~Final Thoughts~

We have finally come to the end of the semester and i can honestly say that I feel very insightful of the different critical theories that we have discussed this semester. I have to say, in the beginning of this course, I struggled quite a bit trying to comprehend the different theories such as Marxism and concepts such as communism. But as the semester progressed and with the help of the guest posts, I started becoming more comfortable with the readings and even applying what I learned to real life experiences.

One thing that really stood out to me this semester, that I enjoyed the most hands down, is our discussions on Derrida. The different concepts and the ways in which he looked at life amazed me. It made me think of things that I would have never considered to analyze before learning about him. His humor made it easier to want to listen to what he had to say, and then when you finally listened to him speak, you couldn't tear yourself away. He brought up so many insightful things like how the eyes and hands on a person are "sites of recognition" and that they are the parts of the body that do not age. He explained to us how it is hard to show emotion or personal things, but it easy to share facts. Differentiating between loving the "who" vs, the "what". Finally, the statement that I still remember 'til this day and have added as one of my personal favorite quotes is when he states: "To truly forgive is impossible (pure forgiveness). We can not forgive what is forgivable (too easy). Forgive the unforgivable which is to forgive the impossible". That's something that just has always stuck in my mind and his words and wisdom and something I know I will always take away from this class. 

Just like Jon from the Mexican menu article, I know there will be times when I see an ad in a paper or a commercial that held very little meaning to me, except for to remind me of my financial struggle, that will now give me deconstructive power over its true "meaning". It has been quite the experience. 

Signing off...

...Ladii

I am......a Feminist?

Define what a feminist is. Tell me exactly what the main ideals are in feminist theory. Can you? I sure can't. There are so many aspects and different theories that are thrown into this theory its hard to just give one simple and basic response to these type of questions.

Personally before  talking about it in class and reading the guest post, I thought of feminist and the concept of feminism as one sided. Being a female myself, I am most definitely down for women empowerment and having us viewed on an equilibrium to everyone else (men) in society. But, I wasn't too fond of the whole men vs. women concept and only focusing on the category of women when there are way more injustices out in the world. 

I've always agreed with the concept of knowing where you've been in order to know where you're going. Learning the history of anything pertaining to your identity is always crucial. Especially in trying to figure out how to fix the wrong doings of today. In feminist history, we evaluate our comparisons especially to men which usually confirm our position in society. "The false representations of women reaffirms women's subordinate position in culture" (Krouse). I do sort of agree with what Woolf said about how women writers have to "kill the angel in the house who tell them they can't write." Now in this case, the angel is being represented by masculinity and the male figure, but i think this concept can and should be applied to life in general. No one person or group of people should dictate to you what you are capable of doing or try to handicap our ability to voice our own opinions of anything. It goes beyond just gender, but is also present among races, cultures, and social classes. Not to necessarily associate this with feminism, but just the idea of learning how to listen to the voice within ourselves and learning to appreciate all types of theories, even if indifferent to what we believe, can be beneficial to every type of individual.

Ashley Shelden: Lacanian Psychoanalysis

Thank you Ashley for being a "guest blogger" this week on the Lacanian Psychoanalysis. I feel that your overall break down of meaning and language, the Mirror Stage, and the death drive was very insightful. The affects of the death drive is of course is the shattering of the self and even all sign of reality as well. I think this can be seen in the first part of Mantissa first and foremost from the fact of Miles having a severe case of amnesia. This than leads to a very powerful and sexual fantasy dream he has with the female characters in the book. This is when the death drive through an orgasm is shown. Both characters are portrayed as have gone "beside themselves" and evidently there is a lost of reality and self for all. When MIles is subjected to "memory-restoring" sex therapy form the female doctor and nurse, his inability to comply with the act of mind-over-matter as the "assault" is in progress, is a representation of a mind/body split. The death drive has "destabilized the self and has threatened to undo all structures within which we try to make meaning of the world." According to Lacan, and shown in the book, this process is continuous since we are never able to actually grasp and have a fixed meaning. It is a continuos and everlasting search.

As far as evaluating the Lacanian psychoanalysis, i found  the mention of the metonymic chain very interesting and very relevant to everyday life. As far as the movement of desire is concerned, we as people/humans are continuously  craving or searching for something to fulfill a void that we have. It may be a new job, good grades in school, a lover, etc. If we are lucky enough to obtain whatever desire we are searching for, most of the time we find ourselves dissatisfied and then eventually searching for a different and new desire. This goes back to the concept of never finding a fixed meaning. It is always a search for something. Desire can not end because it can never be satisfied. I guess it goes back to the concept of always wanting what we don't have. We are always searching and looking for the new "thing". Something to fill that void that always seems to be present no matter what we do in life. Trying find that "self" and "who we are". An everlasting search of a "fictional identity", eventually realizing its illusion.

Baudrillard:Simulation:Matrix

First and foremost, I would like to thank Ken Rufo for contributing to our class blog and giving us an in-depth analysis of Baudrillard's work. Baudrillard is obviously a difficult thinker, which is the cause for the many interpretations of his work. He introduces to us the term simulation and the concept of representing a reality. I found it interesting how Rufo spoke about and related this topic back to Marxism and how capitalism in a way created a form of simulation for people by how it creates this false reality based on different ideologies and classifying or molding certain individuals into a certain part of society, leading them to believe that the class or "reality" way of living that society has set up for them is the real reality and the only possible reality they can have. He states how "wealth and materialistic objects" make lower class people "simulate" living like people in upper class.

Applying this to the Matrix, Neo has been living in a false reality all his life and Morpheus is the one who shows him the way; reality. The real world appears to be Zion which is where they are trying to go once they are able to escape from the false reality of the Matrix, which is a computer generated dream world. Now, I have seen this movie about fifty times and I am still unsure which world Neo was existing in before, but I know it wasn't the real. One time in the movie, once Neo goes through the process of being "re-born", he asks Morpheus "why do my eyes hurt?" and he replies "because you've never used them before". This is just emphasis on the fact that he has been blinded all this time and sheltered from reality and he is finally seeing the truth.

This is a perfect example of how our world works as well; just not as extreme and without all the costumes. The media is a perfect example or form of simulation.  It speeds up, copies, and makes "artificial things appear real." A lot of television is an advertisement trying to sell you something or persuade you to think in a certain way. It usually portray people to be jolly and always smiling. Food advertisements always have their food laid out perfect, with no spills and everyone is satisfied. It also tends to have a particular portrayal of different social and/or ethnic classes in a certain way as well. Most of us aren't able to have first-hand access to everything in the world, so the media is our only portal to see what goes on. So the way that the media portrays everything, leads us to believe that that is the reality of things. Now if w can differentiate between what is real and what is only an imitation, that's great, but then we are left with deciding how and who is liable to decide what can be defined as real, as our own reality.

Authorship

From this week's topic of authorship, we step away form the analysis of the text and tie in the role of the author as well. A lot of the time, we as readers or critics, take a text and give it a level of credibility, not just based on the structure of a text's discourse, but mainly because of the connection of the author. The author is the source of creativity and central meaning that we may find within a text. In Focault's What Is an Author, he states, "criticism should concern itself with the structures of a work, which are studied for their intrinsic and internal relationships"(1262). This statement displays a sense of turning away from the author and not seeing the author as the "genius" behind the formation of a text. This thought process is challenging the power of the author and the idealism that they hold the tie between reality and a text. He then brings up the point that while we are trying to break this connection between a text and the author, can the text now still be considered a work without that connection: "If an individual is not an author, what are we to make of those things he has written or said...is this not properly a work?" These two conflicting theories contribute the the controversy behind the concept of the author. We attempt to separate ourselves from the author to just be able to focus on the text, but there's always that temptation pulling us back because of social habit of tying the two together. When we go to the movies and we see that the director is Steven Spielberg, we are already giving the text a sense of credibility because we know his work, so we assume it will be a great movie. Even as we watch the movie, our previous notions might inhibit our own personal judgments of the movie. John Cassavetes and the Role of the Author mentions this as well in his analysis of movies. In this blog, the director is seen as the author of the movie or piece he has created. Here we are examining the relationship between representation and reality. The director has a vision and takes us back to how the author connect reality with what is placed and expressed within a text. An authorship analysis of a film would focus on acknowledging how the director has attributed to the film in an artistic way. To find and identify these qualities we are then forced to refer back to the author's previous works, recognizing notable patterns. Continuing this constant connection between a text and its author.

Derrida

Jacque Derrida comes off as a simple man with a complex mind. This man with fluffy grey hair and an over-sized over coat who uses humor as a distraction. A strategy used throughout the film to turn the attention from him to those who observe him through the lens. During his lecture he sarcastically announces to his class to not be "alarmed" by the "archiving machines" filming the class. When walking he comments on the style of the film guy or even just the simple fact that he should pay attention before he falls. 

I found the interviews to be the most humorous portions of the film. To me, this is when we truly get to see the real Derrida. I love the fact that he refuses to portray himself in the way that the film crew wants him to behave. He doesn't give the type of answers that an interviewer wants him to respond to. One instance, a woman interviewer asked him a general question about "love". He stated that he "could not answer such a generalized question. I'm not going to answer that." He then continued to slightly insult the interviewer by telling her what she should have asked or giving her several chances to re-phrase the question to give it more depth such as the difference between "the  who" and "the what" concepts of love. He basically could have conducted the interview by himself. 

He also has a good way of putting off a question that he has no interest of answering. He will either blatantly refuse to answer the question or will drift off into another realm of thought, distracting everyones' thought process. Derrida is good at leading the conversation so that he is able to answer the question on his own terms.

One thing I noticed though is that besides all the humor, Derrida always seems to manage to give insight on something. Whether it is about love, forgiveness, or the parts of the human body. Everything he says, whether it seems silly or doesn't make sense at first, has some type of meaning and message and I respect that most about Derrida. Even though I was not given the chance to meet him, I feel like I have learned a lot about him and a lot of insight on life that I has never even crossed my thought process.

Signifier & Signified

"The bond between the signifier and the signified is radically arbitrary" (R&W 35). This statement hold little meaning until it's main components are introduced. The "signifier" is represented by the sound of an image as well as the visual and hearing of the particular word. "Signified" is the actual concept of ideas. These ideas are not concrete without the combining of visuals and actual words  that represent a certain ideology of a concept or word. The relationship between the two is tied together through language. When we say that the terms are "arbitrary" we are basically saying that the meaning is agreed upon but there is no natural relationship. If we say the word "tree", without language, we couldn't connect the thought of tree with an actual image that fully gives the word its depth and overall meaning.

When we analyze this relationship, we run into the issue of differentiating value & signification. When I first looked at the two words, it was easy to consider them the same, but they're not. Signification is a pretty solid and non-conformed meaning. For value of a word, it can be exchanged and even compared. The value of a word is "determined by its environment". We go back to Saussure's sheep example. The French word "mouton" and the English word "sheep" are compared but hold different values. The word and concept of sheep is represented and has the same significance in both languages, but in English "sheep" can also mean other things and be represented with other words. In French this isn't the case. This is the same for several words or phrases. Two or more languages can have the same signifier, but not all languages are able to express it through words. For example if you tell a Spanish speaking person and an English speaking person to describe how their weekend was and they both attended a party, they both know the experience and the concrete visuals and sounds of "having a good time at a party", but one may not have the particular words within their language to describe that experience. 

When tying this back to Post-Structuralism, the relationship between the signifier and the signified is still arbitrary but this time it is considered stable. My personal understanding of this is that they are mostly going against structuralists' definition of difference: "we know what something is by what it is not". Our definition is stable because we accept the fact that there is more than one meaning within a text and that there is more than one overall distinction or "difference". This concept will not change and that is what makes it stable.

Hopefully I haven't further confused anyone. Just my gist of the lesson. Thanks for reading :)