Language as Control

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?

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Originally Posted by fayefaye

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

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. .

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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)

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

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.

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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')...

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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.

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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?

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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

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What else do you expect?

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Originally Posted by Unnamable

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

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.

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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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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.