguistics, cybernetics, informatics, computer languages, and mathematics. These are rules that have flexed beyond the status of need or truth. They base themselves in rules subject to the prescriptive auspices of those who control that knowledge. Lyotard negatively presents a modern view that it is irrelevant. One cannot excavate a hidden truth, since this will not add to the collective society; it would elevate the individual to the status of hero.

Knowledge is for production’s sake and not for the sake of learning itself. It has become homogenized and isolated within the Keynesian model of productivity (45, 1979). He acknowledges that the source interpreted through language has already become the principal force of production. It has changed the composition of the workforce in developed countries remaining hidden under the tag of “primitive” (those who remain hidden from technological advance). The commercialization of knowledge and its new forms of media are on the rise, creating problems between the nation-state and the information. He argues that it will continually widen the gap between the so-called developed society and the Third world. They will remain as an other, invisible to the advances of knowledge and language games that continually “progress” the nation-state. Ultimately, the nihilistic “grand narratives of the nineteenth century,” are placed in a positivist’s frame of knowledge of today (38, 1979). The control of the senses, the holder of the image is unknown, and is placed in position of power. Lyotard’s idealistic sense of free data is an unfortunate consequence of looking for what is/was lost and applying it to the unknown frontiers of exploration today.

Applications: All college discourse.

Other Works in Translation:
Phenomenology (Fr. 1954) (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991)
Discours, figure (Fr. 1971) (translation in progress? Harvard?)
Driftworks (NY: Semiotext(e), 1984) (partial translation of Derive et partir de Marx et Freud , 1973)
Libidinal Economy (Fr. 1974) (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1993)
Pacific Wall (Fr. 1975) (Venice, CA: Lapis, 1990)
Duchamp's Transformers (Fr. 1977) (Venice, CA: Lapis, 1990)
Just Gaming (w/Jean-Loup Thebaud) (Fr. 1979) (Minneapolis: U. Minnesota, 1985)
The Differend (Fr. 1982) (Minneapolis: U. Minnesota, 1988)
The Postmodern Explained (Fr. 1986) (Minneapolis: U. Minnesota, 1992)
Heidegger and "the jews" (Fr. 1988) (Minneapolis: U. Minnesota, 1990)
The Inhuman: Reflections on Time (Fr. 1988) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991)
Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event (NY: Columbia, 1988)
The Lyotard Reader (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1989)
Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime (Fr. 1991) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994)
Toward the Postmodern (Atlantic Highlands,NJ: Humanities Press, 1993)
Political Writings (Minneapolis: U. Minnesota, 1993)

Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers: Order Out of Chaos (Matt)

2004-10-25T17:20:00.000-07:00

Mathew Gacy
10/25/04
Order out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature
Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers
Bantam, 1984
349 pgs

1. Synopsis:
A significant portion of the text is devoted to an overview of Western scientific development proceeding from Newtonian mechanics to contemporary developments in dynamics, quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. For the most part, this overview assumes a simple form of a basic chronology, though the authors do, at times, frame this timeline in more theoretically complex terms, as when they briefly discuss Joseph Needham's conclusions about the importance of social structures in supporting or undermining the development of specific scientific vectors. The authors posit that the development of classical dynamics lead to the alienation of man from nature as well as the development of the two conflicting cultures of the sciences and humanities.
Classical dynamics is concerned only with reversible processes where time is a relatively insignificant factor. Its understanding of time is problematic in its inability to account for processes of evolution. It is only with the development of thermodynamics and the introduction of the concept of entropy that "the arrow of time" becomes significant and a scientific account of evolution and complexity possible. The authors posit that this scientific recognition of time and randomness permits an account of life and evolution as well as the reintegration of man into scientific discourse as "we can see ourselves as part of the universe we describe" (300). Further, this development permits to to approach "the central problem of Western ontology: the relation between Being and Becoming" (310). Prigogine and Stengers deny any opposition of the two, claiming that they "express two related aspects of reality" (310).

2. Thesis
We are in the midst of reconceptualization of physics leading to a recognition of stochastic, reversible processes that permits a description of life, evolution, and man.

3. Key words
--Entropy
--Far From Equilibrium Thermodynamics
--Linear/Nonlinear Processes
--Reversible/ Irreversible Processes

4. School/ Discourse
The text is primarily situated within scientific discourses (physics, chemistry, and biology), though Prigogine and Stengers do discuss properly philosophical objections to the premises and implications of classical dynamics in the writings of Kant, Hegel, Bergson, and Whitehead.

5. Thoughts Triggered
Though Prigogine and Stengers claim that their "role is not to lament the past," Prigogine and Stengers clearly bemoan the division that resulted in the development and subsequent conflict of the "two cultures" represented by the sciences and humanities (22). They identify their project as an attempt "to discover in the midst of the extraordinary diversity of the sciences some unifying thread" (22) and problematically herald our entrance into "new era in the history of time, an era in which both being and becoming can be incorporated into a single noncontradictory vision" (255). They conclude that a "new unity is emerging: irreversibility is a source of order at all levels. Irreversibility is the mechanism that brings order out of chaos" (292).

6. Context
The text discusses the evolution and implications of dynamics, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics.

7. Applications
While the theories that Prigogine and Stengers develop and explain are most obviously applicable to traditional scientific fields, they acknowledge the broader significance of the reconceptualization of time implied by irreversible processes and the potential applicability of thermodynamic modelizations of the evolution and increasing complexity of open systems to social and economic problems.

Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City (Aloy)

2004-10-25T09:58:00.000-07:00

Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City
By Jane M. Jacobs
Routledge, London and New York, 1996, xiii + 193 pp.

I summarize Jacobs’s project as follows:

1. The view that empires are a thing of the past is inaccurate and flawed. To say this does not mean that there are no centers; there are no peripheries; there are no structures of domination and subordination. This signifies that the line that separates these spatial boundaries is now messier than before. As Jacobs puts it, “the social and spatial demarcation of…uneven politics is no longer as clear as it once was.” The structures of power that constituted the “old” empires have now been challenged in the wake of diasporic settlements, new nationalisms, indigenous land right claims and so on. As the “edge” of the title Edge of Empire suggests “imperialism lives on in the present but it is also always at its ‘edge’ point”—a point that is precariously unstable or, as bell hooks puts it, “unsafe,” marking “not only a space of openness but also the very negotiation of space itself.”

2. Jacobs makes a critical departure from what she describes as “spatial rhetoric of colonial and postcolonial theory” to “real” geographies; she takes us to contemporary conflicts over space in the cities of Britain and Australia. Jacobs argues that space and place are discursive sites that are as much as important in the formation of postcolonialism as they were for colonialism.

3. Two of the four sites involve the long-running planning struggle around the redevelopment of the Bank Junction area in the City of London, and the transformation of neighborhood of Spitalfields, an inner East London neighborhood, in the form of gentrification and mega-scale development.

The contest over the redevelopment of a historic built environment in the City of London reveals that “the idea of empire” does not belong to the past. As Jacobs puts it, “Place plays an important role in the way in which memories of empire remain active” (p.40). This is seen in the efforts to preserve the historic Bank Junction area in the City of London; such efforts are also seen to preserve buildings and city scenes which memorialize the might of empire.

Spitalfields is a place marked by the processes of identity negotiation and destabilization generated by the loss of empire and subsequent migrant settlements. Inhabitants of Spitalfields negotiate their identity in a multicultural terrain where one’s entitlements and claims to a place are high. But it does not mean that with multiculturalism and diasporic landscape Spitalfields is dislodged from the nation defined by its “Englishness.” In the case of the Bengali migrants, this has worked to “domesticate (not assimilate) the Bangali settlers within an embracing Englishness” (p.101).

4. The other two sites, once located at the geographical edge of the British empire, include the city of Perth, a city where the colonial repression of Aboriginal interests in land was apparent only to resurface albeit “uncanny” as Aboriginal sacred in the secularized space of the city, and the city of Brisbane, a city actively reinventing itself through Nature and Aboriginality in the wake of tourist development.

Cinema 1 by Gilles Deleuze (Callen)

2004-10-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

Callen Shutters
October 18, 2004
Cinema 1: The Movement-Image by Gilles Deleuze
Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam
London: The Athlone Press, 1983
215 pages

1. In this text, Deleuze analyzes cinema in the first half of the 20th century (from the earliest silent pictures to post-WWII Hitchcock) in terms of the philosophical concepts that are raised in the medium of film. Deleuze aligns directors, auteurs, with great thinkers of the day rather than great painters, architects, musicians, etc. (x). The focus of the text is the ‘Movement-Image,’ which is supported by Bergson’s three theses of movement from his text ‘Matter and Memory’ (1-29). Deleuze discusses the ‘Movement-Image’ in terms of different applications/uses of framing, cutting, and montage (12-20, 29). Furthermore, the ‘Movement-Image’ is divided into three categories: perception-image, action-image, and affection-image, which correlate with a long shot, medium shot, and close-up, respectively (66, 70). Finally, Deleuze sums up the text with a discussion about how the ‘Movement-Image’ began to include the audience as a factor in expressing meaning through the medium of film (197-205). Using Peirce’s notions of ‘firstness’ (affection), ‘secondness’ (action), and ‘thirdness’ (mental) from his ‘Classification of Images and Signs,’ Deleuze makes the argument that cinema has also followed this progression and, by the end of WWII, auteurs like Hitchcock were making films that forced audiences to construct a mental relation about the information they were receiving (197). Within the whole of the text, Deleuze uses the different schools of filmmaking in the first half of the 20th century (the American school, the Soviet school, the pre-war French school, and the German expressionist school) to discuss how film progressed and created a unique language of its own that was capable of introducing and reinterpreting profound philosophical concepts (introduced in 30-51).
2. Cinema is viewed as a direct relation of philosophical concepts and, thus, the text is not a history of film or an interpretation of specific films. Rather, Deleuze attempts to “isolate certain cinematographic concepts” (ix) and present a “taxonomy, an attempt at the classification of images and signs” (xiv).
3. Action-Image: “reaction of the centre to the set [ensemble]” made up of “Synsign,” “Impression,” “Index,” and “Vector” (141-160, 217, 218)
Affection-Image: “that which occupies the gap between an action and a reaction, that which absorbs an external action and reacts on the inside” and is made up of “Icon,” Qualisign,” and “Dividual” (91-117, 217)
Dicisign: “a term created by Peirce in order to designate principally the sign of the proposition in general” or “a perception in the frame of another perception” (217).
Dividual: “that which is neither indivisible or divisible, but is divided (or brought together) by changing qualitatively” (217)
Gramme: “the genetic element of the perception-image, inseparable as such from certain dynamisms (immobilisation, vibration, flickering, sweep, repetition, acceleration, deceleration, etc.)” (217)
Icon: “used by Peirce in order to designate a sign which refers to its object by internal characteristics (resemblance)” (217)
Movement-Image: “the acentered set [ensemble] of variable elements which act and react on each other” (217)
Perception-Image: “set [ensemble] of elements which act on a centre, and which vary in relation to it” and is made up of “Dicisign,” “Reume,” and “Gramme” (71-76, 217)
Qualisign: “term used by Peirce in order to designate a quality which is a sign…the affect as expressed (or exposed) in an any-space-whatever” (217)
Rueme: “the perception of that which crosses the frame or flows out…the liquid status of perception itself” (217)
Synsign: “set of qualities and powers as actualised in a state of things, thus constituting a real milieu around a centre, a situation in relation to a subject: spiral” (218)
4. Deleuze aimed to create a text not of the history of film, nor a typical critique of film, but rather an understanding of the medium of film and the postmodern concepts that are brought about through this medium.
5. This text really helped me understand how the different schools of filmmaking in the first half of the 20th century built upon the ideas and creations of each other to develop a language unique to film that utilizes the strengths specific to the artistic medium. Additionally, by including theses by Bergson and Peirce, Deleuze connects philosophical notions with the expressive medium of film to uncover new ways in which to view movement, images, and subjectivity/objectivity.
6. The text reflects upon the first half of the short history of film to uncover the mechanical reproduction of the ‘Movement-Image. The second volume in the set, ‘Cinema 2,’ deals with the ‘Time-Image,’ which Deleuze felt pervaded cinema post-WWII.
7. The text is invaluable for those who wish to understand how cinema developed a unique language of its own and how this new(er) artistic medium transcends the past modes of artistic expression to uncover new philosophical notions and reflections about the state of our being.

Language and Myth (Cherie)

2004-10-18T01:03:00.000-07:00

Author: Ernst Cassirer
Title: Language and Myth
Translater: Susanne K. Langer
Published: 1946
Length: 103

Cassirer uses mythopoeic thought that is that man lives through a mythic state of mind that developed from language as a conceptual system. The argument opens with a critique of theories about the origins of myth. It explains how our understanding of myth is based in unsubstantiated terms created out of deficiencies in language. Cassier’s points out that causes in nature confront the mind and when this happens, man attempts to attach these ideas symbolically to a concept. This concept is derived from a fundamental set of properties that gathered symbolically within the mind and therefore precede language. He draws this conclusion largely upon the ideas of Kant and what he coined the Copernican Revolution. This generation of a world created out of the single moment when the mind attempts to affix language to what it sees is not fixed as in Kant, but is instead conceived out of assigned properties or objects of influence that have been assigned importance to that human utterance. In other words the symbolic forms are not objects for intellectual comprehension that have been made visible to us through the moment, but through language itself they been given meaning and therefore have become real. Therefore looking back upon history through the lens of the modern is most difficult, particularly in the sense of the modern associations to the context of the word or its origin. Even looking at primitive societies fails to complete the sense of value assigned by a particular society. The society itself forms preferences and influences over the individualized thought. It is founded upon the land, culture, and basic needs of a given group. Cassirer uses the examples of agriculture and dancing to demonstrate this concept. In one particular case the word for dancing is not merely a sense of movement, but it is a representation for the primitive execution of some cause and effect. The participant is expressing, not representing. It is the ritual being produced at that moment that defines the word and therefore cannot be applied to our modern sensibilities of the same action.

Cassirer draws upon Usener’s ideas of myth, art, language and science in order to produce a world view of inter-related forms of spirit. He states that, “all theoretical cognition takes its departure from a world already preformed by language.” It is the noticing that constitutes the function of denoting. He delves into the ideas of Genesis and the moment of creation labeling it at one point a "veritable monkey puzzle". He continues to state that the only notable world worth viewing is reflected in language developed from religious myths, the holy, and magical; these conceptions are directly linked to our modern associations. These associations have been formed through primitive cultures’ words that are linked to moments which sought to define the image of god. He argues that the words are permanently dependant upon theological concepts. Therefore, the genesis of human language can be formulated through metaphor, and the nature of linguistic phenomena as it is connected with learning. Ultimately, Cassirer seems to be stating that it is through naming that the world makes sense to man; it is the implication that symbolic mechanisms come automatically within the very act of "naming" and do not occur on an animalistic level. It is the emotional impact of experience that allows a person to formulate their own sense of identity on the experiential level.

Associated Applications: Social Linguistics, Mythology, Religion, Anthropology

Keywords: Mythological, Religion, Language, Word-Magic, Philosophy of Origins, Metaphor, Mode of Thought

Referenced works: Plato, Kant, Max Muller, Usener, Herder, Humboldt, Gabelentz, Eckhardt, Spieth, Eve Tribe

Final thoughts: Cassirer is very approachable, although the text seems to be too general to apply any firm conclusions. It would be interesting to reread this after retuning to Latour’s immutable mobile. Just one more stop in along Foucault’s excavation, although I feel that he would have probably buried some of Cassirer’s concepts of singularity in concept. However I do believe that they share similar ideas power and how it is exercised through language and the teleological perspective that influences a subject’s point of view.

McLuhan, Understanding Media (Rachel)

2004-10-17T11:48:00.000-07:00

Rachel Moe
October 11, 2004
Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
Published in1964, 359 pages

Synopsis
Marshall McLuhan explains the psychic and social consequences of the technological media in his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. He believes that after three thousand years of the explosion of mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding from current “electric technology.” McLuhan states that this electric technology is an extension of people’s central nervous system. Due to this change in technology, people adjust the way they process, store, and speed up experiences which creates a different thought pattern than that of the past. This instant processing of data and knowledge simulates the automatic and natural function of the nervous system, therefore; the technology recreates this function and becomes an extension of man’s body.
McLuhan coined the phrase, “The medium is the message.” In his book, he postulates that in this new age of electric technology the medium from which people receive information is the message and that the content of a medium is always another medium. He explains this concept using electricity and the invention of the light bulb. The electric light is “pure information” and it does not have any content until humans derive meaning. It is not until someone uses the light to read after dark or play baseball at night that meaning is established. The way humans interact with the medium (TV, radio, light bulb, etc.) “shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.” Using this concept that the medium is the message, he examines the new technological media and their ability to shape society.
He believes the content of a medium is always another medium. For example, the content of a book is a speech, the content of a movie is a novel, and the content of the press is a literary statement. He refers to “hot” media, which are low in viewer participation and “cool” media, which are high in viewer participation. Hot media are high definition and visually filled with data. Less effort is exerted by the viewer to understand the message. Examples of hot media include books, movies, photographs, and radio. Cool media, on the other hand, are low in definition and are not structured. They require more “filling in” by the audience. Examples include the television, the telephone, cartoons, and speech.
A basic theme of McLuhan’s book is that even if you have an understanding of the medium’s effect and force, it is impossible to stop the “closure” of the senses and the pattern of conformity that occurs. Once the technology becomes an extension of ourselves (occurring on a subconscious level), we lose the ability to function without it. McLuhan believes the media are a powerful controlling agent in society and that Western values have been affected by technology. He thinks people have surrendered their nervous systems to corporations and advertisers, allowing them to take away their rights. Through technology, people have created irritants through the process of accelerating and making things easier, faster, and better. People disassociate from their senses and have become mesmerized by the medium.
McLuhan felt that a positive consequence of the media is the unification of people into what he called the “global village.” His optimistic view was that television and radio had the potential to improve the world and involve people in each other’s lives.

Thesis: Electronic communication has decentralized modern living in the twentieth century.

School/Discourse: Technological Determinism

Thoughts/Context/Application
Since the publication of this book, a great deal of media analysis has occurred and McLuhan’s ideas probably do not seem as radical as they did in the early 1960’s. Even though slightly dated, I find that McLuhan’s ideas and criticisms of the media are thought provoking and rich in cultural analogies. We are all familiar with the various media he presented, but I found his rendition of the invention, history, and context of each medium to be interesting. He frequently compared tribal societies and Western societies when explaining various media and their contexts.
If McLuhan were still alive, it would be interesting to hear his thoughts on more recent technologies such as the Internet, personal computers, and video games. His idea of technology as “extensions of man” still applies to the world in which we live. It is common to see people engaging in conversations on their cell phones, typing on their laptops, or calculating a math problem. If these technologies were suddenly taken away, people would function on a much different level. It is questionable whether they would be able to find new resources to meet the daily challenges of life.
Western society prides itself in its technological advances but after reading this book, I have a deeper respect for cultures that have not been inundated by the mind numbing effects of the media. Tribal societies are able to function and live their lives on a different plane than the technologically based society. If we were to lose all of our technology, we would find survival difficult until learning the skills of the tribal society.
McLuhan’s idea of a “global village” did not turn out the way he foresaw. The United States expanded its mass communication system, but the rest of the world lacked these technological advances. Satellites have since been introduced but language and cultural differences preclude the globalization that he predicted. Overall, McLuhan’s analogies are interesting but are unable to be validated.

Occam's Razor

2004-10-16T13:34:00.000-07:00

name: Bill Jay

title: Occam’s Razor: An Outside-In View of Photogaphy

pub date: 1993

length: 165

The premise of Jay’s text, or Jay’s premise with this text, to be more precise, is to attempt an explanation as to what photography is, and how it should be discussed. While doing so, Jay has taken, as his north star, the basic principle of the argument of Franciscan monk, William of Occam, entitled Occam’s Razor. An argument whose basic principle says “that in all scientific and philosophical enquiry variables should not be multiplied unnecessarily”.

Jay, through the course of this text, rails against the over intellectualization of the study(ies) of photography, albeit it softly. This railing includes, but is not limited to, the separation of personal life and the photograph, that meaning and interpretation are imposed upon photography; photography disturbs, the chasm between artist and commercial (read professional) photographer.

Along this last line of thought, one aspect of photography that Jay grapples with, or attempts a reconciliation with is whether photography is an art or a by-product of technology. Similar to Sontag, Jay addresses the similarities between photography and painting. Whereas the two are similar in that they are representations, one is wholly an “original”, while the other is considered a reproduction, of never having had, or been, an original. Due to this quandary-ous state, photography then, could never be considered an art medium, as art is uniquely original.

And yet, Jay counters that with a personal anecdote, in which he recounts an experience in which he, all the while, ignorant of having done it, plagiarized an article he had once read. The point to this particular anecdote is that photography cannot be original, it owes itself to what has come before, it is subject to patterns. This redeems photography to some extent for not being a wholly original creation.

Keeping in tune with post-structuralist thought, photography, much like individuality, is simply a construct.

This text includes accounts of Jay’s own interviews/times with such notable photographers as Diane Arbus, E. O. Hoppé, and Frank Capa-Smith.

Ironically enough, Jay includes a chapter on the importance of recognizing that the writing of photographic criticism is for the most part, worthless. Which of course, casts into doubt, his own take on photography.

This text is in line with Susan Sontag’s own analysis of photography, of taking it out of an over-intellectualized arena, and placing it in a more photo-friendly locale. In other words, this text does not drown the reader with –izes and –isms, the meat and potatoes of the intellectual trade. However, that is not to say it is a dumbed-down read or lesser than John Tagg’s The Burden of Representation.

This text did offer a new way at looking at my own research. It’s discussion on photography as disturbance offers me with a new angle to approaching the representation of the masculine other, and what that is.

Not an essential read to the study of photography, but an insightful one, nonetheless.

Re-excavating/Erasing the Self (Cherie)

2004-10-14T18:39:00.000-07:00

Name: Peter Weiss
Date: 1964
Title: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat
as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.

First of all I cannot possibly touch upon all that I want to say. The comments below represent but one potion of a much broader response.

The play The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performied by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade truly reflects how art remains as a means to represent conflict. This play is more than simply the reenactment of the bourgeois society and its reflections of the French Revolution. It concentrates on the possibility of the transcendence of the self; a struggle still present in today’s postmodernistic views of consciousness. This play about a play is soaked in the melee of revolutionary politics. It is both ironic and humorous. The humanistic madness that engulfs the entire proceeding is highlighted by the comedic cartoon-faced choir. Their nursery rhyme songs denote political and historical observation as well as act as a touchstone of familiarity, while remaining untouchable. They invoke a universal voice while speaking to the madness to which they have succumbed. Like Foucault’s history, the play is something which has lost its original meaning, and is in need of re-excavation. The problem arises when one uses the tools of intellect to attempt to discern the haunting images that swim wildly about the stage.
Both Marat and the Marquis proclaim that the Revolution has failed. For the Marquis, a revolution is needed but one which liberates the individual from social and intellectual convention. His failure is a personal one, brought on by spiritual and intellectual defeat. The Marquis’ attempt to erase his own bias is what ultimately leads to the creation of a personal story, like a translator who tries to recreate an original text. This can be thought of as Foucault’s Don Quixote created by the history of that which he intended to embody, but in turn he is merely a refection of that which he originally sought. Even romance is subjected with his relationship with Corday. She is whipping him, by request, in order to erase his own inability to escape his intellectual failings. This failing is all too human, inevitable, and inescapable.
Marat feels that the Revolution is a casual effect of the rich bourgeois looking for profit. His romance is rapt in society; he even emulates an enraptured state with his quaking and passionate cries. He too is unable to escape the delusional desire of his imagined society. The priest is the only one who seems to capture the rapture and support Marat. He rouses a radical upheaval of events, even at one point turning to the audience and inciting them to take up his call to action. He is a vocal radical projection of Marat’s words which remain apart from the audience’s view. It seems a little Marxist in nature supporting Marat’s plan for equality, although individual freedom and creativity break that mold of dependency. Society must be purged of its corruptive classes. The whole idea of punishment both on the level of the personal and societal dictative courses seems to align with Focault’s attitudes. The perverse inmate is constantly beaten, highlighted, and finally castigated as an other throughout the play. All the characters seem to be of Foucault’s subjugated history, described in a way that is constantly rewritten, a tumultuous event that causes a viewer to remain in self doubt about the realty that they are witnessing. This is reinforced when the dates fly from in front of the modern audience. By watching the play about the past, history is turned in on itself. The postmodern view of history ending is blurred, for the comments can apply to today, yesterday, and the past. One loses oneself in analyzing the place and the cause of what the actors speak and beckon us to questioned what we know of history at all. Ultimately, this invokes the audience while imprisoning us in our own opinions. It is a voyeuristic event; we are watching the seen form inside the painting. From the lunatic to the animal, from the bourgeoisie to the common, from the neurotic to the symptomatic, this play has finally encouraged me to want to know more.

The Dismemberment of Orpheus (Michael Green)

2004-10-12T13:13:00.000-07:00

The Dismemberment of Orpheus (1971)
By Ihab Hassan
Orpheus was a poet and musician in Greek mythology who almost rescues his wife Eurydice from Hades by charming Pluto and Persephone with his lyre.

Ihab Hassan is a prominent critic, scholar, and theorist in the study of literature. While focusing his scholarship on the post-war novel, Hassan was among the first to develop and promulgate the concept of the postmodern. In his best-known works, he theorizes a vision of the postmodern that stresses formal characteristics such as discontinuity, indeterminacy, and irony.
He begins by saying that “Radical questions engage the total quality of our life; they are questions of being. Often, they arouse large hopes: to change consciousness, to banish death from our midst. They have a radical innocence. This work may imply such questions.”
In his book, Hassan is trying to advance some idea of postmodern literature, which moves towards the “vanishing point.” In order to do this he examines modern literature especially in terms of the idea of silence.
Hassan says that we still stand in the “domain of literature” but that literature does not suffice. He says that modern literature writes the future of mankind in an invisible hand and that he tries to evoke this invisible writing.
He says that the Modernists in literature——have come up with something new to explain the human condition. He quotes the literary critic Edmund Wilson who said that the modernist writers “ wake us up to the hope and the exaltation of the untried, unsuspected possibilities of human thought and art.”
But then he says that it is time to make a new construction of literary history. He says that a different line has emerged “within” the tradition of the modern. It leads to a literature to come.
Questions: what is the nature of modernism in that it may be “scattered in the life we imagine for ourselves?” What model of modernism can best serve the avant-garde of the future?
Hassan speaks of a doubleness within the modernists: their respect for life and their unwillingness to mix it up with something so inferior as art and (2) art and language may seek transcendence in a state that can be evoked anagogically, or spiritually.
When Hassan speaks of modern literature he speaks of it in two ways as the early 20th century modernists: Eliot, Proust, Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Hemmingway, etc. And he also speaks of modernist literature as far back as the 18th century and early 19th century: Sade, Blake and Wordsworth, all of whom, in their own ways were looking beyond a medium, in other words, beyond words, which leads to the idea of “silence.”
How the modernists use silence as sort of a revolution in art, language and consciousness is one of the primary ideas advanced by Hassan. He explicates the idea of silence in many ways, but ultimately he means that the traditional methods of literature--language and form—are inadequate to convey meaning or a true idea of the human condition.
He also says that silence refers to an avant-garde tradition of literature (from Sade past Beckett). Silence implies alienation from reason, society and history. Silence betrays separation from nature. Silence demands the self-repudiation of art. Silence requires the periodic subversion of forms. Silence creates anti-languages. Silence fills the extreme states of the mind—void, madness, outrage, ecstasy, mystic trance—when ordinary discourse ceases to carry the burden of meaning
Continuing to draw on the Orpheus myth, he speaks of silence and man’s only recourse in modern literature, as playing a lyre without strings.
One writer who I thought summed it up nicely is Esslin, quoted by Hassan, who says, “The time has passed when an identity was believed to exist between the structure of language, the structure of logic and the structure of reality.”
Hassan also says that the negative, acting through art language and consciousness, shapes the boundary state I call silence.”
The revolution in traditional language takes many forms. Words can appear as gibberish, nonsense. Language has become the language of math, logic and chemistry.
To support his theories, Hassan examines the modernist writing of Sade, Hemingway, Kafka, Genet and Beckett.
A quick summary of what he says of some of the writers:
Of Sade he begins with a short biography and says that the movement in Sade’s works is towards total terror. Everywhere Sade focuses on the energy of evil. Sade rejects conventional morality and focuses on the truth of nature, which is indifferent to what men call vice or virtue. Men have no freedom to choose.
Hassan shows the ways in which Sade can be considered the first modern writer, the first avant-gardist, the first creator of an anti-literature. His literature is silent in several ways, because language can not really communicate the annihilations, the voids that he dreams up. Sade is also further silenced by his solipsistic attitude--with whom can he communicate? He alone is the subject and all others are objects of his pleasure. Hassan says “Without full comprehension of his role in Western thought, Sade may be the first to wrench the imagination free from history, to invert the will of art, and to set language against itself.”

Hassan also says of Sade, “He needs the erotic release of transgression against authority” and this reminded me of the play.

Hemingway is next. Again, Hassan provides a short biography. He is providing these biographies to show what in life might make these writers modernist. With Hemingway, as with Sade, it is Hemingway’s knowledge of death (his father killed himself, Hemingway was almost killed in the war, etc), his familiarity with death, his understanding of the emptiness behind things that makes his writing silent. Hassan says that among the modernist American writers, Hemmingway may prove “closest to our consciousness, our blankness and rage. Familiar now as it may seem, the work engages modernism on the deepest levels. Hemingway minimalism rejects traditional language and “holds the world of Hemingway together against madness.”

Kafka, like Hemingway makes his home “in the void.” Hassan sees Kafka as the key figure in the search for a post-modern literature. He says that Kafka brings the “future into our midst.” He sees Kafka as a visionary and that his importance in culture moves beyond literary history. He plays out a “luminous drama of human consciousness that few of us can attain. For him completion lies on the other side of art, the scrupulous and holy art of ambiguity, on the far side of silence where all is pure meaning.”

I can summarize the conclusions that Hassan comes to in terms of looking out to the vanishing point but he says it so well himself. “I am aware of the difficulties in bringing this work to its necessary incompletion. Yet neither can the imagination abandon its teleological sense: change is also dream come true. I can only hope that after self-parody, self-subversion, self-transcendence, after the pride and revulsion of anti-art have gone their way, art may move towards a redeemed imagination, commensurate with the full mystery of human consciousness.”

The Condition of Postmodernity (Aloy)

2004-10-11T10:17:00.000-07:00

The Condition of Postmodernity
By David Harvey
Blackwell Publishers, Massachusetts, 1990, ix + 378 pp.

This book examines the nature of postmodernism by tracing its discontinuities (and continuities as well) with modernism. The first part of the book explores the differences between modernism and postmodernism (see Table 1.1, p 42), and grapples with the question whether postmodernism represents a radical break with modernism, or simply a reaction against the universalist, totalizing narrative of modernism. But Harvey concedes after a lengthy discussion of the works of Foucault then to Lyotard, to Derrida, to Deleuze and Guttari to Jameson that “there is much more continuity than difference between the broad history of modernism and the movement called postmodernism.” “It seems more sensible to me,” Harvey states, “to see the latter as a particular kind of crisis within the former, one that emphasizes the fragmentary, the ephemeral…while expressing a deep skepticism as to any particular prescriptions as to how the eternal and immutable should be conceived of, represented, or expressed” (p.116).

If part one focuses on distinct cultural forms of postmodernism in relation to modernism, the focal point of part two lies in the way in which social forces have transformed capitalism in the late twentieth century. The basic argument that Harvey wants to make is that the first post-war recession of 1973 marked a shift from “Fordist-Keynesian” condition to what he describes as a “flexible” regime of accumulation. Flexible accumulation is an apt solution to the “rigidity” of Fordism. Harvey describes it as flexibility

with respect to labour processes, labour markets, products, and patterns of consumption. It is characterized by the emergence of entirely new sectors of production, new ways of providing financial services, new markets, and, above all, greatly intensified rates of commercial, technological, and organizational innovation. It has entrained rapid shifts in the patterning of uneven development, both between sectors and between geographical regions, giving rise, for example, to a vast surge in so-called ‘service-sector’ employment as well as to entirely new industrial ensembles in hitherto underdevelopment regions…(p.147)

The shift from Fordism to post-Fordist condition has led to a new round of “time-space compression” (the subject of discussion in Part III) in the capitalist world in which “the time horizon of both private and public decision-making have shrunk, while satellite communication and declining transport costs have made it increasingly possible to spread those decisions immediately over an ever wider and variegated space” (p.147). The intersection of the rise of postmodernist cultural forms and the emergence of more flexible modes of capital accumulation has changed the way which in time and space are experienced. But if set against the basic rules of capitalistic accumulation, it appears that these changes, Harvey argues, are “more as shifts in surface appearance rather than as signs of the emergence of some entirely new post-capitalist or even postindustrial society” (p. vii).

Following a materialist approach to understanding time and space, Harvey, in part three, argues that “objective conceptions of time and space are necessarily created through material practices and processes which serve to reproduce social life” (p.204). Harvey surveys in chapter 13 different ways in which theorists such as de Certeau, Bachelard, Foucault, and Bourdieu have conceptualized space, and how power relations are implicated in spatial and temporal practices. At the heart of part three is a concept that Harvey calls “time-space compression.” The term refers to processes that resulted in a radical change of the qualities of time and space that we are, in Harvey’s words, “forced to alter, sometimes in quite radical ways, how we represent the world to ourselves” (p.240). The book concludes in Part four by turning to social and moral questions surrounding postmodernism and the condition of postmodernity.

Now, I wish to discuss further topics such as “time-space compression” and postmodernism and the city for obvious reasons; such topics are relevant to my dissertation project. Let me begin with postmodernism and the city.

In postmodernism and the city, Harvey makes the following points:

1. Postmodernism signifies “a break with the modernist idea of planning and development,” largely characterized by “large-scale, metropolitan-wide, technologically rational and efficient urban plans” (p.66).

2. The urban fabric is seen by postmodernists as necessarily “fragmented, a ‘palimpsest’ [the term suggests ways in which the traces of earlier ‘inscriptions’ remain as a continual feature of the ‘text’ of culture, giving it its particular density and character] of past forms superimposed upon each other, and a ‘collage’ of current uses, many of which may be ephemeral” (p.66).

3. A distinction can be made here between modernism and postmodernism with respect to the way in which space is conceptualized. Modernists see “space as something to be shaped for social purposes and therefore always subservient to the construction of a social project.” Postmodernists on the other hand see “space as something independent and autonomous, to be shaped according to aesthetics aims and principles which have nothing necessarily to do with any overarching social objective” (p.66). Another way of distinguishing them is simply to say that while modernists work within a certain plan, postmodernists eschew planning in favor of design.

4. How do we account for such a shift? The “built environment” is one; how a city looks and how its spaces are organized? Architecture and urban design are crucial for understanding the city as a discourse the way in which Barthes described it. For example, in the wake of the destruction caused by WW II and its aftermath, there was an emphasis on the reconstruction and renewal of the urban fabric with a strong “adoption of the industrialized construction systems and rational planning procedures that modernist architects had long proposed” (p.69), not to mention the role played by the state in carrying out this project such as the elimination of slums, building schools, hospitals, housing and so on. The underprivileged class “get[s] swept under the rug” by urban planning.

5. Harvey has also described postmodern architecture as an “anti-avant-gardist (unwilling to impose solutions, as the high modernists, the bureaucratic planners, and the authoritarian developers tended—and still tend—to do)” (p.76). The proponents of postmodern architecture privilege the aesthetics of diversity and ways in which “symbolic richness” of urban forms are articulated. However, postmodern architecture and urban design grapples with market-driven demands that “carries with it the danger of pandering to the rich and the private consumer rather than to the poor and to public needs, that is in the end…a situation [in which] the architect is powerless to change” (p.77). For e.g., free-market populism “puts the middle classes into the enclosed and protected spaces of shopping malls and atria, but it does nothing for the poor except to eject them into a new and quite nightmarish postmodern landscape of homelessness” (p.77).

6. Focusing on heterogeneity and difference, po-mo takes “architecture away from the ideal of some unified meta-language and breaks it down into highly differentiated discourses. The end result is one in which fragmentation of urban spatial forms. As Harvey puts it, “The multivalency of architecture…renders it ‘radically schizophrenic by necessity’” (p.83).

In his discussion of time-space compression, Harvey makes the following assertion:

1. This notion refers to the way in which capitalism has changed the way time and space are organized in relation to human activity. Harvey deploys the notion of “speeding-up” in understanding time-space compression. The “speeding-up” of the economic and social processes has led to the way in which we experience time and space; in that space and time do not anymore appear to be an obstacle in terms of how we organize our daily life. The re-configuration of time and space is described by Harvey in the following words, “space appears to shrink to a ‘global village’ of telecommunications and ‘spaceship earth’ of economic and ecological interdependencies…and…time horizons shorten to the point where the present is all there is…” (p.240).

2. The transition to flexible accumulation was marked by a speed-up in production through vertical disintegration characterized by subcontracting, outsourcing and so on, which reversed the Fordist tendency towards vertical intergration.

3. Advertising is crucial in the production of commodity and in an increasingly consumerist culture. But, as Harvey puts it, advertising “is no longer built around the idea of informing or promoting in the ordinary sense, but is increasingly geared to manipulating desires and tastes through images that may or may not have anything to do with the product to be sold…” (p.287), prompting Baudillard to declare Marxist analysis of commodity production irrelevant “because capitalism is now predominantly concerned with the production of signs, images, and sign systems rather than with commodities themselves” (p.287).

4. What does it mean in the context of globalization? For Harvey globalization means the shrinking of space and the shortening of time which resulted in the speeding up of the pace of life in which the time to do things and the experiential distance between disparate locations in space becomes shorter.

Levy, Cyberculture

2004-10-09T14:11:00.000-07:00

The text makes some major assertions:

Far from being a sub-culture of Network fanatics, cyberculture expresses a major mutation in the very essence of culture. Ubiquity of information, interconnected interactive documents, reciprocal and asynchronous telecommunications within the group and between groups: the virtualizing and deterritorializing character of cyberspace makes it the vector of an open "Universal".

Indeed, cyberculture expresses the rise of a new Universal, different from the cultural forms that preceded it insofar as it is being built on the non-determination of any global meaning. The more extensive cyberspace grows, the more "universal" it becomes, the less the world of information is totalizable. The Universal of cyberculture has no centre and no guideline. It is empty, without any particular content, or rather it admits all contents, since all it does is put any one point in contact with any other, regardless of the semantic load of the entities concerned. This does not mean that the universality of cyberspace is "neutral" or without consequence, since its major manifestation, the general interconnection process, is already having and will continue to have immense repercussions in economic, political and cultural life. This fact effectively transforms the conditions of life in society. However, it is an indeterminate Universal, with a tendency to remain indeterminate, since each new node on the constantly expanding Network of networks can become a producer or transmitter of new, unpredictable information, and reorganize part of global connectivity for its own purposes.

Cyberspace is setting itself up as the system of systems, but for that very reason, it is also the system of chaos. Although it is the ultimate incarnation of technical transparency, because of its irrepressible teeming activity, it is open to every opacity of meaning. It traces and retraces the shape of a mobile, expanding labyrinth, without any possible plan, a universal labyrinth unimaginable even to Dedalus himself. This universality devoid of central signification, this system of disorder, this labyrinthine transparency Levy calls the Universal without totality, is the paradoxical essence of cyberculture. It can only be fully understood in the perspective of previous changes in the pragmatics of communication.

In oral societies discursive messages were always received in the same context in which they were emitted. Then writing came on the scene, detaching texts from the living context in which they were produced. You can read a message written five centuries ago, or five thousand miles away, and this can often pose serious problems of reception and interpretation. To overcome these difficulties, certain types of message were then specially designed to preserve the same meaning whatever the context (place or time) of reception: they are the "universal" messages (science, book-based religions, human rights, etc.). This universality is built on a certain "closedness" or fixity of meaning. The Universal based on static writing is therefore of a "totalizing" nature. Levy argues that cyberculture revives the co-presence of these messages with their contexts that existed in the days of oral societies, but on another scale, on a completely different orbit. The new universality is no longer the result of any self-sufficiency of the text, any fixity or independence of meaning, since immersion in the networks has made this less necessary. It is growing and spreading through the interconnection of messages with other messages, through their permanent connection to emerging virtual communities, which infuse them with varied and constantly changing meaning.

The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image (Elle)

2004-10-04T13:59:00.000-07:00

Major Ideas: Shlain's thesis is that “Writing of any kind, but especially in its alphabetic form, diminishes feminine values and with them, women's power in culture”. Shlain goes on to suggest that characteristics of a feminine outlook would include holistic, simultaneous, synthetic and concrete views of the world while masculine characteristics would include linear, sequential, reductionist and abstract. He does, of course, recognize that both men and women have both sets of these characteristics, but that feminine characteristics are more prevalent in women, etc. Shlain goes on to suggest that while literacy created major changes and benefits in society, it also had negative effects. He reviews the Hunter/Gatherer societies looking at the value men and women were given for their roles (pretty equal) and moves into a discussion of right brain/left brain to give the reader understanding of the differences and how the brain works together. From here, Shlain explains the correlation between Males & Death, and Female & Life, and how Greek mythology held women in high esteem. Comparing the Greek mythology, mythology in Mesopotamia and among other primitive civilizations, he concludes that with the creation of a monotheistic faith and Western civilization, Goddesses and the role of women faced certain demise. Shlian reviews this demise and relates how the alphabet and the role of literacy promoted masculine ideals and demoted any suggestion of power, sexuality and women. In addition, the idea that the value of the image has decreased with the growing value of the word is fascinating.

Application Value: As I am only halfway through the book, I am not necessarily sure that I am able to apply the ideas yet however the discussion of women and their role of equal and demotion throughout history-I am not yet convinced that the demotion directly correlates with literacy-is fascinating. I am interested in women, gender roles and society and so this fits in well with my interests. Also because the text comments a great deal on history, philosophy and religion I am able to more clearly understand the roles of women during these times and how gender roles have changed throughout history. I've been discussing ideas from the book quite a bit so I think that must have some application value- it is definitely promoting me to think about my beliefs, ideas and understanding. As well, the correlation between image and word is fascinating and may be useful later in my studies. Unfortunately I am not yet sure of a direct application of my reading but clearly it will be useful in my future studies.

2nd Half:

Shlain continues to make his case that the alphabet has, in fact, been a detriment to women. Looking at Israelite culture, politics, Greek gods and goddesses, and the evolution of Indian culture moving from Mohenjo-Daro to the ritual of Sati (a widow being expected to take her place on her husbands' funeral pyre with his corpse). Shlain also addresses time periods, religions and ideas such as Chinese history, Jesus, Buddhism, slavery, Christianity and philosophy (particularly existentialism) in regards to the role that introducing the written word and the subsequent results for women, which were often degrading and demoralizing.

The book concludes that we are moving back into a time of compromise between the right and left brains. Shlain suggests that with the advent of computer (focused on images), television and the great use of images within current culture, the divisions between men and women are closing and that we will, again, see the benefits of a goddess. He does not, of course, mean this literally (that people will start worshiping goddesses again). What he is saying is that we are moving back towards right brained thinking which will have profound changes in personality, including a focus on compassion, with holistic, simultaneous, synthetic and concrete worldviews making a return in the global society.

Shlain states (p.431), “I have tended to characterize the right-hemispheric attributes as purely positive. But it is no less true that relying on them without the ordering balance which is the forte of the left hemisphere leads to a different kind of disarray and can result in mindless anarchy and sensuous excess. Emphasis on one hemispheric mode at the expense of the other is noxious. The human community should strive for a state of complementarity and harmony.”

Overall, I think this book is excellent because it covers such a vast amount of information about historical periods, including discussions of literature, image, culture, and philosophy. The thesis that Shlain presents, that the alphabet and written word have hurt women, is not proven, but I felt his argument is strong. Everything that benefits us also has consequences, and I am not sure if this has been considered before. I even found, in the conclusion, a section that relates to my own research. Shlain suggests that computers are furthering the image (over the written word) which promotes (in his opinion) women and the ideals of the right-brain. This is interesting in light of my interests which focus on college women and their success and persistence in computer science programs which is typically quite low. If the computer is promulgating the image, right-brained ideals and equality between the two hemispheres of the brains, why aren't women drawn to computers naturally?

In any case, overall I thought the book was really interesting. As I mentioned in class, I ordered a bunch of books that sounded interesting but had no central theme, but even in this book I was able to find information that is applicable to my thesis, so I see this as a good choice. I also think this book was beneficial because I have a hard time choosing one area to be interested in and this book covered so much information that I feel I've learned quite a bit from it. I've been discussing different things I read in some of the classes I teach, with coworkers, and have been boring anyone else who will listen with different ideas that came from the book.

States and Strangers (Maria)

2004-09-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

Nevzat Soguk. 1999. States and Strangers. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.

The book is an exploration into the origin, development and employment of the concept of the “refugee” in the context of International Politics. Above all else, the book is a re-thinking of the traditional meaning attached to such politically-laden terms such as “border,” “citizen,” state,” “nation.” To begin with, he acknowledges that there is not one definition of “refugee” today that sufficiently encompasses all the complexities and multiplicities of refugee experiences. Thus, the epistemological base from which much theorizing on the refugee is done is already lacking in broad-enough scope and necessarily leaves our categories of people who do not fit within the neatly defined lines of Internationally-accepted conventions some fifty years ago. The lack of applicability thus creates the problem of accountability regarding the very organizations that are to take care of the person in flight. Soguk suggests that the discourse on the refugee is rooted in a hierarchical interpretation still, an interpretation that is blind to the refugee itself and that leads to a voicelessness that is “an effect of the refugee discourse” (9). Thus the central question in the book: “How is it that the discourse of the refugee announces itself as a privileged discourse oriented to helping the refugee yet all the while manages to afford no place for the refugee? This is, I would accentuate here, a question of power” (9). The answer to this question is to be found in the epistemologically and ontologically stable/sterile nature of the state/citizen discourse as it has been conceived by conventional International Relations scholars. Soguk turns his attention to the so-called paradox of sovereignty, deriving its legitimacy from the “premise that the modern citizen, occupying a bounded territorial community of citizens, is the proper subject of political life” (9) and thus, the paradox:
The state is understood to derive its powers from the citizens it represent,
the citizens who author the state by way of a covenant or social compact
that accords certain powers to the state, the citizens for whom, in return,
the state deploys law, force, and rational administrative resources in order
to guarantee certain protections. (9-10).
The community of citizens that empowers the state is the same community that the state claims to represent and by virtue of whose control the state authorizes its own use of violence, one outcome of which is the figure of the refugee. Neither theories of International Relations (realism and its derivatives), nor practices of International Organizations themselves made up of sovereign entities address sufficiently the question of the refugee as long as the latter continues to be seen as a challenge to territorially-defined authority of the state as well as to the security of its territorially-conceived citizens. The refugee is seen as a problem in the otherwise stable, orderly and secure realm of the nation state. In the context of state-ist discourse, the refugee is inscribed negatively as an outsider, an Other, a threat and at the same time, as the very thing that legitimizes the creation and justification of those very categories of exclusion. The dichotomized understanding of the modern state system cannot but perpetuate its claim to being the unproblematic authority that represents a territorially-bounded citizenry (12). In order that he uncover the paradoxical implications of the refugee, Soguk refers to “contingent moments of history when the presence of the refugees has become both a 'problem' to be addressed and a 'resource' to be employed in the service of discursive yet converging social and political practices of representation that constitute the realities of the sovereign territorial state” (15). In order to do that, Soguk follows the thought of Michel Foucault in uncovering how and why the refugee has been made “objects of acts of problematization” (17) affirming statist practices. As such, they legitimize practices of exclusion spanning from the unit of political organization that is the state to International Organizations' often hypocritical and orchestrated actions. Soguk centers his discussion around three puzzles:
The first puzzle centers on the question of whether it is possible to
retheorize the refugee discourse as one of the many boundary-producing discourses instrumental to the task of statecraft . . . how the refugee
problematizations might work in constitutions and representations of the
relations, institutions, and subjectivities of the sovereign state in local and
global politics. The second puzzle . . . how these problematizations might be
generated in a multilateral fashion, that is, through international activities of intergovernmental regimentation. And finally . . . how these activities of
intergovernmental regimentation are imbricated and bound up with the articulations of a number of fundamental projects and practices in life, including human rights, humanitarianism, security, and democracy and democratic practices. (21)
The figure of the refugee figures as a problem as well as an empowerment for both statist and international activities that perpetuate a rhetoric of regimented and methodical disciplining and inscribing of the “effective boundaries of sovereign statehood and citizenship in contemporary global life” (20). Thus, in conjunction with a call for the recognition of the multiple existing discourses on refugees, the book itself is a multifaceted exploration into the nature of the various theoretical as well as practical employments of the category of the refugee toward the creation of a “category of orchestration of global political life” (22). Chapter one engages the refugee as one of the multiple fields of statecraft in history. Chapter two offers a historical analyses of the evolution and emergence of the category of the refugee in relation to that of the sovereign state. Chapters three and four examine the various aspects of the so-called “international refugee regime” focusing primarily on intergovernmental practices as exemplified by the League of Nations and the United Nations. Chapters five and six examine “how contemporary strategic representations as sovereignty practices constitute strategic discourse on and of security, human rights and democracy, all of which are linked epistemologically and ontologically to the discourse on sovereignty” (25). Rightly so, the book poses more questions than it answers and opens the door to a more critical, certainly more liberating, interpretation and understanding of important issues that have been, to say the least, taken for granted and theoretically abstracted from the every day reality of the displaced human being dying somewhere on the border between two equally unstable, but importantly, sovereign, territories. To look beyond the state is indeed troubling but the only way to hope to see.

Chaosmosis: An Ethico Aesthetic Paradigm (Gacy)

2004-09-30T13:00:00.000-07:00

Mathew Gacy 9/20/04 Chaosmosis: An Ethico Aesthetic Paradigm Indiana UP, 1995 135 pgs 1. Synopsis: In Chaosmosis, we find a proposal for new ways of understanding and producing subjectivity that are conducive to the refoundation of politics in a very broad sense. Félix Guattari advances a schizoanaytic modelisation of subjecticity as a necessary alternative to psychoanalysis and its reductive fixations on the family, structure, and language. Schizoanalysis instead is directed towards complexification, and divergent actualization. It recognizes the interaction between individuals, society, and institutions in the production of subjectivity as well as the heterogeneous construction of the Unconscious. This modelisation, or rather, metamodelisation utilizes the categories of material, energetic, and semiotic Fluxes, concrete and abstract machinic Phylums such as the steam engine, but also the writing machine, virtual Universes of value--more or less, value systems, though the concept is directed towards a recognition of their role in the production of subjectivity--and finite existential Territories, which are psychological, affective spaces created by an experience or situation. Throughout the text, we encounter the concept of the machine liberated from its common technological connotations and expanded to encompass living beings, partial objects, and more abstract entities. Guattari develops a machinism, with its connotations of dynamism and processuality, that he opposes to structure and with which he describes subjectivity and society. Guattari valorizes the aesthetic machine's exemplification of creativity and its involvement in the production of new existential Territories. The capacity for creation is not exclusive to the aesthetic machine, but it carries it farthest. For example, while psychoanalysis has affirmed its scientific status, Guattari claims that it would benefit from the adoption of an aesthetic processual paradigm such that it might "reacquire the creativity of its wild years at the turn of the century" (106). Regarding the production of existential Territories, Guattari writes that

whatever their sophistication, a block of percept and affect, by way of aesthetic composition, agglomerates in the same transversal flash, the subject and object, the self and other, the material and incorporeal, the before and after. . . In short, affect is not a question of representation and discursitvity, but of existence. I find myself transported into a Debussyst Universe, a blues Universe, a blazing becoming of Provence. I have crossed a threshold of consistency. Before the hold of this block of sensation, this nucleus of partial subjectivation, everything was dull, beyond it, I am no longer as I was before, I am swept away by a becoming other, carried beyond my familiar existential Territories (93).
2. Thesis: Guattari posits that new (schizoanalytic) methods of modeling subjectivity that are fundamentally based on heterogeneity and creativity are necessary to advance a general "liberatory" project. 3. Key words: --AUTOPOEISIS: refers to collective entities that engender and specify their own organization and limits and maintain diverse relations of alterity --FINITE EXISTENTIAL TERRITORIES: the psychological, affective space created by an experience/situation --FLUXES (material, energetic, and semiotic): expresses the dynamism of these entities --MACHINIC PHYLUMS (concrete and abstract): groups or families of machines, visible in both the steam engine and the writing machine --VIRTUAL UNIVERSES OF VALUE: value systems implicated in the production of subjectivity 4. School/ Discourse: French Post-Structuralist, Psychoanalytic 5. Thoughts Triggered:
There is a possible tension between the generally democratic and liberatory values that Guattari expresses and the more prominent, better developed valorization of creation, experimentation, and the actualization of virtualities. Elsewhere, Guattari does stress the necessity of a constant vigilance in the face of the potential emergence of micro-fascisms, but he fails to address how the constant becomings that he espouses might be guided and their potential ramifications monitored.
6. Context: Chaosmosis was published in 1992 and is Félix Guattari's final book. In many ways, it is a reinterpretation of Marx and Freud and continues lines of thought that he and Gilles Deleuze developed in Anti-Oedipus (1971) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980). The text is firmly situated within the French post-structuralist theoretical field. Guattari is influenced, most notably, by Nietzsche, Bergson, and far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics. 7. Applications
The text would seem to be of primary relevance for psychology and cultural theory. 8. Mapping of Text
Guattari, Felix. Chaosmosis. Trans. Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis. Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1995. 1 ON THE PRODUCTION OF SUBJECTIVITY 4 In such conditions it appears opportune to forge a more transversalist conception of subjectivity, one which would permit us to understand both its idiosyncratic territorialised couplings (Existential Territories) and its opening onto value systems (Incorporeal Universes) with their social and cultural implications. 6 [Daniel Stern] emphasizes the inherently trans-subjective character of an infant's early experiences. 7 The important thing here is not only the confrontation with a new material of expression, but the constitution of complexes of subjectivation: multiple exchanges between individual-group-machine. These complexes actually offer people diverse possibilities for recomposing their existential corporeality, to get out of their repetitive impasses and, in a certain way, to resingularise themselves. Grafts of transference operate in this way, not issuing from ready-made dimensions of subjectivity crystallised into structural complexes, but from a creation which itself indicates a kind of aesthetic paradigm. One creates new modalities of subjectivity in the same way that an artist creates new forms from the palette. 8,9** [provisional definition of subjectivity] 9 Subjectivity does not only produce itself throgh the psychogenetic stages of psychoanalysis of the "mathemes" of the Unconscious, but also in the large-scale social machines of language and the mass media--which canot be described as human. 10 My perspective involves shifting the human and social sciences from scientific paradigms towards ethico-aesthetic paradigms. 11 [modelisation] In a more general way, one has to admit that every individual and social group conveys its own system of modelising subjectivity; that is, a certain cartography--composed of cognitive references as well as mythical, ritual and symptomatological references--with which it positions itself in relation to its affects and anguishes, and attempts to manage its inhibitions and drives. 12** the crucial thing is to move in the direction of co-management in the production of subjectivity. . . Contemporary upheavals undoubtedly call for a modelisation turned more towards the future and the emergence of new social and aesthetic practices. I opted for an Unconscious . . .[FINISH] 13* How do certain semiotic segments achieve their autonomouy, start to work for themselves ad to secrete new fields of reference? It is from such a rupture that an existential singularisation correlative to the genesis of new coefficients of freedom will become possible. This detatchment of an ethico-aesthetic "partial object" from the field of dominant significations corresponds both to the promotion of a mutant desire and to the achievement of a certain disinterestedness. Here I would like to establish a bridge between the concept of a partial object (obect "a" as theorised by Lacan) that marks the autonomisation of the components of unconscious subjectivity, and the subjective autonomisation relative to the aesthetic object. [Lacan object a] [Bakhtin--> what Guattari call partial enunciation] [subjective autonomisation] 15 [existential refrains] Thus it it not only in the context of music and poetry that we see the work of such fragments detached from content, fragments which I place in the category of "existential refrains." The polyphony of modes of subjectivation actually corresponds to a multiplicity of ways of "keeping time." Other rhythmics are thus led to crystallise existential assemblages, which they embody and singularise. Thee simples examples of refrains delimiting existential Territories can be found in the ethology of numerous bird species. Certain specific song sequences serve to seduce a sexual partner, warn off intruders, or announce the arrival of predators. Each time this involves marking out a well-defined functional space. In archaic societies, it is through rhythms, chants, dances, masks, marks on the body, ground and totems, on ritual occasions and with mythical references, that other kinds of collective existential Territories are circumscribed. 16 To illustrate this mode of production of polyphonic subjectivity, where a complex refrain plays a dominant role, consider the example of televisual consumption. When I watch television, I exist at the intersection: 1. of a perceptual fascination provoked by the screen's luminous animation which borders on the hypnotic, 2. of a captive relation with the narrative content of the program, associated with a lateral awareness of surrounding events (water boiling on the stove, a child's cry, the telephone . . .), 3. of a world of fantasms occupying my daydreams. My feeling of personal identity is thus pulled in different directions. How can I maintain a relative sense of unicity, despite the diversity of components of subjectivation that pass through me? It's a question of the refrain that fixes me in front [17] of the screen, henceforth constituted as a projective existential node. My identity has become that of the speaker, the person who speaks from the television. Like Bakhtin, I would say that the refrain is not based on elements of form, material or ordinary signification, but on the detachment of an existential "motif" (or leitmotiv) which installs itself like an "attractor" within a sensible and significational chaos. The different components conserve their heterogeneity, but are nevertheless captured by a refrain which couples them to the existential Territory of my self. 17 [constellation of Universes] [example] The paradoxical concept of a complex refrain will enable us, in psychoanalytic treatment, to refer to an interpretive event, no longer to Universals or mathemes, not to preestablished structures of subjectivity, but rather to what I call a constellation of Universes. This does not involve Universes of reference in general, but incorporeal domains of entities we detect at the same time that we produce them, and which appear to have been always there, from the moment we engender them. 18 (and earlier) [issues of time, irreversibility] This is why I have opted for pragmatic interventions oriented towards the construction of subjectivities, towards the production of fields of virtualities which wouldn't simply be polarised by a symbolic hermeneutic centered on childhood. 19 In these conditions, the task of the poetic function, in an enlarged sense, is to recompose artificially rarefied, resingularised Universes of subjectivation. For them, its not a matter of transmitting messages, investing images as aids to identification, patterns of behaviour as props for modelisation procedures, but of catalysing existential operators capable of acquiring consistence and persistence. [poetic-existential catalysis] When it is effectively triggered in a given enunciative area--that is, situated in a historical and geo-political perspective--such an analytico-poetic function establishes itself as a mutant nucleus of auto-referentiality and auto-valorisation. 20 Beyond the poetic function, the question of the apparatuses of subjectivation presents itself. And, more precisely, what must characterise them so that they abandon seriality--in Sartre's sense--and enter into processes of singularisation which restore to existence what we might call its auto-essentialisation. . . . the three ecologies--the environment, the socius, and the psyche. We cannot conceive of a collective recomposition of the [21] socius, correlative to a resingularisation of subjectivity, without a new way of conceiving political and economic democracies that respect cultural differences--without multiple molecular revolutions. 21 A partial subjectivity--pre-personal, polyphonic, collective and machinic. Fundamentally, the question of enunciation gets decentered in relation to that of human [22] individuation. 22 So we are proposing to decentre the question of the subject onto the question of subjectivity. Traditionally, the subject . . . [MORE] Thus, we will start with the primacy of enunciative [23] substance over the couplet of Expression and Content. 23 I believe I've found a valid alternative to the structuralism inspired by Saussure, one that relies on the Expression/ Content distinction formulated by Hjelmslev, that is to say, based precisely on the potential reversibility of Expression and Content. Rather than playing on the Expression/ Content opposition which, with Hjelmslev, still repeats Saussure's signifier/ signified couplet, this would involve putting a multiplicity of components of Expression, or substances of Expression in parallel, in polyphony. [abstract machine] [Hjelmslev] 24 . . . to integrate into enunciative assemblages an indefinite number of substances of Expression, such as biological codings or organisational forms belonging to the socius. [machinic subjectivity] Expressive, linguistic and non-linguistic substances install themselves ast the junction of discursive chains (belonging to a finite, preformed world, the world of the Lacanian Other) and incorporeal registers with infinite, creationist virtualities [25] (which have nothing to do with Lacanian "mathemes"). It is in this zone of intersection that subject and object fuse and establish their foundations. It concerns a given that phenomenologists have addressed when they demonstrate that intentionality is inseparable from its object and involves a "before" in the discursive, subject-object relation. 25 We can trace this intuition to Bergson, who shed light on the non-discursive experience of duration by oppositing it to a time cut up into present, past and future, according to spatial schemas. [pathic subjectivity, before the subject-object relation . . .] 26** [pathic subjectivation] 28 [The logic of discursive ensembles vs. pathic logic] [MORE] The logic of discursive sets finds a kind of desperate fulfillment in Capital, the Signifier, and Being with a capital B. Capital is the referent for the generalised equivalence between labour and goods; the Signifier the capitalistic referent for semi- [29] ological expression, the great reducer of ontological polyvocality. The true, the good, the beautiful are "normalising" categories fro processes which escape the logic of circumscribed sets. Capital smashes all other modes of valorisation. 29 [ontological intensity] [MORE] 30 But maybe it's necessary to affirm both these positions concurrently: the domain of virtual intensities establishing itself prior to the distinctions being made between the semiotic machine, the referred object and the enunciative subject. It's from a failure to see that machinic segments are autopoietic and ontogenetic that one endlessly makes universalist reductions to the Signifier and to scientific rationality. 31 Note that the categories of metamodelisation proposed here--Fluxes, machinic Phylums, existential Territories, incorporeal Universes--are only of intertest because they come in fours and allow us to break free of teriary descriptions which always end up falling back into dualisms. The fourth term stands for an nth term: it is the opening onto multiplicity. What distinguishes metamodelisation from modelisation is the way it uses terms to develop possible openings onto the virtual and onto creative processuality. 2 MACHINIC HETEROGENESIS 33 [Humberto Maturana and Francisco Vareli] 34 [diagrammatic schemas] 35** [on abstract machines] [machinic assemblage] When we speak of abstract machines, by "abstract" we can also understand "extract" in the sense of extracting. They are montages capable of relating all the heterogeneous levels that they traverse and that we have just enumerated. The abstract machine is transversal to them, and it is this abstract machine that will or will not give these levels of existence, an efficiency, a power of ontological auto-affirmation. The different components are swept up and reshaped by a sort of dynamism. Such a machinic assemblage will hereafter be described as a machinic assemblage. 36 It is, then, impossible to deny the participation of human thought in the essence of machinism . . .What we need here is a distinction between on the one hand semiologies that produce significations, the common currency of social groups--like the "human" enunciation of people who work with machines--and on the other, a-signifying semiotics which, regardless of the quantity of significations they convey, handle figures of expression that might be qualified as "non-human" (such as equations and plans which enunciate the machine and make it act in a diagrammatic capacity on technical and experimental apparatuses. [MORE] 37*** [machinic vs. structure] 39 [autopoietic vs. allopoietic] The abstract machine passes through all these heterogeneous components but above all it heterogenises them, beyond any unifying trait and according to a principle of irreversibility, singularity, and necessity. 41 [great examples of different machines] 42 ["the delirious machines of Jean Tinguely] 45 [registers of machinic alterity] 47 [Heidegger's example of the commercial plane on the runway] 48 Why are we so insistent about the impossibility of establishing the general transalatability of diverse referential and partial enunciative components of assemblage? . . . distinctions between the different forms of semiological, semiotic, and coded linearity: 49 [a-signifying semiotic machines; example] [hypertexts] 51 And, here again, we need to rediscover a manner of being of Being--before, after, here and everywhere else--without beng, however, identical to itself: a processual, polyphonic Being singularisable by infinitely complexifiable textures, according to the infinite speeds which animate its virtual compositions. 53 . . . pure intensive repetitions that I have called the refrain function. 54* 55 [constellations of Universes of value] 56** 3 SCHIZOANALYTIC METAMODELISATION 58-9*** 58+ go over again 59 By making assemblages of enunciation open, chaotically determined, the concatentation of the four ontological function of Universe, machinic Phylum, Flux and Territory, preserve their pragmatic processuality. 65 [on universes and territories] [the emergent self] [processes of child development from birth onward] 67 [another use of the dialectic] [Universes of reference] 69 [the kitchen at La Borde] [degree of openness (coefficient of transversality)] 70 collective is not here synonomous with groups 71 [Universes, Consistency, partial analyser, a-signifying semiotic, network of nucleu of partial enunciation] 72 [Paul Virilio's "dromospheric" velocities of exchange] The Lacanian Signifier homogenises the various semiotics, it loses the multidimensional character of manyu of them. Its fundamental linearity, inherited from Saussurian structuralism, does not allow it to apprehend the pathic, non discursice, autopoietic character of partial nuclei of uninciation. One indicative topos refers to another indicative topos, without the trans-topical dimension of agglomeration--which charcaterise intensive Territories--ever emerging. 73 [Lacanian rereading of Fort/Da] 74** [assemblage of enunciation in Fort/Da] 76* The Unconscious of the dualist hypothesis of drives of life and death, like that of the transcendence of the Signifier--the murderer of the "things" of context--petrify chaosmic abolition, by aking it lose its immanence; they transform it inot deathly negativity, into a cadaverous object. It is true that a certain capitalistic, reductionist use of language leads it to a state of a signifing linerarity of discrete binary entities which smother, silence, disempower and kill the polysemic qualities of a Content reduced to the state of a neutral "referent." Isn't the task of analysis precisecly to recharge Expression with semiotic hetergeneity and to run counter to the disenchantment, demystification and depoetisation of the contemporary world denounced by Max Weber? 4 SCHIZO CHAOSMOSIS 77 . . . foundational intentionality of subject-object relations. . . 77-8 [the/ a Real] Psychosis starkly reveals an essential source of being-in-the-world. 78*** [Universes/ Territories] [semiotization] [somewhat earlier, discussions of consistency] 79 [on psychosis] [chaosmic existential stasis] Psychosis thus not only haunts neurosis and perversion but also all the forms of normality. . . . --the exclusive insistence of an existential stasis that I describe as chaosmic and which is capable of assuing all the hues of a schizo-paranoiac-manic-epileptoid, etc., spectrum. 80 [Derrida and differance] Why describe the homogenesis of ontological referents--and, by extension, the latent homogensis of other modalities of subjectivation--as chaotic? It's because, all lthings considered, worlding a complexion of sense alwas involves taking hold of a massive and immediate ensemble of contextual idveristy, a fusion in an undifferentiated, or rather de-differentiated, whole. A world is only constituted on the condition of being inhabited by an umbilical point--deconstructive, detotalisating and deterritorialising--from which a subjective positionality embodies itself. . . [MORE]** 81 And chaos is not pure indifferentiation; it possess a specific ontological texture. 83 So we are in the presence of two types of homogenesis: . . . [MORE] 84 The point of this is certainly not to make the schizo a hero of the postmodern . . . [MORE] 85 [the incorporeal Universes of art or religion] [more on chaos vs. complexity] [existential Universes] This, I repeat, stems from the fact that chaosmosis is not exclusive tot he individuated psyche. We are confronted by it in group life, in economic relations, machinism (for example, informatics) and even in the incorporeal Universes of art or religion. 86 Who speaks the truth? This is no longer the question; but how, and under what conditions can the best bring about the pragmatics of incorporeal events that will recompose a world and reinstall processual complexity? The idiosyncratic modelisations grafted onto one-to-one analysis, self-analysis and group [87] psychotherapy . . . always resort to borrowing from specialised langages. Our problemaitc of chaosmosis and the schizoanalytic escape from the prison of signification is firected--to compensate for these borrowings--towards a necessaryt a-signifying deconstruction of their discursivity and towards placing their ontological efficacy into a pragmatic perspective. 5 MACHINIC ORALITY AND VIRTUAL ECOLOGY 88 Lacan's full and empty speech 89** [oral vs. scriptral substances of expression] Speech empties itself when it falls into the clutches of scriptural semiologies fixed in the order of law, the control of facts, gesutres and feelings. The computer voice--"You have not fastened your seatbelt"--does not leave much room for ambiguity. Ordinary speech tries by constrast to keep alive the presence of at least a minimum of so-called non-verbal semiotic components, where the substances of expression constituted from intonation, rhythm, facial tgraits and postures, reinforce ad take over from each other, superimpose themselves, averting in advance the despotism of signifying circulairty. But at the supermarket there is no more time to chat about the quality of a product of haggle for a good price. The necessary and sufficient information has evacuated the existential dimensions of expression. We are not there to exist but to accomplish our duty as consumers. Instead we will begin with blocks of sensations formed by aesthetic practives before the oral, textural, gestural, postural, plastic ... whose function is to elude significations attachte to the trivial perceptions and opinions informing common sentiments. 90-1* [on the importance of art] In our era, aesthetic machines offer us the most advanced models--relatively speaking--for these blocks of sensation capable of extracting full meaning from all the empty signal systems that invest us from every side. 91 [ecosophy] This is to say that generalised ecology--or ecosophy-- will work as a science of ecosystems, as a bid for political regenera-[92]tion, and as an ethical, aesthetic and analytical engagement. 93** But whatever their sophistication, a block of percept and affect, by way of aesthetic composition, agglomerates in the same transversal flash, the subject and object, the self and other, the material and incorporeal, the before and after. . . In short, affect is not a question of representation and discursitvity, but of existence. I find myself transported into a Debussyst Universe, a blues Universe, a blazing becoming of Provence. I have crossed a threshold of consistency. Before the hold of this block of sensation, this nucleus of partial subjectivation, everything was dull, beyond it, I am no longer as I was before, I am swept away by a becoming other, carried beyond my familiar existential Territories. 94 [the enunciative consistency of Jazz] 96 [umbilical point] [hypertexts again] 97 [Pierre Levy-dynamic ideography] 6 THE NEW AESTHETIC PARADIGM 98 [territorialized Assemblages of eununciation] 98-9 [on archaic social life, art, etc.] 99 [on the transition to modern configurations] 99-100 [Universes of value] 101 [Duchamp] [Again, territorialized Assemblages of enunciation (which seem to be characterized by a "kind of polysemic, animistic, transindividual subjectivity")] 102 [discursive time (time marked by social clocks)] 103 . . . with deterritorialized assemblages of enunciation . . . 104 [materials of expression] 103-4** [modular individuation] 105*** [Capitalisitc deterritorialized assemblages] 106** [the value for psychoanalysis to move from scientific to aesthetic paradigms] 107** [3 tendencies of aesthetic processual paradigms] [the ethico-political implications] [scientific enunciation (with individual, collective, institutional, heads)] 108 [on the three types of enunciative assemblages] 109 [Being as an ontological equivalent] 111 [two types of ontological consistency] 7 THE ECOSOPHIC OBJECT 120 It is less a question of having access to novel cognitive spheres than of apprehending and creating, in pathic modes, mutant existential virtualities. 124 Exploding the hegemony of the capitalist valorisation of the world market consists in giving consistency to the Universes of value of social assemblages and existential Territories which situate themselves, in a manner of speaking, against the implosive evolution we are witnessing. 125 . . . The positionality of these refrains in the ordinary world will be effected, for example, as a derivative and a-signifying function of mythical, fantasmatic and . . . theoretical narrativity. 126 To speak of machines rather than drives, Fluxes rather than libido, existential Territories rather than instances of the self and transference, incorporeal Universes rather than unconscious complexes and sublimation, chaosmic entities rather than signifiers--fitting ontological dimensions together in a circular manner rather than dividing the world up into infrastructure and superstructure--may not simply be a matter of vocabulary . . . [MORE] 128 The primary purpose of ecosophic cartography is thus not to signify and communicate but to produce assemblages of enunciation capable of capturing the points of singularity of a situation. 131 The work of art, for those who use it, is an activity of unframing, of rupturing sense, of baroque proliferation or extreme impoverishment, which leads to a recreation and a reinvention of the subject itself. What is important is to know if a work leads effectively to a mutant production of enunciation. 133 Beyond material and political demands, what emerges is an aspiration for individual and collective reappropriation of the production of subjectivity.

Nietzsche (Cherie)

2004-09-30T06:25:00.000-07:00

Name: Fredrich Nietzsche
Translator: Walter Kaufmann
Date: 1966
Title: Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future
Pub. Date: 1989
Length: 256

1) Synopsis: A historical critique which refutes that there is no single truth or authority of traditional power; there are only interpretations. There is no definitive version of truth in philosophy, religion, language, or science. Thus the Socratic quest for some way was/is futile.

2) Thesis: The "will to power" is the most basic instinct that an individual maintains. It is that will which incites one’s desire for self-preservation and allows superiority over weaker individuals. Ultimately the claim for "truth" is masked by the history of the life of the person proposing that particular "truth". It is the will to abound in self definition and seek out truth within the moment, one which is always evolving.

3) Key Words
1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Will to Power, Existentialism, Perspectivism, Zarathustra, Self-realization, Sublimation, Nihilism

4) School/Discourse
1. Existentialism - the desire to make rational decisions despite the existence of an irrational universe. The human desires for logic and immortality are futile, therefore humans are forced to individually define meaning.
2. Response to:
(a) Socrates – Search for truth; all men are equal in their search for living a moral and humble life.
(b) Kant - Empiricism and rationalism; knowledge is transmitted through the organization of space, time, and sensation. The search for absolute truth.
(c) Schopenhauer - Idealism; reality is a representation of the will and self-preservation.
(d) Hegel - German Idealism; recognition of consciousnesses through the recognition of mutual and distinct patterns.

5) Context: Beyond Good and Evil is Nietzsche’s attempt to summarize his philosophy of life. Nietzsche’s voice is very straightforward and often sarcastic, which can make this text at times confusing. One is often turned into thinking that Nietzsche is contradicting himself when really he is portraying a caustic view of another. The texts and its subdivisions are reliant upon each preceding section, therefore a careful read and a return to previous sections is helpful so as not to get lost in the underlying current of the moment that Nietzsche is attempting to capture. Throughout the text Nietzsche attacks Western morality and the interpretations of outward appearances. Vowing instead that humanity’s sensibility lies within its “will to power.” That is the shifting power that allows individuals to define everything for themselves. One truly fails to live if own does not take that risk or attempt to seize that recurring moment. Humans should cultivate the strong of will, becoming better and going beyond what it is at present. The only boundaries are those made by the past through enslavement to prescribed morality. The new philosopher is free from these bindings and seeks out its own truths.

The text is broken down into 9 core sections:

1. On the Prejudices of Philosophers – “…every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.” (p.13)
2. The Free Spirit - “Independence”: free spirit “is for the very few; it is a privilege of the strong.” It is “daring to the point of recklessness.” (p.41)
3. What is Religious - “The philosopher as we understand him, we free spirits—as the man of the most comprehensive responsibility who has the conscience for the over-all development of man—this philosopher will make use of religions for his project of cultivation and education, just as he will make use of whatever political and economic states are at hand.” (p.72)
4. Epigrams and Interludes – “The sage as astronomer.—As long as you still experience the stars as something “above you” you lack the eye of knowledge.” (p.81)
5. Natural History of Morals – Every morality is against nature since “one is accustomed to lying.” “…one is much more of an artist than one knows.” (p.105)
6. We scholars – “The objective man is an instrument… a mirror …that awaits content and substance in order to take ‘shape’.” (p.128)
7. Our Virtues – “As men of historical sense…we modern men, like semi-barbarism—and reach our bliss only where we are most—in danger.” (p. 153) “Our honesty, we free spirits—let us see to it that it does not become our vanity.” (p.156) (Side note: Some disparaging comments on the role and function of women; she is not “retrogressing”.)
8. Peoples and Fatherlands – “Perhaps Wagner’s strangest creation is inaccessible, inimitable, and beyond the feelings of the whole, so mature, Latin race, not only today but forever.”(p.198)
9. What is Noble – “The noble human being honors himself as one who is powerful, also as one who has power over himself.”(p.205) Self-preservation, Self enhancement, self-redemption. The Dionysian philosopher, who longs to reduplicate himself “trying to immortalize what cannot live and fly much longer—only weary and mellow things.”(p.237)

6) Applications
1. The role of the philosopher
2. Christian and Enlightenment social and moral systems
3. Religion and the “Death of God”
4. Socratic philosophy
5. Perspectivism and a look at meaning of truth

7) Other Works:
1. The Birth of Tragedy, Essay: 1872, (English, 1968)
2. Human, All Too Human, Essay: 1878
3. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Essays: 1883-1892, (English, 1961)
4. Beyond Good and Evil, Essay: 1886
5. On the Genealogy of Morals, Essay: 1887
6. Ecce Homo, Essay: 1888
7. Twilight of the Idols, Essay: 1889
8. The Anti-Christ, Essay: 1895
9. The Will to Power, Essay: 1901, (English, 1967)

Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (Callen)

2004-09-29T07:19:00.000-07:00

Callen Shutters
September 20 and 27, 2004
Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative by Mieke Bal
University of Toronto Press, 1985
164 pages

1. This project is focused upon introducing readers to the field of narrative theory. Bal breaks down storytelling into three categories, which also correspond to three chapters in the text. These categories include Fabula: Elements, Story: Aspects, and Text: Words. The project of chapter one is to introduce the idea of the ‘fabula’ and to break down the story by the functionality of its parts. That is, Bal describes in detail how the narrative is broken down into events, actors, actants, time, and location. Chapter two focuses upon aspects of the story, including ordering, direction, possibilities, distance, and focalization. Also, Bal discusses the use of narrative techniques such as span, anticipation, achrony, rhythm, pause, frequency, predictability, and suspense. Within these subtopics, Bal gives examples of texts that employ each of these methods of embellishing a narrative. The final argument of this chapter is that “focalization is,…the most important, most penetrating, and most subtle means of manipulation” (116). Focalization accounts for the lens with which readers approach a narrative and considers the role of the reader in the relation of a narrative. Chapter three focuses upon an in-depth study of the many issues surrounding the distinct identities of the narrator and the author. Bal concludes her study by describing the relationships between primary and embedded texts.

2. Within narrative theory and the models of narrativity, there is a homology. That is, “a correspondence between the (linguistic) structure of the sentence and that of the whole text composed of various sentences” (11). In addition to the linguistic homology, Bal feels that there is also a structural homology “between the fabulas of narratives and real fabulas,” or the fabulas of life (12). By breaking down a story into categories of events, actors, actants, time, and location, these homologies emerge.

3. Chapter One Key Terms: Narratology: “the theory of narrative texts” (3)
Narrative Text: “a text in which an agent relates a narrative” (5)
Story: “a fabula that is presented in a certain manner” (5)
Fabula: “a series of logically and chronologically related events that are
caused or experienced by actors” (5)
Event: “the transition from one state to another state” (5)
Actors: “agents that perform actions (not necessarily human)” (5)
Act: “to cause of to experience an event” (5)

Chapter two key terms:
Aspects: a term that indicates that the story “does not consist of material
different from that of fabula, but that this material is looked at from a certain,
specific angle” (49)
Perspective: “the technical aspect, the placing of the point of view in a
specific agent” (50)
Point of View: “view from which the image of the fabula and the (fictitious)
world where it takes place are constructed” (50)
Chronological Order: “a theoretical construction, which we can make on the
basis of laws of everyday logic which govern common reality” (51)
Chronological Deviations or Anachronies: “differences between the
arrangement in the story and the chronology of the fabula” (53)
Media Res: “a conventional construction of a novel, in which the novel
begins by immersing the reader in the middle of the fabula” (53)
External Analepsis: a case in which “a retroversion (flashback) takes place
completely outside the time span of the primary fabula” (59)
Internal Analepsis: a retroversion which “takes place within the time span of
the primary fabula” (59)
Span: “the stretch of time covered by an anachrony,” can be complete or
incomplete (disconnected jumps in chronological fabula time) (61)
Achrony: “a deviation in time which cannot be analyzed any further,” an
instance where the “linearity of the fabula and the linearity of its presentation
to the reader no longer have any correspondence at all” (66)
*examples include a back reference, anticipation-within-retroversion,
retroversion-within-anticipation
Ellipsis: “an omission in the story of a section of the fabula” (71)
Iterative Presentation: “a whole series of identical events presented at once,”
the reverse of repetition (78)
Semantic Axis: “pairs of contrary meanings” (86)
*examples include large-small, rich-poor, man-woman, kind-unkind
Place: related to the physical, mathematically measurable shape of spatial
dimensions within the fictional sphere of the fabula” (93)
Space: “places seen in relationship to their perception,” places which are
linked to certain points of perception (93)
Focalization: the relationship between the vision and what is ‘seen,’
perceived” (100)
Focalizor: the subject of the focalization, the point from which the elements
are viewed (104)

Chapter Three Key Terms:
Narrator: “the linguistic subject, a function and not a person which expresses
itself in the language that contributes to the text” (119)
Implied Author: “the result of the investigation of the meaning of a text, and
not the source of that meaning,” “term used in order to discuss and analyse the
ideological moral stances of a narrative text without having to refer directly to
a biographical author” (119-120)

4. Structuralist. Bal describes elements “in their relation to each other, and not as isolated units” (45). The “assumption is that fixed relations between classes of phenomena form the basis of the narrative system of the fabula” (46). The approach relies upon a system of classification. Other theorists expanded upon and referenced include Barthes, Hendricks, Chatman, Bremond, Griemas, Souriau, Prince, Lotman, Genette, Hamon, Booth, Uspenski, Lodge, Friedman, Rimmon-Kenan, and Lanswer.

5. Since the text is a basic introduction to the elements of narrative, the text did not trigger substantial thought or analysis beyond the elements listed. Most importantly, it pushed me to think of examples of or exceptions to the structure of the elements listed in the text. Finally, the key terms used in the discourse of narratology will prove vital to the comprehension of other theoretical texts on this topic.

6. The book offers a broad view of the history of narrative theory while also breaking down the pieces of a narrative into easily navigable elements. Within these elements, one can apply the investigation to any narrative. In this respect, Bal’s analysis seems timeless.

7. This text has provided me with a sound base of knowledge of narrative theory and the many elements that go into storytelling.

Baudrillard, Simulations (Rachel)

2004-09-29T07:15:00.000-07:00

Rachel Moe
September 28, 2004
Simulations by Jean Baudrillard
Publication Date: 1983
Length: 159 pages

Synopsis
Simulations consists of two main sections, the first titled The Precession of Simulacra and the second titled The Orders of Simulacra. Baudrillard’s focus in the first section of this book is to introduce the concept that the world in which we live consists of images and signs that have disengaged themselves from “reality.” The new postmodern world is made up of simulations that are not based on “reality” but are devised by our imaginations. For example, he believes that in the past a map was a representation of reality itself. Today it is too difficult to distinguish between reality and the image of reality due to simulation. This blurring of what is “real” and “unreal” is what the author calls “hyperreality.” It is substituting signs of reality for reality itself. He believes that there are four phases of the image. The phases include reflecting a basic reality, masking or perverting a basic reality, masking the absence of a basic reality, and bearing no relation to any reality (its own pure simulacrum).
In the second half of Simulacra, Baudrillard discusses the three orders of appearance, which include Counterfeit, Production and Simulation. Counterfeit is representative of the “classical” period from the Renaissance to the industrial revolution and occurs when a basic reality is masked or distorted. Baudrillard believes that in the Renaissance “the false is born along with the natural.” He introduces the concept of stucco, where castes and artificial signs bind society, where social power is created.
During the industrial revolution, signs did not have to be counterfeited because they were produced on a massive scale. He proposed that through this series of production and reproduction objects became undefined simulacra, one just a copy of the other. Reproduction masks the absence of a basic reality.
The third order, simulation, is the order of the modern world. One must use this model as a point of reference. Things can no longer be based on the order of production, and Baudrillard compares the third order to DNA and codes, where a point of reference no longer exists, where the structure of the sign is digital. He argues that science has become man’s thought process and that everything is presented to us in question and answer form. He believes the answers to the tests we create are predetermined. You can approach a subject at any angle to capture the mood or response you desire! The media use samples, for example public opinion polls, and manipulate “that which cannot be decided.” Any question asked already has a fabricated response. A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when one uses polling. The question creates the answer.
Throughout Simulations, Baudrillard focuses on media, society, and technology. Current media technology has changed how people think and function. The boundaries between the masses and the media have imploded and it is impossible to separate them. The media reach a huge mass of people, feeding them the same information. In return, the masses make demands on the media as to what they want to view. This exchange between the media and the masses blurs the boundaries of reality.

Thesis
In society, the vast number of signs and simulations blur the boundaries of reality.

Key Words/Terms
Simulation- the representation of a system that imitates reality
Hyperreality- substituting signs of reality for reality itself
Simulacra- images, signs and codes

School of Thought
Simulations belongs to the postmodern school of thought.

Thoughts Text Triggered
Reading this text reinforced the idea that the media are so intertwined in the reality of our lives that they have become a part of our reality. It is difficult to distinguish between news and entertainment, fact and fiction. Reality TV is simulation at its best, not even reality. This text encouraged me to think about the possibility that things exist in order to prove a reality that is not there. For example, people have created symbols (religious, etc.) to represent a reality that they cannot prove. Overall, this book has opened my eyes to the intellectual changes made by society and it has given me another angle from which I can study the media. Baudrillard’s cynical and somewhat dismal views of the world and the age of digitization are intriguing, leaving readers to ponder whether the reality they have created for themselves could ever be more insane than the reality in which Baudrillard lives.

Context
The context of this book is based in postmodern society and examines mass media and emulsion in the general population.

Applications of Text
Baudrillard’s ideas can virtually be applied to any area of modern society. One application of this text is to the interactions between current media and technology and society. It demonstrates the power of the media to effect changes in society. For example, in the past there was an instance where the media told people that there was an oil shortage. This affected society’s behavior when people reacted to this misinformation. The shaping power of the media is vast and should always be under scrutiny. Another application of the text is the numbing effect the media have on society. Some children, after simulating “reality” through video games, become numb to the violence in the real world. Children have resorted to gun violence without realizing the horror of what they are doing.

Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Aloy)

2004-09-29T07:13:00.000-07:00

Book Report
Aloy Canete

The Consequences of Modernity
By Anthony Giddens
Stanford University Press, California, 1990, ix + 186 pp.

Synopsis

In this book, Anthony Giddens examines the nature and consequences of modernity by looking at major discontinuities separating modern social institutions from the traditional (or pre-modern) social orders. The disjuncture stems from the following: the pace of change (as in the unprecedented rapidity of change in modern technology), the scope of change (as in the extent to which change has affected the world), and the nature of social institutions not found in pre-modern societies such as nation-state, dependence on inanimate power sources, commodification of products and wage labor, predominance of urban life forms and so on, which, of course, are contingent on capitalism, industrialism, surveillance, and military power.

Giddens argues that modernity involves a profound reorganization of time and space in social and cultural life. This is spelled out in his discussion on “time-space distanciation” and “disembedding.” According to Giddens, social relations of pre-modern societies predominantly are largely confined to a face-to-face interaction in a given locale. However, the advent of modernity undermines social interaction in pre-modern societies by “fostering relations between ‘absent’ others, locationally distant from any given situation of face-to-face interaction” (p.18); in other words, it disembeds or lifts out social relations from local contexts of interaction and rearranges them across indefinite spans of time-space. Reflexivity is another defining feature that separates modernity from pre-modern societies.

In understanding the nature of modernity, Giddens dwells lengthily on the issues of trust in respect to disembedded institutions and the questions of security, risk, and danger in the modern world. Modernity, for Giddens, is a double-edged phenomenon if not paradoxical. One can see the benefits and advantages modern social institutions have created, which have affected the world on a global scale. On the other hand, modernity has led to problems that are increasingly becoming very significant today, such as the degrading nature of modern industrial work, the growth of totalitarianism, the threat of environmental destruction, and the alarming development of military power and weaponry. How far can we…harness the juggernaut, or at least direct it in such a way as to minimize the dangers and maximize the opportunities which modernity offers to us?—is the challenge we all are facing.

Keywords: modernity, time-space distanciation, disembedding, trust, reflexivity, juggernaut, utopian realism, post-modernity

Denzin , Images of Postmodern Society: Social Theory and Contemporary Cinema (Michael)

2004-09-29T07:12:00.000-07:00

Images of Postmodern Society: Social Theory and Contemporary Cinema.
By Norman K. Denzin
Denzin’s book is a study of the postmodern self as it is represented in two places: postmodern social theory and a selection of contemporary Hollywood movies.

The book is organized into two parts.
Part 1: “The Postmodern” which is four chapters.
1. “Defining the Post-Modern Terrain.” A description of the post-modern contemporary world in all its aspects.
2. Postmodern Social Theory.” Where a post-modern theory fits among a current school of theorists who disregard it. “A certain nostalgia pervades contemporary social theory, a longing for a past which postmodern social theory says is over.” These theorists are in danger of being past over as irrelevant.
3. Takes on the Postmodern: Baudrillard, Lyotard and Jameson. The relevant, though flawed, theorists, in Denzin’s view.
4. Learning From Mills (or C. Wright Mills, who wrote Sociological Imagination, which was one of American sociology’s first treatments of the postmodern condition. Mills’s main topic was the relationship between personal troubles and public issues.)

Part II: In the second part Denzin works back and forth between social theory texts (Mills, Baudrillard, Barthes, Derrida, poststructuralism, post-modernism, feminist cultural studies, etc) and cinematic representations of life in contemporary America in six films: Blue Velvet, Wall Street, Crimes and Misdemeanors, When Harry Met Sally, sex, lies and videotape, Do the Right Thing. He uses the films as “readings of contemporary life in America, finding postmodern contradictions in them which mirror the everyday in the society and its popular culture.”

Denzin says that his goal is “to fit Mills’s call for a postmodern sociological imagination to Baudrillard’s reading of contemporary America.”
In the preface and the first chapter Denzin defines “postmodern,” post-modernism” and “post-modern self” often and in a few different ways. I think Denzin does this to get a handle on the sometime vague definition of postmodernism and also to try to show how vast and encompassing postmodernism is, in terms of the way it affects and defines culture and society.
Denzin talks of the postmodern self in terms of three cultural identities: class, gender and race. And, evoking Baudrillard he talks about how “the postmodern self has become a sign of itself, a double dramaturgical reflection anchored in media representations on one side and everyday life on the other.” And Denzin thinks that this double self is too often reduced to its markers of class, race and gender.

Overall, Denzin is interested in finding a new sociology that stays in touch with the experience of the late 20th century. He also wants to figure out how individual human beings can emerge from the things that define them: the signs, the reflections and the assignments of race, class and gender. I think this is a laudable, if ambitious and difficult, goal to achieve. But I worry about the things he worries about and I am happy to follow him and see what he proposes.
What is scary to see is just how much further down the road we are on the postmodern path that Denzin lays out in his book only 13 years ago. The world is so much more hypermediated and remediated, and people, especially young people, are so much more defined by image and reflection, while race, gender and class are still essentially what marks each of us.
It has been occurring to me lately—and this book has been part of the catalyst—just how constructed I am by the post-modern condition. I was at an art gallery the other night, a small one with students and artists commingling, sharing their work, and I realized I was resisting it because the media wasn’t validating their work. Sub-consciously I have come to believe that an actor is not a “true actor” unless he is on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, a painter, not a painter, unless her work is covered in The New York Times. My apartment is top to bottom with representations. My walls are covered with framed movie posters—representations of representations—and I see myself reflected in them. Indiana Jones, Lawrence of Arabia—I have constructed myself, my attitudes of romance, adventure, philosophy in their image. What is real about me? Where is my essential humanness? Who would I be without these images, this postmodern society to form and inform me?
So I find the book readable and interesting if not attempting to be (so far at least) entirely original. Denzin does a very good job of situating theorist and theories in context and in providing summaries of theorist’s work.

Sontag, Photography (Victor)

2004-09-29T07:09:00.000-07:00

name: Susan Sontag
title: On Photography
pub date: 1973
length: 208 pgs.

Sontag’s basic premise in this text is to define the meaning of photography; what it is. How it traverses from a non-artistic mimetic medium to a socially impacting/aware artistic form.

Is it an art form? Mechanical, soul-less, a violation, a method of control (government), acquisition, etc.? Yes.

Sontag runs the gamut from Arubs’ work on documenting/abstracting even further the “victims” of society, down to the differences between American and European photographic endeavors. A discussion on how pht is more wholly American in the sense that pht makes the now old, today yesterday, so on and so forth—“a less stable connection with history”.

“…you’ve lost your identity. You’ve fallen through the cracks of our quick-fix, one-hour
photo, instant oatmeal society”. – Lisa Simpson

Photography furnishes instant histories (and memories); a society becomes “modern” when it produces and consumes images; preferring image to the thing, copy to the original, the representation to reality, appearance to being (Feuerbach in the Essence of Christianity). It confirms and consumes reality.

Photography is not only a record of the world, but an evaluation, makes everything beautiful, even the humble, no one ever said, “isn’t that ugly”; yet it struggles between beautification and truth-telling.

Is a transgression not only upon the subject, but upon the spectator as well; robs the spectator from a deeper appreciation/connection of/with the “real” thing. The “real” thing fails in comparison to the feelings evoked by the “realities” of the photo.

Does not create the real, it merely recycles the real.

The camera is the ultimate too/weapon of the tourist. Photography/camera makes everyone a tourist, a voyeur. It is phallic, a predatory weapon, a fantasy machine.

Because a photograph is a fixed point in time, it becomes a message from the past. Giving rise to (photographic) memories, or memories dependent upon photos. Because a photo is a material object, by possessing this material object, the experience captured therein is possessed as well, an imaginary possession.

Photography = captured experience.

On Photography is a “perfect” example of how to understand photography, as well as thinking photographically. It also serves a primer of sorts to visual theory and culture. If you want a good read that won’t leave you going “huh?”, but will leave you going “hmmm”, then this is the text to pick up. Sontag covers each and every single base, with slight hints to her bias, but does so well. Even includes, as a final chapter, quotes on photography.

Connected - Steven Shaviro

2004-09-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

Shaviro's text explores the socio-psychological effects of pomo networks. He uses science fiction as a means to explore a number of themes including metaphysics, gender, identity, sexuality, technology and biology. I suggest that if you are a science fiction fan and are interested in postmodern culture than this might be a good read. Shaviro sees science fiction as a prophetic discourse.
If you are not much of a sci-fi fan then it may not be worth the effort to dig into this for some pomo insights. They're there but are piggy-backed with a knowledge of contemporary sci-fi, especially Jeter's Noir. If you want more detail, email me.

How to Contribute - The Manifesto

2004-09-26T07:40:00.000-07:00

Thinking Culture is a virtual book club. Its goal is to serve as a library for writers who review media dealing with the nature/theory of modern and postmodern culture. The idea began in a culture theory class at Arizona State University in 2004. Students were asked simply to read/watch five media sources that dealt with any aspect of cultural theory, everything from architecture to pomo zoo spaces, from theories of representation to Kill Bill aesthetics.

If you are interested in posting and sharing your readings of cultural texts/cultural theory, please email me at
coolpoint25@cox.net and I will give you access. Please respect the purpose of this site.