Literary Theory Wednesday, Apr 22 2009 

Feminism and Post-Modern writing , , , , , , , sarahoims390 1:50 pm

Literary Theory – Varying ways to reading a text to find out what it means

In the profession of English literature, and to some entente in all humanities.

New criticism – the dominating way to interpret text, roughly 1920’s to 1950’s.  A way of seeking out various contradictions, and figuring out how those contradictions unified the text and created meaning.  As this develops, the idea of author fades away.

1960’s cultural revolution.

Psychoanalysis, unconscious: directs our thoughts and actions. Bring in the Oedipus complex, and work with exploring the latent content of dreams in order to understand yourself.

Psychoanalytic theory – reading a text with Freudian principles in mind.

Feminism -  Where you read texts to discover hidden or not hidden meanings, about female desire, empowerment, equality, sexuality, gender politics, and POWER.  and SUBJECTIVITY.  What makes a women a woman and a man a man?

Sometimes I think people look too much for symbolism in literature and by doing so fail to enjoy the simply beauty of it.  But maybe that’s because I’m not trained to go intricately in looking for symbolism and female power in a literature work, and automatically just enjoy a good story.

Your stance on how to read text (can) determine your place on the political spectrum

Text: poems, novels, plays, films, tv shows, movies, digital images, art, paintings, cds, music, graffiti, clothes merchandising, advertising, etc.  What is a text?  Cultural artifacts = text.

Queer Theory: gender issues, power, gender depictions, heteronormative ways of thinking.  How is queer identity constructed in the text?

Power, identity, subjectivity, political significance, cultural significance, types of representation (common to all types of reading)

Deconstruction: from French philosopher Jacques Derrida.  (when Howard speaks, he mimics this in a way)  This is where Howard’s theories of art come from, the 70’s onward.

Oppositions:

Logos:  speech, reason vs, writing or text.

Speech is privileged over writing (speech is closer to us)

Logocentric: we privilege faculty over reason over all else.  In the history of the West, reason has been used to judge what makes a human human.

In literature or philosophy, or in political reports, or expeditions to far way lands, non-white peoples are judged to be without reason and therefore no fully human.

British imperialism: slave trade between England and plantations all over the world.  Notion of the people they are trading of slaves have no reason, and we, as Brits, have reason and intellect.  The part of the brain in the non-whites for reason is missing.  In fact, if we don’t help them by enslaving them, they’ll wipe themselves out because they are barbaric.

Deconstruction: question meaning, to question stable notions of identity, to question stable notions of what a person is and so on.  The point is to challenge fundamental assumptions of Western culture.  What is art?  What is  a poem? Is a text a text?

Darwin and the advent of biological adaptation.  Different human development in various geographic areas that accounts for difference in a non-essentialist way.

 

Art and Lies create recognition and truth Friday, Apr 3 2009 

Post-Modern writing and art and lies , sarahoims390 2:08 pm

For some reason unbeknown to me, I felt a great affinity towards Art and Lies the more I read through it, and an even greater affinity for Jeanette Winterson once I read more excerpts of her work online. While the previous readings for the beginning of this semester were interesting sometimes and garnered thoughtful discussion, I found myself pressing my nose closer to Art and Lies when line after line would jump out at me with a recognition and agreement within me, almost as thought I had written it myself.

To serve as an example, here are all of the passages I underlined reading my first time through:

Instances of her making a statement, then immediately suggesting an alternative to her observation. I thought this was a really cool way of thinking: I say it’s this BUT look, is it THIS?feather

A feather had been used as a bookmark or perhaps the book had been used as a feather store.
A few lines of physics had been turned into a miracle, or a miracle has been turned into a few lines of physics.

So what other things in life can we switch around?  What thoughts or norms can I pull away from my normal consciousness and attempt to look at it in a unique way, opening doors for thoughts and worlds greater and bigger than the drab and common.   I guess I think drab=common.  I try to avoid this at all times, which is probably why Winterson’s writing struck me.   This feather is a bookmark….but wait…was this massive book just used for the feather?  Who is serving whom?

Other excerpts:

Having the ordinary desire to appear both socialable and wise. (Miss Mangle)

This story is striking for two reasons.  It is first a comment on the lengths that people will go for appearances.  Apparently there is an “ordinary “desire” to be seen as worthwhile to speak to, a person who is intelligent and bale to carry a soicalable conversation.  Is this such an ordinary desire that we cover up any imperfections in order to be social?  Also the desires themselves.  Not generous?  Not humble?  Not gracious? Not joyful or innovative?   Just able to be social and the appearance of being wise.  yikes.

The fatal combination of indulgence without feeling disgusts me.

Having no beliefs of their own they believe.

What do you believe if you have no beliefs?  Something, I would assume!  It’s like thought, no matter how hard you try, you always think.  No matter how hard you may try not to believe, maybe you just end up believing in a life that has no beliefs.

Protection always involves some sort of loss

A man with God inside him is still preferable to man with only his breakfast inside of him

What use is it to love God, to dig my hands I nthe dark red soil of my home, and feel for it a passion which is not in possession but in recognition? What use is it to believe that beauty is a Good, when metaphysics has sold her in the market place?

More vivid, more graphic; more pornographic even, is the newsman’s brief. He must make us feel, but a body punched and punched again, we take the blows and do not even notice the damage they have done.

When I read this ^^ statement, I pumped my fist in the air and shouted “yes!”  Not quite literally…but notions like this have been tossed around my conscious for a while.   It’s ridiculous what we are exposed to, what we can handle, and now what we require to be moved or shaken.   It’s scary to not know the damage that has been done to me, even when I know there has been lots of blows already.

What’s left? Romance. Love’s counterfeit free of charge to all.

He was becoming the thing he feared.

Are the things we fear fearful to us because they are a part of us already?  A part of us that we don’t like, or maybe are trying to get rid of, so we fear it and even scorn it in others.

Can I? Can I speak my mind or am I dumb inside a borrowed language, captive of bastard thoughts? What of me is mine?

These passages are satisfying, they sound off thoughts or ideas I may have been able to put together if I had been blessed with the gift of writing. Winterson writes in a circle of questions and answers, musings and proclamations.

Sometimes her questions escalate to a more frantic or simply just a broader contemplation, like when she asks “Can I? Can I follow…., “ and then the concluding and resounding question stemming from her musing “What of me is mine? This is an intriguing question amidst thoughts about what langue is
And of course, the passage from class discussion:

It’s awkward, in a society where the cult of the individual has never been preached with greater force, and where many of our collective ills are the result of that force, to say that the Self to which one must attend.

The cult of the individual has indeed taken over our entire society.  Even in the realm of faith, the cult of the individual has wormed it’s way in an proclaimed that it’s okay to put God in a box, to make Him who you want Him, and kind of live a buffet Christianity, picking and choosing the aspects and practices that fit our individual lifestyle.  The cult of the individual has invaded and ruined our society, our sense of cohesion  and our ability to truly work together.  No matter how many times a teacher or coach has “there is no i in team,” we all just decide to call it an alliance, which has an “i” in it, and we move on in the same opposite directions we’ve been moving in.

What DO you do?  Is there a desire to be socialable and wise, and reply with a prestiguous job and some sort of other random fact or braggable item?  Do people throw off this desire and allow their innermost self to answer what they do:  I’m a gardener, I’m a writer, I’m a mother.

 

Jeannette Winterson Monday, Mar 30 2009 

Post-Modern writing and art and lies , , , , , , sarahoims390 1:25 pm

Moving out of the 19th century finally!

To explore Jeannette Winterson and Art and Lies

A word about  post modernism: It juxtaposes things wihtout explaining them, it’s very collage-like.  Interested in disrupting what you would normally think.

Novels began to be written around 1700 (late). Short stories were in existence in late romantic era, in 1800.  Novels very quickly become a genre.  (“genre fiction” means it’s formulaic.)

The literary canon has been blown apart!   Or so we would like to hope.

What is great art?  Some people want to abandon this concept, and it is getting wider as we add women, racial diversity, etc.   “As soon as we include women writers in our studies, we decide to forgo the concept of great art.   Thanks a lot!”

Greatness is far too narrowly defined, people are afraid to look at it in a broad away because Stand by Me, from Youtube then we have to pay attention and recognize it in our neighbors.

What is great art, or great writers?  Emerson says something cool about this: “when someone reads something, or hears a great author, they get their own alienated majesty.”

On diluted projections: you have great thoughts and great desires, artistically beautiful sentences, drawings, etc.  Then you go out and adore the art and adore the great artists (ie Shakespeare, Keats, etc), and the only way you worship them is because you have projected yourself onto them.  You are loving yourself that is in them. It’s almost as though we can’t bare to see how great we are, so we have to see our greatness in others.
Part of the problem is our forms of attention.  For example, business majors get a list at Miami of the great literature to pay attention to. I want to know the greats, I want to read them, just tell me! Thinking about the great art requires attention, requires effort to not just be force fed and fall into what other people define as great art.

Consider everything you read as great art, for the rest of the semester. Too…much….thinking! I understand this, but still, sometimes there is just too much to think about. It can get overwhelming to think about this concept, let alone putting it into practice (by donning my “art goggles”). I would much rather be hit by art, blown away by it, stopped by it, by moments of profoundness. But I guess how often really will this happen without conscious attention to that fact that everything or anything could be art?

I think art to me is God. Or God is art. Either way, I see God as the ultimate creator and artist. Therefore, I see beauty and art in everything. As general as that sounds, it gives me the ultimate potential to see art, intelligent design, and beautiful creation in objects, nature, and people themselves. In this way, I think it’s easier and closer to my heart to see the world as a result of a loving Father and Creator, and from that to see everything as art, instead of just for the sake of trying to see art.