If considering the context in which the School of Frankfurt flourished, one can find solid ground for the radicalism of Adorno and Horkeimer’s arguments. For example, the 1930s was the era of the big major studios (MGM, Paramount, Fox, Warner Bros) who exploited the star system and controlled local and international markets through vertical integration, block booking, among other strategies. The prevalence of images and dreams imported from Hollywood has been a reality in other countries where the local industry still struggles to release endogenous movies, and I even remember how video stores used to classify genres where American movies were considered the norm while national movies were grouped under their own subcategory based on their origin (Colombian films) and not their genre.

Mass production of cultural goods led to assume the homogeneity of dreams and a top-down determination in the hands of ‘evil’ producers for these two authors that supposedly represents the end of the individual. I am always surprised with the fascination exerted by boy bands all over the world and the disposability of these artists every 3 years, if lucky enough to survive that long.

I think the main contribution of this approach was to reveal the high concentration of the media market and standardization of goods or objective nature of products (1244). As critics have pointed in subsequent years (Miege, Garnham and Hesmondhalgh, among others), there are serious flaws in the main arguments of the Cultural Industry school that deserve further discussion. First, the term of Cultural Industry in singular overlooks the different conditions of cultural sectors or that the terms refers to the way of producing culture rather than a specific economic sector, so Miege (1989) prefers to use the term in plural “Cultural industries”. Right now, the term has even changed to Creative industries and Hesmondhalgh (2007) has argued that this distinction is to please the current neoliberal context.

Another serious observation is the assumption that company directors represent a monolithic and coordinated group free of contradictions or struggle of power or that there are other forces acting in the market (state, civil society, new comers, multiple technology alternatives etc.). We all have witnessed how the arrival of video rental/purchase, cable television, video on demand and streaming.

Last but not least is the role of the public as robotic recipients of the cultural content with no sense of consciousness or imagination (1244) when experiencing cultural goods, especially sound films. That’s why I found Certau’s counter-argument of the gap between those products and the use of them (1250) very interesting because it allows to have a sense of play toward the determination of taste.

References:

Hesmondhalgh, David. The cultural industries. Los Angeles: Sage, 2007.

Miege, Bernard. The Capitalization of Cultural Production. New York, N.Y.: International General, 1989.

When reading Lopez’ Social construction on race, I couldn’t resist thinking about Canada and multiculturalism. In my early years as an immigrant, I read Uzma Shakir’s essay, Demystifying transnationalism: Canadian immigration policy and the promise of nation building, and combined with my personal experience,  the whole positive and romantic image of Canada as a friendly, “neutral” society was permanently damaged.

Shakir revisited the history of Canadian immigration policy to argue that, agreeing with Lopez in many ways, marginalization and racialization are perpetuated through immigration policy and entrenched in Canadian society. The author proceeds to explain the early attempts to encourage immigration of Western European farmers (whites) to Canada as nation builders through the Sifton Plan while ensuring cheap labor and halting any attempts to settle down from non-white immigrants (i.e. Head tax). Even when the point system was introduced in 1966, social barriers still marginalize non-white groups from structures of power. This might be shifting a bit nowadays when the inclusion of one or two people of colour in high-ranked positions, but it’s definitely not a trend.

Credit: Mei-Po Kwan

Some of the questions that I usually ask to myself is that if we have to wait until the second generation can “get rid of the accent” (echoing Anzaldua) for them to get a job that matches his skills and education. But even studies from SFU show that labour racialization still persists for second and third-generation immigrants. Is total immersion a reality? I guess the immigrant will always have the advantage, for some, and burden, for others of that race plasticity that I called “identity negotiation”: you negotiate your identity according to your interest and the situation, as Anzaldua exemplifies with her own experience. In the labour market, competing forces of white and non-white might force us to always prove we can do the job and perform as any other white with the risk of being over qualified (we have to demonstrate we can speak English, follow the rules, etc.), but when the situation changes to our disadvantage, we can pretend not to be so qualified (I usually pretend not to speak English when a stranger talks to me on the bus or when I jump the queue).  Here I am a Latino; in South America, I’m a Colombian; in Colombia, I’m a person from the Caribbean, and so on.

I agree with Lopez on the majority of his arguments and the social formation and competing forces in this society. However, the fact that he, and other authors, tried to oppose only two groups (whites and non-whites) might be seem reductionist. The way I see it is not that all immigrants are united against or around whites or Caucasians, because we oppose to each other as well. We play with stereotypes as well: whenever there is a car accident, I have heard comments from people from other ethnicities, such as “For sure there was a Chinese behind the wheel”, or if there is a party with loud music, “it must be a Latino”.

When I read Metz’ From the imaginary signifier, I couldn’t avoid the temptation to consider myself a fetishist in regards to. I have been always fascinating by the magic of these “shadows” in comparison of theatre, literature or painting.

The first element that intrigued me was the psychoanalytic approach from Freud and Lacan, establishing analogies with the mirror stage and the sense of lack that maintains the object of desire from the distance. As one progresses on the reading, Metz’ arguments will make a statement (i.e. cinema is the most perceptual art since it mobilizes a larger number of axes of perception) and then showed that this affirmation is not an absolute as everything happens in absence, so technically speaking it would be the least perceptual. It is precisely its unique form of perception what makes cinema so different.

Another point that it would be interesting to discuss is position of the spectator in the middle of all duplications: the projection of bringing live to objects by make them appear on camera and the introjection at the level of the consciousness (698). So, when we talk about movies are we also projecting them by bringing them up to the conversation and internalizing the content by reflecting on them?

In terms of the process of identification, what I found revealing is the fact that the subject sees himself/herself as all perceiving rather than saying the identification is with the characters on the movie, which would be a secondary or tertiary identification (700). As technology progresses, this process will present new challenges; I’m thinking about the current popularity of 3D when sometimes it does not add anything different to particular films. Is this perception of projecting reality beyond the screen a replacement for what we used to perceive in a regular movie or a reinforcement? How is the consciousness affected for this special effect of fiction within a fiction film? Do we “wake up” every time we see an object coming out of the screen, and then we go back to a lethargic stage when we forget we see a 3D movie? Or, it might be a mere distraction.

This week, I was very interested in Butlers’ excerpt of Performative acts and gender constitution as I relate her critique to feminism to our discussion last class.  When considering gender within the simplistic dichotomy patriarchy/women oppression, one’s assumes the universalism in terms of gender being homogeneous within each category (all men as oppressors and all women as victims). Subsequently, as we noted in class, the use of “we” erases all differences of race, class or gender in this case that might unify in order to achieve some goals at first, but then alienate those who cannot identify with the generic model.

But life is not that simple. Authors such as Butler, Sedgwick or Halberstam just argued how the lines among sex, gender and sexuality easily become blurry when analyzing social constructions, discourses or even characters that once traditional identifies as representative of masculinity (James Bond).

To be honest, I am still confused about these concepts as I still believe we are born with a distinctive set of chromosomes that serves to place us in different categories (regardless how arbitrary this classification is), either female, male or hermaphrodite. Now, as we enter in all social, cultural, political etc. constructions we identify ourselves, perceive our bodies and our bodies/identities are perceived in multiple, infinite ways even within a predominant heterosexual framework. Then I will agree with Butler that sexuality and gender are constructed, “(gender) then can be neither true nor false, neither real nor apparent and yet one is completed to live in a world in which genders constitute univocal signifiers.” (908) However, I am not sure that her proposal to reduce gender to a sustained performative act on a social stage would accomplish to change or acknowledge the influence of rigid parameters such as heterosexual framework and sexual difference. She does mention that we have to “reread the texts of Western philosophy” from the point of view of the marginalized and “establish philosophy as a cultural practice” (910) when in reality we still observe a system of social punishment for those who do act according to the norm or when political correctness avoids conflict and, therefore, open discussion.

I would very appreciate if we can work on the transfers or conceptual common grounds between sex, gender and sexuality, so I can see the gray areas.

The discourse of feminisms (in plural) is definitely an aspect that is many times overlooked when observing the way women have come to terms with their identity and establish their place in a political, private, public and intimate contexts. Questioning structures of power and inequality not always results in the simple elimination of the external force that install such structures, as Rubin says in her introduction (770), because our own perspective is also destabilized, renewed and redefined in the process. The emancipation and awareness is also painful for women who have lived with the belief of achieving happiness as long as the foundation of social relations, unequal or equal, remains intact.

Far from a unified, homogeneous movement, Western feminism reproduced the same structure of negligence to different determinations that affect women inside the movement. Lorde (856) looked into her own case when explaining all the layers that interact in her identity and its implications: African American (or Black to be more precise), lesbian, women and how not even African American literature is included in women’s literature or any literature course in general in her critique to the movement from the inside. Heng reveals in a similar way the dynamics and determinations that the State, society and the market play in the development of particular feminisms in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, usually judged by Western feminists for not following a confrontational, opposed-to-the-state activism or for having ground in the tradition or folklore as archaic ideas, ignoring the need for legitimation in the local context.

The complexity toward adopting and defending feminist ideals in the 3rd world also includes the “theoretical dependence” taboo that undermines any serious attempt to question ancient frames of thought and representation. When I lived in Colombia  in the 1990s and volunteered in an shelter for abused women, the executive board was always afraid of adopting a feminist approach as the organization would be seen as copying a foreign discourse that has no sustainable ground in Colombian society, and the same women in need might refuse to ask for help. Another fear was to be perceived as “too leftist”. Since the organization received funding from the government, they wanted to avoid being identified as a guerrilla-supporter- organization. In that case, we can observe how male oppression is not the only determinant in the emergence, development and survival of a movement that need to recognize all the variables (social stigma, economic and political conditions) at play in specific contexts.

Something interesting that I also observed while was there was the different attitudes and contradictions toward self-proclaimed “feminist”. The first reaction women and men had toward the feminist was that she was miserable, bitter, lesbian and that was raped once at least. Surprisingly, women in Colombia are encouraged to study and work although there is still inequality in a lot of areas (i.e. salary), but it is still expected that they carry out all domestic tasks if there are not female maids around. Usually, when this structure is questioned by a girl, is another woman (the mother) who corrects the deviant behavior. I always thought our emancipation in the public sphere (vote, representation) served to increase our burden as it was not accompanied by education and acceptance in the private/intimate sphere.  Of course, this does mean we have to go back in order to be the “angel of the house” and have an “easier” life, but to be aware about internal mindsets in both women and men about feminism.

Based on what we discussed last week and this week’s readings, I am very interested in the role of consciousness in the way the individual or the subject interacts with and through language and ideology, and if living in the truth of ideology is a conscious decision.

Bakhtin, for example, highlights the importance of the awakening moment when an individual (an illiterate peasant in his extreme example) realizes there are variegated languages that juxtapose, encounter, interact and contradict each other just like in a novel, and he faces the moment of choosing one (678).

Before that, the individual just use various (not variegated) languages automatically. What triggers that moment of consciousness? If we say during the mirror stage when the child determines his identity as a separate entity and recognize the Other, then I don’t think children will have the capacity of realization and Bakhtin is not proposing that either as the peasant might have gone through that stage and not necessarily choose a specific orientation at such an early age.

It seems to me that we have the faculty to choose at some point, according to Bakhtin, between the Authoritative discourse and the Internally persuasive discourse, this latter enabling multiplicity of the semantic structure, an open window where languages can have a dialogue.

In contrast, Althusser’s perspective is more deterministic and blunt: ideology is false consciousness and consciousness is seen as the means by which ideology will preserve the order or, in his words “the imaginary relationship to their real conditions of existence” (693). If man is by nature a subject (“individuals are always-already subjects” p. 700). Then one cannot even talk about an “awakening moment” or the mirror recognition (although he suggests that this is what is really in question) since ideology will interpellate us since always and our ‘free’ subjection will always be mediated by an illusion.

As a side note, the way Althusser wrote the text with self-reflecting quotes such as “To speak in a Marxist language…” (694) or “And I shall be expected to use a more directly Marxist vocabulary” (697) or the justification of quoting Aristotle by saying Marx had a very high regard for him (695) were very comical, and make me wonder about his intention. As he insisted that one might be able to observe the distortion ideology displays in front of us if we don’t live in its truth, should these quotes be interpreted as a claim of distance from Marx while still using a Marxist framework for his analysis?

Back to the topic of consciousness and ideology, Zizek replies to Althusser arguing that ideology is not simply a false consciousness but it’s this reality which is “already to be conceived as ideological” (716). This implies blindness or a cynical attitude in which subjects are conscious of the ideological discourse and the distorted reality offered to them but still live in its truth because they find reasons to retain the mask (718). The solution to break the cycle would be rather than unmasking, to confront the Real of our desire (723), but how? He doesn’t say and perhaps there is no way to do it as reality is always mediated by the language and other structures as Lacan said.

Deleuze and Guattari’s defying discussion on the rhizomatic mode of organization as a more attainable way to explain the being, the production of knowledge and the way to stand before the State is very controversial. Their critique to the traditional arboresque, hierarquical and Hegelian model to understand the world has clear echoes with Derrida’s concepts of differance (despite some differences, such as mapping and trace) and deconstruction. Both play with the notion of systems of signifiers and signifieds not being unequivocally correspondent as well as of the potentiality of multiplicity, a continuous process of re-invention that shakes up static notions and structures internalized by the individual.

The analogy with the biological term, rhizome, suits the constant renewal of identity proposed by Deleuze and Guattari. This is explained in the beginning of the excerpt when they justified the use of pseudonyms, “To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think.(…) To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves.” (378) (I can see also the ghost of Barthes wandering around here).

Subjectivity is then progressively constructed in enunciation; so, in that sense, language and signification has a plasticity feature that as part of the proposed system would enable alternations of deterritorialization and reterritorialization in the plateaus, if I’m on the right track. My question is more about the abstract concept of “line of flight” because according to Deleuze and Guattari “Multiplicities are defined by the outside: by the abstract line, the line of flight or deterritorialization according to which they change in nature and connect with other multiplicities. (…) The line of flight marks: the reality of a finite number of dimensions that the multiplicity effectively fills.” (382)

Is the rhizoid-type-of-book (as opposed to the root-book) that has the potential of outlining or suggesting the lines of flight (but the authors said a book has no subject or object) or is in the individual in a virtual dimension who defines those lines?

Perhaps I am still thinking in terms of a system with a unity, a center and static referents, because I don’t see the empirical application of Deleuze and Guattari other than comparing the rhizomatic structure to the Internet. The power of imagination is infinite, but how can we be nomads or think about multiplicity in a reality that is still concrete and use binary oppositions?

I found the excerpt of Derrida’s essay, Differance, fascinating; not only for the level of complexity (I had to read it 3 times and I’m still struggling), but for the subversive ideas of reversing hierarchies that are entrenched in the history of thought within the metaphysical tradition.

His attempt of de-centering violent hierarchical binary oppositions, and his critique of the privilege given to one variable over another, such as presence/absence, good/evil, speech/writing, etc.  Specifically in this latter relation, Derrida demonstrates that contrary to the traditional approach of considering speech pure, more immediate to thought than writing as this latter as an obstruction to the process of portraying it, writing is a species of speech (Selden, Widdowson and Broker, 168). Both, speech and writing share the same structure of signifiers not always connected with signifieds, and are permeated by differance.

I wonder if the new opposition between metaphysics and deconstruction in the way we understand the world represents another hierarchical opposition that Derrida precisely tried to avoid.

I also found Johnson’s proposal of reading the silence very interesting (Rivkin and Ryan, 346-347) as an alternative to the usual way of reading texts. How we do that when we have social structures internalized (Foucault) that might prevent us from seeing the absence? Are there ways to escape, perhaps, looking at Lyotard and his skepticism toward the meta-narratives or Barthes with his idea of text that generates and subverts meaning? but again how to escape from fixed structures that shape our thought and enable ourselves to go beyond these limits?

This week’s readings brought me to the other equally complex and contested side of the spectrum: the reader and the meanings created from a text. Barthes’ call for the birth of the reader at expenses of the death of the author (p.148) and Foucault’s reflection on how the society insists on perpetuating the ideological construction of the author despite the efforts of modern criticism and philosophy, reminded me a discussion about Jorge Luis Borges, short story Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote where the main character re-writes this work and the text is seen as a completely different text. This to say, echoing Barthes again, that the text is eternally written here and now, or Kristeva’s concept of intertextuality when stating that a text is a mosaic of quotations, or the transformation of other texts. Borges uses a narrator that praises Menard’s innovative style of the “rudimentary art of the work (of art)”, hinting that a new reading of a text is, in fact, like re-writing the text.

This only generates more questions as writer and reader are two sides of the same coin, the text. Who is the reader? An abstract concept as Barthes implied: “someone without history, biography, psychology” (p.148) as a recipient that brings text to life through their interpretation? or the product of embodied social structures that cannot see beyond these systems of classifications where they are located and in which they locate/undersdant texts? Is the author’s own structures being reflected on his work and being used to reproduce social order? How can we break this trap? Can we break it?

As I was reading the formalists and their scientific approach to the object of study, such as the importance given to the literary devices and procedures that make literature an autonomous field, a question came to mind regarding the affective fallacy. If the reactions of readers are irrelevant as the structure is the ultimate recipient of meaning, why Shklovsky emphasizes the ultimate goal of poetry to “disrupt habitual ways of seeing and thinking”. Isn’t the goal of creating a special perception of the object the same thing as making sure that there are reactions to that particular work of art? Moreover, having this goal will mean the author has that intention and this is precisely another fallacy that I think formalists are denouncing.

Is this a contradiction or am I not understanding the readings?