All the world's a production (with apology to Will)

The Eagleton reading confirmed my speculation that Marxist theory relates to art as a product, and the interplay of history/ideology and text/production serves to identify the "internal relations to its 'world' ." As I read, I could not help but envision this relationship in terms of the Greek drama mask. The mask was both the signifier and, to some degree, the signified. It served to give the audience a point of reference. Beneath the mask was the human actor. If this person had removed the mask, the audience would have been at least a little confused. They would not immediately understand the intention or the message behind the action. The threads of the play would be lost, and the actor would not be recognized because he had been know only as that entity signified by the mask. In reference to Balzac,"..his art drives him to transcend his reactionary ideology and perceive the real historical issues at stake" (172). Perhaps all ideologies are merely masks that lend meaning to the cosmological audience. In that case, theoretical constructs are intended to be predominately referential . Maybe.

In search of an adequate umbrella

In the realm literary criticism and theory, it is rare that anyone creates anything new. Most of what we have been reading is based on theorists looking at existing phenomena and attempting to explain the foundations, origins, basis, or "essence" behind the works of others and behind social structures. In the most extreme speculation, there is a denial that such things even exist. There is no real structure or essence. All ideas about reality are artificial constructs that serve a limited and transient purpose. In Marxism, there is a shift back to finding that root/causal element which will explain a number of different--apparently unrelated--phenomena. That base was economy. All social interaction throughout history was to be viewed from the singular perspective of a struggle to control "production" in all of its aspects. The effects on the artistic world are a little blurry because, other than the move by the Communist government to suppress art that didn't toe the party line, Marx seemed to have thought very little about that. Perhaps art was simply another product to be controlled by a fluctuating hierarchy. There are a number of other isms seeking a base that is progressively more eccentric. The definition of a universal philosophy or cosmology based on single group perspective is the aim of many current theoretical approaches. Feminism is simply one more. However, there has been a not so subtle shift in the place and purpose of theoretical speculation. Marxist aims were to change the material world by changing the power base controlling the means of production. The more that people were "schooled" to see this perspective, the harder it would be for the old structures to stand. Unlike previous theorists who sought to understand and to explain, the Marxist sought to actively intervene. A part if this intervention involved the creation of a recognizable enemy of the "cause"--the Bourgeoisie.
The Hooks reading identifies the enemy as the sexist and the purpose of feminism/feminist cultural criticism is to identify and eradicate sexism (against women primarily). The sexist enemy can be either males coming from the old patriarchal structures or the privileged "white"(?) woman who has lost interest and identification with feminist theory because she now has access to the money and the power structures formerly in the tight grasp of the male controllers (are we back to Marxism here?). It is the purpose of feminist criticism and politics to educate the people to recognize the various forms of sexism that may manifest in all aspects of our shared existence. Unlike Marxism, feminism is acutely aware of the influence of the arts and makes them a focal point, as hooks points out in her exuberant proclamation at the beginning of the article. It seems to me that theory as a discipline and as pursuit into deeper meanings (or non-meaning) is becoming both more eccentric and more adversarial in nature. It almost seems that there is an attempt to regress to an "us v. them" mentality. Perhaps some of the earlier vagueness in the course was a good thing.

A loss for words

I really don't know what to say. These readings seem to be starting to rehash everything we have been talking about from the beginning. Issues of form and the purpose of literature and rhetoric (revealing the author, concealing the author, ignoring the author) are still with us. Marxist theory (in its various forms) seems more proactive than most with its stated purpose of not just understanding but changing reality. At least it acknowledges the existence of reality. It is paralleling the more spiritual Greeks who explain the ideal in the guise of the caste system of the utopian philosoper king. Marx denies the ideal and replaces it with the somewhat more mobile and material caste system of class struggle--more mobile in the sense that up sometimes winds up being down and vice versa. Then Althusser brings us right back to a decentered structure without essence or focus. It is all very much like a tail chasing its dog.

So, that's all folks. I am going to sign off now and go read the book that I have selected to review. It really is more interesting for me than this week's assignments, and I suspect it is more original, too.

Tech trouble

I do not know what is going on with the Jameson post. It is supposed to be below this one. It shows partial text, and if you left click after the last letter and drag the mouse, it does show the rest of the text. I have done everything I can to fix it, but nothing is working. If you all see a different screen, let me know.

Jameson and the Order of the Comfy Chair

I have to admit to an appreciation of the reading from "On Interpretation: Literature as a Socially Symbolic Act." It had an almost anti-climatic, post- resolution sense of ease after weeks of butting our heads against Truth (big "T", little "t", CAPITALIZED, italicized, bolded, and "quoted "T"). It was like a cool refreshing drink after the parching desert where nihilist "monks" chanted a decentralizing mantra of "Nada, Nada, all is Nada." I found myself reveling in phrases that identified a principle as "the absolute horizon of all reading and interpretation" (181). I rejoiced in the resurrection of the author in the forms of Dante, Milton, and Joyce. I, too, believe that "even archaic moments of the cultural past...do not go away just because we choose to ignore them" (182). To grasp this cultural past is to behold a mystery. This mystery not only possesses a center, it requires a unified "human adventure" in order to be truly comprehensible. I stood up and cheered the formula, "Our presupposition, in the analyses that follow, will be that only a genuine philosophy of history 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). The extreme graciousness of Jameson was impressive in noting that other perspectives, though having merit, are in fact, "more specialized interpretive codes whose insights are strategically limited as much by their own situational origins as by the narrow or local ways in which they construe or construct their objects of study" (183). I almost wept with relief after so much energy has been expended over the futility of words and the ethereal nature of language when I read, "Indeed, no working model of the functioning of language, the nature of communication or of the speech act, and the dynamics of formal and stylistic change is conceivable which does not imply a whole philosophy of history. ..." (184). All is not truly relative; there really is a mysticism implied in language that transcends mere formulas. As Telleyrand is credited with observing: "language ... having been given to us in order to conceal our thoughts" (184). Ahh! This is incredibly warm and comfy. Can I please have some marshmallows with my hot chocolate?