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.