Life is like a box of chocolates...

I really enjoyed Ken Rufo’s post on Baudrillard and his theories. Ken was able to convey complex thoughts in a way I could grasp and understand, so thank you so much Ken for helping us out!

When learning how Baudrillard basically said that other philosophers did not create terms to describe things, but they created things when they made the terms, it made me really like him. I don’t really know why I liked this statement so much, but it really made me think of how theorists create a term and then a whole study is built upon this term, such as the “Freudian slip”. Yet, even Baudrillard made up his own terms.

I also really enjoyed this post because of the way that Rufo described the terms Baudrillard coined. His examples made me think of instances in my life where I have tried to experience the hyper real.

This summer, my boyfriend Tony and I went on a vacation up and down the east coast via Greyhound, and at one point stopped in the lovely city of Savannah, Georgia. I had read all of the little pamphlets and touristy books I could get my hands on, and found that the scene in Forest Gump where Forest tells his story on the bench at the bus station was in Savannah. The bench was located in Chippewa Square, so Tony and I thought it would be fun to find this square and take a picture on the bench. Once we found the square, we could not seem to find the bench. Racking my mind for the image of Forest on the bench while looking at the actual area was incredibly strange. I was looking for a copy of this picture I had in my head. However, I would never find it because it was just a simulation of realty, and I was trying to make it a part of my reality. When reading Rufo’s description of going to a national park and trying to find that spot where a famous picture was taken, was describing exactly what I was doing. I was experiencing the hyper real.

After a local (homeless man who did not ask for money until after he gave us some useful information) told us that the bench was placed in the visitors center due to fear of theft, he showed us the flower patch where the bench was. Although we were disappointed the actual bench wasn’t there, we found some happiness in the fact that we found the scene of the movie.

When Rufo says, “ So the real you discover will always be an effect of the simulation, a copy or non-copy of it.” I was really able to apply my Forest Gump experience to what Baudrillard is trying to say.

Better late than never (part 2)

Ok, so here we go…

As I was strolling through the blogs of different academic blogs, I was trying to find something that directly related to authorship. While searching, and searching, I could not find too much that really caught my eye and made me think, “That’s Barthes!” Or, “That’s Foucault!” Then, I realized that there was something that occurred in many blogs, even our own theory and academy blog; bloggers having other authors post on their blogs.

Isn’t this interesting? Although we feel that our own blog is our own writing space, if we want, we can have another author write on our space. Why would we want this intrusion? Because if you know of someone that has an idea that you want to show people, it does not matter who writes it, as long as the idea gets out there. In our class blog,http://theoryandacademy.blogspot.com/ we had a guest lecture write a blog because Dr. M wanted us to hear his ideas on Marxism. Sure, she could have just paraphrased him, but what difference would it make, as long as the point got across to us, the readers?

Another blog that I found that did this was Bitch PhD, http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/. Some of her blogs are written referring to Bitch PhD as a third person, so we can only assume that someone else is writing that post. (Or, she just really enjoys writing in third person.) Yet in other posts, she feels the need to introduce herself and say, “Yes, it is me this time, no one else.” I found this especially interesting because of the way she felt that she needed to make sure that everyone knew she was the author. Where Dr. M basically “killed” herself as the author of her blog while letting someone else take over, Bitch PhD made herself become alive in the post. Part of me does not really know what to make of this discovery, but the other part of me wants to figure it out. What is the point of making it known that you are the author when trying to show people an idea? It is the idea that counts, not who has thought of the idea. After reading Barthes, I really get the idea that the language should be the one speaking and not some person.



ps- I couldn't figure out how to do the links and I think it is because that I have a mac. Any suggestions?

Better late than never (part 1)

The whole idea of the author being dead feels right to me. As strange as that sounds, I never went to the bookstore to pick out a book to read, and go straight to my favorite author’s books. The name of the author has been generally irrelevant to me in the books that I like. In high school, we only read the books that were by well-known authors; we studied the writing styles of authors such as Dickens, and Hemmingway. I never felt the need to study the author; I always just wanted to study the story and the characters of the text. I am fascinated by the way we can relate to people who do not exist in the real world and how the story is brought to life by the language of the book.

So, when I was reading Barthes, “The Death of the Author”, the phrase that struck a cord with me was when he was referring to Mallarme and said, “It is language which speaks, not the author”. The author is just the person who came up with the words, but the language is the story. We do not need to know the history of the author to understand the characters and the plot of literature. Ideas can stand by themselves, and they do not need a physical being to hold an idea. The words are enough.

I felt like Barthes helped me understand this idea of the dead author, and I was able to grasp it well.

More to come once I go deeper into the blogging world.

Derrida

This past week I have really enjoyed watching Derrida and how he acts in front of the camera. Also, I finally realized that he is one of the guys on the front of the Barry book! One of the things that I really picked up on in this biography was the fact that Derrida was very aware of the film crew and that his life was being recorded.

I think that there is always some sort of irony when someone is trying to document anything that is true. Everyone is bound to act a different way when they know they are being watched then when they know they are alone. There is no possible way to record the “true” Derrida if he knows that he is being recorded. The directors must have realized this and I think they did take advantage of it. They wanted to see how he would act when put in the awkward situation of having a camera in your face all day. They wanted to know if he would shut down and not enjoy the experience, or if he would open up and enjoy having the spotlight on him.

The directors wanted the biography to be obvious. They constantly had shots just of the camera equipment and of Derrida looking at himself in an interview. The purpose of the biography was to record Derrida, not to tell of his life, but to just let him speak. This format is a metaphor about some of Derrida’s ideas but it also represents the directors. When Derrida told the director that this was her biography, it really made me think. At first I did not really get it, but then I realized that he meant the director’s style and form showed in the biography. It displayed her talents as a director just as much as it displayed the ideas of Derrida.

Overall, I really enjoyed this movie and I found it really interesting to see how he responded to the “American” questions. I got completely pulled in by him, and I liked the format of the obvious biography.

Structuralism

I have been having a hard time figuring out Saussure and structuralism. I thought I got it, but once I read Saussure, I felt even more confused. However, I think that I was able to grasp onto one of his concepts: "The bond between the signifier and the signified is radically arbitrary"

At first this statement puzzled me beyond words, but after class and after looking at it for a while, I think I understand it. In my persuasive strategies class my freshman year, the professor asked us to draw a tree. No one in the class drew the same thing, however all of us had the basics of what a tree was supposed to look like. The thing we call a tree is the signifier, and the actual thing outside is the signified. I remember that I drew something I would have drawn when I was much younger. My idea of drawing a tree was a big poofy thing as the leaves and branches, with a straight trunk and a squirrel hole in the middle of the trunk. The person next to me had a tree with no leaves at all. Since we all had different views on what a tree looks like, that is what was arbitrary in this exercise. People can have different words for an object, but still mean the same thing as what another person thinks that object is. Everything depends on how we perceive it to be. This is why no one is ever going to have one picture of a tree that is the definition of a tree and it is what everyone thinks about when they think of a tree. We all pick out different things than other people do.

I am really hoping that I have gotten this statement down, and I also hope that studying post-structuralism is going to help me understand Saussure better!

Some thoughts on “Some Thoughts on Ideology”

I really enjoyed Proffer Craig’s lecture this week. It was easy to read and it really made me think about how I always go into to Urban Outfitters and I love the atmosphere there. They have this edgy trendy feel that has appealed to me since I first walked into the store as a high school student. The one thing that has always struck me about that store is how it targets the student age, (whether in high school or college) but has prices that are someone with a good salary can afford. Whenever I go there, I can only get one thing at a time. The way that they target students like me is by using that idea of rebellion against the system. The atmosphere of the store tells its shoppers that by buying these clothes, not only are you going to look super trendy, but while trying them on in our “urban” dressing rooms, you will feel a sense of rebellion with a bit of rock and roll.

I actually remember seeing them selling the Communist Manifesto at one point. I never really thought about it at the time, but I felt like something was off about that book being in a commercial place. After reading Professor Craig’s lecture, I realized that everything he talked about is what was unsettling to me when I saw the book. I love irony, so this story and analysis was so much fun for me to read. I completely understand the point the store was trying to do; get you to buy the jeans for the rebellion of it all. However, I found it hilarious if you actually understand what the manifesto is about. I think this also shows how gullible American society is. By buying jeans because you saw this rebellious manifesto next to it, (even if you do not think you bought it because of the book) it shows how Americans do not understand Marxism in general. Students seem to think of it as a threat to their parents generation and thus, they want to use Marxism to rebel against their parents. But, in by doing so, they are contributing to the Capitalist society that Marxism is against. The irony is beautiful.

I just wanted to thank Professor Craig for writing this guest lecture. It really helped me understand what I was studying a lot more, and it made me think of how to look at my world in a Marxist way. I found in interesting to sit back and analyze my own life and how I have given into the irony of stores like Urban Outfitters. The next time I go there, or to a store like it, my eyes will be darting looking for subtle undertones like Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

Human Liberalism vs. Marxism

This past week, it has been interesting reading about Marxism right after the lectures and readings on Liberal Humanism. The two theories most definitely differ in many ways. A liberal humanist perspective says that we should not look at the text from any angle, but we should just look into the text itself to find its meanings. A Marxist view says that we should look at a text by understanding where the author ranks in society, and what is going on in society at the time the text was written. This distinct definition between the two theories shows how Marxism challenges Liberal Humanism. The idea that we should look at literature this way, comes from the tenants of Liberal Humanism. The second tenant says that the literary text contains meaning within itself. Liberal humanist believe that the reader should not be looking to any outside source to find the meaning of the text. When reading a text, you should not even try to figure out what the author was trying to convey, you should just look at what the actual text is saying.
In Marxism, you should investigate many things before trying to understand the text. Marxists look at the world around them and try to relate the text to the society that they live in. They look for class structures and how they affect the society. Also, they find out the social status of the actual author. If the author is a poor man, and in a lower class in society, the Marxist view will look at the text much differently than if the author was a rich man. They try to understand the text by understanding what was going on in the authors’ life and the society around him or her. Then, once that has been evaluated, they look to themselves and try to relate the text to their own society.
Another tenant I found that interested me was the fourth tenant: human nature does not change; it is constant. In Marxism, the point of most of the literature is to change the way that humans tend to act. The view shows humans changing for the better of the society. Change from the norm would be good in a Marxist view because then the infrastructure of society would be changed. Liberal Humanists say that human nature cannot change, and therefore neither could social classes. There will always be the rich, and there will always be the poor. In an ideal communist society, there would be no classes; everyone would get as much out of society as they put into society.
I found that overall, Liberal Humanism is much more concrete than Marxism. You do not need a society to look at a text through the Liberal Humanist view, and you do not need anything other than the text to support your opinions on the text. With Marxism, the ideas are much more abstract. The reader needs to be able to understand the social classes and the society that they live in and what the author lived in. As I go on in my studies, I am interested to find if any other theories will be able to relate themselves to Liberal Humanism instead of conflicting with it as Marxism does.