Final Thoughts

Before this class began I was afraid that it would all be over my head, that I would spend most of my class time looking at the clock and day dreaming about who knows what. However, literary theory turned out to be pretty interesting and while there was some that was over my head, I feel that I have a pretty good grasp on all the theories we've discussed. Whether it was attempting to wrap my head around the idea that all of language is a system of differences, or the idea that nothing has any real meaning or a true center, my knowledge of the topic has greatly expanded.

One of the major apprehensions I had going into the class was that I felt literary theory really had no place in everyday life, that it was something reserved for the academic world. However, while it might be true that more in depth observations are best saved for academia, theory can be applied to almost everything around you, even if it's only to spark some thought for yourself. They all give you a new way to think about your surroundings, particularly looking at what is taken for granted by most people. Whether it's looking at the power structure of the country, the college, or your job or even just looking at an advertisement and thinking about the underlying meanings in it, theory can be applied to all kinds of things.

I think the overwhelming lesson that will really stick with me from this class is to be careful with my language. Previously I had never thought much of language, whether I was reading someone else's work or writing my own it was not something that I really thought much of. Yet through the study of theory I've come to understand that language is something of great importance and can have a great influence whether it intends to or not. Language is a system that is always at work looking to establish meaning or destroy meaning (if you believe there is a meaning) depending on which theory you subscribe to.

This class has certainly exposed to new ideas and has changed the way I think about certain things in my life. While I'm not to the extent of Jon Rosenblatt, the student in our final article, I definitely do find myself having new thoughts about things I see everyday which I would not have been doing without my new knowledge of literary theory.

Settle for the Draw

I'd once again like to begin my post with a thank you to our guest lecturer, Ms. Tonya Krouse for her extensive and informative discussion about the many aspects of feminism and feminist theory. It greatly illustrates the complexity and overarching spread that feminist theory has, more so than almost any theory we've engaged in this semester.

When I first think of feminism my mind is filled with images of women burning bras, holding picket signs and an overall social revolution. While I completely understand that I'm generalizing the term and associating it with dated ideas, they are the free associations that my brain conjures up. The idea of feminism, as we discussed in class, gets quite a bad rap in today's society, which is odd for an idea that seems pretty simple, that women should be treated equal as men, in society and in this context, in literature.

Ms. Krouse does a great job of separating the ideas of women and literature and women in literature, and the differing approaches of theory that follow. This separation is one that I usually did not make when thinking of feminist theory prior to reading this posting. I tended to simply associate a feminist reading of something as strictly analyzing female characters in literature, how they were presented, if they were obviously oppressed, and how/if the patriarchal society around them was dictating their position. Yet, as with most theory we've discussed this semester, there is much more to it, much more that I learned for the first time.

One particular aspect of Ms. Krouse's guest post that piqued my interest and opened up some new ideas in my mind was the discussion about performance studies and how "individuals create their gender and sexual identities in language and in action," and the controversies that accompany this line of thinking. I've begun to really suscribe to this line of thinking that all of a person's individuality is really a creation of the society around them, in regards to this discussion, that girls act like "girls" because they're taught that's the correct way to behave from birth. So this idea of performing your identity introduced and discussed by newer feminist critics is one that I agree with.

The part of the discussion that really interested me though was the critiques that followed these ideas, particularly the idea that this view limits political action because a woman is no longer being defined as a woman, it has been complicated. This idea seems somewhat ludicrous to me, that simply because the age old belief of gender identity separation is being questioned these theorists aren't aiding in the political movement or advancement of women. While again this idea of political mobilization was something discussed in class today, it is an area of extreme interest for me. Feminist theory, and almost all theory for that matter, while engaged certainly in the political arena, specifically in regards to change, is not confined to that space. For feminist theorists to be criticized on their idea because it may hurt the political position seems counter-intuitive to the institution as a whole, the theoretical institution of deeper analysis of the literature and world around us. Suffice to say, these ideas were not ones that I usually had when thinking of feminism before reading this post, and I will definitely no longer only associate feminism with flannel shirts. (That's a joke)

The Cure

I'd first like to start this post by thanking Ms. Ashley Shelden for her extremely informative post about Lacanian ideas and making them more understandable for me at least. The descriptions of the function of language, the mirror stage and the death drive have led me to a much better comprehension of what Lacan was saying.

The parts of the post that interested me the most were the new ideas, at least to me, that dealt with the human striving for meaning, whether in language or in their 'identity'. While I understood that Lacan proposed the idea that there is no true signifier, that language consists strictly of metonyms, the idea that we are constantly searching for the meaning, constantly making attempts to find the signified was one that I think I missed. In turn, the constant searching for a meaning of identity is also a very interesting and disturbing one as well. Finally the discussion of the internal death drive and the ability, in Lacan's mind, that humans can only reach this moment through the jouissance of orgasm is what led me to thinking about and one scene in particular popped into my mind. Lacan's idea that our constant thinking and searching for meaning, in both language and identity, whether it's conscious or not is only put on pause during le petit mort, when for that few seconds our minds are blank and not troubled with this search.

In Mantissa much of the novel consists of Miles and Erato's constant bickering, and while I understand that much of what they talk about is actually quite insightful and full of talk of the literary process, a lot of the time I was just tired of hearing them argue like your annoying neighbors. Yet with these Lacanian ideas in place I now think of all this linguistic arguing, this constant back and forth about the literary, as a result of their internal struggle to find meaning. While I'm unsure as to how to deal with Erato, as she is a muse, a fictional being existing only in Miles' head, Miles is like all other humans trying to find his identity whether he knows it or not. This self-questioning leads to his creation of the muse as he's trying to find his "true" voice and can not do it alone just as no one else can. But I digress, the moment I immediately thought of when reading that the jouissance results in temporary mental silence if you will is the scene that takes place on pages 154-5 when the two begin to have sex and stop talking.

No longer burdened with the search for a meaning the two are quiet, they don't bicker with each other as they approach the moment of orgasm, when their brains are able to be clear of the search for a few seconds. This cleared brain is actually literally represented by Fowles when he describes that the room has become clear plate glass and is no longer the gray room the two were previously in. We find out that the room is gray as it is supposed to represent Miles' mind, the setting of the entire novel. Yet in this scene with the two reaching a real moment jouissance, different from the original sex scene, his brain becomes clear and is no longer clouded by the gray cloudy walls that previously made up the room. This scene seems to directly illustrate the moment of jouissance, the clear brain that is able to very briefly stop its search for an underlying true meaning that does not exist...Lacan's idea come to life, or at least an unreachable life in a fiction, fitting no?

Amnesiac

While Mantissa provides many scenes that leave themselves available for a close reading, the scene I chose occurs very early on, when "Miles Green" (if that is his real name) awakes from his coma and is just re-introduced into the world and in turn, the world of language.

"Her mouth began to announce names, people's names, street names, place names, disjointed phrases. Some were repeated. He had perhaps heard them before, as words; but he had no idea what relevance they were supposed to have, nor why they should increasingly sound like evidence of crimes he had committed. In the end he shook his head. He would have liked to close his eyes, to have peace to reforget, to be one again with the sleeping blank page of oblivion." pg. 5-6

This passage immediately stood out for me, Green is hearing words that he may know, but really all they are to him at this point are sounds he mildly recognizes. This is an idea that is very interesting to me and I linked to structuralism very quickly. Structuralism looks specifically at the linguistic aspect of a text, the meaning of the language utilized within a body of work and this passage directly applies to that idea. Green has woken from what is assumed to be a coma and has no recollection of his past life, and as we find out, has no understanding of words that once meant something to him. Without a past referent, a meaning that he was once taught and no longer remembers, these words have no meaning to him, they are really just sounds to him, phonetic noises that relate to nothing that he is familiar with.

This scene also led me to think about Saussure's ideas of language as a system of dyads, binary opposites that allow us to understand a meaning. Green has no knowledge of anything at this point, and the words that his wife speaks to him, while he does hear them, might as well be incoherent noises, as he has nothing to refer them against. Not only does he no longer remember the places, people, and things that she is talking about, he doesn't remember their opposites. His knowledge is minimal and we are able to see that words do not have an intrinsic, essential meaning but are formulated in regards to other things, and as Green doesn't know any of these things his wife's attempts to jog his memory might as well be gibberish, as he is completely unable to understand the 'words' that she is saying to him.

Whoa

I'd like to begin this post by thanking Ken Rufo for his fantastic post about Jean Baudrillard, taking very complicated and apparently 'meaningless' ideas, and making them understandable to a non-theorist. The section that I was most interested in was his discussion of Baudrillard's ideas about other theories, such as Marxism or psychoanalysis as simulated models that actually invent what they claim to discover.

This is an idea that I have been grappling with throughout the entire semester, the idea that these men, as we've only read men so far, simply discovered these abstract ideas out of thin air, and didn't invent them to promote their ideas. Rufo's post specifically references Baudrillard's criticism of psychoanalysis' claim of discovering the unconscious, when he felt that the unconscious was invented and used to further ideas that psychoanalysts wished to push forward. These are ideas that I have always had about theory both prior to and during this class. While I have to admit that much of that was due to my own lack of knowledge and understanding of these complex ideas, and I am beginning to realize that these ideas can be useful in at the very least questioning human existence, it still must be brought up that these are mostly invented ideas, not essential truths about human nature.

However, I also couldn't help but stop and think how Baudrillard could possibly make these claims about other theories and theorists, or the language they use, while he was in essence doing the same thing. While I understand he was proposing different ideas, it was still theory and anyone could make the same claim against him, that he was inventing ideas and concepts that he claimed were natural. Yet I need to move on, as Baudrillard is a theorist who I enjoy and think proposes some very interesting ideas particularly his most famous ideas, those of the simulacra and simulation.

My first introduction to Baudrillard was last semester in regards to Don Delillo's novel White Noise. In it is a scene when the main character goes to look at the 'most photographed barn in America', a completely inauthentic experience. Knowing that this barn is supposed to be the quintessiential barn, the perfect photograph, you can no longer actually see the barn, but only the idea of the barn. What you are actually seeing is the barn in reference to it as a photograph, there is no authenticity to the true object you are seeing, because you can never see it for what it truly is, it is a simulation of the real. Rufo makes this point in his post as well, using the example of waiting in line for the ET ride at Universal Studios, which goes a step further than the barn example. While waiting in line you're placed in a re-creation of the forest from the movie ET, so you are in a re-creation of a representation of a forest, all while thinking you are experiencing something real, something authentic. When you really think about that, it's mind-blowing, how deep the simulation can go, and how far removed they are from a 'real' thing.

Finally, I just have to comment on how astonished I was when reading Baudrillard's obituary from the Chronicle of Higher Education and how unbelievably venomous it was. While it has to be understood that this sort of writing isn't for everyone I just couldn't believe that some of that article ever got published, particularly after the man had just died. While I understand there was some lingering animosity towards Baudrillard in the United States over his writings regarding the Gulf War and September 11th, the fact that a publication of higher education would stoop to that level boggles my mind. It just served as an example to me that a lot of people do regularly engage themselves in reading these kinds of works, and apparently people have much stronger opinions on them than I have yet to form.

I think there's a mouse in my room

While I know the directions for this blog post were to find a blog focused on the academic or on theory, a posting I just read on my usual blog seems to fit this assignment perfectly. This article from the sports blog Deadspin, which operates out of Gawker media, provides an interesting take on the pseudonymity and anonymity the blogworld gives us, in this case on the topic of race. The author of the article, Will Leitch, does a good job explaining the background of the issue he's discussing, the last four paragraphs are particularly of interest. Leitch counters the idea of a growing "angry white man" culture with the idea that people simply are taking advantage of being anonymous in a public forum to voice their unpopular and offensive opinions.

He goes on to describe how blogs begin to take the shape of their author, which I think Barthes or Foucault would disagree with. While the author may be putting their opinion into their work, their personality is not a part of their writing, they are removed once they click post, just as I will be removed from this post. The idea that bloggers and commenters have the anonymity that newspaper columnists or authors of books often don't have allow them to say things they may feel deep down but would never express to others, for better or for worse. In this you have to wonder does the blogosphere change the idea of authorship altogether? In this new medium, people no longer have to have accountability; granted people have been writing under pen names for centuries, but not in the numbers that people are today. Millions of people have been empowered by this new anonymity and are becoming "authors", which may be redefining the concept as many "readers" are now also "authors".

Mr. Fab

Reading Barthes' "The Death of an Author" makes me realize my senior year high school English teacher must have been a fan of his. The one comment he made all year that has stood with me all these years was the idea that he "didn't care who the author was or what they meant to say, once the words are on the page, that's what they mean." I remember thinking at the time that this was a crazy idea, but as I've continued in English I think I'm starting to feel the same way. Barthes' piece ends with the line "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author" and this is okay with me.

While the Author is a necessary component to the composition of the novel, he is not the end all be all of the final product. One cannot blame any deficiencies of a work on the Author's flaws in life, but rather on the work itself, the language that makes up the text. Through this realization we also open up the door to a new wave of criticism, one that doesn't over value the Author, but allows the reader to gain some importance in the understanding and analysis of the text. This concept of removing the Author from the final work might seem a bit odd at first, but when you really think about it, my teacher was right, who cares what they meant to say, what did they say? By giving the reader more authority in understanding the text it is only logical that someone loses authority, and who more fitting than the Author.

Le Vrai Derrida?

In the Derrida film, the directors were making an attempt to show a side of Jacques Derrida that most people didn't get the opportunity to see. Rather than simply (as if it's simple) knowing him through his philosophical writings they wanted to document his everyday life, show him as just another guy eating his breakfast or watching television. Yet, rather than simplifying Derrida through these depictions they actually help get his idea of deconstruction across to the viewer. Whether intentional or not, the directors succeed in making natural everyday events look unnatural and of course Derrida points this out.

Derrida's continually refers to the cameras, microphones and people milling around him while he is supposed to be performing everyday inconsequential actions. In most documentaries the subjects attempt to disregard these peripherals and showcase the fact that the viewer is seeing a natural normal occurrence, yet Derrida can't allow this to happen. Rather than having people see his image as one of his normal life he has to point out the unnatural aspects of what is happening around him, and also how he is acting differently because of the cameras. The directors are looking for the 'true' Derrida and he makes sure to tell viewers that that is not what they are getting.

This idea of capturing who Derrida really is also poses a problem because it assumes there is one true identity within a person, an idea which deconstruction inherently disagrees with. I think the filmmakers understand this and through their choices to leave in the scenes in which Derrida is questioning the authenticity of the experiences he is going through for the film, they are acknowledging that these are powerful examples of deconstruction.

This documentary does succeed in that it gives viewers an idea of who Derrida is as a person, but more importantly the entire film serves as an example of his work. By including excerpts of his writing throughout the movie they explicitly introduce his philosophical ideas, but by the end of the movie it becomes more clear that the entire project is an expression of deconstruction, the de-naturalizing of situations we take for granted.

Signifi-can't

Saussure's excerpt brought up a few very abstract but intriguing ideas about how language operates. The idea that I'll discuss is that "signs function not through their intrinsic value but through their relative position" (39) This idea is a strong contradiction to what we are originally led to believe, that objects' names seem to emanate out of them, their name is almost part of their essence. Saussure is saying that this is not true at all, a sign has no intrinsic value, no true connection to what it is supposed to represent, rather its function only rises to the surface when compared to other signs. The relative position is determined through the system of negative difference that he also discusses. Something has meaning strictly because it is not something else, this system is what gives signs a relative position and in turn, a function.

Our recent discussion on post-structuralism complicates Saussure's ideas in that his ideas on the system of difference included its stability. However, post-structuralists, while believing in the system of negative difference to define meaning, think of it as an unstable structure. Their ideas work to deconstruct and decenter ideas, trying to expose the lack of stability in language, and in this particular case in the idea of meaning through position, or difference.

Dr. Craig's post brings up many different and interesting points about Marxism, how it operates and some examples of how ideology potentially effects us everyday. The first interesting observation is the example of the copy of The Communist Manifesto on a table in a trendy clothing store. I find it intriguing that it was placed not only in this store, but also next to a replica of Rodin's Il Penser, almost an example of man thinking about his subjugation. As Dr. Craig points out the book at once invites the consumer to subscribe to the thought that they are willingly being different by purchasing these trendy jeans yet they are truly falling further into the consumer culture they are trying to fight. The next example of the commodification of Che Guevara's image also brings up a very good point, the idea that even people who think they are being "revolutionary" by expressing their views on their t-shirt are just victims of the ruling class as well. Without really knowing it these people are participating in hegemony, thinking they are spreading their "unique" message when really they are most likely purchasing t-shirts made in sweat shops and sold at inflated prices.

I also agree with Dr. Craig's example of professional sports as a way for the masses to be distracted from their conditions. While an avid sports fan myself, it is very easy to recognize the overall ludicrousy that is professional or major college sports. One goes to an event, often paying a good deal of money earned from hard work, to watch millionaires (players) play a game to make more money for billionaires (owners), yet people leave feeling entertained, their minds off of their everyday lives. This feeling of satisfaction is exactly how the owners, or the ruling class, want us to feel, oblivious or simply apathetic to the overall poor, relatively speaking, conditions that they have to return to work to. Yet sports is not the only institution that serves that purpose and I think this is where literature can also come into the picture.

A work of literature can serve the same purpose as the sporting event, that of a distraction. People can get caught up in the fantasy world of a novel, forgetting about their lives for a brief period of time and thinking they are in power for choosing which book they want to read or what author they enjoy. This is not to say that enjoying a novel is inherently a bad thing, as I said before I am a big sports fan, but the problem arises when you don't think a little more deeply about what you are doing. The literature you are reading has become a commodity, something for you to consume, and also serves as a way for people to turn a blind eye to their subjugation. By analyzing a novel or play through the Marxist eye, you not only get a better insight into the world in the novel or the time in which the author wrote it, but also into the world you are living in. Looking at something with Marxist Criticism allows you to begin to see the ideology of your own time as well as in the work of literature you are reading.

X Marx the Spot

Karl Marx's thoughts and specifically the literary criticism that spawned off of them provide a very different way to look at literature than liberal humanism, the "theory" we discussed last week. While liberal humanism strictly looked at the work of literature, completely ignoring the societal factors that influenced its creation, Marxist criticism looks directly at the factors, particularly the economic structure in which the author was living in during writing.

As we talked about, liberal humanism is made of ten tenets, many of which Marxist criticism fundamentally disagrees with. Two I will discuss specifically are the idea that human nature is unchanging and that all people have one true self, an essential identity. The idea of an unchanging human nature is an impossibility in Marxist theory, since all people are characterized by the time they live in, and most importantly by the economic system they are participating in. This idea might seem cynical but personally I find it much easier to believe in than a universal, timeless human identity that outside factors have no effect on.

The second tenet, the idea that a human has an essential identity, that each human is born and their true self resides somewhere within them is also opposed by Marxism. Similar to how there can be no one true human nature, Marxists argue that people are shaped by their economic situation, influenced by the superstructure, and that they never reach a true self as who they become is heavily determined by outside factors, not an internal essence.

Personally I find Marxist criticism to be a more realistic way to look at literature in comparison to liberal humanism. While I may not agree with all of the Marxist ideas, I think that looking at literature in a cultural vacuum is impossible, and the ideas of an essential self and an unchanging human nature to be crazy.

The Inauguration

Welcome to I Might Be Wrong, a blog predominantly dedicated to the discussion and confusion of literary theory. For the most part I'm anticipating this blog to simply deal with subjects of academia however there does remain the possibility that as things catch my interest they appear as well.

Yet this initial post will remain on topic, specifically my initial thoughts on literary theory and its applications in the world of literature studies. I feel that theory is a necessary evil when it comes to reading and attempting to dissect works of literature. Theory is a way to make literature more systematic yet it also opens it up to be intellectually analyzed in great depths.

As mentioned I feel it gives the analysis and study of literature some structure in that it provides people with specific ways to look at works. Rather than read a novel and be overwhelmed by all of its complexities, one can look at it, if they choose, from a strictly Marxist perspective or a structuralist perspective, or another type of theory. This specificity allows the reader to focus in on certain dynamics of the text and reach conclusions that they may not have seen or even had known were within the work prior to the theory approach. The preceding statement is what I mean when I refer to theory broadening the scope of literary analysis while also systematizing it. By looking at a work from a certain perspective you think differently about the text, and enable yourself to see aspects within a novel that, without theory, you would have never noticed.

However I did describe theory as a necessary evil, and as of now I'll stick by that description. Personally I think that at times people seem to dig too deep into works of literature while using theory, at times finding messages that may not actually be in the text. Theory seems as though it can be used to get across an agenda; a critic looks over a text with a particular message and through the use of deep theoretical analysis is able to find their point within a classic work. This somewhat pessimistic view is one of a theory rookie, and maybe over the semester you'll see a different impression of theory in the postings of this blog.