Response to Tonya Krouse

After reading Tonya Krouse's guest lecture on feminist theory I am a little uneasy on everything that was brought up in the post. It may be the reader inside of me coming out, but I did not like the way in which the article was written and it couldn't keep my attention.

With that said, the subject matter I think is very important, but I feel as though our other readings and discussions have been more helpful, for me, in understanding what feminist theory is and its application to texts. 

Growing up, the idea of women not having the same rights as men usually never crossed my mind, since my mother was the one that was taking me and my sister to practices and places we needed to go to. But as I got older I starting realizing that my father was making more money than my mother was, and he put in half the hours at work than she did.  After learning more about the Equal Rights Act, or lack there of, I started to think about how things were in our country.  I agree with the idea that women should have the same rights as men, but I feel as thought the connotations that we discussed in class, hinder our generation from saying they are feminists.

My biggest grudge with the feminist theory is the women who say that pornography objectifies women and makes them victims of assault. I feel as though since both parties in the video are partaking in the act, and its not just the woman sitting there, then who is to say which person you're getting pleasure from. And to say that only men watch porn to objectify women, when in reality there are women who watch it as well for the same reasons men do, they are partaking in this idea that women are subordinate to men, and just are continuing this wrong thought instead of changing it.

Mantissa Part 2

When I first started reading Mantissa I was confused as to what parts of theory was applied to this. Once I read Ms. Sheldon's blog post, I started to realize what exactly what was incorporated into the novel. Even though I understand what is going on in the book now, I can't help but think that what Lacan is saying about about sexuality and identity is being reflected in Fowles' novel. 

When considering the death drive and jouissance in the novel I feel that it is contradictory in the book.  Miles Green in the first section is searching for who he could be, trying to find his identity.  Through the first section, he racks his brain to think of possible ideas of who he possible could be, he then finally thinks that he is part of the government.  This continues through to the end of the first section which results in sexual interaction between Miles Green and the Doctor, resulting in both of them orgasming.  From my understanding of Lacan's theory between the relationship of sexuality and identity, all the work that Miles Green has been working for to find out who he is, had just been sidetracked by the sexual release. In that point he had no sense of identity and gave up the feeling of trying to fill a void.

All within the first section I believe that Fowles is refuting the Lacan theory between sexuality and identity because the nurse and the doctor are doing sexual things to Mr. Green throughout the section in order for him to remember more about himself. If it were to hold true with the Lacanian theory, identity is lost in sexual contact so in a way the medical professionals are reversing his attempts to find his own identity. In Fowles novel, my understanding is that he writes in a way that sexuality and identity are connected and one is needed to determine the other, not like in Lacan's theory where you can't have the two together. 

I may be completely off in left field with this blog post, but when reading it, these were the thoughts that I was thinking about, and once Ashley posted her blog, I started to think of these questions more, and this is finally what I came up with. Hope you enjoyed!

Mantissa Response

After reading the first half of John Fowles' Mantissa I had mixed emotions. I enjoy reading the book because I think the way it is written and the subject matter makes it easy to read. With that said I found myself being confused a little as to what was going on with the other characters, how they disappear and are what he desires them to be in the second half. 

Dr. M then explained to us that the character in the second portion is his muse and that made everything seem to fit into place with one another.

As far as a passage that I would connect to an idea or theory, I found a line that the character who is with Miles Green in the second portion.  The character says "Nothing's real until you see it on television". This quote got me thinking, and I believe that there is truth to this statement.

This quote coincides with Baudrillard's ideas of Simulacra/Simulacrum and the Hyper real. What I think this quote is saying is that the character, Miles Green, only assumes things are real once he sees it on television, the object or idea is not real until it is seen on television.  I think this correlates to the idea of the Hyper real. From my understanding of Simulacra/Simulacrum and the Hyper real. The Hyper real is your experience mediated through simulation. For example, a person can watch a movie that contains a sex scene and that is what they think it is like, so once they actually engage in the act in real life, they are living their experience through the simulated one in the movie.

With that said I think that the quote is saying that our authentic experiences are not justified until we see them in front of us as a simulation.

Response to Ken Rufo

When first learning about Baudrillard, I was a little confused as to what he was saying when he was discussing simulation. After reading Ken Rufo's post and learning more from Dr. M, I am understanding the concept of Simulacra/Simulation/Hyperreal.

Just the other day I was thinking about the concept of money and I found it interesting that Ken touched base on what I was thinking about. I was wondering if you work a job, and get your money direct deposited in your account, and you use a credit or debit card to pay for items, you essentially never see that money, but it stands for something.  Once Ken touched base on the idea of the credit card accumulation being a simulation of what is being used to buy a product, it allowed me to understand what I previously pondered.

I enjoyed when Ken went through the works of Baudrillard and how some of his ideas have changed as he went on in life. He started off with Marxist views, but then a hint of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism is found in his work.  The way that Ken related his changing ideas, allowed me to make a connection with how the theories we learn are connected. 

The last part that I found interesting is that Baudrillard does not even like the Matrix movie. He believes that the effects in that are a simulation itself, which I never thought about in those terms, but once I started thinking about it, it can be seen as taking away from Baudrillard's ideas. With that I said, I think it would be hard to make a movie or rendition of his ideas and not make it something it is not. In order for everything to be visual comprehensive I think there needs to be some form of simulation, when discussing the ideas of Simulacra/Simulacrum.

Thank You again Ken for the post!

The Man That Is Derrida...

After watching the movie on Derrida, I had many mixed feelings towards it.  I like the premise of the movie, but the movie was definitely something I wouldn't have picked o my own to watch. I think the movie has aspects of being a mainstream movie, but for the most part I see it as being an elitist film.  Thinking of friends and family, I don't think any of them would choose to go to a movie about Derrida the theorist, let alone even understand what he is talking about. With that said I think the movie was an interesting one. 

I think that the film is ironic in the sense of capturing Derrida's image, because in reality they are not capturing the real Derrida.  He even states that if the camera crews were not there, than he would still be in his pajamas, instead of being fully dressed.  I also think that it is funny because the film crew is trying to find out who the real Derrida is, but he will not open up to them, because he says that there is no need to focus on him as a philosopher, and instead to just examine his theories. I think that there is not much known about philosophers in general because they don't want their image to be attached to a theory, to the point where an audience is more worried about what they look like or who they are, instead of what they are saying. If that is the case, I can see how the real Derrida was not present in the movie. The film crews do a good job with the situation at hand, since they were not going to get a lot of personal information about Derrida out of him. I think the funny thing of this "biography" is that it is almost an autobiography, because the film crew isn't getting much out of him, and he is dictating what will be included about his life, so in the sense he is writing the script to this movie himself.

I think that Derrida is seen by the audience as a pensive man who enjoys what he is writing about and the theories he studies. We also see a lighter side of Derrida, where he jokes and fools around. I think the two are conflicting in most people's minds because they  assume that a theorist or philosopher tend to be more serious, but this is showing that there is just not one depicted image of how a theorist acts. 

During the interview process Derrida does not fully complete questions the way that the interviewer would like him to do. From the audience's perspective it seems like he is dodging questions. The interviewer wants Derrida to rant about a specific topic and he says that he cannot do that, that it is too broad of a topic to talk about. There is definitely a disconnect between the interviewer and Derrida since he does not give all the information that the woman wants to hear. Due to this I almost was getting aggravated at the interviews because I just wanted the questions to be answered, and have one answer for them. Maybe it is my "American" way of answering and asking questions, but towards the end it began to get a little frustrating. 

Language and the Sign....

"signs function not through their intrinsic value, but through their relative position"

Over the past week I felt as though I understood what Structuralism was, and that I could convey that message to other people. Once we started reviewing Post-Structuralism in contrast to that, I was starting to doubt myself.  Saussure seemed pretty easy to follow since this was my second attempt in a class to learn about Structuralism, granted the first attempt was a simplified one. We learned about three key ideas and the one that most stuck out for me was the quote ...

"signs function not through their intrinsic value, but through their relative position"

Saussure is saying that signs (which contain both the signifier and the signified), are not recognized or understood on their own, they work through the understanding of the context that it is in. For example, the word house is only understood, when put in context with the words, shack, mansion, hut, palace, etc.

I understand this statement as being that all words don't have an essential meaning. The only way to understand the meaning of a word is to know where it stands in context to other words. Essentially the meanings of things are only known by someone when they are put into relation to other words that are similar but have different meanings. For example, I know what a rocking chair is because I know what a stool, a couch, a lounge chair, is. 

The reading for this week I feel as though complicated the idea of what I believe structuralism to be, all the key ideas include, Post-Structuralism puts that on its head. I think the idea, that meanings of things are different  and that is stable in Structuralism, and in Post-Structuralism it says that meaning is destabilized threw me for a loop. 

Response to Dr. Craig's post on Marxism

When learning about Marxism I thought I knew what it meant to have a Marxist view on the world, and a Marxist literary critique, but I soon found out that I only had a simplified version of what Marxist Criticism is.

Dr. McGuire's further explanation of Marxist theory in class this week, as well as Dr. Craig's post helped make the theory clearer for me.

What I found to be interesting in Dr. Craig's piece was the idea of wage earners and stock owners. When wages are up the stocks will go down because it is seen as cut in profit. The idea that people are more worried about those who are making the money from the stocks instead of those  who work to make the product was very interesting as well, since like Dr. Craig said, most of us our wage earners and not stock owners.  The idea of the people solely becoming a part of production in order to get a profit is something that I believe will still see today, and will always see in a Capitalist society. 

I also have changed my idea on Marxist literary theory because I realize it is more focused on the ideology of the text itself, instead of examining the author, since the author is not really a factor. The idea of oppositional voices in the text that help the critic learn more about the ideology of the text I found to be very interesting as well, since I previously thought it was about the author.

Overall, the post by Dr. Craig has helped my understanding of Marxism and hopefully other guest post will be just as helpful.