Within the excerpt of Discipline and Punish reprinted in our anthology, Foucault connects the rise of the disciplines and surveillance to the rise of the Enlightenment discourse of liberties as well as to the rise of capitalism. This connection directly opposes an impression that I think I was supposed pick up somewhere or other: the impression that a system based on liberty (aka “democracy”) and capitalism directly oppose and combat the disciplinarity and surveillance of “other” regimes (whether they tend toward fascism or socialism…irrelevant). I believe I (we?) have been taught of a historical period in which this opposition played itself out on a world-wide stage. The Cold War, yeah? The world split between West and East, and on a smaller, physically-bounded level West Germany (FRG) and East Germany (GDR), and again between West and East Berlin, with the two halves divided by one wall (though there were actually two walls).
In view of this physically manifested distinction and the political, social, economic, ideological importance placed upon it, what results from Foucault’s argument that “each makes the other possible and necessary; each provides a model for the other,” that “in fact, the two processes –the accumulation of men and the accumulation of capital – cannot be separated?” (564) Maybe what Foucault would have hoped for: a reevaluation of the framework constituting discussions of the Cold War and East and West and a blurring of the distinctions we’ve been taught to believe in.
The Lives of Others captures, on film, life in the GDR. In the film, however, the viewer can see both the typically upheld image of the communist East and an image that complicates the other’s clear-cut, discreet unity. The story centers on Stasi Captain Wiesler’s surveillance of the playwright Dreyman and the changes he undergoes through this surveillance. Even in this set up the opposition between surveillance and capitalism is clearly created along lines of East and West. Wiesler participates as a member of East Germany’s secret police in a system of hierarchical surveillance. And while he is, on the one hand, the seer of Dreyman, he is also the seen. The scenes that show Wiesler’s own apartment depict it as impersonal and cell-like (the walls unpainted, the furniture spartan and constructed from particle board, the food pre-portioned and pre-packaged) bringing to mind the segmented, individualized cells of the peripheral ring in the Panopticon.
But disputing the division between East and West does not require disputing this presence of surveillance or discipline; to accept Foucault’s argument one must accept that everyone everywhere lives in a system based upon discipline and surveillance as opposed to the predisciplinary system supported by spectacle. Instead, to dispute the distinction between East and West involves exposing the West within the East and the East within the West. So in the film, there must be shown characteristics of the West. This mixing of East and West can best be seen in the relationships of West and East German artists and the ways in which these relationships crossed the border. Dreyman communicates and receives visits from a West German man affiliated with the West German magazine Der Spiegel. The man smuggles in a West German typewriter on which Dreyman writes an expose detailing suicide in the GDR that is to be published in Der Spiegel, in the West. Additionally, the presence of a black market in illegal prescription drugs and the presence of prostitution betray the incomplete dominance of communism and the failure of the communist State to eliminate individual consumerist tendencies within the GDR. It is possible, then, to see the capitalist and other characteristics typically limited to the West as being present within the East during the Cold War.
Conversely, the qualities used by the West to characterize and demonize the East (as a state of surveillance and discipline, devoid of the (consumerist) liberties present in the West), can likewise be found in the West. Like Wiesler’s apartment, the division of West Germany (and West Berlin) between the French, British, and Americans into three occupation zones echoes the division of cells within the Panopticon’s peripheral ring. West Germany, though representative of freedom, democracy and capitalism, was divided and controlled according to Foucault’s theory of discipline in the same way (though perhaps not to the same degree) as its eastern counterpart.
My previous observations, I think, can be seen to support Derrida’s conceptualizing of the supplement as well as investigating Foucault’s arguments. It would seem I’ve been examining discipline and capitalism not as distinct systems and discursive objects that, as Foucault argues, make each other possible and necessary, but as two concepts occupied by the history of thought that constitute them, much like Derrida’s discussion of speech and writing. In line with that discussion, the opposition between the discipline of East and the freedom of West, between the communism of East and the capitalism of West, are impossibilities; the terms are tied up in each other and cannot exist without each other; the supplement is always already present at the origin.
Maybe, then, the attempt in the West to dissect and oppose Liberty from and to Discipline (as Foucault pairs the two) results in the impossible separation constructed between East and West in the Cold War. Maybe it was the-condemnation-of the-evils-of communism-in-order-to-praise-the-glories-of-capitalism as a simultaneous masking of the already-presence of all of those communist “evils” within the West.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Creative Nonfiction and Crabgrass
In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari write that, “A book itself is a little machine; what is the relation (also measurable) of this literary machine to a war machine, love machine, revolutionary machine, etc. – and an abstract machine that sweeps them along? We have been criticized for over quoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machines the literary machine can be plugged into, must be plugged into in order to work.” (379). This quote and many others in this essay reassured me why my favorite form of writing, to read and to write, is the personal essay.
Essays are dated back at least to classical Greece and Rome. However, Michel de Montaigne, the “father of the essay”, was the first to actually give the form of writing the name of essay. The word essay comes from the French word, essayer: to attempt, to try. As Phillip Lopate wrote in his essay, “What Happened to the Personal Essay?”, “Montaigne understood that, in an essay, the track of a person’s thoughts struggling to achieve some understanding of a problem is the plot. The essayist must be willing to contradict himself (for which reason an essay is not a legal brief), to digress, even to risk ending up in a terrain very different from the one he embarked on.”
I have often found myself quoting the essayist, Anne Lamott. She is always honest and blunt and every sentence is loaded with sarcasm and personality. That is why, when I read her work and I relate to it, I feel real comfort. I put her work into an abstract machine and, even if her experiences are not exactly like my own, I at least have the comfort of knowing that others have succeeded in emotionally or physically pulling themselves through situations and to the other side. And when I write creative nonfiction, I write to get a better understanding for myself of what I’m writing, but also, of why I feel the need to write it. I, like Montaigne, understand that when I start writing, I don’t really know where it is going to end up.
In class, when we discussed A Thousand Plateaus, we reviewed vocabulary and phrases from the reading. One of the phrases was “A book has neither object nor subject”. We discussed in class that nothing is definite and that time doesn’t apply to ideas in books, since they take on new meanings for everyone and reach everyone in different ways. We then related this to crab grass.
I like the image of creative nonfiction being like really bad crab grass. I am more than familiar with crab grass. We’ve actually had this ongoing rocky relationship since my early years. Gardening in my dad’s back yard has never been pleasant since crab grass staked its domain years before we moved into the house. It stretches across the backyard to each fence, to the back of the house, to the garage, and encircles every tree and plant. There is no center to it. I have no idea where it began. It just is. That’s a lot like creative nonfiction. The year of a creative nonfiction piece means nothing. Whether it was written two centuries ago or yesterday, it still speaks to everyone. George Lukàcs said that, “The essay is a judgment, but the essential, the value-determining thing about it is not the verdict (as is the case with the system), but the process of judging.” And so, even people who don’t directly relate to the nonfiction writing, can at least relate or react to the process that the writer is making since, like crab grass, creative nonfiction stretches and is able to speak to all types of people.
My favorite type of creative nonfiction is the personal essay. Just as creative nonfiction is a lot like crab grass, the personal essay, essentially, is crab grass. This reminded me of a portion of “What Happened to the Personal Essay?”. The personal essay is an odd genre, because its form is everywhere. Personal essays can be seen in New Journalism, autobiographical-political mediations, nature and ecological-regional writing, literary criticism, travel writing, humorous pieces, and food writing. Throughout the years, the personal essay has truly stretched itself throughout all kinds of writing. I was reminded of this when discussing our reading in class that, although there is difference in literature, they are all somehow connected.
The phrase “The rhizome is antigeneology” was also discussed in class. My understanding was that there is no linear progression. Also, the word “plateau” was discussed which, as I understood, referred to there being no beginning or end in history. Whether I am reading Lopate whose essay was published in 1969, or Deleuze and Guattari who wrote from the 1960s-1980s, their ideas still apply now, in 2009. Their beliefs are not old. Just as both works were implying, the readers make of writing whatever applies best to them. No matter their age or the time, writing can always be personally applied. And this is where my love for creative nonfiction and the personal essay comes from. It’s thrilling knowing that writing, no matter how personal, will always have some sort of effect on another whether they read it the day it is published or hundreds of years later. Our work is just waiting to be plugged into other “machines”, as Deleuze and Guattar call them, in order to be understood in another way. This shows that history isn’t linear. History is now. History is our future. Whatever has happened in a previous time is still in effect to this day. There is no linear.
Truly, literature is crab grass. And that is why I like it.
Be careful what you say, you might be talking to a theorist
Over break I was getting my hair cut, and my hairdresser (Amy) was asking me the usual questions. Are you on spring break? Where are you going to school? What are you majoring in? After I’d given my answers: yes, Scripps College, and English, I received a reply that was very surprising. Amy told me that she doesn’t “believe in college” and that she thought it was “a waste of time” using her husband’s first two degrees in history, and interdisciplinary studies as examples (his third degree in landscape architecture was acceptable to her). Then she asked when would analyzing a book ever help someone in the ‘real’ world? I almost laughed out loud and thanked her because her statements were almost TOO perfect for this blog.
I wondered what Althusser would say about these statements in reference to the “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”. Amy’s belief about the educational system, specifically college demonstrates that she has “the absolute guarantee that everything really is so”; basically she knows she’s right (701). Of course this seems rather given, it is her opinion after all. Althussar would use Amy as a further example that “ideology has no history”. There have always been those that believe higher learning to be extremely important and those who do not, and though these numbers have changed and the educational system has changed, it does not concern the individual, because ideology is immersed in everything, it “has no outside” (700).
Well, okay but that doesn’t really provide me with any sort of response for Amy. She has an ideology, she’s immersed in it, and there’s probably no turning back. No offense to Althussar, he’s interesting, but I feel like this conversation needs more of a diagnosis, which is Freud’s specialty. Now perhaps ideology is irrelevant to her statement. Since this response was rather shocking, and somewhat rude considering she basically said that I was wasting four years of my life, there must be a reason behind this anger. Although I did not have a long enough session with Amy to ask her about her childhood, I did learn about her husband. He went to college and she also proclaimed that his degrees were “useless”, so it is far more likely that Amy displaced some sort of anxiety she has about her husband onto me, the unsuspecting customer. It is also likely that education is not what Amy is really upset about. Freud would most likely appropriate this outset of emotion to one of two things (both sexual of course). The first is that Amy is suffering from penis envy, and this unconscious jealousy has manifested itself in her anger towards his college degrees, and in turn towards people who go to college. The second is that Amy wishes to castrate her husband. Not only does Amy’s profession consist of the act of cutting, but she also does not like her husband’s degrees (something she does not have, and does not want). Although a Freudian interpretation of this conversation is extremely entertaining, I’m sure that penis envy is not the reason behind her statements.
Neither of these theorists gave me a satisfying interpretation or result, which I think Amy would say proves her point, however, I thoroughly disagree. Every theory has limits, and some I think shouldn’t be applied ever to certain works or situations, but the process of working through them, although not always successful, is useful. Perhaps not useful in the way that Amy defines it, but we all analyze, regardless of whether we’re in an English class, and these tools for analyzing and interpreting can be put to use anywhere, even within the context of a brief conversation.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The Self, the surroundings, the stroke (of genius)
Our discussion of Derrida’s différance today triggered an idea that has already been ruminating in my brain, ever since our discussion of Lacan’s “Mirror Stage”. Today we touched on the human idea of the self, what we perceive as a physically and mentally contained individual who is separate from the rest of the world. We talked about how the physical conception of the self is constantly being deferred and shifted, because as we sweat, shed skin or eat food, we are consuming and releasing various components of our body. We’ve all heard this statistic: “every [certain number] years our body is composed of completely different particles than it was [blank] years ago” (I’ve heard anywhere from six to ten years, I’m not sure if either is completely accurate, but you get the point). Our body is constantly interacting with the outside world, exchanging particles and moisture, and obscuring an essential notion of the body.
This reminded me of an idea that I found intriguing when we read Lacan’s “Mirror Stage”. Before a baby girl develops a sense of self, she may see a tiny hand move across her line of vision, but she does not understand it as a part of her “self”. According to Lacan, it is when we recognize ourselves in the mirror that we begin to understand ourselves as individuals, separate entities from the rest of the world. This is also perhaps what makes us human; you needn’t look far to see examples of animals who do not bear the same conception of the physical self. Have you ever seen a kitten hiss at its own reflection? Or a dog chase its own tail? They do not have the same human conception of a self who is physically separate from the rest of the world, an individual you can recognize in a mirror as “me”.
I recently stumbled upon a lecture by Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist who suffered a massive stroke and recovered years later to recount the extraordinary observations she made while her brain was deteriorating. It’s an absolutely incredible lecture, and I’d highly recommend that you watch the whole thing:
What strikes me about Taylor’s story is her description of her altered sense of self during the stroke; when she looked at her hand, her brain didn’t register it as a separate entity from the rest of her surroundings. She was reverted back to Lacan’s infantile, pre-Mirror Stage, before the baby understands herself as separate from the rest of the world. Taylor explains that one of her greatest motivations for recovering after her stroke (a long and very difficult process) was to share with the world her blissful feeling of being completely and utterly connected with the universe, with every living and inanimate object in the world.
Taylor believes everyone has the capacity to experience this sense of connectedness, albeit at a less intensive level than she experienced during her stroke. In fact, she thinks that tapping into this capacity for empathy and connectedness might bring about solutions to many of society’s problems. I can’t truly experience what she felt in that moment, but I still find her mission pretty fascinating. The human obsession with the self, the individual, is perhaps both our great strength and greatest weakness. It allows us to discover and achieve incredible things, but our egoism often leads to myopia, and a complete inability to see ourselves as part of a larger whole.
This reminded me of an idea that I found intriguing when we read Lacan’s “Mirror Stage”. Before a baby girl develops a sense of self, she may see a tiny hand move across her line of vision, but she does not understand it as a part of her “self”. According to Lacan, it is when we recognize ourselves in the mirror that we begin to understand ourselves as individuals, separate entities from the rest of the world. This is also perhaps what makes us human; you needn’t look far to see examples of animals who do not bear the same conception of the physical self. Have you ever seen a kitten hiss at its own reflection? Or a dog chase its own tail? They do not have the same human conception of a self who is physically separate from the rest of the world, an individual you can recognize in a mirror as “me”.
I recently stumbled upon a lecture by Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist who suffered a massive stroke and recovered years later to recount the extraordinary observations she made while her brain was deteriorating. It’s an absolutely incredible lecture, and I’d highly recommend that you watch the whole thing:
What strikes me about Taylor’s story is her description of her altered sense of self during the stroke; when she looked at her hand, her brain didn’t register it as a separate entity from the rest of her surroundings. She was reverted back to Lacan’s infantile, pre-Mirror Stage, before the baby understands herself as separate from the rest of the world. Taylor explains that one of her greatest motivations for recovering after her stroke (a long and very difficult process) was to share with the world her blissful feeling of being completely and utterly connected with the universe, with every living and inanimate object in the world.
Taylor believes everyone has the capacity to experience this sense of connectedness, albeit at a less intensive level than she experienced during her stroke. In fact, she thinks that tapping into this capacity for empathy and connectedness might bring about solutions to many of society’s problems. I can’t truly experience what she felt in that moment, but I still find her mission pretty fascinating. The human obsession with the self, the individual, is perhaps both our great strength and greatest weakness. It allows us to discover and achieve incredible things, but our egoism often leads to myopia, and a complete inability to see ourselves as part of a larger whole.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Las Vegas as a Rhizome
Over break, I went to see Las Vegas with a couple of friends. I did a bit of my lit theory reading as we were driving up, which, by the way I do not recommend—it is confusing enough without adding motion sickness into the mix. Nevertheless, it got me thinking about the drive, and about the city of Las Vegas, in terms of the Deleuze and Guattari essay “A Thousand Plateaus.”
If I understood the essay correctly—and I make no claims for my level of coherency on long car trips—they were basically arguing that everything is connected, like the root structure known as a rhizome. In fact, things are so interdependent that it is ridiculous to even talk about simple cause and effect. They used the example of a puppet. Though it is true that it is controlled by strings, those strings are not controlled by invisible will of a puppeteer, but another set of strings of nerves.
As a southerner, I am well aware of the effectiveness of rhizomes. Asparagus, which has such a root structure, grows along the side of the road in many parts of Georgia and Texas, and kudzu, also known as “the vine that ate the south” is so prolific and fast-growing that it entirely possible to lose a house to it over the course of a single summer. Both are all but impossible to eradicate.
It is easy to think of Las Vegas as isolated. After all, it is surrounded by miles of the bleakest scrubland I have ever encountered, rather ironically considering that “las vegas” is the Spanish word for fertile lowlands. We went for hours without seeing so much as a goat. The transition to Las Vegas is sudden and shocking. It seems to rise from the horizon.
What happens, though, when we consider Las Vegas as a rhizome? For one, it grows with all speed and tenacity of kudzu, and it may be just as impossible to kill. Even in the middle of a recession, they were building a high-rise apartment building right along the strip. Part of the reason that Vegas is so successful might be the fact that it, like the roots of a rhizome, has many nodes. No one casino is central, so if one fails, the others can continue on.
This is probably not quite the way that Deleuze and Guattari meant the idea, though. They might consider Las Vegas more in terms of the process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. The billboards advertising various Vegas shows and hotels started popping up practically before we left LA County. About halfway there, we encountered a tiny stand of buildings, which I will call a town only because I feel village sounds too innocent, called Baker, California, that seems to exist only to serve the streams of tourists traveling between the two cities. In this way the literal territory of LA merges seamlessly into its economic territory, and the two interact and shape each other. Las Vegas keeps billboard owners and Baker in business, and they drive the tourists onward to the city.
On the plain of ideas, Las Vegas is even less distinct. After all, what Las Vegas truly markets is hope—they don’t sell sausages, they sell sizzle. Every single person who walks up to a slot machine does so knowing that they almost certainly about to lose money, and that the machine has, at best, a 95% payout. Watching the little disks spin is not nearly amusing enough to justify the cost. The slot machine is not an object, it is an assemblage, a converges of hopes and dreams and possibility and loss and compulsion, and the city is just a larger example of the same, with a heavy dose of sin and taboo.
Or maybe I am just blinded by all the neon lights.
If I understood the essay correctly—and I make no claims for my level of coherency on long car trips—they were basically arguing that everything is connected, like the root structure known as a rhizome. In fact, things are so interdependent that it is ridiculous to even talk about simple cause and effect. They used the example of a puppet. Though it is true that it is controlled by strings, those strings are not controlled by invisible will of a puppeteer, but another set of strings of nerves.
As a southerner, I am well aware of the effectiveness of rhizomes. Asparagus, which has such a root structure, grows along the side of the road in many parts of Georgia and Texas, and kudzu, also known as “the vine that ate the south” is so prolific and fast-growing that it entirely possible to lose a house to it over the course of a single summer. Both are all but impossible to eradicate.
It is easy to think of Las Vegas as isolated. After all, it is surrounded by miles of the bleakest scrubland I have ever encountered, rather ironically considering that “las vegas” is the Spanish word for fertile lowlands. We went for hours without seeing so much as a goat. The transition to Las Vegas is sudden and shocking. It seems to rise from the horizon.
What happens, though, when we consider Las Vegas as a rhizome? For one, it grows with all speed and tenacity of kudzu, and it may be just as impossible to kill. Even in the middle of a recession, they were building a high-rise apartment building right along the strip. Part of the reason that Vegas is so successful might be the fact that it, like the roots of a rhizome, has many nodes. No one casino is central, so if one fails, the others can continue on.
This is probably not quite the way that Deleuze and Guattari meant the idea, though. They might consider Las Vegas more in terms of the process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. The billboards advertising various Vegas shows and hotels started popping up practically before we left LA County. About halfway there, we encountered a tiny stand of buildings, which I will call a town only because I feel village sounds too innocent, called Baker, California, that seems to exist only to serve the streams of tourists traveling between the two cities. In this way the literal territory of LA merges seamlessly into its economic territory, and the two interact and shape each other. Las Vegas keeps billboard owners and Baker in business, and they drive the tourists onward to the city.
On the plain of ideas, Las Vegas is even less distinct. After all, what Las Vegas truly markets is hope—they don’t sell sausages, they sell sizzle. Every single person who walks up to a slot machine does so knowing that they almost certainly about to lose money, and that the machine has, at best, a 95% payout. Watching the little disks spin is not nearly amusing enough to justify the cost. The slot machine is not an object, it is an assemblage, a converges of hopes and dreams and possibility and loss and compulsion, and the city is just a larger example of the same, with a heavy dose of sin and taboo.
Or maybe I am just blinded by all the neon lights.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
The Dangers of Free Association as Revealed by Modern Media
The Dangers of Free Association as Revealed by Modern Media
When reading Freud’s theories regarding the psychoanalytic approach to literature, it seems that I could never quite muster up enough enthusiasm to really want to interpret a piece of literature in this way. Although I still manage to I feel that many, if not most, of his arguments are at least understandable and fairly reasonable, I ultimately cannot like this approach because I feel that if it becomes recognized and allowed to be used as factual I feel it would be only detrimental to our society. Ultimately the problem is that I simply cannot think of a situation where Free Association specifically would lead us as a population to make any beneficial advancements, and therefore has no right to be legitimized as anything else than a literary hypothesis. I came to this conclusion because recently modern media has so kindly reminded me that when validity is granted to absurd notions situations get out of control and bad things happen.
Seemingly crude and obnoxious, Southpark was actually able to perfectly capture the thought that I never was able to fully articulate. Even though Freud believes a dream to be a “picture-puzzle” (The Interpretation of Dreams, 401) and goes further to clarify that “there is no justification for supposing that the lost pieces of the dream would have related to the same thoughts which we have already reached from the pieces of the dream that have survived” (The Interpretation of Dreams, 401) thus legitimizing Free Association, I still feel as if “it’s like everyone’s putting pieces together that aren’t there” (Stan, Southpark season 10, episode 9) as so eloquently put by Kyle Broflofsky of South Park elementary school.
It has become clear that I have a problem with the very foundation of Psychoanalysis, which grants everyone’s interpretation by Free Association as correct. I feel that when applied to decision-making and understanding the facts, such as ones subconscious desires or repressed notions, Free Association gives too much power to people who may or may not deserve such influence over people. In episode nine, season ten of Southpark, Cartman proceeds to successfully frame Kyle for the nine eleven attacks on the Twin Towers. This obviously absurd notion is brought up through Cartman’s “shocking powerpoint report on the truths behind the 911 attacks” (Cartman, Southpark season 10, episode 9) leading him by Free Association to decide that Kyle, a young boy in the fourth grade, is responsible for the attacks. It becomes obvious to Cartman that Kyle did this because “2-1+911 is twelve which contains the numbers” which are ridiculously manipulated by Cartman to be 91 which is the math score Kyle received on a math test the previous week thus proving Kyle’s involvement. Cartman proceeds to turn the entire school, and government against innocent Kyle.
Although extreme, this exemplifies that when everyone is working towards their own selfish desires unconsciously, and our desires are detrimental to society which is the entire reason they are repressed, evil will take over and never allow our society to make any progress. I feel that Free Association allows for more theories to skate by due to a strong willed individual, and if that individual somehow gains enough support for his random and personal opinion it will be carried farther and could get out of control. The key to the psychoanalytic approach is that each individual has a right to their own interpretive opinion, as in most analytical situations, but when such responsibility is given in a situation where it will be used to diagnose our unconsciouss repressed desires and lead to important conclusions, it can be easily twisted and used for evil.
Gossip Girl, another highly intellectual and excellently viewed show, is in its entirety about the negative affects of Free Association. A website is run, entitled gossip girl, where anonymous tips and photos are sent in and are up for interpretation from that point forward. Each interpretation has some validity, and gains approval the more it is exposed. This proves that the popular girls, which are the ones with the worst intentions, will control what information is believed by the mass public. I feel that this again shows what can happen when Free Association is used as more than just a mode of discussion.
I’ve been pretty hard on the psychoanalytic approach, but honestly I do find it very interesting when applied to literature. I agree with Freud in noticing “that literary texts are like dreams,” (Freud, Strangers to Ourselves, 394) and in that way Free Association is very interesting to explore. I just want to ensure that it stays only in the hypothetical and discussion phases and is not allowed to have a great impact on areas of society where it is not a fit mode of decision making.
All Freud quotes taken from:
Literary Theory: An Anthology, Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan
When reading Freud’s theories regarding the psychoanalytic approach to literature, it seems that I could never quite muster up enough enthusiasm to really want to interpret a piece of literature in this way. Although I still manage to I feel that many, if not most, of his arguments are at least understandable and fairly reasonable, I ultimately cannot like this approach because I feel that if it becomes recognized and allowed to be used as factual I feel it would be only detrimental to our society. Ultimately the problem is that I simply cannot think of a situation where Free Association specifically would lead us as a population to make any beneficial advancements, and therefore has no right to be legitimized as anything else than a literary hypothesis. I came to this conclusion because recently modern media has so kindly reminded me that when validity is granted to absurd notions situations get out of control and bad things happen.
Seemingly crude and obnoxious, Southpark was actually able to perfectly capture the thought that I never was able to fully articulate. Even though Freud believes a dream to be a “picture-puzzle” (The Interpretation of Dreams, 401) and goes further to clarify that “there is no justification for supposing that the lost pieces of the dream would have related to the same thoughts which we have already reached from the pieces of the dream that have survived” (The Interpretation of Dreams, 401) thus legitimizing Free Association, I still feel as if “it’s like everyone’s putting pieces together that aren’t there” (Stan, Southpark season 10, episode 9) as so eloquently put by Kyle Broflofsky of South Park elementary school.
It has become clear that I have a problem with the very foundation of Psychoanalysis, which grants everyone’s interpretation by Free Association as correct. I feel that when applied to decision-making and understanding the facts, such as ones subconscious desires or repressed notions, Free Association gives too much power to people who may or may not deserve such influence over people. In episode nine, season ten of Southpark, Cartman proceeds to successfully frame Kyle for the nine eleven attacks on the Twin Towers. This obviously absurd notion is brought up through Cartman’s “shocking powerpoint report on the truths behind the 911 attacks” (Cartman, Southpark season 10, episode 9) leading him by Free Association to decide that Kyle, a young boy in the fourth grade, is responsible for the attacks. It becomes obvious to Cartman that Kyle did this because “2-1+911 is twelve which contains the numbers” which are ridiculously manipulated by Cartman to be 91 which is the math score Kyle received on a math test the previous week thus proving Kyle’s involvement. Cartman proceeds to turn the entire school, and government against innocent Kyle.
Although extreme, this exemplifies that when everyone is working towards their own selfish desires unconsciously, and our desires are detrimental to society which is the entire reason they are repressed, evil will take over and never allow our society to make any progress. I feel that Free Association allows for more theories to skate by due to a strong willed individual, and if that individual somehow gains enough support for his random and personal opinion it will be carried farther and could get out of control. The key to the psychoanalytic approach is that each individual has a right to their own interpretive opinion, as in most analytical situations, but when such responsibility is given in a situation where it will be used to diagnose our unconsciouss repressed desires and lead to important conclusions, it can be easily twisted and used for evil.
Gossip Girl, another highly intellectual and excellently viewed show, is in its entirety about the negative affects of Free Association. A website is run, entitled gossip girl, where anonymous tips and photos are sent in and are up for interpretation from that point forward. Each interpretation has some validity, and gains approval the more it is exposed. This proves that the popular girls, which are the ones with the worst intentions, will control what information is believed by the mass public. I feel that this again shows what can happen when Free Association is used as more than just a mode of discussion.
I’ve been pretty hard on the psychoanalytic approach, but honestly I do find it very interesting when applied to literature. I agree with Freud in noticing “that literary texts are like dreams,” (Freud, Strangers to Ourselves, 394) and in that way Free Association is very interesting to explore. I just want to ensure that it stays only in the hypothetical and discussion phases and is not allowed to have a great impact on areas of society where it is not a fit mode of decision making.
All Freud quotes taken from:
Literary Theory: An Anthology, Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan
Monday, March 2, 2009
Two by two: a few thoughts on parallels in the writings of Sassure and Marx
While reading the selections from Marx for today's discussion, particularly Capital (1867), I was continually reminded of the Course in General Linguistics (1916). As with Sassure's notion of an implied order behind language, a mutually comprehensible system, order, pattern-- whatever it's called, it governs actual, observable activities of human society.
When Marx says that value, specifically labor-value, "converts every product into a social hieroglyphic.. we try to decipher the hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social products; for to stamp an object of utility as a value, is just as much a social product as language" (669), it is easy to apply the concept of commodity as a sign to an understanding of Marx's argument. This association reinforced my interest in the commodity's binary nature. Like the linguistic sign is composed of signifier/signified, the commodity or product is composed of use-value/labor-value: the former, concrete, the latter, abstract. The "shape," as Marx says, of the commodity is merely indicative of its labor-value, in the same way that the signifier provides access to what Marx would call an "aggregate" meaning-- that is to say, insofar as both the signified and the labor-value is a construct of complex and varied interrelations of composite experiences and information. Like a linguistic sign, a commodity is a symbol exchanged between two parties who mutually agree upon a system of values and meaning to facilitate social interaction.
The use of binary systems of relation and difference has been an issue of interest to me since reading selections from writing by Helene Cioux, a French feminist deconstructionist theorist, in a Twentieth-century Women's literature course I took last year. Cioux is concerned with the impact of established systems of thought and socio-linguistic order, particularly the binary system of oppositions--male/female, master/slave, strong/weak, winner/loser etc--upon the treatment of women and, more importantly, all people operating under this system of conflict. Cioux emphatically denies the notion that dominant thought structures--perpetuated, as Marx would agree, by the ruling classes--are "the way things are" or indicative of some kind of unalterable human nature. Her writing itself is an endeavor to operate outside and beyond the binary-breakdown of social components. To my dismay, I found myself frustrated by what seemed to me to be Cioux's abstract or nebulous writing style. I felt inextricably entrenched in the dominant thought-pattern structure of binary oppositions, yet I remain confident that Cioux is correct in asserting that this way of thinking is only one possible mode of organizing the world and relational concepts. It's prevalence and dominance is not necessarily indicative of its truth or inate-ness.
In this vein, I also found it interesting that in the brief introduction to Capital, the editor points out that Marx "attempted to provide a scientific explanation of his contention that a capitalist economic system requires the appropriation from workers of more value than they are paid for." As I understand it, Freud, too, famously emphasized the scientific validity of his work, often in the face of open skepticism. And Sassure, the linguist: his career implies access to objective, scientific reasoning. These men subscribe to the myth of objectivity when a claim to scientific observation and analysis is used to validate their theories. This claim to science can be thought of as a sign, used in the rhetoric of an argument about human behavior to convey legitimacy and value.
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