Does This Bike Come in Pink?

Thank you, Tonya Krouse, for participating in our blog. Your straightforward description of the stages of Feminist theory cleared up many misunderstandings concerning the theory.

Originally, I would never consider myself a feminist. This is not due to stereotypes. I would not consider myself a feminist because although I often analyze media and art in the feminist criticism I do not attempt to politically change cultural and social ideas surrounding gender. I am concerned with the way women are portrayed in the media but do not protest the media as a result of my concern. I suppose I would consider myself a feminist if it were to follow the general definition of what it is to be a feminist: someone who believes women should have equal rights.

As far as the question of who can “do” feminist theory, I believe any person has the ability to participate in the theory. To do feminist theory “is to embrace a certain kind of identity as a thinker” (Krouse). This to me means someone who watches the Real Housewives of Orange County while realizing the ways in which the role of women play out in relation to their husbands. Instead of watching this T.V. show with a certain kind of blindness only for entertainment, the feminist critic would be concerned with the implications of the role of women according to Bravo and the producers of the show and the negative impacts those implications would result in in the viewer’s lives.

Postfeminism offers a different interpretation of The Real Housewives of Orange County. Instead of becoming concerned about the role these women play in the show (dramatic women who shop with their husbands credit cards for a living,) Postfeminists relish in the “new” version of the housewife, a sassy woman empowered through her acquired fortune who can decide to order take-out instead of slaving over the oven all day.

Unfortunately, I feel that this is the way the media is being portrayed lately. After watching the first five minutes of The Real Housewives last night, I had to leave my house because I was disgusted when a wife asked a salesman if a particular Harley Davidson motorcycle model her elderly husband was buying her was a “girlie” bike. Let’s just say that after watching it I couldn’t breathe another minute near the television.

Down to the Last Syllable

Thank you, Ashley Sheldon, for assisting us in trying to understand Lacan.

We discussed in class our thoughts on why Miles Green was unable to voice his disapproval during the “treatment” he was receiving towards the end of part I in Mantissa. Using Ashley Shelden’s guest lecture on Lacan for support, I argue that it is because sexual satisfaction and identity are contradictory. Miles Green at first does not know who he is. In fact, it takes him a while to realize he is an “I.” It is only through the mirror stage, when he sees other people, that he realizes he is an I. However, he does not find this identity, because Lacan says that we are never able to reach our identity. Instead, through the mirror stage, Miles Green realizes that he is something fragile that is easily breakable. His refusal to participate in the treatment relates to his anxiety about not having a solid identity.

When Miles Green is forced to participate in the treatment (although the muse tells him he does in fact have a choice in the matter,) he is unable to voice his disapproval or concern. The treatment, or the sexual act, is an act of seizing the search for identity. All Miles Green works for in the earlier passages through language is shattered in one moment of orgasm. The death drive exists while the symbolic (language or search for identity) cannot.

And as we see this jouissance in the novel, we also see the death of the author. Of course this death is figurative. The doctor tries to encourage Miles Green to orgasm: “Keep going, don’t stop. Right to the very last syllable” (Fowles 41). In this moment of the death drive Fowles introduces the notion that language has something to do with their act. “There was a little gasp from her, as if she were the one who had really given birth” (Fowles 41). We find out from nurse after treatment had finished that through the death drive a novel was born. Therefore we have the death of the author and the birth of the novel.

The Abyss

There is nothing outside of language. That is, if you are a structuralist. John Fowle’s protagonist in Mantissa seem to be just this. When the novel opens, Miles Green awakes from a coma. His health is measured by tying the signified to the signifier. “Her mouth began to announce names, people’s names, street names, place names, disjointed phrases. Some were repeated. He had perhaps heard them before, as words; be he had no idea what relevance they were supposed to have, nor why they should increasingly sound like evidence of crimes he had committed.” (pg 5). The medical world has put an importance on language. To make a connection between the signified and the signifier will determine the health of the patient. Saussure argues that this relationship is arbitrary. That is, it doesn’t exist. The signifier (sound, image) and the signified (concept or idea) really have nothing to do with each other.

We see this idea illustrated in the conscious of Miles Green. The arbitrary relationship between the signifier and the signified is described as an abyss. “He tried to attack word to person, person to self; failed…Nothing. No past, no whence or when. The abyss perceived, and almost simultaneously, but irremediability. He strained desperately, a falling man, but whatever he was trying to reach or grasp was not there.” (pg 5). Miles Green, after falling unconscious for a period of time, is able to recognize that there is no relationship between the signified and the signifier.

So what is John Fowles trying to tell us? Is it a commentary arguing for or against structuralism? We see many theories such as psychoanalytic theory being introduced into the novel in the following passages. However, one cannot miss the structuralist ideas being illustrated in the opening passages of the novel. It seems as if Miles Green may be designed to be a hero; the absurd practices of the medical world (of course a metaphor for a literary idea) seems to be something Fowles is arguing against. Perhaps later in the novel this uncertainty will be explained.

Quite the Contrary

Thank you, Ken Rufo, for contributing to this course so we can better understand Jean Baudrillard. It seems to me like Baudrillard stated a couple things over his lifetime that he later rethought about. Instead of seeing this as a fault, I give a theorist more credit for thinking critically about their own thoughts enough to jump to and from different pools of theories.

I have to agree with Baudrillard in his work Political Economy of the Sign that Marx “goofs up, badly” when he assumes that in the absence of a capitalist regime a laborer will work because he enjoys being useful. Instead of focusing on the production of goods, Baudrillard argues for the focus to be on the consumption. When we have a lack of competition and the laborer works because he enjoys it, all we have left is production. Baudrillard says that capitalism does not care about the production of goods but instead cares about how many goods are being consumed. So if capitalism does care about production at all it is only that production keeps producing so more and more can be consumed.

After Ken mentioned the “L’Esprit du Terrorisme” I decided to read the work. It is easy to point the finger at Baudrillard after reading this text and say he is anti-American – but let’s look at the bigger picture, the man makes some great points. He says that when we think of terrorism, we think of America and Islam because we have a visual confrontation and we are able to make this idea of terrorism concrete. He argues that terrorism is not a clash of cultures, and is not limited to America and Islam.

He focuses on America because of the attack on September 11th and because we are a hegemonic super-power. Baudrillard says that now that we are a single world order, we find ourselves “grappling with antagonistic forces diffused throughout the very heart of the global itself, present in all contemporary convulsions.” For instance, he mentions that if Islam were the super-power, Islam would have a terrorist problem. The attack on September 11th was not so much a personal attack on the United States as much as it was an attack against globalization.

I would like to end my post with the most interesting and thought-provoking quote in “L’Esprit du Terrorisme.” Baudrillard states, “We naively believe that the progress of Good, its climb to power in all areas (science, technique, democracy, rights of man) corresponds to a defeat of Evil. Nobody seems to have understood that Good and Evil climb to power at the same time and in the same move. The triumph of the one does not imply the vanquishing of the other; indeed it is quite the contrary.” I would like to know what people think of this quote, whether they have read Baudrillard’s work, or, more interestingly, they haven’t.

Tissues of Culture

Roland Barthes, in his text “The Death of the Author,” explains that we have the idea of the author due to our capitalist ideology and positivism (belief in one truth). Barthes is a cultural materialist. Cultural materialism is concerned with how we work within a power that limits us, and how we affect it. For example, the power imposed on us can be seen as capitalist hegemony. We are surrounded by its power and we can move and have freedom within it. Cultural materialism is concerned about how we work in this system. So the author is used as a type of power imposed on us over the text. Barthes is interested in how we work to interpret within this limiting power the idea of the author has over us. He explains that the author is, linguistically, “never more than the instance writing, just as I is nothing other than the instance saying I: language knows a ‘subject’, not a ‘person’, and this subject, empty outside of the very enunciation which defines it, suffices to make language ‘hold together’…” The I is not a person, his physical self, but instead is a combination of all the ideologies power has imposed on us. Therefore when the author writes, it is not his own ideas being shared, but instead cultural ideology. The “text is a tissue of quotation drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.” Barthes explains that the authors ideas are not truly his own. He is merely writing his thoughts down from a “ready-formed dictionary” that has already been created for us.

Culture Cat explains in her blog http://culturecat.net/node/575:
Barthes argues that texts consist of "multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation." The field of composition has moved from the understandingof authorship as a solitary act resulting in a product owned by an individual to an understanding of authorship as a weaving together of other texts the writer has read and voices he or she has heard in conversation.

This explanation is related to Barthes when he says that the text is just a tissue of quotations and signs drawn from culture. The meaning of the work is always looked for in the idea of the author, a single voice of a person, in the text. This is not what we should be concerned with, Barthes says. The single voice of a person does not exist in the text. It is what is underlying in our culture, the ideology of power such as capitalism.

...Exploding the Beams Supporting the Shafts...

I would like to begin this film response with a quote from the beginning of the documentary Derrida.
“…work of miners who explode the beams supporting the shafts”
I thought this was a clever way to describe Derrida’s work and development of deconstructionism. I like to think of the text as a mining shaft and Derrida as the miner that destroys the support in the shaft. Instead of searching for unity and symmetry in the text as structuralism does, Derrida searches for the contradictions of the text. He reads “against the grain” and takes apart the structure of the text to find what it is saying and not saying. Therefore, he explodes the beams supporting what we thought the text was before searching for inconsistency and contradiction.

To say that Derrida has a “different” way of analyzing not only text, but life, would be an understatement. I must say, however, that the man makes sense. I particularly like his thoughts about love. Derrida asks if we love someone for who they are or for what they are. It would seem that the answer for many would be we love the “who” of a person, but Derrida makes a convincing argument that when love is lost, it is often for the things that a person is and is not. Therefore, the argument remains open, although I got the feeling through the documentary that Derrida believes in the “what” concerning love. In correlation with Derrida's theory of the "what" and love, he explains that love is narcissistic. Narcissism is a person's concern with his or her self, and love is narcissistic because it looks for the "what" in other people. They look for qualities that fulfill their own needs in a relationship. If one doesn't agree with this theory, he/she only needs to go to eharmony.com and search the profiles of people searching for potential life partners (their success may depend on whether the other person enjoys dogs, hiking, or goes to bed too late). Internet dating websites are a perfect example of Derrida's concern with love and narcissism.

I am more interested than anything about Derrida’s pessimistic views concerning forgiveness. The easier forgiveness is to give, the less it means in form. The harder it would be to give, the more meaningful it is. Derrida says that because of these truths, true or ‘pure’ forgiveness is impossible to give. If the forgiveness is given with the promise of change and repenting, the forgiveness is directed at a subject and not at the person being forgiven. Therefore, there is no true forgiveness. Derrida’s argument makes sense. I think this is a very negative way of thinking but nonetheless a fascinating thought by a fascinating man.

The Difficulties of Speech

The documentary Derrida's attempt to engage Derrida in an interview is ironic and entertaining to say the least. The philosopher has written many books and essays explaining deconstruction, and he makes it very obvious that he disagrees with the entire interview process. Why?

Thinking back to Saussure and his theory, he states in Course in General Linguistics that linguistics exist in two forms: speech and writing, and the latter’s only purpose is to assist the first. Saussure’s structuralist idea troubles Derrida. In Of Grammatology, he argues that the written word is of equal, if not more importance to language.

So, during the interview process, is it possible that Derrida is bothered by explaining his thoughts out loud, as if it will reach an audience more effectively than if he wrote them down?

He states in the documentary Derrida multiple times that the documentary and interview process is not natural, and even goes so far to mention that if the film crew was not there he would not have changed out of his pajamas all day. He has trouble answering personal questions, perhaps because he would rather his work be taken in without the idea of the individual “Derrida” interfering. Derrida makes it clear that he would rather speak about his ideas concerning death, loss, mourning, etc. instead of focusing on his personal life as a philosopher. Whatever Jacques Derrida decided to answer in the documentary, the very notion of Derrida opposing the interview process will assist me and many others in following readings concerning deconstructionism.