So Long, Farewell

Looking back over this semester, I can definitely see the growth and change that we have experienced as a class. I remember during one of the first classes where Professor McGuire asked us what we already knew about theory. No one really had any definite answers, or really felt comfortable enough with what they knew to discuss it fully. Since those first tentative days, I think that we have become more familiar and comfortable with the confusion that theory hands us. There were many points during the semester where I was, undoubtedly, confused; but like Dr.McGuire said, its ok. I think that being confused is kind of the point of theory. Liberal Humanism was very easy to understand because it was smelting that we were all used to hearing; thoughts that we had thought before. But these other theories; they make us think about things in ways that we might not normally; prompting us to look beyond comfortable thought and analyze things more deeply.

I think that the theories that I found to pose the most significant questions about the culture of a text were Marxist Theory, Feminist Theory and Post Colonial Theory. These three theories all focus on cultural ideas, power structures, and hierarchy. They give us three very different ways to looks at American Society and the way that American ideologies and culture is reflected in literature. They have opened my eyes to things that I might not have noticed otherwise. Studying power structure as it is portrayed in literature is an interesting indicator of how a society functions and how people relate to each other. I also liked reading about Saussure and I thought that his ideas were very interesting and gave me a better understanding about the structure of language and how we perceive it.

Like I said before, there were definitely many challenging moments. One of the most difficult theories for me to grasp was Psycho-analytic. To me, Lacanian thought was so confusing and it was difficult for me to tie the ideas we discussed into literature that I have experienced. Overall though, I think that this class was a very positive experience. It was definitely very challenging at times, but I think that is what made it so interesting. I liked being challenged by these difficult concepts, as this helped me to seek a better understanding of the theories and how they apply to literature.

Arrivederci!

Thinking about Feminism

Thank you Dr. Krouse for an interesting post!

Feminism is a very interesting theory. Its roots, like Marxism, lie in politics, in class struggle and in hierarchical oppression. I think that approaching a text with a political agenda, like these theories do, is a very interesting way to approach a text. Through these theories we can analyze the system in which the text operates, the beliefs held by the varying tiers of society and how they all work around each other in order to form a complete, albeit imperfect, system. Through the eyes of feminist politics, we are able to examine culture in a way that we might not have before. Living in a patriarchal, male dominated society like ours, it is easy to look at things through that perspective. Feminist theory allows us to open up to new ideas, and a new way of thinking about situations. In my paper for class, I discussed a feminist criticism of The Little Mermaid. I went into it, knowing that it was sexist, but upon reading more about feminist theory, I was able to pick out things that I would not necessarily have looked for before. It is very different looking at society from the point of view of a woman, and understanding how she is supposed to participate in male society; male language.

While this theory opens up new ways of looking at literature and language, it is also partially limiting. Limiting the analysis of writing into this political framework excludes many other views. When feminist critics simply use gender as an analysis point they miss out on things like class and time period and psychology; that's why i think that using feminism combined with other theories like Marxist and Lacanian allows the theory to be more open minded, to explore gender along with other qualities. These types of feminism allow for a more comprehensive analysis of literature and language under feminist criticism.

Just for this Moment

Thank you Ms. Sheldon for such an interesting post!

I found the discussion of Lacan's idea of the "death drive" to be especially interesting. I find it interesting that it says that sexual identity is no identity at all. It has nothing to do with a persons true identity. Sexuality in fact "radically destabilizes the self and threatens to undo all the structures within which we try to make meaning of the world." Lacan says that the "death drive" directs us away from understanding our Symbolic and Imaginary and leads us towards sexual satisfaction in which we will lose all sense of these. He also says that through the sexual experience people experience "an orgasmic moment of blindness" called jouissance. In this brief moment, ones sense of self is completely shattered.

I think that the first section of Mantissa works against this idea. Fowles shows us that through Greens sexual experience he is gaining more and more of his identity. He begins to piece together bits of his identity, recognizing that the methodology being used is something he knows he would never have supported in his 'past' life. In fact through his orgasm, the moment of jouissance, he creates something. A book. His sense of self is not undone, it is confirmed. This goes against Lacan's idea that jouissance and identity can not coexist. It is through the jouissance that Green forms his identity. He is a writer, and this scene that has been playing is not reality, but a creative process.

The New First Family

This is just because I am so happy.


I wonder what it is like to wake up one morning, look in the mirror and face the reality that you are the next president of the United States. I wonder what Lacan would say. Can you experience the "mirror stage" more than once per life time?

The Swift Fatality of Fall

First, before I say anything else, I want to say HOORAY! Happy Day After Election Day! Everything turned out quite nicely if I do say so myself...

Ok, so... Mantissa.

I could not help but notice that the first few pages of this novel connect quite well to Lacan's "Mirror Stage." the first lines where the "he" is experiencing something resembling the pre-mirror stage moment where the child has yet to realize the reality of themselves as an "I." Fowles writes "It was conscious of a luminous and infinite haze, as if it were floating, godlike, alpha and omega, over a sea of vapor and looking down." This quotation connects us well to the pre realization. Before a person realizes that they are an I they are in stuck in the haze of nonrecognition. They have no sense of their symbolic reality. From here Fowels goes on to tell more of "his" experience. "With the swift fatality of fall, the murmurs focused to voices, the shadows to faces. As in some obscure foreign film, nothing was familiar; not language, not location, not cast. Images and labels began to swim... these collocations of shapes and feelings, of associated morphs and phenoms, returned like the algebraic formulas of school days....It was conscious, evidently; but bereft of pronoun, all that distinguishes person from person." In this passage the character in the novel is experiencing the moment of the mirror stage. Where things are beginning to make sense. What was once bleak obscurity, is now beginning to take a form with solid borders. He is beginning to realize his identity, however what he is lacking "the pronoun" is his symbolic place. "All that makes a person a person" can refer to Lacan's idea of how a subject gains their subjectivity through language and through the rules and regulations of a culture. Without knowing these things the subjects can not realize their identity.

The Mirror Stage similarities continue when the subject finally does come to realize (at least in part) his symbolic place. "In a kind of mental somersault it was forced to the inescapable conclusion that far from augustly floating in the stratosphere, it was actually lying on its back in bed." He has realized his surrounding, and the reality that comes along with them.

The rest of the chapter is also a reflection of the mirror stage because he slowly beings to understand more and more of the social and symbolic reality that he has woken up into. As he makes more revelations he begins to discover himself further as he sorts out his thoughts from those that the people in his "new world" are telling him..

There is no Spoon...

Thanks to Ken Rufo for a great post!

I really enjoyed reading this post and found the real world examples given by Mr.Rufo exceptionally helpful. For my post I want to talk about his discussion of the simulacrum, simulation and the hyperreal. A simulacrum mimics a simulation, however there is quite a distinctive difference. A simulacra is a copy without any real model. The example that Ken Rufo gives is the World Showcase in Disney's Epcot. Each nation is not actually a simulation of the nation. "They are so fake that they aren't actually copying anything." He says that the culture of the simulation does not allow us to discover the actual real on our own. Simulacra make things real and we are in effect, blinded from reality by these simulacra.

The hyperreal refers to forming our reality through a simulation of the reality. Ken Rufo gives the example of going to a national park and trying to imitate the famous pictures that we have all seem of these places. Our experience and knowledge of a place is experienced through simulations that we have previously experienced. This is the same as someone traveling to Pisa and taking the picture holding up the Leaning Tower. The Leaning Tower of Pisa is experienced for thousands of people a year take this same picture, because they have seen hundreds just like it before. They have this experience of the tower through all of the other pictures that they have seen, their "reality is filtered through a simulation of the reality."

I find that these ideas are seen every day in our lives. We experience things in the hyperreal everyday. We do something because we have seen what others have done before us. We travel out of travel guides, experience places through the simulated lens that Fromer provides us with. We take the "famous" pictures and partake in the cliche experiences.. simply because they are cliche. Our realities are formed by these cliches.


I would like to say thank you again to Ken Rufo. I hope that I did not too poorly butcher my explanations and thoughts on your post.


*Disney's "Italy"

Would a Rose by any other Name Smell as Sweet?

In Foucault's essay "What is an Author," he provides some very interesting ideas about the significance of the author and their name. Where Barthes discusses the death of the author, Foucault stresses some alterior functions that the author holds, other than as the scriptor of a work.

Foucault asks "How does the name of an author function?" He goes on to discuss that an author's name does not simply signify that they wrote a work, but also speaks about the work itself. "[The author's name's] presence is functional in that it serves as a means of classification. A name can group together a number of texts and thus differentiate from others. A name also establishes different forms of relationships among texts." When we think of Shakespeare we think of his works as a whole. We attribute comedies, dramas and sonnets to his name, and therefore we get a sense of his works as a whole. His name in our culture means something. Through Shakespeare we have a better knowledge of the sonnet genre as a whole and works written by him are seen as credible because they are attached to his name.

This idea is relatable to the pseudonimity that bloggers assume. Ms.Bean is of course not my given name. But here, on this blog, it is my identity. Dr.Crazy discussed the reasons behind using a pseudonym on her blog. She says that, "by disconnecting one's writing identity from one's "real life" identity, one preserves first a measure of control over how one's writing is perceived and second acquires a level of protection from certain kinds of scrutiny (often gendered)." The idea of controlling the way that one is perceived is quite related to the ideas that Foucault attributes to an author's name.

A pseudonym is a safe way for a lot of people, professors in this case, to openly discuss ideas without the danger of ruining their credibility. Dr.Crazy says, however, that even under a pseudonym we develop a reputation, "one has responsibilities under this identity, through one's relationships to others in the community. You're "known" as the identity that you've created, and you develop a reputation under that name." Our work is attributed to us, and people expect certain things out of our Blogger identity. To go against these expectations would be out of character.

I am definitely no Shakespeare but I think that the ideas Foucault expresses about the relevance of an author's name fits nicely into both the world of great authors and into the bloggosphere.