This week while I was reading the different texts I started thinking about the various other readings that we have covered till now and how these are different from the one that we have read earlier. One thing that is very interesting for me to note and relate with the previous reading is that they are all based on the society or that I have mentioned the word ‘society’ in every reading or every blog. How the various readings deal with problems of the society and interpret them from their point of view.

The readings of Karl Marx in the book Literary Theory: An Anthology is arranged in such a way that in the initial pages we see the introduction of various terminologies to define a country, such as, population, division of classes, annual production and consumption etc.  We see that these terms are economic terms and he relates them to define the society, much later we see how he relates these terms to politics. He says that the concrete terms are product of our thought of comprehension which has been influenced by Capitalism in our thought process and so our thought is also a product. So we see that we are now able to connect the economic terminologies with politics in given society. Further, he relates this ‘politico-economic’ relation with the history of the society and we see that the relation is not simple but extremely complex and that it has a history connected to it. He talks about the various forms of ownership that persist in the society, like tribal, communal, feudal etc and every form of ownership has given rise to class division ‘the dominant and the dominated’. However, he later introduces the relation of capital to labor power and he gives utmost importance to the labor power for the capital to multiply and here we are introduced to the terminology of exploitation.

But, what stroke me as the most important point of Marx is when he talks about the division of labor in the ruling class – one who has the ruling ideas ‘mental labor’ and the other the ‘material labor’. Hence we realize that the idea to rule is also constructed and has the tendency to universalize them. He says that there is always a chance to enter into conflict between the rulers of mental labor and the material labor which topples the structure of the society and a new form of society is created with new ruling ideas. But before the revolution the ruling ideas are being related to the entire society, the ideas are homogenized by the new dominant class. Here we can pay attention to the term ‘new ruling idea’ because a new class comes into being and a new structure of class is established.  It is interesting for me because the critics of the new terms today like globalization, neoliberalism etc keep saying that there is a homogenization of ideas, problems, and other issues but now we could trace back and see how old is this concept of universalizing everything. And probably that is why today history is detached from several issues so that one is not capable of tracing back to the past and finds its root …. Marx has given so much importance to history ….. was he aware of the contemporary situation that we are facing??

It is interesting to see how dreams can be analyzed. Many of us take the dreams very seriously and think that they would come true if seen at a particular time of the sleep and many do not believe them at all and say that it is a “dream”. How notions with dreams are so well attached to our everyday life. For instance we say very often ‘it is a dream come true’. It is interesting for me to see how the concept of dream works in us with the help of science.

As Sigmund Freud talks about in “The Interpretation of Dreams” of concepts like latent content or dream contents and dream – thoughts.  The idea that dream is a result of the thoughts of our unconscious mind is another interesting aspect to look at. As it is said in the introduction of Interpretation of dreams that “the idea was that the mind harbors wishes or desires that lie outside awareness but that nevertheless manifest themselves at night in dreams”. Later in the same paragraph we see where it says that dream as a result of unconscious material is always repressed by the consciousness since those desires and wishes are not appropriate for the society. Hence, I interpret the conscious self as a social construct which obeys the norms and the code of conduct of the society and also adapts to it. As Julie Rivkin and Micheal Ryan mention in “Introduction: Strangers to Ourselves: psychoanalysis” of the terms introjections and projection. Where introjections stand for adapting to certain characteristics from the society and projection stands for distancing ourselves from some of our own characteristics.  Can we then say that it is perhaps the projection which sometimes is projected through our unconsciousness in our dreams? Are the projections our hidden wishes and desires which we throw out perhaps due to the unacceptable nature of the society and therefore they manifest in our dreams?

The other interesting aspect of Freud’s discussion which I can very well relate to my reading of novels is “uncanny”.  Even though we strongly defend that we are not superstitious but read with great concentration when the technique ‘uncanny’ is applied by the writers to write suspense novels (detective, horror, etc.). We very well believe that some kind of clue is associated or hidden to certain act when that act is repeated many times in the life of the protagonist.  A technique used by the writers which ask the reader to concentrate on those repeated actions to find out the hidden mystery in it and we as readers follow it quite efficiently.

Structuralism, modernism, colonialism etc. are concepts which categorized the society, constructed concepts and created law and order. These schools of thought restricted the world to think beyond the demarcation that they have created. During this period Europe was at center and the rest was its periphery.

But, the “post” of all these thoughts is actually questioning their ideology and politics. Derrida with the example of a nonexistent word differance questioned the rigid system of the society. Barbara Johnson in her article Writing mentions that Derrida particularly wanted to demonstrate that speech is not superior to writing as the meaning carried is always differed and deferred in a spatial-temporal framework.  Further, she says that he questions the binary oppositions where they are arranged in a hierarchy and one of these binaries is superior in the ranking order. Hence, Derrida is basically deconstructing all the centers so that there would not be any peripheries, so that there would not be any authority, dominance and control over the rest of the world. He is therefore not interested in looking at “Black” and “white” as binary opposite but rather the nuances of ‘grey’ between them. So he says in the very beginning that “Differance is neither a word nor a concept” and it does not fall under any constructed system of knowledge. It is the grey area that is intangible, nonrigid and without category.  He relates differance not to Consciousness but to unconsciousness and he says “…..contrary to the terms of an old debate, strongly symptomatic of the metaphysical investments it has always assumed, the “unconscious” can no more be classed as a “thing” than as anything else; it is no more of a thing than an implicit or masked consciousness”, he also relates it not to present or absent but to traces and he calls differance a strategy without finality.

“It is hazardous because this strategy is not simply one in the sense that we say that strategy orients the tactics according to a final aim, a telos or the theme of a domination, a mastery or an ultimate reappropriation of movement and field. In the end, it is a strategy without finality”. This quote of Derrida in Differance can very well be related to Lyotard’s “The Postmodern Condition” where post modernists are being criticized “for not taking a stand on issues of value”. I believe because post-modernism is “a strategy without finality”. Taking stand would be again constructing concepts or centers which would in turn create its own periphery. Lyotard further goes on arguing about Legitamation and delegitimation of knowledge. How knowledge was being legitimized by only few institutions in Europe during Enlightenment and how in contemporary and post modern world it is formulated in different ways .In this contemporary world where we do not have any more metanarratives, no universal language, where “research has become compartmentalized and no one can master them all”, philosophy is in crisis; legitimation of knowledge is a question of power today not probably by the state or institutions as it were traditionally but by the capitalism. “Scientists, technicians, and instruments are purchased not to find the truth, but to augment power”. Hence the role of truth or reality which was earlier a strong notion is now appropriated, in fact Lyotard says “By reinforcing technology, one “reinforces” reality, and one’s chances of being just and right increase accordingly”.

But ‘reality’ according to Baudrillard is simulacra and we are in a world of simulations…….THE STABLE WORLD HAS BEEN SHAKEN DRASTICALLY……….

I suppose that Barthes’s ideas on the “Death of the Author” are very strongly against the existence of the Author. Both Foucault and Barthes in their respective articles “What is an Author” and “Death of the Author” talk about individualization of the Author as a result of the capitalist society. Further, both of them talk about the relationship between writing and death of the author. It is quite an interesting aspect to see how death is related to the author and beginning of a life with the writing. But Foucault goes further ahead with the question of what is an author or his work? And he puts forward an important question that whether we consider the writing of anybody as work or not. He gives example of Sade in the article and he says that can we consider the papers as work in which he wrote while he was in imprisonment and not an author, also how can we deal with the “rough drafts, laundry bill, deleted passages notes at the bottom of the page”. Therefore, he says it is not easy and sufficient to read only the work and discard the author completely because as he says “the word work and the unity that it designates are probably as problematic as the status of the author’s individuality”. Another interesting role that he mentions of the Author is the “founders of discursivity”. The role that is played by Freud, Marx etc. who has introduced new discourses and debates on these discourses are being discussed even today. As he says that they are not just novelist who is no more than the author of his own text but they are the author of their thoughts or ideology which has come into being with them.

Hence the word author is a complex term; also author is not singular himself/herself. As Barthes puts forward his thoughts and says “…..in which a variety of writings, none of them original¸ blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture”. I think author is not an individual who is loaded with ideas and creative power. An author has also derived his ideas or thoughts from a social situation or circumstance, probably from a discussion or a conference, developed his plot for writing his next novel by watching an old man walking down the street or from one of his travels. Therefore it is difficult to say that so and so is the author of this so and so text because his/her ideas in text have been influenced by many people and so different people in different ways have contributed to text.

It is difficult for me to understand why there is a need to kill the author to make the reader exist. So probably the next question arises who is this reader or what is a reader? According to me, reader is also a part of the same society as that of the author and hence every reader will read the text differently depending on their culture, their past and the social circumstances that they experience. As Fish says in Interpretive Communities “…. Interpretive strategies are not put into execution after reading (the pure act of perception in which I do not believe); they are the shape of reading, and because they are the shape of the reading, they give texts their shape, making them, rather than, as it is usually assumed, arising from them”.  I think probably a text then could be a dialogue with the society if we believe that the author has disappeared and that the reader is also not an individual who solely reads the text develops his interpretive strategies rather his/her interpretation depends very much like the author on the surroundings

This is Upasana Thakkar from Hispanic Studies in PhD program.

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