Mantissa

Although Mantissa is an easy read, it gets pretty heavy when your looking at it through theories. To me it is a melting pot of theories which makes it a little overwhelming. This post will most likely be a lot of jibberjabber or circle talk and although I don't know where to start I'll start here:

"... Eternal limbo, at least eventless, tolerably nothing. If it had not been for the two women staring down.
Obscurely reproached by the closer and more requiring face, it made another unwilling deduction: for some reason it was a center of attention, an I of sorts...
...With another painfully swift and reducing intuition it realized it was not just an I, but a male I. That must be where the inrushing sense of belowness, impotence, foolishness came from..."

This excerpt from page 4 in Mantissa shows Mile's moment of self recognition. It is relevant to Lacan's mirror stage and also opens up the theme of awareness within the novel. Throughout the novel, the narration is self aware and there are many references to the fact that it is a novel. In this way it is almost challenging the Barthes' 'The Death of the Author.' Barthes believes the author is not necessary to draw meaning from the text but Mile's seems to think differently and displays his rejection by placing himself within the text to, seemingly, assert power. Another example of how Mile's clings to the importance of authorship is when, on page 173, he comments on how the Odyssey must have been written by a man because of its genius. This dialogue in itself can be looked at through Feminist Criticism. I believe a feminist would look at this dialogue as displaying the extent of patriarchy and most likely raise the question of men and women being 'essentially' different. For instance they may look at Mile's comment about Homer obviously being a man because of his genius and ask 'how' or 'why' something genius must have been created by man over woman.

I think the excerpt from page 4 also implies Lacan's idea of the castration one goes through when entering the symbolic stage. Especially the line, " With another painfully swift and reducing intuition it realized it was not just an I, but a male I." This can also be seen as an example of Freud's castration anxiety. Later in the paragraph it talks about a "red orifice" which can be seen as some sort of wound/lack of penis, a lack of power of sorts that is scary.

Art, Rufo, and Baudrillard

Thanks to Ken Rufo for making Baudrillard's idea of simulation a little clearer to me. I especially liked his example of Universal Studio's ET ride.

My roommate is currently working on her senior studio art project. What she is doing is having people think of and then draw their most memorable dream. She then draws her own interpretation of her dream from the dreamer's depiction. After which she paints the dream somewhere on the person's body using both drawings as reference. In addition, she is also using other artist's depictions of dreams as reference. Finally, she will photograph the painting in order to display it in her exhibit. Through Rufo's description I thought that this could be related to Baudrillard's ideas when looking at the three steps of simulation.

1. Simulation stands in for or represents basic reality:
The dreamer's drawing captures or seems to represent the reality of what happened in the dream.

2. Simulation hides the absence of reality or misrepresents/distorts reality behind it:
The artist uses the drawing to create her own depiction of what the dream might have been like. Since she is
most often using drawings from 'non-artists' as reference, the artist is using an already distorted replica of
'reality'(or at least a sort of original, I understand calling a dream reality is problematic in itself but bear
with me please) and further distorts it by making it more aesthetically pleasing, almost romanticizing it.

3. Simulation produces it own reality/disguises the fact there is no corresponding reality underneath:
The artist produces painting on body by looking at images not only created by her and the dreamer but of
other artists' dream paintings as well. This further romanticizes it and hides the true 'reality' of the dream. It
hides the absence of original ( the dream) because it has been distorted so much it loses touch with the
original.

I hope this made some sense to you.

Over and out,
J.H.

Barthes killed the author, now the author is haunting him?

Barthes says, " to give a text an author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing." What he is saying (or what I believe he is saying) is that by asserting an author, the biases or experiences of an author serve as the definitive explanation of meaning within the text.

I read a quick post from a blog on wordpress (here) that briefly describes his take on Barthes' theories. In it he says, "in literature, even though the writer is the origin of the words on the page, the voice it could be could be anyone’s." This got me thinking about the pseudonyms we picked for our blogs. A pseudonym allows a blog to be personal because it can be anybody. It can be you. It is void of the author's context and allows the reader to be unbiased. With an author, the reader can, even unconciously, think about an author's life or previous works which may lead the reader to preconceived meanings associated with the author.

Barthes is, however, (although he does not think who is speaking matters within a text) still concerned with where the power in the text is coming from. He wants to explore the author's relation to the text without an unequivocal appeal to them as authority of meaning.

With that being said, I kind of think of Barthes' idea of an author as a ghost writer. A ghost writer's text has an author, yet his anonymity can create unbiased readings. I hope Barthes can sleep at night with all those ghost hanging around.

Love,
Juliana

Derrida

I think there is a sense of irony in attempting to capture the true Derrida in a documentary film. He kind of deconstructs the idea of making a documentary, pointing out that it is impossible to accurately portray somebody once the camera is present. Derrida even makes it a point to tell the crew that he would usually stay in his pajamas all day if they were not there. Hence, the cameras presence cannot do what they came to do, accurately portray Derrida's everyday life. I think Derrida would agree that the film is more telling of the creator because they are making it the way they want to and portraying him the way they think he should be portrayed. So really it is a better biography of the producers? hmmmm...

The fact that the creators decided to keep this little bit in shows they probably understand the irony in their work. They instead seem to try to work with Derrida on understanding whether or not an author's ideas and contributions are all that matters. Are the specifics of personal biography relevant to understanding the work? But then again, I guess we have already come to understand that there is little possibility of creating a true biography, so should this question even stand?

tree huggers and post-structuralists.

The idea that "the bond between the signifier and signified is radically arbitrary" makes sense to me. The signifier is the sound or text while the signifier is the concept or idea. The signified and the signifier make a sign. So the signifier would be 'tree' and the signified would be the leafy thing outside. What Saussure is saying is that the relationship between the word 'tree' and what a tree actually is arbitrary. Basically, somebody just made it up. The word 'tree' in no way reflects the essential treeness of the tree. Although, the relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary, that does not mean the sign is not important. Sticking with the tree example, when I say tree in English everybody I am talking to understands what I mean. Although they may have a different type of tree in mind, they have a basic understanding, and this makes signs important.

I think the readings on post-structuralism supplemented my understanding of this statement. They did, however, complicate my understanding of truths and facts. While structuralists find stable meaning through binary opposition (i.e. day/night, hot/cold, etc), post-structuralists believe that there is none. Post-structuralists find that there are no facts, only interpretations. This is because the signifier is attached to many meanings and there is no stable relationship between the sign and the signified, so there is no truth. This is not to say there is no meaning to the sign. Because post-structuralists do not find stable meaning with binary oppositions, their center is not fixed and this causes a mere slippage of meaning when trying to center/decenter the text.

Transvestites, Communists, and Chris Craig

Warning: Talking in circles will ensue-

I really enjoyed Craig's example of the Marx's Communist Manifesto in the clothing store. I thought it was a great way to portray how society turns ideologies into material objects that can be bought and sold and, therefore, strips the ideology of its power. (I think that is what Marxist theory is trying to point out, anyway.) It also strikes me as humorous that the consumer that is buying these jeans to be radical and different is really just falling deeper into what they are supposively opposing. I think this what Craig means when he says, “American ruling class ideology continuously spins narratives that attempt to limit the working class’s ability to recognize and respond to its own subjugation." In this instance the ruling class is placing Marx's Communist Manifesto next to the jeans to make them look more dangerous and appealing. It makes the consumer feel like they're fighting the system or 'the man.' However, buying the jeans is just supporting the capitalist society. So really the ruling class is tricking us into supporting them.

I was, also, intrigued by Craig's notion that, "the ruling class appropriates those ideas which it finds most threatening. It commodifies them and mystifies their meaning, while also potentially taming the subversive behaviors that might result from them." I was talking to my friend Ben the other day (who has previously taken this class) and we discussed Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side. Does it strike anybody else as unusual that a song about transvestites and blowjobs can easily be played in a grocery or department store without anybody making a fuss about it? More than likely the grandmas and mothers in the store are humming right along with it as they push their children down the aisles. It's light rock sound deems it okay to talk about bathroom blowjobs in front of the children. It is funny how if you put the same lyrics behind some 'phat beats' and turned it into a rap song there would most likely be some fussing from the customers. It is weird how pop culture can turn something radical into a household name. Like when did punk rock become trendy? I'm pretty sure that was not the point in its origins. Chris Craig talks about how people wear Che Guevara on their t-shirts, trying to be revolutionary or making a their own message about society when they really just bought the t-shirt at some trendy store.

Alright, I am not really sure what I am saying anymore. I'll try back later.

Peace.
Juliana

Marx vs. Zombies

Hello, again. I am back to attempt some Marxist theory.

Tenet 3:
"To understand [a] text well it must be detached from contexts and studied in isolation."

Here, Liberal Humanists are making the claim that all the meaning is derived from the text alone. This would clash with Marx who believed there are overt and covert meanings within a text. There are things the author wrote and things he/or she may not have realized he/she was writing. For instance, it is possible to read Dawn of the Dead as some kind of sacred commentary of consumerism. On one hand, I am sure the writer/director was realizing how awesome it would be to have a movie with people trapped in a mall surrounded by zombies. blood and guts yay! right? Anyways...On the other hand, he is really comparing zombies to the mindless, bourgeoisie consumers who flock to the shopping mall instead of paying attention to the world around them.


There you have it, my version of Marx.

Peace out.
Juliana

Patience is like bread I say, I ran out of that yesterday

Hello, friends. I am a Communications major and a senior at Emmanuel. I picked Juliana Hatfield as my pseudonym because she is a rockin' babe and I envy her rumored fling with The Lemonheads' Evan Dando. A newcomer to blogging and theory, this first post is fairly intimidating to me. My vision for my blog is to use it as a tool for ranting about theory, connecting it to the real world, and hopefully incorporating musicians and their lyrics as often as possible. As for theory, I originally viewed it as something dense and elitist that white men with white beards think of as they smoke pipes in their university. Fortunately(I guess), the little experience I had with it in Persuasive Strategies allowed me to see that, although it is still dense and daunting, it can be a great tool for dissecting films and literature. My goal for this blog is to expand my knowledge of what I already know about theory and hopefully learn something new. I also look forward to hearing what everyone else has to say.

Over and Out.
JEM