It’s hard to believe that 13 weeks have flown by so fast! I have been thinking about the beginning of term and not having any idea how the Literary Theory class would go – but after these 13 weeks I feel I have got to grips more with critical thinkers, and encountered some new ones I will be able to draw on for my other graduate classes and my thesis. I have actually already been showing off my knowledge or Literary Theory in other classes, and it does make understanding concepts easier when you have some background in theory.

I enjoyed our week on film theory, for me that was the most interesting and I am excited to write the second assignment! I have also enjoyed other theories though, don’t get me wrong. I really liked the reading on Williams the other week for instance; I had never considered Jane Austen’s work to have much attachment to colonialism but it was interesting when Williams compared Austen to Cobbett as they were both writing at the same time, but from opposite ends of the spectrum.

I think it has been good for me to learn about Derrida and Foucault, Lacan and Freud etc, all of the big thinkers! As I knew of them before but didn’t really know much about them!!!

Also I have really liked having the blog – this has been my first blog on anything ever, and I think it is good to have something to tap away at consistently each week. Though if I were to continue blogging I’m not sure what I would write about. I’m sure people don’t want to see pictures of my dinner or listen to me rant about running, they can go on Facebook for that 🙂

Overall the class has been fun! I have really loved getting to know everyone, and I feel like the group dynamic is very welcoming and supportive. It’s been lovely studying with everyone!

I did the readings in a funny order this week, usually I just go through them as they are outlined in the syllabus from top to bottom, but I decided to attack the big ones first this week, so tackled Williams, Foucault and Fiske. It was only when I read Horkheimer and Adorno that everything sort of tied itself together. In reading Horkheimer and Adorno I was able to relate to Foucault, and his ideas about power and knowledge. It was quite scary to read of the Panopticon and think of the efficiency of power that this image implies, along with his ideas about discipline and the various methods which can be used to control the body. It seems to me that Foucault is leaning towards the idea that observation and gaze are the key instruments of power, an idea which I feel ties in with Horkheimer and Adorno’s notions that all products, or commodities, are essentially the same, it is just the way that we as consumers in our different groups are marketed to. So the notion of observation, that consumers are always being watched and observed, our needs and desires being continually assessed so that we may be more easily lead by the propaganda which comes our way, lead me to consider that the idea of the Panopticon was not just present during the 18^th century but that it has been carried through into the society in which we live today. A quote which struck me was “something is provided for all so that none may escape” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1243), which I think illustrates the idea of the modern-day Panopticon that is the technology/media-controlled society in which we live. Technology, it seems, has become the underlying structure for maintaining this cycle: as technology improves individuals feel the need to buy into this thinking they are improving themselves. This has been going on for many years, as Williams seems to suggest in his writing. Not only ‘things’ but individuals have also become mass-produced, if you think of the music industry there are so many pop icons who are gunning to be the next Britney or Rhianna. Again going back to technology, we think we are being individual in our choice or colour of iphone, or maybe the different screen cover we put on it, but everyone has fallen prey to the same propaganda which those in ‘power’ have used to influence our buying habits because of the knowledge they possess about our likes and dislikes, or what we may/may not be able to afford. I think this links back to Foucault’s notion that knowledge and power go hand in hand.

This week the reading by Thiong’o really struck me. It also made me feel sort of helpless when I thought about the way that we as academics approach the subject. I am sure I will never know or experience the hardship he went through at school; of being forced to speak the language of the colonisers and then being treated differently according to the level of mastery of the language. I am sure none of my 101 students would enjoy it if I placed every one of them in a hierarchy according to their French! I am pretty sure there would be some serious uproar as well. Yet this is what children have been subjected to in Africa where imperialism continues to control.

My feelings of helplessness arise because in reading the various texts for the week I became aware that the only way that I will ever know or be made familiar with the struggles of the writers who have decided to speak out and seize back their culture and history is by sitting at my kitchen table with a cup of tea only imagining how bad it could have been for them. I have to say that I do feel a sense of guilt and shame in this approach. I guess it’s like a sort of boiled-down version of chapter two of Thiong’o’s text where they sat around at the conference discussing what African literature was or could be. There’s lots of hypothesizing and discussion, but where is the action and involvement?

I admire the way Thiong’o writes and agree with him when he talks about language as culture, in that it is the product of a particular history, he states that “culture is a product of the history which it in turn reflects” (1134). In connection with this I also enjoyed the way he wrote about hearing stories in his mother tongue and how they “learnt the music of [their] language” (1131), this really emphasized the pleasure and enjoyment he derived from his mother tongue Gikiyu, and made it all the more heartbreaking to hear that “the language of my education was no longer the language of my culture” (1131). I think the points he brings up about how cultural invasion is related to language are very important, and while it was tough to read it was also insightful for me to consider the things he writes about, albeit from a distance.