The Readings for Dr. Krips lecture, especially Freud’s, increased my interest in psychoanalysis since I have developed an interest for the notions of self and subjectivity and objectivity through this class. How much are we influenced by our relationships with others and society? How are we created and shaped by society and the rest of our environment? I was thinking about these things after having read the readings. Dr. Krips’s lecture gave a broader idea, using the examples of the French Revolution, policing, and interpretations by scholars concerning their relationship. Any one event which occurred in the past is interpreted in different ways by different scholars. As Dr. Krips said, an old order failed to signify the French Revolution, when something new happens, it becomes a new signifier and creates a new order. This idea is also applied to the expiration date of theory. I like what Dr. Krips said, that each theory has an expiration date, but it is interpreted and applied in different ways in different times. He used the example of Marx’s theory and I agree with him, but as an individual who has a sociological background, I believe that every theory can not be reinterpreted in the exact same way as when it was first created; however, many old theories may still be applied to different parts of today’s society by being redeveloped and modified from their original structure to suit the need. This is why, from my own personal perspective, many people still talk about and use Marx’s theory even though his theory is recognized by many as a failure or out dated. I wish someday, someone (or, perhaps, myself) would deconstruct my favorite theorists, Durkheim and Foucault.

While I thought that Henry Krips’ lecture on Monday was interesting, I honestly did not fully understand all of it, especially the parts about “political events” and the “poetic flight of signifiers,” to name just a few. There were, however, parts that I did understand and found fairly intriguing, such as the fact that the act of interpreting an event actually creates the event and “domesticates” it, puts it in a box to be analyzed, etc. If someone wants to leave a comment further clarifying what, exactly, “political events” and “the poetic flight of signifiers” are, be my guest! :) Also, the “interruption by the Real” was a bit confusing as well.

Moving on, I was drawn to the first part of Stavrakakis’ article where he describes ambiguous democracy, unity, utopianism, and disharmony. I am actually writing a paper in another class about multiple subjectivities vs. the notion of a Western self in the USA, so I very interested in the idea that radical democracy is impossible, inherently agonistic and indeterminate. Laclau is cited in the article which ties into my paper tangentially because of his collaboration with Chantal Mouffe, who also writes about the impossibility of a fully realized radical democracy in an essay of hers. What she mentions, however, is the necessity of keeping in view, on the horizon, utopian ideals of the common good. This view on the horizon is referred to as a “vanishing point...something to which we must constantly refer when we are acting as citizens, but that can never be reached” (Mouffe 379). Where I think the USA runs into trouble is when those in power insist on American unity but elide differences and multiple subjectivities. While I agree that constant negotiation needs to occur between totalitarian universality and “particularism,” I don’t think that acknowledgment of differences between subjects and some fragmentation in the American polity is completely negative. In this aspect I think the ideas of affinity and coalition are productive in negotiating between the extremes mentioned above.

I have been thinking of the distinction that Prof. Pagel made between the critic as the "priest" or expert, and the critic as the equal to the audience. It occurs to me, that these two models are entirely composed of how the critic himself writes, as opposed to having anything to do with either the art or the audience. Without the critic, the art would still exist and new interpretations of artists and art pieces would still be made by those who follow the art. The difference exists, then, in whether the art critics treat the audience as if they know very little, need to be taught, and can not have meaningful, valid opinions of their own. The fact that Pagel establishes himself as an equal to his readers would make his writing less pretentious, I would imagine. I wonder how critics who write as if they are experts would respond to Pagel's charge. Maybe they'd say that they clearly know more than their readers, as it is their chosen profession to possess more art knowledge. Or maybe nobody would admit to writing in this critic as "priest" manner. I don't know personally, but it the question interests me.

Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents writes, “We should have to be very cautious and not forget that, after all, we are only dealing with analogies and that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with concepts, to tear them from the sphere in which they have originated and been evolved” (110). Thus far in our course, we have encountered a variety of disciplines that stress the importance of context when making evaluations of a text or an image. For historians and anthropologists, they must make sure to correctly situate their work within the proper time frame to elicit the most accurate scholarship. For painters and artists, context is a creative force; it can ascribe meaning or perhaps mediate it. In literature and cultural studies, an author’s context is paramount in attempting in analyzing their work. Just as we are dissuaded from “colonizing the past,” we also must take care not to “force the text.” Theory, for literary scholars, is a touchy concept. Some scholars feel that theory is a practical application that enables researchers to uncovered hidden layers of text that reside perhaps not solely in the literal content of a work, but also in the unconscious meaning conveyed through an author’s composition and methodology. For others, theory is undesirable. I have had a least one professor at CGU announce on the first day of class, “Throw you Derrida out the window!” For that particular professor, historical contextualization upstages and replaces theoretical conceptualizations. Lori Anne Farrell, a literary scholar and historian at CGU, often notes in courses that outside of English departments that Freud is no longer used today in the practice of psychology. What does this say about the appropriations of theory? Can theory itself be taken out of its proper framework? What does it mean that literary students continue to apply Freud to their readings when his work is no longer practically used in the sciences? Does theory have an expiration date?

What is perhaps even more interesting is the divide that is being created between literary and cultural studies students over the role of theory and how texts are read. It is becoming an increasingly charged atmosphere where I have heard literature students being charged as want to be cultural studies students or cultural studies students accused of doing mere “literary analyses.” I have also often heard people discussing “going to the other side.” What causes this division? Why is it so politically charged within academia? Does being both a cultural studies and literary scholar increase your job market value? Or does it hurt it? Is there room for both literature and cultural studies? And if so, will they play 

 

           I am finding it more than a little bit difficult to put together a coherent statement about our readings for today, but I will at least draw attention to a few themes in them that I find interesting, and hope that the loose ends will be all tied up by the end of tomorrow’s lecture. 

           In the Freud reading I was struck first of all by the theme of the relation between the individual and the group.  The first part of the reading seemed to set up a kind of analogy between processes that happen on the individual level and on the collective level of community and civilization.  He even speaks of an analogy between the two.  Yet, it is clear that he is not merely drawing parallels here but is very much concerned with the actual articulation of the one (the libidinal development of the individual) with the other (the development of civilization).  Civilization somehow issues forth from the non-satisfaction of powerful instincts.  Freud is not simply drawing out parallels between the two. 

           The analysis in the part of the Freud reading on Group Psychology brought this question of the connection of individual development and the group into sharper focus.  I found his discussion of the connection between being in love, hypnosis, group formation and neurosis to be fascinating.  In this discussion I feel he is developing the real connections between these phenomena (rather than simply showing analogies between separate levels).  At the same time, I find it almost impossible to remain open-minded when I read his account of the murder of the “father of the primal horde”—a murder somehow standing at the beginning of all of this.  It seems to me that here Freud is reading a myth almost as if it were history, and I can’t get myself to be open-minded when it comes to this.

           This leads me to the most memorable image from the Freud reading (which he took from Schopenhauer)—the image of the freezing porcupines.  Now I love this image as a way of capturing the tension between the desire to come close to one another in a group, and a need to withdraw into the self.  Both of these tendencies cause pain.  We can’t escape from the necessity of moving in one or the other direction, but we can find just that location where we minimize the pain coming from the pin-prick of the quills when we draw too near our fellow creatures, and the freezing cold we experience when we pull too far away from them.  In the reading about Lacan I kept thinking about the freezing porcupines (although I can’t quite explain why yet!). Stavrakakis notes at the beginning that there is a tension which is constitutive of democracy.  The locus of power is empty.  There is no longer a theo-political incarnation of power in the form of a prince or leader, and so there is struggle.  By the end of the reading he tells us that this is not meant to be read as rejection of democracy.  This tension is not so much constitutive of democracy as it is constitutive of the human condition. What was thought of as “intolerable” now has “ethical status.”  But it is a different sort of ethics here—not one of the ideal or of the good, but of the Real, which stands in opposition to the ideal on the one hand, and to the unreal on the other.  The ethical community is one which remains an open one, and this openness means openness to difference and “recognition of the Other.”

          

(sorry for being so long-winded and LATE!)

Questions that I am wondering about:

1)I really appreciated Patricia Easton’s systematic summary of her discipline of philosophy at the beginning of the lecture she gave.  She noted the subdivisions of the field of philosophy, its materials, its object of study (arguments), and its norms.  She also noted that sometimes disciplines have competing norms, and she gave the example of history and philosophy.  My question to Professor Easton and the rest of the panel has to do with competing disciplinary norms and what our response to them should be or might be, in a context like our own where we are trying to bridge disciplines in some way or where one of our governing norms is to be transdisciplinary:

           àWhat distinguishes competing norms from simply different norms? 

           àHow do the different members of the panel respond to other disciplines (especially those perceived to have competing norms), or how do they incorporate those other disciplines into their own discourses?

           àIs it desirable or even necessary to think of a kind of meta-discipline that can mediate across disciplinary boundaries?  Or would that be going too far?  (I think, for example, that Professor Oishi described the cultural studies approach as a kind of meta-discipline, because it looks deeply into the question of how knowledge is produced in the disciplines, and at how separate disciplines are formed)

           àAre some disciplines (even restricting ourselves to the humanities) inherently less open to being transdisciplinary?  Are some more porous or tractable in that respect?  And if they are, what exactly is it about a discipline that makes it either more open to other disciplines or less so?

 

2)In several of the lectures, I was struck by the desire to open up to the text, to generate multiple readings of texts or images without coming down fast and hard in favor of one true interpretation.  This leaves the impression that one is opening up to multiplicity, leveling hierarchies.  Professor Redfield, for example, very eloquently drew out the multiple and complex discursive tensions in literary approaches to texts.  Yet he also maintained a notion of “truth as immanent,” and a notion of “disclosive truth”.

           à I wonder if he and others on the panel could say something more about the function of the idea of truth in contexts where we are trying to open up to the multiplicity of possible interpretations of works and texts.  How do we evaluate interpretations in the absence of a hierarchical notion of truth?  Or should we evaluate?  (I think we do, whether we should or not!)

           àIn Professor Pagel’s lecture I felt a related tension.  He clearly stated that he no longer wanted to assume the old role of the critic—a role parallel to the priest of old, in which the truth descended from God (or from Art with a capital A) to the critic and then to the (lowly) people.  Professor Pagel sees the critic’s role in terms of the triangle which he drew, which put the critic and other viewers on the same plane.  I wonder, however, whether this unhierarchical structure isn’t undergirded by something like the old structure that we would like to supercede.  The very medium in which a critic’s voice comes to the people is through the published text.  This inserts an asymmetry that is very difficult to counteract.  In addition, many of the judgments about the work of art depend upon the viewer’s knowledge of and participation in the art community.  So much of Professor Pagel’s wonderful insights about the works of art that he discussed presupposed an insider’s view of the various art sub-cultures.  Isn’t it difficult to really come up with a more reciprocal or egalitarian view in interpretations of art or literature?

  

 

            Before going on an easy Freud bashing spree, I think a little caveat is in order.  Within the context of his time and place, his insights were ground breaking and dangerous to what were considered societal norms; for that I have to give him kudos.

           While I think Freud’s theory of the primal father is somewhat ridiculous, his overarching Oedipal theory is still intriguing. I think we still have room to explore the importance of the mother in the lives of infants and it has been shown that brain chemistry plays a huge role in a mother’s bond to her child.  She is chemically programmed to fall in love the infant and therefore the father tends to fall by the wayside for a little while, thus competition for her attention ensues.  I question how long this situation lasts, however, and whether it continues to be a valid theory as the child grows up.

           Freud’s focus on sex as a prime motivation is, I think, somewhat overstated, but it still lends an interesting aspect to the argument.  This may reflect the male psychology, but Freud’s unwillingness or inability to access the female psyche in any vaguely objective way leaves his overall theory lacking.  His fundamental assumption seems to be that people are, at their core, bad aggressive and extremely narcissistic.  Again, I think he focuses on the male psyche more than he realizes.  His context colored his view of the male psyche is more at issue here than the human psyche itself.  However, I think we need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water.

           The problems expressed in regard to democracy, in the Stavrakakis  reading, are true of any community: there will always be a struggle between the narcissistic tendencies of the individual and the need for action on behalf of the good of the group.  That democracy highlights this conflict between particularism and unity is something I had considered before.  As much as we would like to find some harmonious unity, any unity is, I think, inherently short lived and ephemeral at best. Many of the issues raised in the reading have been painfully evident in our own society over the last decade: the call to ‘patriotism’, the desire for revenge at a cost far higher than imagined, the rule of egos over the masses through fear and manipulation of the press.  I think one issue that stands out after this reading is the need for a critical and free press, and the need for education among the masses in order to create any kind of peace as society navigates through a democratic process. 

What I found interesting in her lecture was her methodology. She is a professor of English, but her research is not limited to that discipline. Even though I know very little about John Commons and the historical context, I was amazed by her way of approaching the topic. She used sociological, historical, economical, and theological angles for her research. Because of this multifaceted approach to her topic, many different questions were asked of Dr. Tichi after her lecture. She talked about economic depression, unemployment, God, and racism. As an individual who has a sociology background, I connected her research with Durkheim’s Anomie theory. When society experiences a significant change that disrupts the “normal” course of behavior, or a paradigm shift, it will greatly affect people’s behavior and morality. Changes in people’s behavior resulting from such a shift, will then cause new types of social problems resulting in societal structural changes. Since I wrote my master’s thesis using Durkheim’s theory, I somewhat applied this theory to her lecture. I also learned how to make connections using different disciplines applied to one topic. The images she used in her lecture were also effective at informing me as to what the society was like at that time. I have been thinking about my research and her lecture gave me some new directions and insights to go on.

Meaning behind Readings for Dr. Pagle’s lecture made me wonder what the Electric Mud exhibition looked like. As an individual who loves art, but lacks a professional knowledge about it, I sometimes intentionally try not to know the developed meanings or the creators’ messages behind their art works since I want to enjoy the art in its immediacy and not clutter this immediacy with a lot of thought. However, reading Dr. Pagel and Sara Cochran’s essays, I felt like I was experiencing a reversed way of observing the arts. I learned the history, the creators’ intentions of their works, and the transition of the meanings of ceramics and sculptures. But still, I do not “see” these works with my eyes and all I could do was to imagine what they look like. Since I am used to “seeing” art, it is a quite interesting experience for me as it was like texts flowing in my mind to create the image. Also, even though I got some information about the particular art works from the readings, I felt that the authors did not try to convince me to look at the works from their perspectives. They discussed about some of the effects of looking at the arts, such as representation and binary definition, its history, and etc, yet they left me with how “I” think of them when I actually view them. Although I am not sure if Dr. Pagel will show the pictures of the exhibition, I am interested in how he is going to talk about texts and the visual arts.