Language as Control [Archive] - Literature Network Forums

The Unnamable

12-24-2005, 03:59 PM

Virgil,

“There are no facts, only interpretations.” –Nietzsche

There are many, many more examples of the kind of things I mention above. In the UK a number of years ago, there was significant opposition on the streets to what was then called ‘The Poll Tax’, a local tax levied at the demand of central government. After much opposition and some subsequent concessions, the tax was repackaged as ‘The Community Charge’. The word ‘Poll’ was considered too reminiscent of historical conflicts in Britain and nobody feels positively about ‘Tax’. The word ‘community’ has a much nicer set of connotations and ‘charge’ seems something much fairer – a justifiable request for payment for goods or services provided. It’s much easier to sympathise with a person refusing to pay what could be seen as an outdated tax than someone who is refusing to contribute to the community. The really interesting aspect of all this comes when you read the work of Structuralists, Post-Structuralists, Marxist, Feminist and Cultural Theorists and critics.

How is power exercised? Stalin and Hitler were able to exercise enormous power but it was obviously not because they were physically superhuman. So how is that power exercised? According to French Poststructuralist, Michel Foucault, it is through’ discourse’.

The following is cobbled together from teaching notes I have used in the past:

The father of this line of thought is the German philosopher Nietzsche, who said that people first decide what they want and then fit the facts to their aim; 'Ultimately, man finds in things nothing but what he himself has imported into them/ All knowledge is an expression of the 'Will to Power'. This means that we cannot speak of any absolute truths or of objective knowledge. People recognise a particular piece of philosophy or scientific theory as 'true' only if it fits the descriptions of truth laid down by the intellectual or political authorities of the day, by the members of the ruling elite, or by the prevailing ideologues of knowledge.

The term discourse is used in a number of different ways. The usual meaning of the word when applied to discussions of narrative, describes 'how' a text is written, not the content (some critics reserve the French spelling discours for this meaning). To some extent this first usage overlaps with the second, more specific use of the term by the French philosopher and historian, Michel Foucault, whose work has been very influential on post-structuralist criticism. The first thing to be said about Foucault's use of the term discourse is that it is always related to concrete examples of language being used in specific areas of knowledge. For example, Foucault argues that madness, sexuality and criminality are all discursively constructed: each of them is an example of the way in which in different historical periods human behaviour is shaped by a specific vocabulary and knowledge. But there is more to his argument than this. Foucault maintains that specific discourses such as medicine, law and psychiatry serve specific interests, and that power and control of the human subject are exercised in discourse. More particularly, discourse is a way of classifying and ordering. We can see this more clearly if we look, as Foucault does, at the history of madness and how knowledge is used as a power to control and define those who are then labelled as mad. The point here is that language operates in the interests of the institutions of society to construct people in certain ways. It is not only power, however, but also resistance to power that is embedded in each discourse. It is not possible, in other words, to have a discourse which simply maintains the status quo. The power which is inscribed in discourse is shadowed by resistance to that power which is also inscribed in the discourse.

In terms of Literature (you said, I think that you have an MA?), think for example of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Prospero has been deposed as duke and now rules an island where he has taught Caliban how to speak. But Caliban resists Prospero's white colonial rule and uses his knowledge of language to curse him. The play shows the way in which Prospero's colonial rhetoric contains the seeds of its own failure as well as its fear of that which is ‘other’. The term other is used in a number of ways in post-structuralism: here it is used to describe the way in which groups of people characterise outsiders who threaten them as 'other', in this case as non-human. Racism is a practice, for example, that operates by categorizing ethnic groups as 'other', as outsiders, as threatening, as alien. At work here is the way we use discourse to divide reality up into binary opposites - black/white, man/woman. As Foucault reminds us, however, it is discourse that masters and divides us and only seems to put us in control of the world. It is we who are the sites of discourse and constructed by it.

With reference to the use of swear words, such thinking as Foucault’s would see the promotion of one type of discourse and the marginalizing of another as simply about the exercise of power. In short, the ruling ideology does not find swearing acceptable and so, rather than simply exercising brute force to uphold their own tastes and preferences, they help (both consciously and unconsciously) disseminate the ideological standpoint that sees it as indicative of lack of education or good manners. What about working class culture, where the use of certain swear words is socially and culturally inherited? These days no one would promote the idea of suppressing a different culture but it still appears to be acceptable to denigrate a whole economic class by reinforcing the idea that their language is debased. The reasoning therefore goes that such people deserve the menial jobs and impoverished lives they lead because they have not worked hard to achieve better. They ‘fail’ not because of any inherent inequalities and contradictions in the system that condemns them but because they are themselves lacking in some way.

Obviously this is not done in a conspiratorial manner by men in black coats sitting in a darkened room somewhere. The subtlety of its workings is precisely what makes it so powerful. It enables us to capitulate while still considering ourselves to be free. The idea can be (and has been in the work of people like Roland Barthes) extended into all areas of life.

Barthes examined modern France (of the 1950s) from the standpoint of a cultural anthropologist in a little book called Mythologies which he published in France in 1957. This looked at a host of items which had never before been subjected to intellectual analysis, such as: the difference between boxing and wrestling; the significance of eating steak and chips; the styling of the Citroen car; the cinema image of Greta Garbo's face; a magazine photograph of an Algerian soldier saluting the French flag. Each of these items he placed within a wider structure of values, beliefs, and symbols as the key to understanding it. Thus, boxing is seen as a sport concerned with repression and endurance, as distinct from wrestling, where pain is flamboyantly displayed. Boxers do not cry out in pain when hit, the rules cannot be disregarded at any point during the bout, and the boxer fights as himself, not in the elaborate guise of a make-believe villain or hero. By contrast, wrestlers grunt and snarl with aggression, stage elaborate displays of agony or triumph, and fight as exaggerated, larger than life villains or super-heroes. Clearly, these two sports have quite different functions within society: boxing enacts the stoical endurance which is sometimes necessary in life, while wrestling dramatises ultimate struggles and conflicts between good and evil. Barthes's approach here, then, is that of the classic structuralist: the individual item is 'structuralised', or 'contextualised by structure', and in the process of doing this layers of sigificance are revealed.

I’m sorry if that seems like a lecture but the issue is both interesting and important enough to warrant more than a few sound bites. I’d be glad to discuss any aspects of it further.

Oh, and have a nice Christmas, by the way, if by my saying so I am not being offensive to non-Christians (of which I am one). :)

Virgil

12-25-2005, 12:07 PM

First of all, my sentence could be clearer. I didn’t mean that power suppresses thought and control of language. I meant that ‘suppression of thought’ AND ‘control of language’ are the business of power.

Oh, I agree completely. Government uses language to their advantage as you show below.

There are many, many more examples of the kind of things I mention above. In the UK a number of years ago, there was significant opposition on the streets to what was then called ‘The Poll Tax’, a local tax levied at the demand of central government. After much opposition and some subsequent concessions, the tax was repackaged as ‘The Community Charge’. The word ‘Poll’ was considered too reminiscent of historical conflicts in Britain and nobody feels positively about ‘Tax’. The word ‘community’ has a much nicer set of connotations and ‘charge’ seems something much fairer – a justifiable request for payment for goods or services provided. It’s much easier to sympathise with a person refusing to pay what could be seen as an outdated tax than someone who is refusing to contribute to the community.

Government's play the same games here in the US too. Frankly, they ususally fail if they think their putting one over. But I guess they must try. What I thought you were getting at, you suggest a little further.

The really interesting aspect of all this comes when you read the work of Structuralists, Post-Structuralists, Marxist, Feminist and Cultural Theorists and critics.

Yes, I have an MA in lit and I've been exposed to all of the types of critical theory you mention. If I may rephrase the gist of their arguments, it might be that language and cultureal icons (for lack of a better word) are themselves constructed to impose, frame, and support the existing power structure.

I do have a problem with that. Let me just focus on language.

First we all use words to our personal advantage in every day life. It's just natural. Government is not just an abstract quality; it is compose of indivuals who are trying to negotiate, pursuade, and protect their interests. Just like anyone on a street having a conversation, on a market purchasing goods, or in a court room debating law. It's an apriori make up of the human condition, and anyone arguing against that is almost arguing against common sense.

Second, language is a "thing" that arises out of a tradition. It is the result of millions of people through hundreds of years of time. If a phrase or elocution takes root, it is implicitedly condoned and an accepted by millions of people. It is impossible for me to construe how a government could impose specific language onto people without their consent. In fact, it most likely happens the other way. Language is formed on a people level and then bubbles up to government.

What I think those movements that you point out are reacting to is the 20th Century's flux of demographic groups. At no time in history (except perhaps 1st & 2nd century Roman empire) have groups of people immigrated and come into contact with different cultures. Obviously people react posiitvely and negatively and language reflects that. There is this quality of humanity that feels compelled to characterize "the other." There is also this quality of humanity that feels compelled to characterize ourselves and within our groups, just as positively or negatively as with the other. Language is ultimately a form of signs and shorthand. What I feel is going on is that language perhaps has not caught up with the flux. Given time, I think this will work itself out. Now I'm not a advocate of political correctness, but it does serve some purpose. I don't think institutions should force people to think a certain way, but then institutions do have a right to enforce good manners and public decorum. There is a need for a balance.

Frankly except for the culturalists, I've always been skeptical of all these critical theorists. First, you mention five movements above. There are even more, such as the mythologists, psychological of which their are subdivisions of Freudian, Jungian, and whatever else. That's five to ten aesthetic theories in less than a hundred years. Well, in the couple of thousand years since Aristotle, there probably hasn't been more than five aesthetic lines of thought in all. Doesn't this suggest an incapcity to arrive at any conclusions and consensus? Second, I've always felt that these theorists (especially the Marxists and Feminists) start with an ideological point of view, and then try to force the facts to fit their theories. This is completely wrong headed. Aristotle starts from the facts and draws conclusions. I can understand a critic pointing out Marxist thought in a post Marx writer. I cannot understand a critic who tries to formulate Marxist though out of a Shakespeare play. A Marxist might argue that Marxism is the state of nature and so Shakespeare would reflect that. Well, are a huge number of people who would dispute that Marxism is a state of nature, so if a critic argues along Marxist thought in a Shakespeare play, then the bar of credibility has to be set extremely high.

Well, thank you for the Christmas wishes, and a Happy to whater holiday you maY celebrate.

The Unnamable

12-25-2005, 02:09 PM

I do have a problem with that. Let me just focus on language.

First we all...common sense.

This is similar to the problem I had when I first began reading the theorists I mentioned. However, what is ‘just natural’ is itself a construct and variable according to the prevailing beliefs of the day. Look at gender. Not that long ago people would have considered it ‘natural’ for only women to bring up children. Some still do. Also, is a heart transplant ‘natural’? What about homosexuality? That seems to have done the rounds on both sides. To me, a pattern begins to emerge – we consider ‘natural’ any conditions, events, processes etc. that confirm what we want to be seen as true. All of the people you mention negotiating and persuading will use the medium of language to do so. As some feminist critics have pointed out, language itself is inherently biased towards a male view of the world. In simple terms and trying to offer real world examples, look at the following pairs of words consisting of a male and a female equivalent:

King / Queen
Dog / *****
Wizard (or Warlock) / Witch
Master / Mistress
Bull / Cow
Bachelor / Spinster

These are obviously crude examples and whether or not they are exact equivalents is debatable. Nevertheless, there is a definite hierarchy that foregrounds male experience as primary. We think of a king as mightier than a queen (even in chess); ‘dog’ does have negative connotations but not as much as ‘*****’; wizards are not perceived as being evil on the whole, while witches are. Would JK Rowling be as rich if Dumbledore had been a witch? -Probably richer, who cares? Most of the female equivalents have very negative connotations, so I have some sympathy with those critics who, albeit through far more sophisticated research and analysis, have highlighted the difficulties that women writers have in expressing their own perceptions in a language that foregrounds male experience. Part of what makes us think of things as ‘natural’ is the prevailing ideology. By this I don’t mean a set of rabble-rousing political activists, I simply mean the beliefs, concepts, ways of thinking, ideas and values that shape our thoughts and which we use to explain or understand the world. According to Marxist critics, the function of ideology is to disguise the real power relations in society. Thus ideology serves the needs of the dominant class. It does this by ensuring that subordinate classes believe they share the same interests as the ruling classes. Ideology thus seeks, invisibly, to make social conditions appear natural and, by gaining the consent of the subordinate classes, to bring about political control in the form of hegemony. So internalised are many of our assumptions that we come to think of them as ‘natural’. This is why it is so enormously powerful. As long as we are comfortable, it feels like freedom.

Second, language is a "thing"... government.

Again, I fully understand your objections but you seem to assume that we all have an equal say in how language evolves. We don’t. A number of years ago, a friend did some Christian missionary work in the Far East (think about that phrase – it’s only East if you look at a map with Europe at the centre. But it seems ‘natural’, doesn’t it? Does this mean I should now stop using the phrase? I’m sure some would say yes and tried to ban it as offensive). Anyway, she was amazed to find areas where no one had ever even heard the words ‘Jeusus Christ’ but they had heard of ‘Coca-Cola’. We simply don’t have the same power available to us to affect what new words enter the language as huge multi-national corporations. This brings me to the Media Age and the work of Jean Baudrillard and Jean-Francois Lyotard. Baudrillard is associated with ‘the loss of the real’. The idea of this is that the pervasive influence of modern media images has led to a loss of the distinction between real and imagined, reality and illusion, surface and depth.

What I think those movements ...

Why is there a need for balance? In order that people get on better with one another? That is a good example of an ideological position that is so internalised within us all that it appears to be simple ‘common sense’. Unless you believe in a God or some other kind of objective reality, all attitudes must necessarily be subjective. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but it should make us aware that there are other ways of looking at things.

Frankly except...conclusions and consensus?

I don’t really know how to respond to this as it is quite alien to the way I approach the works of such ‘thinkers’. Your approach seems much more focused on categories that I don’t really know much about – ‘aesthetic theories’. It seems they come from within and in reaction to/against what has come before. I think one of the key differences in the last century has been an emphasis on ‘meta-narratives’ –Lyotard famously characterised postmodernism as ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’. I’ll try to explain this more carefully in response to your next points.

Second, I've always felt that these theorists (especially the Marxists and Feminists) start with an ideological point of view, and then try to force the facts to fit their theories. This is completely wrong headed. Aristotle starts from the facts and draws conclusions.

They do and, in the case of the Marxists, I think that is their strength. No critical approach is devoid of ideological bias. At least Marxist critics do not claim to be offering ‘the true’ view, merely their own, with its emphasis on ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’. But the biggest problem here is ‘facts’. What are ‘facts’? I think Nietzsche had a point when he says “There are no facts, only interpretations.” So Aristotle starts with what he considered to be the facts at the time. To do this he also employed a linguistic system that inherently reinforced that particular world view – it must have done, without the necessary language, other ways of looking at things becomes literally unthinkable.

I can understand a critic...extremely high.

I think your disagreement here stems from the fact that Marxist critics are not interested in limiting themselves to producing particular readings of particular texts. They do this but tend rather to look at how that text was created in the first place (both literally in terms of how it physically came into existence and in terms of how and why it was generated out of the prevailing ideology of the era in which it was produced). They do not try to persuade us that Shakespeare was a Marxist thinker; they apply Marxist thought to their consideration of the way Shakespeare and his plays have been read, as well as looking for aspects of the play that also are concerned with ideology.

I have never read a Marxist critic state that Marxism is a state of nature. It seems to me that, in simplest terms, they start from Marx’s statement that “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.”

“Marxist literary criticism maintains that a writer's social class, and its prevailing ideology have a major bearing on what is written by a member of that class. So instead of seeing authors as primarily autonomous 'inspired' individuals whose 'genius' and creative imagination enables them to bring forth original and timeless works of art, the Marxist sees them as constantly formed by their social contexts in ways which they themselves would usually not admit. This is true not just of the content of their work but even of formal aspects of their writing which might at first seem to have no possible political overtones. For instance, the prominent British Marxist critic Terry Eagleton suggests that in language 'shared definitions and regularities of grammar both reflect and help to constitute, a well-ordered political state' (William Shakespeare, 1986, p. 1). Likewise, Catherine Belsey, another prominent British left-wing critic, argues that the form of the 'realist' novel contains implicit validation of the existing social structure, because realism, by its very nature, leaves conventional ways of seeing intact, and hence tends to discourage critical scrutiny of reality. By 'form' here is included all the conventional features of the novel - chronological time-schemes, formal beginnings and endings, in-depth psychological characterisation, intricate plotting, and fixed narratorial points of view. Similarly, the 'fragmented', 'absurdist' forms of drama and fiction used by twentieth-century writers like Beckett and Kafka are seen as a response to the contradictions and divisions inherent in late capitalist society.”

RobinHood3000

12-25-2005, 02:14 PM

I think your chess analogy is a smidgen misused. The King is worth more, yes, but the Queen is vastly more powerful. Sounds like some households, doesn't it?

starrwriter

12-25-2005, 02:24 PM

I think your chess analogy is a smidgen misused. The King is worth more, yes, but the Queen is vastly more powerful. Sounds like some households, doesn't it?
He does have a real girlfriend after all.

kaka

12-25-2005, 03:58 PM

Originally posted by The Unnamable:
In the UK a number of years ago, there was significant opposition on the streets to what was then called ‘The Poll Tax’, a local tax levied at the demand of central government. After much opposition and some subsequent concessions, the tax was repackaged as ‘The Community Charge’. The word ‘Poll’ was considered too reminiscent of historical conflicts in Britain and nobody feels positively about ‘Tax’. The word ‘community’ has a much nicer set of connotations and ‘charge’ seems something much fairer – a justifiable request for payment for goods or services provided. It’s much easier to sympathise with a person refusing to pay what could be seen as an outdated tax than someone who is refusing to contribute to the community.

Unnamable: #1 The tax was changed from a tax per adult person (head) to a property tax! That's much more significant that anything you suggest.

#2 The expression "Poll Tax" was only a nickname. The **official** name throughout the saga was "The Community Charge". What you call the "repackaged" tax - that is, the property tax referred to in #1 - was (and still is) called "Council Tax".

Unnamable, please try to get your facts rights. Often it just takes a websearch. For further information on the tax in question, please see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_tax

The Unnamable

12-25-2005, 08:18 PM

kaka,
Is this a serious post? If so, thank you – I’ll get the hairshirt on right away. I am really pleased that from the vast forest of words above, you chose to pick out and comment on that. It was, of course, the core of my argument and now I realise that I am simply a nincompoop. There’s me carrying out research (including web searches) on the aforementioned theories and authors, when what I should have been doing is getting my facts right on the example I used. I’m so ashamed.

kaka

12-25-2005, 10:16 PM

Yes, the post is serious. That said, my apolgogies if the tone was unduly harsh. No need for any hairshirt!

I'm sure that the tax was never officially called the (or a) Poll Tax. Even Margaret Thatcher, who was particularly keen on it, didn't use that term.

If you plan to use that tax or the series of events surrounding it for future examples and/or in teaching, please check it out. (Obviously, it occurs to me that the misunderstanding may have become firmly embedded in American sociology coursebooks). For me, the absurd name "Community Charge" for a tax that was highly anti-social, suggests that sometimes people can see through propaganda.

starrwriter

12-26-2005, 01:06 AM

kaka, Is this a serious post? If so, thank you – I’ll get the hairshirt on right away.
Hairshirt! Jesus, that's funny. Who would have thought you had a sense of humor, Unnamable?

As for kaka, I wonder if he realizes his screen name is baby talk for excrement.

RAS1LOVE

12-26-2005, 02:28 AM

hear me now, "power" uses the rhythm of love, as we are born the body grows outta of the heart beat in the womb, the rhythm, the world is musical every aspect, and so the powerful may use their words to play to their tune, them use their created languages as in mathematics, philosophy, to support their ideology, you know originally word was the way, and word sound power will always lead the way
so hear me, them make a book, and say what we know, is only what they teach us. --RESPECT

The Unnamable

12-26-2005, 07:57 AM

Hairshirt! Jesus, that's funny. Who would have thought you had a sense of humor, Unnamable?

As for kaka, I wonder if he realizes his screen name is baby talk for excrement.

star, this is the second reference you have made to human egestion in the shirt (sorry, short) time that I have been around. May we draw our own conclusions? :p

I don’t have a sense of humour. It was surgically (but painfully and unskilfully) removed from me in an operation called ‘accommodating other people’. It’s a bit like what happened to Randle Patrick McMurphy at the end of ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’. I wonder why he was so mean to Nurse Rached.

kaka

12-26-2005, 08:57 AM

Originally posted by The Unnamable:

How is power exercised? Stalin and Hitler were able to exercise enormous power but it was obviously not because they were physically superhuman. So how is that power exercised? According to French Poststructuralist, Michel Foucault, it is through’ discourse’.

Foucault's mention of Stalin and Hitler in this context may suggest that this means of exercising power is a feature of 20th century totalitarianism. However, the moment anyone tries to control anything much bigger that a gang or a small tribe, reliance on brute force alone is seldom practical or reliable. It's also potentially destabilizing, as it can provoke a rebellion, possibly under the leadership of a rival. I suspect that the use of discourse has always played a key role in the exercise of power. (Obviously, I'd accept that in the 20th century the means of disseminating discourse, for example by radio and film/TV, greatly increased, but somehow successful earlier politicians also managed to reach their audiences).

It seems to me that a key feature of discourse in this context is the underlying set of beliefs and values, for example, the "divine right of kings", religion and nationalism ...

RobinHood3000

12-26-2005, 09:29 AM

Actually, starr, "kaka" is a homonym for "caca," which is Español for human excrement. To my knowledge, most English-speaking babies use other terms.

Virgil

12-26-2005, 10:44 AM

There is lot here. I can't possibly respond to it all

This is similar to the problem I had when I first began reading the theorists I mentioned. However, what is ‘just natural’ is itself a construct and variable according to the prevailing beliefs of the day. Look at gender.

Points well taken. But I was referring to people using language to their personal advantage. I won't say that this is an absolute, that every single person tries to frame words from their point of view. But almost everyone does. Perhaps natural was too strong a word here. Common might be a better word, although that seems to weak a word. There must be something in between.

look at the following pairs of words consisting of a male and a female equivalent...these are obviously crude examples and whether or not they are exact equivalents is debatable.

These are poor examples. The only one I might agree with is warlock/witch. (Side note, the Salem witch trials of the 18th century were tried and executed by men, but the controversy was started by other women's accusations.) ***** does not carry negative connotations in the dog breeding/training world. (If applied to women, well, there are negative words that are out there that apply to men) King/Queen are both powerful words. I don't argue that men haven't been in power historically. I'm focused more on language here. Which brings me to bachelor/spinster. The implication here is that men have established the connotations. Well, I don't know if that's true. In my experience, women are much more defining and confining of other women than men. Can't you imagine a situation where a women might define, perhaps to feel superior, some other women as a spinster if she herself is married, and, if she is not, define a single man as prospective bachelor? It's possible. None of us know how such things evolve, including I might add the theorists. Perhaps there are some examples that might be valid. Historically more men have had the ability to read and write, so I imagine some bias (and I use the word here in a statistical sense) may have developed, but over time given that women are half the population I don't see this being a conforming trend.

Thus ideology serves the needs of the dominant class. It does this by ensuring that subordinate classes believe they share the same interests as the ruling classes. Ideology thus seeks, invisibly, to make social conditions appear natural and, by gaining the consent of the subordinate classes, to bring about political control in the form of hegemony.

We don't have classes in the United States, so I can't really speak to how class struture developed or was maintained. It does strike me that the assumption is that the classes who are ruled do so out of any sense of free will or without a complicent consent. I can't get into the mind of someone in the middle ages, but if a person of the lower classes believe in the divine right of kings then there was no conspiracy to conform him as the theorists imply. I believe that these social structures evolved out of a tradition, not out of some slick speaking con artist. I'm not a historian, but until the Renaissance when perspective shifted, I don't recall large masses of popular rebellions.

Your approach seems much more focused on categories that I don’t really know much about – ‘aesthetic theories’.

Well, aren't all these theories essentially questioning the aesthetics of a work? Isn't that what we do as critics? Discussing the philosophy of a work may be important to understanding its structure, style, themes, but if it doesn't expand to that then it's a philosphy discussion and best left for philosophers and philosphy classes. Aristotle doesn't evaluate the philospohic thinking of the dramatist he analyzes. He focuses on the work, the artistry. I think he was a true critic.

They do and, in the case of the Marxists, I think that is their strength. No critical approach is devoid of ideological bias.

Perhaps so. But there are gradations. I don't feel that Aristotle or Sidney or Wordsworth (I've mentioned their aesthetic theories eslewhere) are ideological. Yes, they bring their history and backgrounds to the table, I don't feel they are imposing something to the facts (and we have to agree on some set of facts), which I can't help but feel from these other critics do. I'll give an example later in response to something else.

I think your disagreement here stems from the fact that Marxist critics are not interested in limiting themselves to producing particular readings of particular texts. They do this but tend rather to look at how that text was created in the first place (both literally in terms of how it physically came into existence and in terms of how and why it was generated out of the prevailing ideology of the era in which it was produced).

Yes, you're right. I'm interested in literature and art not sociology or economics. If a critic wants to explore an author's background and place his work in the context of his times, good; that's apprpriate. The industrial revolution is certainly important to undertanding 19th century literature. But most of these critics take it beyond that. Here's my example. When I was last in school, oh about six or so years ago, the latest new theory was New Historicism. Our focus was Malory's Le Morte Darthur. The professor's arguement, backed up by New Historicist' commentary, was that Malory was reacting to the context of his times, the end of feudalism and the all ready establishing capitalism. I wrote a lengthy paper challenging this view. All the observtions they made were implied, almost nothing from the text. And then they draw the conclusion that the final battle between Arthur and Mordred was a conflict between feudalism and capitalism. What? Where in the text does Malory suggest anything about economics? I understand implications beyond what writer might realize can creep in, but this was absolutely rediculous, and frankly it was supported by published commentary.

I'm getting long here. So much for now.

Virgil

12-26-2005, 10:55 AM

Originally posted by The Unnamable:

Foucault's mention of Stalin and Hitler in this context may suggest that this means of exercising power is a feature of 20th century totalitarianism. However, the moment anyone tries to control anything much bigger that a gang or a small tribe, reliance on brute force alone is seldom practical or reliable. It's also potentially destabilizing, as it can provoke a rebellion, possibly under the leadership of a rival. I suspect that the use of discourse has always played a key role in the exercise of power. (Obviously, I'd accept that in the 20th century the means of disseminating discourse, for example by radio and film/TV, greatly increased, but somehow successful earlier politicians also managed to reach their audiences).

It seems to me that a key feature of discourse in this context is the underlying set of beliefs and values, for example, the "divine right of kings", religion and nationalism ...

I don't know what Foucault says about Stalin and Hitler, but ultimately all power is enforced by the point of a gun, physical force. Pursuassion is not the excercise of power. Words don't force people to do things they don't want to.

The Unnamable

12-26-2005, 12:57 PM

(If applied to women, well, there are negative words that are out there that apply to men)
Of course there are but doesn’t it strike you as significant that there are (at least in English) more negative words for women? Also, I was intending that the non-literal meaning of the word be considered. Even ‘queen’ is used disparagingly to refer to homosexual men. Why is ‘*****’ used to describe women? I think you’re taking things too narrowly, in a way. The implications resound far beyond the dictionary definition of a word. You must always be mindful of context.

King/Queen are both powerful words. I don't argue that men haven't been in power historically. I'm focused more on language here. Which brings me to bachelor/spinster.
This is an interesting choice. I believe it reflects implicit assumptions about the expectations placed on men and women. While the words are not exact equivalents, there is the assumption that an unmarried woman is bad in some way. ‘Spinster’ is not a pleasant label. It’s not that a group of men sat around and decided the connotations; it’s more that the way society has been structured will help establish and reinforce such connotations. Many of Shakespeare’s own plays and much of the output of Hollywood reinforces the idea that a woman can be completed by marriage to a man.

The implication here is that men have established the connotations.
While I don’t think that men have done this deliberately and consciously, the male perspective has had a far greater influence in constructing the world as we see it than the female perspective. Part of the reason why men have been in power is that they have had a far greater influence on how language evolves. Of course, it’s not just written language. Images are also extremely powerful in today’s media-saturated world. The B.B.C., famed for objectivity, now disseminates propaganda with a straight face. Between programmes, we are treated to images of non-white people in wheelchairs, playing basketball. This is done, I am sure, to ‘naturalise’ such people. I hope you don’t think I am being deliberately offensive here. My point isn’t that I don’t want to see non-white people in wheelchairs but that I am only seeing them as part of an ideological position with a specific agenda. Again, no conspiracy is involved. In our present ideological climate someone has decided that this is what needs to be said and they would probably consider themselves as having absolutely no political agenda. I believe that everything is political.

In my experience,...conforming trend.
The fact that some women define themselves and others using such ideas is, surely, a powerful argument in favour of the Theorists’ position. It shows the extent to which certain ideas have been internalised and accepted as ‘normal’. I think that we approach things from the opposite direction – you believe that we make language; I believe that language makes us.

We don't have classes in the United States,... I don't recall large masses of popular rebellions.
This is the key to where (I believe) you do are not being fair to the theorists. They do not claim any conspiracy, as I said in the earlier post. No con artist sits plotting in his attic. It does, as you say, ‘evolve’ but like evolution, there is no pre-determined goal. Things expand to fill whatever space is available in whatever way circumstances permit.

Aristotle doesn't evaluate the philospohic thinking of the dramatist he analyzes. He focuses on the work, the artistry. I think he was a true critic.
But his is just another ideological position and I return to my earlier question – is Aristotle to be considered an objective authority who is simply revealing truth? Wouldn’t that make him God? While I certainly don’t think we have outgrown Aristotle, I find it impossible to accept this position. It depends upon the implied assumption that everyone else is wrong and only Aristotle could see the true nature of things.

I don't feel they are imposing something to the facts (and we have to agree on some set of facts),
Another crux – yes, we do, but whose facts and how are they enshrined as ‘facts’? In the end it doesn’t really matter whether the earth is round or flat, what matters is what those in power decide to accept (again, not as part of any conspiracy).

Our focus was Malory's Le Morte Darthur.
But Malory didn’t exist in a bubble. His perception of the world must, axiomatically, have been the result of all the ideas available to him. His medium of communication was not a private language but a pre-existing set of rules and processes. I think you are assuming that theorists and cultural critics simply place greater emphasis on the historical context in order to reveal something about the text. They don’t. They look beyond issues like plot, theme and character to issues of how any meanings are constructed.

Finally, I should add that I do appreciate you probing me and taking my responses seriously. I hope I am repaying the compliment.

RobinHood3000

12-26-2005, 02:08 PM

The Unnamable

12-26-2005, 04:24 PM

The reason "queen" is used disparagingly to refer to homosexual men is because it's impugning masculinity. It's not intended to compare them to women, it's intended to comtrast them with straight men.
I don’t know if this is meant to be serious but I’ll assume it is because, if it is serious, it makes my point very well. If it’s impugning masculinity then surely it is implying that masculinity is a positive quality and that lack of it is negative? So it’s a virtue to be masculine and lack of masculinity is something to be scorned. Do you agree? The implicit assumption is ‘masculinity = good”, “femininity = not so good”. I don’t think there is anything revolutionary about such thinking. From Freud to Simone de Beauvoir we see examinations of how femaleness has been characterised not as a quality in its own right, but something defined by ‘lack’ or difference from the primary. Shakespeare even wrote a play with a title that reflects this: ‘Much Ado About Nothing”.

RobinHood3000

12-26-2005, 04:44 PM

Yes, that's the point that's being made, but you mistake my meaning--"queen" is only an insult in comparison to other males. The implication is that the addressee of the insult is not worth as much as the males--if the same term were to be applied to a woman, it would most likely be a compliment. It's a question of different standards within various genders of what is positive and what isn't. Among males, masculinity is a virtue and femininity is a flaw. Those standards are generally reversed among females.

The Unnamable

12-26-2005, 06:07 PM

It's a question of different standards within various genders of what is positive and what isn't. Among males, masculinity is a virtue and femininity is a flaw. Those standards are generally reversed among females.

What about calling someone (female as well as male) a ‘drama queen’?

Male experience is nearly always foregrounded in English phrases. I teach the Head Girl at my school. She recently asked me why, at the Christmas Carol Service, the Head Boy always speaks before the Head Girl. In school brochures, the name of the Head Boy always comes before the name of the Head Girl and this is probably true for most schools on the planet. We say ‘king and queen’ rather than ‘queen and king’, prince/princess, boy/girl/, husband/wife, even lion/lioness. There is always some kind of hierarchy apparent. I think you are not so much mistaking my meaning as not seeing the point I am making. This is why I said earlier that the way hegemony works is powerful – we are convinced that our ideas originate entirely from within our own autonomous selves. We are fairly blind to the extent to which those selves are actually constructed through the language and other systems of meaning available to us.

I disagree that the standards are simply reversed. It’s simply not true to say “It's a question of different standards within various genders of what is positive and what isn't.” Maleness is still considered primary, especially in the world of politics and power (and the topic of this discussion is Language and Power). During Shakespeare’s time, England had a female head of state, which would superficially imply that it wasn’t patriarchal. However, Elizabeth’s validity as a ruler was by virtue of her possessing qualities usually associated with maleness. In practice, patriarchy is maintained in spite of the presence of a woman at the pinnacle of power, by constantly insisting on Elizabeth's difference from other women. This is a familiar strategy even today, for having a female leader did not lead the British Conservative Party to revise its ideas about the role of women in society - on the contrary, under the rule of Margaret Thatcher, the ‘iron lady’ (an interesting locution in this context) reactionary ideas were reinforced and strengthened. One of the first things any woman in politics must do if she is to reach ‘the top’ is make sure her opponents aren’t able to characterise her as ‘weak’. You might argue that this is true for all would-be leaders but there is not the same expectation for men to be weak as there is for women to be. Richard III exploits such assumptions for his own ends:

“why, this it is, when men are ruled by women:”

Also, the very word ‘weak’ needs much closer scrutiny in this context. Women are deemed to be weak if they lack those qualities of physical strength and aggression usually ascribed to maleness.

I would be interested to hear your response to my point about ‘femaleness’ not being considered as a quality in itself by defined by ideas of difference from and inferiority when compared to ‘maleness’.

Feminist criticism is especially concerned with the way gender assumptions, especially about women, operate in the reading and writing of literary texts. They wish to show how literary texts either sustain or challenge the structure of patriarchy.

Feminist critics argue that gender inequalities are reproduced at three levels:

· in the production of texts;
· in the structure and language of text;
· and through reading practices.

The production of texts is gendered because the 'means of production' - publishing houses, printing presses, bookshops - traditionally have been owned by men. This has made the publishing industry more receptive to stories that support masculine views of life. (If you are reading this, Virgil, this is an example of how such views become embedded as 'normal' without anything conspiratorial being at work. Men who commissioned writers would, simply by virtue of the fact that they are men, be more likely to react positively to male experience.)

The language and structure of texts reproduce gender inequalities by rnarginalising femininity. The use of the male pronoun 'he' as the general term for 'human being' is one simple and often cited example of the way in which this occurs. Another factor is the emphasis on male 'heroes' in popular narratives. In many stories, female characters become merely the 'obstacles' or 'prizes', which the male protagonists encounter during the narrative. Women are reduced to the status of objects, whereas men are the characters who matter.

Reading practices combine with these textual structures to reinforce inequalities. Dominant reading practices encourage readers to 'identify' with characters in a story. In mainstream narratives, readers have the choice of identifying with the active, masterful male 'hero' or the passive, helpless, pretty 'heroine'. Male readers are therefore better catered for than female readers: they can identify with the hero (imagine being him) and desire the heroine (imagine having her). The choice for women readers is less clear cut. They must choose either to identify with subordinate character positions, or to identify with male characters.

RobinHood3000

12-26-2005, 08:44 PM

Hmm. I see your point, and it's an interesting one on how the male counterpart generally comes first when both are stated. I suppose it is true that males generally get the high end of the stick, both socially and dictionally.

Still, both sides can get a little silly in the quest for political correctness. For examples, some feminists are calling for "Eve and Adam" to be the accepted phraseology as opposed to "Adam and Eve," despite the fact that the latter is both biblically chronological and alphabetical (if you wanted to get picky about things).

Besides, not all of culture is oriented towards males, subconsciously or otherwise. As an example, I turn to Star Wars. Yes, I realize it's not the most scholarly of sources, but please bear with me. It's a franchise almost entirely dominated by male characters, including either of the two arguable protagonists (Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker). Princess Leia, however, though in a definite state of distress at times, is far from helpless. Even when she is in need of rescue, she's not above demeaning her captors ("Aren't you a bit short for a stormtrooper?"). Even the Rebellion as a whole, the fundamentally "good side" in the original trilogy, is led by a woman, Mon Mothma. Nearly every female of importance is one more than capable of dominating whatever male she encounters, be she a princess, a queen/senator, a Jedi (although the female Jedi are more prominent in the non-canon literature), or a bounty hunter.

Still, I imagine Star Wars is a fairly uncommon exception to the rule.

Nightshade

12-27-2005, 08:07 AM

First off I pretty sure Im agreeing with Unamable here except Im not sure I just understood everything. however anyways, first off the power of the choice of words.

In 1974 Loftus and Palmer did a study to prove that witness could be lead (meaning mislead) by the phrasing of a question. The short of it was tghey showed the participants a video of a car accident and divided them in to groups and asked how fast they thought the cars were going when, and heres where it differed, they either hit, contacted, smashed, collided or bumped into each other. Unsuprisingly the people who were asked using the word smashed estimated a much higher speed than those who were asked using the contacted.

My point is that the word leaves an impresion behind that influences a persons opinion whether (spelling :sick: ) consciously or not.
And the fact is the male equivelent is usually the stronger, rmore dominant , shiner if you like word, carrying the stigma of "better". Back to the bacholr and spinster anology.The word spinster often contotates a lonley woman of a certain age often assoiated with Cat ladies while bachelors are associated with freedom happiness James bond. ILL use starr as an example if you dont mind, just go and read some of his choice of words in some of his posts and youll see what Im talking about he illustarates about the best example I can think of off the tp of my herad this anolgy. And another thing(These arenot my words but part of a course I was doing before I dropped it in favour of literature) History? although come to think of it Im not convinced by this point.

As for the backing up of this in popular culture I first saw grease last year for a media studies essay and was leant the copy because all my classmates were horrified I hought I was deprived because I had never seen it. I was shocked I mean what message does that film give out? Women should change to suit men! I wrote a nice angry essay on it. But now I am gettng distracted. Point here being this film (which someone recently said is the most pure bit of americana ever to be capture on screen) illstrates a cultural norm women should change for men becasue men are right or better or somthing and language backs this up and this kind of idea backs language up so that they are so mixed up its pretty much impossible to seperate them.

I think that about it for now:D

RobinHood3000

12-27-2005, 08:31 AM

With regards to Grease--yes, the girl changes to suit the guy, but in the lines of dialogue preceding her arrival, the guy demonstrates a willingness to change to suit her. The only reason that the girl is the one who changes is because she simply beat him to the punch, which makes sense because she has the faster-turning gears upstairs.

The Unnamable

12-27-2005, 01:50 PM

Nightshade,
first of all I’m sorry for putting you in the unenviable position of agreeing with me. I hope you won’t be too upset to read that I agree with you. ‘Grease’ reinforces patriarchy. Perhaps it would be possible to stage a production that reads ‘against the grain’ but all the productions I have seen, as well as the film, offer the reading you have discovered. Cultural norms are inscribed in language and reinforced by cultural artefacts, including those called ‘popular’ culture.

Robin,
Your response demonstrates the way that patriarchy reinforces its controlling position while ostensibly promoting freedom for females. In my view, it is simply inaccurate to say “The only reason that the girl is the one who changes is because she simply beat him to the punch, which makes sense because she has the faster-turning gears upstairs.” First of all, ‘the girl’ is a linguistic construct, not an actual historical person, so the writer who created her and the medium through which she is constructed determine her behaviour. You imply that she is a thinking, autonomous individual. Such a reading practice is one of the methods by which patriarchy ensures containment of potential opposition. It acts as a sort of pressure valve, enabling us to think that what is rarely equal in social reality can be so in the imaginative realm.

PS
Nightshade,
I’m glad your essay was ‘angry’. I think passion is a disappearing commodity.

RobinHood3000

12-27-2005, 02:13 PM

If that is the case, then how would you suggest that I refer to the prominent female character in the course of the narrative? The way that I did in the last sentence? Forgive me if I misunderstand your point, but I don't quite understand how I am to refer to the character of "Sandy" without using language. Nightshade made a point as to how the female character in Grease changes to suit the male character, and I was dissenting on the basis of the male character's willingness to do the same for the female counterpart. I was under the impression, however mistaken it may be, that we were discussing how society is reflected in the cultural parallels that it creates.

Nightshade

12-27-2005, 04:15 PM

Robin yes I see your point what I meant was at the end the film when I did the analysis I was taught to do it seemed to me that the film left the taste of well yes it was better and more right for her to chnge think what a fool travolta looked in the cardigan and how "cool" sandy looked. But I see your point actually since the film is in its way historical its could be argued that it was trying to be acurate to the era.
What I was trully horrified by was that nowadays with all the talk about equality little kids are allowed to watch that alone and just end up excepting the implict value ( I cant think of what the theory is called). But since this is only my represntation of what its aboput it can hardly be called a fact now can it?
But another point on the unnbalnced cultural norms and the fact that languge contatins power (and by languge when Im talking about Tv, or the media I also mean music clothes facial expressions basically everything you see or hear) recently my younger sister (9 years old) was watching a cartoon when I came in so I sat down and watched a bit with her and There was this charcter that was well not evil in the proper way but nmot obviously the goodie so and this is our exact dialogue
Me: " sister, whose that is she the baddy?"
sister: : "Well look at her she old ugly and not married"
Me jumping up and down in shock"WHAt! WEhat did yousays? and what doesa that have to do with it?! I asked if she is tha baddy.. Dose that mean if I nevber get married Ill be a bad person?"
Sister: " No, move its only a cartoon I was explaining....go away Im watching"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Needless to say I was very very very shocked I mean shes generally a sesable person and such an old fashioned idea, I mean I can sort of accept it in grease but in a modern cartoon targeted at little kids with all these good moral lessons at the end and yet somehow my little sisters end up with that!

:eek2:
Actually Unnamble I dont really mind agreeing with you although I do think that all swearing should be censored.
:D

The Unnamable

12-27-2005, 05:19 PM

Forgive me if I misunderstand your point, but I don't quite understand how I am to refer to the character of "Sandy" without using language.

Obviously you have to use language – we all do. As the Bee Gees sang, ‘it’s only words and words are all I have.” The point was not about using words but about the dominant reading practice of discussing texts in terms of ‘character’. The problem with this approach is that it trains us to look at individuals in isolation from their wider context. Take for instance the problem of Hamlet’s so-called delay. Surely the point of all of Shakespeare’s great tragedies is that they dramatise a predicament which cannot be accounted for, let alone resolved, in terms of the moral responsibility of the protagonist alone. The plays require that we look beyond questions of morality and examine the premises of a society which could trap such an individual into such a predicament in the first place. The time and not Hamlet himself, is ‘out of joint.’ Interestingly, Terry Eagleton declared that the true heroines of ‘Macbeth’ are the witches because they, “by releasing ambitious thoughts in Macbeth, expose a reverence for hierarchical social order for what it is, as the pious self-deception of a society based on routine oppression and incessant warfare.” He goes on to add that “official society can only ever imagine its radical ‘other’ as chaos rather than creativity, and this is bound to define the sisters as evil.

RobinHood3000

12-27-2005, 05:49 PM

The Unnamable

12-27-2005, 06:04 PM

Tell me if I have this correctly: it's not who the character is in the context of the narrative, it's who the character is as a construct relative to the context of its creator?

I intend no facetiousness, though I fear it's difficult to tell based on the wording of the above, but I'm trying to make sure I understand what you're saying.
“Post-structuralism demands an awareness of the social, cultural conditions of meaning, of the dynamic interactions between texts and their contexts, the cultural practices and habits that determine the nature and directions of the process of meaning. Institutions - as organizing contexts - are centrally significant in terms of holding meanings in place, promoting specific meanings, enabling and disqualifying meanings. Institutions here include institutionalized reading practices, for example. Post-structuralist theory, then, enables analysis to go beyond the immediate encounter of reader and text to examine the institutional practices that position readers and texts, and to come to an awareness of the culturally powerful, readily available systems and possibilities of meaning. Post-structuralism also has the most powerful available descriptions of the individual subject of language and meaning - as a mobile entity enmeshed in cultural formations. This radically changes our understanding of reading and meaning processes: it also has implications for our understanding of cultural processes more generally.

In general, post-structuralism is likely to be sceptical of the claim of any single system of knowledge - like literature, for example - to comprehensive explanatory power, universal value or truth. Post-structuralism would insist on the necessary recognition that our knowledge and understanding of anything is inseparable from the business of representation (language - signs, texts, discourses, institutions). Post-structuralism would tend to insist that knowledge and understanding are always positioned - and that the identity and meaning of things shifts radically given different perspectives and cultural contexts.”

Virgil

12-27-2005, 11:53 PM

You must forgive me. I'm not as quick as you and Robin in my responses. I need time ponder points.

Of course there are but doesn’t it strike you as significant that there are (at least in English) more negative words for women?

I don't know that there are more for women. Has someone actually did a study and tallied them up? If so, at what point in time, because words are always evolviong. But my point is still the same: how can you discern if a man or a woman generated and propogated them?

Many of Shakespeare’s own plays and much of the output of Hollywood reinforces the idea that a woman can be completed by marriage to a man.

Well, don't most women share that point of view too? My mother (a female) believes that her daughter (a female) and her sons (both males) are all incomplete until married. Everyone is incomplete until marriage, and the notion is not just imposed by men.

The fact that some women define themselves and others using such ideas is, surely, a powerful argument in favour of the Theorists’ position. It shows the extent to which certain ideas have been internalised and accepted as ‘normal’.

So, if certain women agree with the theorists, they are enlightened; if they disagree, despite personal testimony, they have "internalize and accepted as normal" the bad ideas. Sounds Stalinist to me.

I think that we approach things from the opposite direction – you believe that we make language; I believe that language makes us.

I think you might be right here. This may be the fundemental point from which our thinking diverges. I believe that people have free wills and that language (especially english, for crying out loud) is diverse and flexible enough to conceptualize all sorts of ideas. If language makes us, how come an englishman and a frenchman share simliar ideas? How come you and I, both nautralized speakers of the same english language (with subtle differences because of the pond that separates us) have very different ideas? If language makes us, why are we not all identical thinkers?

But his [Aristoltle] is just another ideological position and I return to my earlier question – is Aristotle to be considered an objective authority who is simply revealing truth? Wouldn’t that make him God? While I certainly don’t think we have outgrown Aristotle, I find it impossible to accept this position. It depends upon the implied assumption that everyone else is wrong and only Aristotle could see the true nature of things.

First, I don't know what Aristotle's ideological position is. Does he have one in The Poetics? It's been a while since reading it, I don't recall it. In contrast Plato, who did not have a specific work on aesthetics but one could piece it together from various writings, did merge an ideological position with his understanding of art. Remember he wanted to banish all the artists and writers. Second Aristotle is not God. If I put him in a place of prominence, it is because he is the most satisfying to me. There have been people over time who disagreed with him. Wordsworth I've mentioned repeatedly is an antithesis in many ways. Aristotle looks at a work as a construct of a rational mind, while Wordsworth looks at art as an inspired effort--inspired from what? Nature, emotion, ultimately God. The teachers of my undergraduate days taught literature from what is called New Criticism (I.A. Richards, Blackmur, Penn Warren, Cleaneth Brooks). Mostly pre-WWII thinking (perhaps mostly American, but I'm not sure), in which in my opinion tried to synthesize Aristotle and Wordworth.

I don't feel that Wordsworth is ideological either in his thinking about art, and we know he had ideological positions in his personal life. On the issues of his day, he was what would be considered on the left in his younger days, but evolved to be on the right in his older days. But his aesthetic ideas never changed, no matter where he was ideologically. The theorists we have in question here are uniformly all on the left. Isn't that also suspicious? You would think that if the ideas aren't ideologically driven there would be a general 50/50 split, or given the leftward trend of acedemia even 70/30. But it's more like 99/1, if that one even exists.

Another crux – yes, we do, but whose facts and how are they enshrined as ‘facts’? In the end it doesn’t really matter whether the earth is round or flat, what matters is what those in power decide to accept (again, not as part of any conspiracy).

But how is language controling here. It strikes me that power is controling. What's to stop a person from saying in front of authority one thing but thinking that person is full of B.S.? How long over time can one continue to convince the public that the world is flat?

But Malory didn’t exist in a bubble. His perception of the world must, axiomatically, have been the result of all the ideas available to him.

We barely know the raw facts of Malory's life. What those critics are doing is speculating. They don't know what infleuenced Malory. And surprise-surprise, their speculation fits perfectly with their political agenda! Isn't that startling? I made the point in my essay on Malory that one could make the argument that the absense of a free market capitalist system generated the feud between Arthur and Mordred, and I backed it up with some facts in the text and compared it to the general stability of free market systems. I also went on to say that this would be just as rediculous a line of thought as the New Historicists. BTW, I got an A+ on that essay, my only A+ ever, and from a teacher who was not sympathetic to my position. Actually, she said it was the only A+ she had ever given out.

Finally, I should add that I do appreciate you probing me and taking my responses seriously. I hope I am repaying the compliment.

Absolutely, I'm enjoying it. Even if we don't convince each other, we're exposing these ideas to the younger people. BTW, you spelled "compliment" correctly.

The Unnamable

12-28-2005, 09:24 AM

You must forgive me. I'm not as quick as you and Robin in my responses. I need time ponder points.
No need to apologise! I’m trying to make the most of my free time at the moment. I’m going to be offline for a week or so after today.

how can you discern if a man or a woman generated and propogated them?
I don’t think it matters greatly. I think you are still seeing it in terms of conspiracy. However, when you consider that it’s men’s interests that are served by having words for women that ‘control’ their behaviour, it is far more likely to be men who help sustain them. It’s in their interests to do so. The simplest and most commonly cited examples I can think of are words that describe ‘promiscuous’ men and women (an interesting label in itself in this context). Identical behaviour is viewed in very different ways. A man seldom gets referred to as a ‘tart’ or (in the UK) a ‘slag’, ‘slut’, ‘slapper’ etc. Many feminist critics examine the way female sexuality is defined and controlled in this way.

Well, don't most women share that point of view too? My mother (a female) believes that her daughter (a female) and her sons (both males) are all incomplete until married. Everyone is incomplete until marriage, and the notion is not just imposed by men.

So, if certain women agree with the theorists, they are enlightened; if they disagree, despite personal testimony, they have "internalize and accepted as normal" the bad ideas. Sounds Stalinist to me.
Again, your comment is good evidence of the way ideology operates. Yes, women also believe that marriage completes them. Many people believe it because it is such a dominant assumption within many cultures that it appears to be ‘normal’. It is reinforced (not necessarily consciously and certainly not conspiratorially) through the cultural artefacts that surround us. Even fairy stories carry the assumptions that women are ‘made whole’ by marrying.

Primary sex differences between males and females remain the same in all cultures. Gender differences vary greatly from one culture to another. In western societies, males are expected to be active, competitive, domineering, and authoritative. Women are expected to be passive, co-operative, submissive, and caring. But these masculine and feminine characteristics are completely reversed in some societies. This shows that the differences are not 'natural', but cultural.

We need to distinguish between sex and gender. In many areas of society, these distinctions are hidden, with the result that gender differences are often thought to be 'natural' - like a person's anatomy. The problem with this is that gender is used as a means of social organisation. It is a technique for producing inequalities between men and women.

Cultures create gender through social practices such as education, employment and childrearing. These activities slot men and women into different positions of power. Traditionally, women have been raised to take on domestic roles such as wife and mother, while men have been prepared for more powerful positions as wage earners and decision-makers. They have even been given personality characteristics which match these positions.

Once again, consider the words used to describe males or females who don’t opt for such ‘completion’ – spinster is pejorative while bachelor is not.

I don’t know where you got the enlightened/unenlightened idea from – The vast majority of people have never heard of the theorists I mentioned. Crucially, it has nothing to do with ‘bad’ ideas. I am making no value judgments here. ‘Value’ itself is a transitive term: it means whatever is valued by certain people in specific situations, according to particular criteria and in the light of specific situations. The point is that our knowledge and understanding of anything is inseparable from means of representation (language, signs, texts, discourses, etc.). There is no such thing as a disinterested fact.

As a sideline, as it’s Christmas, did you know that in none of the Gospels is there mention of an donkey or an ox? Yet most ‘Nativity’ scenes include an ox and an donkey. Most people, if asked to describe the Nativity scene, will mention the animals. Why? Because most of the representations they have seen include them. It is absorbed into us. This is not the result of a conspiracy but of constantly reproduced images that have now, for most people, become ‘reality’. Similarly, I remember once asking a lecturer at the Slade School of Art in London why so many 13th and 14th century paintings have so much intense blue in them. I was told that the blue used came from Lapis Lazuli, which was fantastically expensive. Those who commissioned paintings urged their artists to use the colour because it demonstrated the patron’s wealth. There is an example of how power and wealth can influence our perceptions and representation of ‘reality’.

If language makes us, why are we not all identical thinkers?
I think this is a matter of degree. I don’t think we are that different, at least not fundamentally.

First, I don't know what Aristotle's ideological position is. Does he have one in The Poetics?
Again, it’s not that Aristotle adopts an ideological position, simply that all positions are ideological.

The theorists we have in question here are uniformly all on the left. Isn't that also suspicious?
No more suspicious than the fact that most other approaches are conservative and even reactionary. Take the Liberal Humanist approach (and this is the one that I was educated to accept). It claims to be interested only in the text and the human condition. In the case of King Lear, it is an approach that implies that suffering is universal and therefore permanent and unavoidable (part of the human condition); that the reasons for this pain are beyond human comprehension; and that the pain is somehow beautiful and necessary in a sense we cannot fathom. By implication, therefore, we must accept suffering as a part of what it is to be human. While I might agree with this, I can still see that it is a very conservative view of human experience and it does suggest that there is little point in trying to change things. At least the theorists make their political allegiance clear and do not claim to be offering universal truths.

But how is language controling here. It strikes me that power is controling. What's to stop a person from saying in front of authority one thing but thinking that person is full of B.S.? How long over time can one continue to convince the public that the world is flat?
This is now becoming extremely complicated because the fine detail is now showing. Part of the ‘strategy’ (for want of a better word) is to enable people to preserve a sense of being able to maintain autonomy by thinking one thing and saying another. Willing capitulation is far more powerful than the imposition of rules from above. Perhaps my example was not well chosen. There is little to be gained by convincing people that the world is ‘flat’ but there is something to be gained by having everyone believe that promiscuity is bad for a woman. These ideas are not imposed on us from above in the way you appear to be assuming. Why is it that people think of the Nativity as a stable scene? There are many 13th and 14th century paintings that use the setting of a cave, not a stable. As I say, there is no conspiracy involved but the representations of reality to which we are being exposed are ‘controlling’ us nevertheless.

We barely know the raw facts of Malory's life. What those critics are doing is speculating. They don't know what infleuenced Malory.
Does anyone ‘know’? However, we are all influenced by whatever systems of representation are available to us at the time. Malory was no different. It’s not that he consciously considered aspects of free market capitalism, but that he cannot be separated from his historical context. Take the simple example of texts criticised for ‘racism’. At certain periods in human history, it would have seemed natural to think of non-whites as inferior so it’s hardly surprising that this is reflected in the work produced.

I think the main barrier to your acceptance of the work of theorists is your sense that some sort of power hungry conspiracy is involved. That isn’t the case.

BTW, you spelled "compliment" correctly.
You have to let these things go! :p

fayefaye

12-28-2005, 10:31 AM

when you consider that it’s men’s interests that are served by having words for women that ‘control’ their behaviour, it is far more likely to be men who help sustain them. It’s in their interests to do so. The simplest and most commonly cited examples I can think of are words that describe ‘promiscuous’ men and women (an interesting label in itself in this context). Identical behaviour is viewed in very different ways. A man seldom gets referred to as a ‘tart’ or (in the UK) a ‘slag’, ‘slut’, ‘slapper’ etc. Many feminist critics examine the way female sexuality is defined and controlled in this way.

It's a minor point to pick up on, considering that I agree with most of what you've said from what I've skim-read (this is a pretty dense thread!), but I don't think it's necessarily more likely to be men who perpetuate the patriarchal ideology in language. As you say, the nature of ideology means that we all see from within it. A lot of women are convinced that promiscuity is worse for women than men.

Having said that, it is one thing to analyse the differences in language and another to start to destabilise them. I know people who use 'whore' as an affectionate term (possibly evolved over time from attaching 'whore' to the end of words, 'hug whore' - somebody who hugs everyone, 'coffee whore' - somebody who drinks everyone else's coffee, etc) but it goes to show that dominant interpretations ('whore' as a negative term, promiscuity associated with it being negative) are not static. 'Manwhore' however, is a term used derogatorily and attached to men who think they're players, but are basically male sluts. So, whilst, generally and traditionally, these hierarchies exist (men are players not manwhores, women are sluts not players), they are not absolute. Sometimes it seems as if feminists could be simply strengthening the view of females as being oppressed by stating that the female component is always the weaker.

Primary sex differences between males and females remain the same in all cultures. Gender differences vary greatly from one culture to another. In western societies, males are expected to be active, competitive, domineering, and authoritative. Women are expected to be passive, co-operative, submissive, and caring. But these masculine and feminine characteristics are completely reversed in some societies. This shows that the differences are not 'natural', but cultural.

True, but I think that gender is becoming more fluid and Western culture is becoming more flexible in the expectations imposed upon men and women.

As a side-note, I recently did a BBC quizz telling me I have a Man-Brain :p The up-shot being, that whilst society imposes certain expectations and gender roles on people (women are worse at maths, better at languages, are caring etc...), most people defy these sorts of expectations/roles in some way (after all, gender is an act...)

The Unnamable

12-28-2005, 11:13 AM

A lot of women are convinced that promiscuity is worse for women than men.
I wouldn’t disagree with this at all. I would add however, that such a view really helps men. If you can get women fighting one another over such labels then all the better. Their focus and energies are on who gets the labels, not on their validity.

Having said that, it is one thing to analyse the differences in language and another to start to destabilise them.
Absolutely, which is why I find it fascinating to read these theorists but I have no interest in applying them in my own enjoyment of literature. This might come as a shock to some but I don’t actually accept them ultimately. Only now I know why I don't whereas before my position was troubled (broadly) Liberal Humanist. All concepts are relative and so I tend to focus on the characters and the ways they have made sense of their world.

So, whilst, generally and traditionally, these hierarchies exist (men are players not manwhores, women are sluts not players), they are not absolute. Sometimes it seems as if feminists could be simply strengthening the view of females as being oppressed by stating that the female component is always the weaker.
Of course not – none of what I’ve said would make sense if they were absolute. Values change. We no longer put the mentally ill on public show, except occasionally perhaps, on the ‘net. :p How and why they change is what’s interesting. And I still believe that we do not all have an equal say in effecting those changes.

Your last point might have been a side-note but (together with a few other comments) it’s relevant to the issue. Some theorists have explored the way that dominant ideologies have a sort of inbuilt pressure valve by ensuring the existence of some form of opposition to its domination. This way opposition can be contained by having issues debated on the dominant ideology’s own terms. If the discourse with which to challenge something disappears altogether, then certain types of alternatives become literally unthinkable.

PS Sorry to hear that you might be a man-bird. :p

fayefaye

12-30-2005, 11:15 AM

PS Sorry to hear that you might be a man-bird. :p

:goof: (I love this emoticon, it really is quite goofy looking). The point I was sort of trying to make, in a very roundabout way, was that if gender is culturally constructed, then the differences and oppositions and hierarchies created are also culturally constructed. More importantly, the differences aren't really all there, but are rather dependant upon people behaving in a certain way (the way defined by those in power, I suppose). So the difference between being a man and being a woman (gender wise) isn't all there. You can see this when you look at the people around you. Most dont' behave in the 'socially defined' way. Men who are very self conscious ('does this shirt make me look fat? White makes me look fat'), women who are very apathetic, for example. Feminist statements about how the female component of a binary opposition are weaker, and female qualities are viewed as inferior etc rely on the social definition of what it is to be female, and seek to show that it shouldn't be seen as inferior, that 'femininity' isn't weaker. But, as you say, this is arguing an opposition within a dominant discourse (arguing for equality within a patriarchy which defines female, and accepting the patriarchy's definitions of female. If that makes sense. It seems as if they accept the definition of female imposed by the patriarchy but resent the implication that feminity is weaker/marginalised). Couldn't we get rid of the definitions altogether?

I hope that makes sense... I'm not in much of a thinking mood atm. :confused:

Virgil

01-02-2006, 01:54 AM

I I think you are still seeing it in terms of conspiracy. However, when you consider that it’s men’s interests that are served by having words for women that ‘control’ their behaviour, it is far more likely to be men who help sustain them. It’s in their interests to do so. The simplest and most commonly cited examples I can think of are words that describe ‘promiscuous’ men and women (an interesting label in itself in this context). Identical behaviour is viewed in very different ways. A man seldom gets referred to as a ‘tart’ or (in the UK) a ‘slag’, ‘slut’, ‘slapper’ etc. Many feminist critics examine the way female sexuality is defined and controlled in this way.

All this proves is language reflects social norms. It doesn't prove that language controls people. And frankly, I can point out a number of places in your write up here where you suggest, perhaps unaware on your part, it is a conspiracy.

Primary sex differences between males and females remain the same in all cultures. Gender differences vary greatly from one culture to another. In western societies...

Ok, can you name one society in the world and across time that would not be regarded as patriarchal? Frankly, an argument can be made that western society is the least patriarchal. But that's neither here nor there.

I think we're talking past each other.

First, I fail to see how Aristotle and Wordworth are ideological. Your whole argument seems to hinge on this [either (a) their language has framed subsequent ideology or (b) they've written from a language already imbued with ideology - not clear which you mean. Either way, I catagorically reject this. You need to prove it. I don't honestly see it. You say:

Again, it’s not that Aristotle adopts an ideological position, simply that all positions are ideological.

The reason you say this is because everything the theorist see is through their idelogical glasses. They've constructed a world view that that is not complex, but is simply binary. So, if it doesn't agree with them, it must be ideologically against them. It's as if from the beginning of written history, there was a philosophy A, which prevailed up to them (20th century?) and then there was a B philosophy. This is so limiting as an avenue of literary criticism. This is why every five years they need to restructure their argument into a new "ism."

Second, I maintain that the theroists are ideological and consciously so. I maintain that they look at a text, and--surprise-surprise--it fits in with their ideological perspective, either anti-capitalists or patriarchal or pro-Marxist or pro-feminists. They interpret a text not from what the author intended, or even from what the text says, but from what it doesn't say. While I don't mind a critic speculating at some point about the author's social context, to develop a critical approach this way is ripe for shoddy thinking.

Third, I still don't see how language controls human behavior. You have presented a few examples, but it's not evident from your examples that language is reflecting reality rather than creating reality.

The points that Faye makes about language shows just how complex its relationship is to social norms. To me, that complexity says volumes. It says to me that it doesn't fit into ideological patterns. Thanks Faye.

Anon22

01-02-2006, 02:42 AM

I think that we approach things from the opposite direction – you believe that we make language; I believe that language makes us.

Not exactly... language doesn't make us, concept does. The only part of us that language makes is our conscience, without it we would not really be able to use it. All our thoughts begin in our subconscience though which is purely concept.

Anna Seis

01-02-2006, 05:43 PM

The point here is the definition of power. If power is only the act of force someone to accept anything by means of concrete threat, I should agree with Virgil. However, there are many ways to excercise power, which are more subtle and more effective, because a direct threat often will raise a resistance; therefore indirect means of control would be preferable. With the means of comunication that we have access in this late times, the indirect control is more easy and reachs more people. And if indirect power can suggest us what to desire, so there is no need of forcing by physical means. Lately I see many people are absolutely interested in material things - I have no prejudice against material things. I like cars, computers, music etc. A man whose main care is to buy expensive tennis shoes or movil telephones or new car and so, doesn't reflect much at all and is more controlable.
It is true that we are free to make elections. But we can only choose between the things we can do, because nobody chooses things he doesn't know, and with great difficulties chooses things that are unnacceptable in the social context that he is inmersed. So, the human being is limited in his elections, and will choose what he knows and what will not give him problems.
Reality is built everyday, and with materials that are originated from issues of information that are not contingent, but controlled by economic and politic power. Of course the question is not simple. There are many variables, sociological, psychological, etc. that converge in the determination of phenomena. Some days ago, I was introducing myself to the theory of Teun Van Dijk. This author states that Social Cognitions are “socially shared systems of social representations”. Those systems are socially shared by means of discourse, and includes representations about “groups, classes, structures or social issues”. The idea is that the elites that have privileges in their access to management of discours can excercise some influence on the social representations of those who receive their messages, by means of discourse. Van Dijk did research about social communication, anayzing how stereotypes about ethnic minories were transmitted in a biased way, creating the conditions for the reproduction of racistic beliefs.
If we assume that an actitude is the germen of a behavior, so we have to accept that the control by linguistic means exists. I don’t think it’s an irreversible fact; I believe that reflection about it makes us more conscious, and it is a better strategy that deny the existence of the problem.
I must add that I’m enjoying this thread!!

Anna Seis

01-02-2006, 05:51 PM

Virgil said:
"I believe that people have free wills and that language (especially english, for crying out loud) is diverse and flexible enough to conceptualize all sorts of ideas. If language makes us, how come an englishman and a frenchman share simliar ideas?"

I also believe people have free wills, but our freedom is limited; and it is not equally limited for everybody. Our freedom is diverse if we are born in different places, times and social groups. There will be always limitations, but in some cases it will be more notorious. A child born in a context where he has no possibility of reading will appropiate discourse in a different way that a child who is encouraged to reading since he has age to do it; his ability of express his thinkings will be different, his behaviour will be different. In theory, books are available to everyone, but the social context is a very important factor, and imposes values and attitudes that precedes the individual. I believe that the statement "language makes us" makes reference to a process of internalization of social discourse, that is different to the learning of a "tongue". I conceive discourse as an ability to expose our thinking by means of an idiom, that implies argumentation skills as ways or operating by symbolic means with our representations of reality (Defining Discourse is a hard work; I am making a stipulative definition.) A Frenchman and an Englishman who have similar management of discourse can share similar ideas because idiom is not an obstacle; perhaps a Frenchman can comunicate whit his British equal in a better manner that he could do with another Frenchman whose social context, age, gender etc were different.
After all, I do prefer to believe in freedom of will, but recognizing that freedom is not uniformly easy for everyone. I think is more realistic, and not so deceiving as believe that our lives are entirely controlled from out of ourselves .

Virgil

01-02-2006, 06:01 PM

If we assume that an actitude is the germen of a behavior, so we have to accept that the control by linguistic means exists. I don’t think it’s an irreversible fact; I believe that reflection about it makes us more conscious, and it is a better strategy that deny the existence of the problem.
I must add that I’m enjoying this thread!!

The fact that it is not irreversible suggests to me that we are not under the contol of language as unnamable states. I'm not arguing that we can't get pursuaded by people and propaganda. This is sort of a short term, individual by individual decision. What I'm arguing against is that society at large, millions of people across time and space are controled by nuances of language and culture. What I claiming is that these nuances are a reflection of society at large. We contol the language; language doesn't control us.

Nightshade

01-03-2006, 03:28 AM

We contol the language; language doesn't control us.
Yes but do we?
I mean at first w control the language but say you come across a new phrase or ok how about this "I have a learning disability."
Now should you not know me or not be aware of the differance between a learning disability and a learning difficulty.
The strength of th word is going to color your attitude towards me. First impressions and all. Thats where I think languge does not so much irriversabvly control us so much as has a tendency to color our thoughts andd nuge our opinions in a certain direction.
Its all to do with the negtive and postive social associations with a word. Although naturally personal associations are stronger than social ones and thus have more power.

The Unnamable

01-03-2006, 05:05 AM

All this proves is language reflects social norms.
And where do social norms come from? How are they established and maintained?

It doesn't prove that language controls people.
Perhaps we are at cross-purposes over the meaning of ‘control’. I don’t mean simply that language bludgeons us into a state of submission in some Orwellian stamping boot way (although I think Orwell would disagree with your assertion that language doesn’t control us. Think of 'Thoughtcrime'.). I mean that our very identities are constructed through the systems of meaning available to us, of which language is the most important.

And frankly, I can point out a number of places in your write up here where you suggest, perhaps unaware on your part, it is a conspiracy.
Then this is my fault. I still say that there is not, at least in the vast majority of cases, a conspiracy. However, there are many instances of centralised attempts to police language. Why is so much importance now placed on ensuring we adopt politically correct terms? Recently in the UK, a retired female teacher put forward a motion at a teachers’ conference that the word ‘failure’ be dropped when assessing students’ examination scripts and the term ‘deferred success’ be adopted instead. If language doesn’t control the way we see the world and ourselves, why does it matter? And why are words like ‘nigger’ so unacceptable?

Ok, can you name one society in the world and across time that would not be regarded as patriarchal?
No – but that surely supports my point? Men have always been in control.

I think we're talking past each other.
I disagree that I am not listening to you. I used to be broadly supportive of your approach and resisted the theorists at first. I simply think that the post-structuralist argument is ultimately far more convincing than the others.

First, I fail to see how Aristotle and Wordworth are ideological.
The point is that everything is ideological. Notice that I say ideological and not ‘political’ or ‘party political’. There is no such thing as a disinterested statement of fact. During the last Labour Party Conference, an elderly man called Walter Wolfgang was forcibly evicted from the conference hall for shouting ‘nonsense’ during one of the speeches. When the BBC reported the incident, he was described as “frail, former refugee from Nazi Germany.” Now he did look frail and it is a verifiable fact that he was a refugee from Nazi Germany. However, the reason these facts rather than others (his shoe size, his height, his hair colour) were given is something we should question. It certainly helped to establish some kind of equivalence between the thugs evicting him (and by implication, the Labour Party) and the Nazis. It’s not that I’m a socialist who objects to his party being tarnished in this way. I am not making any political point here, merely trying to show that what we take as unbiased can never be so. If we say that in South London X% of crime is committed by non-whites, is that a fact? Why are we not told the %age of green-eyed people, or blondes, or left-handed people etc.?

‘Our’ Wordsworth and Aristotle are not identical to the Wordsworth or Aristotle of their contemporaries. It is rather that different historical periods have constructed a ‘different’ Wordsworth and Aristotle for their own purposes, and found in those texts elements to value or devalue. The claim that knowledge should be ‘value-free’ is itself a value judgment. The largely concealed structure of values which informs and underlies our factual statements is a part of what I mean by ‘ideology’. Literature does not exist in the way that say flowers do. The value judgments by which it is constituted are historically variable and these value judgments have a close relation to social ideologies. Aristotle’s and Wordsworth’s views of the world are not the only, ‘true’ views. The fact that they are not the same means, by simple logic, that both cannot be ‘correct’.

Your whole argument seems to hinge on this [either (a) their language has framed subsequent ideology or (b) they've written from a language already imbued with ideology - not clear which you mean. Either way, I catagorically reject this. You need to prove it. I don't honestly see it.
It’s not really my argument but those of Barthes, Derrida, Lacan, Foucault, etc. They have produced work that exposes the Liberal Humanist position for what it is – a piece of disguised ideology. This does not mean that the 'great writers' produced propaganda or that the world ‘out there’ doesn’t exist, but that our perception and knowledge of that world is shaped by the medium through which we express it. Why do we still use the expression ‘sunrise’ when it doesn’t?

The reason you say this is because everything the theorist see is through their idelogical glasses.
I think you still see ideology as the same as propaganda. The two are not synonymous. We all see the world through ideological glasses. How could it be otherwise? Your original response to this question was that it’s common sense. The fact that structuralism offends common sense is one of its greatest assets. Common sense tells us that the world is more or less as we perceive it. We know that the sun goes around the earth because we can see that it does. It’s common sense.

Second, I maintain that the theroists are ideological and consciously so.
Yes, theorists are ‘ideological’ as I said before. The point is that they know and admit this. You refer to ‘what the author intended’ as if Literature has an ontologically privileged status. This is untenable. The main consequence of the kind of linguistic study carried out by men such as Wittgenstein and Saussure is our recognition that meaning is not something expressed or reflected in language – it is actually produced by it. It’s not that we have meanings in the first place and then dress them in words. Meaning is not a pre-linguistic something that the author ‘wills’, which is then fixed for all time in a set of material signs. Martin Heidegger, pupil of Edmund Husserl, broke with his master’s system of thought when he recognised that meaning is historical. It’s not simply a matter of asking what signs mean but of investigating their varied history, as conflicting social groups, individuals and discourses sought to appropriate them and imbue them with their own meanings. You will probably claim that this is evidence of conspiracy. However, I consider it no more conspiratorial than when you say above, “an argument can be made that western society is the least patriarchal”. You are trying to insist on your own definition of meanings. I assume that you are not involved in any conspiracy to do so. Language is a field of ideological contention and not a monolithic system. Signs are the very material of ideology – without them no values or ideas could exist at all.

The points that Faye makes about language shows just how complex its relationship is to social norms. To me, that complexity says volumes. It says to me that it doesn't fit into ideological patterns. Thanks Faye.
I don’t think Faye disagrees with me, in essence.

The Unnamable

01-03-2006, 05:07 AM

Not exactly... language doesn't make us, concept does. The only part of us that language makes is our conscience, without it we would not really be able to use it. All our thoughts begin in our subconscience though which is purely concept.
This makes no sense to me. How can a concept exist without language? Name me just one concept that exists without it. There is no concept that is not involved in an open-ended play of signification, permeated with the traces and fragments of other ideas. It’s just that, out of this play of signifiers, certain meanings are elevated by social ideologies to a privileged position, or made the centres around which other meanings are made to turn. The interesting theorist to read with regard to a psychoanalytical approach is Jacques Lacan.

The Unnamable

01-03-2006, 05:29 AM

The fact that it is not irreversible suggests to me that we are not under the contol of language as unnamable states. I'm not arguing that we can't get pursuaded by people and propaganda. This is sort of a short term, individual by individual decision. What I'm arguing against is that society at large, millions of people across time and space are controled by nuances of language and culture. What I claiming is that these nuances are a reflection of society at large. We contol the language; language doesn't control us.
Of course it’s not irreversible. As I have already said, the theories I have mentioned depend on that fact. I think you are equating ideological control with propaganda. That is not what I’ve been saying. I cannot understand how you don’t see that our very identities, our sense of ourselves, are dependent upon the systems of meaning available to us. You seem to assume that society at large exists outside of the realm of language. How can it, unless you believe in an objective reality existing independently of our ability to describe it? We can only ever be what language enables us to be. Even by saying ‘I’ we are making certain assumptions.

Nightshade’s point is a valid one. Again, there is no conspiracy or propaganda involved. The word ‘disability’ carries with it the implicit assumption that ‘learning’ is worthwhile. You might say that it is and I wouldn’t take issue with you over whether or not this is the case. I would take issue though, if you assume that to be a self-evident truth and not a value judgment.

The Unnamable

01-03-2006, 10:04 AM

The point here is the definition of power. If power is only the act of force someone to accept anything by means of concrete threat, I should agree with Virgil.
I hope that, if you read my reply to Virgil, you now see I do not mean power as in simple brute physical force. I mentioned ‘Thoughtcrime’, which I take as an example of the way power resides in language. It is a concept that exists in language. It has the power to control behaviour by making the people in Orwell’s novel fearful of what goes on in their own heads. Yes, it is backed up by the threat of physical force but its real power exists in the fact that its influence permeates our sense of ourselves.

However, there are many ways to excercise power, which are more subtle and more effective, because a direct threat often will raise a resistance; therefore indirect means of control would be preferable.
Some more recent cultural theorists argue that the dominant ideology ‘deliberately’ produces its own resistance in order to contain it. In simple terms and to use a real world example, the threat of say, terrorism is exaggerated in order to legitimise draconian measures taken by the state.

With the means of comunication that we have access in this late times, the indirect control is more easy and reachs more people. And if indirect power can suggest us what to desire, so there is no need of forcing by physical means. Lately I see many people are absolutely interested in material things - I have no prejudice against material things. I like cars, computers, music etc. A man whose main care is to buy expensive tennis shoes or movil telephones or new car and so, doesn't reflect much at all and is more controlable.
This is the key, although I wouldn’t express it in a way that suggests simply that some people are stupid and so easier to control. We are all controlled. This is what seems to offend Virgil more than anything else I suggest. Please read the following by British Marxist critic, Terry Eagleton for a more succinct and articulate explanation of the point I am making:

“As far as society is concerned, I as an individual am utterly dispensable. No doubt someone has to fulfill the functions I carry out (writing, teaching, lecturing and so on), since education has a crucial role to play in the reproduction of this kind of social system, but there is no particular reason why this individual should be myself. One reason why this thought does not lead me to join a circus or take an overdose is that this is not usually the way I experience my own identity, not the way I actually ‘live out’ my life. I do not feel myself to be a mere function of a social structure which could get along without me, true though this appears to be when I analyze the situation, but as somebody with a significant relation to society and the world at large, a relation which gives me enough sense of meaning and value to enable me to act purposefully. It is as though society were not just an impersonal structure to me, but a ‘subject’ which ‘addresses’ me personally – which recognises me, tells me that I am valued, and so makes me by that very act of recognition into a free, autonomous subject. I come to feel, not exactly as though the world exists for me alone, but as though it is significantly ‘centred’ on me, and I in turn am significantly ‘centred’ on it. Ideology, for Althusser, is the set of beliefs and practices which does the centring. It is far more subtle, pervasive and unconscious than a set of explicit doctrines: it is the very medium in which I ‘live out’ my relation to society, the realm of signs and social practices which binds me to the social structure and lends me a sense of coherent purpose and identity. Ideology in this sense may include the act of going to church, of casting a vote, of letting women pass first through doors; it may encompass not only such conscious predilections as my deep devotion to the monarchy but the way I dress and the kind of car I drive, my deeply unconscious images of others and of myself.”

The Unnamable

01-03-2006, 01:02 PM

All our thoughts begin in our subconscience though which is purely concept.

I won’t even pretend to understand much of what French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan explores in his most famous work, Écrits, but from what I can make out he has reread Freud in the light of structuralist and post-structuralist theories of discourse. I said earlier that “Even by saying ‘I’ we are making certain assumptions.” I was thinking here of Lacan’s theory of the ‘mirror stage’. In the pre-Oedipal stage, a baby has no sense of self, is not able to distinguish between subject and object. It depends on its mother for its very existence. So the boundary between its own and its mother’s body is blurred. Lacan calls this state of being the ‘imaginary’ realm. However, when it looks at itself in a mirror and first sees reflected back an image of itself, we see the development of an ego. For the first time, it sees a unified image of itself. But it is still an image – so both ‘real’ and ‘not real’. It is both us and not us. Because it is recognised as somehow ‘us’, a part of ourselves, we identify with it. But it is also alien because it is not ‘us’ and certainly not how we feel ourselves to be from inside our own body. So for Lacan, the act of identifying oneself in the mirror image is an act of misrecognition. As we grow up, we continue to make imaginary identifications with objects. This in turn builds up the ego. This means that the development of a sense of self is dependent on creating a ‘fictional’ image of self by finding something external to us with which we can identify.

To become a subject therefore, the child must come to ‘understand’ that it is made up of its similarities to and differences from all that surrounds it. This is when, according to Lacan, it moves from the ‘imaginary’ to the ‘symbolic’ realm. And by entering into that realm it is entering a pre-existing structure of social and sexual roles and relations. This is why Lacan sees the unconscious as structured like a language. The fact that every society known to man carries the assumption that female is inferior to male shows that this assumption is deep rooted in our early development. This in turn explains why Lacan’s work has been so significant for feminists. Whatever you make of Lacan’s theories, they certainly challenge profoundly the simplistic notion that we are all autonomous, free-thinking individuals.

blp

01-03-2006, 02:02 PM

Phew. Finally at the end. Got to admit, I skim read some, so forgive me if I repeat anything.

I see a Lacanian analyst, which I suppose gives me some direct insight into all this. I also went through art school feeling fairly starry-eyed about Derrida, Deleuze, Kristeva et al. without really having any of it properly explained. When I came out I realised I knew virtually nothing about politics and the French theorists weren't helping, so turned to Chomsky (as political theorist rather than linguist) and various others to learn all about the nasty things the American govt had been up to etc. Also learned a little about economics so as to be able to have opinions on things like taxation (mostly in favour), privatisation (almost always opposed) and globalisation (depends what you mean). A lot of this concrete reality seemed beyond the reach of the Post Structuralists and there was a wide acceptance in the nineties among many of their former acolytes that their focus on language and identity was rather impotent in the face of iniquity and exploitation in, say, third world factory sweatshops (c.f. Melanie Klein, No Logo). I tended to buy this and I also balk a little when my Lacanian analyst gets into punning and free association as if language is some magic bullet cure-all.
But actually, it is (and, after all, balking occasionally seems to be part of the psychoanalytic process) and in the end, whether you're seeing a Lacanian, a Freudian, an existential analyst or one of any number of other varieties, it's all about a talking cure. You'll have to take my word for it, shrink sceptics, but if you get lucky enough to get a good one, it works.

Language is both a way into oppression and a way out. As you indicate, I think, Unnamable, oppression is constructed in language and, as you said not too far back, some governments may actually be pleased to have an opposition. Even if they're not, look at the normal outcome of opposition: in democracy, all parties end up being distrusted and seen as largely the same and in revolutions, the liberators frequently become the oppressors. In each case, the ascendents to power become caught up, ensnared in the rhetoric of their own rightness - a position that requires other positions to be marginalised. This is where Deconstruction comes in - Heidegger's coinage, but primarily Derrida's method. What's fantastic about it as a method of understanding and dismantling the arguments of our oppressors is that, as Derrida puts it, the deconstruction of what they say is always already at work within their own argument or, if you prefer, discours/discourse. Derrida, like a good psychoanalyst, shows that there is almost always more going on in language than the speaker intends. The attempt to construct a single dominant truth is constantly undermined from within by numerous other positions. This is the fallacy of mere opposition - simply saying, no, I disagree - it forces us to construct our own attempt at a single, dominant truth, shutting down other possible readings and thereby participating in our own oppression. In the end, it's far more effective to simply ask questions until an oppressive position collapses. And it's not true to say this has no relevance to politics. Chomsky advises his readers to question everything, including his own writing. Deconstruction is an excellent method for that.

Perhaps a problem for you in this debate, Unnamable, has been an implicit linkage between the idea of oppression and government (with a nod to patriarchy). Perhaps it's this that opens you up to charges of conspiracy theory. In fact, of course, when it comes to government, there simply is a great deal of deliberate dissimulation and evasion going on. The rhetoric surrounding the so-called 'War on Terror' seems quite adequate as an example. Leaked Downing Street memos, a sacked Ambassador to Uzbeckistan, some distinctly linguistic fudging on the nature of torture and an outed CIA agent indicate strongly that the conspiracy is somewhat more than theoretical. In the end, so much of it's about lying and during a lot of it, a lot of the public bought it. But perhaps these examples are too dramatic. How about, instead, the position, widely accepted, but rarely explained, that Socialism is a spent force now 'irrelevant' or that the private sector is 'efficient' or that bolstering the rich of a nation creates a 'trickle down effect'? Politics constantly plays host to the strategy that just by saying something you can make it true. It's almost childish in this respect and a lot of people childishly accept this stuff. But more to the point, oppression doesn't just take place at this level but in all kinds localised situations, particularly the family where, long after children are able to understand rational arguments, they may still be palmed off with insupportable positions such as 'because I'm your mother and I say so'. Unfortunately, in many of these situations, the oppressor is just as conned by the language at work as the victim of oppression.
Is there an effective way to address oppression other than through language? No. We might kill an oppressor with a weapon, but, as I've indicated, we risk simply taking his/her place as oppressor and becoming trapped in a dominant position of alleged rightness. I'd go further - we don't just risk it - unless we use language to unpick what language has done, we remain ensnared.

Virgil

01-03-2006, 02:17 PM

I repeat - Surprise-surpise. The people who advocate these theorists look at a text and see their ideology reflected in it. Surprise-surprise. blp, you make my point perfectly.

The Unnamable

01-03-2006, 04:32 PM

I repeat - Surprise-surpise. The people who advocate these theorists look at a text and see their ideology reflected in it. Surprise-surprise. blp, you make my point perfectly.
I don’t mean to offend you, Virgil, but in an earlier post on this thread you complained of the theorists’ “shoddy thinking”. This last post of yours is not only shoddy but also insulting to the efforts made by me and the other contributors who have tried to add something to the discussion. Try to open your mind a little.

Firstly, you have entirely misunderstood the nature of theory if you still believe that a theorist simply applies his or her own overtly political ideology to a text. A Marxist critic does not look for ways of making a text support a politically Marxist view. Structuralism did not attempt to persuade anyone of a political (in the sense of Party Political) reading of texts – rather it attempted to apply the linguistic theory of people like Saussure to objects and activities other than language itself. They looked at myths, wrestling matches, systems of tribal kinship, even restaurant menus as systems of signs in an attempt to identify the underlying set of laws by which such signs are combined into meanings. Their aim was not to politicise texts so that they supported their own political agenda but to show that meaning is neither a private experience nor a divinely ordained occurrence. It is rather the product of certain shared systems of signification. That such an attempt was a blow to the confident bourgeois belief that the individual is the fount and origin of all meaning is apparent from your dogged refusal to accept their work.

Secondly, it has nothing to do with seeing one’s ideology reflected in a text. What ideology are you referring to anyway? Eagleton does not read ‘Macbeth’ in order to find arguments that would persuade us that Marxism is a viable political system! He applies his knowledge and understanding of the ways in which meaning is constructed in order to demonstrate how we have in the past arrived at certain interpretations and to identify the ideological assumptions that have underpinned those interpretations. Yes, their work has political implications but so has the approach to which you subscribe. It’s just that theirs is a great deal more transparent and deliberately so.

Thirdly, although I read, digest and (I hope) understand these theorists, it does not therefore follow that I apply them in my own enjoyment of Literature. There are problems I have with them that have nothing to do with your objections but that I will not go into at the moment simply because this would be even longer than it will be. I feel that, in this case at least, I should make sufficient effort to understand what I am dismissing before doing so.

Fourthly, how on earth does blp make your point? He/She wrote very openly and with, I believe, genuine passion about the issues and in doing so provided further ideas for the consideration of all those interested in the topic. I might not agree with him or her but at least I recognise that my own thoughts were taken seriously enough to warrant a considered response rather than a glib “I’ve won, so there!” You are, in essence, denying the validity of ideas that are now commonly accepted as worthy of serious attention among the academic community. That might account for nothing but your position denies the enormous contribution to human thought and understanding of Barthes, Derrida, Levi-Strauss, Jakobson, Heidegger – need I continue? And to top it all, you fail to see (or admit) that the earliest work of theory was Aristotle’s Poetics. He offers famous definitions of tragedy, insists that literature is about character, and that character is revealed through action, and he tries to identify the required stages in the progress of a plot. He was also the first critic to develop a ‘reader-centred’ approach to literature, since his consideration of drama tried to describe how it affected the audience. Surely this is a clear example of a theorist?

RobinHood3000

01-03-2006, 04:45 PM

Unnamable--I'm not going to argue with your grievances with Virgil, but I do feel obligated to clarify that, thus far, he HAS been trying to contribute to the discussion. It'd be nice if you could cut him a little slack on that pont.

The Unnamable

01-03-2006, 04:51 PM

And it's not true to say this has no relevance to politics. Chomsky advises his readers to question everything, including his own writing. Deconstruction is an excellent method for that.
Obviously I agree with you. I didn’t mean to imply that such theories are not in any way political but I have had to underplay this in order to avoid (unsuccessfully, it seems ;) ) giving the impression that I see things in terms of conspiracy (as you noticed). I also agree that we should question everything and that Deconstruction is a very effective tool/weapon for doing so. In the end, it probably means that you will be unhappy but at least your life will be real.

By the way, have you read much of Lyotard and Baudrillard? I can’t wait to unleash some of their ideas on the Forum. :)

RobinHood3000

01-03-2006, 04:53 PM

"Unleash?"

...why does this not bode well...? :p

Virgil

01-03-2006, 05:39 PM

I don’t mean to offend you, Virgil, but in an earlier post on this thread you complained of the theorists’ “shoddy thinking”. This last post of yours is not only shoddy but also insulting to the efforts made by me and the other contributors who have tried to add something to the discussion. Try to open your mind a little.

Like my reply to blp, this is just an off the cuff reaction, not a coordinated reponse, which I'll get to in a day or so.

Yes I understand the difference between ideology and politics from a couple of messages up. You don't need to reiterate. What I maintain is that the theorists and academia today are ideological and don't suspend their ideology in interpreting texts. They are not being objective. I again maintain (and perhaps we're at logerheads here) that Aristotle and Wordsworth and mostly the crtitics prior to the 1970s were not being ideological and came to a text attempting to derive from it, not project into it. Go ahead and survey your fellow teachers as to their political leanings; if its not 10 to 1 on the left, and mostly on the radical Chomsky left, then I will be shocked.

The Unnamable

01-03-2006, 10:48 PM

I do feel obligated to clarify
Given that you chose to describe my disagreement with Virgil as a ‘grievance’, may I be permitted to draw my own conclusions about why you ‘feel obligated’?

"Unleash?"

...why does this not bode well...?
Still picking up breadcrumb sins, eh Robin? Pass the umbrage. Don’t fret (even if you use a mollifying smiley), I am not planning to provoke offence: ‘unleash’ was an indication of the perplexing nature of messrs Baudrillard’s and Lyotard’s work, nothing more.

The Unnamable

01-03-2006, 10:52 PM

Yes I understand the difference between ideology and politics from a couple of messages up. You don't need to reiterate. What I maintain is that the theorists and academia today are ideological and don't suspend their ideology in interpreting texts. They are not being objective. I again maintain (and perhaps we're at logerheads here) that Aristotle and Wordsworth and mostly the crtitics prior to the 1970s were not being ideological and came to a text attempting to derive from it, not project into it. Go ahead and survey your fellow teachers as to their political leanings; if its not 10 to 1 on the left, and mostly on the radical Chomsky left, then I will be shocked.
Most of the teachers I’ve ever worked with have been utterly apathetic when it comes to politics. Nor would they have the slightest idea who Chomsky is. I have no idea why this is relevant anyway.

I’m not convinced that you see ideology in the way I take it to mean. You still refer to a text as something one can either derive from or project into, as if texts exist independently of their social and historical context. Your claim that pre-1970 writers (whether critics or those included in the canon) are not ideological is simply untenable. While it might be true to say that before the structuralists appeared most writers were not consciously aware of the ideological basis of their own assumptions, it is certainly not true to say that they were ‘objective’. They are permeated with value judgments. A key figure in the development of English Literature as an academic subject was Matthew Arnold. Arnold feared that the decline of religion in the late nineteenth century would result in an increasingly divided society with no common system of beliefs and values. He saw Literature as a replacement for religion and it was the job of the critic to help the masses recognise and appreciate ‘the best that has been known and thought in the world’. To do this, Arnold believed, it was necessary for criticism to attain pure, disinterested knowledge. He writes about appreciating ‘the object as in itself it really is.’ This, on the surface, would seem to suggest that he was not pursuing any political agenda. But there is no such thing as pure, disinterested knowledge. Arnold’s approach is no less informed by an ideological stance than is the most politically committed of writers.

Perhaps we should change our approach. Please demonstrate to me how/why Aristotle and/or Wordsworth are not ideological. Explain how they can produce work that is not a product of the systems of meaning available at the time.

rachel

01-03-2006, 11:00 PM

Having been an investigative reporter I don't know really what to say for what I uncovered may have been an abberation or something. But to my shock and surprise and despair I found so many true, absolute conspiracies that I was dazed. Everything from an Italian woman screaming outside her home each and everyday and the residents telling me she was crazy. I went to her and she begged me to avenge her husband murder. she said the maffioso had murdered him and thrown him into the garbage can outside the Terra Nova because he uncovered something. I was scared to death but I did my sleuthing-she was not crazy and I was devestated. The case of workers being leaded at Cominco in Trail, I and a fellow worker, my photographer pulled some strings and were able to sneak into a niche in the plant where the cameras someonhow didn't watch. We were terrified to see vats and vats of acid with no covers or fences, anything to protect the workers. You couldn't get into that plant unless a relative got you in for any amount of money. All the lies the plant told, it was beyond belief. It took years and years and the deaths of many before things were exposed and cleaned up.
And the home for handicapped in a small b c city where atrocities were beyond belief.And yet how smooth their words, cunning their answers. Why if I didn't know the truth I would have believed those people myself. It all came down to money and power and they used words to anethestize any one who came snooping around.
so I don't know. those of us who uncovered things had to go on a very wide circuitous road to leak info and not lose our lives. One day when we were in Gyro park after work some guys got out of a limo and had guns under their suit jackets. They asked for a certain person and we were all terrified but refused to answer. A couple of days later he just 'happened to have slipped and fallen on something which rendered him unconscious or something like that and then just happened to fall into the river. I never got over that for the longest time. I felt close to a breakdown and the others right along with me.many moved on to safer jobs and eventually so did I because the publisher actually changed my words after a political rally. I couldn't believe it and faced him on it. He told me calmly that that particular party pretty much owned the paper.
perhaps most things are not like that but if in one small city all this could be going on and the average person knew nothing of it, well who is to say that many many conspiracies aren't going on and being done with the power of words.I honestly don't know.

Anon22

01-03-2006, 11:23 PM

This makes no sense to me. How can a concept exist without language? Name me just one concept that exists without it. There is no concept that is not involved in an open-ended play of signification, permeated with the traces and fragments of other ideas. It’s just that, out of this play of signifiers, certain meanings are elevated by social ideologies to a privileged position, or made the centres around which other meanings are made to turn. The interesting theorist to read with regard to a psychoanalytical approach is Jacques Lacan.

Language is a way to express concept, when you think of the word "Love" you think of its concept, not the word love, and its what it means that makes the word itself important. When Hitler said "Kill the Jews!" it's not what he said, its what he meant that got people worried.

I won’t even pretend to understand much of what French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan explores in his most famous work, Écrits, but from what I can make out he has reread Freud in the light of structuralist and post-structuralist theories of discourse. I said earlier that “Even by saying ‘I’ we are making certain assumptions.” I was thinking here of Lacan’s theory of the ‘mirror stage’. In the pre-Oedipal stage, a baby has no sense of self, is not able to distinguish between subject and object. It depends on its mother for its very existence. So the boundary between its own and its mother’s body is blurred. Lacan calls this state of being the ‘imaginary’ realm. However, when it looks at itself in a mirror and first sees reflected back an image of itself, we see the development of an ego. For the first time, it sees a unified image of itself. But it is still an image – so both ‘real’ and ‘not real’. It is both us and not us. Because it is recognised as somehow ‘us’, a part of ourselves, we identify with it. But it is also alien because it is not ‘us’ and certainly not how we feel ourselves to be from inside our own body. So for Lacan, the act of identifying oneself in the mirror image is an act of misrecognition. As we grow up, we continue to make imaginary identifications with objects. This in turn builds up the ego. This means that the development of a sense of self is dependent on creating a ‘fictional’ image of self by finding something external to us with which we can identify.

To become a subject therefore, the child must come to ‘understand’ that it is made up of its similarities to and differences from all that surrounds it. This is when, according to Lacan, it moves from the ‘imaginary’ to the ‘symbolic’ realm. And by entering into that realm it is entering a pre-existing structure of social and sexual roles and relations. This is why Lacan sees the unconscious as structured like a language. The fact that every society known to man carries the assumption that female is inferior to male shows that this assumption is deep rooted in our early development. This in turn explains why Lacan’s work has been so significant for feminists. Whatever you make of Lacan’s theories, they certainly challenge profoundly the simplistic notion that we are all autonomous, free-thinking individuals.

Couldn't that also mean that the child is obtaining a conscience? when he(or she) is born, she/he has absolutely no grasp of reality, no logic, he's aware of things that are there(a subconscience), then he starts to obtain a conscience and awareness of his surroundings and how they work.

RobinHood3000

01-04-2006, 07:04 AM

Given that you chose to describe my disagreement with Virgil as a ‘grievance’, may I be permitted to draw my own conclusions about why you ‘feel obligated’?

Still picking up breadcrumb sins, eh Robin? Pass the umbrage. Don’t fret (even if you use a mollifying smiley), I am not planning to provoke offence: ‘unleash’ was an indication of the perplexing nature of messrs Baudrillard’s and Lyotard’s work, nothing more.
Conclude away, but you could have just asked; I feel obligated because my avatar is a superhero, and hence seeks to combat injustice anywhere. I felt your comments were unjust and that Virgil was an innocent being unfairly criticized--hence my defense.

And there's no need to ram a tone down my throat; the smiley was not for mollification but clarification. Namely, clarification that the comment was meant in jest and likewise did not intend to cause any offense.

Nightshade

01-04-2006, 09:09 AM

I dont really follow all of the theorists and things the rest of you have been on about but lets see if I can agree with everyone and noone shall we? :p

Language is both restrictive and freeing in that you need languge to express an idea or a concept but the languge is alrady linked to preconcived notions which differs for everyone who recives/hears it (realitivists theory).
So in a catch 22 you are freed by the languge but at the sam etime bound by it in that should I say "I feel high as a kite."
This could be an expression of soaring feelng victory, winning joy. Or the preconcived link to high being drugs . I could be linking myself to drugs or equally that whole expression might mean Im drunk.

But I may be straying fom the point being in the hannds of people who know languge well it can be a key they know how too use it to make it work for them, while for others it can be the tool that controls the masses as it were.
Now a real life example thats very political but Im afraid I cant help it just say I dont agree with it.
About 5 maybe 6 years ago when I was still living in Egypt there was this whole thing where someone said the Israli's nurse their babies on blood which makes them blood thirsty. It was a turn phrase an expression of speech but it caught on, like wildfire as it were and the newspaper cartoonjis took it up and everything. Anyway A few weeks later Im on the school bus and a little 8 year old I think she must have been starst tellin me about the jews feeding their babies blood with theremilk , now no matter how I try and convibnce them these kids KNOW this becasue the newspaper said so, so did the television. In fact others jumpned in 10 and 11 year olds all insisting that this is what was being said and obviously it was true and I could not get them to understand that it was a figure of speach. Now maybe when they grow up theyll stop belibveng that but there are 100s of illiterate people in Egypt and words like that have power and have control and in the end that is how propaganda works, words.
And should these people realise that it was a turn of phrase it will still color their thoughts and emotions towards the Isralis and in turn all jews as part of the association they have with them.
And thats all for now.

:D:D

fayefaye

01-04-2006, 10:50 AM

Language is a way to express concept, when you think of the word "Love" you think of its concept, not the word love, and its what it means that makes the word itself important. When Hitler said "Kill the Jews!" it's not what he said, its what he meant that got people worried.

The philosophy goes, that language exists first, the concept comes after. The concept, the meaning, is formed by what it is not. We know what the word 'love' signifies because we know what it is not (it is not hate, etc etc), as signified by the other parts of language. I think Unnamable explained this earlier on.

And yes, for the record, I do agree, in essence, with what Unnamable has written. THere are some small things I don't agree with, which were probably mostly just things written out quickly for convenience. (eg Can you really say that the word disability carries the assumption that education is important?)

It feels that this thread is lacking a little explanation. THings which Unnamable seems to take as a priori truths (language creates us, has a role in controlling us, all interpretations are ideological etc) should be more closely analysed; then maybe we would get some headway in terms of sharing ideas instead of getting frustrated...

First, ideology: I won't add much to what Unnamable has said, (
While it might be true to say that before the structuralists appeared most writers were not consciously aware of the ideological basis of their own assumptions, it is certainly not true to say that they were ‘objective’. They are permeated with value judgments. ) except to maybe explain why this might be the case. Interpretation of literature is ideological because the very process of reading a text requires that we have an understanding of language; this understanding of language will be situated in our particular ideology (how else do we understand the meaning of symbols, if not from a particular world view?); thus our ideology effects our interpretation of literature. Moreover, the implication is that each time we read a text, we do not just read it; we re-create it.

Secondly, language as control: Yes, it's not a conspiracy. But is that really the point? Language doesn't just persuade us, which seems to be the view which Virgil has taken; it also constitutes and shapes the very way in which we think (ie, we think through language) and therefore effects how we behave. Having said that, the relationship [I]is incredibly complex and to say that 'language controls us' or that 'we control language', is both, I think, an over-simplification. It is as much social relations as language; social relations are reflected in language, which in turn effect social relations. Take the definition of 'rape'. For centuries, rape was only defined for a man and a woman who were not married. This reflected social relations at the time. Ok, so women were 'controlled' in the sense that the law said that if they were raped in marriage, they couldn't seek redress. But, this is just a law, and we can change it, since we control language, right? Well sure, but what if you've you've grown up in a society your entire life that has told you that a wife has NO legal rights, that 'this is what rape is' and that ****ing her husband is part and parcel of marriage, etc etc? Then the definitions could become so thoroughly entrenched in the way that you think that you don't seek to change them (of course, many women also didn't have the power to change them. But even when they did, the law of rape remained like that until 1992 in the UK, at which point, the change in thinking enabled the change in defn.).
Anyway, I'm not trying to provide another example of how language controls people. I'm trying to show that in saying 'language is control' we're referring to complex social relations (which I doubt I can explain, and which I"m sure I've over-simplified) But reading some of your posts (unnamable, virgil), it sounds a bit as if you're arguing points that arent' mutually exclusive (Altho I think that Unnamable understands that social relations shape language as much as vice versa, Virgil seemed to think we were looking at a one-way street)

Finally, Language forming identity: I find this the hardest to grapple with. I like Lacan's theory about how people form a sense of self, but I don't see how this means language creates us. :confused: I think language contributes to our sense of self, how we identify ourselves and the basis on which we identify with others, but that doesn't mean that without language we wouldn't have a sense of self (perhaps we would have one which we didn't define..). At any rate, given that people create a sense of identity by setting up similarities and differences with those around them, but also that people influence us and we influence people, a 'self' never really can be described or defined independantly. A 'self' by itself never really exists, can never be defined (Not only across time and situation, but even within one point of time and one situation); in that sense, the concept is flawed.

Virgil

01-04-2006, 12:03 PM

About 5 maybe 6 years ago when I was still living in Egypt there was this whole thing where someone said the Israli's nurse their babies on blood which makes them blood thirsty. It was a turn phrase an expression of speech but it caught on, like wildfire as it were and the newspaper cartoonjis took it up and everything. Anyway A few weeks later Im on the school bus and a little 8 year old I think she must have been starst tellin me about the jews feeding their babies blood with theremilk , now no matter how I try and convibnce them these kids KNOW this becasue the newspaper said so, so did the television. In fact others jumpned in 10 and 11 year olds all insisting that this is what was being said and obviously it was true and I could not get them to understand that it was a figure of speach. Now maybe when they grow up theyll stop belibveng that but there are 100s of illiterate people in Egypt and words like that have power and have control and in the end that is how propaganda works, words.
And should these people realise that it was a turn of phrase it will still color their thoughts and emotions towards the Isralis and in turn all jews as part of the association they have with them.
And thats all for now.

:D:D
Night - Are you saying that these people didn't freely believe it from their own free will? Are you saying that they were brain washed? Are you saying it was universal, every single person believed it? Not a single person who doubted it?

Virgil

01-04-2006, 12:06 PM

Finally, Language forming identity: I find this the hardest to grapple with. I like Lacan's theory about how people form a sense of self, but I don't see how this means language creates us. :confused: I think language contributes to our sense of self, how we identify ourselves and the basis on which we identify with others, but that doesn't mean that without language we wouldn't have a sense of self (perhaps we would have one which we didn't define..).

I don't know Lacan. I'll have to look him up. But anyone that has had a dog as a pet knows that canines have a sense of self. Absolutely. Last time I checked my dog didn't speak any language. Children, before they learn to speak have a sense of self. Look it up.

Virgil

01-04-2006, 12:18 PM

First, ideology: I won't add much to what Unnamable has said, () except to maybe explain why this might be the case. Interpretation of literature is ideological because the very process of reading a text requires that we have an understanding of language; this understanding of language will be situated in our particular ideology (how else do we understand the meaning of symbols, if not from a particular world view?); thus our [inescapable] ideology effects our interpretation of literature. Moreover, the implication is that each time we read a text, we do not just read it; we re-create it.

Yes, we always bring ourselves to a text, but the goal of critics historically has been to interpret the text, at least with an effort of objectivity. No single critic defines a work; an community of critics honestly doing their best to be objective will formulate an understanding of a work. What is revolutionary in these theorists is not only they suspend their objectivity but that they project ideology into a text, whether the author intends for it to be there or not. And surprise-suprise, (and I'm not saying they are trying to be political, and again I understand the difference) but whatever they percieve in the text always seems to support their ideology. What they see reinforces what they believe. This approach may be good for a sociology department, for all I know, but it is shoddy literary criticism.

The Unnamable

01-04-2006, 01:06 PM

Can you really say that the word disability carries the assumption that education is important?)
No, I can't. I was cutting corners. I should have said that the phrase ‘learning disability’ carries this assumption. I thought that was implied and hope you can now see what I mean. A lack of ability to learn is deemed sufficiently significant as to warrant a special label.

I’ll get back to you about Lacan, although I don’t know how much use it will be as I find him extremely difficult. I think I can see why he considers the unconscious as structured like language though, which is what you appear to be interested in.

blp

01-04-2006, 01:25 PM

What a busy busy thread. Thanks for your defense, Unnamable. I'm a he, by the way. My comment about politics wasn't meant to be directed at you but at a bit of my own line of reasoning - as I remember it.

Unnamable's right, Virgil. The fact that I say I've read Chomsky or that I'm opposed to privatisation doesn't prove I'm projecting my ideologies onto any texts not specifically about those subjects. I'm really not sure what your comment regarding this is based on. My whole post was an attempt to show that deconstruction was effective because it didn't oppose, but instead showed how ideologies and argumentative positions could and would unravel themselves from the inside. This implies that the deconstructor must work without a governing ideology.

Of course it would be naive to suggest that this always works in practice. Derrida's subjectivity notoriously crept in when his good friend Paul De Mann was revealed to have worked for a pro-Nazi newspaper in Belgium during the war and Derrida deconstructed his texts for this paper to try to demonstrate that they were actually pro-Jew. Raised eyebrows all round.

Nevertheless, what's funny about your comment is that, precisely because of the pains a lot of theory takes to avoid subjectivity and ideology, it's more often accused of being too negative, offering no alternative to the things it critiques or simply being too abstruse and sealed off from political reality to make a difference to anything -especially if it's concerned with matters of language.

Rachel, what a fascinating account of your time as a journalist. It couldn't be more apt in relation to this question of offering an alternative - the alternative to corruption and crime should (but sadly doesn't by any means always) go without saying. Your reference to the ownership of a newspaper by a political party points strongly to the idea that those in power have no doubt about language's efficacy as a method of control. This brings us properly back to the subject of this thread. What brings me up short about material like this is the part that does not appear to be about language - the violence. We can say that all the violence you describe is concerned with language in that it is specifically directed to silencing it. But it feels almost obscene to talk about the violence itself as language. I would say, the moment when someone is shot in the head or drowned in a canal is not linguistic - the moment - but we return from that moment to language almost instantly. The immediate effect of the act is a death, but that death almost instantly becomes something reported in language and, in itself, a method of communicating a message to the wider world, roughly translated: keep your mouth shut.

Digital Crash - 'language is a way to express a concept', you say, as if it's the most simple thing in the world, then pick a concept, love, the nature of which is perpetually in dispute. Since the subject of this thread is language as a method of control, let's stick to the way this example applies to that. I think a lot of what is being argued here points to the fact that it is precisely this blasé assumption that language is a simple tool for accessing reality that often allows us to be controlled by it. 'I love you', says the debonair huckster - and the fey, inexperienced millionairess swoons with pleasure as if she knows what he means. Meaning is dependent on context. Language is a system of relations. We ignore its complexity, ambiguity and manifold possibilities at our peril.

Your second point, Digital Crash, about Hitler, is easier to address. The point about Hitler is not that he said, 'Kill the Jews' - he didn't, publically - but that he spread propaganda about them that allowed him to curb their rights more and more, up to and including the right to life. There really couldn't be a more obvious and frightening example of language used as a method of political control. And don't forget, Hitler was elected. His entire agenda was something he convinced people of with language, not, initially, force.

Nevertheless, 'language is a way to express a concept' you say, and that seems to me to be worth considering a little more. First of all, importantly, do we really have access to that concept except through language? You say we say 'love' and think not of the word, but of the concept. But what happens when you feel love? Isn't it the case that the word itself pops up nonvolitionally right away? Don't we start to describe the condition using the word - whether to ourselves or others - right away? What then is beyond the word? What is real other than the language? And how do we know it's real?

Part of the reason I ask this is because of the Neitzche quote that Unnamable gives as a kind of starting point for all this - no facts, just interpretations. Later on, Unnamable, addressing me, you say that using deconstruction may make me unhappier, but at least my life will be 'real'. Well, broadly speaking, I agree, though not about being unhappier, but I wonder how you square this notion of what's real with a lack of facts.

And lastly, you're way ahead of me on most of this, Unnamable and I've barely skimmed the surface of Lyotard and Baudrillard - and then about a decade ago. I look forward to your unleashing of them with interest.

The Unnamable

01-04-2006, 01:31 PM

Couldn't that also mean that the child is obtaining a conscience? when he(or she) is born, she/he has absolutely no grasp of reality, no logic, he's aware of things that are there(a subconscience), then he starts to obtain a conscience and awareness of his surroundings and how they work.

I don't think so. According to Freudian theorist Melanie Klein:

"at a very early age the infant will harbour murderously aggressive instincts towards its mother's body, entertain fantasies of tearing it to bits and suffer paranoid delusions that this body will in turn destroy it."

So much for the innocence of childhood. :)

blp

01-04-2006, 01:44 PM

I don't know Lacan. I'll have to look him up. But anyone that has had a dog as a pet knows that canines have a sense of self. Absolutely. Last time I checked my dog didn't speak any language. Children, before they learn to speak have a sense of self. Look it up.

I did. I've had a dog and a cat as a pet and I have no idea how you can be so sure of this. Have you ever been a dog?

I apologise to everyone for bringing up Lacan. I tried to read his 'Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis' once and I barely understood a word. Alright, there were a lot of individual words I kind of understood, but next to each other they were a problem.

Virgil

01-04-2006, 02:31 PM

I did. I've had a dog and a cat as a pet and I have no idea how you can be so sure of this. Have you ever been a dog?

I am aboslutely sure of it. Have you ever seen a dog who knows its dying? He's very aware.

rachel

01-04-2006, 03:44 PM

night and virgil, you both have good points. I personally believe that unless a person freely uses the mind and heart and conscience to come to a conclusion about something, we do have free will and thought even if some try to deprive us of it-unless we do that we tend to live in a Truman world, accepting the reality we are given. That is why when like little fires erupting, a person here and a person there begins to carefully weigh things and try to find out for themselves and then become a conscientious objecter-unless this happens the lie becomes a truth and soon mere conditioning and acceptance makes it somehow a religion. And another generation lives and dies in ignorance undue hate and violence. How sad.
animals without fail, at least cats and dogs absolutely know when they are about to die, especially if they have been sick a while. All my pets if this occurred and I wasn't expecting it would go to a quiet place after licking me in love or purring and laying against me. And in that quiet place they died. that is my experience at anyrate.

RobinHood3000

01-04-2006, 04:47 PM

I don't think so. According to Freudian theorist Melanie Klein:

"at a very early age the infant will harbour murderously aggressive instincts towards its mother's body, entertain fantasies of tearing it to bits and suffer paranoid delusions that this body will in turn destroy it."

So much for the innocence of childhood. :)
Yikes. I have to say, honestly, that's rather disturbing.

That IS just theory, right? :confused:

Nightshade

01-04-2006, 04:55 PM

Night - Are you saying that these people didn't freely believe it from their own free will? Are you saying that they were brain washed? Are you saying it was universal, every single person believed it? Not a single person who doubted it?
Im not saying they were brain washed as such but that it never occurs to people to doubt it, and yes its pretty much the universal point of view in Egypt not that the feed thier babies thblood but that they are blood thirsty monsters whoi will stop at nothing from slaughtering e innocent. Unless you have good reason to doubt it, like coming from a mixed religoun family (like me) are a Jew or know jews personally, so you realise they are human beings. I think its more a case of social power and the abuse of it. People who other people follow like sheep giving out there very biased opinions.

Im not saying that this is a consiparcy or delibtrate (although knowing how people are on this particular issue it very well might be) Im saying peoples ideas are coloured by the languge used. Of course people doubted it (me, although I was once accused of being an alien or some other non-human thing :p) but even the greatest control and propaganda will have faliuers.

Secondly, language as control: Yes, it's not a conspiracy. But is that really the point? Language doesn't just persuade us, which seems to be the view which Virgil has taken; it also constitutes and shapes the very way in which we think (ie, we think through language) and therefore effects how we behave. Having said that, the relationship is incredibly complex and to say that 'language controls us' or that 'we control language', is both, I think, an over-simplification. It is as much social relations as language; social relations are reflected in language, which in turn effect social relations.
I think thats what Im trying to say put nicer and clearer. :D :nod:

The Unnamable

01-04-2006, 08:00 PM

The Unnamable

01-04-2006, 08:24 PM

fayefaye,

I’ve cobbled this together from various teaching materials I have scattered all over my hard drive.

I suppose I need first to go back to Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure. I’ve already mentioned him but can’t remember whether I said why he is relevant to Structuralism. He viewed language as a system of signs and each sign is made up of a ‘signifier’ and a ‘signified’. The former is the physical manifestation (printed letters, sounds etc.) and the latter is the concept to which it refers. So ‘dog’ is a signifier made up of the three marks, d - o - g that brings to mind the animal we know as a dog. The relation between signifier and signified is purely arbitrary. There is no reason why the three marks d - o - g should mean dog, other than cultural and historical convention. There is nothing inherently dog-like about those marks. The relation between the sign ‘dog’ and the actual animal is therefore also arbitrary. We could have used a different sign. The important thing is that it differs from other signs – so it’s not ‘dot’ or ‘dig’ or ‘bog’ etc. “In the linguistic system there are only differences” he said. The important point here is that, according to Saussure, language doesn’t simply record or label the world, it constitutes it. Meaning is attributed to the object by the human mind – it is not already contained within that object. If this seems contentious to some people, just think of the four seasons (not the Vivaldi work!). In ‘reality’ is a year divided into four distinct units? Why shouldn’t we have six or more seasons? The seasons are a way of seeing the year and not an objective fact of nature. So Saussure’s work demonstrated how language is arbitrary, relational and constitutive, which is why it was so influential among structuralists. Saussure’s system is a self-contained one in which individual parts relate to other parts to form larger structures. Important also to Lacan’s theories is the idea that the system of language is one dependent on lack and separation.With language we can name what is not present by substituting a linguistic sign for it. Imagine if it were like Swift’s Laputa where people carry around with them every object about which they wish to communicate. So to have a conversation about a cat, you would need to carry a cat and then point to it when the need arose!

To relate this to Lacan’s theory, go back to the mirror stage idea. We can view the child looking in the mirror as a kind of signifier and the image reflected back as a kind of signified. What the child is seeing is somehow the meaning of itself. In Lacan’s ‘imaginary’ realm, the child exists in a state in which there is no distinction between self and other. It doesn’t know where its body ends and its mother’s begins. With the onset of the mirror stage, it begins to conceive of itself as a unified being, separate from the rest of the world. This is also the stage at which the child begins to enter the world of language, as well as of sexuality. It has to learn (unconsciously) Saussure’s point that identities are dependent on ideas of difference, lack and separation. Signs only have meaning by virtue of their difference from other signs. They also presuppose the absence of whatever they signify. The child also learns (again, subconsciously) that its role will be defined by sexual difference, exclusion and absence. It cannot be its parent’s lover, nor can it remain inseparable from the mother’s body. From what I can make out, this results in an identity that is divided between the conscious ego and the subconscious desire. I’ll try to clarify this. The child now has to accept that it can never have any direct access to the reality it experienced in the imaginary realm, and especially to the now prohibited body of its mother. It moves from the fullness of that imaginary realm into the empty world of language (empty because it is just an endless succession of signifiers. If you look up a word in a dictionary, you will simply find more words. Look them up and more words are offered and so on, ad infinitum). To Lacan, this is what desire is - an endlessly deferred search for what we lack, which Lacan calls the ‘real’. So there is a correspondence between the world of language and the world of desire. Lacan says “Language is what hollows being into desire.” We will never reach our destination, the final meaning that completes us although we will never cease in our search. We have to make do instead with substitutes, as is the case with the endlessly deferred signifiers that prevent us from attaining some transcendental meaning. Interestingly, Lacan refers to the phallus as the ‘transcendental signifier’. By this he does not mean an actual penis but a sign that places us into our role in the symbolic order.

That’s given me, as well as you no doubt, a headache.

PS Isn't 'smeghead' a bit rude?

The Unnamable

01-04-2006, 09:28 PM

The philosophy goes, that language...in that sense, the concept is flawed.

fayefaye,

you might find this interesting – can’t remember where I got it. Louis Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher who was heavily influenced by Lacanian theory.

“Althusser makes a useful distinction between what we might call state power and state control. State power is maintained by what Althusser terms repressive structures, which are institutions like the law courts, prisons, the police force and the army, which operate, in the last analysis, by external force. But the power of the state is also maintained more subtly, by seeming to secure the internal consent of its citizens, using what Althusser calls ideological state apparatuses. These are such groupings as political parties, schools, the media, churches, the family, and art (including literature) which foster an ideology which is sympathetic to the aims of the political status quo. Thus, each of us feels that we are freely choosing what is in fact being imposed on us.

This Althusserian distinction is closely related to the notion of hegemony, which was given prominence by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci contrasts rule, which is direct political control, which uses force when necessary, and hegemony, which is (as defined by Raymond Williams) ‘the whole lived social process as practically organised by specific dominant meanings, values and beliefs of a kind which can be abstracted as a “world-view” or “class outlook”'. Williams relates hegemony to culture in general and to ideology in particular. Hegemony is like an internalised form of social control which makes certain views seem ‘natural’ or invisible so that they hardly seem like views at all, just ‘the way things are’.

The ‘trick’ whereby we are made to feel that we are choosing when really we have no choice is called by Althusser interpellation. Capitalism, says Althusser, thrives on this trick: it makes us feel like free agents (‘You can have any colour you like…’) while actually imposing things upon us (‘as long as it’s black’). Thus, democracy makes us feel that we are choosing the kind of government we have, but in practice the differences between political parties, once in power, are far fewer than the rhetorical gulfs between them. Interpellation is Althusser’s term for the way the individual is encouraged to see herself or himself as an entity free and independent of social forces. It accounts for the control structures not maintained by physical force, and hence for the perpetuation of a social set-up which concentrates wealth and power in the hands of the few.”

What Althusser does is rethink the concept of ideology in the light of Lacan’s ‘imaginary’ realm. The relation between the individual and society is similar to that between the child and its image of itself. Suitably beguiled by the image of ourselves we see reflected, we subject ourselves to it and from that subjection comes our sense of who we think we are.

Althusser’s emphasis is perhaps far too much on the oppressive nature of ideology but his work does show that Lacan’s own theories carry implications and resonances far beyond the realm of psychoanalysis.

One thing I would like you to clarify concerns the point you are making when you say, “But, this is just a law, and we can change it, since we control language, right?” Who is ‘we’ here? Do you believe that we all have an equal say in controlling language? I don’t think we do.

fayefaye

01-04-2006, 10:26 PM

Interestingly, Lacan refers to the phallus as the ‘transcendental signifier’. By this he does not mean an actual penis but a sign that places us into our role in the symbolic order. .

I think I understood everything you wrote except this. :confused: :p (But it was very interesting, thanks for posting it up. And if you were wondering, 'smeghead' is a bit rude, but not particularly, something of a playful derogatory term. Have you ever seen Red Dwarf? :p)

One thing I would like you to clarify concerns the point you are making when you say, “But, this is just a law, and we can change it, since we control language, right?” Who is ‘we’ here? Do you believe that we all have an equal say in controlling language? I don’t think we do.

Of course not. (How can we have an equal power to control language?) 'We', in this case, refers simply to people (a reference to Virgil's statement that people control language). More specifically, 'we' would be the old, white judges in the house of lords in positions to overturn past precedent, and the broader legal community (also largely composed of white men... but why describe them as old and white? :p They may or may not have also been 'brussel sprouts eaters' and 'poor picker-outers of children's names': unfortunately this is not how people are classified in our society - perhaps they should be - so we will never know) who can criticize the decision.

A large amount of academia has been generated over how it is that judges can overrule past precedent/dodge precedent by distinguishing, etc without being criticized as being subjective ([gasp] subjectivity - the horror). Because, you know, we want to believe that the law is 'objective'. Anyway, a guy named Stanley Fish wrote a great article arguing that the only thing constraining the interpretation of a text, including law, is the community in which it operates (the 'interpretive community')...

Yes, we always bring ourselves to a text, but the goal of critics historically has been to interpret the text, at least with an effort of objectivity. No single critic defines a work; an community of critics honestly doing their best to be objective will formulate an understanding of a work. What is revolutionary in these theorists is not only they suspend their objectivity but that they project ideology into a text, whether the author intends for it to be there or not.

What you assume, but do not argue for, is that there is an objective interpretation of a text. How can there be? (and i agree that no single critic defines a work)

The point is that everybody subconsciously and unintentionally projects their ideology onto a text, because to do so is an inherent part of interpretation. If you look at language, it does not have a single determinant meaning, does it? So your interpretation will depend on the ideology you are coming from as to finding what it means.

Or do you mean that the 'objective' intepretation would be precisely what the author intended when they wrote the text? In which case, do you think that this meaning is static?

whatever they percieve in the text always seems to support their ideology. What they see reinforces what they believe.

What else do you expect?

fayefaye

01-04-2006, 10:38 PM

I should have said that the phrase ‘learning disability’ carries this assumption. I thought that was implied and hope you can now see what I mean. A lack of ability to learn is deemed sufficiently significant as to warrant a special label.

No, I got that. What I was disputing was the way that it sounds as if you're stating the implied assumptions of the word as though that same implied assumption was carried by everyone.

I think that there are dominant meanings to words, but I think things get a bit dodgy when it sounds like you think that everybody in a society thinks of a word in the same way. Some women think promiscuity is bad, some don't. Some men think it's bad, some don't. Some people think that using the word 'nigger' is acceptable. It depends very much on who we're talking about. As Nightshade said, it also depends on the intention with which the word is used.

My point? THere are dominant meanings, but I don't think different people look at one word and see it in the same way. (Although other interpretations are marginalised... possibly to the point of virtual non-existance). It sounded as if you did, although some of your other statements suggested otherwise.

fayefaye

01-04-2006, 10:50 PM

To Lacan, this is what desire is - an endlessly deferred search for what we lack, which Lacan calls the ‘real’. So there is a correspondence between the world of language and the world of desire. Lacan says “Language is what hollows being into desire.” We will never reach our destination, the final meaning that completes us although we will never cease in our search. We have to make do instead with substitutes, as is the case with the endlessly deferred signifiers that prevent us from attaining some transcendental meaning. Interestingly, Lacan refers to the phallus as the ‘transcendental signifier’. By this he does not mean an actual penis but a sign that places us into our role in the symbolic order.

I had a second read of what you wrote on Lacan to clarify that I understood it, and I was wondering if you could please expand on this? The 'Real'? As in, the meaning, the existence? (what do you mean by the 'real': is it our actual selves, a sense of selves which isn't based on signifiers and deferred meaning? A pure signified? (the ability to see ourselves without a mirror?)) And why can we never find a final meaning to complete us? Is this only within language, or within the world at all? (if indeed, there can be a part of the world without language)

Virgil

01-05-2006, 01:00 AM

Virgil,
you remind me of Dr. Johnson:

‘After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."’
Boswell: Life of Johnson

Thanks, I feel exactly that way.

Robin - This is only theory, that's why it's so funny. Everytime I read about it I crack up laughing. What's sad is that it's taught in the university as gospel. Here's some more things to laugh about:

Marx: he was wrong about economics, he was wrong about history, but we're going to use him to interpret literature. Duh?

Freud: he fabricated studies, nobody has ever found what part of the brain the id/ego/superego exists in, he's not taught in any psychology department, nobody really knows what a sub-conscious really is, but we're going to use him to interpret literature.

Jung: another fabricater of studies; he proposes a "collective unconscious". Now there's real paradox: not only do we have an unconscious (if its unconscious how do we know we have one?) but it's collective, we all share it together, and it's passed on in the genes to your children. Oh yeah!

Lacan: what was this, phallogocentric? Some how that must mean that if I show women my crotch, they'll fall for my language control. You know every guy at a bar knows this already. He didn't have to go to college for it. And you know, all this time I was trying to sweet talk them.

blp

01-05-2006, 06:01 AM

PS Isn't 'smeghead' a bit rude?

Just your interpretation, surely? ;)

I just wanted to respond to your remarks on Saussure before reading any further. Although, as should be obvious from my previous posts, I'm on board with most of this, this is roughly where I get stuck: saying language is arbitrary and things only have the meaning we ascribe to them is great from the point of view of addressing things we don't agree with, except that it also tends to undermine the political import of our own positions. I've already suggested how this might not be a problem, but if I hear about the kinds of atrocity Rachel's reporting brought her into contact with or that, say, the millions of year old glacier on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro is melting and will be gone in several years, it's hard for me not to feel that these things are facts, not just interpretations and that, where possible, something concrete needs to be done with the referrents, no matter what they're called. I start finding myself horribly drawn to phrases like 'common sense' and people kicking stones and saying 'smeghead'.

The Unnamable

01-05-2006, 08:51 AM

I had a second read of what you wrote on Lacan to clarify that I understood it, and I was wondering if you could please expand on this? The 'Real'? As in, the meaning, the existence? (what do you mean by the 'real': is it our actual selves, a sense of selves which isn't based on signifiers and deferred meaning? A pure signified? (the ability to see ourselves without a mirror?)) And why can we never find a final meaning to complete us? Is this only within language, or within the world at all? (if indeed, there can be a part of the world without language)

Now I know how Kryton feels! ;) I’ll try but people put PhDs together on less than I’ve written here! Is there anyone else out there who understands Lacan who can help us?

The good thing about it is that it’s making me think really hard to try to understand it myself. Anyway, here goes.

I mentioned that in the early stages of an infant’s development it does not distinguish between itself and the world it inhabits. This pre-Oedipal state is what Lacan calls the ‘imaginary’. Subject and Object are as one. This means that there is no experience of lack, exclusion or absence, no ‘I’ and no ‘you/they/them’. We just ‘are’, I suppose - although obviously we don’t consciously think of it like that. (Part of the reason that this is so difficult is that we are trying to understand a state of consciousness that existed before we became able to think in terms of consciousness at all. It’s like trying to imagine how someone totally blind from birth conceives of colour.) There is no awareness of difference or division. This provides some sense of wholeness that we never again experience. So at first the child in front of the mirror experiences a whole, what Lacan I think refers to as ‘plenitude’. I take it that this is what Lacan means by the ‘real’ because it is utterly unmediated and all encompassing. He’s not referring to any deeper ‘reality’. There is as yet no distinction between the signifier and the signified. However, on seeing that image reflected back the child begins to see itself as a unified being separate from the rest of the world. This is roughly the same point at which the child enters into the language system – crucially a system based on lack and separation – ‘cat’ is not ‘car’ and neither of them have to be physically present since we now have a linguistic sign available to us to name what is not present. This stage also marks the beginning of socialisation – coming to learn what we can and cannot do. Such restraints and prohibitions are associated with the figure of the father, which Lacan labels the ‘Law’. This new realm is what Lacan calls the ‘symbolic’. The child has to recognise that a wider social and familial network exists, of which it is only a part. Such a network not only teaches the child that it is merely a part of something much larger than itself but it also places it into a predetermined role. The father detaches the child from the mother and in doing so drives its desire underground into the unconscious. So prohibition and unconscious desire occur at the same time.

In language we can observe a similar process. If you use a dictionary to look up the word ‘cat’ you will see other words and so on ad infinitum as I said. At no point on this endless movement from one signifier to another do you actually encounter or possess the physical object of a cat. As in the search to satisfy desire, you never finally fill the lack that we continually strive to fulfil, never again return to that state of the imaginary where there is only completeness and plenitude. The ‘real’ in this sense is forever inaccessible and outside of the symbolic realm in which we now exist. In Freudian terms it is the mother’s body that we will never again ‘possess’ and inhabit. Put crudely, some people forever search for in others what they have lost by being separated from their parent. We can never find a meaning to complete us because we exist only in the symbolic realm now and this only deals in metaphor and metonymy. There are only substitutes and more substitutes like the signifiers and more signifiers. In his later work Freud became much more pessimistic and saw human beings as trapped in the grip of a powerful death wish. Eros drives us on in the search but only Thanatos (the death drive) offers access to a state where the ego is no longer under threat. In death nothing more can threaten or injure us. The phallus is the transcendental signifier not because it is an actual object or reality but because it is the key sign of what divides us from the imaginary and inserts us into our place within the symbolic order.

I don’t really want to end on that note so I’ll offer you this instead. It always touches me and strikes me as the thoughts of a gentle and wise man:

In Woody Allen's Crimes And Misdemeanors there is a psychoanalyst named Louis Levy (possibly modelled on Bruno Bettelheim and not, as the man’s name has led some to believe, Primo Levi).

This Professor says:

“what we are aiming at when we fall in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox consists of the fact that when we fall in love we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand we ask of our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted on us. So that love contains in it a contradiction, the attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.”

And he goes on:

“We must always remember, when we are born we need a great deal of love to be persuaded to stay in life, once we get this love it usually last us. But the universe is a pretty cold place. It is we who invest it with feelings, and under certain conditions, we feel that the thing isn’t worth it anymore.”

And the film ends with him saying:

“We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, Human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.”

The Unnamable

01-05-2006, 10:15 AM

Just your interpretation, surely? ;)
Of course it’s not. I am the transcendental signifier and everything I say is indisputable objective truth. Why do you think I am called The Unnamable? (Do I need to use a smiley?)

I agree with you – I did say that although I find the work fascinating, I don’t ultimately subscribe to it. In the case of Saussure, I think the problem you identify is the result of his decision to deal only with ‘langue’ and ignore ‘parole’. The former is the structure or system of language and the latter is actual utterance in that language. Saussure was not interested in what people actually said but in the system that allowed them to say it. As Eagleton has pointed out, “Saussure strips language of its sociality at the point where it matters most: at the point of linguistic production, the actual speaking, writing, listening and reading of concrete social individuals.”

Eagleton also makes a point that I hope will help answer one of your earlier questions to me. He is here writing about Derrida:

“deconstruction sees social reality less as oppressively determinate than as yet more shimmering webs of undecidability stretching to the horizon. Literature is not content, as with New Criticism to offer a cloistered alternative to material history: it now reaches out and colonises that history, rewriting in its own image, viewing famines, revolutions, soccer matches and sherry trifle as yet more undecidable ‘text’…
Meaning may well be ultimately undecidable if we view language contemplatively, as a chain of signifiers on a page: it becomes ‘decidable’, and words like ‘truth’, reality’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘certainty’ have something of their force returned to them, when we think of language rather as something we do, as indissociably interwoven with our practical forms of life. It is not of course that language becomes fixed and luminous: on the contrary, it becomes even more fraught and conflictual than the most ‘deconstructed’ literary text. It is just that we are then able to see, in a practical rather than an academicist way, what would count as deciding, determining, persuading, certainty, being truthful, falsifying and the rest – and see, moreover, what beyond language is itself is involved in such definitions.”

This is why I agree with you when you wrote,

“But it feels almost obscene to talk about the violence itself as language. I would say, the moment when someone is shot in the head or drowned in a canal is not linguistic - the moment - but we return from that moment to language almost instantly. The immediate effect of the act is a death, but that death almost instantly becomes something reported in language and, in itself, a method of communicating a message to the wider world, roughly translated: keep your mouth shut.”

However, there was a Spike Milligan comedy sketch which included a military general shouting, “The war is over: Get to your typewriters!” That has a horrible ring of truth about it.

My own position is problematic for me. I can see the validity and brilliance of people like Derrida and Barthes but I find myself more in accordance with the work of George Steiner, especially in his work ‘Real Presences’, which puts forward a refutation of post-structuralism and the claim that there is nothing outside of the text.

Here’s a bit from his autobiography, ‘Errata’:

“ The notion of cosmic solitude [is] …to a great majority among us, unbearable. We crave a witness, even fiercely judgemental, to our small dirt. In sickness, in psychological or material terror, when our children lie dead before our eyes, we cry out. That such a cry resounds in nothingness, that it is a perfectly natural, even therapeutic, reflex but nothing more, is almost impossible to endure.”

And from ‘Real Presences’ on the nature of the Media Age:

“Correspondingly, the content, the possible significance of the material which journalism communicates, is 'remaindered' the day after. The journalistic vision sharpens to the point of maximum impact every event, every individual and social configuration; but the honing is uniform. Political enormity and the circus, the leaps of science and those of the athlete, apocalypse and indigestion are given the same edge. Paradoxically, this monotone urgency anaesthetizes. The utmost beauty or terrors are shredded at close of day. We are made whole again, and expectant, in time for the morning edition.”

blp

01-05-2006, 11:00 AM

Great stuff. No, no need for the smiley there, but I'm mildly annoyed that you beat me to the punch on making a joke about your name.

The Steiner stuff sounds interesting and, reading your post, I wonder if it's really mutually exclusive with the Post-Structuralists. The quote from his autobiography is about anguish. This isn't, directly, the concern of Post-Structuralism, but it describes a situation that is a cause of anguish to many. Could be when we get upset with the Post-Structuralists, we're just shooting the messenger. The more I read your post, the more it came back to me that it was helpful to be made intensely aware of language's pervasiveness and multiplicity precisely because ignoring the thicket can cause such problems.

As I've indicated, I'm not going to be much help with understanding Lacan, but an ex of mine has been studying to be a Lacanian analyst and she treats the whole business with increasing scepticism. Can't remember the dirt too well - lots of demagogic vanity in the great man, possibly a drug problem (don't quote me). The thing I've been struck by before and that comes back strongly reading your description is the Christian undertone - specifically, the pessimistically Christian undertone of some of his thought. This departure from the imaginary is such an expulsion from the garden.

blp

01-05-2006, 11:06 AM

Your Eagleton quote is great - pretty insubtantiable really, but that's sort of the point and it's great. I had a non-Lacanian analyst before I had my Lacanian and she understood this in a way I'm afraid the Lacanian never will, constantly giving me the shocking and invigorating experience of butting up against absolutely indisputable truth that was, nevertheless, from a philosophical perspective, equally insubstantiable.

fayefaye

01-05-2006, 12:53 PM

The phallus is the transcendental signifier not because it is an actual object or reality but because it is the key sign of what divides us from the imaginary and inserts us into our place within the symbolic order.

...So what is the phallus (the transcendental signifier - but what does that mean?? :brickwall: ) Sorry to get you to explain everything to me, but I do find it fascinating.

Is it like a return to the 'Real': a position without lack? And what do you mean by 'our place within the symbolic order'?

rachel

01-05-2006, 01:09 PM

hahahahVirgil.
you are brilliant. You said in a couple of sentences what would take some people a year. very refreshing.

fayefaye

01-05-2006, 01:09 PM

Thanks, I feel exactly that way.

Robin - This is only theory, that's why it's so funny. Everytime I read about it I crack up laughing. What's sad is that it's taught in the university as gospel. Here's some more things to laugh about:

Marx: he was wrong about economics, he was wrong about history, but we're going to use him to interpret literature. Duh?

Freud: he fabricated studies, nobody has ever found what part of the brain the id/ego/superego exists in, he's not taught in any psychology department, nobody really knows what a sub-conscious really is, but we're going to use him to interpret literature.

Jung: another fabricater of studies; he proposes a "collective unconscious". Now there's real paradox: not only do we have an unconscious (if its unconscious how do we know we have one?) but it's collective, we all share it together, and it's passed on in the genes to your children. Oh yeah!

Lacan: what was this, phallogocentric? Some how that must mean that if I show women my crotch, they'll fall for my language control. You know every guy at a bar knows this already. He didn't have to go to college for it. And you know, all this time I was trying to sweet talk them.

[shock, horror] Freud is just theory?? And here I was, all this time, thinking I had penis envy and waiting to develop a conscience. Does this mean.... that even without a castration complex... I might have a conscience anyway?? (I'm just kidding of course, Freud canned the Electra complex later on anyway, I believe. And I don't have a conscience.)

Of course it's all theory, of course it's all subjective, of course it's all bull****. But at worst, it's good for a laugh, and at best, it can be really fascinating. And philosophies like these challenge the way in which we usually think, and anything that can do that has some value. Maybe they are taught as gospel, and if so, then that really is a shame.

But lighten up, we're here to share ideas. Even if they are other peoples.

Virgil

01-05-2006, 03:42 PM

[shock, horror] Of course it's all theory, of course it's all subjective, of course it's all bull****. But at worst, it's good for a laugh, and at best, it can be really fascinating. And philosophies like these challenge the way in which we usually think, and anything that can do that has some value. Maybe they are taught as gospel, and if so, then that really is a shame.

But lighten up, we're here to share ideas. Even if they are other peoples.

Thank you. You penis envy and I Oedipal complex. I guess I missed out on that. Of course it's B.S. And it is a hoot (laugh, for those not up on American slang). I thought I was being kind of light in my tongue-incheek remarks. Perhaps that's where they belong, in philosphy, anthropology, or sociology departments. But I hold literature, and all art, pretty dear to me. It's one thing if it's a stray critic here or there, but this is what they are teaching in college today. That is sad.

The Unnamable

01-05-2006, 04:42 PM

If it’s all BS, then why are we even bothering to make the effort? You said in your most recent post that you hold Literature as dear to you. So do I but I consider it to be just as much under threat from the attitudes you have expressed as you consider it to be by theory. I know you said that your remarks earlier were tongue in cheek but I think they warrant closer inspection nevertheless because they are employed as a way of dismissing these ideas.

Thanks, I feel exactly that way.
As much as I love Dr. Johnson, his argument is a very poor one in terms of logic. It doesn’t refute anything, does it?

Robin - This is only theory, that's why it's so funny. Everytime I read about it I crack up laughing. What's sad is that it's taught in the university as gospel. Here's some more things to laugh about:
Again, the fact that you find it hilarious is not a valid indication of its worthlessness. I would also say that it’s simply not true to say that it’s taught as gospel, well certainly not in universities of any standing. Aren’t students supposed to learn how to think for themselves? Such theories are covered because they are constitutive of human knowledge. No decent university lecturer will fail you because you don’t agree with him or her. All that is being asked of you is that you manipulate a certain language in particular ways. You are free to disagree entirely with Barthes, Lacan etc. You will be assessed on your powers of reasoning, not on how far you agree with what you have been told. You might, however, be failed if you simply say that such ideas are counter to common sense and a load of rubbish (and in my opinion so should such a response be failed).
Besides, as well as being a Freudian theorist, Melanie Klein was a very well respected and successful clinical practitioner. This is why I get so frustrated with your dismissals – they are not made on the basis of any real knowledge or understanding of what it is you are deriding.

Marx: he was wrong about economics, he was wrong about history, but we're going to use him to interpret literature. Duh?
Don’t you even feel a little arrogant making statements like this? Virgil says Marx was ‘wrong’ – it’s as simple as that and we need enquire no further. Is absolutely nothing he said worthy of consideration? Also, you say that you understand the nature of theory but continue to make statements that clearly demonstrate that you don’t. It’s not about ‘using Marx to interpret Literature’. I thought blp had made that clear earlier.

Freud: he fabricated studies, nobody has ever found what part of the brain the id/ego/superego exists in, he's not taught in any psychology department, nobody really knows what a sub-conscious really is, but we're going to use him to interpret literature.
Yes, like all human beings, Freud was a flawed individual but so was Milton, Shakespeare and, I’ve no doubt, Aristotle. When he had finally lost all sight, Milton forced his daughters to act as amanuenses for him. When asked if he would be teaching them French, he replied “certainly not. One tongue is sufficient for a woman.” Does this make ‘Paradise Lost’ nonsense?
I have never before encountered the criticism that Freud’s theories are invalid because we can’t find a part of the brain where we can see the ego! Many post-Freudian writers have used Freud’s theories in their own work but you state that critics should not use them! That I find bizarre.

Jung: another fabricater of studies; he proposes a "collective unconscious". Now there's real paradox: not only do we have an unconscious (if its unconscious how do we know we have one?) but it's collective, we all share it together, and it's passed on in the genes to your children. Oh yeah!
I don’t know much about Jung but I don’t ever remember him suggesting that genetics had anything to do with his ideas. Besides, WB Yeats devised a far more absurd system based on the occult and ‘gyres’ and the idea that history takes place in two thousand year cycles. His poetry is still interesting nevertheless.

Lacan: what was this, phallogocentric? Some how that must mean that if I show women my crotch, they'll fall for my language control. You know every guy at a bar knows this already. He didn't have to go to college for it. And you know, all this time I was trying to sweet talk them.
Again, however amusing it might be, this is not a reasoned argument.

Why are you so threatened by these ideas? What are you afraid of? I wouldn’t mind but you have offered no reasoned argument to counter them. Simply dismissing them as if they are self evidently wrong because you consider them so gets us nowhere. I have tried very hard to explain some extremely difficult ideas here. Once again I ask you now to offer reasons – explain to me how Wordsworth is not ideological or how your approach is not just another theory.

Oh, and Robin - draw back your bow.

Virgil

01-05-2006, 04:45 PM

OK, here's my developed response, without facetious comments.

And where do social norms come from? How are they established and maintained?

Now there is an interesting question. What makes you say that language came first. We could be arguing about which came first, the chicken or the egg. [BTW, it's always been clear to me that the egg came first; something other than a chicken layed it, and offspring had genetically evolved to the chicken.] Intuitively one would have to say social norms came first, and language followed. Do we make up words for things that don't exist (other than some flight of imagination, ala sci-fi)? Don't social norms have to exist and then get labeled with a signifyer? Let's take the language of oppression: Are you saying we had to create the word slave before human beings actually enslaved anyone? No, I can't buy that. I think it works the other way around.

Perhaps we are at cross-purposes over the meaning of ‘control’. I don’t mean simply that language bludgeons us into a state of submission in some Orwellian stamping boot way (although I think Orwell would disagree with your assertion that language doesn’t control us. Think of 'Thoughtcrime'.).

Orwell is an artist presenting his view of the world. That is his right and privilidge. I am opposed to critics, whether thay be of the left or the right, conservative or liberal, injecting their views into someone else's art. I have particular views. I suspend them for objectivity. At least I try. I may bring my background to a work, but my one opinion is not the defining word. Through a discussion of objective critics, over time we can arrive at an appreciation and appraisal for a work of art. What these theorists are doing is intentionally not being objective. If they want to create a work of art, like Orwell, with their theories as the controling themes, fine. I'm not against that.

I mean that our very identities are constructed through the systems of meaning available to us, of which language is the most important.
Yes, there are limitations to life. But "available to us" implies options. Perhaps we would love to have more options, but we can't all be Albert Einstein. But there are options, and we do freely choose among them.

Originally Posted by Virgil
Ok, can you name one society in the world and across time that would not be regarded as patriarchal? No – but that surely supports my point? Men have always been in control.
:lol: I promised no facetious comments.

I disagree that I am not listening to you. I used to be broadly supportive of your approach and resisted the theorists at first. I simply think that the post-structuralist argument is ultimately far more convincing than the others.

So you made a free choice?

The point is that everything is ideological. Notice that I say ideological and not ‘political’ or ‘party political’. There is no such thing as a disinterested statement of fact.
"The sun rose today." A disinterested statement of fact.

Yes, theorists are ‘ideological’ as I said before. The point is that they know and admit this.

Do they admit this? If they do, to what value is it then? Ideologies come and go over time. Unless you're hard core (like Chomsky) you must realize that in a generation this will all be footnotes to history. Almost no one takes Freudian approaches to literature seriously anymore. And all those poor critics who spent their lives writing from this perspective are nameless nobodies. And there is Aritotle and Wordsworth and Sidney and Horace still around. Just to show I'm not picking on only critics of the left, let me pick on a critic who's associated more with the right. Harold Bloom has this theory of "anxiety of infleuence". His theory that writers, because they are borrowing and evolving from their predecessors, an anxiety develops from which the author distorts and finally recreates into a new work. I can almost buy this, but it too is flawed. "Anxiety"? How does he know what's going on in the writer's mind, and how can he identify from what the author is borrowing and his creative process?

Perhaps we should change our approach. Please demonstrate to me how/why Aristotle and/or Wordsworth are not ideological. Explain how they can produce work that is not a product of the systems of meaning available at the time.

You're the one making the claim they are ideological. I'm the one making the claim they are not. I can't prove a negative. Aritotle and Wordsworth have been around a long time. The theorists are the johnny-come-latelies. It seems to me that the burden of proof is on you to prove they are. I think I asked a couple of times to cite where, but I haven't heard an answer.

My apologies to all who have contributed in this discussion. I can't reply to all. These developed responses take a bit of time for me. But it continues to be fun.

Virgil

01-05-2006, 04:58 PM

Why are you so threatened by these ideas? What are you afraid of? I wouldn’t mind but you have offered no reasoned argument to counter them. Simply dismissing them as if they are self evidently wrong because you consider them so gets us nowhere. I have tried very hard to explain some extremely difficult ideas here. Once again I ask you now to offer reasons – explain to me how Wordsworth is not ideological or how your approach is not just another theory.

Oh, and Robin - draw back your bow.

Oh this was a facetious post to be lighthearted and show the absurdities of all this. Perhaps we can have a debate on whether the sub-conscious exists. Another one of those gospel truths held by academia today. Once we're done with this discussion, perhaps. I can't do more than one at a time.

The Unnamable

01-06-2006, 03:24 AM

Intuitively one would have to say social norms came first, and language followed.
Firstly, ‘Intuitively’ is not a reasoned argument. It has the convenience of being something that is not rational and therefore needs no logical defence. You might as well say that you intuitively know that Shakespeare was a woman. I can deal with a reasoned argument that he wasn’t but how can anyone argue logically with someone else’s intuition? It would be like arguing with someone about his or her faith. The interesting thing is why you believe that social norms come first. What is the basis of your belief?

Don't social norms have to exist and then get labeled with a signifyer?
It’s more complicated than this. Language must come before concepts – see fayefaye's and blp’s comments above. You might say that nouns come first, which they do but surely there is some kind of hierarchical structure in evidence in deciding which objects from the physical world get named first?

Are you saying we had to create the word slave before human beings actually enslaved anyone?.. I think it works the other way around.
Think about this – how would we know someone is a slave if there is no word for it? We might subsequently define their status as enslaved but initially they would simply be a person in a situation that we later called slavery. The person obviously existed prior to the subsequent application of the label but the actual concept must, logically, come second.

Orwell is an artist presenting his view of the world.
Orwell is a very good choice to discuss. He was a journalist first and foremost and very politically motivated. It would have come as a great surprise to him to find his essays discussed as Literature as if the topics he discussed were less important than the way he discussed them. What is considered as literature is changeable. It is historically variable – a piece of writing might start off by being considered history or philosophy and then come to be regarded as Literature. It is unlikely now that anyone reads Gibbon’s account of the Roman Empire for its historical accuracy.

I have particular views. I suspend them for objectivity. At least I try.
And how exactly do you do this? It simply isn’t possible – the medium thorough which you express yourself as well as the reading practices you employ make those readings as subjective as anyone else’s. This is not to say that you are a con-artist claiming to be unbiased while at the same time disguising your dark agenda! It simply means that you are mistaken in your assumption that there is such a thing as objectivity when it comes to exploring a text.

Through a discussion of objective critics...
Who are these ‘objective’ critics? Eagleton makes an excellent point about this:

“Some traditional critics would appear to hold that other people subscribe to theories while they prefer to read literature ‘straightforwardly’. No theoretical or ideological predictions, in other words, mediate between themselves and the text: to describe George Eliot’s later world as one of ‘mature resignation’ is not ideological, whereas to claim that it reveals evasion and compromise is. It is therefore difficult to engage such critics in debate about ideological preconceptions, since the power of ideology is nowhere more marked than in their honest belief that their readings are ‘innocent’.”

Also, Barthes’ ‘Mythologies’ is no less creative a work of art (by what I assume to be your definition) than anything Orwell wrote.

Yes, there are limitations to life. But "available to us" implies options.
I’m not sure I understand your point here – there is the appearance of freedom because we have options, but that freedom is limited because so are the number of options. What I mean by ‘available to us’ is something that varies according to time and place. The systems available to a cave dweller early in human history included spoken language and virtually monochromatic painting. Today it includes written language and moving as well as still images.

So you made a free choice?
Yes (inasmuch as it’s possible to define it as a choice when the number of options on offer are finite) – based on thought, knowledge, understanding and reasoned argument – not on simply repeating the same statement.

"The sun rose today." A disinterested statement of fact.
An unfortunate choice of an example, Virgil.
First of all, the sun doesn’t actually rise so this isn’t even a ‘fact’, if by fact we mean something that is universally true in all contexts. It’s just the way we perceive it to be. What if you made that statement to someone from a different culture who then said to you, “what do you mean, ‘rose’? Where I come from we believe that the sun doesn’t move. How can it ‘rise’?” What this would do is demonstrate part of the unconscious system of value judgments which underlies the original, seemingly unambiguously factual statement. I admit it is not a value judgment of the same order as if you had said ‘It was a beautiful day today’ but it is a value judgment nonetheless and no factual statement you make can escape that. Even making the statement carries certain assumptions –e.g. that it is worth making in the first place, that you are in a position to verify it is fact and so on. Even in the context of its being a post on this forum, it is not disinterested. It is made to prove a point.

Do they admit this? If they do, to what value is it then?
They certainly recognise it, which amounts to the same thing. Its value is, for me, that it makes us think. I’m always in favour of that.

Ideologies come and go over time...you must realize that in a generation this will all be footnotes to history.
This is dogmatic. There is no way any of us can possibly know this. It is perfectly feasible that, given a sufficiently marked transformation of society, future generations will find nothing of interest in Shakespeare. He might appear completely alien to them. He might not, but no one can yet know because the future hasn’t arrived. History hasn’t yet ended. In that, it's rather like this thread. ;)

Almost no one takes Freudian approaches to literature seriously anymore.
Evidence? I would argue that there are far more readings based on theory being produced than any other type.

And all those poor critics who spent their lives writing from this perspective are nameless nobodies. And there is Aritotle and Wordsworth and Sidney and Horace still around.
“The fact that we interpret literary works to some extent in the light of our own concerns – indeed that in one sense of ‘our own concerns’ we are incapable of doing anything else – might be the reason why certain works of literature seem to retain their value across the centuries. It may be, of course, that we still share many preoccupations with the work itself; but it may also be that people have not actually been valuing the ‘same’ work at all, even though they may think that they have.”
‘Our’ Horace is not identical with that of his contemporaries.

How does he know what's going on in the writer's mind, and how can he identify from what the author is borrowing and his creative process?
This highlights the contradictions you trap yourself in by adopting the position you do. You ask, rightly I believe, how can Bloom know what the author was thinking and yet you then see no problem with saying in the Tess rape thread, “Hardy is after a very complex situation from which he wants to show how fatalism is integrated into what makes us human beings” as if you know this. So Bloom cannot know the author’s intentions but you can.

You're the one making the claim they are ideological. I'm the one making the claim they are not. I can't prove a negative. Aritotle and Wordsworth have been around a long time. The theorists are the johnny-come-latelies. It seems to me that the burden of proof is on you to prove they are. I think I asked a couple of times to cite where, but I haven't heard an answer.
I believe this is, essentially, semantic evasion. However, I thought I had pointed out the ways in which Aristotle adopts an ideological approach when I wrote above, “the earliest work of theory was Aristotle’s Poetics. He offers famous definitions of tragedy, insists that literature is about character, and that character is revealed through action, and he tries to identify the required stages in the progress of a plot. He was also the first critic to develop a ‘reader-centred’ approach to literature, since his consideration of drama tried to describe how it affected the audience. Surely this is a clear example of a theorist?” This is not to claim that Aristotle had a conscious political agenda but that his approach is informed by assumptions that are historically variable and not, however much you wish to believe, universal truths applicable for all time. That is an ideological position.

Nightshade

01-06-2006, 05:18 AM

Can sopmeone please define the way your using concept here please??
:confused:

blp

01-06-2006, 07:12 AM

It's one thing if it's a stray critic here or there, but this is what they are teaching in college today. That is sad.

I can kind of relate to this. I don't know what the situation's like now, but this stuff became very very dominant in the eighties nineties and was probably not always intelligently taught. As I say, I first encountered it at art school, which was a bloody awful place to learn it. When dissertation time came around, it was suddenly impossible to get Barthes' 'Mythologies' or the book with the Death of the Author essay out of the library because the theory tutor had recommended them to everyone, whatever their subject. Later I remarked to one of the younger tutors that I could have done with a bit more help with some of the chewier theory I'd encountered and she said blandly that theory was sort of just something some people took to and some didn't. Lots of smoke and mirrors. Carrying a Baudrillard book around was a bit like writing 'The Dead Kennedies' on our schoolbags had been a few years earlier. These theorists were deified to the point where it was very difficult to admit you had a problem understanding them, let alone agreeing with them. As a result, you had the absurd situation of nineteen, twenty year old kids feeling bad because they couldn't understand Deleuze and Guattari when what they probably needed was just a concise introduction to Plato (and absolutely weren't getting it).

This is maybe more extreme than the situation in a university might have been, but I also remember meeting a guy from Harvard at the time who told me simply that you'd get a better grade for writing a thesis on Derrida than, say, Merleau-Ponty or even Wittgenstein. The point - an old one now - is that for all its preoccupation with decenteredness and collapsing hegemony, post-structuralism became a central, dominant mode of thought, one with its own peculiar millennarianism that all too quickly was seen by its lesser practitioners as having made everything else irrelevant. The point I'm longwindedly leading up to, Virgil, is that if a lot of this thinking has felt like having ideology forced down your throat and muddy up your reading of the books you love, I can see why, though I'd question whether it's really the theory's fault. Freud, Marx and Neitzche are definitely, in practice, a sort of holy trinity of post-structuralism and, to the extent that this is allowed to exclude other thinkers of merit, some corrective is probably required. Just don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

blp

01-06-2006, 07:15 AM

Perhaps we can have a debate on whether the sub-conscious exists.

With no facetiousness, yes, please, I'd be interested.

Actually, it's pretty crucial to this language as a method of control debate and if you absolutely don't believe in the sub-conscious or unconscious, it's no surprise that you wouldn't buy a lot of post-structuralism.

Again, I have to say, those with a desire to control are in little doubt about the unconscious' existence. Check out Vance Packard's classic and still relevant study of advertising from the early sixties, 'The Hidden Persuaders'. Bob Dylan says in his Chronicles book that the reason he never read Freud was that he was told it was a tool of advertising men.

The Unnamable

01-06-2006, 08:23 AM

Can sopmeone please define the way your using concept here please??
:confused:

Do you mean the way I, Unnamable, am using ‘concept’? If so, I am simply using it the sense of the standard dictionary definition - an idea or principle. In the case of slavery as a concept I simply meant the idea of owning a person who is forced to work for you.

The Unnamable

01-06-2006, 08:25 AM

Bob Dylan says in his Chronicles book ...
A Dylan fan as well? Is there no end to your excellent taste?

blp

01-06-2006, 10:14 AM

A Dylan fan as well? Is there no end to your excellent taste?

Nope! I also love Beckett.

And just to briefly resurrect another hoary old debate from the foothills of post-structuralism (and make myself out a right PoMo barbarian at the gate), yes, I prefer Dylan to Keats.

rachel

01-06-2006, 11:39 AM

I am quite overwhelmed by all this intellectual banter between especially the three of you.It is all much above my head and as I read it I seem to feel more and more confused.
That is until I remember the scripture in Ecclesiastes that states(by the man considered the wisest man that ever lived):
"there is nothing new under the sun".
Then I can take a deep breath and realize that way back in the time of Socrates people were sitting about having all the same sort of discussions. Their civilizations rose and fell and mankind still went about eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage and waking up to a work day the same as always.And at night they often fell into bed exhausted and wondered what the world was coming to and what really was the truth of anything. "Seek and ye shall find, knock and the door shall be opened unto you . ask and it shall be given." says God. I happen to believe that and so I can then just move along and figure out what I shall make for dinner tonight knowing all that is still resting on His shoulders. what a relief.

Riesa

01-06-2006, 11:52 AM

Thank you, Rachel, for the above.
I feel like the slow person in a room full of geniuses. It is really interesting reading though, duh.

Xamonas Chegwe

01-06-2006, 12:37 PM

"The sun rose today." A disinterested statement of fact.

Is it?

All statements carry baggage, even this one.

Why do we say, "The sun rose" and not the more accurate, "The Earth turned to face the sun"? Because the phrase dates from a time when it was believed that the sun turned around a stationary, flat Earth. Because that's what it appears to do, even though we understand the true mechanism better than that these days. (I don't think that respecting other people's beliefs extends to flat-Earthers, does it? If so, I apologise. If not, I think you're all mad.)

Also, where you actually there watching when it happened? Or did someone you know and trust see it and report the fact to you? If not, this is an assertion based on previous experience and personal beliefs about the workings of the world, rather than a truly objective, disinterested fact.

Semantics - Don't you just love em?

fayefaye

01-06-2006, 12:42 PM

If it’s all BS, then why are we even bothering to make the effort?

I know this question was directed at Virgil, but just to clarify - when I referred to it as BS, what I meant was that, Virgil is right in saying that it's subjective, that it's theory. And in that sense, it's all bs. But that doesn't mean it's not useful, or that it isn't good to think about etc.

(Although, I don't think that Virgil's statements about Marx, Freud and so on were entirely accurate. Saying that Marx was 'wrong' about economics seems to ignore that economics itself is also just theory. A theory based on an ideology, seeing people as 'innately' self interested etc)

Through a discussion of objective critics, over time we can arrive at an appreciation and appraisal for a work of art.

Virgil, what do you mean by 'objective'? How can anything be objective? You'll get a lot more from philosophers and critics if you stop looking for black and whites where there are none.

blp

01-06-2006, 12:49 PM

(Although, I don't think that Virgil's statements about Marx, Freud and so on were entirely accurate. Saying that Marx was 'wrong' about economics seems to ignore that economics itself is also just theory. A theory based on an ideology, seeing people as 'innately' self interested etc)

So true. And, to be a little ideological myself, we may only now be beginning to get the evidence of just how wrong right wing monetarist economists like Milton Friedman were, but their ideas still have a great deal of, er, currency among exactly the kind of people who like to say that Marx was wrong.

rachel

01-06-2006, 04:58 PM

reading all you geniuses, and I do not say that in jest but in great seriousness I am forced to take a step backward and having nothing of equal brilliance to say must grasp at something from another genius.
So I shall quote James Barrie, author of Peter Pan. He said to a fellow famous author who was touting his latest creation"that is all very well but can you wiggle your ears?" :brow:

Virgil

01-06-2006, 05:03 PM

Is it?

All statements carry baggage, even this one.

Why do we say, "The sun rose" and not the more accurate, "The Earth turned to face the sun"? Because the phrase dates from a time when it was believed that the sun turned around a stationary, flat Earth. Because that's what it appears to do, even though we understand the true mechanism better than that these days. (I don't think that respecting other people's beliefs extends to flat-Earthers, does it? If so, I apologise. If not, I think you're all mad.)

Also, where you actually there watching when it happened? Or did someone you know and trust see it and report the fact to you? If not, this is an assertion based on previous experience and personal beliefs about the workings of the world, rather than a truly objective, disinterested fact.

Semantics - Don't you just love em?
Oh, please. It's a metaphor. It's disinterested. It's a statement of fact. Did the sun not rise by you today, or is that all relative to you?

Virgil

01-06-2006, 05:18 PM

I am quite overwhelmed by all this intellectual banter between especially the three of you.It is all much above my head and as I read it I seem to feel more and more confused.

Oh, there's been a few others too who have contributed, not just three of us. Let's not forget them.

Frankly this is nothing to be overly impressed about. It's what we've been exposed to in grad school. I frankly ususally question overly intellectulized explanations, especially when it comes to art and literature. For centuries, western culture based the foundations of its world view on the scholarly thinking of Plato and his Academy. After centuries, it dawned on people, what a crock! Well, I think we have a new academy today that seems to think outside of common sense. Sorry if that insults anyone. Perhaps its my engineering training that when confronted with abstraction I feel around for the tangible. If you've read my posts here, you can see that my feeling is that this is all a gordian knot of thinking.

Anna Seis

01-06-2006, 05:36 PM

Unnamable,
Perhaps I was not clear; I don't think you're telling that power is only excersed by the physical coercion. I was thinking about Virgil's statement, when he said "persuasion is not excercise of power. Words don't force people to do things they don't want to do". My answer aimed to exprime that power can persuade people and -in a complex process, that involves also interaction between attitudes, motivations and interests of people- make them see the world in a certain way -by means of press, for instance. And if we see world in a certain way, we will behave consequently. I believe that persuasion is excercise of power, even if the aims of it are positive or negative, being power a kind of relationship between groups. I think that examples you gave in the third reply ilustrates what I want to say.

When I wrote about people whose main care were the buying of very publicited products I didn't mean that they're stupid, I apologize if the message suggested that idea. But I had in my mind the image of young people, no necesarily teenagers, whose values and aspirations seem to be curiously limited. I think that some conditions, for example, a formal education of low quality, added to contexts socioeconomical and familiar disfavoured (not only economically) , make them more vulnerable. And those situations create conditions to the reproduction of exclusion, and contribute to mantain situations of dominance.

I agree with you in the fact we are all controlled in a subtle, unconscious manner. Eagleton also says that in superior education institutions we are enabled to speak and write in a specific way, no matter what we think or believe. The control is excersed over the discourse as a form. It seems that if we access to superior education, we are controlled in our discourse and become participants of an elite. If we don`t, we are excluded or limited in our access to discourse, but controlled at all.

BLP, as a human being I forgive you, but as psychologist, I don't. You know, Lacan's theory is a karma in my life. There are many aproachs more comprehensible and even Freud is more preferable. A teacher told me at once "at fist, I thought this was Gongora". She didn't liked Gongora, but I sincerely love him, and Lacan is not Gongora. Perhaps I should read him in French (To be quite sure). Your assertion, "Alright, there were a lot of individual words I kind of understood, but next to each other they were a problem" could be made for many psychologists I know.
(Unnamable, I have heard many times the assertion "Lacan inverts the Saussurian algorithm". I readed De Saussure and I couldn't find that De Saussure attributes preeminence to "signified" over "signifier". He says that both are the two inseparable faces of the lingüistic sign, but as far as I know, he doesn't emphasizes not any of them. I am beginner in Lingüistics, and my teacher at University -a lovely one- seems not to be much interested in Lacan. On the contrary, psychoanalists usually underlined that invertion, and in Theory and Critics it was underlined too. Is this actually a very important point?)
Well, I see you all been hardly working, I guess I have to read more to be worth of this thread. Perhaps I'll get courage to face Lacan.

Xamonas Chegwe

01-06-2006, 05:45 PM

Oh, please. It's a metaphor. It's disinterested. It's a statement of fact. Did the sun not rise by you today, or is that all relative to you?

Of course it did (I think). I was just pointing out the implicit assumptions and social conventions present in even the simplest of statements.

And it was supposed to be a disinterested fact, not a metaphor. A metaphor is a step removed from a fact; a comparison that attempts to offer extra insight. Perhaps you should have chosen your example more carefully.

One plus one is two. That's a fact. About as disinterested as you can get. But it requires an understanding of numbers, of the operation of addition, of the meaning of equality to convey it's meaning. Bertrand Russell took several chapters of his Principia Mathematica to prove this statement!

Whether you like it or not, words and sentences carry baggage - that's a fact but not a disinterested one.

The Unnamable

01-06-2006, 06:14 PM

I am quite overwhelmed by all this intellectual banter

Then I can take a deep breath and realize that way back in the time of Socrates people were sitting about having all the same sort of discussions. Their civilizations rose and fell and mankind still went about eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage and waking up to a work day the same as always.And at night they often fell into bed exhausted and wondered what the world was coming to and what really was the truth of anything. "Seek and ye shall find, knock and the door shall be opened unto you . ask and it shall be given." says God. I happen to believe that and so I can then just move along and figure out what I shall make for dinner tonight knowing all that is still resting on His shoulders. what a relief.

And that, oh wise one, is why I don’t ultimately care what any critics or theorists say about any of the writers I love. In the end it’s very simple for me and probably very narcissistic. Literature is whatever reminds me of the world as I have experienced it. What I find interesting are characters and situations, preferably interesting characters in interesting situations, which make me either laugh or think. You’re right; someone has to make the dinner. This is, of course another piece of ideology and certain structures of power will be further maintained as a result of my subscribing to it. Ah, well.

We probably all need someone who can see the world as we can, to share our sense of its miraculous absurdity. My two favourite examples from the world of writing are:

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh!" he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you."” ~A.A. Milne

and

ESTRAGON:
We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?
VLADIMIR:
(impatiently). Yes yes, we're magicians. But let us persevere in what we have resolved, before we forget. (He picks up a boot.) Come on, give me your foot. (Estragon raises his foot.) The other, hog! (Estragon raises the other foot.) Higher!
-Waiting for Godot

The challenges of the everyday are the ones that occupy us most. We need to get our boots on and we can’t even recognise the difference between left and right. Genius, indeed! I’m as confused, uncertain and pointless as everyone else.

"Every man is occasionally visited by the suspicion that the planet on which he is riding is not really going anywhere; that the Force which controls its measured eccentricities hasn't got anything special in mind. If he broods upon this sombre theme long enough he gets the doleful idea that the laughing children on a merry-go-round or the thin, fine hands of a lady's watch are revolving more purposefully than he is. These black doubts creep up on a man just before thunderstorms, or at six in the morning when the steam begins to knock solemnly in the pipes, or during his confused wanderings in the forest beyond Euphoria after a long night of drinking.

The fearful mystery that lies behind all this endless rotation has led Man into curious indulgences and singular practices, among them love, poetry, intoxicants, religion, and philosophy. Philosophy offers the rather cold consolation that perhaps we and our planet do not actually exist; religion presents the contradictory and scarcely more comforting thought that we exist but that we cannot hope to get anywhere until we cease to exist. Alcohol, in attempting to resolve the contradiction, produces vivid patterns of Truth which vanish like snow in the morning sun and cannot be recalled; the revelations of poetry are as wonderful as a comet in the skies, and as mysterious. Love, which was once believed to contain the Answer, we now know to be nothing more than an inherited behaviour pattern."

James Thurber

The Unnamable

01-06-2006, 06:35 PM

I know this question was directed at Virgil,
What do you mean, ‘directed at’? It was ‘addressed to’ Virgil! Slippery things these signifiers, aren’t they? ;)

but just to clarify - when I referred to it as BS, what I meant was that, Virgil is right in saying that it's subjective, that it's theory. And in that sense, it's all bs. But that doesn't mean it's not useful, or that it isn't good to think about etc.
Don’t worry; I’d assumed that. I’m feeling a little deconstructed at the moment and even when I was writing the question, I was wondering about whether or not I should agree that ultimately it is all BS. But then I’d have to issue disclaimers and we’d be back into endlessly deferred meaning. My words are deconstructing themselves before my very eyes! It’s all BS and the answer to my question is that we are waiting for Godot. It's either this or the tele. :lol:

“The sun shone, having no alternative on the nothing new.” Murphy SB

Xamonas Chegwe

01-06-2006, 06:39 PM

Unnamable,

Where do you get all of your quotations from? You seem to have something to respond to every argument and something long at that. I can't believe that you pull out the books and copy them in by hand - no spelling mistakes and you don't strike me as anally retentive enough to spend hours proof-reading; plus, your responses appear too quickly for it in any case - so do you have a favourite website full of amazing observations, or what?

I really love that "forest beyond Euphoria" metaphor. I've spent half my life there without knowing where it was!

Wasn't it Thurber that said, "A woman's place is in the wrong"? Sounds like your kind of guy based on the Herzog thread.

The Unnamable

01-06-2006, 06:58 PM

Unnamable,

Where do you get all of your quotations from? You seem to have something to respond to every argument and something long at that.
How dare you! :)

I can't believe that you pull out the books and copy them in by hand - no spelling mistakes and you don't strike me as anally retentive enough to spend hours proof-reading; plus, your responses appear too quickly for it in any case - so do you have a favourite website full of amazing observations, or what?
I’m kwite good at spellings. I remember large chunks of a lot of them (simply because they are memorable) and the full versions are on my computer in various files. The observations on the texts are what struck me when I was reading them, I suppose. So no website, sorry. Occasionally, I use the texts online here and search the keywords I remember.

I really love that "forest beyond Euphoria" metaphor. I've spent half my life there without knowing where it was!
Wonderful. That made me laugh out loud and is the kind of observation that you should keep in a file somewhere. I know I’m going to use it when you aren’t looking.

Wasn't it Thurber that said, "A woman's place is in the wrong"? Sounds like your kind of guy based on the Herzog thread.
I couldn’t possibly agree with anything so utterly un-PC. ;)

The Unnamable

01-06-2006, 07:08 PM

Oh, please. It's a metaphor. It's disinterested. It's a statement of fact. Did the sun not rise by you today, or is that all relative to you?
As I live and work in Asia, I am in a very different time zone from you. So whose 'today' do you mean in this disinterested statement of fact?

Xamonas Chegwe

01-06-2006, 07:28 PM

As I live and work in Asia, I am in a very different time zone from you. So whose 'today' do you mean in this disinterested statement of fact?

Wonderful. You have returned the compliment and made me laugh out loud.

Xamonas Chegwe

01-06-2006, 07:38 PM

Anna Seis,

Who is the woman in your avatar? Hopefully I will be able to understand the answer. ;)
And if it's yourself - well hello!!!!

Scheherazade

01-06-2006, 08:00 PM

Just a wild guess but isn't that Greta Garbo?

Xamonas Chegwe

01-06-2006, 08:17 PM

One quick google image search later - Of course it is! I never was any good at faces - or names for that matter - speak to me and I'll forget you by tomorrow. There are things that I am good at but they'd only get asterisked if I deigned to try and mention them.

Thanks for compensating for my gaps in knowledge.

I am in your debt Schez. btw - are those really your own wings?

Scheherazade

01-06-2006, 08:23 PM

One quick google image search later - Of course it is! I never was any good at faces - or names for that matter - speak to me and I'll forget you by tomorrow....

I am in your debt Schez. btw - are those really your own wings?Pardon, you said you are...?? :p

The wings are, of course, my own! I usually carry my halo in a hat box for the sake of convenience... as you can imagine!

Virgil

01-06-2006, 10:04 PM

As I live and work in Asia, I am in a very different time zone from you. So whose 'today' do you mean in this disinterested statement of fact?
Hehehe. :D That still doesn't alter the fact that anyone who speaks english will understand the sentence.

Asia? I thought for sure you were in England. If you don't mind me asking, where in asia? If you do, just ingnore the question and I won't bring it back up.

Unnamable,

Where do you get all of your quotations from? You seem to have something to respond to every argument and something long at that. I can't believe that you pull out the books and copy them in by hand - no spelling mistakes and you don't strike me as anally retentive enough to spend hours proof-reading; plus, your responses appear too quickly for it in any case - so do you have a favourite website full of amazing observations, or what?
I find him pretty amazing too. Sometimes I wonder if he's human. :lol: I'm impressed.

Virgil

01-07-2006, 12:48 AM

Of course it did (I think). I was just pointing out the implicit assumptions and social conventions present in even the simplest of statements.

And it was supposed to be a disinterested fact, not a metaphor. A metaphor is a step removed from a fact; a comparison that attempts to offer extra insight. Perhaps you should have chosen your example more carefully.

One plus one is two. That's a fact. About as disinterested as you can get. But it requires an understanding of numbers, of the operation of addition, of the meaning of equality to convey it's meaning. Bertrand Russell took several chapters of his Principia Mathematica to prove this statement!

Whether you like it or not, words and sentences carry baggage - that's a fact but not a disinterested one.
What baggage is in "The sun rose today"? Given everything you say, is there a single person who speaks english who would not understand the sentence?

rachel

01-07-2006, 01:45 AM

oh dear Unnameable,
the exchange between pooh and piglet is one that I have in water color and it is a comfort and safe haven for me.
I admire your mind, honestly I don't feel I could be even in your shadow. I would have loved to be in one of your classes if for no other reason than to hear you speak......words. any words.

fayefaye

01-07-2006, 08:40 AM

What do you mean, ‘directed at’? It was ‘addressed to’ Virgil!

lol… Unnamable, you are brilliant. :)

The Unnamable

01-07-2006, 09:29 AM

fayefaye

01-07-2006, 09:51 AM

My God, Unnamable, you're right! There are children in the world who may grow up to dislike locusts! Contact all the English speaking teachers and parents across the globe and ensure that they forget about trying to teach mathematics, spelling, grammar and basic hygiene to children, and instead, teach them to like locusts.

Now I'm the one being facetious. :rolleyes:

Xamonas Chegwe

01-07-2006, 10:28 AM

What baggage is in "The sun rose today"? Given everything you say, is there a single person who speaks english who would not understand the sentence?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this was originally a statement of what people actually believed the sun did - rise at one side of a stationary Earth, pass across the sky and descend behind the hills on the other side; the flat Earth remaining stationary beneath it.

Nowadays it is accepted that this is not what happens; that the Earth spins on it's axis, giving the impression that the sun is moving.

One example of 'the baggage' is that an english speaking person from pre-Galileo times would understand the phrase in a completely different way than a modern one.

Another example is that very young children take things much more literally than adults. A child that has never been told that the Earth spins around the sun and turns on it's axis would take exactly the same meaning from the phrase as our historic english speaker, as might a person with impaired mental faculties, a sufferer of Down's syndrome or autism, for example.

I can still remember when I discovered that the Earth moved around the sun and not vice-versa - I was probably about 3 - and how my perception of the world suddenly changed. I actually had nightmares, thinking I could feel the Earth moving beneath me at night.

In a completely different way, the phrase can be said to have baggage due to the mental associations conjured up upon hearing it. I know that I get a fleeting image of the sun appearing from behind a hill, sending fingers of light across fields and rooftops; a delightful pastoral scene, with a crowing cockerel and all. Whereas, had I been awake at sunrise, it may well have been overcast and raining, the only hint of sunrise being a slight lightening of the shades of grey behind the tower blocks and factories.

Our brain, upon hearing words, triggers memories and associations, throwing up anything that might be useful in understanding what it has heard. For example, "The sun rose today" may trigger the phrase, "The rising sun" and lead to thoughts of Japan, especially if that country had been on one's mind for some reason recently. One could also hear the homophone "son" and turn to thoughts of Christianity.

These associations are how we understand words and every word and phrase triggers them. Hence, "baggage".

Virgil

01-07-2006, 03:31 PM

I sure no one will mind if I forget about Lacan for a moment. ;)

I was thinking about locusts and their tragic position in all of this. They are usually referred to with the word ‘plague’ as their collective noun. Our negative view of locusts is made explicit in the very phrase we use to describe them - ‘a plague of locusts’. Some creatures are far more favourably treated by us – We have a ‘pride’ of lions and even a useless great lump of an animal like a hippopotamus gets nothing worse than a ‘herd’. Even the very lowliest are better served – we speak of a ‘culture’ of bacteria, which sounds rather refined and educated.

My concern is that there are children growing up in this world, being indoctrinated with linguistic structures that mean they will probably never give a locust a fair chance. I believe this is, in essence, nothing short of Locustist.
A person who doesn't know what a locust is, will have no reaction, intellectually or emotinally, to the phrase "a plague of locust". But once he finds out what a locust is, the reality of it, that will shape his reaction. He doesn't need a word to know how bad locust are. And aren't you providing your own contradiction here? If in the phrase "a culture of bacteria," culture is a positive word, why, my friend, do we have such aversion to bacteria? We should be embracing them if language controls us.

Virgil

01-07-2006, 03:38 PM

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this was originally a statement of what people actually believed the sun did... Hence, "baggage".
For brevity I didn'twant to use the whole quote, but used....
There are 250 million people in the United States. Given they all understand the english language I am willing to bet that 250 million people will understand what I meant. Frankly the examples you give are trivial. If you think that there is that much of a barrier between people's understanding of words, then how come we are having such a complex discussion? If a simple sentence, The sun rose today" is a barrier then how can any communication exist?

rachel

01-07-2006, 06:35 PM

fayefaye,
for some reason your hilarious post reminds me of Basil Faulty when the American tourist comes and wants a waldorf salad. Basil's chef is gone and he took twenty pounds from the American and had to come thru. All his wife can find for the moment are apples. His response sounds exactly like yours.
It opens up a whole new vista of thought about your personality.
I like it.

Xamonas Chegwe

01-07-2006, 09:38 PM

Virgil,

Please let's stop arguing for argument's sake!

I will try and put my points more succinctly.

When we hear a word, any word, we immediately draw upon our previous experiences of that word to establish it's meaning. Our brains provide us with a series of images associated with the word. For every individual, the precise combination of images is subtly different but there is enough common ground for us to 'understand' roughly the same concept. This is how communication is possible.

Where two people's prior experiences of a concept are similar, the communication is much more accurate, leading to a feeling of 'rapport' with the other person. Where the two experiences are very different, misunderstandings and arguments ensue. I am merely playing devil's advocate here and trying to show how people can have a different reaction to the simplest of phrases.

The thoughts, ideas and emotions triggered by the phrase, "The sun rose today" are different for every person on the planet. I'm not saying that they don't understand the phrase, or that their understanding of it is not essentially similar, just that they do not understand the phrase in precisely the same way.

Stroke victims, and unfortunately, I know one personally at the moment, often forget words but are able to describe the concept behind the words perfectly. It is entirely plausible that such a person would understand nothing whatsoever from the word "sun" but would be able to describe the object and it's "rising" without hesitation. As an example, the person that I know gets extremely frustrated with not remembering the names of simple objects - shouting such phrases as, "I want a.... like a knife but with a round end - I need it to eat my ****ing soup!" In this person's case, the brain has been damaged and can no longer link the word with the object that it represents. The link needs to be re-established by re-learning the word (in precisely the same way that it was originally learnt as a child.) Trust me, it is one of the saddest things I have ever witnessed.

The concepts behind all words exist as much in our brains as they do in the real world. If you like, we hold a 'model' of them all inside our heads and this model has associations and links with other object models. In as much as we all have different brains, with different models and a different set of links between them, there is no objective meaning of any word.

Try this simple test. Ask as many people as you can find to write down the first thing that comes into their heads when you say "The sun rose today". Simple word-association. I would lay odds that no 2 people write down precisely the same thing. This doesn't mean that not everybody understands the phrase, just (as my point has been all along) that not everybody has the same set of connections (which I call baggage) associated with the phrase.

I hope that this makes my position clear.

Xamonas

Virgil

01-07-2006, 09:44 PM

Virgil,

Please let's stop arguing for argument's sake!

I will try and put my points more succinctly.

When we hear a word, any word, we immediately draw upon our previous experiences of that word to establish it's meaning. Our brains provide ...hope that this makes my position clear.

Xamonas
I heard you. I understand. I've said it many times, I understand. . I am not arguing for argument's sake. I find the position bogus. It doesn't meet my experience. Frankly it trivializes the human brain. If something is not clear with one word, than communication requires more words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs. People communicate within and across cultures everyday and understand. The sun rose today. Do you understand?

Xamonas Chegwe

01-07-2006, 10:15 PM

Kindly explain how my post "trivialises the human brain". I think that I described, as accurately as I could, in simple terms, the incredible richness and diversity of human brains. If my meaning wasn't clear, then perhaps your own personal "baggage" associated with the words I used has got in the way of understanding. If so, I apologise.

As well as communicating, people also misunderstand each other every day (wars have started over such). I think that you're responses to my posts are a case in point. I didn't set out to argue with you, merely to illustrate that even the simplest of phrases can have subtly different meanings to different people. If, for whatever reason, you find this impossible to accept, I find no further point in arguing with you. I fear that you find objectivity on a subject upon which you have already "made a stand" impossible. I find this sad. Personally, I am my own worst critic and my own doubting Thomas. As Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living for man."

The Unnamable

01-08-2006, 12:04 AM

A person who doesn't know what a locust is, will have no reaction, intellectually or emotinally, to the phrase "a plague of locust".

That isn’t true, is it – assuming they know what ‘a plague of’ means. If they don’t know what that means either, then I would assume they don’t speak English and that what you are saying above would be true for any words.

But once he finds out what a locust is,

And how does one find out? Presumably, unless one lives where the locusts run free, it would mean relying solely on books, images, other people’s studies, etc. Even if you see them in the course of your everyday life, your feelings towards them will still include a large part of what those who have educated/socialised you feel towards them. The ‘meaning’ of locust is already ‘decided’. That doesn’t mean it can’t be altered but our assumptions and attitudes are very deeply ingrained (see later comments).

the reality of it, that will shape his reaction.

It depends what you mean by the ‘reality of it’. We do not apprehend it ‘objectively’ as if it were simply a physical organism. You know in which part of Asia I live. Well, on the way home after a night’s revelling, in a truly Shakespearean meaning of the word, I often pass many roadside food vendors selling an assortment of local fast food. This includes deep-fried cockroach, deep-fried maggots, deep-fried grasshoppers (they could be grasshoppers, crickets or locusts, I don’t examine too closely) and deep-fried little frogs that have been squashed flat. Why is it that I know that insect protein is nutritionally quite good for you but that I have an aversion to putting such things in my mouth? The thought of chewing a cockroach is not one that I entertain without feeling rather queasy.

Logically, there is no reason why this should be so but my cultural attitudes are so powerful and internalised that I have no intention of taking a bite.

He doesn't need a word to know how bad locust are.
Are they objectively or intrinsically ‘bad’? Obviously our perception of them is affected by the damage they cause but ‘of themselves’ they can’t be ‘bad’, surely?

And aren't you providing your own contradiction here? If in the phrase "a culture of bacteria," culture is a positive word, why, my friend, do we have such aversion to bacteria? We should be embracing them if language controls us.
If you are serious here (I’m not sure how one embraces bacteria anyway), then all I can say is that you want the issue to be far more unambiguous and black and white than it ever is. ‘Culture’ doesn’t have just one, positive, unambiguous meaning. Nor did I mean ‘control us’ in the way you are using it here. I thought that had been made clear many times above.

PS Fancy a bite?

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y73/stonemewhatalife/friedgrasshoppers.jpg

Virgil

01-08-2006, 12:51 AM

I hate to do this, but to give everyone who’s not up on the intricacies of this discussion I’ll have to resort to a philosophic overview. This will not be particularly pleasurable for me, because frankly philosophy bores me. But I think it will have to be done. Mind you, I was not a philosophy major nor am I an expert on the topic. But the debate between what seems everyone on that side and me on this side has been rehashing old ground. We’re repeating ourselves. This going back to the philosophic roots of what we believe may change some minds (although I doubt it), make some understand why they believe what they believe, or just fill the rest in in this convoluted discussion.

Western culture (I can only speak for western culture, but this may not be much different in other cultures) has historically looked at meaning, what philosophers call the logos, as residing in two places: form or mimesis. Form being the idea of a thing; mimesis being the reality of a thing.

Plato emphasized that form had preeminence over mimesis, which had huge implications. Let’s just summarize as saying that western culture up through the 12th century or so, built its method of thinking (at least according to philosophers; I’m skeptical that real people even bothered with any of this.) on metaphysics, that is we know things not because of their physical nature but because of they exist in the mind and in an ideal way, heaven. Plato believed that these forms exist in the mind before we are even aware of them. Meaning lies in the forms.

Aristotle, as a sort of proto-empiricist emphasized mimesis over form. He believed that we could not be aware of the forms/ideas until we had empirically sensed them or somehow experienced them. Things don’t exist in the mind a priori. Around the 12th century Aristotle was rediscovered, and ultimately overturned Platonic thought and probably led to the renaissance and then to the enlightenment, especially the philosophic notion of empiricism. Empiricism being that we need to derive ideas from observed experiments. You can see then how this blossomed into the scientific revolution and ultimately modern society. Meaning lies in mimeses.

These have been the two extremes of western thought since classical Greece. Empiricism has won the day, but pure empiricism does have a whole in its thinking (there are things which are a priori, we are not a complete blank state). Without getting into it, let me just say that the philosopher Kant was able to qualify pure empiricism, and found a sort of synthesis of form and mimeses, but still an emphasis on mimeses.

Now we come to the theorists, which are a break from traditional western thought, we’ve been arguing over: the structuralists, deconstructionists, new historians, whatever else is the latest fad. I know there are nuances between them but I think they all have the same philosophic underpinning. These theorists don’t believe that logos exist in either form or mimeses but in signifiers. Signifiers being words or how we communicate. These words are constructed before we know of the thing. We create the words before we experience a thing. I think in effect they are creating a new metaphysics not based on forms but on words. Meaning therefore lies in the words, which are unstable, changing, carry baggage, and could mean different things to different people.
I think that’s a lot for now. If anyone wants to correct me, please do I don’t present myself as an expert in philosophy. I don’t even really care about it, but it must be understood. I tried to simplify for the sake of the general forum. I tried to be fair in my presentation above, and in my next major post on this, I’ll summarize why I think the theorists are all wet.

Nightshade

01-08-2006, 10:10 AM

Right sticking my oar in again even though most of this is way out of my depth and Im utterly confused in points .
first off Use , understand and speak the english languge rarely go together, whoever it was who said 250 million americans speak english and all of them understand it. And another thing youll find hundreds if not thousands of those people can comprehend above the simplest english. Its a fact, that with soo many subcommunities not everyone speaks english and even then not all of them speak the same english.
Who was it who said locusts were bad? People in the arab peninsula have been eating them as a delicasy for over a thousand years. Its a preassociation, or a Western Concept that causes you to go "uggh insect gross" like me refusing to eat ox-tail I mean tails, or prehaps more validly bannans.
Now I know that the black thread you have in bananas is the Xaylam (or however you spell it) not mushed up frogs . But when I was little my cousin told me it was mushed frog, and I cann't eat them without Visualizing live frogs in a meat grinder hence I wont eat a banana from choice. But it doesnt control me it simply influences my choices.

rachel

01-08-2006, 12:14 PM

This is all way above me. But since I look at things , try to see things thru the eyes of a Creator, Intelligent design, I cannot believe that he created us as a blank page when we are in or emerge from the womb. And if He already imprinted certain things upon our minds and hearts then that combined with our senses, whichever ones we have if not blind, deaf,etc. and our surroundings plus experiences give us our definitions of things. Or at least that which we choose to be our definitions.
For instance we all have fathers to begin with even if a test tube baby, sperm and egg but whether that parent is alive or dead, in our lives or out helps form our definition of father.
There is a scripture that says that God has put time indefinite into our hearts. eternity if you will. But what we define that is a collection of what we choose given all of the above, to believe that means. But He put it already into our hearts.
So to me the blueprints are already there in brain and heart but we build from those blueprints how we choose. Free will that He has given us.
How you gentlemen, ladies can go over and over and over this a kazillion times without running screaming down the street in frustration is beyond me.

Anna Seis

01-08-2006, 03:14 PM

Anna Seis,

Who is the woman in your avatar? Hopefully I will be able to understand the answer. ;)
And if it's yourself - well hello!!!!

Xamonas, the woman in the avatar is Greta Garbo. The picture was made for Vogue in 1928. I accept your salutation, because though I am not her, I am beautiful in a very secret secret way. :brow:

Xamonas Chegwe

01-08-2006, 03:18 PM

frankly philosophy bores me....Mind you, I was not a philosophy major nor am I an expert on the topic....I don’t present myself as an expert in philosophy....I don’t even really care about it, but it must be understood.

And yet you feel fit to deliver your own, innacuracy-ridden, 5-minute, potted philosophy lesson to the rest of us!

Frankly, I think this smacks of crass arrogance.

I think I just heard your grandmother calling. Would you be so good as to show her how to suck eggs?

Virgil

01-08-2006, 03:19 PM

Xamonas, the woman in the avatar is Greta Garbo. The picture was made for Vogue in 1928. I accept your salutation, because though I am not her, I am beautiful in a very secret secret way. :brow:
Yeah, but could Greta Garbo talk about post-modernism? I bet overall, you're much more attractive.

Logos

01-08-2006, 03:22 PM

Any more negative comments directed at other posters gets this topic closed :)

Xamonas Chegwe

01-08-2006, 07:51 PM

Logos,

I apologise if any of my comments got too personal. They were intended to be aimed at the poster's words rather than person. I shall attempt to be more accurate in future. (PS. Try not to smile when you talk about closing a discussion - it's disturbing!)

Anna,

Of course it is Garbo. This was pointed out to me earlier by another poster. I should have known (Smacks self on side of head!) If she accurately represents your secret secret beauty then it must be a sight to behold for those intrepid enough to locate it. ;)

Unnamable,

I imagine that those locusts would be like eating prawns with the shells and legs still on. If you ever dare them, please let me know if I'm right.

Logos

01-08-2006, 08:00 PM

Virgil

01-08-2006, 08:49 PM

And yet you feel fit to deliver your own, innacuracy-ridden, 5-minute, potted philosophy lesson to the rest of us!

Frankly, I think this smacks of crass arrogance.

I think I just heard your grandmother calling. Would you be so good as to show her how to suck eggs?
Xamonas
You're too young to have your blood pressure explode. And do you think ad hominem rantings perturb me in the least? :lol:
I'm an engineer. I design things. I get things built. I make things run. I don't have the patience for people in ivory towers who try to figure out how many angels can sit on the head of a pin. What you detected was part of my personality, my likes and dislikes. If that is crass arrogance, so be it.
I felt the need for the sake of those who were getting baffled by the discussion to fill them in. I wasn't even trying to make any points, just fill in background. I said I wasn't a philosophy major. This is how it was taught to me. If there are inaccuracies, please feel free to correct. Perhaps then I might be persuaded by your argument. I said how we understand the underlying philosophic principles shapes our opinion on the issue. Perhaps either your side or I don't understand it fully and discussing them may enlighten the situation. But given that you don't understand what "The sun rose today" means I wonder whether you're even capable of understanding it.
In the future please leave either of my grandmothers out of the discussion. They are both deceased.

The Unnamable

01-09-2006, 11:53 AM

Right sticking my oar in again
Please, paddle away – at least we get movement that way, even if so many people paddling with all their might means we don’t get away and then the ship sinks. :)

Who was it who said locusts were bad?
Me – although I didn’t actually say that they are bad – merely that, in linguistic terms, they have had a bad press. Yes, I know that people eat them -that’s why I posted the picture of a roadside food vendor’s wares. – I also mentioned that people here in Asia eat insects. Even that raises another interesting point. People from the north of Thailand are much more likely to eat insects than are those from the capital. Fairer-skinned, middle class Thais view eating insects with the same sort of distaste characteristic of Western people. There are many very prominently advertised products such as skin bleaching creams that are aimed at and appeal to middle class Thais. More and more their lifestyle emulates that of the western consumer. The image of the West is certainly powerful enough to overcome and suppress the culturally accepted norms of many Thais. Why would they now share an attitude that can be seen as xenophobic? Why do they want to be white? In the West everyone wants a tan.

But it doesnt control me it simply influences my choices.

An interesting distinction –what choices? The ones that are available. In the case of a single phrase that I mentioned in an attempt to lighten the tone, we can’t expect much control. No, it doesn’t ‘control’ you inasmuch as it doesn’t make you jump from a tall building or dye your hair green. In the sense that your very sense of who you are is determined by the language available to express such things, it does control all of us. It controls us by enabling us to construct a fictional reality while seeing it as natural, and by hindering us greatly from imagining that things could be otherwise.

The position I am taking is one that asserts that the meaning of language is a social matter. It belongs to my society before it belongs to me. I am not going to go away and read say, Lord of the Flies using the methods suggested by Barthes, Jakobson, etc. but their work has made me far more aware of the assumptions and ideological position of my own reading methods, of the way I make sense of a text.
I think it’s vital to question how and why we have been taught what we have been taught. “I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.” (Wilson Mizner)

blp

01-09-2006, 12:03 PM

One plus one is two. That's a fact. About as disinterested as you can get. But it requires an understanding of numbers, of the operation of addition, of the meaning of equality to convey it's meaning. Bertrand Russell took several chapters of his Principia Mathematica to prove this statement!

Two sixties filmmakers have ironically addressed this paradigm of 'common sense'. In Antonioni's 'The Red Desert', a child disproves it by merging two puddles of water. Godard titled his film on the Rolling Stones 'One Pluse One' and said, by way of explanation, 'Not one plus one equals two, but just one plus one' - a statement that could easily allude to Saussurian chain of signifiers.

The Unnamable

01-09-2006, 12:03 PM

All this began with Virgil’s question about a statement I had made in another thread. I wrote “Ultimately, I would argue that the suppression of thought and control of language have more to do with maintaining existing power structures than any issues of morality or even propriety.” I was commenting on the kind of censorship that justifies itself on the basis of morality or its less authoritarian cousin, polite behaviour. I hope the discussion has moved on enough for me now to say that issues of morality and propriety exist within particular ‘discursive practices’.

I haven’t yet had the opportunity to discuss Michel Foucault, whose work was more instrumental than the others in establishing a link between language and control. Foucault was a poststructuralist cultural historian, who saw the modern State as maintaining its position by what he calls ‘panoptic’ (all-seeing) surveillance. This surveillance is not just a reference to the ubiquitous presence of the camera in western society but also to what he calls ‘discursive practices’. These he sees as language’s equivalent of ideological state apparatuses or hegemony. For a very clear and useful definition of what, precisely, is meant by ‘discourse’ see this link: http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1261

Discourse is not just a way of speaking or writing. It refers to language operating in a way similar to Eagleton’s description of ideology outlined in post number 48 above, “it is the very medium in which I ‘live out’ my relation to society, the realm of signs and social practices which binds me to the social structure and lends me a sense of coherent purpose and identity. Ideology in this sense may include the act of going to church, of casting a vote, of letting women pass first through doors; it may encompass not only such conscious predilections as my deep devotion to the monarchy but the way I dress and the kind of car I drive, my deeply unconscious images of others and of myself.”

Foucault points out that there isn’t just one discourse. However, he’s less interested in identifying them than he is in considering how "Knowledge" is created in our societies and with what purpose or effect.

The following is from the article mentioned above:

“In most of Foucault’s work on discourse there is a sense in which what counts as discourse is constituted out of a process of exclusion. Thus he argues that what counts as reason or rational thought is constituted by a construction of discursive frameworks of insanity or falsehood/fiction. Thus, truth and power have a strong excluding influence on what can be said or written. Foucault suggests that discourses are often constructed through a process of commentary, that is, critics comment on a text and in the process of commenting on it, constitute it as a text which can be commented upon and which is therefore important. The text will therefore be circulated within the education system or within magazines and newspapers and will be available for others to comment upon. It is this process of commentary which keeps certain ideas current and which excludes other ideas and texts. These are for Foucault the mechanisms which regulate discursive production.”

This is what I mean by control of language.

Both Literature and Literary Criticism are discourses. This means, of course, that both have to compete for space with all the other available discourses. On a very simple level, I am reminded of that very short poem ‘Days’ by Philip Larkin.

Days
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields

Those who come running do so armed with their own discourse, which promises to explain life.

Legal discourse is infamously impenetrable and within the reach only of those able to master it. To Foucault’s mind this very impenetrability is one effective method by which the discourse maintains its own validity. Medical discourse is similar, as is philosophical discourse, of course, and so on. Discourse is power. This is another reason that I am in no way trying to suggest any conspiracy is at work or that any explicit political motive is apparent. Our own discourse seems natural to us.

All teachers and critics of Literature are simply custodians of the discourse of literary criticism. As Eagleton says:

“Their task is to preserve this discourse, extend and elaborate it as necessary, defend it from other forms of discourse, initiate newcomers into it and determine whether or not they have successfully mastered it.”

I think this is why you, Virgil, are so fervently against these theories. They threaten to expose the relativity and ideological position of your favoured discourse. The reason why things appear 'natural' or 'common sense' is that nothing is more natural than speaking in your own language.

On this thread, time and time again we have seen people running for their discourses.

Xamonas Chegwe

01-09-2006, 04:02 PM

I said how we understand the underlying philosophic principles shapes our opinion on the issue.

I would go further, have been for several posts in fact, and say that how we understand everything shapes our understanding of everything else.

I have never claimed that people don't understand the offending phrase. I have merely claimed that their understanding of it is coloured by their culture, prior knowledge, and beliefs; that everyone's understanding, while essentially the same, has a unique something of themselves in it.

As an engineer, you must be familiar with the concept of "thinking outside the box" to solve a problem. The obvious, accepted way of proceeding is not always the best (it usually is, I'll grant, it's prior effectiveness being the reason for it's general acceptance) but every now and then, somebody comes along with a brilliant new idea that turns things on their head, a paradigm shift occurs and overnight there is a new obvious and accepted method. Only by trying new things, making connections where none existed before, can this kind progress be made. The flash of inspiration which leads to new inventions, new methods, new ideas, comes about because different minds approach things from different viewpoints; make different connections; have different baggage associated with words and ideas which leads them all in subtly different directions.

I work as a computer programmer. It is a well known adage that if you give 1,000 programmers the spec for a program, you'll get 1,000 different programs back from them. All will work (hopefully), but all will work in slightly different ways. I suspect that 1,000 engineers would build 1,000 different bridges in much the same way.

And, as I have been saying for so long (seems like years), everyone has a different mental image of a sunrise and their minds will jump in different directions upon hearing that the sun has risen. This is baggage, like it or not. Call it by any other name you prefer, but it is an essential part of how our minds work - biological and psychological fact - not philosophical abstraction, post-modernist or otherwise.

I really do apologise for getting personal a few posts ago. It was not to my credit. I would have withdrawn or amended the post but felt that the damage had been done once it had been replied to. I felt frustrated because I felt that you were not really reading my posts (into which I put a lot of time and effort, in an attempt to make them as unambiguous as posible) but were pre-judging what I was trying to say in advance. Your replies appeared (and this may be an error of perception on my part - I'll admit that) to be the first things you thought of, unfiltered and unconsidered and based on those pre-judgements, rather than my actual words.

A few points about myself:

I am not a philosophy major either and I do not live in an ivory tower (I can't afford one and would hate to bring about the demise of so many elephant's) although I do love philosophy and have read many books on the subject, including the works of many of the major philosophers (but no post-modernists, any limited understanding of their concepts comes from more general texts). I also enjoy discussing philosophical issues and ideas and comparing my ideas with others. I am more than willing to agree that I am wrong, or that there is an alternative, equally valid point of view, if the argument put forward is well presented, well reasoned and sound. However, I get very annoyed at just being told I'm wrong, without full evidence of why the claimant feels that way.

I am probably much older than you think and have been on medication for high blood pressure for several years, so I really should be more careful as to how wound up I get about things or else I might just :rage:

And finally, if you've bothered to read this far, let me re-emphasise that I agree 100% with the statement which I quote at the start of this post - and with which I intend to conclude it - it is essentially, the point that I have been making for days. Please re-read my previous posts and I hope you'll see that. I have tried a variety of lines of reasoning, with different examples and styles to say exactly that.

Please everyone, was I really that opaque in my arguments?

I said how we understand the underlying philosophic principles shapes our opinion on the issue.

Nightshade

01-09-2006, 05:52 PM

An interesting distinction –what choices? The ones that are available. In the case of a single phrase that I mentioned in an attempt to lighten the tone, we can’t expect much control. No, it doesn’t ‘control’ you inasmuch as it doesn’t make you jump from a tall building or dye your hair green. In the sense that your very sense of who you are is determined by the language available to express such things, it does control all of us. It controls us by enabling us to construct a fictional reality while seeing it as natural, and by hindering us greatly from imagining that things could be otherwise.

Fittingly enougfh my siste is watching The Matrix in the next room. ((g)) And I have a point that pproves you right too I didnt mean chocies Im dyslexix And have troubles with languge and expressing what I mean I guesss I know alot about The confins of languge I meant desison , and there is a differance between them.

As for the East trying to be west and the west trying o get a tan I just lov e to sit back and laugh, and laugh and laugh.
:lol:

Virgil

01-09-2006, 10:13 PM

In the West everyone wants a tan.

I don't. I put on sunscreen. And even those that do, how does that follow that they want to be black?

An interesting distinction –what choices? The ones that are available. In the case of a single phrase that I mentioned in an attempt to lighten the tone, we can’t expect much control. No, it doesn’t ‘control’ you inasmuch as it doesn’t make you jump from a tall building or dye your hair green.

This doesn't take into account the utter complexity of humanity. There are people here that dye there hair green and there are people that don't. I have a brother who is a anthropologist/philosopher; he's got a PHd. We both essentially have the same genetic make-up and grew up in the same environment. I'm an engineer. I can't stand abstract thought that has no application; he can't hammer a nail into a piece of wood. No language controled either one of us to be who we are or to see how we see the world, which is quite different.

I am not going to go away and read say, Lord of the Flies using the methods suggested by Barthes, Jakobson, etc. but their work has made me far more aware of the assumptions and ideological position of my own reading methods, of the way I make sense of a text.
Well, for crying out loud then we agree on all this!!!!! I don't mind the critic being sensitive to anything, but he's got to have an on-off switch that says, wait, the author isn't after this.

Xamonas - We've gotten off on the wrong foot. Let's patch up our sensitivites and agree to disagree. I'm a New Yorker. Crass arrogance is part of our nature. We grow up on it. I really, and I mean it, would feel bad if I made your blood pressure go up.

blp - The Rolling Stones do not have a song called "One Plus One." I'm a Stones buff and it didn't ring a bell. I went to Keno's Rolling Stones song list http://www.keno.org/Songlistnlyrics.htm and it wasn't listed. I would be shocked if it were so rare that Keno isn't aware of it. Your quote: 'Not one plus one equals two, but just one plus one' sounds roughly like a Who song which says: "In life one plus one don't make two; one plus one makes one." I don't know what your point was, but what The Who were trying to say is two perople each without a lover/mate are isolated individuals. It's a popular Who song, I just for the life of me can't place it.

I still haven't fleshed out why I feel post modernism is wrong in its approach to aesthetics. I'll get to that eventually.

The Unnamable

01-11-2006, 07:11 AM

I don't. I put on sunscreen. And even those that do, how does that follow that they want to be black?
I didn’t say they want to be black, Virgil – I said they wanted a tan. Obviously such statements are never meant to include every living human being – but the number of tanning products on sale in the West does suggest it’s not just a few isolated individuals.

I don't mind the critic being sensitive to anything, but he's got to have an on-off switch that says, wait, the author isn't after this.
How can any of us know what the author was ‘after’? Why does it matter anyway? We don’t have their ‘intentions’ to read, only the text and its context. On another post you criticised Harold Bloom for presuming to know the author’s mind but you now seem to believe that we can and should. I have already pointed out one example of this and now you do it again. Doesn’t that highlight the contradictions inherent in your position?

blp

01-11-2006, 07:32 AM

blp - The Rolling Stones do not have a song called "One Plus One." I'm a Stones buff and it didn't ring a bell. I went to Keno's Rolling Stones song list http://www.keno.org/Songlistnlyrics.htm and it wasn't listed. I would be shocked if it were so rare that Keno isn't aware of it. Your quote: 'Not one plus one equals two, but just one plus one' sounds roughly like a Who song which says: "In life one plus one don't make two; one plus one makes one." I don't know what your point was, but what The Who were trying to say is two perople each without a lover/mate are isolated individuals. It's a popular Who song, I just for the life of me can't place it.

I didn't say there was a song by the Stones called 'One Plus One', as you'll see if you re-read the post.

My point was something of an aside, but was meant to show how even this most basic example of inarguable common sense (1+1=2) is open to question and interpretation. The wider point might be that, whatever the claims to truth of maths and science, migrating them into a linguistic, rhetorical realm is perhaps not that easy.

fayefaye

01-11-2006, 11:06 AM

Why does it feel like this thread is going nowhere, and doing it slowly?

The Unnamable

01-11-2006, 11:52 AM

Why does it feel like this thread is going nowhere, and doing it slowly?
Where do you want it to go? :)

In terms of the original topic of the relationship between language and power, how about commenting on Foucault's ideas about 'discursive practices'?

blp

01-11-2006, 11:55 AM

Why does it feel like this thread is going nowhere, and doing it slowly?

Some positions may be a little entrenched.

The Unnamable

01-11-2006, 12:03 PM

Some positions may be a little entrenched.
:)

Perhaps so but I have been trying to deal with what has been said and then trying to explain why I think it’s problematic.

As I said above, how about commenting on Foucault’s ideas about the relationship between language and power? To me they seem stronger than most of the others in this context.

blp

01-11-2006, 12:13 PM

Well, I know enough about Foucault to think you're probably right, but the only thing I've read by him is his book on Magritte's 'This is not a pipe' and that a long time ago. But I'll be glad to say something on this, once I find your original post on it. Incidentally, if it seemed I was ignoring you, I think we posted simultaneously.

Sami

01-11-2006, 04:26 PM

There is a fascinating debate going on here. Apologies if I repeat anything that’s been raised before - I didn’t quite have time to get through all of the pages. I will go back and have another look at them later, but just wanted to raise a couple of things first.

Several people have complained about “feeling out of their depth” or lost with this discussion and I think this is a fair comment because these issues are notoriously complex. Personally speaking I cannot claim to have anything approaching a thorough knowledge of all the themes/authors that have been raised. However, since I have read a fair bit of Foucault’s work I wanted to dispel the idea that his work is totally obscure or impossible to get through. I find that some of his texts, particularly those written in the late 1970s are fairly accessible when compared with Lacan, or Derrida etc. So, by way of a quick review, I’d like to suggest that “Discipline and Punish”, which raises the idea of “panoptic” power, and the “History of Sexuality vol. 1”, are good starting points. Although Foucault did his fair share of dry abstract theorizing, these two texts are histories of concrete historical practices relating to sexuality, power, the body, prisons, torture…hope that tempts at least a few of you!

One other thing: I agree that, for Foucault, language operates in a similar way to ideology, but there are some important differences. Ideology implies that a more complex meaning has been simplified for a mass audience. It also usually has a negative connotation that they are being duped or manipulated away from the true meaning of things and that, conversely, unmasking the ideological meaning will lead to a positive outcome. It seems to me that Foucault was not so interested in unmasking false consciousness and so on as with sticking to a surface level of analysis. As Unnamable points out, he views power as “a way of relating to the world” that produces various knowledges (I think he nearly always used knowledgeS, plural?), at various points/sites. In some ways then, Foucault’s view has a positive, inclusive aspect: In contrast to ideology, there is no universal truth that an elite theorist can claim to unmask or perceive on behalf of others, and elite discourses such as law and medicine are divested of their claim to be essential, necessary, or natural etc.

fayefaye

01-12-2006, 06:49 AM

Where do you want it to go? :)

In terms of the original topic of the relationship between language and power, how about commenting on Foucault's ideas about 'discursive practices'?

hmm.... I think my knowledge of Foucault is limited to the whole power knowledge cycle. (those in positions of power have the ability to define what counts as knowledge and thereby maintain their positions of power, etc) I'd be interested as to what else he said.

I'd love to bring us all back to Lacan :D After I became confused with the whole 'phallus' thing I googled it and read/sort of skim-read what I found (it makes my eyes sore to stare at a computer screen for too long) and I'd love to discuss it to see if I have any genuine understanding. From what I gather, it seems that the 'phallus' is to be the centre of the system of signification (the transcendental signifier, analogous to the 'God' of the system of signification, because it is the centre of the system but not bound by any of its rules. the centre is on the outside!! (why are philosophers so painfully circular??)) - so it would be a position of complete fullness, a position which holds the other signifiers in place an limits 'play' (the tendency for the relationship between signifer and signified to shift, I think...). ie, a stable position which is not defined by lack. Which, in a system of signification where EVERYTHING is defined by lack, is actually non-existant. [edit: forgot to add that in a system of language, what is there to keep meaning stable anyway which the phallus could signify? I think the statement that the phallus couldn't exist as a position of fullness in a system defined by lack sounds a lot like the argument that God couldn't exist in a universe made by God, which sounds a little absurd...]

Am I close? And if so, what does everyone think of his ideas?

fayefaye

01-12-2006, 07:09 AM

Or, if you're tired of Lacan, it is a good time to unleash Lyotard and Baudrillard.

blp

01-12-2006, 08:30 AM

Having a smidge more knowledge of Lacanian theory than of Foucault, I'm going to allow myself to be blown by the prevailing wind.

What you say sounds right, Fayefaye, (though I'm hardly any authority) and I think it's fairly easy to see from this how Lacan, who began as a structuralist, ends up relating to other post structuralists: to say that all signifiers are defined by lack seems to me to really be saying that their definitions themselves are marked by lack, incompleteness (though I believe 'lack' itself has wider connotations in Lacan's system). This means that they can only have meaning provisionally and contingently as part of a system of relations. A good example, would be the signifier 'god', since it might be seen to be analagous to Lacan's 'phallus', yet is constantly incomplete in its meaning until 'completed' by other signifiers: 'God, I'm tired', 'God is great', 'God does not exist', 'a minor god in the pantheon', 'this is my god-son', 'god the father, god the son, god the holy ghost'.

Even apart from the religious connotations, this relates to questions of power. The assertion that there is no transcendental signifier seems to me to be a statement of the impossibility of absolutism. Once you accept it, you are logically less likely to accept assertions of absolute certainty about meaning from those in power.

To throw a few more names and tricky words into the mix, this seems to me to relate well to Gilles Deleuze and his sometime writing partner Felix Guattari. In their book 'A Thousand Plateaus' they question why things are so often structured on an arboreal model (i.e. like a tree, in which everything branches out from a central stem or trunk) and argue instead for thinking in terms of rhizomes (subterranean node and stem structures such as potatoes, where no individual element can be said to have centrality). This sounds very like a signifying chain, but I think part of the point is that here the chain is non-linear and forms something more like a web, each element constantly relating to the others in a multitude of different ways at any one time.

No surprise perhaps that these two were interested in schizophrenia: "A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst's couch. A breath of fresh air, a relationship with the outside world." Note: 'relationship'. At the beginning of 'A Thousand Plateaus' they describe the writing of it by saying 'Since each of us was several, that was already quite a lot'. Again, I think the scepticism of even a single true identity within an individual this implies relates to what Unnamable was saying earlier (much earlier) about desire and the real:

If you look up a word in a dictionary, you will simply find more words. Look them up and more words are offered and so on, ad infinitum). To Lacan, this is what desire is - an endlessly deferred search for what we lack, which Lacan calls the ‘real’. So there is a correspondence between the world of language and the world of desire. Lacan says “Language is what hollows being into desire.” We will never reach our destination, the final meaning that completes us although we will never cease in our search. We have to make do instead with substitutes, as is the case with the endlessly deferred signifiers that prevent us from attaining some transcendental meaning.

and perhaps the thousand plateaus are the provisional meanings and identities we can move between, with no promise or prospect of a single peak to conquer or 'real' to arrive at.

Again, this brings us back to the subject of this thread. The American philosopher Richard Rorty relates Deleuzian ideas to those of humanist philosophers such as William James to make an argument for democracy. In his view, democracy is made of a constant web of negotiations between different positions, none of which can be said to have centrality - a rhizomatic model. If you accept that this relates to a signifying chain, what's particularly interesting about it in the context of this thread is that the structure of language itself becomes the model for a political structure the purpose of which is to limit, as much as possible, the use of language as a method of control. Freedom of speech becomes crucial in order to allow the negotiations that are the engine of democracy to continue.

Coincidentally, during the time I was reading Rorty in Tokyo, a Japanese girl asked me if I could explain the difference between fascism, socialism, communism, capitalism and democracy. A great chat ensued, not surprisingly and what I realised in having to think this through was that democracy was the one system built not on the idea of perfection, but imperfection. It's a nebulous thing, not fixed. The others think they have the answer, democracy knows it doesn't and never will and will only be defined by the often conflicting voices of its constituent parts. Churchill's formulation of it as 'least worst' becomes somewhat beside the point.

To nod back to Foucault, he once said, 'Perhaps one day this century will be seen as Deleuzian'.

blp

01-12-2006, 08:58 AM

P.S. Here's a Deleuze quote from the seventies that suits this thread:

'One should know what is currently happening in the realm of books. For several years now, we've been living in a period of reaction in every domain. There is no reason to think that books are to be spared from this reaction. People are in the process of fabricating for us a literary space, as well as judicial, economic, and political spaces, which are completely reactionary, prefabricated, and overwhelming/crushing.'

The Unnamable

01-12-2006, 09:32 AM

a Japanese girl asked me if I could explain the difference between fascism, socialism, communism, capitalism and democracy.

Marxism is the exploitation of man by man and Capitalism is the other way round.

PS I will get to a serious response but I thought that one might make you smile, even though you've no doubt heard it before.

The Unnamable

01-12-2006, 09:37 AM

From what I gather, it seems that the 'phallus' is to be the centre of the system of signification (the transcendental signifier, analogous to the 'God' of the system of signification, because it is the centre of the system but not bound by any of its rules. the centre is on the outside!! (why are philosophers so painfully circular??)) - so it would be a position of complete fullness, a position which holds the other signifiers in place an limits 'play' (the tendency for the relationship between signifer and signified to shift, I think...). ie, a stable position which is not defined by lack. Which, in a system of signification where EVERYTHING is defined by lack, is actually non-existant.
That makes sense to me (mind you, that’s no recommendation). I remember another bit of Lacan that I found both fascinating and infuriating. It’s from The Mirror Stage part of Écrits. The abstruse style is one of the things I find infuriating.

“That a Gestalt should be capable of formative effects in the organism is attested by a piece of biological experimentation that is itself so alien to the idea of psychical causality that it cannot bring itself to formulate its results in these terms. It nevertheless recognises that it is a necessary condition for the maturation of the gonad of the female pigeon that it should see another member of its species, of either sex; so sufficient in itself is this condition that the desired effect may be obtained merely by placing the individual within reach of the field of reflection of a mirror.”

Is this true? If it is, then there must be some link between self-awareness and sexual maturation. An awareness of separateness, presumably, is the stimulus for the passage from one realm to another. If it is true then it takes me into realms I simply don’t have the capacity to navigate. The reason I am doubtful is that Lacan goes on to mention, believe it or not, the locust (I must admit I did know this earlier when I brought up the subject :brow: ):

“Similarly, in the case of the migratory locust, the transition within a generation from the solitary to the gregarious form can be obtained by exposing the individual, at a certain stage, to the exclusively visual action of a similar image, provided it is animated by movements of a style sufficiently close to that characteristic of the species. Such facts are inscribed in an order of homeomorphic identification that would itself fall within the larger question of the meaning of beauty as both formative and erogenic.”

Apart from the fact that I had to look up half those words (anyone seen that great Tony Hancock sketch where he’s reading Bertrand Russell?), I’m not sure that’s true about the locust. I have some memory of reading that it was physical touch on the back legs that triggered the change. Still, the stuff about the pigeons is worth a second thought.

blp

01-12-2006, 10:49 AM

Hello, I found this, which makes the link between Lacan and Deleuze & Guattari clear.

http://130.179.92.25/Arnason_DE/Deleuze.html

fayefaye

01-12-2006, 11:43 AM

“That a Gestalt should be capable of formative effects in the organism is attested by a piece of biological experimentation that is itself so alien to the idea of psychical causality that it cannot bring itself to formulate its results in these terms. It nevertheless recognises that it is a necessary condition for the maturation of the gonad of the female pigeon that it should see another member of its species, of either sex; so sufficient in itself is this condition that the desired effect may be obtained merely by placing the individual within reach of the field of reflection of a mirror.”

Is this true? If it is, then there must be some link between self-awareness and sexual maturation. An awareness of separateness, presumably, is the stimulus for the passage from one realm to another. If it is true then it takes me into realms I simply don’t have the capacity to navigate. The reason I am doubtful is that Lacan goes on to mention, believe it or not, the locust (I must admit I did know this earlier when I brought up the subject :brow: ):

“Similarly, in the case of the migratory locust, the transition within a generation from the solitary to the gregarious form can be obtained by exposing the individual, at a certain stage, to the exclusively visual action of a similar image, provided it is animated by movements of a style sufficiently close to that characteristic of the species. Such facts are inscribed in an order of homeomorphic identification that would itself fall within the larger question of the meaning of beauty as both formative and erogenic.”

Apart from the fact that I had to look up half those words (anyone seen that great Tony Hancock sketch where he’s reading Bertrand Russell?), I’m not sure that’s true about the locust. I have some memory of reading that it was physical touch on the back legs that triggered the change. Still, the stuff about the pigeons is worth a second thought.

yech, I can see what you mean about reading it (the word homeomorphic sent me to the dictionary, and when I got there I was disgusted to see how unnecessary the use of the word was... to save others the time: n. a correspondence between the points of two geometrical shapes or two spaces in which each element can be paired with one from the other without any remaining (from the Encarta Dictionary in Word :p ) - ie two things that look the same. 'hey, that locust looks like me.')

Well, I suppose 'intuitively' (I'm pretty sure we've had a discussion about the unstable foundations of this word...) you would think that a pidgeon wouldn't need to see another pidgeon to mature sexually. But there is a simple way to find out. Kidnap a baby pidgeon and keep it as a pet for a while (minus the mirror)

The Unnamable

01-12-2006, 12:20 PM

People are in the process of fabricating for us a literary space, as well as judicial, economic, and political spaces, which are completely reactionary, prefabricated, and overwhelming/crushing.'

I wouldn’t argue with that. You like Dylan. What’s really good about that line from ‘Not Dark Yet’ is that he sings, “There's not even room enough to be anywhere”, and not ‘go’ anywhere as would be more usual. That’s how I see the dominant discourses – they don’t leave you anywhere to be. It links in nicely with Baudrillard and ‘the loss of the real’. In Simulacra and Simulation, he sees post-modern culture as having dispensed with everything except signs and signs for which there are no referents at that. All that exists in Baudrillard’s ‘hyperreality’ is surface without depth. The distinction between reality and illusion is eroded and life turns into MTV.

I can understand what he means from an early example of such an idea – in Richard Eyre’s ‘The Ploughman’s Lunch’. Anyone outside of the UK probably won’t know this but a ‘Ploughman’s Lunch’ is a meal popular in English pubs. It often consists of a chunk of granary bread, a lump of cheese, a pickled onion, green salad, occasionally a hard-boiled egg and something called ‘Branston Pickle’, which is a sort of relish, I think. Most people assume this rustic fare is the traditional food of broad-shouldered agricultural workers of the 19th century. It wasn’t. It was ‘thought up’ by ad. men in the 1960s in an attempt to encourage people to buy more food in pubs. Similarly, I mentioned elsewhere on this site that none of the Gospels mention an ox or a donkey and that many 13th century paintings set the scene in a cave. Yet when we think of the Nativity scene, we picture it the way it is on all those Christmas Cards we send or on those inept fridge door drawings done by the children. For all intents and purposes, the only ‘reality’ we have is the most dominantly reproduced one and we aren’t that bothered about whether or not it has any similarity to any actual scene, as long as its consistent with our current version of reality.

Baudrillard goes much further than this but it’s not a bad way to begin thinking about it. There is a useful and fairly short introduction to the idea of simulacra and simulation here - http://www.uta.edu/english/hawk/semiotics/baud.htm
The bit about Pop Music is quite accurate.

One of Baudrillard’s infamous pronouncements was when he said that Disneyland is the ‘real’ America:

“Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the ‘real’ country, all of ‘real’ America, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, which is carceral. Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real.”

Virgil, I apologise for any extreme emotions you might be feeling.

blp

01-12-2006, 01:26 PM

That’s how I see the dominant discourses – they don’t leave you anywhere to be.
Yes, that's how I feel them.
It's salient that that Deleuze quote comes from the seventies. The entire decade must have been a taking stock for people like him after the failure of the 68 uprising in Paris. The backlash against the sixties that defines so much culture now must already have been gathering a significant head of steam. Cinema, in particular, which was seen as central to the coming revolution during the sixties, changed significantly after 68 in France. Up to that point, Jean Luc Godard, in particular, believed he was making films to bring about a revolution. Not one French film of the seventies is as experimental or challenging as his great films of the late sixties, 'One Plus One', 'La Chinoise' and 'Weekend'. Nevertheless, Godard complained that throughout the sixties all he was doing was rattling his cup against the bars of his cell and that the more angrily he did this, the more he was applauded. He seems in this to be pointing already to the way in which oppositional, revolutionary discourse can be co-opted by the dominant discourse and rendered impotent.

blp

01-12-2006, 01:33 PM

Re: Baudrillard. I'm not wrong in thinking that in Plato, Simulacra or the Realm of Simulacra means something rather like Hell, am I?

Based just on what you say, it seems at first glance as if Baudrillard diverges from Lacan and the development of his reasoning in Deleuze & Guattari in suggesting that our alienation from 'the real' is something created by the dominant discourses rather than merely an effect of their being no 'real' to begin with.

I'm just about to leave work, so will return to this later.

fayefaye

01-13-2006, 10:52 AM

For all intents and purposes, the only ‘reality’ we have is the most dominantly reproduced one and we aren’t that bothered about whether or not it has any similarity to any actual scene, as long as its consistent with our current version of reality.

Based just on what you say, it seems at first glance as if Baudrillard diverges from Lacan and the development of his reasoning in Deleuze & Guattari in suggesting that our alienation from 'the real' is something created by the dominant discourses rather than merely an effect of their being no 'real' to begin with.

hmm... What is real? If there was a real world, then how could we know it? I think it sounds more like, even if there was a real world, we couldn't differentiate it from an illusion, or from a world presented to us. Reality and simulation have no line drawn down the middle; no means for differentiation.

I'm not sure if it's relevant, but I'm reminded of part of the film He Died with a Felafel in His Hand (nothing special, not particularly worth watching. The book's pretty funny.). Anyway, a character is telling a story about a man who lost his wife. The wife is duplicated, but because she's like a photocopy, he hates her. When the duplicate realises that he hates her, she tries to kill herself, but can't (something about her being like a phoenix, she keeps coming back to life. I wasn't really paying much attention...). When he sees the pain she's going through, he's able to love her for what she is. The fact she wasn't his original wife (sort of like a signifier for his past wife, I suppose) ceases to matter.

In Simulacra and Simulation, he sees post-modern culture as having dispensed with everything except signs and signs for which there are no referents at that. All that exists in Baudrillard’s ‘hyperreality’ is surface without depth. The distinction between reality and illusion is eroded and life turns into MTV

This sounds really interesting. Is it that people can no longer tell between signifier and signified (like, looking at a pretty sky reminds you of a Monet painting and you feel like it should be the other way around) or that there ceases to be a signified at all? (And if so, how can signifieds cease to exist?)

blp

01-13-2006, 12:26 PM

This sounds really interesting. Is it that people can no longer tell between signifier and signified (like, looking at a pretty sky reminds you of a Monet painting and you feel like it should be the other way around) or that there ceases to be a signified at all? (And if so, how can signifieds cease to exist?)

I'm not sure about this, Fayefaye, but I think this is all complicated by the fact that the signified is not the thing in itself, but the concept of it, e.g. the signifier 'cow' signifies - means - the concept of cow, which is therefore the signified. The cow in itself is what is referred to and hence is the referrent.

Baudrillard may then be talking about a world devoid of meaningful concepts, but full of appearances that suggest meaning, tricking us into thinking there's something behind them when there isn't.

The Unnamable

01-13-2006, 01:21 PM

hmm... What is real? If there was a real world, then how could we know it? I think it sounds more like, even if there was a real world, we couldn't differentiate it from an illusion, or from a world presented to us. Reality and simulation have no line drawn down the middle; no means for differentiation.
I sort of agree with you here. I don’t think whether or not something is ‘real’ is of much relevance to Baudrillard. He is suggesting something more about the nature of the reality we ‘have’.

I'm not sure if it's relevant, but I'm reminded of part of the film He Died with a Felafel in His Hand (nothing special, not particularly worth watching. The book's pretty funny.). Anyway, a character is telling a story about a man who lost his wife. The wife is duplicated, but because she's like a photocopy, he hates her. When the duplicate realises that he hates her, she tries to kill herself, but can't (something about her being like a phoenix, she keeps coming back to life. I wasn't really paying much attention...). When he sees the pain she's going through, he's able to love her for what she is. The fact she wasn't his original wife (sort of like a signifier for his past wife, I suppose) ceases to matter.
I don’t know either the film or the book but I wonder if you’ve ever applied similar thinking to ‘Vertigo’. The exploration is certainly darker in ‘Vertigo’ than what you describe but there are parallels.

This sounds really interesting. Is it that people can no longer tell between signifier and signified (like, looking at a pretty sky reminds you of a Monet painting and you feel like it should be the other way around) or that there ceases to be a signified at all? (And if so, how can signifieds cease to exist?)
It’s a little more complicated but also problematic than that. Baudrillard thinks first of a sign which is a surface indication of an underlying reality or depth. Then he considers what it means if a sign is not a surface indication of depth but simply of more signs. The resulting system is what he calls a simulacrum.
There are four stages to the process by which signs become simply empty.
1. The sign represents a basic reality;
2. The misinterprets or distorts the reality behind it;
3. The sign disguises the fact that there is no reality behind it;
4. The sign bears no relation to reality at all.

The first two are straightforward but the other two are less so. According to Baudrillard, Disneyland is a third order sign – it conceals the fact that there is no reality behind it. (It seems like a second order sign as well to me.) I suppose what he means by this the ‘reality’ of people’s everyday lives is so at odds with what they are being told it is by the all-pervasive signs of a media saturated culture, that one view has to go and the one that goes is the ‘real’ one, where we sweat, defecate, cry, die, are unhappy, in fact, most of the things we don’t do in Disneyland. We have come to believe that ‘real’ life is the one we stare at through our computer screens, are fed by the glass teat of television or see up on the big screens or billboards. It’s a little similar to Althusser’s ‘interpellated’ individual. I have a lot of sympathy with this view. It explains to me how the same person can have many utterly different sets of values while seeing no inconsistency whatsoever.

Take a simple example from Literature. I once did a school assembly using Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’ to highlight the problems of world hunger. I ‘modernised’ the language and situation and advocated, as Swift does, eating children as a solution. A few of the other teachers who were present at the assembly complained that my ‘little stunt’ was ‘profoundly offensive and appallingly tasteless.” I was summoned to the Head’s office to explain myself. She was in no mood for taking prisoners. As you can imagine, I have had a number of run-ins with the stupidity and insolence of office, ;) so she was going to make the most of her opportunity. The wonderful thing was however (which I knew when I chose Swift), that she immediately became far less sure of herself when I pointed out that the idea was Swift’s and that the work was considered one of the finest pieces of irony in the English language. It was also a set text at the time, so she was going to look rather stupid chastising me for bringing one of her own students’ set texts to life. Most of the students and teachers were talking about that assembly well into the afternoon (which is unheard of longevity for an act of collective worship :) ). Why is it that she can thrill over the genius of Shakespeare’s Tragedies while sipping her glass of chardonnay, yet she doesn’t really see human experience as tragic at all? When Lear goes on about ‘unaccommodated man’, we all marvel at his humanity, yet I look away from beggars every day. I have to. Perhaps I am reassured when I read King Lear that in essence, I am nice, I care.

What I find appealing about Baudrillard is less anything he has to say about order of signs and more of what he suggests about this utterly impoverished and crass culture in which I find myself like some confused child plunged into a Hieronymus Bosch landscape.

Xamonas Chegwe

01-13-2006, 03:19 PM

The story that the character tells in the film sounds a little like a central part of "Solaris" by Stanislaw Lem - filmed in Russia & in Hollywood with George Clooney - but the book beats both films hands down. I recommend the book if you like thoughtful, philosophical sci-fi. In fact, I recommend anything by Lem, especially "The Cyberiad".

The Unnamable

01-13-2006, 04:51 PM

Re: Baudrillard. I'm not wrong in thinking that in Plato, Simulacra or the Realm of Simulacra means something rather like Hell, am I?
Sorry, don’t know.

Based just on what you say, it seems at first glance as if Baudrillard diverges from Lacan and the development of his reasoning in Deleuze & Guattari in suggesting that our alienation from 'the real' is something created by the dominant discourses rather than merely an effect of their being no 'real' to begin with.
He might agree with you but I’m not sure he’d see it in those terms. I don’t think ‘alienation’ or ‘dominant discourses’ are where his emphasis lies. He seems unconcerned with whether or not there is any ‘real’ to begin with.

Baudrillard may then be talking about a world devoid of meaningful concepts, but full of appearances that suggest meaning, tricking us into thinking there's something behind them when there isn't.

I think it’s more as I describe it in my response to fayefaye. The telescreens keep telling us that the chocolate ration has gone up by another 10% and we believe it by ignoring all evidence to the contrary. Perhaps this is partly because the telescreens have morphed into many forms and moved into almost every area of our existence. It’s also a case of ‘as long as you’re comfortable, it feels like freedom’. There’s obviously a lot more to him than that, and I just know that your use of the word ‘trickery’ will be like blood to a shark for anyone insistent that theory sees things in terms of conspiracy. :)

Virgil

01-13-2006, 05:16 PM

To pick up where I left off (post # 135), logos, meaning, has as far as I know now three philosophic possibilities: Meaning from forms (Plato), meaning from mimeses (Aristotle, as empiricist), and meaning from language (postmodernists, probably initiated from Nietzsche). Listen I happen to think that the postmodernist thought here is an interesting philosophic permutation of a long held debate.

Certain tenets, however, come out from this. Reality is derived from language. Language is of shifting meaning. The syllogism then follows that reality itself is not fixed. It then follows that the author himself is writing from perspectives he’s not even aware of, and his meaning of his own text is suspect or at least is free to be re-interpreted. We can see why then those that have argued for language as controlling humanity feel so comfortable in the postmodernist camp. What the postmodernist are saying is that all language is ideological, whether it is of the sun rising or the simple exchange of money for a product at a department store.

However, I don’t subscribe to it. I’ll address the nihilism in another post. But let me go through three pertinent examples.

Example #1. Let’s take an example of oppression, slavery. Possibilities: (a) Platonic, the enslaver thought up slavery because the form existed and then acted on it; (b) Aristotelian, the enslaver enslaved and therefore generated the form/concept of slavery; (c) postmodern, the enslaver thought of the word enslave which created the form and then the reality. Which meets the test of reality or even common sense? a or b is probably a matter of preference (and that’s why this debate has been going on for thousands of years), but I tend to side with b because other than mathematics I find it difficult to understand how forms precede the real thing. But c is frankly ridiculous.

Example #2. Let’s take an example from feminism, pornography. Ever since Hugh Heffner created that magazine called Playboy in the 1950’s, each subsequent decade has seen an exponential rise (at least here in the United States) in pornography as measured by its share of the GDP. Now the language of the immorality of pornography has been imbedded into western culture since Moses and the Old Testament. The language of the feminists has dominated the discourse also at least since the 1950’s, where pornography is stated to be a degradation of women (one of the rare times I happen to agree with the feminists) and an objectification of women. Now given all of this language both from the political right (immorality) and the political left (degradation), if the postmodernist were correct, then language should be reducing the number of women going into pornography. But just the opposite is happening. The reality is that once society (power structure, if you will) consented to not physically clamping down (mimesis) on porn, women, men, everyone involved were free to choose.

Example #3. One from personal experience. I’m of Italian-American ethnicity. Nearly every movie, TV show, novel that features Italian-Americans associates them with the mafia. It’s become part of our folklore. Every politician of I-A ethnicity, of whichever political party, is at sometime or other smeared with the association. Nearly every time I introduce (my real name is very Italian sounding) myself across the country, if it catches someone’s attention they will make a joke of it. I’ve just taken a lecture of the American Identity, where the lecturer went through about 40-50 famous Americans from our history across various times and backgrounds; the only one of I-A ethnicity was Al Capone. I’m not complaining but it is a little insulting. When we were children, my friends (also of I-A ethnicity) would play act mobsters, taking on the names of famous mobsters. So, we did absorbed it. However, studies have shown that at most the percentage of I-A who in any way are associated with the mafia is less than 1 %. Let me repeat, less than one percent. Don’t you think that given the bombardment of cultural language/icons/definition that more than one percent would be associated with the mafia? The correlation isn’t there. Language does not define you.

I still have more points to make. Enough for now. Wait for next installment.

The Unnamable

01-13-2006, 10:51 PM

Reality is derived from language. Language is of shifting meaning. The syllogism then follows that reality itself is not fixed.
Virgil, do you actually read my posts? When I say that ‘reality is constructed through language’, I try to justify what I’ve said by giving examples or offering an explanation of what some theorists have said. You say ‘reality is derived from language’, but simply say it and then repeat it without dealing with any of the points I raised since the last time you said it. The ‘reasoning’ you offer above begins with a false assumption, which then generates further unsubstantiated assertions. At no point do you dispense with the idea that the world is ‘out there’ and we name it. That’s not how things work. It’s far more complicated. The reason you end up simply reasserting the same position is simply because you are ignoring every question that challenges your assumptions. You say ‘Language is of shifting meaning’ – If by this you mean that the meanings of words and concepts vary according to context, historical period, culture etc., then yes, they do. You then say that it ‘follows that reality is not fixed’, which it isn’t. But I believe that in such a statement you mean some ‘reality’ that exists independently of the human mind – the world ‘out there’. By saying that reality is not fixed, I am not saying that there is a physical world ‘out there’ that is simply like liquid, as if physical objects morph to suit our language as it changes. I am simply saying that without the systems of meaning that we have, our experience of that world out there would be other than it is. The world itself would not change, simply our perception/understanding of it. The most obvious and simplest example of this is our past assumption that the earth is flat. The earth was whatever it is regardless of what we saw it is. Only our ideas changed, the physical earth itself didn’t.

It then follows that the author himself is writing from perspectives he’s not even aware of, and his meaning of his own text is suspect or at least is free to be re-interpreted. We can see why then those that have argued for language as controlling humanity feel so comfortable in the postmodernist camp.
What do you mean ‘suspect’? Do you mean not the right one according to you? Are you saying that texts are not free to be re-interpreted? None of us know what perspectives will be available in the future but I don’t think that’s what you meant. I think you meant that it’s incorrect to assume there can be any meaning in a text that an author did not put there in the very act of producing that text.

What the postmodernist are saying is that all language is ideological, whether it is of the sun rising or the simple exchange of money for a product at a department store.
Yes, all language is ideological to a greater or lesser extent. Once again though, your example makes absolutely clear that you are completely unaware that concepts are constructions. The idea of exchanging money for a product is ideological in a very obvious way. In this case, it is so in a much more conventional sense of the meaning of ideology – Capitalism. Firstly you need to have a system of money in place. Then you have to assign objects a monetary value (which I assume they don’t intrinsically have). Nothing might seem as natural as going into a shop to purchase some goods but it hasn’t always been so and probably isn’t so now for your average Masai warrior.

Example #1. Let’s take an example of oppression, slavery. Possibilities: (a) Platonic, the enslaver thought up slavery because the form existed and then acted on it; (b) Aristotelian, the enslaver enslaved and therefore generated the form/concept of slavery; (c) postmodern, the enslaver thought of the word enslave which created the form and then the reality. Which meets the test of reality or even common sense? a or b is probably a matter of preference (and that’s why this debate has been going on for thousands of years), but I tend to side with b because other than mathematics I find it difficult to understand how forms precede the real thing. But c is frankly ridiculous.
Yet again, you are ascribing to postmodernism thinking of which it is simply not guilty. I have already explained this. No one is saying that someone thought up the word slavery and then decided who would be the first slaves. This is how I see it: At some point in human history, the condition of slavery came into being. However, perhaps at first the ruling ideology saw nothing ‘wrong’ with treating certain people as slaves. They might not have seen them as ‘slaves’ at all (or even as 'people' for that matter). Perhaps the ruling group genuinely believed that such a system was natural and common sense. It’s even possible that they called them slaves but they cannot have applied that word in anything like the sense that we mean it now. So the condition of slavery is in place and then discourses (and I think in the context of language as power, it is better to speak of ‘discourses’) compete for ways of determining what it ‘means’.

Example #2. Let’s take an example from feminism, pornography. Ever since Hugh Heffner created that magazine called Playboy in the 1950’s, each subsequent decade has seen an exponential rise (at least here in the United States) in pornography as measured by its share of the GDP. Now the language of the immorality of pornography has been imbedded into western culture since Moses and the Old Testament. The language of the feminists has dominated the discourse also at least since the 1950’s, where pornography is stated to be a degradation of women (one of the rare times I happen to agree with the feminists) and an objectification of women. Now given all of this language both from the political right (immorality) and the political left (degradation), if the postmodernist were correct, then language should be reducing the number of women going into pornography.
On what basis do you make this astounding assumption? Also, if your criticism of feminist/postmodernist theory is that it doesn’t prevent women from entering porn, then the questions I have are endless. Firstly, if Literature is so enlightening and ennobling, why has it failed so miserably in the case of humanity? Secondly, not all feminists would agree that pornography degrades women. Camille Paglia has a very different view.

But just the opposite is happening.
And you think the explanation for this is the failure of postmodernist thought? You don’t think the fact that the pornography industry generates such enormous profits might be worth considering? Or perhaps the way that women are represented in all forms of media? 80% of women we see on television are between the ages of 18 and 30. Why is that?

Example #3. One from personal experience. I’m of Italian-American ethnicity. Nearly every movie, TV show, novel that features Italian-Americans associates them with the mafia. It’s become part of our folklore. Every politician of I-A ethnicity, of whichever political party, is at sometime or other smeared with the association. Nearly every time I introduce (my real name is very Italian sounding) myself across the country, if it catches someone’s attention they will make a joke of it. I’ve just taken a lecture of the American Identity, where the lecturer went through about 40-50 famous Americans from our history across various times and backgrounds; the only one of I-A ethnicity was Al Capone. I’m not complaining but it is a little insulting. When we were children, my friends (also of I-A ethnicity) would play act mobsters, taking on the names of famous mobsters. So, we did absorbed it. However, studies have shown that at most the percentage of I-A who in any way are associated with the mafia is less than 1 %. Let me repeat, less than one percent. Don’t you think that given the bombardment of cultural language/icons/definition that more than one percent would be associated with the mafia? The correlation isn’t there. Language does not define you.
This is even more astounding! You give a great example of the power of ideology (as well the way it masks its own status as ideology). People’s perceptions of reality (in this case, less than 1%) do not match the ones that our systems of meaning suggest. When most people think of an IA, they think of the person their culture has constructed (and this time you must see that it’s constructed because otherwise how could it be less than 1%?), rather than what you might call the ‘real’ IA. Theory doesn’t claim that watching ‘The Sopranos’ makes us want to join the mafia! It suggests rather that our perceptions of what the mafia is and our assumptions about IAs are dependent on the way things are represented in the relevant available sign systems. If those systems repeatedly reinforce the idea that all IAs are gangsters, it’s hardly surprising that so many people assume that it’s true.

The Unnamable

01-13-2006, 11:06 PM

Baudrillard and the loss of the real:
This was sent to me by a very kind German lady. Fans of The Matrix might find it interesting:

"The question is, why would anyone think that selling shoes could be subversive? To understand the answer, it is useful to take a closer look at the first film in the Matrix trilogy. Lots has been written about the “philosophy of the matrix”, most of it wrong. To understand the first film, one must look very carefully at the scene in which Neo sees the white rabbit. He hands a book to his friend, and on the spine of that book we can see the title: Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard. Many commentators on the film saw the core idea of The Matrix– that the world we live in might be an elaborate illusion, that our brains are simply being fed sensory input by machines, input that tricks us into thinking that we live and interact with a world of physical objects – as simply an updated version of René Descartes’s sceptical “How do you know that you’re not dreaming?” thought experiment. This is a misinterpretation. The Matrix is not intended as a representation of an epistemological dilemma. It is a metaphor for a political idea, one that traces its origins back to the ‘60s. It is an idea that found its highest expression in the work of Guy Debord, unofficial leader of the Situationist International, and his later disciple Jean Baudrillard.

Debord was a radical Marxist, author of The Society of the Spectacle and one of the prime movers behind the Paris 1968 uprising. His thesis was simple. The world that we live in is not real. Consumer capitalism has taken every authentic human experience, transformed it into a commodity and then sold it back to us through advertisement and the mass media. Thus every part of human life has been drawn into “the spectacle”, which itself is nothing but a system of symbols and representations, governed by its own internal logic. “The spectacle is capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image,” Debord wrote. Thus we live in a world of total ideology, in which we are completely alienated from our essential nature. The spectacle is a dream that has become necessary, “the nightmare of imprisoned modern society, which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep.”

(That last bit made me laugh out loud.)

In such a world, the old-fashioned concern for social justice and the abolition of class-based society becomes outmoded. In the society of the spectacle, the new revolutionary must seek two things: “consciousness of desire and the desire for consciousness.” In other words, we must try to discover our own sources of pleasure, independent of the needs that are imposed on us by the system, and we must try to wake up from the nightmare of “the spectacle.” Like Neo, we must choose the red pill. In other words, when it comes to rebellion and political activism, there is no point trying to change little details in the system. What does it matter who is rich and who is poor? Or who has the right to vote and who doesn’t? Or who has access to jobs and opportunities? These are all just ephemera, illusions. If commodities are just images, who cares if some people have more of them, others less? What we need to do is recognize that the entire culture, the entire society, is a waking dream – one we must reject in its entirety.

Of course, this idea is hardly original. It is one of the oldest themes in western civilisation. In The Republic, Plato compared life on earth to a cave, in which prisoners are shackled to the floor, seeing only shadows flickering across the wall from the light of a fire. When one prisoner escapes and makes his way to the surface, he discovers that the world he had been living in was nothing but a web of illusions. He returns to the cave bearing the news, yet finds that his former companions are still embroiled in petty disputes and bickering. He finds it difficult to take these “politics” seriously.

Centuries later, early Christians would appeal to this story as a way of explaining away the execution of Jesus by the Romans. Prior to this event, it had been assumed that the arrival of the Messiah would herald the creation of the kingdom of God here on earth. The death of Jesus obviously put an end to these expectations. Some of his followers therefore chose to reinterpret these events as a sign that the real kingdom of God would be not on this earth, but in the afterlife. They claimed that Jesus had been resurrected in order to convey this news – like Plato’s prisoner returning to the cave. Thus the idea that the world we live in is a veil of illusion is not new. What does change, however, is the popular understanding of what it takes to throw off this illusion. For Plato, there was no question that breaking free would require decades of disciplined study and philosophical reflection. Christians thought that it would be even harder – that death was the only way to gain access to the “real” world beyond. For Debord and the Situationists, on the other hand, the veil of illusion could be pierced much more easily. All that it takes is some slight dissonance, a sign that something’s not right in the world around us. This can be provoked by a work of art, an act of protest or even an article of clothing. In Debord’s view, “disturbances with the lowliest and most ephemeral of origins have eventually disrupted the order of the world."

Nation of Rebels : Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture by Joseph Heath, Andrew Potter

fayefaye

01-13-2006, 11:31 PM

I don’t know either the film or the book but I wonder if you’ve ever applied similar thinking to ‘Vertigo’. The exploration is certainly darker in ‘Vertigo’ than what you describe but there are parallels.

You should really read the book, it's a lot lighter than philosophy and good for a laugh. It's about a guy's experiences living in sharehouses across the East coast of Australia, and all the crazy people he meets. Good point about Vertigo.

Take a simple example from Literature. I once did a school assembly using Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’ to highlight the problems of world hunger. I ‘modernised’ the language and situation and advocated, as Swift does, eating children as a solution. A few of the other teachers who were present at the assembly complained that my ‘little stunt’ was ‘profoundly offensive and appallingly tasteless.” I was summoned to the Head’s office to explain myself. She was in no mood for taking prisoners. As you can imagine, I have had a number of run-ins with the stupidity and insolence of office, ;) so she was going to make the most of her opportunity. The wonderful thing was however (which I knew when I chose Swift), that she immediately became far less sure of herself when I pointed out that the idea was Swift’s and that the work was considered one of the finest pieces of irony in the English language. It was also a set text at the time, so she was going to look rather stupid chastising me for bringing one of her own students’ set texts to life.
:) lol. This really is brilliant.

What I find appealing about Baudrillard is less anything he has to say about order of signs and more of what he suggests about this utterly impoverished and crass culture in which I find myself like some confused child plunged into a Hieronymus Bosch landscape.

hmm... you know, I feel that to survive in this world we have to have some contradictory values, some layer of hypocrisy. This sort of ties in with something you said before about ideology. A while ago, I made a pact with myself only to buy clothes that were made by companies that were signatories to the Homeworkers Code of Practice (the retailer basically agrees that their clothes have been made under good conditions, no exploited outworkers and so on). I wouldn't mind only shopping at the shops which had agreed to this, but the agreement only holds for clothes made in Australia. Now, for those of you who have never shopped in Australia, probably about 99.9% of clothing sold here is made in China, or overseas (clothes made in Australia are very much few and far between. Even Australian souvenirs are typically made in China) Anyway, I didn't buy clothes for about a month, because the realisation dawned on me, that on the off chance I find something that I like, that is affordable, and that fits, it almost certainly won't be made in Australia. So in the end I gave up. It's interesting because I've seen documentaries about how people can change the whole sweatshop-clothing industry thing by no longer shopping at stores that use sweatshops. (One of things that actually caused me to do it) But, in a world where it seems as if they ALL do, the rhetoric of choice is just that - a rhetoric. And the documentaries, which admirably try to empower consumers, only mask the fact that our freedom is to a great extent curtailed. (we are given a choice, but all of the choices are black. we can choose different types of black). They mask the reality, or provide a mask for the absence of a basic reality (absence of freedom and the ability for the free market to correct for failures in the economy. Unless of course, we all stop buying clothes.). So. I'm basically left with values that, whilst I'd like for them to correspond with my behaviour, don't. (Maybe I COULD only buy clothes that were made under good conditions, but I feel like, for all the difference I'd make, it really isn't worth the hassle. Leaving one pissed off fayefaye and one rambling post about the horrors of shopping...)

Also, an echo of the way that ideologies enable some disagreeing voices, which unfortunately seem to have little real impact. *becoming increasingly cynical*

Virgil

01-13-2006, 11:32 PM

Virgil, do you actually read my posts? When I say that ‘reality is constructed through language’, I try to justify what I’ve said by giving examples or offering an explanation of what some theorists have said. You say ‘reality is derived from language’, but simply say it and then repeat it without dealing with any of the points I raised since the last time you said it. The ‘reasoning’ you offer above begins with a false assumption, which then generates further unsubstantiated assertions. At no point do you dispense with the idea that the world is ‘out there’ and we name it. That’s not how things work. It’s far more complicated.
"Reality is constructed through language" versus "reality is derived from language." There is no distinction that I can see between those phrases. Of course I know that postmoderns as well as Plato believe that a real world exists. But postmoderns believe that language is the reality.

What do you mean ‘suspect’? Do you mean not the right one according to you? Are you saying that texts are not free to be re-interpreted?
This is a key point to which I aiming for in my upcoming post. Of course they can be re-interpreted. But postmoderns believe that the test itself is unstable and in flux.

In this case, it is so in a much more conventional sense of the meaning of ideology – Capitalism.
Of course I'm completely aware. I'm actually agreeing with you for that case. I'm saying that to a postmodernist, it is no different whether you are talking about the sun rising or an exchange of capital. To a postmodernist, there is no distinction, it is all ideology, which I find rediculous.

This is how I see it: At some point in human history, the condition of slavery came into being. However, perhaps at first the ruling ideology saw nothing ‘wrong’ with treating certain people as slaves. They might not have seen them as ‘slaves’ at all (or even as 'people' for that matter). Perhaps the ruling group genuinely believed that such a system was natural and common sense. It’s even possible that they called them slaves but they cannot have applied that word in anything like the sense that we mean it now. So the condition of slavery is in place and then discourses (and I think in the context of language as power, it is better to speak of ‘discourses’) compete for ways of determining what it ‘means’.

What you are describing here is not postmodernism: logos in your interpretation quoted is not in the signifyer.

Firstly, if Literature is so enlightening and ennobling, why has it failed so miserably in the case of humanity?

I never said it could. I'm the one arguing that language doesn't control, remember?

Secondly, not all feminists would agree that pornography degrades women. Camille Paglia has a very different view.
Paglia is the only one I know who purports this; she's a lone, anomolous voice on this; it's relatively recent and it doesn't explain the fifty years of feminist preaching.

Theory doesn’t claim that watching ‘The Sopranos’ makes us want to join the mafia! It suggests rather that our perceptions of what the mafia is and our assumptions about IAs are dependent on the way things are represented in the relevant available sign systems.
You're very flexible with your theory. When it comes to shaping women's personalities you claim all sorts of subtle connotations of language (which I've claim are trivial) has determined their being: passive, feminine, etc. Read your posts in this whole thread. You, watching the show, doesn't want to make you join the mafia because you're not Italian. I've have know IA who had nothing to do with the mafia, but within the context of a particular discussion had wished that they were.

If those systems repeatedly reinforce the idea that all IAs are gangsters, it’s hardly surprising that so many people assume that it’s true.
Well, you don't live in the United States. I believe there was a study of this. The reality turned out to be less than 1%, but the perception of the general population was in the 30ish percent range.

fayefaye

01-13-2006, 11:58 PM

In such a world, the old-fashioned concern for social justice and the abolition of class-based society becomes outmoded. In the society of the spectacle, the new revolutionary must seek two things: “consciousness of desire and the desire for consciousness.” In other words, we must try to discover our own sources of pleasure, independent of the needs that are imposed on us by the system, and we must try to wake up from the nightmare of “the spectacle.” Like Neo, we must choose the red pill. In other words, when it comes to rebellion and political activism, there is no point trying to change little details in the system. What does it matter who is rich and who is poor? Or who has the right to vote and who doesn’t? Or who has access to jobs and opportunities? These are all just ephemera, illusions. If commodities are just images, who cares if some people have more of them, others less? What we need to do is recognize that the entire culture, the entire society, is a waking dream – one we must reject in its entirety.

That was interesting, but I get the feeling that the person who wrote it is already pretty out of touch with reality (or at least, my understanding of it :p) How can somebody say something like, 'what does it matter who is rich and who is poor?' unless they have never been poor themselves. For those who have nothing, or next to nothing, and wonder how they're going to survive, having money is pretty damn important. And those denied the status of human beings by the legal system, denied a voice and a right to vote, would probably think that having these rights is really important. Who cares if voting doesn't make a difference, the fact that they weren't allowed to do it had an impact on the way they saw themselves. Imagine being told that you weren't a person.

Commodities... food, water, basic human rights... these things are real. Maybe the argument holds for the middle/upper clases, maybe I just haven't fully understood it.

I think in some ways, some of the other things they wrote ring true. People live in a world where they think a Mercedes is success, that a big, new house, a white picket fence and a four wheel drive, a couch upholstered in Italian silk is a happy, successful life. (Throw in a marriage with kids and you 'have it all') A world where images and marketing intermingle with reality. "This isn't life. This is just STUFF! And it's become more important to you than living. Well, honey, that's just nuts." (American Beauty)

The Unnamable

01-14-2006, 01:42 PM

"Reality is constructed through language" versus "reality is derived from language." There is no distinction that I can see between those phrases.
Then why are these two sentences (they aren’t phrases) not identical? Are ‘constructed’ and ‘derived’ synonyms? It seems to me that your position is that meaning (if it would be better to call it that rather than ‘reality’) resides within a text, and is not something constructed from outside of it. Reality is not reflected by language but produced by it.

But postmoderns believe that the test itself is unstable and in flux.
And we all know, of course that meanings are fixed and stable. That’s why misunderstanding never occurs and also why when Gertrude said that Hamlet is ‘fat’, she meant that he was chubby.

I'm saying that to a postmodernist, it is no different whether you are talking about the sun rising or an exchange of capital. To a postmodernist, there is no distinction, it is all ideology, which I find rediculous.
On the contrary, there are distinctions and very significant ones, but ideology permeates all language to a greater or lesser degree.

What you are describing here is not postmodernism: logos in your interpretation quoted is not in the signifyer.
What do you mean? Are you taking issue with my point about language or my understanding of postmodernism? I don’t care whether you call it postmodernism, theory, post-structuralism, deconstructionism or whatever (which doesn’t mean that I consider distinctions between them as non-existent). My point is that meaning is dependent upon something other than authorial intention. You still haven’t answered the question of how we know that someone is a slave if we have no word for it.

Quote:
Firstly, if Literature is so enlightening and ennobling, why has it failed so miserably in the case of humanity?

I never said it could.
True, you didn’t. This is the Liberal Humanist position, which is as close to your own as any. Would you not agree?

I'm the one arguing that language doesn't control, remember?
I can’t believe that we are still quibbling over the meaning of ‘control’! Look back at only my second post in this thread. I am very careful to state, “I meant that ‘suppression of thought’ AND ‘control of language’ are the business of power.” Nevertheless, I do consider that language is form of control. The way you see control (judging simply from your comment above) is as something that forces people to do or think something they don’t want to. That’s not what I mean when I say that language is a form of control. Our very sense of ourselves is only made possible by the language (verbal, visual, etc.) available to us. Given that that language pre-exists us, what sense we are able to make must necessarily be shaped by that language. In what way isn’t it a form of control? How can we express thoughts or ideas that exist outside of the realm of language? "Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?"

Paglia is the only one I know who purports this; she's a lone, anomolous voice on this; it's relatively recent and it doesn't explain the fifty years of feminist preaching.
Very revealing choice of word, Virgil. No, Paglia isn’t a lone, anomalous voice. Women interpret pornography in different ways, as do feminists and other theorists.

You're very flexible with your theory. When it comes to shaping women's personalities you claim all sorts of subtle connotations of language (which I've claim are trivial) has determined their being: passive, feminine, etc. Read your posts in this whole thread.
I think you need to read them. I said absolutely nothing about women’s personalities per se. I said ‘they had been given personality characteristics’, which is not the same as what you imply above. You say that I am flexible with my theory. Perhaps it is rather that you are less than attentive in your reading of my theories?

You, watching the show, doesn't want to make you join the mafia because you're not Italian. I've have know IA who had nothing to do with the mafia, but within the context of a particular discussion had wished that they were.
Quote:
If those systems repeatedly reinforce the idea that all IAs are gangsters, it’s hardly surprising that so many people assume that it’s true.

Well, you don't live in the United States. I believe there was a study of this. The reality turned out to be less than 1%, but the perception of the general population was in the 30ish percent range.

I simply don’t know what your point is with most of this. I made no claims to any knowledge of IA experience and only used the information you’d given me (apart from mentioning ‘The Sopranos’. I remember that someone tried to sue (?) over the show’s negative portrayal of IAs.). I didn’t need to offer any of my own information as I thought you’d made the points very effectively. I still think so.
In the study you refer to I am here assuming that you are saying that X% of the American population believe that 30% of Italian Americans are in some way associated with the mafia. I won’t quibble over the X% except to say that I assume it is a significantly high number to warrant consideration (if only 0.005% per cent of the American public believed that 70% of IAs were involved with the mafia, it probably wouldn’t matter much). This means that, for some reason, a huge number of Americans think that nearly a third of all IAs are in some way associated with the mafia. In reality, only 1% are so how do we account for this significant difference? The theorists you decry would argue that people’s realities are constructed through the systems of meaning available. These systems are made up of signs. These are not a reflection of reality but the producers of it. Those systems are also permeated with ideological assumptions as well as competing discourses, all vying for recognition of their own position. In the case of the example you give, when those questioned were asked about an IA, they presumably had a concept of what an IA is to which they could refer to offer an answer. Now, where has that concept come from? It can’t already have existed in their heads from the moment of birth, so where’s it from and of what is it comprised? Many theorists would answer ‘from all the references to IAs to which the person has been exposed.’ What are these likely to be? I presume that personal experience might play a part in some cases but for most, it will be television, films, magazines, advertising, books, music, the whole field of signifiers which has rendered up any idea of what an AI is. So for some it might include Mario Lanza, for others Al Capone and for yet others, Robert De Niro. The last example is also interesting in that we might also ask what do people think of when they think of Robert De Niro? Obviously there will be variation but many will also think of gangsters. Our culture is so saturated with images and representations that these come to shape our sense of what is normal, everyday reality. Isn’t that what the study you mention suggests? Even though the ‘actual’ reality of the %age is just 1, the reality as it is perceived by a significant proportion of the American public is 30%. To me that is wholly consistent with just about everything the theorists have said.
I’ve no doubt, however, that you have a more correct explanation.

The Unnamable

01-14-2006, 02:24 PM

*becoming increasingly cynical*
My work is complete. :brow:

blp

01-14-2006, 02:27 PM

How can somebody say something like, 'what does it matter who is rich and who is poor?' unless they have never been poor themselves. For those who have nothing, or next to nothing, and wonder how they're going to survive, having money is pretty damn important. And those denied the status of human beings by the legal system, denied a voice and a right to vote, would probably think that having these rights is really important. Who cares if voting doesn't make a difference, the fact that they weren't allowed to do it had an impact on the way they saw themselves. Imagine being told that you weren't a person.

Commodities... food, water, basic human rights... these things are real. Maybe the argument holds for the middle/upper clases, maybe I just haven't fully understood it.

I think in some ways, some of the other things they wrote ring true. People live in a world where they think a Mercedes is success, that a big, new house, a white picket fence and a four wheel drive, a couch upholstered in Italian silk is a happy, successful life. (Throw in a marriage with kids and you 'have it all') A world where images and marketing intermingle with reality. "This isn't life. This is just STUFF! And it's become more important to you than living. Well, honey, that's just nuts." (American Beauty)

This was my first reaction on the rich poor thing too. It sounds callous to say what does it matter. In some ways you could say, well we're caught up in a specifically linguistic binary rich/poor equating automatically the former with good and happy, the latter with bad and unhappy. In practice, I should have thought, it should be pretty obvious to most of us that this doesn't always hold true.

But the reality of poverty at its most extreme makes relativism a nonsense. What does it matter if Southern Africans are being forced at gunpoint into tiny holes in order to mine one of the key components of our computer's circuit boards? All I know is that I wouldn't want to have to do it. But what can I do about it? I don't intend to answer this because I don't think there is an answer - yet, but it's worth talking about - with specific reference to this language debate.

Guy Debord as Situationist par excellence is one of those Parisians I was talking about earlier who went through the '68 uprising and saw it fail. Already a lot of their material had gone beyond Marxism proper and into a semi-artistic realm designed to create the kinds of disturbances to consciousness that Unnamable is talking about above. 'Under the stones, the earth' they would say to remind us of the frothing, unpredictable world existing just below the surface of our ephemeral civilisation. One of their ideas, which I love, is 'the walk home' - the idea of the period of time after the event, after the spectacle, after the thing that was supposed to have centrality. After that, it's all supposed to be over, but no, you've still got to get home. They liked it because it's marginalised, something not talked about and assumed to be devoid of content and highly resistant to commodification (though I did recently see 'under the stones the beach' used, with no clearly intelligible reason, as a coca-cola ad).

This concern with a marginalised blankness in place of the spectacle runs throughout the sixties and I would say, from my own experience it does have a power to effect fairly powerful changes in consciousness. Warhol films from the period subject me to a barrage of sly detournements of traditional film language, series of events with no clear purpose, unhinged people talking nonsense, not following the script, not providing either useful information or well constructed escapist entertainment. Repeatedly watching these I've come butting up with my own conservatism, thinking, no this is stupid, there's nothing here, only to find the tension breaking as I realise I'm having a special experience, something I'm grateful for precisely because it's denied me by the dominant culture. Seeing these was one of the things that led me into having psychoanalysis - the 'talking cure'.

In a sense, my little epiphanies in cinemas have been luxuries. What of our African miners? Something tells me they're not going to be having screenings of 'Chelsea Girls' after work round the campfire, let alone much exposure to that dominant culture I'm so contemptuous of. But what's keeping them there? The situationists, particularly after '68 when they discovered to their dismay that the proletariat didn't want the revolution they were proposing, would probably say 'false consciousness' - something constructed by language. In a globalised situation, that would mean, not their own consciousness, but the consumer consciousness in the first world where the problem is always one of wanting too much and being fixated on the idea that one doesn't have enough. The Vance Packard book, 'Hidden Persuaders' that I've alluded to before is relevant. Packard describes how, using the discoveries of Freud among others about consciousness and the unconscious, advertising people in the fifties and sixties worked out how to promote this consciousness in people, falsely instilling an idea of progress so that people would feel they had to update their possessions regularly, regardless of whether the old ones were still functional. I would say that this is still happening today.

But, uh oh, we need this kind of behaviour to drive the economy don't we? Well, that's what we're told all the time and people go around saying it without always understanding it very well. I don't mean to disagree with it - I don't feel qualified to. But that means I'm also not qualified to agree with it and the same can be said about a lot of the other people blandly accepting it around me. The last thirty odd years have been dominated by rightwing economics, coming to fruition in Reaganomics and Thatcherism, but already in evidence in the policies of Jimmy Carter. In this monetarist schema, the postwar advance of the welfare state and, by extension, the idea of community (pace Thatcher 'There's no such thing as society') is seen as erroneous. 'Economic growth' is the objective and, hey, who could object? Well, according to Harvard economist Benjamin M. Friedman, the period between 1973 and 1993 was a period of growth, but it was also the first sustained period in American history in which the standard of living for middle income Americans fell. Economic growth simply means the average earnings of the entire populace and it could only be said to have happened during this period because the rich got exponentially richer. Everybody else simply didn't. To make matters worse, Friedman shows a pattern of history whereby, as conditions worsen, ordinary people become more reactionary and therefore more likely to elect precisely the kinds of people who institute economic measures that harm them.

No accident that one of the first things to come under threat when money is tight is education and easy to see how this perpetuates a downward spiral. This is directly about language, control of and through language. Rightwing economics are riddled with shibboleths and millennarianism, constantly underlining the message that there is no alternative (TINA, as one current philosopher usefully shortens it). This rhetoric creates a reality, the system we live under, full of people repeating its truisms. But under the stones of rightwing economic rhetoric, the infinitely more complex reality.

Uh oh, that word again: reality. This is one signifier that, as I've already pointed out, is slipping about all over the place here. Language constructs reality or obstructs reality in order to control us? Well, which is it? Is there any reality at all? Is it the same as 'the real'? Do Situationist disturbances simply construct another reality or do they create a rent in a veil of illusion to reveal reality? Perhaps it's safest to say that the word can mean different things.

The Unnamable

01-14-2006, 02:33 PM

That was interesting, but I get the feeling that the person who wrote it is already pretty out of touch with reality (or at least, my understanding of it :p) How can somebody say something like, 'what does it matter who is rich and who is poor?' unless they have never been poor themselves. For those who have nothing, or next to nothing, and wonder how they're going to survive, having money is pretty damn important. And those denied the status of human beings by the legal system, denied a voice and a right to vote, would probably think that having these rights is really important. Who cares if voting doesn't make a difference, the fact that they weren't allowed to do it had an impact on the way they saw themselves. Imagine being told that you weren't a person.

Commodities... food, water, basic human rights... these things are real. Maybe the argument holds for the middle/upper clases, maybe I just haven't fully understood it.

I think in some ways, some of the other things they wrote ring true. People live in a world where they think a Mercedes is success, that a big, new house, a white picket fence and a four wheel drive, a couch upholstered in Italian silk is a happy, successful life. (Throw in a marriage with kids and you 'have it all') A world where images and marketing intermingle with reality. "This isn't life. This is just STUFF! And it's become more important to you than living. Well, honey, that's just nuts." (American Beauty)

Although I would take issue with the writers over a number of comments, to be fair to them, I don’t think they are suggesting that the actual experiences of poverty etc. are unimportant but more that dealing with the issue of ‘poverty’ is unimportant. It is simply a ‘spectacle’ i.e. a debate that exists only for the purpose of convincing us that we are having a debate, which of course, we aren’t. All it really does is ensure the continuance of the existing power. If we believe that having a debate and trusting to the political process will solve the issue, then we probably won’t start chopping off the right heads. It also allows us to engage in our favourite activity of being comfortable (which means not thinking too much):

“But what more oft, in nations grown corrupt,
And by their vices brought to servitude,
Than to love bondage more than liberty--
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty--”

Milton Samson Agonistes

Of course those things you mention matter to most people but the extract suggests that if we are really serious about making improvements, we must begin by realising that we need to expose the whole system for what it is. I think you realised much of this yourself when you wrote about the Homeworkers Code of Practice. You can’t put out a forest fire with a water pistol, however good it feels to know you are doing your bit. I prefer to fan the flames. ;) You appear to like Twain – here’s one that comes to mind, “There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.”

There are larger implications but I don’t know if I can articulate them without inviting a backlash of Homeric proportions, so I’ll just say:

“nothing really matters much, it’s doom alone that counts.”

“I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life...”

blp

01-14-2006, 02:41 PM

If we believe that having a debate and trusting to the political process will solve the issue, then we probably won’t start chopping off the right heads.

The business of ethical consumer choices - though I do make them where possible - particularly backs up the current economic system: markets provide us with 'choice', they are 'rational' and self governing and self correcting. In other words, you don't need to apply international law to prevent goods being made in sweatshop conditions, the consumer market will take care of it by 'choosing' not to purchase the products. Aside from everything else, this makes it seem as if the whole thing's our fault, when actually we're largely powerless. And again, just to keep us on topic, this is done with language.

The Unnamable

01-14-2006, 08:35 PM

Uh oh, that word again: reality. This is one signifier that, as I've already pointed out, is slipping about all over the place here. Language constructs reality or obstructs reality in order to control us? Well, which is it?
Is there any reality at all? Is it the same as 'the real'?
Are you having a rhetorical flush or are these to be considered? It’s just that I don’t like that opposition between “constructs reality or obstructs reality in order to control”. It might make some (I’ll mention no names) think, once again, that Language is an autonomous force deciding on the world of humans. I can see what you mean – is it that the only world we know is a construct of language or is there a world beneath the surface of language, which language works to hide from us?

I wonder if the analogy of building a house might help me to explain how I see the relationship between language and power (in the context of the thread).

Imagine that someone sufficiently knowledgeable about bricklaying, carpentry, plumbing etc. is given all the materials necessary to build a house and told to make it however they like. It might appear that they were free to construct any type of house they wished. However, let’s simply assume for a moment that all the bricks made available are blue and triangular. The resulting construction will already take on certain characteristics merely by virtue of the nature of the materials. That is one way a form of control occurs. We can only operate within the constraints, even though it might not feel as if there are any.

If we expand the analogy a little, we can see how other aspects we have discussed in this thread might work. If no one manufactures any other type of bricks, or we are educated to accept that, scientifically speaking, triangular bricks are by far the best, then our choices in real terms diminish further. The D.I.Y. expert himself or herself will already have assumptions about what is and isn’t possible by virtue of having acquired his or her knowledge from the existing pool. This further influences the nature of the resulting house.

A lot of these things will be determined by dominant discourses. The capitalist discourse might offer its own explanation of why no other kinds of bricks are manufactured. The ‘actual’ reasons would probably be economic (they’re cheaper) but the ones we would hear would hide this fact. This is the Marxist view. Capitalist discourse might also call on the legitimising power of other discourses (mechanical engineering concepts might be recruited to prove that bricks have to be triangular because of the coefficient of whatever). The D.I.Y. expert’s own knowledge will have been affected by discourses. The carpentry classes he or she attended were provided by an organisation/institution that had its own ideas about what skills and knowledge constitute Carpentry.

Obviously most of these things won’t be considered by the D.I.Y. enthusiast. It will ‘feel’ as though there is a choice. There is no group of conspirators wickedly employing language to force the D.I.Y. enthusiast to build the house that suits them. He or she is, however, being controlled through language.

Do Situationist disturbances simply construct another reality or do they create a rent in a veil of illusion to reveal reality?
Both and neither. "Do not despair: one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume: one of the thieves was damned."

Perhaps it's safest to say that the word can mean different things.
Or different nothings. :D

Virgil

01-14-2006, 11:15 PM

Then why are these two sentences (they aren’t phrases) not identical? Are ‘constructed’ and ‘derived’ synonyms? It seems to me that your position is that meaning (if it would be better to call it that rather than ‘reality’) resides within a text, and is not something constructed from outside of it. Reality is not reflected by language but produced by it.

I still don't get it. Yes they are synonymous. The distinction between these two in this context is infintesmal.

And we all know, of course that meanings are fixed and stable. That’s why misunderstanding never occurs and also why when Gertrude said that Hamlet is ‘fat’, she meant that he was chubby.
What you have here, doesn't follow. Is it not possible that meanings can be fixed and misunderstandings still occur? The writer could have been imprecise; the reader could have mis read.

On the contrary, there are distinctions and very significant ones, but ideology permeates all language to a greater or lesser degree.
This is one of the central disagreements between us. I still haven't gotten a credible answer on The sun rose today. You all made fun of it as having a metaphor, but no one has still proven how that is ideological.

You still haven’t answered the question of how we know that someone is a slave if we have no word for it.
The chains around his hands; the whip marks across his back; the forced labor he performs. No word is needed.

True, you didn’t. This is the Liberal Humanist position, which is as close to your own as any. Would you not agree?
I don't know. I am sympathetic to Liberal humanism, and yes it is close to my position. But I'm not aware that this would be a tenet of Lib-Hum. Yes, I would agree that preaching morals is critical to society. But I would compare it to a magician doing a card trick whereby he sticks out the card he wants you to pick. Ultimately you don't have to pick it. I would not catagorize it as control through language (which suggests predeterminism) but as suggestiveness or encourgement (the right word is not coming to me here) which is laying our options from which to choose.

On the contrary, there are distinctions and very significant ones, but ideology permeates all language to a greater or lesser degree.
Well, then you need to clarify. To a postmodernist, as I understand it, there is no distinction, it is all ideology, which I still find rediculous. I asked where in Aristotle's Poetics is he ideological. Perhaps that's going to far across time and culture and translation of language to pick up the distinctions. Let's instead use Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads. Show me where he's ideological.

I can’t believe that we are still quibbling over the meaning of ‘control’! Look back at only my second post in this thread. I am very careful to state, “I meant that ‘suppression of thought’ AND ‘control of language’ are the business of power.” Nevertheless, I do consider that language is form of control.
What you are arguing in that thread is the act of rhetorical argumentation. Don't you have your students write essays of pursuasion? This is pursuasion, not language as control.

Our very sense of ourselves is only made possible by the language (verbal, visual, etc.) available to us. Given that that language pre-exists us, what sense we are able to make must necessarily be shaped by that language.
I dispute this. You have been brought up (let us assume it if you haven't) and I have been brought up with the same (albeit english english and american english) english language. How come we are so different? I said it before, how come my brother and I are so different? Where is the proof?

I think you need to read them. I said absolutely nothing about women’s personalities per se. I said ‘they had been given personality characteristics’, which is not the same as what you imply above.
Perhaps I'm a little thick. What is the distinction?

Very revealing choice of word, Virgil. No, Paglia isn’t a lone, anomalous voice. Women interpret pornography in different ways, as do feminists and other theorists.
I use the word, preaching, in a good way. I agree with the feminists here. In a paragraph above I say why preaching is important. I'm not using the word dispargingly. Paglia is the only one I've heard on this; if there are others, and I haven't heard of them, well, I'm pretty sure the average girl who goes into porn hasn't heard from them either. And so my point still stands: despite preaching from the left and the right, the porn industry has mushroomed once physical contraints were lifted.

As to the mafia issue, I agree there are many factors for becoming part of it, but you would think that with all the bombardment of cultural texts and images, that more than 1 percent of IA would join it.

fayefaye

01-15-2006, 09:12 AM

Language constructs reality or obstructs reality in order to control us? Well, which is it?

Well, to throw in my two cents, I would say that language constructs reality, and because it constructs our view of reality, we could also say that it obstructs any objective reality which could be said to exist. (ie, we wouldn't have a clue what was real because we can't tell the difference between the reality and the construct) So both

Is there any reality at all?
If there was, how could I prove it to you?

Is it the same as 'the real'?
Far as I can tell, the Real is a state of fullness, where we can't differentiate between ourselves and our mothers and seem to have little idea about the world around us, and no ability to think abstractly (since we have no language). I don't consider that reality.

Do Situationist disturbances simply construct another reality or do they create a rent in a veil of illusion to reveal reality?
Knowing nothing about Situationists and being too tired/lazy to look it up, I wouldn't have a clue. I would, however, be happy to hear more about the Situationists if anyone was willing to oblige :brow:

I don’t think they are suggesting that the actual experiences of poverty etc. are unimportant but more that dealing with the issue of ‘poverty’ is unimportant. It is simply a ‘spectacle’ i.e. a debate that exists only for the purpose of convincing us that we are having a debate, which of course, we aren’t. All it really does is ensure the continuance of the existing power. If we believe that having a debate and trusting to the political process will solve the issue, then we probably won’t start chopping off the right heads. It also allows us to engage in our favourite activity of being comfortable (which means not thinking too much)

I wouldn't really argue with that. I might even subscribe to it as a philosophy. But I can't help but be reminded of Sisyphus and that big, stupid rock and wonder what would happen if people really DID stop discussing/trying to deal with poverty. I'd like to think that it does make a difference, and that even if it doesn't improve things, the situation would deteriorate.

The chains around his hands; the whip marks across his back; the forced labor he performs. No word is needed.
But this is a concept formed by the word 'slave'. Without 'slave', it's just another person doing work.

This is pursuasion, not language as control.
Language constructs the way we see the world, our sense of reality, our sense of self, the very way in which we think is constructed through language. How is that not control?

I would not catagorize it as control through language (which suggests predeterminism) but as suggestiveness or encourgement (the right word is not coming to me here) which is laying our options from which to choose.

Persuasion as to which option to choose is a means of control, isn't it? And the fact our options are constructed, isn't that also a type of control? I don't think control needs to suggest predeterminism.

How come we are so different? I said it before, how come my brother and I are so different? Where is the proof?
I think you're misunderstanding what we mean by language constructs identity. Read earlier posts.

I agree with the feminists here
I'm going to split hairs and tell you there are lots of different types of feminists and you generally can't lump them all together like that.

Virgil, sorry if I've misunderstood any your post/repeated things already written, to be honest I've skipped over your recent posts (nothing personal)

Virgil

01-15-2006, 09:44 AM

But this is a concept formed by the word 'slave'. Without 'slave', it's just another person doing work.
What you are arguing here Faye is Platonic metaphysics: form preceeds reality. If that's the way you think it works, then fine. Postmodernism requires that meaning reside in the signifyer. The word had to precced all, even form which I don't find credible. The more you guys point things out, the more I'm beggining to believe that Postmodernism is nothing more than a variation of Plato's metaphysics.

Language constructs the way we see the world, our sense of reality, our sense of self, the very way in which we think is constructed through language. How is that not control?
Prove it. Even Freud had to provide/fabricate studies. This is a grand statement of human nature, one that is I would say is somewhat revolutionary. This is probably overthrowing thousands of years of western culture, or at least since the enlightenment. You and those arguing here have an obligation to prove it. Otherwise I am beggining to believe is that this is fallacy of argument by assertion. I can think a large number of examples to contradict. I gave three above. I have yet to hear of one that supports it. Someone provide me proof.

fayefaye

01-15-2006, 09:50 AM

And so my point still stands: despite preaching from the left and the right, the porn industry has mushroomed once physical contraints were lifted.

I caved and found this on Situationism from Wikipedia:
The Spectacular society: "We live in a spectacular society, that is, our whole life is surrounded by an immense accumulation of spectacles. Things that were once directly lived are now lived by proxy. Once an experience is taken out of the real world it becomes a commodity. As a commodity the spectacular is developed to the detriment of the real. It becomes a substitute for experience."- Larry Law, from Images And Everyday Life, a 'Spectacular Times' pocket book.

What's interesting about this is a conversation I had with a psych major a while ago about pornography. People have done psychological studies showing that there is some sort of inverse relationship between how much porn somebody watches and how good they are in bed. (Yes, seriously) As it turns out, watching pornography offers this presentation of sex which it's often difficult for real life to stack up to in comparison. So guys become sort of... inured to it. It becomes harder and harder to turn them on; some become impotent.

What I'm suggesting, is the ever growing porn industry is because the presentation, the construction, the spectacle offers a fantasy which is almost *searching for the right words*... better than the reality. (Real sex isn't like porn, generally) Anyway, it ties in well with everything we've been talking about. Not only do people confuse the image with the real, but some actually start to prefer the image over the real. If guys get off to porn more than they actually have sex, it could be said that pornography becomes like a replacement for the reality. (It masks the absence of a reality also- they're not getting any!)

fayefaye

01-15-2006, 09:51 AM

(lol, I'm just pulling ideas out of my *** here, but I really think I'm onto something!)

The Unnamable

01-15-2006, 10:16 AM

The writer could have been imprecise; the reader could have mis read.
I know which one my money is on. :D

The chains around his hands; the whip marks across his back; the forced labor he performs. No word is needed.
That’s interesting. It doesn’t sound like a female Roman slave. Why did you assume the kind of slave you did? The word must have different meanings for us. :) You are not thinking about this. What you see when you look might be what you describe if we look at it from the perspective of now. But what if I were a Roman senator looking at the same scene? I might not even consider the creature to be a man in the same why I am. That doesn’t mean he’s not or that he doesn’t exist until we think up a word. And what can you possibly mean by ‘no word is needed’ – as if some things are so obvious that we don’t even need a word for them. Well, name me just one thing that exists for which we don’t even need a word. ;)

I would agree that preaching morals is critical to society.
Whose morals, Virgil and whose society?

But I would compare it to a magician doing a card trick whereby he sticks out the card he wants you to pick. Ultimately you don't have to pick it. I would not catagorize it as control through language (which suggests predeterminism) but as suggestiveness or encourgement (the right word is not coming to me here) which is laying our options from which to choose.
First of all, I said nothing about predeterminism. That’s how you see it. I believe we enter a pre-existing realm that necessarily affects how we construct ourselves. That is not the same as saying that everything is already decided forever. That realm isn’t static. Competing discourses are adding to, subtracting from, re-emphasising or redefining it every day. If the ruling hegemony changes sufficiently, then the realm of language changes, as does the nature of the available roles. A simple example of this would be women employed in jobs that they would not have been employed in before.

Show me where he's ideological.
I love that. It’s as if the ideological can be pinned down to a particular metaphor. You might just as well hand someone a copy of King Lear and say, “Show me where he’s great.”

This is ideological:

“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on; but the emotion, of whatever kind and in whatever degree, from various causes is qualified by various pleasures, so that in describing any passions whatsoever, which are voluntarily described, the mind will upon the whole be in a state of enjoyment. Now, if Nature be thus cautious in preserving in a state of enjoyment a being thus employed, the Poet ought to profit by the lesson thus held forth to him, and ought especially to take care, that whatever passions he communicates to his Reader, those passions, if his Reader's mind be sound and vigorous, should always be accompanied with an overbalance of pleasure.”
Wordsworth from Preface to Lyrical Ballads

I could have copied the whole of it because it is an outline of Wordsworth's own ideology with regards to Poetry and its importance. Surely even Wordsworth’s desire for change is a revolutionary ideology?

On many English Literature undergraduate courses, the significant names before the Romantics are the 18th century novelists like Richardson and Fielding and poets like Dryden and Pope. These writers would not have shared Wordsworth’s sense of the importance of ‘felt experience’ and it is out of the supposed cold rationality of that age that the Romantic Poets were born.

In the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth is explicitly concerning himself with the question of what Poetry is. It’s not simply a technical mode of writing; it’s bound up with social, political and philosophical implications. Most of the Romantic Poets were political activists – easy to notice in the work of Blake and Shelley. To the Romantics, the whole realm of the ‘Imagination’ carries a political force. They hope their ideas will transform society. The emphasis is on the transformative power of the imagination, with the human subject located at the centre of this world. How can you not see that all this is an ideological position, even in your sense of the term? It’s part of the Romantic ideology. Or is Romanticism not an ideology, merely a way of categorising artists? Artists exist only in a social and historical context; they don’t float around in the ether.

How come we are so different?
This is relative. We are not as different as say a carrot and a monkey. (We do, though, share 35% of our genes with a daffodil.) And we are certainly more similar than either of us and a member of the Sarawak tribe. We are at least similar enough to have both arrived at and decided to post on the same website.

As to the mafia issue, I agree there are many factors for becoming part of it, but you would think that with all the bombardment of cultural texts and images, that more than 1 percent of IA would join it.
I’m not arguing about becoming a part of it – that is not what’s interesting about the study! I’m interested in why people’s perceptions differ. The cultural texts and images that bombard us are not recruiting for the mafia! I didn’t realise that your argument was that language can’t be controlling us otherwise more people would join the mafia and if this argument goes on much longer, I think I’ll submit an application form myself. The all-pervasive, all-encompassing texts of a modern media society are not reinforcing the idea that people should join the mafia (has it not struck you as significant that in almost 100% of mainstream films, we are finally reminded that crime doesn’t pay, that killing is wrong, or that everything will turn out well in the end?). The important point is that these images/texts etc. contain representations that end up as a part of our own sense of reality. That explains the 30% figure.

The Unnamable

01-15-2006, 10:49 AM

I wouldn't really argue with that. I might even subscribe to it as a philosophy. But I can't help but be reminded of Sisyphus and that big, stupid rock and wonder what would happen if people really DID stop discussing/trying to deal with poverty.
By dropping the issue, I don’t mean simply wash their hands and forget about it, but have done with all the present nonsense (i.e. the discursive practices with which the problem is currently addressed) and begin by seeing what the real problem is.

I'd like to think that it does make a difference, and that even if it doesn't improve things, the situation would deteriorate.

We would all like to think that – it stops us from just sitting down on the side of the road and simply refusing to take part any more. But our belief, despite the evidence, is vital to the continuance of the present system.

PS – Don’t forget that Camus concluded, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” :lol:

The Unnamable

01-15-2006, 11:46 AM

The Spectacular society: "We live in a spectacular society, that is, our whole life is surrounded by an immense accumulation of spectacles. Things that were once directly lived are now lived by proxy. Once an experience is taken out of the real world it becomes a commodity. As a commodity the spectacular is developed to the detriment of the real. It becomes a substitute for experience."- Larry Law, from Images And Everyday Life, a 'Spectacular Times' pocket book.
The idea isn’t that dissimilar to Freud or even Lacan in its idea of substitutes. It also reminds me of Freud's idea of fetishism and the idea of commodity fetishism.
“The motive of human society is in the last an economic one.” Freud, not Marx, said that.

how good they are in bed. (Yes, seriously)
I think you’ve made this up to test us. How do you measure something like that? Are there judges sitting near, awarding marks for style, levels of technical difficulty, artistic interpretation? I don't know, you Aussies. :)

As it turns out, watching pornography offers this presentation of sex which it's often difficult for real life to stack up to in comparison. So guys become sort of... inured to it. It becomes harder and harder to turn them on; some become impotent.
You could also say that watching action movies or soaps, or advertisements or whatever “offers presentations of XXX which it’s often difficult for life….in comparison.”

We become inured to everything: “When I hear about deprivation and injustice in the world, I get up and change the channel.” Garrison Keillor 95 Theses 95 from Lake Wobegon Days

If guys get off to porn more than they actually have sex, it could be said that pornography becomes like a replacement for the reality. (It masks the absence of a reality also- they're not getting any!)
I hope this isn’t directed at me. :)

To be serious (and perhaps to highlight the extent to which thinking away from the current dominant discourses is extremely difficult, if not impossible,), look at the assumption in your own comment. You assume that actual sex is ‘reality’ and pornography is simulation. In other words, by associating pornography with those things that you angrily point out are replacing ‘real’ experience, you are assuming ‘real’ experience is superior. Will you now call on the power of biological discourse to justify your choice? :D

I agree that it is all consistent with the theories we have been discussing here. I know Virgil mentioned pornography and that is why you mentioned it, but it might be worth considering why pornography is more emotive a topic than most of the other topics we could have chosen. Why should we object more to being bombarded with pornography than to being bomborded with, say, all forms of advertising?

blp

01-15-2006, 12:17 PM

Are you having a rhetorical flush or are these to be considered?

Gah. It ended up sounding like a rhetorical flush - a bad one - but what I was trying to say is that throughout this discussion you veer between different uses of the words 'real' and 'reality'.

Leaving aside the fact that 'the real' has a somewhat more specific connotation in Lacanian discourse, it sometimes seems that you're saying language is the reality and sometimes that there is another real reality beyond the dominant discourses' constructions of reality. I assume you'll balk at the latter and I'm sorry, there's so much to wade through that I don't think I can go back and find specific quotes, but I don't think I've imagined it. I also think it's absolutely basic to this kind of discussion that this happens. No matter how much one rationally understands the impossibility of absolutism, one keeps coming back to it unconsciously. There's also something seriously queasy about the sense that poststructuralists are saying 'language is the reality'. Everything is not true and everything is true (and, pace Hassan El Sabbad, 'Everything is permitted). Why should we address the dominant discourses at all critically if this is the case? Specifically, in doing so, aren't we saying, 'what you have constructed does not fit reality' - some 'fundamental' reality that should underpin or undermine the reality of what we build on it? To extend your house analogy, the point might be that no matter what we're allowed to build and with whatever bricks, the ground was unstable and the building's eventually going to collapse into itself and this basic, inarguable truth is denied and marginalised at every stage of the building process. But within poststructural thought, it seems that there is no possibility of such a basic truth.

If this is the case, I don't really have a big problem with it. I was mainly just trying to point out that the assumption of a fundamental reality does seem to keep coming back.

blp

01-15-2006, 12:31 PM

Well, to throw in my two cents, I would say that language constructs reality, and because it constructs our view of reality, we could also say that it obstructs any objective reality which could be said to exist. (ie, we wouldn't have a clue what was real because we can't tell the difference between the reality and the construct) So both

This is my point. Can that objective reality be said to exist at all?

Here's what I think: there's always more. Contrary to what Marx and Hegel and, later, Fukuyama have thought, there's never going to be an ultimate synthesis, which is to say, the dialectic, the debate is never going to end. It's not even as linear as the dialectical process suggests. One solution doesn't just become an opposition in another debate, it implies many many more possibilities than it is intended to. The main problem with the dominant discourses is not necessarily what they are saying in itself, it's their dominance, their assertion of centrality and the absolute absence not of an alternative (if you don't like the democrats, vote republican), but of many many alternatives.

These dominant discourses do create reality - objective reality - however ephemeral. They create facts on the ground if you like - free health care gets cut, people die. It's true, it happens, it's reality, brought about by a process of argument and assertion. But there is a reality that is denied in this, which is not so much 'If you hadn't cut free helath care, those people wouldn't have died' - a difficult case to make - as 'There are many many other ways of looking at this problem'.

The Unnamable

01-15-2006, 01:37 PM

Gah. It ended up sounding like a rhetorical flush - a bad one - but what I was trying to say is that throughout this discussion you veer between different uses of the words 'real' and 'reality'.
One of us is / Both of us are confusing my own position with the ones I have tried to explain. I have said a few times that I don’t ultimately subscribe to these theories. Ultimately, I don’t believe that there is nothing other than text. I say ‘believe’ rather than ‘think’. It isn’t a rational position that I can defend easily but it’s largely what Literature is to me. The thing is, I don’t think it matters greatly for a lot of what we’ve been discussing. Whether or not there is anything beneath the surface will never be known until we first realise that it is just a surface.

Leaving aside the fact that 'the real' has a somewhat more specific connotation in Lacanian discourse, it sometimes seems that you're saying language is the reality and sometimes that there is another real reality beyond the dominant discourses' constructions of reality. I assume you'll balk at the latter and I'm sorry, there's so much to wade through that I don't think I can go back and find specific quotes, but I don't think I've imagined it. I also think it's absolutely basic to this kind of discussion that this happens. No matter how much one rationally understands the impossibility of absolutism, one keeps coming back to it unconsciously. There's also something seriously queasy about the sense that poststructuralists are saying 'language is the reality'. Everything is not true and everything is true (and, pace Hassan El Sabbad, 'Everything is permitted).
Isn’t this the conclusion Ivan Karamazov reaches? It’s interesting that I should be reminded of this. Do you know the novel? Ivan is the tormented intellectual who doubts that there is any rational or moral order in the universe. For me, the best parts of that great novel are Ivan’s discussions with Alyosha in the chapters ‘Rebellion’ and ‘The Grand Inquisitor’. If you haven’t read them, do: they really are worth it.

There is also a character called Smerdyakov, who is particularly interested in discussing philosophy with Ivan. He hears Ivan’s explanation of why ‘Everything is permitted’ and subsequently murders Fyodor Pavlovich. Ivan suffers terrible guilt over this, even though his rational mind tells him that he isn’t responsible. This is one of the reasons I prefer to read Literature in the way I do. I’ll never know what the ‘real truth’ is, so I concentrate on the way others battle with what it all means. I find Ivan fascinating.

Why should we address the dominant discourses at all critically if this is the case?
I’m not being facetious when I say, “because they are there.” We have to find something to give us the impression that we exist, eh Didi? I might never discover who I am or what the point of it all is but as much as possible I’d like the experiences I have to be only contaminated with the discourses I am prepared to defend. Most of all, I don’t want ignorance in authority to tell me what really matters, as if they know or care.

Specifically, in doing so, aren't we saying, 'what you have constructed does not fit reality' - some 'fundamental' reality that should underpin or undermine the reality of what we build on it? To extend your house analogy, the point might be that no matter what we're allowed to build and with whatever bricks, the ground was unstable and the building's eventually going to collapse into itself and this basic, inarguable truth is denied and marginalised at every stage of the building process.
Yes, I agree – which is why I said that I’d encounter a backlash if I said what I meant. In the end, none of it does matter. Horrible though it might sound, even the worst acts of atrocity are ultimately insignificant. Of course, we don’t live in the ultimate.Do you remember that George Steiner quotation I posted? It’s relevant here:

“ The notion of cosmic solitude [is] …to a great majority among us, unbearable. We crave a witness, even fiercely judgemental, to our small dirt. In sickness, in psychological or material terror, when our children lie dead before our eyes, we cry out. That such a cry resounds in nothingness, that it is a perfectly natural, even therapeutic, reflex but nothing more, is almost impossible to endure.”

But within poststructural thought, it seems that there is no possibility of such a basic truth.
Yes, I can see why you would want this and I don’t think I’d object too much if it were achieved. The important thing for me, however, is to keep questioning and challenging the assumptions that are used to control us. You want it to reveal the possibility of something better. I want it first to expose what’s wrong.

The Unnamable

01-15-2006, 09:46 PM

it sometimes seems that you're saying language is the reality and sometimes that there is another real reality beyond the dominant discourses' constructions of reality.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y73/stonemewhatalife/magritte_The_Human_Condition_1933_.jpg

This Magritte painting is called ‘The Human Condition’. You’ve probably seen it many times. I can remember first seeing it when I was about 19. My reaction to it then hasn’t changed much in the subsequent years. The immediate question I asked was about the part of ‘reality’ blotted out by the canvas and easel. How do we know whether it’s the same as what is painted on the canvas within the canvas? That should alert us to the kinds of problems we’ve encountered using the term ‘reality’ here. The whole thing is a canvas, obviously. So what I called the ‘reality’ obscured by the painted canvas and easel is itself a painted representation of reality. At some point I must have realised that there is no way that we would ever be able to find out whether what’s hidden by the canvas corresponds to what appears on the canvas. Therefore, I decided, it doesn’t matter. All I have to deal with is what I perceive to be there.

Xamonas Chegwe

01-16-2006, 06:20 PM

I love Magritte. He always reminds me of Philip K Dick's short stories - not the best technician by a long margin - but some of the best ideas out there.

Ceci n'est pas un post!

blp

01-16-2006, 08:39 PM

The Unnamable

01-16-2006, 10:35 PM

Unnamable, just to be clear - and as may be clearer from my last post, which you may have missed - a lot of what you were responding to was not my view so much as an attempt to unpick what seemed to me to be some contradictions in what was being said throughout this thread.
This is how I have been taking it. I didn’t think you were looking for cracks to exploit.

In the end, and here's a rhetorical flourish I'll stand by, I keep coming back to Eliot's line from Sweeney Agonistes: 'But I gotta use words when I talk to you'. And because the words keep slipping around, it can become increasingly difficult to work out whether we're agreeing. Still, I think we are on the whole, particularly on the slipperiness itself.
I would agree with this – I think the only area that I’d disagree with you is in my sense of the hopelessness of everything. You are much more optimistic than me but that is probably to your credit rather than a reason for me to consider you ‘wrong’ in some way.

But here's something I'll take issue with - at least with my interpretation of it - 'none of it does matter'. It does - in the same way the individual signifiers do - not absolutely and transcendentally, but in little localised relational contexts.
When I said none of it maters, I did add ‘ultimately’. All I meant was something similar to Macbeth’s great speech beginning ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’. I really do believe that it’s all a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. And it certainly is full of sound and fury, mostly my own! That doesn’t mean that I am dismissing other people’s misery and suffering but simply outlining my own beliefs. ‘Nothing matters’ isn’t a comment on the Language debate specifically, more an observation from my own experiences and viewpoint. I seem to remember a powerful point you made about seeing violence as just another text. I think that point is unanswerable. Similarly, I cannot see Auschwitz as just another text. If I’m wrong, so be it. Whether or not I am right or wrong is utterly insignificant compared to most things, but especially when compared to what happened in the Death Camps.

I credit that 'Grand Inquisitor' passage with saving what could have been years of wasted time in a friend of mine's life. I'd just read it many years ago when he told me he was thinking of joining a religious group in the north of England. I gave him my interpretation of the text and used it to explain far better than I could have myself why what he was planning made no sense. He dropped the plan and went to university. Many years later, the religious group was revealed to have been a cult. Hope this doesn't sound like bragging - it weren't me it were Dostoyevsky. Incidentally, I've been meaning to tackle the rest of the book ever since and this is a timely reminder.

'There's more to life than books you know, but not much more' - The Smiths.
Those two chapters are tremendous. I’ve never reread the whole novel but I still revisit those chapters when I want some sustenance. Here’s another Morrissey comment that seems appropriate to what you’ve said about the way fiction/Literature/Art offer consolation and even some kind of guidance:

"The passing of time
And all of it’s crimes
Is making me sad again
The passing of time
And all of it’s sickening crimes
Is making me sad again
But don’t forget the songs
That made you cry
And the songs that saved your life"

Rubber Ring The Smiths

blp

01-17-2006, 08:03 AM

I would agree with this – I think the only area that I’d disagree with you is in my sense of the hopelessness of everything. You are much more optimistic than me but that is probably to your credit rather than a reason for me to consider you ‘wrong’ in some way.

Or I'm just lucky or a better liar. I often think I might be better off if I could abandon hope. On the other hand, without being sure at all this is what's happening here, I'm reminded of the moment in 'Manhattan' when Diane Keaton's character says that the futility expressed in Ingmar Bergman is just personal neurosis justifying itself with a cloak of contemporary philosophy. It's Allen's film and he groans pointedly, but then, he's a self-confessed anhedonic (pleasure phobic) himself. I think what she says is a real trap in this kind of thought and goes to what I said before about the way absolutism can creep up in every attempt to rout it. Real hopelessness is a kind of certainty and if it's really what you end up with, I would say, get thee to a psychoanalyst forthwith, not so much as a way out of suffering as out of an ultimately subjective certainty. Wittgenstein said that the point of psychotherapy is not to make you happier but better at thinking. To be traumatised is to make bad experiences into a synechdoche for everything.

When I said none of it maters, I did add ‘ultimately’. All I meant was something similar to Macbeth’s great speech beginning ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’. I really do believe that it’s all a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. And it certainly is full of sound and fury, mostly my own! That doesn’t mean that I am dismissing other people’s misery and suffering but simply outlining my own beliefs. ‘Nothing matters’ isn’t a comment on the Language debate specifically, more an observation from my own experiences and viewpoint. I seem to remember a powerful point you made about seeing violence as just another text. I think that point is unanswerable. Similarly, I cannot see Auschwitz as just another text. If I’m wrong, so be it. Whether or not I am right or wrong is utterly insignificant compared to most things, but especially when compared to what happened in the Death Camps.
Yes. And despite what I said above, there's not much I find quite so vivifying in literature as futility expressed convincingly, from the Greeks on up through Thackeray, Stendhal, to Beckett. But you say 'ultimately' - that absolutism again. And very often, the futility is shown to be a bi-product of pointless, blind, conventionalist striving. Shakespeare's the great leveller. His plays are so rich because hope there is as convincing and valid as hopelessness. Drama is a great medium for this, a cornuccopia of different voices expressing contradictory views, each dependent on a specific time and set of circumstances. Still, to end this paragraph as it begins, a short quote from Ulysses makes the point almost as well: 'Yes.'

The Unnamable

01-17-2006, 10:41 AM

It's Allen's film and he groans pointedly, but then, he's a self-confessed anhedonic (pleasure phobic) himself.
What are you implying, sir? :)

I think what she says is a real trap in this kind of thought and goes to what I said before about the way absolutism can creep up in every attempt to rout it. Real hopelessness is a kind of certainty and if it's really what you end up with, I would say, get thee to a psychoanalyst forthwith, not so much as a way out of suffering as out of an ultimately subjective certainty.
Hmmm, I think we are coming from different places. I’m not certain of anything other than that I exist, at least as what I experience when I think ‘I exist’. I don’t think I’m stuck in a subjective certainty by saying that, just dealing with the only evidence I have in the only way I know how. I still do battle with the everyday and think and laugh and cry and scream and eat and so on and so on. I did say, for precisely the reason you highlight, that we don’t live in the ultimate. I’m not really bothered that my existence is futile and will terminate in oblivion. So what? In fact, I find that rather funny, often hilarious. I also find it terrifying occasionally but I find it something.

Wittgenstein said that the point of psychotherapy is not to make you happier but better at thinking. To be traumatised is to make bad experiences into a synechdoche for everything.
I don’t expect to be happy or even particularly happier. Most of the time, I can be content with my lot. I keep myself amused, am touched by others, touch them and, on many occasions, “I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life...”

Yes. And despite what I said above, there's not much I find quite so vivifying in literature as futility expressed convincingly, from the Greeks on up through Thackeray, Stendhal, to Beckett. But you say 'ultimately' - that absolutism again.
Yes, I know – first see above but also, I am finite. I believe there is an absolute – that of death, the infinite jest.

And very often, the futility is shown to be a bi-product of pointless, blind, conventionalist striving. Shakespeare's the great leveller. His plays are so rich because hope there is as convincing and valid as hopelessness. Drama is a great medium for this, a cornuccopia of different voices expressing contradictory views, each dependent on a specific time and set of circumstances. Still, to end this paragraph as it begins, a short quote from Ulysses makes the point almost as well: 'Yes.'
As I said somewhere earlier, I find characters fascinating (most people I find boring :D ) and there’s a pleasure to be had in seeing how others have come to terms with what Larkin called “the million-petalled flower/Of being here.” Mind you, as much as I love many of Shakespeare's non-tragic characters, I still find Hamlet the most fascinating.

blp

01-17-2006, 11:26 AM

What are you implying, sir? :)

You know - like Bergman. ;)

Well, I've misunderstood. But I'm in no doubt about the dying part too. in what way did you mean I was more optimistic then?

Xamonas Chegwe

01-17-2006, 07:55 PM

Ultimately, nothing matters - nothing beyond the everyday: beyond getting up another morning; beyond eating another meal, drinking another cup of tea, taking another breath; beyond the fact that there's a book that's not finished yet; beyond the film that comes out next week; beyond the tickets for the football match on Saturday; beyond friends & family; beyond job, bills and debt; beyond getting and spending; beyond the everyday. All else is smoke and mirrors.

We go on because going on is all we know, all we've ever known, all we can ever know. We go on because there's no going back. We go on because the illusion of continuance, of progression, is better than the reality of futility. We go on because it is in our nature to go on. Because we're too bloody-minded to stop.

We may know that there will be an end but we don't accept it - not really - not deep down - we all harbour a hope, however miniscule, however ridiculous it seems to our intellects - that there is something beyond - something other. We all live in denial, because to face the truth is to surrender to it, to give up, and none of us want to do that, not if we want to live another day. And there's always a reason to live another day - until one day there isn't - but hopefully that day isn't this day.

This is from an unfinished short story of mine. It's just words, not great words, just my words. It's stuff that's been said a lot of times before a lot better.

It sort of fitted with what Unnamable & blp were saying above. I'll admit that I added the word "Ultimately" to the beginning to make it fit even more. I'll add it to the original passage too, it works.

It's gloomy stuff though - so here's some light relief:

It's a post-modernity generator! Hit the refresh button for endless, convincingly meaningless essays!

Post Modernity Generator. (http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo)

The Unnamable

01-18-2006, 09:54 AM

in what way did you mean I was more optimistic then?

Obviously I know no more of you than I have assumed from your responses here. However, it appears that you believe that even if the fight is hopeless, it’s still worth putting one’s energies into trying to find something better.

I’m more of the opinion of the main character in Eugene O’Neill’s ‘The Iceman Cometh’:

“So I said to the world, God bless all here, and may the best man win and die of gluttony! And I took a seat in the grandstand of philosophical detachment to fall asleep observing the cannibals do their death dance.”

They have the absolute freedom of the unfree. George Steiner unfashionably lamented the changes in post Berlin Wall Europe:

“In the book-stores in East Berlin or in Weimar, where they have survived at all, Jackie Collins and the video-cassette have swiftly ousted Lessing and Holderlin. Virtually overnight, freedom reclaimed its inalienable right to junk food.”

I have no religious faith whatsoever and it’s unusual for me to be quoting the Bible, but:

“Where there is no vision, the people perish. (Proverbs 29:18)”

Let them.

fayefaye

01-18-2006, 12:07 PM

I have no religious faith whatsoever and it’s unusual for me to be quoting the Bible, but:

“Where there is no vision, the people perish. (Proverbs 29:18)”

Let them.

whoa... dark.

The Unnamable

01-19-2006, 09:10 AM

whoa... dark.
Darker than this from Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court?

"Now came a diversion. We heard shrieks and yells, and soon a woman came running and crying; and seeing our group, she flung herself into our midst and begged for protection. A mob of people came tearing after her, some with torches, and they said she was a witch who had caused several cows to die by a strange disease, and practiced her arts by help of a devil in the form of a black cat. This poor woman had been stoned until she hardly looked human, she was so battered and bloody. The mob wanted to burn her.

Well, now, what do you suppose our master did? When we closed around this poor creature to shelter her, he saw his chance. He said, burn her here, or they shouldn't have her at all. Imagine that! They were willing. They fastened her to a post; they brought wood and piled it about her; they applied the torch while she shrieked and pleaded and strained her two young daughters to her breast; and our brute, with a heart solely for business, lashed us into position about the stake and warmed us into life and commercial value by the same fire which took away the innocent life of that poor harmless mother. That was the sort of master we had. I took his number. That snow-storm cost him nine of his flock; and he was more brutal to us than ever, after that, for many days together, he was so enraged over his loss."

fayefaye

01-21-2006, 01:28 AM

Prove it. Even Freud had to provide/fabricate studies. This is a grand statement of human nature, one that is I would say is somewhat revolutionary. This is probably overthrowing thousands of years of western culture, or at least since the enlightenment. You and those arguing here have an obligation to prove it. Otherwise I am beggining to believe is that this is fallacy of argument by assertion. I can think a large number of examples to contradict. I gave three above. I have yet to hear of one that supports it. Someone provide me proof.

You know I can't prove anything to you. All we have are theories. Psychology is a subject composed entirely of theories. What do you want me to produce for you? A set of algebraic equations for the human mind followed by the letters QED? If we're sitting around discussing what we mean when we say 'reality', and we don't know what is real and what is our perception of reality, then how can we prove things about a reality which we don't know? Alternatively, how can one prove a philosophy? To be honest, this:

Language constructs the way we see the world, our sense of reality, our sense of self, the very way in which we think is constructed through language. How is that not control?

was just an over-generalised, over-simplified statement which I hoped would put an end to an argument that was going back and forth over and over and over the same ground. Plus, I was tired and not in the mood for posting up something thinky. I do think that language plays a part in how we see the world (along with other things), and our sense of self, and I do think that we think through language. If you go through the thread, I think people have already written why they/we think this is so. (Still too lazy for reiteration) (sorry for the late response, I think we posted up about the same time and I didn't notice your post. When I did, I was just too lazy to respond.)

I think you’ve made this up to test us. How do you measure something like that? Are there judges sitting near, awarding marks for style, levels of technical difficulty, artistic interpretation? I don't know, you Aussies.

Yes, the send armies of men and women out to bars. Then, they pick out and randomly hit on strangers. Then they go back home with them and wait till they go to the bathroom, and rifle through their sock drawers, taking note of and carefully cataloguing all of their pornography. Then, they sleep with them, and rate them on a set of ten criteria, each with a scale of 1-5. These are compared to a baseline group of randomly selected people who watch no pornography, also rated and standardised. Then, a number of statistical calculations took place (t-tests and so on), and the difference was found to be significant. Something to watch out for. :p

lol, seriously though? I don't know, I think it was probably just impotence which they researched.

In other words, by associating pornography with those things that you angrily point out are replacing ‘real’ experience, you are assuming ‘real’ experience is superior. Will you now call on the power of biological discourse to justify your choice?
I agree that it is all consistent with the theories we have been discussing here. I know Virgil mentioned pornography and that is why you mentioned it, but it might be worth considering why pornography is more emotive a topic than most of the other topics we could have chosen. Why should we object more to being bombarded with pornography than to being bomborded with, say, all forms of advertising?

I wasn't 'angrily' pointing out anything. It was only a matter of time before the discussion turned to sex :p. I think pornography is just more emotive because it's overtly sexual; advertising is less so. I suppose this is one of those 'discourse of sexuality' type things (Sexuality is not really to be openly talked about, yet it permeates society etc) .

Darker than this from Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court?

You're not really that dark. But it's always confronting to hear someone state the same sort of attitudes that we nearly all have, but don't admit to. Namely

“So I said to the world, God bless all here, and may the best man win and die of gluttony! And I took a seat in the grandstand of philosophical detachment to fall asleep observing the cannibals do their death dance.”

The Unnamable

01-21-2006, 06:23 AM

Something to watch out for. :p Is this a warning or a tip? :D
You wouldn’t happen to know where they scout for subjects, would you? No reason for asking, just curious.

I wasn't 'angrily' pointing out anything.
I wasn’t just referring to the pornography issue but to all the comments that suggested increasing cynicism, which finally led to your quotation from ‘American Beauty’. I wasn’t trying to insinuate that you were a ranting Sheila. Besides, I like to see a bit of angry passion. In my view, the world only really offers two ways to react - silence or rage.

It was only a matter of time before the discussion turned to sex :p.
That’s your doing – you’re an Aussie so it was inevitable. Since the last rugby world cup and the Ashes, you’ve nothing else to boast about being the best at. :D

I think pornography is just more emotive because it's overtly sexual; advertising is less so. I suppose this is one of those 'discourse of sexuality' type things (Sexuality is not really to be openly talked about, yet it permeates society etc) .
I agree with you to some extent, except about advertising, which is saturated with sex as a commodity. I’m sure many will disagree with me but I find pornography less offensive than advertising. Advertising is much more dishonest and insidious.

But it's always confronting to hear someone state the same sort of attitudes that we nearly all have, but don't admit to.
Do you mean that it's confrontational or that it’s comforting?

fayefaye

01-21-2006, 07:29 AM

Is this a warning or a tip? :D
You wouldn’t happen to know where they scout for subjects, would you? No reason for asking, just curious.

I could tell you, but that would kill the fun.

That’s your doing – you’re an Aussie so it was inevitable. Since the last rugby world cup and the Ashes, you’ve nothing else to boast about being the best at. :D

:D :D :D (The Rugby world cup really was a disappointment... :bawling: )

I agree with you to some extent, except about advertising, which is saturated with sex as a commodity. I’m sure many will disagree with me but I find pornography less offensive than advertising. Advertising is much more dishonest and insidious.

Sure, it's saturated with sex. But it's more subconscious - insidious as you say - whereas pornography's in your face. So nobody protests at a chocolate advertisement with a woman making orgasmic sounds at a chocolate bar, but some people would protest if she was naked.

Do you mean that it's confrontational or that it’s comforting?

hm. Well it's confrontational because it makes me think about myself, pick apart my own hypocrisy and confront/come to terms with my own dreadful apathy. It's comforting because I'm probably not the only one going to hell. :lol:

The Unnamable

01-21-2006, 08:30 PM

:D :D :D (The Rugby world cup really was a disappointment... :bawling: )
For me also. I’m Welsh.

but some people would protest if she was naked.
I wouldn’t. I might even buy the chocolate.

hm. Well it's confrontational because it makes me think about myself, pick apart my own hypocrisy and confront/come to terms with my own dreadful apathy. It's comforting because I'm probably not the only one going to hell. :lol:
As I said elsewhere it’s all about choosing the company you keep. There ought to be a good few more interesting sorts in Hell but to make it truly Hell, my conversations with them will be moderated. :D

fayefaye

01-22-2006, 12:12 AM

I wouldn’t. I might even buy the chocolate.

A friend told me the difference between men's Pocky (those chocolate covered biscuit sticks they sell in Asia, as well as Chinese shops) and normal chocolate pocky is that men's Pocky has pictures of girls (he didn't say anything about the nature of the pictures). Anyway, there's a handy tip if you ever want chocolate AND pictures of [possibly naked, I don't know and wasn't interested to find out] women.

fayefaye

01-28-2006, 04:56 AM

... does anybody want to discuss Foucault's History of Sexuality? (I've only read vol 1, but still...)

The Unnamable

01-28-2006, 06:02 AM

... does anybody want to discuss Foucault's History of Sexuality? (I've only read vol 1, but still...)
I doubt it. :D

Actually, to be serious for a moment, I doubt there’s any point on this forum. Firstly, his ideas on sexuality are far too unconventional and controversial to be considered with the seriousness they deserve. Besides, sex is ‘naughty’ – not a proper topic for discussion among decent people. It will attract disapproval from those clean-cut Americans who celebrate Thanksgiving in Norman Rockwell paintings and sip vanilla sodas in Thornton Wilder plays. Secondly, his ideas are permeated with the assumption that sexuality is historically constructed. It is a system based on ideas of morality, power, discourses and procedures designed to mould sexual practices towards political ends. We mustn’t discuss politics, not even the Holocaust it seems. I can hear a distinct hum from Orwell’s grave as he rotates at an ever-increasing rate.

Now, if you want to discuss Mary Poppins’ thoughts on the matter (I can’t even bring myself to write the word sometimes), that’ll be fine. No one will be offended or hurt that way – assuming that ignorance hurts no one.

I don’t have my Foucault volumes with me but I do have some notes here. I’ll give it a go if you dare.

Sami

01-28-2006, 12:09 PM

I completely understand how this book could push the limits of the “no politics” rule, but in a way, Foucault makes a broader point about how the activity of talking has come to be seen as a good thing – not just about sex, but about ourselves in general.

One of my favourite arguments in that book is the idea that we’ve all become “confessing animals”. Repressing or prohibiting certain things from discussion is an important means of control. At the same time though, encouraging or including things as can be just as significant. Talking about ourselves is very often seen as a good and healthy activity. Although Foucault seems to have had the therapy/psychoanalysis industry in mind as a major example, the idea that this makes us better, more honest people, is something we find all the time in everyday life/relationships.

I recently met someone who insisted on telling me all sorts of personal information about her family background. While she no doubt felt she was being terribly sincere, and/or deserved some praise for confronting her “dysfunctional childhood”, Foucault’s view would probably be that her wish to be truthful about her inner feelings was far from liberating. Instead, it can be seen as another example of power producing discourses or types of knowledge, including the ideas we have about ourselves. So often we think that finding our “true self”, or the “Real Me”, can only be a good thing that will make us happier and more balanced etc. What he’s calling into question is whether this “truth” about ourselves might be another example of power. Rather than going on, and on about our “real feelings”, maybe Foucault is telling us that therapy, and these type of confessional discussions are actually another form of control.

The Unnamable

01-28-2006, 01:50 PM

One of my favourite arguments in that book is the idea that we’ve all become “confessing animals”. Repressing or prohibiting certain things from discussion is an important means of control. At the same time though, encouraging or including things as can be just as significant. Talking about ourselves is very often seen as a good and healthy activity. Although Foucault seems to have had the therapy/psychoanalysis industry in mind as a major example, the idea that this makes us better, more honest people, is something we find all the time in everyday life/relationships.
I think there is also the idea that the ritual of confession always exists within a power relationship:
“...the authority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, console, and reconcile.”

The ‘industries’ you mention are able, through such confession, to classify different pleasures, presumably including ones that many people had not known even existed. If I understand correctly this might account for why Foucault sees the modern era as characterised not by increased sexual repression but by a multiplication of ‘deviant’ forms of sexuality. Didn’t he say that homosexuality was ‘invented’ by modern discourses about it? Obviously he didn’t mean that there were no same sex relationships before the modern era but that the idea of homosexuality as a distinct category didn’t exist prior to defining discourses. I suppose this makes sense if we think about the search for a ‘gay gene’. The discourse of genetics is called upon to reinforce the idea that such a separate category exists.

I recently met someone who insisted on telling me all sorts of personal information about her family background. While she no doubt felt she was being terribly sincere, and/or deserved some praise for confronting her “dysfunctional childhood”, Foucault’s view would probably be that her wish to be truthful about her inner feelings was far from liberating. Instead, it can be seen as another example of power producing discourses or types of knowledge, including the ideas we have about ourselves. So often we think that finding our “true self”, or the “Real Me”, can only be a good thing that will make us happier and more balanced etc. What he’s calling into question is whether this “truth” about ourselves might be another example of power. Rather than going on, and on about our “real feelings”, maybe Foucault is telling us that therapy, and these type of confessional discussions are actually another form of control.
Interesting. But how are they? What is being controlled, by whom and why?

Sami

01-29-2006, 11:58 AM

What is being controlled? Well in a way both of us were being controlled, but if control means we’re somehow limited by the relationship then this is not quite how I understand Foucault’s point in “History of Sexuality”. What he seems to be saying is that power produces as well as limits – you’re right that he thinks it produces discourses about sexuality etc. but he goes further to look at how we’re inside these discourses - we act as if they are true in order to produce our sense of who we are.

So, the woman I met recently produces her sense of who she is in relation to a discourse that claims there is a “real me” somewhere inside all of us – that if we could only “find ourselves” then we’d all be happier, healthier and so on. Here I think Foucault is correct – these types of confessional conversations don’t only happen in therapy situations, they’re all over the place in everyday life – in magazines, casual conversations, internet forums etc etc.

By whom? Foucault does not seem to be saying that this production of ourselves is one person exercising power over another. He is different from say a Marxist view of power that argues one class dominates another and suppresses their interests. Because of this, the “history” in “The History of Sexuality” is not based on the idea of progress – the arrival of modern sexuality is more accidental and contingent. Both the confessor and the person hearing the confession are involved in the production. As a partner in the conversation, by listening to what was being said, I was also involved in this woman’s self-construction and vice versa.

Why? Obviously this is the tricky one since it raises the what is the end goal of postmodernism (again!). In a way this is not Foucault’s main question. He’s more interested in the “how” – how is it that the idea of a “real me” became so important for us? How is it that religious confession spread into therapeutic discourses? And how did this develop into an everyday, familiar feature of our lives? How is it that we now think talking about ourselves is a good thing? I think he makes a great point here because it’s not an abstract hard to grasp philosophical argument – it’s located right in everyday conversations that we have. Foucault is maybe suggesting that that our tendency to talk about ourselves, and to see this as a positive thing, is not necessary or neutral. He’s asking, how come we spend so much of our lives doing this?

The Unnamable

01-29-2006, 01:06 PM

Sami,
I’m going to be really busy for a while and want to give this the time it deserves. So for now, I’ll just say that that is one of the best responses I’ve read – precise, clear and informative. I hope fayefaye fills in if I take a while.

fayefaye

01-30-2006, 11:00 PM

hmm... To be honest, I'm not sure how much of 'history of sexuality' I really grasped. But reading Sami's post, I was more inclined to think along the lines of why certain things are situated within 'confessional' discourses and why others aren't.

So a 'dysfunctional childhood' would be something personal to be confronted, but a 'normal' childhood wouldn't be. By putting something into a particular discourse, it reinforces the status quo. (anything 'abnormal' would become something to be confessed to, thereby marginalising certain experiences which may be more common than people would tend to believe)

blp

01-31-2006, 09:40 AM

The more you dig, the more 'dysfunctionality' you find. Which risks bringing us back to Lacan. Again.

fayefaye

01-31-2006, 01:15 PM

Which risks bringing us back to Lacan. Again.

Sorry, I do have a tendency to bring him up, don't I? I just like being exposed to philosophers I haven't heard of before...

I'll look over Foucault again when I have time, maybe when it's not the wee hours of the morning, and try to post something semi-intelligent.

Sami

02-02-2006, 12:07 PM

It seems to me that Foucault’s “History of Sexuality” is similar to Lacan and the other post structuralist theories in some ways, but that there are also some important differences. Foucault supports the lack of a transcendental signifier – sorry for the complicated term, but I think it’s been explained pretty well earlier in this discussion. As Faye Faye points out, “The History of Sexuality” does show how categories such as dysfunctional are produced in relation to the standard of the normal or functional, and how some are approved and others are not. Foucault shares this type of argument with other post structuralist approaches.

At the same time, unlike other theories, Foucault’s view does not suffer from a sense of lack or loss. Saying that meanings are generated by their relation to other meanings does not leads to a sense of something lacking because Foucault sees these relations as filled by power, and because he thinks of power as creative, not just limiting. He is not only interested in what is NOT said, but on what IS said. It’s not a question of what is hidden in the unconscious etc. but on what is right in front of us, in everyday life. This seems to be his point about sexuality; it’s not only a case of looking at what is repressed, because there is an “incitement to discourse”.

I think there are some advantages to this view. Commonplace phrases such as “let’s talk about it”, something that we say all the time when we’re trying to settle arguments or misunderstandings, aren't seen as neutral. Foucault seems to be asking, how is it that we think that talking about things is necessarily a good way to go about life? What is the history of this? Is this an example of power producing a way that we think about ourselves? His questions apply not only to “deviant” discourses, or how some things become hidden discourses, but also to the ones that we approve of and think of as normal – his view is not confined to difficult psychoanalytic theories but is more accessible and, in some ways, maybe less highbrow. (Although I should point out that I know nothing about Lacan so I could be underestimating his view).