1. In the first entrance in this blog I said my relationship with theory was not the best since I always have felt it cold and distant, and it did not gave me the warm sensation that literature gives me. Well, today, three months later, I think that some of these fast brushstrokes of theory are still cold. Some of them are also distant. But not all of them. I have found some authors really inspiring and warm: Lorde, Anzaldua, Fanon, Morrison, Barthes, Foucault, Thiong’o, Bakhtin, Schlovsky, inter alia. Also when I read Friedberg and Fiske I also noticed that television its a really interesting topic. Even thought in this very moment I will not able to remember all their definitions and terms, some of their ideas still resonates in my head.
2. Lorde, Anzaldua and Thiong’o made me think about how a theory or theoretical reflection could be proposed from a personal perspective, with an emotional ingredient which remembers a little the sense of literature. When I read them I thought: “It is possible create and the same time theorize! There is an alternative and it not contradicts the academy!” I actually felt very excited. However, when I asked in class if is possible to write down a paper in this way, from the first person who elaborates academic reflections based on personal experiences, the answer was negative. I felt disappointed. Well, it was explained to me that it is possible to write some papers, perhaps for conferences where you can make performance-papers, but not for academic work, nor for a thesis. So, maybe is a contradiction that we read alternative models for creating theories but we are not able to apply those models in our work, right?
3. In that order of ideas, I think, also, the alliance between arts and theory should be accepted in our programs. Is part of making real the interdisciplinary studies. When I watched “Blow Up” by Antonioni (I know this is not part of the readings, but we should watch it for our second writing assignment) I asked myself if a work of art, a film in this case, is also understandable as a analytical reading for a short story. I think the film is: Antonioni offers a point of view, and highlights what he thinks is the most important of the short story. However, I am not completely sure if a student of our programs would be allowed to present a film, a painting, a novel or a group of poems as a thesis. Maybe is possible if the student argues with a solid theoretical frame, but I am not sure if the academy will validate it. Maybe. Maybe not. I do not put much hope on that.
4. The course more than answers, give me questions. One of them is how to put in practice these theories, not only in an article or essay but in the “real” world. If we are learning to deconstruct, an idea that for me is still ethereal, how can we teach or apply this concept to our societies; how to use deconstruction in a practical way, linked to the problems of our countries, to our works. I have to think more about this.
5. I also asked myself which one of this theories could be useful for my thesis research. So far, I am not sure. Maybe a combination of concepts/authors could work: Said + Fanon + Thiong’o? Perhaps. I think I have to read them more profoundly and see how to use them. But I least I have an idea for where to begin with.
6. Last, but not least, I think the blog is an useful idea. I understood better some concepts here than in the readings! When someone explains tricky ideas in a simple way it was really helpful. Thanks to everybody! Sometimes this blog was a space for dialogue, for thinking in different ideas, and it worth it. However, in several occasions I felt frustrated because the authors we talk about here in the blog were not discussed in class. Anyway, is a great space but it deserves a better connection to the class.
7. Gracias. Merci. Thanks.

People of my country, including me, are football’s fan. When our team plays, I mean the Colombian Selection, the country just stops because almost everyone is watching the game. A game, let’s say, against Argentina is an event which compromises our jobs, classes… and if you can not skip a meeting or a class, usually the radio takes places and, as I experienced while I was teaching, students and workers have their earphones connected and listen at the same time they are “taking notes”.

From my perspective, this huge fanaticism has increased last twenty years since a traditional broadcastings developed a particular way of transmit Colombia’s games. When our team plays, the anchors and reporters increase the national symbols, and the semiotics of language changes completely. When they start to talk about the Colombian team they use on purpose the possessive our for identifying themselves and the audience with the team. For instance, several times they omit saying the “Colombian team”, but rather they say “Colombia” and when you hear the name of your country besides the name of a team, something different is perceived.

Probably a decade ago, the fashion of using the Colombian’s team t-shirt the day of important games started. TV promoted, in a subtle way, that if you use the colors of your country, you help the players “to fell that they count on you”. Of course, the majority of TVs anchors, some in the news some others in talk-shows, wear their yellow shirts with the Colombian Football Federation symbol. They also spread this idea since it’s very common to adapt yourself to social norms proposed on TV.

Before the game, the TV news is almost completely absorb by the football information so, from the two hours that usually the news takes, only thirty or forty five minutes are dedicated to the news of the country, and the other part is dedicated to players interviews, reports, images of the last game… and a frequents visits to the stadium, interviewing the public and make seem happy. In that way, the audience is all the time expecting the game starting, and we can not change the channel, of course.

When the game is on, the publicity becomes crazy: a lots of ads appears during the whole game, even the narrators announce products and in the half is almost a fifteen minutes of commercials.  If Colombia’s team scores is like a tsunami of nationalism: “This is my dearest homeland!”, the narrator says, “This is my country, this is the people who give us hope!” (and you should imagine the voice of the narrator almost crying of “happiness”). And then a popular Colombian music resonates to increase the sense we are building a new country because of one goal.

Actually, I think when the TV takes advantage of football for creating a sense of hope, is because t is used as part of creation of the subject-in-ideology, as Fiske explains Althusser’s concept (1270). The reproduction of the ideology is that “this is a great country and we can get better, but we need the team wins because it represents the state”. Even, the current president has visited several times the Colombian’s team trainings and give “his support”, and he calls the football team as part of the state. But most of these players play in Italy, France, Spain, Argentina… they grew up as players in those countries, they had to travel and got other economical support and better teams since Colombia football or economical possibilities were not good for them as players.

When all advertisements and all this symphony of nationalism take place, it is really hard to see what is really happening with the country. The purpose of the TV transmission is not other than to sedate the sensation of inequality or indifference that Colombians feels constantly, and create and stimulate a system of values based on believing in football, and in that way in the state, since is really hard to create confidence with politics or social justice.

Football, used in that form, seems like a strong make-up for covering for some hours what is really happening and construct this “national we”, as Fiske reminds (1272) for not reading what is really happening. In that order of ideas, this is a sad example. In November 6th, 1985, the  M-19 guerrilla took over the Palace of Justice and the most violent military answer occurred causing hundreds of dead and disappears. The radio and TV broadcastings that were transmitted that event, suddenly stop because the Communications Cabinet Minister from that time commanded to intervene the media and. All the the broadcastings, then, started to transmit a football game that was taking place at the same time in other place of the country.

I do not want to finish with this sad episode. Actually, last week Colombian government recognized that the state had a big responsibility on this tragedy and apologized with the victims. This has being a huge step. And also, Colombian team is already qualified for the FIFA World Cup Brazil 2014, so it is great motive for celebrate. That is my team! Thanks for giving me hope!

In “Decolonizing the mind”, Ngugi wa Thiong’o  presents a reflection about how the English language and academia built on Kenya a way of perceiving the world through the eyes of the British culture and imperialist language.

The text structure addresses different stages. After a brief introduction about the topic, the author explains his own experience remembering how in his natal place and his home, he used the Gĩkũyũ language and it works for every single aspect of his everyday life, including oral stories that identify him with his community. Later, the appearance of the colonial language, the English, transforms his life completely since in the school he has to learn a new code, a new structure and a new culture since the books that the British brings are those that represent the European values. The reflection take him to analyze the importance of the language for building the culture and how the language is culture itself for three reasons: 1) the culture is product and reflection of human beings communicating with each other; 2) language as culture is as an image-forming agent in the mind of the child; 3) culture transmits those images of the world and reality through the written and spoken language (1134). In that order of ideas, when the English language is imposed in Africa, the African culture is submitted to the English culture.

Thiong’o notices that this process is more clear in the writing language, where the child can not express his or herself in an emotional way, but the writing becomes a “cerebral activity” (1135), since the school language is not related with the language of home.

The article turns to question aloud what to do to decolonize the mind of children that have received or are receiving classes about European literature and not African in English language. The conclusion is a “quest for relevance”, process in which Thiong’o wants “to look for at it far as relates, not to just the writing of literature, but to teaching of that literature [African literature] in schools and universities and to the critical approaches” (1138). So he summarize discussions about how to propose the African literature as centre and not periphery of the literary education, and how this literature should nurture from the others literatures. He even mentions that Indian, Caribbean and Latin American literature should be add to the academic programs since they share a lot of things in common.

Thiong’o extract make me think about how the education I received also perpetuated colonial ideas. For instance, when I study my B.A. in Literature in Universidad Nacional, many of the professors who taught me had obtained their Masters and PhD in French universities. For that reason their classes cover a lot of European literature but, over all, French literature. For instance, the Literary Theories that I took were specific studies about one or two authors, some of them were Barthes, Lukács, Goldman, Saussure, Ubersfeld, Bourdieu, Gennete, a little of Benjamin, who is not French but German (but we read his text about Baudelaire) and Bahtin. Actually, I did not receive much information about North American or British theorists (perhaps Raymond Williams and Northrop Frye), but almost nothing about Latin American approaches. Literature classes were about Colombian, Latin America and Spain; but we also had these group of classes called “Universal Literature”, and this classes were about important authors of the world in different historic moments but we did not read Li-po, Chinua Achebe or Tagore, we read Dante, Bocaccio, Flaubert, Dostojevski, Kafka, Ionesco…  European authors. I think is important to recognize when my professors studied their B.A., during the 1970’s and 1980’s, many of them studied in the very same Universidad Nacional, a public university deeply politicized to the left, so the United States were seen like the epitome of the “yankee imperialism”, and not many students look for North American universities to complete their graduate education. I do not know about Canada, but probably it was not seen with good eyes. So the majority of students, who later would be professors in this university, saw Europe, but over all France, as the possible place where they can improve their knowledge.

Anyway, the theoretical perspectives I received from my professors were, in its majority, the French perspectives. I can not say these perspectives are not interesting or not useful to analyze or criticize literary texts, but after reading Thiong’o I think I would like to have learned not only North American. African, Asian approaches, but, more important, Latin American theoretical approaches for analyzing Colombian and Latin American literature. I do not know how is the Literature program currently, I supposed it have changed since there are new professors, new times, new reflections, and a new relationship with the North American academia, since many students, including me, have come to US or Canada for obtaining post graduate titles (the brain drain that perhaps is a new form of colonialism in the academy, but this is other topic).

So far I do not know much about Latin American literary theories, I think is one of my task as student to get to know them. Actually, one of the my conclusions of these postcolonial readings is that is really important for me to know some of them. Just checking online, I found the “Grupo Latinoamericano de estudios Subalternos”, headed by Walter Mignolo, inter alia, and the “Grupo modernidad/colonialidad” headed by Anibal Quijano and also by Mignolo, authors or theories that we will not be able to read or analyze in the course, since we have not enough time of it, but I am really eager to read.

Perhaps, under the light of these postcolonial readings and thoughts, in the future this Introduction to Literary Theory course could include Latin American theoretical approaches. I know time is short but maybe if they are included would help to some students from Hispanic or French Graduate studies to think about their projects. Maybe?

I know is not related (or is it?) with our topic of the week, but I found this great definition of ideology, one of the terms we probably will have to define in our exam.  Here, a commentary by Zizek about the movie “They live”, in the film The perverts guide to ideology, where the philosopher and the director Sophie Fiennes deepen in how Hollywood maintains the ideology (I would really like to watch this movie before the exam!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4WAXQJyxCo

Have a nice weekend!

The first I remember, before arriving to El Paso, was the color: I have never seen the profound orange and yellow that the Chihuahuan desert showed me when I was close to the city. “Where the hell are we?” I asked my wife. “I do not know” she mumbled astonished while the desert run and run and run without end. Finally, a small city appear in middle of the desert. We arrived. A friend picked us up. I remembered when I passed the door of the airport to get to the parking lot, I felt like I was really close to hell: it was hot, probably close to 40 degrees. We arrived in August. The summer was in its peak.

After two sweaty days, I remember we went to this store to buy some groceries. I was not sure how to ask for things, I mean, I knew some English grammar, but one thing is when you are in classroom full of students practicing how to say “Can I have a Coke?” and other being in a real store where your language is not the official, is the alien one. When I was making the line, thinking in how to say the correct words, repeating in my head the small phrase, counting in my pocket the dollars, that were also a new currency that I did not understand, I asked in my “correct” English  “How much is that?” and the answer was “Son diez dólares y catorce centavos”. The cashier spoke to me in Spanish! I was so relieved. I paid and thank her and then we leave the store. But after a while, walking under that shiny and eternal sun, I said to my wife: “Wait, why she did answer in Spanish?”. “She probably noticed your accent”, she replied. “My accent?! How is my accent like?” “I do not know, probably a Colombian one”. (It is funny to write this in English). And then this occurred several occasions. I asked for something and immediately I received and answer in Spanish or Spanglish (expression that Anzaldua evades, but perhaps it could be useful for describing this double condition of the language).

Later I understood that people from the border have a great hearing capacity: they can easily notice when a person is from the region, from the Southwest, is mexicano or mexicana, suramericano, American, pocho, or if is from El Chuco, the name that Chicano people call El Paso. This hearing capacity let them identify how to treat the other in order they do not seem excluded, or less excluded. It is a perceptive attitude. Perhaps is related to the form that many of immigrants were treated when they started the school, the difficulties they lived in a world that demanded the use of correct English, while in home was necessary to speak in Spanish in order your parents can understand you. They live between this two languages that can be jails, or freedoms, as Anzaldua well presented.

I also noticed in some El Pasonians the characteristics that Anzaldua mentions in her text. They spoke in several levels of the language in the Academia, in the street, with their family. I remembered some of my classmates speaking this kind of mix between a high elaborated English, that they learnt in their schools, with this “rural” Spanish, that their parents and extended family speak at home, since they were campesinos immigrants with no formal education. For me it was a new phenomena since I am a Spanish speaker, and I can understand English, but I can not switch from Spanish to English that easy. I need a moment. They do not. That moment is part of them.

And I think Anzaldua makes also a defense of this condition. They can move from one shore to the other thanks to this amphibian capacity to share different spaces, and languages. This natural bilingualism let the people of la frontera to understand two ways of thinking at the same time, and they can live with these two structures in an easy way. They also have to deal with the racism of both sides: the Mexican, that notice in their accents and expressions and “incorrect” Spanish; and the American, that emphasizes in the Mexican origin.

It is true that Chicanos and Chicanas have created a new language. I am not sure if is that rebellious as Anzaldua shows it, perhaps for her, but it is a language that is alive and, in the future, I think it will input some of its expressions to English, or at least in the spoken English in some specific places in United States. I think the forked tongue is also an advantage for a world that needs people could step in someone else’s shoes to identify, to criticize and to abolish the racism in our societies.

Extra:

Question. The book emphasizes that this Ethnic and Cultural differences are important in relation with United States… but is the same in Canada? Does Canada deal with the same racial differences? Are the Chicano or African-American or Asian-American reflections the same in Canada than in USA? What about France? What about India? China? Latin America? I am not sure if these discourses, that are questioning the white-men-American supremacy, work for all these countries in the same way. Is the Nationality part of this phenomena?

Is inevitable not being nostalgic reading Anne Friedberg’s article “The End of Cinema: Multimedia and Technological Change”.  After she mentions the change that VCR, cable television and television remote control represented for technology and culture, I just want to add that those events also took an important place in my family live during 1980’s and 1990’s.

We did not have color TV until late 1980’s. My grandparents gave us a color TV as a present. I think this change was fundamental in the history of film, perhaps for Friedberg’s is not, but I think when my family and I started to watch in technicolor, the value of image increased a lot. Perhaps some of the readers of this blog did not have a black and white television, but when you pass from that gray and somber image to a new one in color, the relation with the image is other. I remember watching cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry or The Flintstones in black and white, but when I started watching them in colors it was awesome! The color gave this texture that before it was impossible to determine, gave them character, personality.

We also had a VCR and sometimes we rented movies for a low price. The selection of the movie was a ritual: my sisters and I trying to agree about what children or pre teen films chose, and my parents trying to select one that both could probably enjoy, because we did not have  enough money for renting more. But it was a really good deal, if we think in economic terms: my father paid for two films the value of two movie tickets, so besides taking the whole family in a bus to the movie theatre and pay for five tickets, and for popcorn and sodas, we can just lay down in the bed, watch the film, and drink juice or 2 litter of Coke and make our popcorn. I say in bed because we usually did not have the TV on the living room, it did not was this “window-wall designed to bring the outside in” as Lyden Spigel mentions quote by Friedberg (810), but it was located in my parents bedroom. The film, that usually took place Sunday’s afternoon, after lunch, it was almost like the representation of the end of the weekend, the last rest before we starting to prepare for terrible Mondays. Usually, someone took a nap when the movie started ⎯there is nothing like napping when the TV is on⎯, and usually, after forty minutes or an hour that one who was napping, woke up and asked the question: “I missed much of the movie?”.

I remember, also, about twenty years ago, my dad brought a VCR camera to the house. I his work sometimes they have to record on video meetings or events, and the employees can borrow the camera for personal events, well in certain occasions. I remember my father recording an asado, a barbecue, with this huge VCR camera during a holiday time. He worked as a camera man and director looking for smiles, interviewing spontaneously  friends and visitors, taking funny shots from different perspectives. When we saw the film two or three days after the event took place, it was funny to note the faces, the attitudes of people in front the camera. But two or three years ago I was looking for a VCR video for my job and I found this one stacking within other. My mother started to watch the video with me and I think both of us watched everything with different eyes, perhaps we were a little shock: many of that people, young or not so young, children that day were dancing or playing with each other, have passed away during the last twenty years. It was very hard to see that, but also we saw a lot of the video trying to remember names, and figuring out what had happened with all that people.

What I want to say is perhaps not so critic. I just want to recognize that my memory is linked to technology that was developed during the last twenty five years. The objects that were part of that technology are not only history of the film but part of the cultural live of most of many people. The idea of seeing myself trough this old-fashioned apparatus let me know who am I, how I conceived the world according to the possibilities I had then and now.

To conclude, there are some films related to this topic: the unassailable pass of the time and changes of that technology produces, and the nostalgia for those days of VCR.  I present two examples: one of my favorite scenes from The artist, directed by Michel Hazanavicius,  the “sound” part:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qvNfSwTAfE

and this scene from the movie Be kind, rewind, directed by Michel Gondry, a film about how to reconstruct a VCR world and what represented for communities (I could not found it in English or French)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DscBAc0zXUU

The trailer in English

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0M9rSpjlDM

One of the most interesting readings I found for this week was Audrey Lorde’s selection of Sister Outsider. I discovered a particular voice that I did not seen in other authors so far. I just going to add some reasons why I enjoyed Lorde ideas and how she made me thought about our class.

First, I think that is definite important, as a theoretical critic, to determine where you are. When I read in the second paragraph “As forty-nine-year-old Black lesbian feminist socialist mother of two, including one boy, and a member of an interracial couple, I usually find myself a part os some group defined as other, deviant, inferior, or just plain wrong”(854), she really caught my attention since she stands up on her enunciation place and, in first person, she talks about her experience as human being, intellectual and part of ‘other’ group. This is the first voice that is not placed in an omniscient narrator, the objective watcher, that usually we have in our readings, since the analysis has to be distant and non charged of emotions. In Lorde’s I found a voice. Of course, is related to the feminism, but it is really interesting that someone could propose an emotive and critic approach to theory.

Second,  when she explains what to analyze about the differences:

“Certainly there are very real differences between us of race, age, and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation” (855).

If we notice, all colonial discourse, marxism, psychoanalysis… are built on difference. Societies are unequal, no matter what we do or what we think, and they are going to be unequal for hundred, thousand of years because human being is attached to difference.  If we think, even the academic world is nurture of this difference, since we have to criticize literature or culture and we compare and establish differences to get some point (actually, our writing assignments are based on this idea: determine the differences). But what I really found valid of Lorde’s point of view is the idea of “examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them”.  So, probably is not the difference that we are looking for, according to Lorde, but how are we misnaming them for not recognize them. I guess there is a complex idea about what it is difference and maybe in our future thesis and papers every one will discover what is the difference that is important for her/him.

On the same topic:

“You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reason they are dying” (857).

That really made think about Colombia, and in general Latin American societies. The huge gap between rich and poor is overwhelming. In the same city, in the same neighborhood, you see a tremendous building with sophisticated apartments, elevators and spectacular views, dwelled by executives and high class people, and a few blocks from there, you can see several persons who sleep on the street and do not have a meal. I think that kind of difference is also painful. Not recognize them, when I am studying abroad and I have access to education, it is unfair. Perhaps Lorde is pointing out that the differences maybe can help you out to understand who you are, what should you think about.

Finally, I think it is quite interesting that she talks about her experience as a writer. She notices that poetry was not a publishing material for some magazines and explains her experience as a novelist, including that is not only necessary “a room of one’s own” remembering Virginia Woolf’s book, but also that you need paper, a typewriter and time (855). And also, I think is quite important that this selected fragment includes one of her poems (maybe this was a decision taken by the editors), and that small portion of poetry evidences again that her creative and analytical writing are imbricated, they are not separable in her work. That made me think what the academy should have thought about her form and style. I believe, as a reader, that is valid to express yourself int his way if it is related to the topic, and if the think that you are talking about really touch you as an individual. However, is it valid for the academy world? Can I write a paper based on her model to analyze different topics? I open the question.

In The importance of living (1937) Lin Yutang (1895-1976) tried to approach Chinese culture and traditions to North American readers, at those times when internet did not answer every single cultural question that humanity has. Yutang, who lived in Europe and in USA, always maintained a strong bond with his origins, for that reason Confucianism and Taoist traditions are intrinsic parts of his ideas and discourse. In the book, there are many points that I disagree with, of course, we are talking about a book that represented particular values that maybe today should be argued, but I think at least that Yutang’s intentions were valid since is natural that a immigrant want to explain his roots and his point of view.

There is a part f the book that is called “The art of writing”. In this part, Yutang call to young writers to fell more than to think, and go deep in their selves and try to find something profound to say, to write, not be concern about grammar, but try to find deep inside a personal and natural reason to write. He also recommend to find a favorite author and read it very well, so you can fallow him or her as a Master. During the whole reading, he also offers some advise  so they can start to think as a writers. One of his observation is:

“Hay dos minas del idioma, una nueva y una vieja. La vieja mina está en los libros y la nueva en el idioma de la gente común. Los artistas de segunda categoría excavan las viejas minas, pero sólo los artistas de primera calidad pueden obtener algo de la mina nueva” ♣ ♠

I find interesting that we usually can discover this two mines in great novels. For instance, in Don Quijote de la Mancha, trough the voice of Sancho and through the voice of Quijote; or we can also hear them in Falstaff and Henry, in  Henry IV by Shakespeare.

Moreover, I can easily relate Yutang’s ideas with Bajtín’s. In this fragments of his readings (“Discourse in The Novel” and “Rabelais and His Word”) the Russian critic develop at least two concepts related with the second mine.

The first concept is dialogism.  The dialogism allows us to hear many voices on the novels, allow us to read and hear different cultural backgrounds and let us see the humanity that relies in the novel.  In that order of ideas, Bajtín is aware that novel, as an hybrid genre, should contain those different voices that represents different social class, and it could be a mirror of how society is built, and how the different sound registers implies that local or common languages establish, also, different types of communications. Bajtín, perhaps, is not saying that there are only two mines but many whence the novelist should nurture his writing. Later, the Russian critic explains how this dialogism is related to society:

“[…] language is heteroglot from top to bottom: it represents the coexistence os socio-ideological contradictions between the present and the past, between differing epochs of the past, between different socio-ideological groups in the present, between tendencies, schools, circles and so forth, all given a bodily form. These “languages” of heteroglossia intersect each other in a variety of ways, forming new socially typifying “languages” (676).

I also think that is really important what Bajtín notes about the carnival. Described, by Bajtín, the work of Rabelais becomes an important presence that let us remember in which conditions the society could be travesty through the laughter. The second concept to remember, therefore,  in these readings is the grotesque, like a possibility for different social classes to criticize, analyze the social conditions and laugh at itself. Laughing and the possibility of parody our reality, let us realize that the system is not fair and it should be questioned. So, is like a ironic laugh. But also laugh unifies, has Bajtín says, and in that way shows a society that, in way, could be seen more equal.

I know Bajtín’s objective differs a lot from Yutang’s, but when I was reading Bajtín’s ideas I thought that maybe some writers should read his analysis, and how the dialogism and the grotesque could illuminate a work of art. I know is not an easy task but is good to think about it.

Coda:

After reading Marx I was absolutely depressed. He noticed in the Nineteenth Century (!) that the reality of industrial era was unfair, unequal and how the worker class or proletariat was submitted to the capital and the market. Today, more than one hundred fifty years after his analysis, there are still slaves, unequal salaries, worker classes it the worst conditions, global iniquity… Are we really evolving or not? Is there a way for making a social change that in the future will represent something for this unfair society? I doubt it.

There is this place at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia called El Jardín de Freud (Freud’s Garden).  It is close to Humanities and Sociology buildings, so the majority of students that spend their time there are from Human Sciences. It is a green and wide zone where there are some trees and a grey and rusty bust of Freud. When I was studying there, I always found a lot of students hanging out, reading books, chatting, having lunch, playing football, baseball, smoking cigarettes, or some weed, or getting drunk there.  Sometimes, there are some students that talk about Freud. Sometimes they speak well about him; sometimes not. Sometimes, after weed takes effect and some hallucinogenic mushrooms lead the train of thought, they defend him even more, and better.

While I was reading his Interpretation of dreams (1900) I can not deny that I felt a little like in Freud’s Garden at Universidad Nacional: some things sounds logical, some others very “high”; some sounds like drunk thoughts, others like poetry. Actually,  if  I think about the incredible and magic project or “interpretation of dreams” some things have to sound very wear, unusual, “mushrooming”, I suppose. Well, and if we think that maybe some cocaine should affect the precise method of analysis of Freud, we should probably thank to God (I am not sure if I can say something about God when I talk about Freud because I probably will be interpreted as a narcissist, egocentric, uncanny… student) that maybe this great man sniffed one line or two of cocaine only for “medical and research purposes”.

Beyond the drug experience, the idea of create the possibility of read what is in the mind of other people is very interesting, but reading what is hide behind the dreams is really amazing. I mean, if we read him closer, I think his idea is closer to fiction to psychology.  And if we read him very close we can see some characteristics on his style that reminds a lot of fiction. For instance, I like how he recompiles the train of thoughts that let him to question the botanical dream and the concept of “dream-thoughts” it is like a fiction piece. Actually, that reminds me Virginia’s Woolf beginning of Mrs. Dalloway (1925). Also, I can see a connection between his job and Luis Buñuel film Un chien andalou (1929) that Molly Lewis presented last Saturday on the frame of “Metamorphoses” Conference (thanks Gaby and Anne Claire!). However, I think Bruno explained better this idea in his post (check “Psychoanalysis and narrative” in this blog).

Just to add something to Mr. Bruno, I really think that Freud style shows the process of writing, re-writing, drafts, notes… he created a work and you can see how his thought was developed thanks to this writing process. In my profound ignorance I see a writer more than a psychoanalyst, actually. Even, we can read how literature is important in his job. A lot of his examples (Oedipus, Electra, The Sandman…) are linked with Literature because, perhaps, he found an echo in Literature that was impossible to find in other Humanities or sciences.

Ironically, from the diverse theorists that we have read for this Theory Class, this is one where you can actually see that Literature is an important presence of his work. I do not know how to express it, but I really think that maybe if you do not know Euripides or Shakespeare, maybe if you read Freud you can get interested on Literature. I do not if you felt the same with Bourdieu, Saussure, Fish. Or Derrida (ayayay, Derrida…). For me, as a reader, this is what I am looking for in Literature: a door to make connections with other Literatures, a possibility to discover characters, story, situations that make me think about how life is always elusive but we can never stop trying to catch her and interpret her (I say her because I relate the term “life” with word in Spanish vida that is a word that belongs to the feminine gender in Spanish, but maybe I am taking the risk of being interpreted as a chauvinist, “baguette-centric”, repressed… student (if you want to get in deep about the over interpretation on Freud and “baguette-centric culture” check in this blog “Is it sex…? Is it dream…? No, it’s Freud!” post by the mysterious trinity974)), even if we try, as the very Freud tried.  Actually, I am not quite sure if the purpose of sociological or philosophical or literary theories that we have read in this class are so close to Literature than Freud’s. Anyway, is really helpful to find that Freud as a reader found in Literature some devices that help him out to develop his ideas. Is not what are we looking for as students, readers, writers? Maybe I am wrong. Maybe this walk through Freud’s Garden is affecting me.

To finish this walk for Freud’s Garden, there is something that is bugging me. It is the power disguised of writing. Yes, Freud is amazing, creative and developed his theories based on his own method, but, what could ever happened if Freud would have not written these experiences? As human beings, would we be able to create a similar theory? And, what about all these indigenous, african, aboriginal, asian… cultures that developed their own interpretation of dreams but did not wrote it.  Is not valid their knowledge because it was not written on paper but transmitted orally? What made Freud so important during the last century? Is not related with the idea that he is an European and we, as a “westerners” are completely cloud for our narcissism, delusions of grander, paranoid androidism? Is not the idea that a society sold us the perfect delusion that a dream has to be interpreted for not criticizing the establishment but discovering that is you and your sexuality the problem, that you as an individual have to solve the problem of yourself, is not Governments fault, but yours and only yours? Wow… this Freud mushroom is getting better!

After several hours of reading the first pages of “Differance” by Jacques Derrida on English, and do not understand a word about he was trying to say, I decided to look for the text in Spanish, so I can easily could find what he was trying to define. I found a translation. After more than two hours of reading “Diferencia” by Jacques Derrida on Spanish, and not be able to pass the page five, I thought that there was something wrong with my brain.

I look for “Derrida for dummies” and I found there some concepts that I could catch. I read Barbara Johnson’s “Writing” essay and finally I could understand some of the ideas that Derrida explains in a very complicated way. At least, it was very complicated for me.

I had to take a break. I went to the store for buying eggs and milk. While I was walking down the street, feeling the cold wind that this Sunday blowed, I could not stop thinking about what happened with Derrida’s readings. It was impossible to understand? Why is so complicated for me? I arrived to some conclusions.

• I remember when I taught a basic reading course for undergraduate students in Colombia, there was this structured model of basic steps for reading: 1) Read the first time and try to identify all the words that you do not know and look for them on the dictionary; 2) Underline the main ideas in the second reading; 3)Try to select the most important ideas or concepts and make a list with them; 4) Try to establish an hypothesis about what the text is trying to say; 5) Make a small synopsis of the text. Well, I think that my problem with Derrida text is around the step 1 and 2. On the one hand, the vocabulary on the text is closely related to philosophy (for instance arche, ousia, parousia Greek or Latin expressions that are used by philosophers). On the other hand, it seems that syntax is working but for me is not:

 Already we had to note that differance is not, does not exist, and is not any sort of being-present (on). And we will have to point out that everything that is not, and,consequently, that is has neither existence nor essence. It belongs to no category of being, present or absent. And yet what is thus denoted as differance is not theological, not even in the most negative order of negative theology (Derrida 282).

I know probably the majority of the class got the idea but, honestly, I have read this quotation over and over and I can not find what is he trying to say.

• If the language that Derrida is using is closer to the philosophy, I think he is writing for a particular reader. Yes, this is arguable and I hope to read your arguments later, however I think Derrida’s discourse is only for students and scholars that know many of his references and can jump easily from the step 1 to the second on the “reading steps”. I wonder if the world of the ideas is only for privileged readers, like me, which have the time to produce questions like these, or if this world is for everyone.

• The idea of deconstruction, what I understood in Johnson analysis, is complex and profound. Its main purpose, like she demonstrated analyzing the poem “Meditation 6” by Edward Taylor, is to look deep in the text and see “how the logic of writing -it is also a logic that can only really exist in writing” (345). Then she add: “When one writes, one writes more than (or less than, or other than) one thinks. The reader’s task is to read what is written rather than simply attempt to intuit what might have been meant” (346). This idea reminds me Foucault, when he said that

“We must question those ready-made synthesis, those groupings that we normally accept before any examination, those links whose validity is recognized from the outset. We must oust those forms and obscure forces by which we usually link to discourse of one man with that other; they must be driven out from the darkness in which they reign” (90-91)

In that order of ideas, deconstruction should question discourses that we as readers have already accepted, and see within them how writing develops those discourse. It is a political idea, I guess. But the idea of questioning  the world in Derrida is only for philosophers? Is the same in Foucault? I wonder if this two authors are in the same quest.

•  The last reflection is around education and pedagogy. Maybe this is not the most adequate place for doing it, but I just want to express what the impossibility of reading Derrida let me.  While I was walking to the store, I started to wonder if sometimes, as a teacher, my discourse is as confusing as Derrida’s is for me. I know, his purpose is different than mine, but he and I are surrounded by “readers”. Students in my class are trying to learn an idiom, his readers are trying to find what the deconstruction is, are developing a language system. Am I that confusing? Maybe I am. Perhaps I have to check if my discourse is dark and looking for some privileges readers who comprehend it. I have to think about it.

I bought the eggs and milk. I came back and started to write down these ideas. Now that I am reading them again, I concluded that the impossibility of reading Derrida maybe deconstructed me.