Language as Control

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.