damn

so i'm watching a scanner darkly and they're having an intense discussion about addictive drugs, and shit man it is weirding me out, being addicted to drugs is one of the most insane situations i can ever imagine, worse than anything i've had to deal with in my life because it's an unsolvable problem, people turn into other people, they have no idea what they're doing or what they're saying, they just want drugs. while the last few months of my life have dealt with very serious, adult, and life-altering situations...even though it is certainly not okay for me to say that and think about the other situation i could be in. it's weird that my real goal is to be able to have enough money to live in a foreign city and be able to take all sorts of hallucinogenic drugs that would alter my experience more than i ever could in a city i was familiar with or really any city i had ever been to. all i really want to do is host an odd show on the travel channel that allowed me to go all around the world without ever having to pay for anything, get translators, a camera crew and an unlimited stipend and let me have a fucking great time, like my favorite show of all time, Three Sheets starring Zane (what's his name). i guess that's all for tonight and i hope to write on this blog more often, it really could be the spring board that i desperately need.

but I'm probably right

actually I'm left handed. Most people don't know that. I've been festering a strong hatred for the boy across the hall from me. He stinks. He snores. He has repeatedly wiped his sweaty feet on my pillow leaving yellow stains that have a texture similar to feta cheese. porcupine.

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.