Language as Control

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

PS Isn't 'smeghead' a bit rude?

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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'.

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Originally Posted by fayefaye

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)

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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.”

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Originally Posted by blp

Just your interpretation, surely? ;)

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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.”

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

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.

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...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'?

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

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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.

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[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.

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Originally Posted by fayefaye

[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.

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Thanks, I feel exactly that way.

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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?

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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:

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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!

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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.

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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.

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

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

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

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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.

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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'.).

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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.

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I mean that our very identities are constructed through the systems of meaning available to us, of which language is the most important.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil
Ok, can you name one society in the world and across time that would not be regarded as patriarchal?

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No – but that surely supports my point? Men have always been in control.

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:lol: I promised no facetious comments.

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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.

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So you made a free choice?

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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.

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

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

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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?

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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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Intuitively one would have to say social norms came first, and language followed.

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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?

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Don't social norms have to exist and then get labeled with a signifyer?

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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?

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Are you saying we had to create the word slave before human beings actually enslaved anyone?.. I think it works the other way around.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Orwell is an artist presenting his view of the world.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I have particular views. I suspend them for objectivity. At least I try.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Through a discussion of objective critics...

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Yes, there are limitations to life. But "available to us" implies options.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

So you made a free choice?

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Do they admit this? If they do, to what value is it then?

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Ideologies come and go over time...you must realize that in a generation this will all be footnotes to history.

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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. ;)

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Almost no one takes Freudian approaches to literature seriously anymore.

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Evidence? I would argue that there are far more readings based on theory being produced than any other type.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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.

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“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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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?

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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.

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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.

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

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by Nightshade

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by blp

Bob Dylan says in his Chronicles book ...

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

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

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

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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.

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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

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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?

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

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

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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)

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by fayefaye

(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)

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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.

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:

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

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?

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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?

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Originally Posted by rachel

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.

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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?

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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.

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Originally Posted by rachel

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.

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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

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Originally Posted by fayefaye

I know this question was directed at Virgil,

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

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Originally Posted by fayefaye

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.

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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

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.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

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.

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How dare you! :)

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

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?

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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.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

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.

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I couldn’t possibly agree with anything so utterly un-PC. ;)

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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?

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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?

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

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?

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

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!!!!

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

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?

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

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?

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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!