Freud

One of the ideas that heavily resonated in my head while reading (for the first time) The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud, was last week’s reading of Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics and Barthes Mythologies. The most important notion and technique that I picked up from this reading Freud was that of reading a text, reading a sign. It seemed very similar to Saussure’s and Barthes’s respective projects. The most interesting part (the similarities are here) about Freud’s project is the transformation of an image (if that is what a dream is) into text. Our minds, our craniums, do not have a USB connection where we can connect a flash drive and download what is there to be analyzed in an external apparatus; in this case we would like to download the images or video, which our dreams are. If we could see these we would have images instead of writing. That’s interesting. Freud doesn’t analyze a picture, he analyzes language, writing, text, much in the same way Saussure analyzes a sign and Barthes analyzes myths (these do include images, films and other materials). To analyze the mind, the psyche, at least in Freud’s way, you inevitably have to turn what is in mind into writing. To me a dream is like one of Barthes mythologies. I may be wrong, but I like this idea. The dream thoughts and dream content stem from each word that is analyzed, and so on from each other. I’d like to think of these as signifier and signified. The dream, just like the sign, is arbitrary. It has no direct relation to anything outside of itself. The signs that constitute the dream get their meaning by their difference with the other words. Although there is a difference in the way Freud analyzes the dreams, which is somewhat different than what is given primacy in Saussure and Barthes. This difference is based on the synchronic and diachronic classes of signs. Saussure and Barthes seem to give primacy to the synchronic aspect of language; the plane where all language is without regards to time or evolution. Freud has similar concepts: ‘the work of condensation’ and ‘the work of displacement’. In the work of displacement there is a constant evolution of dream thoughts, they, as the name suggests, displace one another from a fixed, central position. There is a story being developed here which is a string tool for dream interpretation as opposed to just studying the condensed dream thoughts. I think Freud acknowledges the inseparability of the paradigmatic from the syntagmatic. All of this is housed in the unconscious. In a sense, that which is behind the sign and inseparable (signified and signifier) is in the ‘unconscious.’

The Communist Manifesto

This is my blog for The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, but first I would like to allude to a previous text on which we have commented. That would be the one on Guy de Maupassant’s short story Toine. In this story we have a man, Toine, who presides over all the land of the town. Presides is, perhaps, a soft word to use; rather, he is the owner of the land. But he is not just owner of the land; he is owner of everything on the land. He is not legally the owner of everything, but he owns the means of production and controls the labor force and also the ideological state apparatus that serves his needs. He enemies, to him, to his realization, could only be anyone like him; this is although is a not an issue because he holds a strong monopoly over the land (perhaps this is more what I mean by ‘owner of the land’). The story doesn’t start of at the beginning stage, the story of his development, up until the current situation. What is seen at the start of the story, through narrative technique, what is shown as if through a microscope, is an already developed Toine, an already advanced bourgeois. Around him we see a mingling lower middle, middle, and upper middle class. His inseparable antagonist is non-other than his wife. She is the labor force, the body, whom he exploits, and has exploited for more than thirty years, and whom has allowed him to amass the huge body that he has, due to his idleness, and also the huge amount of wealth. The time came where all Toine’s possessions cannot save him from his inevitable decline and the takeover of the labor force body, in this case his wife. This is at the end is not resolved; what is shown is his ever intent to keep his position. I have not intended to label with the proper external terms, as I deemed it, rather I argue the text shows these politics at work. There are many other discourses at work in the text, but this is at the center; the other discourses are complimentary to these politics. This story is not a retelling of the communist manifesto nor is this one of the other; again, that is not what I intend. There is although, this will be part of my argument, something very similar at work, connecting both of these works. The history of Marx’s proletariat and bourgeoisie and their current state of being details the formation of an antagonistic social body. The communist manifesto touches briefly on this point, which is the significance of bodies. The most important note it makes is when it proposes that the proletariat only has, or his most important good is, his labor to sell. Let’s remember Toine’s wife has not given him (nor received from him) anything of use but her labor; no children, no happiness. At work in the text is a discourse on the body; a politics of body. Which bodies matter? Is life just a body? What has been the the development of discourse on the body from the 19^th century to the 21^st? Gender is also an important part of this development… that is all for now.

So-sure

It is somewhat difficult to accept that a concept is inseparable from a sound image. It is more difficult to accept, although, that this concept and sound image, signified and signifier respectively, have no real basis in the material world, in nature. Nothing has an intrinsic name. Nothing is born with a name to represent it. Nothing, nobody, told us that a ‘dog’ is to be called a dog, nobody said that a mountain has the name mountain, intrinsically born with that name; based on the real, a referent has no name. This situation is what must be understood as the arbitrary nature of the sign; that is to say the signified does not follow any rule or adhesive joining it with the signifier. This of course does not mean that they can live independently; they are always together.

If the author, as Barthes proposes, is not necessary to interpret a text, then does that mean language alone can give meaning to a text? Saussure develops the argument that a person alone cannot change or create language because it is the social, communal, side of speech, that is to say that it is the determining factor of a community and organizer or recorder of the discourses that the speakers articulate. Saussure is conditioning, or better said, untangling, an identity, such as that of an author, to be understood only as a speaker and not as creator. The author, or the speaker involved in a speech act, does not create anything, does not create language and therefore is not, or should not be allowed, the right to subjectively assign meaning to a given text. This situation implies a certain relations of power. The analysis of signs, of language, of text, can disarticulate common acceptances of powers. Revealing its self is something of the nature of power, which may start with a speech act and the intent to name, to create and impose a name, a meaning. This is the act of trying to give an essence before something realizes that that essence is not what it thinks of itself.

All of this points me in the direction of thinking of such issues of what is real or what is truth. Is the reality I live truthful? Is ignorance bliss if aware of the implications that a further analysis might divulge? To a certain extent, when we stop thinking of concepts and ideas as natural or preconceived to the articulation of speech, we may actually discover truths in many aspects of our culture, and our creations.

Barthes

I would like to ask Roland Barthes (or rather, in the spirit of what I understand from his texts, ask his texts) a question: is the analysis of language and other signs the answer to all sociological/political issues or to the pursuits of truths? My question doesn’t have the intention of debating or arguing with Barthes; there is no malignant intent by posing that question. Even though I explain that, posing that question or questions like that could cast doubt on or generate some negativity towards his arguments. The question could be seen as the sweat on the characters in the film Julius Cesar that Barthes analyzes; the question is thinking there is some sort of thought behind a question enunciated in such a way. The aggressiveness in the question is enunciates with by the phrase ‘answer to all’. This is a phrase that is totalizing and, contingent upon a negative, whose answer implies the uselessness of the analysis of language as a possible tool for research. Confusing the sign with the signified is, as Barthes writes, a hybrid inserted into the sign which is made to be perceived as nature. Say we have a signified, this signified is the concept of ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ and the signifier is the color black. The sign would be thus that black= bad/evil. Or the fringe= roman-ness, sweat=thinking, which in turn = crime, the author= answers to the work, a work= a specific meaning, Einstein’s brain= thought machine, foam= no violence etc. Thus, if the analysis of language doesn’t answer all the problems than it is of no use and can be completely disregarded. I was careful although to ask the text for an answer and not the author. According to the very arguments of the texts, the texts would never give me one uniform answer. Thus, the intentions or connotations (positive or negative) of question posed would fail against the text; but they would not fail against the author. The author can give you a straight answer, but that limits the possibilities of discourse, the possibilities of meanings, and the denaturalization of the one and only. In essence, my understanding from the Barthes texts is that there are finger prints around the sign and its meaning(s). The task in language (textual) analysis is to untangle or uncover certain truths (or perhaps better, histories of signs and their meanings). This tool is counter to the power of prescribing, the power of ruling with no limit, the power of ‘creating reality without the real’. The death of author= liberation (of many entities).

Bakhtin is proposing that the novel is the perfect “environment” for discourse, in its multiple forms, to be manifested but not only manifested singularly or intertwined, but to be made fun of, as in a spectacle; the overturning of values that express more due to these forms than just what the content may develop. The poetics of the novel, as opposed to the poetics of poetry, allow different kinds of social languages to be used as in a parody. This parody or making fun of is not intended to be thought of as literal, not always at least, but as figurative. It is figurative because the intent for languages is to be taken out of their “comfort zone”. This comfort zone is their social group, profession, epoch, age groups, etc. This can be seen as type of manipulation of the words that have their specific function in their language. Poetry cannot do this because the poetry of language is a “unitary language”. I understand this as a language that perhaps tries to not be understood, tries to only draw reference (this would be the content) from inside the speaker and not from the exterior; the forms of poetry that will accompany the content are generated within itself also, just like the speaker (poetic voice), and not look for forms that are conditioned by social life. I would like to think this as an opposition between the expressions of a singularity versus that of a plurality. In other words, the novel can be seen as a collage of languages that exist in social life. This brings the novel to an area where it can express a condensed view of the world, of its social life. It is true that the novel will have an author and said author will have some intentions, will try to manipulate as much as possible with the contested (dialoged, heteroglot, stratified) language that is before their eyes and ears, but it is also true that the author looses relevancy because of the multiplicity of discourses external to the intentions of the writer that are dragged along with the language that is used. The unity of form and content give rise to genres that become a novel, that give prose meaning beyond just a plot or the utterances between characters. This is the novels discourse, the novels particular social language; to unite other languages, discourses, and compose mini worlds, mini epochs.

In Viktor Shklovsky’s article I did not understand what he meant by rhythm. Is the presence of rhythm the same as his account of what becomes habitual and automatic? Does rhythm account for the loss of deautomatized perception? Does rhythm in poetry make it too familiar? The repetition of sounds and or rhyme in poetry can allow for an easier remembering of the words or even a melody in case of a song. But does this put in jeopardy the content of the poem, the meaning of those words? In his examples of Tolstoy, he also concentrates on form only but not on the meaning of the words, the concepts. He focuses on the “defamiliarization” caused by horse narrator. What implications does it have? What is the text criticizing or making comment of? Certainly there is more to Tolstoy’s text than just defamiliarization. In any case, it seems that his examples actually make things familiar. How is the act of flogging familiar? I would say that the description of the flogging makes me familiar with what flogging is; the horse narrator familiarizes me with a new type of narrator. How does this defamiliarize from something with which I’m not familiar?

How can poetry defamiliarize the reader or listener? Defamiliarize from what? If poetry is not to be understood in relation to language of the outside, like the speech of prose is to be. He writes that prose speech is ordinary, easy, economical, and poetic speech is “formed speech”. Where does this formed speech come from? Poetry, in order to be poetry, must have a form and that is different than other types of writing and language in society. What, although, about the words that compose it? Where do the words come from? Is poetry only concerned with renovations and innovations of forms? This is important to understand. He talks about the “roughening of poetic language”. This roughening would cause defamiliarization of that form from previous forms. That although doesn’t take, again, account of the actual words used. The difference is then to see the beauty or ugliness of words used. My question is if the meaning of a poem doesn’t matter? Perhaps defamiliarization only happens once. After we encountered that which is not familiar, we become familiar with it. Does this then account for repeated changes in forms throughout the development of literature? What is the value of defamiliarization today?

FHIS 501

Toine: Staying on Top

Sometimes it is difficult to determine what is good and/or what is bad. The difficulty lies, perhaps, in the subjective experience or learned values of he or she who gazes at a situation to be contemplated. Determining then whether something is good or bad may be irrelevant because of the varying opinions the situation or object in question may generate. There is however something that remains from anyone who gazes. It is precisely the gaze that remains. Then, if the gaze was not altered with the subjective values or the use of polarizing language to describe or explain, the gaze is an objective text that can be read and effectively argued. Guy de Maupassant offers an “objective” gaze of a place and of a people in the short story Toine.

Toine is the man that gives his name to the story and therefore much attention, focus, is vested onto his character. In this story he is the character that would be impossible to say that he is anything but a good man. That however does not seem to be the stories objective to show that he is good or to show that he is bad. In this objective gaze, let’s remember that that is realisms objective, we easily see what ‘seems to be’, Toine is a Jolly good fellow who gets fat, has a nagging wife, and then has health problems, but it is also easy to miss, perhaps because of this happy, pleasant fellow, the connections that can be made with the material which makes up this gaze, the words, the language. In his town, in his land, Toine is a man of power, and as such must maintain that power, stay on top, by any means, even in the sneakiest of ways, sneaky because he doesn’t resort to violence but rather other undetected methods that allow things to go on as they should, as he wants them to be.

It would be difficult to make a full analysis in a short blog post but the argument, an observation in the text, has been made. A few examples can be given in support of this, although without deep explanation. First there is the opening of the text. It is the start of the gaze into Toine’s life but also into the dynamic of the town area where the story takes place. It describes Toine and his importance in the land. He is talked about and recognized as a focal point, perhaps he is even liked. Then the story presents him personally. He is a man that ‘gives back to the people’, even if just a drink or one meal, a man that uses language, humor, to maintain those important around him. The use of this language can be said to create subjects for Toine; people whom he has persuaded. After this, there is an underlying fact that is also symbolically connected to his growing body, this is his growing wealth. He takes and he grows without giving anything substantial back. The contrast to him is his wife, nagging wife who hates him, and has been described as a “peasant woman”.  This is the only person whom he has a problem with, and the only person who hates him for his bodily and wealth growth while she herself must do peasant work.

At the end we have a particular situation. Toine seems to be emotionally changed by the birth of the chicks, which “he has birthed”.  But in a matter of moments he turns to having no care for life in order to give a gift, perhaps a gift of persuasion, perhaps a gift of pleasure. At work in the text are politics such as politics of life, social division, and wealth distribution shown in conjunction with, or underneath, the image of a pleasant man and the land of which he is lord.

¡Bienvenidos! Welcome!

FHIS 501 blog.

I want to learn Literary Theory!!

By Josimar Yácuta Verduzco