Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Hooooo boy this is late...

I actually really enjoyed Benjamin's article. As a student/teacher of acting/Drama, and therefore someone tremendously involved with theater and film as art, this was fascinating.

Although not explicitly stated, Benjamin's argument seems to be that film is not art in the traditional sense because the stuff of which that art is created, the performance of the actors, the setting filmed by the camera etc. is all being reproduced by the camera, and we experience it (the film) only as the camera allows us to do so. In essence, caught off from the aura of the performance the film, as a reproduction of the performance cannot be authentic and therefore cannot be a work of art as art is currently defined.

Of course, this is all implied because Benjamin says explicitly that whether or not film is art is not the point, not even the question, but a distraction from the more important issues at hand. Still, it is the question that has attracted my attention because much of the argument is based on the assumption that film is what he describes: an extraordinary reproduction of the performances of the actors through technology.

However, this is not true. While it reveals fascinating things about the relationship of art to authenticity, and while it lays firm ground for the effects of politicizing art (although I found the leaps at the end from film to Dada and Dada to Fascism/War to be a bit of a stretch, taken, as they are so quickly after such a slowly, laboriously developed argument about film and the relationship between art and mechanical reproductions), it fails to account for the film as a whole, as a created work. What he describes a mechanical reproduction of a series of performances by the actors is simply the raw footage. While there is a nod to the editing/cutting process it is insufficiently discussed. The role of the director in creating a film out of this raw material is to piece together from the reproductions of the performance of the actors a coherent whole (whether or not the plot is coherent is irrelevant, the film itself must cohere in some fashion). In the process actors of great skill do essentially imput their aura, their essence. Their is a reason that a given film is a Spielberg film, a Tim Burton film, etc. Because it is the director who is ultimately the artist behind the film. He/she to an extent, even creates the performance of the actors because he/she controls how we see them, what we see of them etc. It's why director's cuts etc. of films exist: the film is not created in the shooting of raw footage, that is where raw materials are gathered for the creation of the film in the editing room. I would argue that to those who know how to "read" film (and I am not terribly skilled at it, but have witnessed those who really are doing so) there is an aura/essence to a film as a whole in exactly the same way there is in other pieces of art. It's the aura/essence of the director. The actor feeds raw materials, and no two films by a director will have exactly the same aura/essence as another, but you can watch a given director's ouvre and there is a continuance in something intangible that is identifiable to the actor who produces it.

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Incidentally did the very idea of aura and essence feel platonic and "idealist" to anyone else?

And furthermore, what happens to the argument about film in an age where we have DVD, DVR etc. and can pause and attend to any portion of the film that we please? What effect does that have on Benjamin's argument?

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Theory on/of intransigence: Deconstructionism, Modern questioning of Epistemology, and the disappearance of unity...

After last night's class discussion I came to an interesting conclusion that I feel applies the theories we've been discussing (more in philosophical than a literary sense, but we're studying the theories right?) and can perhaps explain in part the intransigence on some of the issues that are fundamental to the various theories. I also personally had revealed the assumptions underlying a position that I had previously considered simply "logical" and frankly obvious once considered. I was wrong, for others it is neither logical nor obvious and I believe this explains it.

Simply because it was the catalyst for this idea in my mind, I will address a portion of last night's feminism discussion, and abortion in particular. I am not attempting to convince anyone, or shift anyone's position. I am simply laying out my position in order to show what I think was an interesting application of the theories we've been studied to each other, and to our own epistemologies and the very ability to know.

Modern science/thought/philosophy has systematically used the western rational perspective to disassemble the constructs on which western thought has been built. Beginning with the rejection of religion in the secular rational world view as at best unknowable, and at worst a delusion (witness Richard Dawkins, recently labeled Darwin's Rottweiler in parody of the current Pope [nicknamed God's Rottweiler as a cardinal] for his aggressive proselytizing of the atheist position). This of course begins with the movement to empiricism in the enlightenment and is nothing new, although several hundred years further developed. It follows with attacks on other western epistemologies until with deconstructionism we use rationality to discredit language and rationality itself. The current cultural condition then is that described by deconstructionists and post-modernists: the center is not the center, there is in fact no center for the culture to base itself around (unless paradoxically the fact that the center is not the center is the center...it makes my head hurt) and we find ourselves, as it were, in a huge train station, each individual on their own train with some or all trains constantly in motion and no agreed upon fixed point of reference from which to determine anything. Therefore, nothing is, or can be certain.

It is the portion of the condition of being each on our own train that I wish to discuss further and tie to last night's discussion. The structuralists and poststrutcuralists along with other modern thinkers/philosophers have posited that our minds, indeed our very language, is the - or at least A - causal agent behind our perceived realities. (I will be referring to Reality, capital R, as signifying whatever actually exists out there in its totality; reality, lower case r, can be assumed to refer from here on to Reality as it is perceived by, or as it exists for, a given individual or group.) Therefore, cut off as we are from Reality, with only language, (a fallible medium) or perhaps logic (logically an even more fallible medium[I love the paradox and irony in that statement]) to allow us any connection with others, we literally exist in individual realities. And, in the strictest sense, no one's reality corresponds exactly to anyone else's. Now there are degrees of overlap within individual realities to the extent which two given individuals overlap in their thinking. Where ever their thinking diverges, their realities will diverge. As systems of thought that share this shaping power constitutive of individual realities I include religions under the broader banner of theories. Thus stretching theory slightly to be any system of thought that constitutes a shaping world view that attempts to explain/account for the world (not the physical earth, but the human created world).

The power of theory as we are studying it in this course, in which, each of the theories is essentially constitutive of a world view or paradigm, is this: Our thoughts create our individual realities by ordering our perceptions. Because these paradigms have the power (because new knowledge has the power) to shape and even transform our thoughts they literally create/re-create our realities to the extent that we embrace new ones.

Think for example of some powerful new piece of knowledge. In Reality, (if Reality exists; I am positing that it does, it is one of the givens required for my particular theory here to exist) that piece of knowledge was always there, just waiting for you to discover it. However, as far as your own reality is concerned, that knowledge did not exist until you learned it and when you did learn it, the reality in which you live was changed. For example: you meet someone new on campus. You do not recall having ever seen them before. For you, that person did not exist before this moment as you had no knowledge of them. They were not a part of reality as it exists for you. However, once you meet them, know who they are and become aware of their presence on campus you tend to see them every where, right? (not always, but often true in my experience...it that can be projected at all to your reality dear reader) Now, where as before they did not exist, they may seem to be everywhere. Was not that person, in Reality, there all the time? However, in your reality, in Reality as created and perceived by your mind, they did not exist. Thus the interaction of our perceptions, our thoughts, and our knowledge create the reality we live in, and theories by giving shape to our perceptions, thoughts and knowledge, by framing or re-framing them create our realities in the manner described above.

With the modern/post-modern destruction of epistemologies, the removal of all centers in favor of truths and relativity, there is no way to know anything for certain without first choosing a center around which to order your thought. That decision by its very nature requires making fundamental assumptions about the world. They may be based on supposed "empirical" information or other evidence, but remember, once we enter the modern theoretical perspectives all knowledge and all methods of knowledge are suspect. Different theories accept different givens because accepting some givens is necessary to maintain any knowledge or agree with anyone about anything.

However, with no center that is agreed upon, and even individual understandings of a shared center across realities causing divergence in those most similar to one another, accepting any of these givens requires an act of faith. Or, to re-state, the acceptance of any world view requires the acceptance of fundamental principles that underlie it (Marxism - economic determinism [to varying degrees granted], Feminism - patriarchy and, apparently in the version discussed in class last night, being pro-choice, Religions - the existence of a deity/deities or some divine force,), fundamental principles without which you cannot be considered to have embraced said theory completely, or perhaps at all. That acceptance, given the destruction of all epistemologies, or at least their reduction to truths/relativity under modern theory/thought, requires an act of faith. By act of faith I mean that the acceptance of any given cannot be justified beforehand except by givens already accepted in an endless recursive cycle, so that the initial acceptance of a given by an individual is a figurative leap into the unknown.

Now after all of this discussion and theoretical argument to establish the existence of each of us within our own figurative trains in the endless train station from Barry's metaphor of post-modernsim, or rather to establish the existence of each of us literally within our own, individual realities, what's the point? What the heck does this have to do with intransigence? Much less last night's discussion? Well, the fact that we live in our own realities, realities devoid centers that can be accepted with anything less than an arbitrary decision/act of faith (remember we can't see the givens of a theory as justified until after we accept them as givens because all knowledge is suspect), is the reason we are so fragmented as a nation, a society, a culture, and a world. Issues that are important enough to touch directly on the givens that constitute our realities, or have very little separation from those givens, like abortion, for example, are things we are incapable of discussing "rationally" with someone whose reality doesn't overlap sufficiently with our own because what is logic to them will literally be absurdity (re: out of tune, contrary to the nature of reality) for us. Thus two entirely intelligent people of integrity, being entirely open with each other can fail to agree on the most fundamental questions, or even which given has primacy in determining one's decision.

I thought of all of this after our discussion of feminism, and abortion last night, when I discovered that what I thought was my nuanced, fair, and "obvious once you think about it" based neither on the given of freedom being a higher absolute good than life in all instances (a reductive statement I know, but an attempt to carry express the idea that freedom is worth dieing, for living for, and killing for, even removing life/potential life if necessary), nor the belief that life is an absolute good that trumps freedom in this instance (another reductive statement, but an attempt to convey the idea that in the instance of the existence of innocent life/the potential of innocent life choice [re: freedom] is trumped). Instead I had what, in my reality constitutes a logical alternative - limited legal abortion. The position that safe, legal abortion should be available in cases in which the choice of the mother was abrogated (rape/incest) or when her life is endangered by the pregnancy, but should in other cases be illegal. To my mind this logically balances the competing values of choice and life. However, assuming that what was logical in my reality would transfer to the reality of anyone operating from a different reality as logic rather than absurdity was fallacious and reflected a misidentification of the givens of my reality that are reflected in the decision.

Underlying my "logical" balancing act was a third given that won't transfer to a reality shaped by a feminism that includes the right to safe, legal abortion with no limits as a given. That given is a very old fashioned one, a belief in the sacred nature of the sex act, which to my mind justifies restrictions on when/with whom it can rightly be engaged in, and the validity of nature taking its course as a natural consequence of the decision to engage in intercourse. Now please, while this may sound quaint, or even be a source of irritation/anger to some, I don't expect you to agree with me, I'm just illustrating why it's so hard to come to agreement and theory's role in making it more difficult.

The disagreement over this issue in this particular discussion and the continuing large scale disagreement over this and many other seeming basic issues is due to the separate realities from which we are forced to argue by modern theory. The intransigence isn't due to the stupidity, ignorance, or evil nature of those arguing against us (whatever our side on any given issue) it is due to the absurdity of trying to discuss these issues across the gaps between realities.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

A Feminist's Semiotic Playground...

Within Barry's summary of various feminist positions I found several ideas fascinating. One was the idea of language having "two aspects" (123) the symbolic and semiotic, from the work of Julia Kristeva. I found this idea, a repesentation of "Lacanian re-use of the notions" (123) of conscious and unconscious, fascinating. How true it is (as we saw in our discussion of post-structuralism) that as we consciously communicate in an ordered and rational way, there is always an undercurrent that works against us, that "emerg[es] into and disrupt[s] the 'conscious' or 'surface' meaning" (124). I'm not sure why, after encountering these ideas in only sightly different words from Derridas et al. I am now so intrigued, but this presentation jumped out at me. I was uncertain however, whether Kristeva and Cixous were claiming this semiotic aspect as a feminine aspect of a male medium, or if they were merely finding in its existence "s vital theater of possibilities, the value of which is to imagine alternatives to the world which we now have" (124). Barry does, just before the last quoted passage, label it "this visionary 'semiotic' female world" which would seem to indicate that is the case. Still, certainly it was something the women recognized they shared with other theorists both post-structuralist and psychoanalytic, and, as such open to everyone regardless of gender, right?

I wonder who they would characterize as making use of this semiotic language then? A single example is given: e. e. cummings, and I don't know anyone who plays with language quite like he does. Other examples seem to be other high modernists like Joyce and Woolf, maybe Faulkner (I haven't really read Faulkner so I'm stretching), perhaps some of Kerouac's more experimental work, although some of the beats' ideas about women are troubling in the context of applying feminist ideas. Still, I don't know that I would characterize many women writers that I have read as possessing this semiotic characteristic as I am struggling to understand it through the one example given. I mean Austen, the Brontes, George Elliott, even more modern writers such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, etc. don't seem to be playing with this semiotic aspect of language in the way she describes except in the sense that it is present in all of us. Are there a bunch of radical experimentalists out there that I'm not aware of?
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An addendum to my original post...I just finished reading Toni Morrison's Jazz and reading an article focused on the identity of her very, very fluid and mysterious narrative "I" in that novel. I would have to revise what I said in including her in the list at the end of the above...In this novel at least there is that experimental form in the interplay of voices, and the mysteriousness of the narrator that I'd have to identify it as an example of the conscious use of the semiotic in the manner Kristeva/Barry seem to be discussing.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Jameson - or Glory Hallelujah, I have seen the Marxist Light!

Does the irony of Jameson's positioning of Marxism as the one, true lens through which we can see the world strike anyone else?

Just consider some of these quotes from the opening of "On Interpretation: Literature as a Socially Symbolic Act":

It (the text in question) conceives of the political perspective (re: Marxist perspective)...as the absolute horizon of all reading and all interpretation (181).

Our presupposition (for which no argument is made I might add) will be that only a genuine philosophy of history (re: Marxism again) is capable of respecting the specificity and radical difference of the social and cultural past while disclosing the solidarity of its polemics and passions, its forms, structures, experiences, and struggles, with those of the present day. . . .(182)

To imagine that...there already exists a realm of freedom (or by implication anything else that contradicts Marxism)...is only to strengthen the grip of Necessity over all such blind zones in which the individual subject seeks refuge, in pursuit of a purely individual, a merely psychological, project of salvation (183).

Perhaps I am way off base, but this sounds to me like the infamous opiate of the masses. Something to be "presupposed" as "absolute" and the "only" means of interpreting anything not written yesterday. Something that then is the only viable portal through which we can access history because any other point of entry requires a reconstitution of that history that is perverted by our own modern perspective and even our own language (181-182), a disease of interpretive fallacy to which the enlightened, "genuine" few (re: Marxists) are apparently conveniently immune (although we must "presuppose" this immunity as no explanation for it is given), and then, since the ideal is to be rejected in favor of the material (we must be rational after all, none of that icky faith stuff) (Barry 150), the material can only be interpreted through history, and "only Marxism can give us an adequate account of the essential mystery of the cultural past" well we should all just shut up and fall in line with this "absolute horizon" for a philosophy of life!

PPPPhhhhheeeeewwwwww. I accept that a Marxist perspective has some healthy critiques to make of a system based entirely on the idea that our individual greed can be harnessed for the good of all. I shudder at the idea of our economic system running freely without outside critique, as that is a sure fire recipe for disaster in any human system. But Jameson's broad, sweeping, take it on faith claims for Marxism as he opens this piece just don't pass the smell test. He's asking too much with no argument, no justification to back it up. I realize that he's simply establishing the ground work so that the rest of the text will make sense (at least I assume that must be what he's doing or it's far worse than I supposed), but even so, to presuppose that the view of the author is the only correct one...Welcome to the church of materialism/marxism.

I am supposed to believe, with all we know about the nature of text and the act of reading, that Marxism is free from the interpretive barriers to the past that everyone else encounters. That their pink glasses, donned before reading the past, doesn't color the light by which they see it? That they alone are not constructing (okay, reconstructing) the texts as they read them? I had a hard time even getting past this opening position statement.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Michel Foucault

To me this lecture excerpt seems to point toward the fragmentation of western society that has resulted from the uprising of various divergent minority views punching through what was formally a more united more cohesive cultural discourse, although one built on exclusion, what Foucault calls more mildly "functionalist coherence or formal systemisation" (130).

Foucault opens with reference to the increasing "vulnerability" of "institutions, practices, discourses" etc. which we find the seeming purpose of philosophy in the modern era. The destruction of Western episteme. Derridas last week turned this fragmenting modern perspective on language itself, something so fundamental that we literally cannot comprehend what it means to be without it. If language through which, as the structuralists suggest, we construct our world, is fragmented and incapable of expressing truth and meaning, and we have like good little post-structuralists overcome our desire for the transcendental signified, than what is left? I believe Focucault uses this lecture to answer that question.

And what he finds is the fragmented post-modern society. The "attempts to think in terms of a totality" have fragmented and fallen apart, philosophical totalities, religious totalities, economic totalities, even the "linguistic totality" of structuralism. In the gaps have risen his "subjugated knowledges of both types" (Paulo Freire, anyone?) as minorities and cultures outside the Euro-American cultural dominance are gaining greater voice and power in a decentralized world.

The second half of the essay is devoted to describing these new knowledges/powers. Instead of being globalizing philosophies like Capitalism, Marxism, structuralism, and even deconstructionism etc. they are localized knowledges/powers focused on specific groups of people rather than on humanity as a whole. I believe the genealogies term used is particularly indicative of the ethnic/cultural "isms" and splits that we see throughout current world society (if such an oxymoron can be tolerated).