7 conclusions
- 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.
- 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?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Gracias. Merci. Thanks.
Reflections
Reflections
One “meta-question” as reflexion of the course
We are thrown into this world without notice. In a certain point of our life we realize that everything is strange: the world, society, its creations, and, of course, ourselves etc., etc. Questions like these arise: “Who I am?” “Which is the sense of life? What is society? Which is my role in society? Why do I have this role in society? What is art? The uncertainties continue to the infinite and beyond. So, we need answers, desperately. In this point we begin to think, to theorize about ourselves, about the world, about society, etc., etc. We also begin to criticize: why the things have to be like this? Why being born in certain society or with certain characteristics typecast us? So, again, we think, we theorize.
However, we are never satisfied. It’s part of our nature. One answer (one theory) to one of our questions lasts few seconds. For instance if I make a theory about Art and develop some terms about it, someone would come and say “Ok, but maybe…” or “No, that is not completely true…” or “No, Art is…” Theory then enters into the dichotomy that gives it life: writing/rewriting. If we accept as definite one theory, then the dynamic finishes. But it cannot end, because, we are never satisfied with only one answer and one answer, paradoxically, conduce to more questions.
This demonstrates that we are very complex and that we like complexity. And more: we need complexity. We can complain about it (“Why everything is so complicate?!, Why life is so difficult?!”, etc.), but we need it. Also, we need art, culture, daily life problems, etc. But, why do we need all these. Only because is in our nature being complicated? I think there is something deeper.
I said that we have infinite uncertainties, but I did not mention that we have only one certainty: we are mortals. This fact, the only one that is for sure, is much more disruptive than the millions of uncertainties regarding the reality that we could have. Of course, this fact also generates multiple questions, but the main difference with all the others is that theories that we could make about it cannot be empirical. Even, religions have their certainties about death; there is no possibility of a real discussion. In other words, we cannot theorize about our transitory condition in the world, because we do not have elements to do it. We only can imagine.
So, my question is: Maybe our need to create theories, art, culture, daily life problems, etc. has not only the purpose of answering our questions about the world, but distract us of the undeniable fact that we are mortals? In that sense, the need of complexity is in someway also a good way of forget our deep nature of being mortals? I am not saying that the aim of theorizing or making art is only to distract us from death, but maybe it is also a function that we are not aware all the time.
This is a reflexion that I could make after a course that demonstrate that we are all the time making questions, attempting answers, criticizing, making more questions; in other words, writing and rewriting. So, one “meta-question” would be “Why we like to be questioning, criticizing, complaining all the time? One possible answer (among multiples, of course), even pessimistic (but also realistic) is that, as I said, we need to be distracted of our mortality. I don’t know. This is only a theory.
The dark side…
The dark side…
the politics of culture
When “Culture” came up, I used to feel perplexed about the immense broad sense of this word. I thought it comprehends everything about art for sure: painting, music, film, architecture… and other aspects of human behavior that could distinct one culture from another. But after reading the introduction of the Culture Studies, I found that “culture” actually possesses a much broader sense which “ includes language and the arts”, as well as “the regularities, procedures and rituals of human life in communities”. No wander that culture tainted with political color, because politics also compose an indispensable part of culture. And it’ll make sense that Walter Benjamin had politics and art forms like painting, photographs and films connected in the extensive realm of culture.
The main conflict that Benjamin displays is the incompatible relationship between “mechanical reproduction” and the “actual work of art”. In summery, there are several qualities that are absent in the reproduction art : “presence in time and space”; “the original”; “the authenticity”; “the aura”; and “the fabric of tradition”. He points that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function. Ritualistic basis is stressed in the cult of beauty, however, it runs to crisis after the Renaissance and even get denied with the doctrine of “l’art pour l’art”. But in the era of mechanical reproduction, it emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependance on ritual and changes the reaction of the masses towards art. Film, as the most powerful agent of mass movements and result of the development of technology, decisively sways the individual attitudes by mass audience response. By introducing the freudian theory which makes unnoticed thing perceivable, Benjamin says that film too, enriched our field of perception.
Last but not least, the author explains “the logical result of the Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life”. Fascism seeks to give the masses an expression rather than their right and thus has property preserved. War is the culmination of this political aesthetic. “War and war only can set a goal for mass movements on the largest scale while respecting the traditional property system”. In this sense, war is worshiped by Fascism and is expected to supply the artistic gratification of a sense of perception. Considering the background in which the author situated, one could not neglect two most significant features of that period: the innovative production of film and the horrible warfare pushed by Fascism. Although nowadays few people connect film with war, and the relation of the two seems quite farfetched, it’s totally understandable in the context of that peculiar history.
What do you mean Bhabha?
First, I would like to quote a paragraph that I would like to have a closer look at when in class on Tuesday:
“ the colonial presence is always ambivalent, split between its appearance as original and authoritative and its articulation as repetition and difference. It is the ambivalence that makes the boundaries of colonial “ positionality”- the division of self/other- and the question of colonial power-the diffrenciation of colonizer/colonized-different from both the Hegelian master/slave dialectic or the phenomenological projection of Otherness. It is a difference produced within the act of enunciation as a specifically colonial articulation of those two disproportionate sites of colonial discourse and power: the colonial scene as the invention of historicity, mastery, mimesis or as the ‘other scene” of Entstellung, displacement, fantasy, psychic defence, and an “open” textuality. Such a dis-play of difference produces a mode of authority that is agonistic (rather than antagonistic). It’s discriminatory.” p.1171
And second, I would like to say what I understood of the “reality effect” concept, though not really sure of myself… any clarification any one???
Bhabha who is influenced by Derrida’s work The Double Session but wishes to focus on the “dividing practises” which construct the colonial space, defines the reality effect with the following terms: “the reality effect” or “the effect of content” is the production “of “presence” as a certain quality of discursive transparency” (p.1172). To Bhabha, the reality effect which is the English book in his study, lies on a strategy of address: when the reader encounters the “English book”, it appears as real, under his gaze, it is showed to him. There, in this effect of presence is engaged the question of authority. Through the book, we “encounter the structured gaze of power whose objective is authority, whose subjects are historical.” (p.1172) This book that everyone can see or picture, produces a moment of “discursive transparency”: we don’t need an explanation to know what it is, we understand immediately what it is and we don’t question it. The simple fact of using this reality effect is an act of authority in the colonial speech: we are not proposed the book, it is disposed on us and with it, the connotations that belong to it and that we don’t acknowledge. It appears detached from the source of enunciation that created it, and therefore, we don’t think of questioning it (why is it there? What is it? What doe it mean?) The way the addressee receives the reality effect is characteristic of the “mode of governance” of colonialism, based on the confusion between “the sense of disposal, as the bestowal of a frame of reference” (which an authoritative discourse does in distributing positions relatively to the Other: in a colonial discourse, we are always the other of the other) and “disposition as mental inclination, a friend of mind.” (the way an individual receives a message and perceives the world) (p.1173) We take as transparent or immediate our understanding, whereas it is actually the result of a series of mediation. In other terms, the colonial discourse hides the fact that our understanding of the Other is based on a construction and not on an immediate understanding. This proces shows in the way a reader reads the English book: we all understand what it is, we believe in it as an effect of real, and we don’t see behind it the construction of an ideology, and of a discourse of religious domination. The reality effect is a mask that covers the construction of the authoritative discourse and enforces its effects.
Walter Benjamin: Art, Aura and Authenticity
The massive reproduction of artwork has changed the nature of how an image is perceived by contemporary society. In a short essay by Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, the author explains that art has always been reproduced throughout history. However, the extent and methods in which it is mass-produced has changed the aura or authenticity of art; it has altered art’s social relations, historical and cultural rituals, and traditions.
In principle a work of art has always been reproducible but still, mechanical reproduction represents something new, as firstly the reproduction process is more independent from the original than manual reproduction. Secondly, technical reproduction can put a copy of the original into situations, which would otherwise be out of reach for the original itself. However, Benjamin believes that even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.
The presence of the original is indispensable to the concept of authenticity, as authenticity is, according to Benjamin, linked to the essence of all that is transmissible from the object since its beginning and includes all the history that it has experienced. The reproduction, as offered for instance by a photograph, differs from the image seen by the naked eye. Uniqueness and permanence is linked to the second and reproducibility to the first. However, Benjamin does not see this a mere difference between the original and its reproductions, he argues that the “aura” of objects is destroyed by reproducing them. Think of the way a work of classic literature can be bought cheaply in paperback, or a painting bought as a poster. Think also of newer forms of art, such as TV shows and adverts. Then compare these to the experience of staring at an original work of art in a gallery, or visiting a unique historic building. This is the difference Benjamin is trying to capture.
I think even though I got from the text that Benjamin was seeing the loss of an aura as a negative thing, I think that through reproduction the “value” of the original is elevated. Indeed, the whole idea of reproduction, creates a big swift in art. Not only in relation to the work of art (that is not seen in relation to its cult significance but in relation to its exhibitional value) but also in relation to the audience.
Walter Benjamin: Art, Aura and Authenticity
The massive reproduction of artwork has changed the nature of how an image is perceived by contemporary society. In a short essay by Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, the author explains that art has always been reproduced throughout history. However, the extent and methods in which it is mass-produced has changed the aura or authenticity of art; it has altered art’s social relations, historical and cultural rituals, and traditions.
In principle a work of art has always been reproducible but still, mechanical reproduction represents something new, as firstly the reproduction process is more independent from the original than manual reproduction. Secondly, technical reproduction can put a copy of the original into situations, which would otherwise be out of reach for the original itself. However, Benjamin believes that even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.
The presence of the original is indispensable to the concept of authenticity, as authenticity is, according to Benjamin, linked to the essence of all that is transmissible from the object since its beginning and includes all the history that it has experienced. The reproduction, as offered for instance by a photograph, differs from the image seen by the naked eye. Uniqueness and permanence is linked to the second and reproducibility to the first. However, Benjamin does not see this a mere difference between the original and its reproductions, he argues that the “aura” of objects is destroyed by reproducing them. Think of the way a work of classic literature can be bought cheaply in paperback, or a painting bought as a poster. Think also of newer forms of art, such as TV shows and adverts. Then compare these to the experience of staring at an original work of art in a gallery, or visiting a unique historic building. This is the difference Benjamin is trying to capture.
I think even though I got from the text that Benjamin was seeing the loss of an aura as a negative thing, I think that through reproduction the “value” of the original is elevated. Indeed, the whole idea of reproduction, creates a big swift in art. Not only in relation to the work of art (that is not seen in relation to its cult significance but in relation to its exhibitional value) but also in relation to the audience.
