Concluding Reflection

Last week in class we finished  Ethnic Studies Theory, which included Langston Hughes and Gloria Anzaldúa;   Post-Colonial Theory, which included Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Benedict Anderson. We ended with a discussion on Cyborgs and Posthumans. For my review of the final exam, I did a lot of rereading and tried to synthesize the main salient parts and tie them into the overlapping theories. I practiced verbalizing some of what I knew and testing my memory with a 2 hour study session with  classmate Janice Reams last night, which was very fruitful. Thus my anxiety for the final exam is lessened and has been replaced by a more compelling feeling, so I know I am relatively ready for the final exam.

I would have liked to read more material in greater depth but am satisfied with my effort. This course has opened up a lot of new knowledge and interests  for me. Although the philosophical discourse has been more challenging than reading literature, I am gratified that I put a lot of time and effort into the learning process. During the first summer session I look forward to taking a Shakespeare course, and during the final six weeks I am looking forward to taking a Pop-Culture course with Dr. Wexler as the instructor again, and from what I understand, some of the major theory and criticism we have learned this spring semester will be a part of the course, so I will be forced to retain a lot of what I have learned already. In conclusion, I hope I feel content after finishing the final exam several hours from now.

Analysis #7: Ethnicity Studies and Post-Colonial Theory

Ethnic Studies to a large extent is a by-product of western imperialism and thereby intertwined with Post-Colonial Theory and Criticism. Langston Hughes (1902-1967) the prominent Harlem Renaissance writer and critic tries to reconcile the predicament for the African-American, while Gloria Anzaldúa expounds and pleads for, while crying out in anger and compassion, the causes for the Mexican-American, Lesbian, and Feminist. Although Edward W. Said (1935-2003) is a post-colonialist theorist who discusses the cultural domination of the Occident over Orient convincingly, he also broaches on his own experience in that “the life as a Arab Palestinian in the West, particularly in America, is disheartening” (Leitch). Lastly, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (b. 1942), a self-proclaimed “gadfly” post-colonialist theorist, deconstructionist, and feminine Marxist (Leitch 2110), in addition to expounding on those issues, relates a poignant story of suicide in colonial North Calcutta India in 1926, the same city where Spivak is from. 

Hughes not only wants respect and appreciation by white American for the Negro but also respect and appreciation by the Negro for the Negro. He is critical that the Negro writer’s and musician’s audience is predominantly white. In “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” an essay written in 1926 (Leitch 1192-1196), he laments that the only Negro who is not self-conscious of his race are the “low down folks” who don’t care if they are like white folks or anybody else” (1193). Hughes rails that the Cotton Club in Harlem is catered to whites, their employees are white, while the jazz musicians and   blues singers are Negro. However, the last few lines of  his 1925 poem, “I, Too,” reflects Hughes’ hopes, aspirations, and predictions “Besides, / They’ll see how beautiful I am / And be ashamed  / I, too, am America” (Baym 2266, 15-18).  It is apparent that Hughes was a forerunner to the Civil Rights Movement a couple of decades later.

Gloria Anzaldúa difficult but high achieving life is a testament to hard work ethic, determination, and talent. She is an advocate for racial harmony, particularly, for Mexican-Americans, and equality for women and gays in a racist United States. Similar to Hughes, she admonishes not only the whites but her own people too, the Mexican-American, and the machismos men who degrade Chicano women.  Her writing style in “Borderlands/La Frontera” is poetically moving (Leitch 2098-2109). It reflects her self-consciously and  embodied  “longings, critical consciousness, and contradictions” (Leitch 2095).  La Mestiza is in a constant state of  "nepantilism, and Aztec word meaning torn apart” (2099), torn apart from two cultures. This condition is similar to the condition of the protagonist in David Dabydeen’s, The Intended, who is a brown Guyanese Asian Indian hybrid who has an extended family consisting of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. He relocates to England as a teenager and his conflicts and ambivalence are emblematic of the post-modern dilemma of racial and ethnic disharmony, in a large part brought upon by Western imperialism.

Edward Said (1935-2003) a Christian Palestinian Arab, who migrated to America as a teenager, expounds on mostly the Occident’s cultural hegemony over the Orient, in particular the Middle East. The Occident predominantly includes France and England prior to World War II, and in America post-World War II.  He points out that the Orient “were shot through with doctrines of European superiority, various kinds of racism, imperialism, and the like, dogmatic views” (1872). He does a skillful job in his Introduction to Orientalism in articulating “a better understanding of the way cultural domination has operated” (1887). Said “has been celebrated and honored, in addition to being “vilified as an anti-Semite”; however, he explains “For anyone to deny the horrendous experience of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust is unacceptable. We don’t want anybody’s history of suffering to go unrecorded and unacknowledged. On the other hand, there’s a great difference between acknowledging Jewish oppression and using that as a cover for the oppression of another people” (Edward Said Online 9). I would have to read in greater depth Edward Said’s discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian issue and other sources to comment with more knowledge. However, there is a wide disparity regarding the origin of the Palestinian refugee  situation, whether they were “encouraged by Arab leaders to flee at the onset of the 1948 War,” when Israel and Jordon were created by the United Nations, or “chased out or expelled by the actions of the Haganah, Lehi and Irgun” (5-7). Nevertheless, according to Wikipedia.org “many Israeli’s nowadays believe that the Palestinians true intentions are to conquer the Palestine region entirely and that their official claims are only temporary strategy.  As proof to their claims, they note the rise of the Hamas, which has called for the takeover of all parts of Israel, incitement against Israel made in Palestinian schools’ textbooks and to the Palestinian political violence made against Israeli civilians within the green Line borders” (5-7). 

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak  maintains that “subtext of the palimpsestic narrative of imperialism be recognized as ‘subjugated knowledge’”(2115). It seems that she disagrees with the imperialist British prohibition of the Hindu widow-sacrifice (Suttee) ritual upon her husband’s death and the predominant hegemony upon her native country India by imperialism. In conclusion, she relates to the suicide of the revolutionary Indian teenager, Bhubaneswari Bhaduri, who hanged herself because she could not go through with a political assassination. Spivak regrets that the victim’s eldest’s sister’s progeny is immersed in a successful career in the global economy in a U.S. based transnational company. Spivak, a Marxist, quotes V.I. Lenin: ‘“For Europe, the time when the new capitalism definitely superseded the old can be established with fair precision: it was the beginning of the twentieth century…With the boom at the end of the nineteenth century and the crisis of 1900-03...cartels become one of the foundations of the whole economic life. Capitalism has been transformed into Imperialism.”’ Thus Spivak concludes her seeming lament with, “Today’s program of global financialization carries on that relay. Bhubaneswari had fought for national liberation. Her great-grandniece works for the New Empire” (2125). One last point to make: although these writers and theorists justifiably criticize the Occident’s imperialism and the damage it has done to the post-colonial world, they predominantly acknowledge—albeit, with ambivalence—that their intellectual careers and skills as writers and critical theorists are a function in large part due to the Occident’s excellent educational system.

Works Cited

Baym, Nina, Ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7^th ed. New York: W.W. 

      Norton & Company, 2008. Print

Dabydeen, David. The Intended. Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 2005.Print

“Edward Said” en.wikipedia.org. Wikipedia, pages 1-17, 8 May 2011. Print

Leitch, Vincent B. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2^nd ed. New York:

     W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print.

Analysis #6: Feminism and Gender Studies

My analysis concerns how feminist theorists such as Simone de Beauvoir, Susan Bordo, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, critique (or would critique) key female writers such as Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, Kate Chopin, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. A commonality among the theorists maintains that we  have lived and are still living, perhaps to a lesser degree, in a patriarchal western civilization where female writers over the last two hundred years have written under duress, as have females in general, to the point of getting sick mentally and  physically with anorexia (starving oneself to be thin), hysteria (nervousness and depression), and agoraphobia (the fear of open and public places). They discourse on how female authors and their female characters confront this unenviable circumstance.

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) wrote The Second Sex (1949) remarkably “in the absence of any organized feminist movement” (Leitch 1261). Indeed, the “Introduction” to her book articulates feminist tenets decades before they became popular with contemporary feminists. She [sardonically] quotes ‘ “The female is a female by virtue of lack of qualities,’  said Aristotle;  ‘we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness. And St. Thomas for his part pronounced woman to be an ‘imperfect man,’ an ‘incidental’ being. This is symbolized in Genesis where Eve is depicted as made from what Bossuet called ‘a supernumerary bone’ of Adam” (Beauvoir 3). This independent, rebellious, and articulate defiance continues and progresses with the contemporary discourse of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Susan Bordo, and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar.

The consequences of women’s second class status is articulated by Bardo, who “follows other contemporary feminists (such as Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar) in noting that women over the last two hundred years are more prone than men to suffer from a number of illnesses that occupy an ill-defined terrain between the physical and the psychological” (Leitch 2254). She relates that Victorian novels did not depict women eating because it was “taboo” which serves as a “suppression of female sexuality” (2254).  Now in the twenty-first century “women, feminists included, are starving themselves to death in our culture” (2254). Gilbert and Gubar, (born 1936 and 1944 respectively) in their Madwoman in the Attic (1979) “famously make evident the high costs women writers pay for success. The madwoman in the attic (a reference to Bertha, Rochester’s hidden first wife, in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre) stands for everything the woman writer must try to repress—though never with complete success—in order to write books acceptable by male standards.  

Actually, although I have not read the book recently, my recollection is that the character, Jane Eyre, is an admirable one, with independence, courage, modesty, and intelligence. Perhaps Gilbert and Gubar take issue with the character Bertha Mason Rochester—who is violently insane and kept on the third floor—as a gratuitous female author’s appeasement to the patriarchal order. Bronte’s Bertha recalls Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s (1860-1935) short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” (1892) whose main character is having treatment for postpartum depression, which “was not widely understood” at the time (Baym 1682).  The female protagonist has been told to eat, rest, sleep, and do without any external stimulation, including company, her baby, reading, exercise, and especially writing. Her husband, who is a doctor, knows what is best for her. It is not surprising that his treatment for her induces his wife/patient into a psychosis manifested by her hallucinating over the women in the yellow wallpaper in her room.

Gilman’s had real life battles with depression and her treating doctor was “Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1914), a noted American physician, novelist, and specialist in nerve disorders, popularized the ‘rest cure’ in the management of hysteria, nervous breakdowns, disorders” (Baym 1688). Gilman’s short story, and in particular her female character’s husband John’s instructions—of course, a proxy for Dr. Mitchell—was assuredly a protest against medical treatment at the time for the “delicate and fragile female mind,” by the patriarchal society. Gilbert and Gubar  note Emily Dickinsin’s observations of ‘ “ infection in the sentence’ which suggests Dickinson’s recognition that literary texts are coercive, imprisoning, fever-inducing; that, since all literature usurps a reader’s interiority, it is an invasion of privacy” (Leitch 1931).  Undoubtedly, Dickinson incurred psychosomatic disorders and her artistry was not acknowledged in her lifetime. However, an English contemporary, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was, indeed, taken seriously across the Atlantic Ocean. 

Her poem, “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point,” (1852) is an indictment against slavery, miscegnational rape of female African American slaves, while “Aurora Leigh” (1857) underscores and advocates the cause of female artists’ intelligence, creativity, and independence. These messages were very bold for a female writer to make in this patriarchal world, and indeed she was a forerunner to the feminist movement; albeit, it certainly helped that her husband was Robert Browning, a major English poet during the Victorian Age, a favorable support that Emily Dickinson did not enjoy. Neither did the American writer Kate Chopin (1850-1904) enjoy male support when she wrote the novel The Awakening (1899) and the short story “Desiree’s Baby” (1893), both speaking “radically to issues of gender, sexuality, and the American family” (Baym 1602).  These extremely courageous, controversial pieces brought on much hostility and ostracizing towards Chopin, however, certainly, absolute high accolades by contemporary feminist/gender theorists. Gilbert and Gubor (as others) are most appreciate of the  perseverance of  “nineteenth-century women [who] overcame their ‘anxiety of  authorship,’ repudiated debilitating patriarchal prescriptions” (Leitch 1938). 

Works Cited

Baym, Nina, Ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7^th ed. New York: W.W. 

      Norton & Company, 2008. Print

Beauvoir, de Simone. The Second Sex. Marxist.org/…/Introduction.htm. Web 19 April

     2011. Print

Leitch, Vincent B. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2^nd ed. New York:

     W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print.

Reflection: Feminism and Gender Studies

This has been another mind-expanding week where we read and discussed a lot of illuminating discourse on feminism and gender studies. The theorists are Simone Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Susan Bordo, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar.  Beauvoir address feminine issues in general, and she is, in fact, a precursor to the others. Foucault and Butler concentrate on gender issues regarding sexuality, while Bordo, Gilbert, and Gubar mainly focus on female writers’ issues. I plan to write my analysis primarily on the female writers’ issues.

During class Dr. Wexler showed us a film clip from the original Pink Panther showing a seductive, sensual female singer entertaining her audience, then the ensuing discussion revolving around: “Who has the power? How is power represented in this scene?”  This elicited responses incorporating Foucault’s “History of Sexuality,” and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s “The Master-Slave Dialectic.” Opinions varied; my response was that the males hold the power because she depends on the predominantly male audience to become enthralled and attracted to her. Simone de Beauvoir might say the singer has the quality of “alterity”—the other—while Hegel may give her the slave characteristics of the master-slave relationship. However, it is still rather subjective, and thus one should be flexible in his or her opinion. From my personal experience, the women with whom I have been attracted to predominantly hold the majority of the power. 

Analysis #5 Poststructuralism and Postmodernism

My analysis on Postsructuralism and Postmodernism revolves around the 2000 uncut version of the horror film, American Psycho, directed by Mary Harron, who also wrote the screenplay along with Guinevere Turner. The setting of the movie transpires in New York City during the 1980s. Patrick Bateman, the yuppie lead character and protagonist (if I may use the word protagonist) from the outset proclaims “There is an idea of Patrick Bateman but only an abstraction, no real me” (American Psycho). Later, he answers his fiancée, “Negative, I want to fit in,” when she prods him “Why don’t you quit your job?”  When I try to put this film in the postmodernistic perspective a couple of its tenants come to mind: There is no ultimate truth, and, there is no self without the word.  The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1890) “focused on the human experience of freedom and responsibility in a godless universe. For Sartre, ‘existence is prior to essence’: because the world and human nature possess no fixed meaning, human beings are responsible for their own choices and actions” (Leitch 1196).  But is Patrick Bateman fully responsible for his murderous actions, or perhaps, partially, a victim of a cultural psychosis inflicted by the Postmodernistic Society?

Someone once said of contemporary society, “To the extent that they allow bureaucracies and entertainment to define and distract them, they live unauthentic lives.” Surely, Bateman exemplifies this by his unauthentic value system. His murderous rage ignites even over seeing better looking business cards of his yuppie colleagues, and over another colleague’s ability to get coveted reservations at an esteemed restaurant while Bateman cannot. Jean Baudrillard observes that “In consumer society, natural needs or desires have been buried under, if not totally eliminated by desires stimulated by cultural discourses (advertising, media, and the rest), which tell us what we want” (Leitch 1554).  Bateman’s true needs to murder and dissect women (predominantly) most likely stem from displaced anger brought about by his fantasy environment with no discernible outlets to sublimate his psychoses.

One might argue that his bizarre sexual activity and acts of murder reflect reality. However, these acts are cultivated through the mass media of film. He watches porno films, which include sadism-masochism, and the horror film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, whence he formulates his wants and techniques of kinky sex and murder. Mary Harron, the film’s director, comments that “Patrick Bateman learns how to kill and have sadist-masochistic sex (and positions) through his videos" (American Psycho  BluRay DVD).  Along these lines, Baudrillard feels “sexual desire is no longer a response to a person whom we meet and know face-to-face. Rather, sexual desire is stimulated by images promulgated by the media, and we strive to make our bodies to fit those images” (Leitch 1554). Bateman even makes his body fit by doing calisthenics to these videos. This brings us to the question: Does Kant’s ideals of reason and rationalism from the Enlightenment still prevail in our Postrucuralist and Modernistic Society?

Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky discuss this during their 1971 debate. (Foucault Chomsky Debate YouTube).  For the most part, Foucault believes that the coercive forces inherent in our society—government, corporate, educational, military—make it very difficult for humanity to maintain reason on a large scale. However, and more optimistically, Chomsky believes that “people’s creative powers to produce reasonable things will overcome the progressive structures of repression” (YouTube). Foucault interjects that even “Psychiatry, which is supposed to help people, is actually part of the power structure used in the judicial system” (YouTube). He goes on to say that Mao Zedong, the first communist revolutionary leader of China, had said that “Human nature is different between the proletariat and bourgeoisie” (YouTube). Chomsky reflects the more positive side in human nature bringing up his own civil disobedience concerning the Vietnam War. We may consider Chomsky a de facto proxy for Jürgen Habermas in this debate, who understands very well the arguments of the postmodernists and agrees that “the Enlightenment project of basing authority on reason has gone awry…we must strive to fully reintegrate the discourses of modern science, art, and politics … Enlightenment ideals gives people in post-Enlightenment societies a lever with which to move their less-than-perfect societies toward a better future” (Leitch 1569).

 Perhaps Baudrillard’s Disneyland metaphor captures most trenchantly our world and the American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman's world with these words: “Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but the order of the hyperreal [models of a real without origin or reality (Leitch 1557)] and of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle” (Leitch 1565).

Works Cited

American Psycho. Dir. Mary Harron Perf.Christian Bale, William Dafoe, Jared Leto, JoshLucas, Samantha 

     Mathis, Matt Ross, Bill Sage, Chloe Sevigny, Cara Seymour, Justin Theroux, Guinevere Turner, and  

     Reese Witherspoon. Lionsgate, 2000. Blu-ray DVD. Film.

Leitch, Vincent B. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2^nd ed. New York:

     W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print.

Foucault Chomsky Debate. YouTube. 1971. Web. 22 Apr. 2011.                                                             

     http://www.YouTube.com

Reflection: Poststructuralism and Postmodernism Part 2

As a follow up of Dr. Wexler’s clips on American Psycho I watched the full version on Blue Ray DVD last night, and I have to admit it was kind of disturbing.  Then I watched it again with the director’s commentary, and her relaxed soothing voice put me more at ease. I also watched the Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky debate again, also, as a follow up to Dr. Wexler’s clip. I know about Noam Chomsky’s great contribution to linguistics through English 302: Introduction to Modern Grammar, which I took last semester. So I plan to incorporate all of this material in my analysis for Poststructuralism and Postmodernism, which I plan to tackle tomorrow morning when I am more rested and my mind is fresh. In addition, I will bring up Disneyland briefly and discuss Jean Baudrillard’s,  “The Precession of Simulcra,” which I find fascinating. So I look forward to the assignment and then reading about Feminism and Gender Studies. 

Reflection: Poststructuralism and Postmodernism

            I’m off from work next week so I took some time this weekend to reread Roland Barthes’ “Death of the Author,” primarily because it is mentioned a few times by the Poststucturalists and Postmodernists, which make Barthe’s work at the cusp between Reader Response and the Postmodern/Poststructuralst. I also reread last week’s theorists’ work of Jean Francois Lyotard, Michel Foucault, and Jean Baudrillard, all of whom I wrote notes about and therefore have a better handle of, and, consequently, may refer to them in my analysis #5 for  next week.  I had purchased the DVD The Matrix a month ago because it has been mentioned several times by students and Dr. Wexler as being pertinent to some of our readings and discussions, and I will most likely watch it tonight so I can relate it perhaps to my next analysis. Last week I also bought the American Psycho DVD and plan to watch it tomorrow night if I’ve progressed satisfactorily in my reading—if not I will watch it later in the week—as I believe Dr. Wexler will be referring to certain segments of its clips in class this Tuesday.

            I look forward to reading this week’s theorists, especially Jacques Derrida, whom I believe piggybacks on Barthes.  Tomorrow and Tuesday, I will read the required works, so, hopefully, it will be fresh in my mind for class Tuesday.

Last week, I appreciated Dr. Wexler injecting a quote from Elie Wiesel”s biographical novel, Night, from one of the concentration camp inmates, said after watching a Jewish teenage inmate die slowly from a rope put around his neck by the Nazis. When a fellow inmate asked the other inmate “Where is God?” the other inmate answered “He just died,” which metaphorically, as Dr. Wexler noted, represented the end of the Modern Period.  A couple of students took issue with this statement because “five million other people were also killed by the Nazis.”  This is tragic and true of course; however, from my observations, it seems in vogue to marginalize the Jewish Holocaust and Israel’s right to exist.  I mention this as a Jew because I see and have seen anti-Semitism everywhere, overtly, indirectly, and latent.  

As a high school teacher, I recently had purchased forty-five Night novels from special funding at my school for my students to read, which I should be getting in a week. Last month I took about eighty-five students to the Museum of Tolerance in West Los Angeles, where the Jewish Holocaust and other Genocides were represented in their exhibitions. Perhaps by reading Night and experiencing the museum, a few prejudiced and angry adolescents’ minds will go through a reformation and see things clearer.

    

Reflection: Marxism

After going over my notes and rereading the Marxism material from last week, I have a better grasp of Marxist Theory and Criticism. And after reading an essay by Leon Trotsky online pertaining to  Leo Tolstoy it gives me inspiration to read a couple of his epic novels like War and Peace, Ana Karenina, not to mention, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s epic novel, The Brothers Karamazov. It seemed from Dr. Wexler’s perspective, Marx, although he, Marx, felt capitalism was inherently flawed, was somewhat in awe of it; however, his communist ideal did not include totalitarianism, which subsequent autocratic leaders assumed or hijacked. The film clip we saw in class for about ten minutes starring Alec Baldwin—the name of the film eludes me—reflects the negative aspects of capitalism: exploitation and class antagonism. Remarkably, there were several acclaimed actors in that one scene; nevertheless, I thought the dialogue was overdramatic and camp, albeit, sending a strong message.

April 3, 2011:

I finished reading Louis Althusser, who among other things, had a satirical perspective of religion as an ideology; and I finished reading Andrew Ross, who is an advocate for the exploited-downtrodden, a talented writer, and an articulate spokesman for higher education's embattled work force. I will post my perspective of Ross's discourse as a continuation to my Marxism analysis.

Analysis #4 Marxism

From my reading of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Antonio Gramsci, Leon Trotsky, and Raymond Williams (at this time I have not read Louis Althusser and Andrew Ross yet) some literature and film come to mind which I can relate the aforementioned discourse to.  Of particular interest to me, and I can see the relevancy, is class struggle, antagonism, and hegemony of the superstructure. However, In Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, the dystopia of the future has precluded class struggle and antagonism by brainwashing the proletariat soon after they are chemically hatched. Thus Marxism’s alienated labor is obviated. The hegemony of religion does not figure in either because it is non-existent in this after-Ford society. As far as the ruling class, Mustafa Mond and other world leaders have de facto totalitarian power. So Marx’s and Engles’ prediction that “the internal tensions and contradictions in capitalism would lead inevitably to its demise” does not come to realization and is averted in the Brave New World society (Leitch 648). However, in George Orwell’s 1984, the intellectuals and ruling class repress the majority and class conflict not only with brainwashing, but with violence and restrictions to literature and media too.  This is to a degree exemplified in the Stalinist Soviet Union. Some theorists believe in fact that Lenin and Stalin hijacked Marxism by instituting a totalitarian regime, “and it is generally believed that he [Stalin] ordered Trotsky’s murder” (878).

Who knows what the course of history may have taken had Trotsky not met such an untimely death. In one of his essays, “Tolstoy, Poet and Rebel,” Trotsky sympathetically discusses the class struggle that Tolstoy had gone through his career (Online Marxist.org 1-11). This essay, written and published in 1908 when Tolstoy was eighty, reflects how Tolstoy tried in both his private and professional life to come to terms with class struggle inherent in capitalistic society but perhaps never overcame his superstructure class: “From the first years of his consciousness he was, as he remains to this very day, an aristocrat, in the deepest and most secret recesses of his creativeness; and this, despite all his subsequent spiritual crises” (1). I do not want to be a hypocrite—I have only completed reading one of Tolstoy’s novels—but I imagine that Tolstoy, in terms of Antonio Gramsci’s terminology was a “traditional intellectual,” and never quite actualized into an “organic intellectual” (Leitch 1000). To clarify, “traditional intellectuals are the administrators and apologists for existing and cultural institutions” while “organic intellectuals rise out of membership in social groups (or classes) that have an antagonistic relationship to established institutions and official power." According to those criteria Marx, Engels, and Gramsci are indeed organic intellectuals, while Huxley, Tolstoy, Williams, and Orwell are more traditional intellectuals. If indeed we can categorize him as an intellectual, what would we call the contemporary Oliver Stone, aside from being controversial?

English 436 Analysis #4 Marxism Part II

I give a lot of kudos to Andrew Ross for articulating exploitation of black recording artists, artists in general, adjunct and part time college professors, and primary and secondary school teachers, even though he has a seemingly secure position—he is department chair—at New York University.  Ross is at odds with greed inherent in our society and corporate-like takeover of our colleges, which creates discount labor at the expense of artists and Ph.D. college professors.  In the clip that Dr. Wexler posted Ross blames a lot of the unemployment condition on “two decades of deregulation.” According to Ross, employers have taken advantage of the discounted flex labor pool, and have incorporated corporate like exploitive policies regarding mental labor, viz., professors.

“One of Ross’s more trenchant charges is that many current jobs return to conditions of the sweatshop, mobilizing cultural ideas of enjoyable work to extract long hours for low pay” (Leitch 2576).  In his chapter on “The Mental Labor Problem” (2578-97) which is part of his 2004 book, Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor (2578) Ross expounds on his positions. He maintains that “the largest subsidy to the arts has always come from workers themselves,” hence, the “cultural discount” (2579).  Referring to the dire circumstances of adjunct and part time college professors, he points out that “Baumol and Bowen” in their 1989 study of graduate education forecast “widespread tenure-track openings in the professoriat…and may have bootlessly lured thousands into doctoral programs,” which to me in part explains the fertile environment for exploitation: oversupply of mental labor, and lack of demand from  employers--universities--due in part from lack of funding, in addition to exploitive corporate tactics. Ross maintains, however, [and we have to take into consideration that this discourse was published in 2004, and the Great Recessions had not yet impacted us] “If colleges were still hiring full-time tenure-track professors, instead of part-timers and adjuncts, today’s labor supply would more closely approximate employer demand” (Leitch Note 2 2581).  Ross goes on to discuss “No-Collar” jobs of a neo-bohemian” workforce whom the tech companies gladly hired while incorporating the “sweat equity” proposition of “stock options” being profitable.

Accordingly, Ross compares the free labor of techies to the public’s “romantic notion of engarreted and starving artist” (2585). Ross takes exception to the “antediluvian” and “gimcrack rationales for paying people less than they deserve” (2585). Regarding artwork, Ross points out an interesting concept that “patrons have been extracting personal prestige and profit from their own association with the labor of art” and in fact, virtually all artists did not profit from the “surplus value” created (2585). He reflects that someone like “Van Gogh” exemplifies this (2586). To make matters worse, Ross maintains that “there persists an ingrained prejudice on the left against being well-paid occupationally, whether in the arts or in the academy” (2587). Consequently, he supports the hip-hop artists for making very good compensation and being sharp enough not to be exploited like their African-American forerunners. Ross acknowledges the “crass nouveau riche version of American success, but it cannot be divorced for reparations for almost a full century in which black artists had been robbed blind of their rights and royalties by the music industry” (2587).

Ross revisits the quagmire of higher education employees—college professors—when “in the 1990s, the corporatization of higher education set in for real, and casualization began to take a heavy toll on institutions nominally built on tenure, academic freedom, and faculty governance…where a large percentage of part-time labor force was soon struggling to earn any kind of living wage (2589). Furthermore, “As for regular faculty, their salaries have stagnated against the average wage…their job security serves as window dressing for a system designed to ensure a continuous flow of cheap, easily replaceable labor” (2590-91). Ross also comments on secondary charter schools, which reduces union membership and online courses which teaches a “disaggerated student body” and maintains tighter “control over the workforce and, potentially the curriculum” (2593). However, on the optimistic side, Ross sees the potential for part-time college professors unionizing in an economy where the unions have been weakening.

Works Cited

Leitch, Vincent B. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2^nd ed. New York:

  W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print

Trotsky, Leon. “Tolstoy, Poet and Rebel” 26 March 2011,  

     Marxists.org/archive/…/Tolstoy.htm, Web

Analysis #3: Psychoanalysis Theory and Criticism

My analysis concerns Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), and their contribution to psychoanalysis theory and criticism. Psychoanalysis has become progressively more prominent in our daily lives during the last one-hundred and fifty years in western civilization (although psychoanalysis critical theory may have waned a bit), even to the point that we can now choose virtually any literary text from any era and explicate it psychoanalytically. For instance, our Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism discusses a few literary works psychoanalytically in Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles; Hamlet, by William Shakespeare; and “The Purloined Letter,” by Edgar Allan Poe, all of which I will discuss from a psychoanalytical perspective.

Freud’s theory of psycho-sexual developments in the formative years specifies  that any fixation at a particular stage creates a problem, namely neurosis, later on. These stages are oral, anal, phallic, and genital. It appears that Hamlet may have had a fixation at the phallic stage during his formative years, which answers in part why he was unable to consummate sexual intimacy with his love, Ophelia. He may have never successfully overcome the prerequisite for the genital stage. Instead, Hamlet’s unresolved Oedipus complex created a fixation with his mother. Furthermore, Freud maintains that his inability to exact revenge on his murderous uncle “who did away with his father and took that father’s place with his mother, the man who shows him the repressed wishes his own childhood realized” (Leitch 817-819). This explains why Hamlet is subconsciously conflicted over killing a man who did what Hamlet subconsciously wanted to do himself, kill his father, the King.

According to another of Freud’s psychoanalytical explications, in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, it is apparent that the author had unconscious awareness of Freud’s psycho-sexual theories, again, the fixation of the phallic stage. “King Oedipus, who slew his father, Laïus, and married his mother Jocasta, merely shows us the fulfillment of our own childhood wishes” (Leitch 816). Furthermore, Freud implores us to acknowledge “those same impulses, though suppressed, are still to be found” (Leitch 816). Lacan continues Freud’s tradition of psychoanalysis explication of literature with his “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter”’ in 1955 (Leitch 1158). 

Poe’s short story, published in 1845 (Leitch 1158), deals with a signifier, a letter, that presumably has no signified, as no one, save the Queen, knows what is in the letter (Poe 1-14). However, as readers we can imagine a signified in the context that the letter’s revelation to the King spells a lot of trouble for the Queen. Accordingly, the letter could be from a lover, a political figure involved in intrigue, or just about anyone that fits the reader’s fancy. Though, as a reading audience, we can only assume. The quest for the letter, according to Lacan, is in effect Freud’s repetition compulsion, which Lacan calls repetition automotive (Leitch 1158). According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, repetition compulsion is “an irresistible tendency to repeat an emotional experience or return to a previous psychological state.” For the protagonist, Dupin, it is the satisfaction of doing to Minister D what Minister D had done to the Queen, stealing back the purloined letter, thereby out-foxing Minister D while at the same time making a hefty financial profit from the reward. We can only conjecture when Poe wrote this short story that he may have intuitively known what repetition automotive was, even if it had not been articulated by Freud and Lacan at that time. Nevertheless, from Lacan’s perspective, Poe was having a “good time” writing this erudite short story, incorporating his knowledge of Latin, French and his refined vocabulary, in this superb psychological mystery story (Lacan  1-12).  Thus, these three perspectives of literary works exemplify psychoanalysis criticism and theory at work. Consequently, it stands to reason that literary critics, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and major critical theory students have the ability to explicate literature psychoanalytically, and thus gain a more intimate knowledge of the authors and their characters.

Works Cited

Lacan, Jacques. “Seminar on The Purloined Letter,” 20 March 2011,  

     www.lacan.com/purloined.htm, Web.

Leitch, Vincent B. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2^nd ed. New York:  

     W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print

Poe, Edgar. “The Purloined Letter, 18 March 2011, enotes 

     http://www.enotes.com/purloined-    letter-text,  Web.

Reflection: Phenomenology and Reader-Response Theory

    For me, there was a lot of drama concerning Martin Heidegger and his affiliation with the Nazi Party in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s, so I downloaded his interview with Der Spiegel Magazine taken in 1966 to be published posthumously, according to Heidegger’s agreement to talk about the subject for the first and last time. I thought his explanations appeared plausible and ethical, and mentioned it to Dr. Wexler, who reacted somewhat  incredulously by recommending to me to read one of his books--the title of which escapes me--the implication that everything was not exactly kosher with Heidegger. His discourse on “Language” was challenging for me. Jean-Paul Sartre was more comprehensible and his past was commendable as part of the French Resistance during WWII.  Reading Wolfgang Iser, at least, the first half of his “Interaction Between Text and Reader” was clearer to me; however, I found the last few pages to be esoteric and challenging as I did Roland Barthes, "Death of the Author." A common threads that I got from all the reading was the important trust the reader must have for the author and vice versa. Also, it is ultimately the reader who perceives the text. However, what reader, contemporary or posterity?

    I spent the weekend rereading Iser, Barthes, Freud, and Lacan, and did some research on Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter,” and Jacques Lacan’s seminar from 1955 on the subject, about which I wrote the first draft  and will publish it tomorrow.

Reflection: Psychoanalysis Theory and Criticism 3/13/11

After the readings, Dr. Wexler’s extensive lecture, and class activities last week, I appreciate Sigmund Freud’s and Jacques Lacan’s contribution to literary theory and criticism more. The concept that the character, Hamlet, according to Dr. Wexler’s posit and take on Freudian psychoanalysis theory, procrastinated killing his uncle, Claudius, basically because he [unconsciously?] identifies with the uncle as having perpetrated the killing of Hamlet’s father, namely, the Oedipus complex, is a fascinating thought.  After seeing the five-minute clip of Mel Gibson’s portrayal of Hamlet along with his mother Gertrude, played by Glenn Close, it fits with Freud’s explication quite well. It appears that Hamlet’s Id is finally winning the struggle with his Superego in creating a very disturbed Ego: Hamlet’s murder of Polonius, and Hamlet’s crazed emotions then sexual moments with his mother. I look more forward to reading Hamlet in a Shakespeare course here at CSUN—the first and last time I had read it was 1966 in a college class in New York City—and explicating it from a psychoanalysis theory perspective.

The two family portraits by Peale (1778-1860) and Bellei (1857-1922) that Dr. Wexler showed us led to an interesting discussion of the family members’ psychological states.  There were a lot of illuminatingly different analyses by class members, which makes me ponder, now, as to what artists consciously feel when painting and how much is unconscious.  Peale lived prior to Freud’s (1856-1939) theories, whereas, Bellei   was Freud’s contemporary. It is perhaps not a coincidence that Bellei’s painting is more spontaneous, more revealing of emotions, and less in a “posing” mode  than Peale’s painting.

During class, I agreed wholeheartedly with Dr. Wexler’s statement that Freud “kicks man off his ‘enlightenment’ pedestal,” for example, Immanuel Kant’s imploring us to use our consciously mature minds more and rely less on other people’s minds, similar to Ralph Waldo Emerson discourse on Self-Reliance. However,  according to Freud, our actions, or lack of, are predicated or controlled more by our unconscious mind. Freud’s psycho-sexual development stages make a lot of sense to me; however, I want to know more about why Carl Jung departed from Freud’s theory.  Same with Lacan, whom I want to read again, and who departs from Freud’s “castration theory” and discourse, and is another major contributor to psychoanalysis theory. Also, I want to learn more as to why Freud was criticized by later theorists as having “bourgeois” tendencies and theories. It stands to reason that Freud was  from a patriarchal dominated time and that later psychoanalysis theorists probably delve into psychoanalysis more equally from feminist’s perspective.

Reflection on Structuralism and Semiotics

Last week I wrote my analysis on Formalism and Carnivalesque, and with the reading of  Shklovsky and Bakhtin, coupled with class discussion and Dr. Wexler’s incorporation of the Bananas defamiliarization clip, I have a pretty decent comprehension of the material. I was concerned, however, over what I felt was complex material of Saussure semiology last week, and I was relieved to be able to grasp it better in a quick discussion with a classmate-Jan—and then Dr. Wexler’s advertisement exercise, which distinguished the signification process of the signifier and the signified, i.e. semiotics. 

 At class’s end I overheard an animated conversation between Eric and Dr. Wexler of “archetypes” in the movie Clockwork Orange, which I would have found more interesting had I seen the movie in the last thirty-five years and had retained Northrop Frye’s discourse on “The Archetypes in Literature” better, so the next day I went to Best Buy and bought the Clockwork Orange DVD—which I hope to see soon, and I reread Frye.

We do have a lot of theorists to cover in class, and I hope we can spend some more time in discussing Frye, and Tzvetan Todorov. Frye, I believe, tied in Carl Jung’s psychoanalysis theory of the collective archetypical memory to his “archetypes” in literature.  Todorov’s discourse on narratology is very structured; it is interesting how he creates “a scientific knowledge of literature” (Leitch 2022).

For tomorrow’s class, I have read Sigmund Freud, and I can see how one can incorporate his theories to literature as he has done with Oedipus Rex and Hamlet. Later tonight, I will read Jacques Lacan.  It is interesting, but I think Todorov up to this point is the only critic who remains living. Tomorrow, I look forward to the class presentation and Dr. Wexler’s lecture and exercises.

Word Picture

Word Picture

Hi, I’m Chiam Robinsky, a Jew from Eastern Europe, who has snuck out of my shtetl for a day to dress-up like an abbot in order to participate in the city’s Carnival. It’s my one day in the year that I can express how I really feel with impunity about those ecclesiastical hypocrites. Life for Jew, even a Torah scholar such as me, is even lower on the social scale than a Christian peasant from the city. But on this day, we all unite in our rebelliousness in making fun of the church and the royalty. As you can see, I’m sticking my tongue out and making a weird face to show self-mockery and disdain for the aristocratic and ecclesiastical order in today’s society.

Analysis: Formalism

Mikhail M. Bakhtin (1895-1975), a literary theorist and dissident Russian during the Stalinist regime of repression and censorship, arguably contributed to the Formalism Literary Theory, which was a “Russian literary movement of the 1920’s and 1930s…emphasized theoretical considerations of FORM as they sought to develop a science of poetics of literature” (Frye 209). His writing on the “carnivalesque—an idea  first introduced in Rabelais and His World (written in the 1930s and 1940s, published 1965)—is Bakhtin’s term for those forms of unofficial culture (the early novel among them) that resist official culture, political oppression, and totalitarian order through laughter, parody, and ‘grotesque realism’”(Leitch 1073). Bakhtin’s  research and dissertation of Rabelias’s discourse on carnival intrigued him because he evidently related its lack of Rabelias’s carnivalesque laughter to his modern day Russia.

            Anatoly Lunacharsky, a Russian critic “who presided over the foundation of Soviet culture, the Commissar of Enlightenment … basic argument that carnival was a kind of safety valve for passions the common people might otherwise direct to revolution” coincided with Bakhtin’s premise, who was writing his dissertation at the time (Bakhtin Michail Prologue xviii). Bakhtin was keenly aware of the intolerance the Stalinist regime held for political satire and parody so he tried to do a balancing act when the censors questioned him. The Introduction of Rabelais and His World states that “all were considered equal during carnival” (10). Furthermore, it “is the laughter of all the people. Second, it is universal in Scope; it is directed at all and everyone, including the carnival’s participants. Third, this laughter is ambivalent: It is gay, triumphant, and at the same time mocking, deriding” (11, 12). Bakhtin’s interpretation of the carnival relates to Victor Shklovsky’s—another Russian formalist (1893-1984)—salient points in his discourse on “Art as Technique.”

            For example, the pantomime of the carnival correlates with the “defamiliarization” technique that Shklovsky describes as making “the familiar seem strange by not naming the familiar object. He [Leo Tolstoy] describes an object as if he were seeing it for the first time, an event as if it were happening for the first time. In describing something, he avoids the accepted names of its parts and instead names corresponding parts of the object” (Shklovsky Online 2). The dress, costume, and pantomime of these carnival participants conveyed hilarious satire and parody without declarative sentences, of their political, aristocratic, and ecclesiastical targets. On a typical carnival day, one would probably see heteroglassia—Bakhtin’s term for speaking differently to different people—at work, depending who the performer’s audience is at that specific instance. Thus Bakhtin tries to revitalize and infuse the carnivalesque freedom into intellectual formalist theory and Russian literary life, and furthermore, we see the incorporation of Shklovsky’s defamiliarization technique reflected in these carnivals during the Middle Ages/Early Renaissance periods in Europe as well.

Work Cited

Bakhtin, Mikail. Rabelias and His World. Trans. Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana      

University Press, 1984. Print

Frye, Northrop, et al. Ed. The Harper Handbook to Literature. New York: Longman, 1997. Print

Kuiper, Kathleen. Ed. Merriam Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature. Springfield, Mass.: 

Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 1995. Print

Leitch, Vincent B. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2^nd ed. New York: W.W.

Norton & Company, 2010. Print

Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Online: http://www.vahidnab.com/defam.html

Reflection #4 2-15-11 through 2-20-11 Enlightenment

English 436 Reflection #4, Covering 2-14-11 through 2-20-11

Yesterday, I caught up on all the reading from last week: The works that I was most able to follow were Alexander Pope’s, An Essay on Criticism; Edmund Burke’s, Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful; Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s, Phenomenology of Spirit, Dr. Wexler’s handouts of Immanuel Kant’s, “What is Enlightenment?” and the six-page summary (Dr. Wexler’s) of all our readings. I had a particularly rough time reading Kant’s From Critique of Power of Judgment and Hegel’s From Lectures on Fine Art.

Last week’s class was somewhat of a self-inflicted disappointment because I had not finished most of our required reading, and as a result did not follow Dr. Wexler’s lecture very closely. In addition, the apprehension regarding my involvement in our group project lived out to my worst fears as I blew my best opportunity for some constructive dialogue when I did not respond adequately to classmate Janet Smith’s compliment that she thought my clip—"James Farmer Jr.’s speech was the most sublime.”

I’ll try to articulate the most salient points from last week’s reading:

• Alexander Pope is a witty, pithy, and clever poet whose verse in An Essay on Criticism expounds on critics’ talents and lack of. He is a neoclassic poet and critic, who values the classic adherence to strict rules.

• Immanuel Kant implores us to be enlightened and value our minds to think courageously and freely. He differentiated between public freedom as a scholar and writer, with less private freedom as a worker in civic post or office, which has less latitude. Although he believes in mature and independent thinking, Kant is far from being an anarchist. He influenced other great writers, for example, Ralph Waldo Emerson—particularly, I would assume, in his Self Reliance essay.

• Edmund Burke, in his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful expounds on affection, pain, pleasure, joy, grief, self-preservation, the sublime, and the beautiful. He states that “curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections,” (Leitch 454) and basically once you find out or discover what you are curious about the “novelty” lessens. I would agree with most of that; however, I can visualize Albert Einstein still enamored all the time. He also makes a point to the effect that the removal of pain or danger does not produce “pleasure” but does produce “delight.” He feels not even grief has any resemblance to positive pain. He believes we endure grief and somehow willingly accept it; however, we try to shake off absolute pain quickly. Self-preservation from pain and danger is the “most powerful of all the passions” (458). Burke vehemently turned against the French Revolution probably because of the ugly turn of events, viz., "The Reign of Terror.” Finally, he related Sublime with danger, e.g., nature’s capacity for violence; and Beauty “should be light and delicate.” (460).

• Hegel, who was German like Kant, was to me perhaps to most controversial,yet his philosophy has influences in the Psychoanalysis and Marxism theories. He believes that philosophy’s goal is to realize the “absolute knowledge.” (537) I look forward to re-read his essays for a firmer grasp. He expostulates on the Master/Slave(Bondsman) relationship in stark terms: Generally, as humans, we have to have another human in our world to feel our “self-conscious,” which initiates the lord and bondsman relationship. Besides influencing the Psychoanalysis and Marxism theories, he also influenced the rise of fascism.

Reflection on my Contribution to Group Presentation 2-15-11

English 436: Reflection of my contribution to Group Led Discussion on Classical Criticism and Theory

Tomorrow we will give our Group Presentation for Discussion and I’m somewhat apprehensive because we haven’t gotten together for a dry run yet. The first night that we formed our group, I wrote out the five members' emails and phone numbers and then emailed the list to everyone in the group. Although there are five of us, only three of us have shared our film clips with each other. In the meantime, I chose a speech clip from the film, The Great Debaters, and tried to relate it to Aristotle’s and Longinus’s tenants. I am not ecstatic with my finished product, but I know that as a result of working hard on it I have been able to learn more of classical criticism and theory. Tonight, I called all our members and was able to get a commitment from Brian to meet before class. He also gave me a neat website to get the text from the actors’ speeches, which I will try to obtain after I submit this reflection.

As far as the film that I’m focusing on, when I had seen it at a theatre a few years ago, I knew that I was experiencing something special, especially the segment I’m showing. Since that time, I have shown it numerous times to my high school English classes, and now that I have woven Aristotle’s rhetoric and Longinus’s sublimity through and around it, perhaps I can share that with my students. However, the important business at hand is how I can involve my fellow classmates tomorrow in a discussion while contributing some salient points myself.

Analysis #1 Classical Literary Criticism

English 436, Analysis #1, Classical Criticism and Theory

The focus of my analysis deals with James Farmer Jr.’s dramatically charged culminating speech at Harvard University during a debating contest in 1935, as depicted in the 2007 film, The Great Debaters. This debating contest actually takes place between Wiley College, a small Negro university from rural Texas, and Harvard University. It is the first time a Negro College debates at the renowned Harvard University. Farmer’s culminating speech perseveres and transcends the others’ because it embodies the classical Greek elements of Aristotle’s great Rhetoric and Longinus’s Sublimity.

Gorgias of Leontini, ca. 483-376 B.C.E., values sophistry and rhetoric for its ability to persuade, regardless of what position the rhetor takes—the ends justifies the means. However, Plato, ca. 427—ca. 347 B.C.E., maintains that The Republic’s Ideal State must be founded in justice and reason; hence, justice is the most desirable, refuting Gorgias’s sophistry. From the outset Farmer’s persona establishes Aristtotle’s ethos, a term for character—knowing who you are. As an impressionable, innocent, but highly intelligent fourteen-year-old, he brings eunola, goodwill and good mindedness. Even at his young age he establishes sophrosyne, reflecting that he knows his way around. He satisfies any remaining doubters later in his argument when he relates “witnessing a white lynch mob in the Jim Crow South, string-up, hang, and burn a Negro.” (YouTube) Thus he establishes Aristotle’s logos, reason, and certainly pathos, emotion when describing this gut wrenching scene.

Prior to Farmer’s final argument, when his Harvard opponent describes his father’s partner dying in the line of duty as a police officer and exclaims, “Nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral, no matter what name we give it [ i.e.; civil disobedience]” (YouTube) he puts the Wiley team on the defensive in their position as proponents of Gandhi’s civil disobedience. Farmer counters and eloquently responds with a quote from Saint Augustine: “An unjust law is no law at all,” (YouTube) which helps establish logos, or justice. He escalates the stakes and establishes a deciding and extremely poignant appeal with his pathos emotionally driven evocation of the lynch mob in the unjust Jim Crow South of the 1930’s. Farmer then raises the stakes and culminates his speech with, “I have a right to resist with violence or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter,” (YouTube) which successfully evokes both fear and compassion in the audience. However, it is Farmer’s prior epideictic part of his speech—an eulogistic description of the Negro victim that particularly helps evoke this emotion—pathos—that establishes his humanity and gives the victim a real face and life that the audience can visualize: “Was he a sharecropper, a preacher? Were his children waiting up for him?” (Youtube)

Farmer’s hyperbaton, which is Longinus’s term for “an arrangement of words or thought which differs from the normal sequence” (Leitch 146) strikes a chord in the audience’s heart. His plain use of diction, avoiding magniloquence, helps create visualization, or as Longinus terms it, phantasia, “in which enthusiasm and emotion make the speaker see what he is saying and bring it visually before his audience” (143). Longinus advocates for the speaker/writer to take chances in their rhetoric just like Farmer does when he states African American violence as a real possibility. He does not, as Longinus puts it, maintain generally at a correct and safe level “and take no risks and do not aim at the heights, whereas greatness, just because it is greatness, incurs danger” (149). Indeed, James Farmer Jr. speech engenders an aura of sublimity and his audience responds accordingly, accepting the rights for civil disobedience for the unjustly oppressed.

Works Cited

Washington, Denzel, The Great Debaters, “Ending Speeches” 2007, Web, 10 Feb. 2011 Youtube http://www.youtube.com/

Washington, Denzel, The Great Debaters, “James Farmer Jr.’s Ending Speech” 2007 YouTube Web 10 Feb. 2011 http://www.youtube.com

Leitch, Vincent B., Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print

Reflection #3

English 436 Reflection #3 Covering 2-7-11 through 2-11-11

It is a minute past midnight, Saturday morning, and I finally feel comfortable enough to do some writing, at least, on my reflection for the week. This is the first installment of a few other pieces due this week: next, the analysis #1 for classical criticism/theory, which I finally feel better prepared for after having reread Longinus “On Sublimity” real slowly tonight, and then on my contribution for the group project that we will be presenting this coming Tuesday. As Dr. Wexler suggested we should give our presentation from more of a Longinus perspective, I needed to get a more tangible grasp on his discourse. Also, Professor O’Neill's and Dr. Wexler's excellent reviews reinforced my reading of Plato, and particularly, Aristotle this week; I finally feel the sensation of standing on firmer ground.

Watching and analyzing the speeches from Wall Street helped ground and prepare me for what is expected in my first analysis, and although I will try to incorporate Gorgias, Plato, and Aristotle, Longinus’s “ On Sublimity” will actually dominate. When I first read Longinus last weekend I had the impression he discoursed in very general terms; however, upon rereading his essay tonight, I realized he has a lot of very substantive and eloquent discourse. Of course, we may never know for sure who actually wrote “On Sublimity,” similar to the controversy regarding Shakespeare’s (?) works.

This has been a particularly hectic couple of weeks for me: my five-week progress report for my high school students was due today, and in addition, I am in the middle of teaching several six-hour Saturdays for CAHSEE preparation. Therefore,I will resume my writing later in the afternoon, and will certainly feel better when everything, including our group presentation, goes well.

Reflection #2 2/1/11 through 2/6/11

English 436 Reflection #2 by Bernie Sapir for the dates 2-1/11through 2-6-11

By now I thought I would already have read this week’s reading but instead I reread all of last week’s Gorgias and Plato, getting a better understanding, plus, watched “Allegory of the Cave” again on YouTube. I also looked at a few classmates’ Blogs, gleaning some valuable ideas, and went over Dr. Wexler’s computer notes, which helped me see things clearer and more in perspective. After reviewing over last week’s class and material, I have less dogmatic views of both Gorgias and Plato. I want to believe that if I was adept at rhetoric and sophistry, then I would use my talents ethically. Of course, Gorgias of Leontini did not have that as a priority; however, he was ethical, or at least truthful, in acknowledging arêtē, excellence in virtue, was not his priority, which Plato gave him credit for. Actually, quite often rhetoric saves one from humiliation. Plato, in his Phaedrus, actually condemns writing and extols speaking because it is more authentic (Leitch 43-44). I would like to have it both ways: be articulate and persuasive in both.

I read somewhere that the Socrates in Plato’s Republic is not his teacher but an entirely different character, which has created some question marks for me. Nevertheless, it is clear that Plato would sacrifice censoring Poetry that may have had a deleterious impact on the city community. As Dr. Wexler mentioned something to the effect that there is a balancing act in society over too much freedom and keeping a stable community. What is actually good for the whole?

Getting back to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” I need to replay the last couple of minutes, which confused me a bit. The audio is lacking somewhat on that clip. The very ending was clearer to me, however, in that the enlightened one should go back to the cave for the betterment of the unenlightened slaves and try to altruistically help them, even though it may be dangerous.  I’m looking forward to reading Aristotle, Longinus, delving into my Analysis#1, and working on my Group Project.

Reflection: Week#1, 1/25/11-2/1/11

English 436 Reflection Week #1 1/26/11-2/1/11, by Bernie Sapir

Last Tuesday’s class helped me realize that I had a lot of studying to do: My response to Dr. Wexler’s clip was limited compared to other students’ responses. The ones most indelible to me were the critiques from the Feminism point of view, reflecting the restrictions and the lack of freedom of the female puppet.  After reading our Anthology’s Introduction, the ensuing discussion is clearer to me now, and I deliberate whether to put a Marxism critique’s slant on the clip, as the characters reflect the class disparity between the performers and the royalty, perpetuating an absurdity.

Over the weekend I read our Anthology’s Introduction followed by Gorgias and Plato; however, it clicked more for me after rereading  the Introduction’s “Classical Theory and Criticism” a second time, being that I then realized more that Gorgias’ and Plato’s discourse was from a critique’s point of view; thus, the objective of this course became clearer to me. As far as their content, Gorgias of Leontini appreciates excellence in language as a tool for rhetorical and persuasive matters. His philosophy is compatible with Sophistry as he makes a great lawyer’s case for Helen.

 On the other hand, Plato criticizes sophistry; he is more interested in truth and protecting Greek society,which may be a contradiction, as occasionally they are mutually exclusive. Furthermore, Plato’s advocating censoring parts of The Iliad and The Odyssey because of the negative images of the Gods is troubling to me. Actually, he seems more concerned with the state of the city and the corrupting influence on society than with creative freedom of poets and playwrights. In addition, Plato’s disapproval of poets mimicking nature—mimesis—appears inflexible. He seems intolerant at times for creative expressionism as just a copy. The Introduction to The Norton Anthology of  Theory & Criticism expresses that Aristotle has even less toleration for sophistry than Plato, which to me is positive position and stimulates my interest in reading Aristotle this week.

INTRODUCTION

Bernie Sapir’s Introduction Regarding Critical Theory, Our blogs, and our Class

This is my first blog, and I am excited that it will help cultivate my knowledge of Critical Theory. I look forward to offering my perspectives and glean from other students’ perspectives. With guarded optimism, I realize the learning curve will be steep, especially in the beginning. So with some apprehension, I read our anthology’s Introduction , Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen, and Plato’s Republic . The reading illuminated a new perspective for me on literature and critical theory.

Hopefully, we will have easy access to each other’s blogs and a lot of online interaction will ensue, making this a very dynamic mechanism to communicate.  Although I will turn sixty-three soon, my mind is still fertile and the learning process continues. Our blogs should facilitate a collaborative and reciprocal learning environment.

 I have been taking English classes at CSUN for the last five semesters with a long-term goal of attaining a master’s degree in English, a process that has already improved my high school teaching skills. Teaching since 1997, I obtained my English credential from the LAUSD Intern Program.  For the fifteen years prior to teaching, I was in the credit and collection field, working for manufacturers and financial institutions. I attained my Bachelor of Science Degree in accounting from CSUN in 1993. Every time that I learn something new I know I have grown and enhanced my mind.

After reading the assigned material for Dr. Wexler’s class this first week, I have a compelling feeling that accompanies a newborn interest. Reading about the different divisions of critical theory, from Classical Theory and Criticism of the fifth century B.C.E to the more recent theories such as New Historians and Cultural Studies, I now have a better idea of what this course entails, and I will read the material over again to solidify my comprehension, which is my practice. 

From my first reading, I perceive that the various categories of Theory and Criticism are formed to a large degree by the socio/political/religious variables present at their respective periods, which impacts the writers, their reading audiences, and their critics. For instance, the predominant female writers from an earlier period did not receive their just acclaim from critics until the “Feminism Theory and Criticism” period became prominent. And the Marxist Theory and Criticism may explain Leo Tolstoy’s disillusionment with writing near the end of his career. Therefore, with confidence, I predict that this English course will create another lens to view literature, literary criticism, and societies.

 When Dr. Wexler showed us that clip of the human female doll and her male counterpart, listening to students’ responses afterwards was a revelation that has inspired me to immerse myself into the learning process of English 436 and become a valuable contributor to our class discussions and blog posts.