tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47333725306955497382024-03-28T05:23:13.132+05:30The Resistance to TheoryThis blog consists of my notes on various literary and critical texts I teach at the undergraduate and postgraduate classes. Critiques and comments are welcome...Sachin C. Ketkarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09429849773311198305noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4733372530695549738.post-22443845734883247462014-11-26T09:38:00.001+05:302014-11-26T09:38:04.073+05:30NOTES ON MICHEL FOUCAULT <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="text-align: justify;">Michel Foucault (1926–1984) is
one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.</span><span style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Plenty of information about his life and
works is available on the internet. However, this write-up provides a
simplified overview of his complex and yet extremely exciting ideas, which
might help a beginner to start reading his dense texts.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">(<a href="http://www.egs.edu/library/michel-foucault/biography/" target="_blank"> For his biography click here.</a> Two websites <a href="http://michel-foucault.info/">michel-foucault.info</a> and <a href="http://foucault.info/">foucault.info</a> are very useful. <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/" target="_blank">Stanford Encyclopedia</a> entry is also useful. <a href="http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/michel-foucaults-controversial-life-and-philosophy-explored-in-a-revealing-1993-documentary.html" target="_blank">The documentary </a>on his life is available online.)</span></div>
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Foucault who began his
research in philosophy and psychopathology was intrigued by the phenomenon of
madness in the western civilization. Though the west was familiar with the
phenomenon of madness right from the Greek times and they were represented in the
plays and other texts, the scientific and disciplinary study of the phenomenon
begins only in the nineteenth century. However, before this process of
objectification of mad people, the processes of their social exclusion and
confinement began in the seventeenth century. </div>
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This historical observation
has multiple implications:</div>
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<b>1.0</b> What is considered to be universal, constant,
essential and invariant like phenomenon of madness is actually historically variable
one. It has not remained identical over time and it varies from culture to
culture. It is actually historically discontinuous.</div>
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What was madness for the
Greeks was not what madness was for the Elizabethans (famous examples of Lady
Macbeth, Hamlet or King Lear comes to my mind) and it is no longer the same
thing in the nineteenth century. </div>
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This implication applies to
other cultural phenomenon or societal categories like ‘ literature’ ‘sexuality’
, ‘punishment’ ‘ author’ or even ‘ human body’ and ‘ man’ which are often considered invariable and essential
( ahistorical). Hence one of the gestures of Foucault is to demonstrate
that these categories are historically variable across cultures and periods.
Foucault goes on to analyze social mechanisms that brought about these shifts
in meaning and functions of these categories. </div>
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Foucault’s classic essay <a href="https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/download/attachments/74858352/FoucaultWhatIsAnAuthor.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1296272754000" target="_blank">‘What is an Author?’ </a>treats the whole category of ‘ author’ as a variable and
constructed category whose function he goes on analyze. Apart from madness, Foucault
maps these shifts and functions of other social categories like sexuality,
punishment and governmentality.</div>
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<b>1.1 </b>This implies we need a
different model for understanding history and practicing historiography. In contrast to the linear model of history
based on some idea of ‘ progress’ or ‘development’ which begins with some point
of ‘origin’ and ends with ‘ contemporary’ point, we need a model of history
which does not privilege the idea of origins , essences, identity and ‘
development’, in short a non-teleological model of history. Foucault turns to Nietzsche’s
idea of ‘genealogy’ which underscores non-identity, discontinuity and is not
based on the ideas of origin or progress. Foucault, like Nietzsche also emphasizes
the role of writing history to impact the present times, i.e. the idea of “effective
history”. See his essay,<a href="http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/CLAS/Departments/philosophy/Students/Documents/'Nietzsche,%20Genealogy,%20History'%20by%20Michel%20Foucault.pdf" target="_blank"> "Nietzsche,Genealogy, History"</a>. </div>
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Foucault’s treatment of the idea
of author, madness or sexuality is hence, ‘genealogical’.</div>
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<b>2.0 </b> The emergence of the
disciplines of knowledge like social sciences of psychiatry , linguistics,
anthropology and the reduction,
subjugation, marginalization, domination of people as ‘ the object of study’,
their ‘ othering’ (e.g colonialism) are <i>not two distinctive or divergent phenomenon </i>but
proverbially “ two sides of the same coin”. That is, both these phenomenon are
produced by <i>the same underlying social
and historical mechanisms</i>. Hence the task of a historian of ideas is to
uncover these underlying social mechanisms or the epistemological grids,
specific to the historical periods (Foucault calls such a grid ‘episteme’).
Such an operation resembles structuralism. However, Foucault terms it ‘archeology
of knowledge’. </div>
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The domain of knowledge and
the domain of exercise of power are not seen as mutually exclusive. This brings
us to the next great Nietzschean theme in Foucault’s writing of ‘Will to Truth’
being inseparable from ‘Will to Power’. Foucault
uses the term ‘discourse’ in a specialized sense to indicate a unified
mechanism of producing, circulating, consuming and controlling both knowledge
and power. In Foucauldian view, most of the social categories seen as universal,
pre-discursive and constant by the ‘common sense’ are actually products and effects
of discourses or are ‘discursive constructs’.</div>
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This means we have to
radically rethink what we mean by both knowledge and power.</div>
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<b>2.1 </b><i>We cannot see knowledge as a great ‘ascetic’ renunciation of material
power or something which is distant from political domain, nor can we see knowledge
as inherently liberating, emancipating and benevolent.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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We will also have to rethink
what we mean by modernity and the Enlightenment is. We cannot think that
modernity is something which is better than previous periods like the Middle Ages
(as many Marxists, neo-Marxists or even progressive liberals do). This
skepticism makes Foucault a ‘postmodern’ thinker who questions the very basis
of progressivism. </div>
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<b>2.2 </b>We cannot think of
power as something which is operating ‘top- down’ from the State onto people,
nor can we think about it as being merely coercive or repressive (as many Marxists,
neo-Marxists or even progressive liberals do). Power is pervasive and creative. It produces
knowledge, disciplines, institutions, even selves and people. </div>
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Foucault sees power as ‘actions
which control and regulate other actions’. These actions may be on one owns
actions or the actions of the others. One of the concerns in Foucault’s later
works is to see how people use power/knowledge to shape and manufacture <i>themselves</i> and their lives (biopolitics)
and <i>govern themselves</i> in contemporary
times.</div>
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<b>Influence and Criticism<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5PVc3bSBNzw/VHVQCJXVpNI/AAAAAAAAE_U/EHAFJlCDlo4/s1600/orientalism.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5PVc3bSBNzw/VHVQCJXVpNI/AAAAAAAAE_U/EHAFJlCDlo4/s1600/orientalism.jpg" /></a>Foucault’s influence in
contemporary culture studies and social sciences is immense. One of the most
influential and famous application of Foucault’s theorization is Edward Said’s <i>Orientalism </i>( 1978) which argues the discipline
of producing knowledge about the East ( Orientalism) cannot be seen
independently of project of colonialism and that the whole discourse of producing
knowledge about the East actually <i>produced</i>
the East as an object to be dominated and consumed. Said’s book inaugurated contemporary postcolonial
studies.</div>
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The idea that gender and
sexuality are not ‘pre-discursive’ givens or universals but are discursive
constructs whose effects and functions vary historically and socially and are
open to archeological and genealogical analysis which Foucault elaborates upon
in his classic <i>History of Sexuality </i>volumes
(1976-84) are central to contemporary
Gender and sexuality studies.</div>
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Many scholars have been
extremely critical of Foucault.</div>
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The German historian
Hans-Ulrich Wehler attacks Foucault of being historically inaccurate and having
tendency to oversimplify. Nancy Fraser claims that Foucault's work is a mixture
of "empirical insights and normative confusions". Richard Rorty points
out that Foucault's 'archaeology of knowledge' is fundamentally negative, and
thus fails to adequately establish any 'new' theory of knowledge per se. </div>
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One can look for more
information on Foucault- Habermas Debate and <a href="http://www.openculture.com/2013/03/noam_chomsky_michel_foucault_debate_human_nature_power_in_1971.html" target="_blank">Foucault-Chomsky Debate</a>.</div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
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<o:p>Check out F<a href="http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/michel_foucault_free_lectures.html" target="_blank">oucault's free lectures</a> on the Openculture website.</o:p></div>
</div>
Sachin C. Ketkarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09429849773311198305noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4733372530695549738.post-54748689711780093552012-07-29T15:26:00.001+05:302013-10-19T09:54:10.548+05:30The Dance of the Language: A Beginner's Guide to Reading Poetry<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><i>“POETRY IS TO
PROSE AS DANCING IS TO WALKING.” </i></b></div>
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Paul
Valery (Poetry and Abstract Thought, 1939 Lecture at Oxford)</div>
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The word ''Poetry '' comes from
the Greek word ''Poetica'' which is derived from the verb ''poiein'' that
means, ''to make''. Hence, ‘poetry’ is something that is ‘made’, ‘constructed’
and ‘artificial’. The poem is made from words and the ways in which a poem is
made are called ‘poetic devices’.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Valery’s quote given above implies
that prose, and discursive prose in particular, is largely about conveying
message or information and hence is ‘goal directed’. It has to reach from the
point A to B or D. It is ‘linear’ in direction. Poetry is not about giving
information or conveying some message. It is not ‘goal’ directed like prose. It
does not have a fixed location to reach. It may start from the point C and go E
and come back to A, non-linearly like a dancer. The use of language which have‘ twists’ and ‘turns’ are called ‘
tropes’ or ‘figures of speech’.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Let us discuss what is poetry
‘made of’ and how it ‘dances’. </div>
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A <b><u>s</u></b>lumber did
my <b><u>s</u></b>pirit <b><i><u>s</u></i></b><i>eal;</i></div>
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I
had no human <i>fears:</i></div>
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She
seem'd a thing that could not <i>feel</i></div>
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The
touch of earthly <i>years.</i></div>
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No
motion has she now, no <i>force;</i></div>
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She
neither hears nor <i>sees;</i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
Roll'd
round in earth's diurnal <i>course</i></div>
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With
rocks, and stones, and <i>trees.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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A poem is made up of a story. Though
‘narrative’ or a story is considered very different formally from poetry,
poetry usually contains both fiction (imaginary worlds) and narrative (story
and plot) and finding out the story the poem tells is important for understanding
of the poem. Very often the speaker is one of the characters in the story which
a poem tells. The speaker of the lines of the poem is commonly mistaken for the
poet as the real person. In fact, the speaker in the poem can very often be a
‘mask’, a fictional character, or a voice. Hence it is a very good idea of not
using, ‘the poet says.. .’ approach while discussing poetry or literature.</div>
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In the Wordsworth poem, the story
is about a lover who believes he was ‘asleep’ when he thought his beloved was
not mortal and hence ‘earthly’, but wakes up to find her dead and one with
nature. The story of this spiritual awakening and the shock and the grief of
this awakening is crucial for comprehension of the poem.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Prose is divided into paragraphs,
a poem is divided into <b>stanzas</b>.
The poem just mentioned is divided into two stanzas. Most of traditional poetry
is written in ‘metre’ and ‘rhymes’. ‘Fears’, ‘Years’, ‘Sees’ and ‘Trees’ are
called <b>‘rhymes’</b>. The
arrangement of rhymes is called the <b>rhyme</b> <b>scheme</b><b>.</b>In this
poem it is ‘abab cdcd’ , where ‘a’ indicates the first rhyme, ‘b’ indicates the
second rhyme and so on.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The lines of the poem is ‘made
of’ roughly fixed number of <b>syllables </b>or the part of a word that is spoken distinctly. The line ‘A-slum-
ber-did my-spi- rit-seal’ has eight syllables out of which four are ‘stressed’ or pronunced with emphasis: ‘slum’, ‘did’, ‘spi’, and ‘seal’ which are
arranged alternatively. Rest of them are ‘unstressed’.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
(A-<i>slum</i>) (ber-<i>did</i>) (my-<i>spi</i>) (rit-seal) (She-<i>seemed</i>)
(a-<i>thing</i>) (that-<i>could</i>) (not-<i>feel</i>)</div>
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<br /></div>
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A more or less <i>fixed pattern</i>
of stressed and unstressed syllables is called <b>‘metre</b><b>’</b>. Here the lines are divided into four
or five units of two syllables.
These units are called ‘ feet’.The
main foot here is ‘ unstressed- stressed’ foot or ‘Iambic’.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The use of rhyme and meter is
often used to <i>create music and the
mood</i> of the poem. It is a convention
and a device that poets
often use. The study of poetic meters is called ‘prosody’. The use of rhyme and meter is one of many ways by which the language of poetry
differs from the language of prose. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The poem is an <b>‘elegy’</b> or a literary form that
conventionally mourns or laments the death of someone close to the speaker.
There are many sub-forms or sub-genres of poetry like the epic, the sonnet, the
ballad, the dramatic monologue and so on.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The ways in which poetry ‘dances’
or the ways in which <i>the language of
poetry differs from ordinary language</i> involve complex and extensive use of <i>figurative
language or figures of speech</i>. A figure
of speech is a rhetorical device that achieves <i>a special effect </i>by
using words in distinctive ways. Lets look at only some important figures
of speech.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->1.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--><b>Alliteration.</b> In the first line of the poem, the sound
‘ s’ ( slumber, spirit, seal) is repeated and this repetition of a consonant
sound is a figure of speech called ‘ alliteration’ . ‘ R’ sound in the line
‘Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course’ another example of alliteration.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->2.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;"> <b>
</b></span><!--[endif]--><b>Metaphor and Simile</b>. The comparison between two
different contexts and things without the use of comparing words like ‘like’ or
‘as’ is called ‘metaphor’. The
comparison which uses these words is called ‘simile’. In the first line, there is a comparison
between the speaker’s ignorance of his beloved’s mortal nature and ‘ sleep’ or
‘slumber’ which ‘sealed’ the speaker’s ‘spirit’. ‘The touch of earthly years’
is another metaphor in the poem. ‘Simile’ on the other hand, compares two
different thing using the comparing words like ‘ as’ or ‘like’. Compare and
contrast the impact of ‘ he was a lion in the batlefield’ with ‘ he was like a
lion in the battlefield.’ <b>Personification</b> is a common kind of metaphor where the inanimate things or abstract ideas are treated as if they are animate or as if they are human.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->3.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--><b>Image and Imagery. </b> An image is a
verbal representation of a sensory experience or of an object that can
be known by one or more of the senses like sight, smell, touch and tastes. Imagery is
vivid descriptive language that appeals to one or more of the
senses. The description of the speaker’s
dead beloved as being ,’ “Roll'd round in earth's diurnal
course With rocks, and stones, and trees” is an example of
imagery. The visual picture in our mind
of earth revolving around the sun, and consequently the body and soul of the
speaker’s beloved revolving along with
rocks, stones and trees suggests her as becoming one with Nature after her death.
</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->4.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;"> <b>
</b></span><!--[endif]--><b>Irony.</b> The speaker’s description of his beloved as having ‘no motion or force’ and she is ‘revolving
with the earth around the sun’ actually <i>implies</i>
she is dead and the speaker cannot be one with her . This is also because the
speaker, unlike his beloved, was always alienated from nature. This <i>mismatch between what is said and what is
meant</i> is an example of irony. The speaker’s opinion that it was because of
‘the slumber’ which ‘sealed’ his spirit that he felt that his beloved was ‘
untouched’ by earthly things like mortality is ironic, because it is not really
the slumber but his desire that his beloved should not be touched by death as
he loves her deeply, that has made him blind to the fact.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->5.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--><b>Symbol. </b> A symbol
is an image which suggests or represents something other than itself. In
poetry, a symbol represents both what it is, and additionally, a concept or an
idea. The symbol of a white dove suggests "peace" and a cow in Indian
culture symbolizes maternity, fertility, auspiciousness and divinity. ‘Slumber’,
for instance, stands for the lack of knowing on the part of the speaker. </div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-align: center;">
Now
let’s look at another poem.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span lang="EN-IN">‘Eating Poetry</span></b><span lang="EN-IN"> by Mark
Strand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
Ink runs from
the corners of my mouth. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
There is no
happiness like mine. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
I have been
eating poetry. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
The librarian
does not believe what she sees. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
Her eyes are sad
</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
and she walks
with her hands in her dress. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
The poems are
gone. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
The light is
dim. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
The dogs are on
the basement stairs and coming up. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
Their eyeballs
roll, </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
their blond legs
burn like brush. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
The poor
librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
She does not
understand. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
When I get on my
knees and lick her hand, </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
she screams. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
I am a new man. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
I snarl at her
and bark. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
I romp with joy
in the bookish dark.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="text-align: justify;">
(1979)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The experience of reading and
relishing poetry transforms the reader into something almost nonhuman like the
dog into which the speaker is transformed by the end of the poem. The irony of the poem emerges when the
speaker says, ‘ I am a new man’ when actually he on his knees, licking the
librarian’s knees, snarls and barks at the librarian. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The contrast between the human
being and the dog is symbolic one. Contrary to the humanist belief about
literature as humanizing, the poet seems to indicate that its sorcerous power
turns humans being into primitive non-human being. This ‘anti or non-humanist’
perception of art is characteristic of the postmodern literature.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="text-align: center;">
<b>How To Appreciate Poetry: Some Tips<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Though there is no one fixed way
of reading poetry, here are some tips for analysis , comprehension and
appreciation of poetry. The best way to do it is by asking questions as we go
along reading the poem. Better we get at asking questions about the poem, the
better we get at reading , analyzing and enjoying poetry. The skills of asking
questions to poetry come with a lot of practice and interest. Keep jotting down
the questions and thoughts that come to your mind as you go along.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->1)<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Why is this title given to the poem? The Title of the
poem often indicates the theme or the subject of the poem, e. g. ‘Eating
Poetry’. Often the first line of the
poem is the title as in ‘A Slumber did my Spirit Seal’. Very often titles are
meant to arouse our curiosity rather than lead to the theme or the subject of
the poem.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->2)<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Try to guess ‘the character’ of the speaker by reading
for information about him or her. The speaker
in the first poem is the lover who has lost his beloved and the speaker
in the second poem is the reader who relishes poetry. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->3)<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Read the poem carefully to find out the ‘story’ or ‘the
plot’ of the poem by trying to guess ‘what happens’ to the speaker or some
other characters.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->4)<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--> Ask yourself
‘what’ the speaker is saying and ‘how’ is he or she saying it.The speaker in
the first poem is awakened by the grief due to the death of his beloved. The
characters of both the speaker and his beloved are transformed. The lover
realizes the mortality of his beloved and the beloved is transformed from a
living human being into a spirit that is one with nature after death. The
speaker in the second poem is transformed into a dog to the librarian’s horror.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-IN">5)<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->Ask
yourself questions: is it divided into stanzas? Does it have rhymes ? If so
what is its rhyme scheme? Does the poem have a fixed metrical patterning ? The
first poem is written in iambic meter and has a fixed rhyme scheme. The second
poem is written in <b>‘free verse’</b> and
has no fixed metrical patterns. <span lang="EN-IN"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-IN">6)<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--> Ask yourself what is the ‘mood’ of the poem.
The mood of the first poem is sad, serene and philosophical. The mood of the
second poem is absurd, comical, dark and even sinister. Usually the poems use
words for creating emotional impact instead of communicating any information or
message. Ask yourself how effective the
poet has been in creating this impact upon you.<span lang="EN-IN"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->7)<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--> How does the
poet use the figures of speech and other devices in the poem? Look at the
images, metaphors and symbols in the poem. How well does the poet use ‘irony’.
Much of the impact of the poem on the reader depends on the freshness and
preciseness of the images, metaphors and symbols. Ask
yourself if the poet’s use of the figurative language is effective and
interesting. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->8)<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--> Very often
tracing the abstract nouns can lead the reader to the theme or the subject of
poetry. The use of abstract nouns like ‘spirit’, ‘earthly’ or ‘force’ in the
Wordsworth poem and the abstract nouns like ‘ happiness’ , ‘ poetry’ and ‘ new
man’ in the Strand poem indicate the theme of the poem. Consider the fact that
both the poets use these words ironically, though in a different way. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b>SOME USEFUL BOOKS FOR APPRECIATING POETRY<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-IN">1.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-IN">Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn
Warren, <i>Understanding poetry</i>, Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1976<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-IN">2.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-IN">Edward Hirsch, <i>How to read a poem: and fall in love with poetry</i>, Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, 2000<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-IN">3.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-IN">Harold Bloom, <i>The Art of Reading Poetry</i>, Perennial, 2005<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-IN">4.<span style="font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-IN">Terry Eagleton, <i>How to Read a Poem</i>, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Sachin C. Ketkarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09429849773311198305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4733372530695549738.post-61914772301520890932012-06-18T22:12:00.000+05:302012-06-25T13:57:47.095+05:30DECONSTRUCTION FOR BEGINNERS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">DECONSTRUCTION FOR BEGINNERS</span></b><b style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Sachin
Ketkar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-07kcpJqRZcE/T99Z7S7_eXI/AAAAAAAAENo/d_GtYczoww8/s1600/Jacques_Derrida.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="222" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-07kcpJqRZcE/T99Z7S7_eXI/AAAAAAAAENo/d_GtYczoww8/s320/Jacques_Derrida.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">The
Problem of Defining Deconstruction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">“What deconstruction is not? Everything
of course! What is deconstruction? Nothing of course!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Jacques Derrida, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">"Letter to a Japanese Friend"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Jacques Derrida<span class="apple-converted-space"> (1930-2004) whose name is associated with the
term ‘deconstruction’ is one of the most renowned and prolific philosophers of
the twentieth century. His writings are characteristically postmodern in the
sense they seek to go beyond modernity. </span><em><span style="font-style: normal;">Derrida has written prolifically on various
themes like translation, ethics, aesthetics, responsibility, death and
mourning, politics of friendship, cosmopolitanism, Marxism, globalization,
technology and terrorism. His dense and complex writings have</span></em> had
an enormous influence in psychology, literary theory, cultural studies,
linguistics, feminism, sociology and anthropology.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Though
the term has become very popular in literary criticism and theory, its precise
meaning is extremely problematic. In fact, Derrida himself in the famous </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">"Letter
to a Japanese Friend" (1983) pointed out that the term was a product of
his wish,” to translate and adapt to my own ends the Heidggerian word
Destruktion or Abbau. Each signified in this context an operation bearing on
the structure or traditional architecture of the fundamental concepts of
ontology or of Western metaphysics”. This operation on the traditional
structures of western thought was not a negative one connoting destruction but,
“rather than destroying, it was also necessary to understand how an
"ensemble" was constituted and to reconstruct it to this end.” Derrida
also reminds his Japanese friend that deconstruction is “neither an analysis
nor a critique” and is not, “a method and cannot be transformed into one.” For
Derrida, deconstruction is not something that you do, rather “Deconstruction
takes place, it is an event that does not await the deliberation,
consciousness, or organization of a subject, or even of modernity. It
deconstructs itself.” J. Hillis Miller in
“Stevens' Rock and Criticism as Cure" (1976) notes, "Deconstruction
is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it
has already dismantled itself. Its apparently solid ground is no rock but thin
air."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">This
leads Derrida to question,” Can deconstruction become a methodology for reading
and for interpretation? Can it thus be allowed to be reappropriated and
domesticated by academic institutions?” In spite of Derrida’s disclaimers and
caveats, there have been innumerable attempts to explain, simplify, define or
‘package’ deconstruction for the academic malls, a tendency that Derrida
protested and criticized throughout his life. The present article does not try
to simplify or package Derrida’s philosophy, but offers some starting points
into more serious and rigorous examination of his works.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Background
to Deconstruction<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Derrida
and Heidegger:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> One of the essential places to start while approaching
Derrida’s texts is in the works of very controversial and yet one of the most
influential German philosophers Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). In <i>Being and Time</i>, Heidegger argued that
the western thought has neglected or repressed the question of Being of beings
(or entities) by failing to make the ontological difference between ‘ beings’
and Being. The metaphysical tradition of the western thought has always been
concerned about ‘beings as beings’ (i.e. treating entities as entities, rather
than their mode of existence) which has resulted in a deep crisis in the
western civilization. Heidegger demands the destruction (<i>Destruktion</i>) of the Western philosophical tradition, which is not
its destruction but total transformation. In his later works, Heidegger talks
about the importance of the question of language in philosophy and points out
that it is ‘language that speaks, not Man’ and that language is ‘the house of
Being’. Heidegger’s own language is extremely dense and often very strange as
if Heidegger is not just offering a critique of the language of western
philosophy but reinventing it. Derrida continues – and critiques- the Heideggerian
themes of radical rethinking of the very foundations of western thought by
dismantling the metaphysical tradition and raising the key question of language and
reinvention of the language of western philosophy. <em><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-style: normal;">While Heidegger
argued that the neglect and repression of the question of Being of beings is a
blind spot of the entire western thinking and dwelling in this question one can
deconstruct the entire western tradition of philosophy, Derrida in the first
book </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a;">Of Grammatology</span></em><em><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-style: normal;"> (1968) argues that neglect and the repression of the question of
writing in its conception of language as speech is another such blind-spot in
the western thought and the rigorous pursuit of this question can similarly
‘deconstruct’ the tradition of western thinking.</span></em><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><em><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-style: normal;"><br /></span></em></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Derrida
and Saussure:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Another
important place to approach Derrida’s works is Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1857-1913)
<i>Course in General Linguistics.</i>
Saussure made an influential distinction between the signifier (the sound image
of a word) and signified ( or the concept or meaning) and that the relationship
between them is arbitrary, that is, there is no inner relationship, say between the word ‘ sister’ and the person
it signifies. The relation between the signifier and the signified is merely
conventional and that convention can be considered as a ‘code’, which combines
the signifier and the signified to make, the linguistic sign. It also implies
that the signifier does not naturally lead to the entities in the world <i>beyond</i> the linguistic system but stays <i>within</i> it by pointing to other signifier.
Derrida notes that the signifier does lead to some universal and stable entity
or fixed and universal meaning (transcendental signified) but only to another
signifier- just as what we consider as what we consider as ‘meaning’ in the
dictionary are actually other words which have meanings of their own. As Derrida
demonstrates the arbitrariness of the sign results in indefinite ‘deferral’ or
postponement or the delay of reaching this ‘ultimate and absolute’ meaning
beyond language. It is in this context one has to see his famous statements
which appears in an essay on Rousseau in his book Of Grammatology (1967) that
"there is nothing outside the text" (il n'y a pas de hors-texte).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> Another important point that Saussure makes is
that ‘in language there are only differences without positive terms”, that is,
we can recognize and understand one linguistic item – say the phoneme ‘p- only
by contrasting it with everything that is ‘not-p’. Saussure goes on to say,
“The entire mechanism of language, with which we shall be concerned later, is
based on oppositions of this kind (e.g. between the word ‘father’ and ‘mother’)
and on the phonic and conceptual differences that they imply.” Derrida shows
that the same applies to the language of philosophy and the entire mechanism of
this language is based on binary oppositions like ‘light’ vs. ‘dark’, ‘ male’ vs. ‘female’, ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’,
‘speech’ vs. ‘writing’ ,‘nature’ vs. culture’ and so on. However, Derrida
points out that these oppositions are not equal but hierarchic where the second
term is considered either derivative or inferior to the first, the privileged
one. What allows this inequality and hierarchy, according to Derrida is the
tendency in the western thought to privilege ‘presence’ over ‘absence’, which
Heidegger had termed as ‘metaphysics of presence’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Difference:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Derrida
combines two characteristics of the language mentioned above: the arbitrariness
or the tendency to defer the ultimate and final meaning, and the systemic
differentiality of language and coins a new term ‘<em><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a;">différance’ – </span></em><em><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-style: normal;">the tendency or
the force of language to defer and differ</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a;"> </span></em><em><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-style: normal;">that is intrinsic to language. The
new term is a pun, and is possible in French as the word différer can mean
either to differ or to defer, depending on context.<o:p></o:p></span></em></span></div>
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<em><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 150%;"> In his rigorous readings of classical western
philosophical texts, Derrida overturns the binaries like ‘ nature’ and ‘
culture’ or ‘ speech’ and ‘writing’ to show that the whole idea that the first
term is basic or central and the second term is derived or marginal -is
actually illusionary and ‘metaphysical’. He demonstrates how the second term </span></em><em><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">can
also</span></em><em><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 150%;"> be considered
‘basic’ and ‘central’ to a philosophical system, and the philosophical text can
be read to mean exactly the opposite of what it starts out to state. This
results in ‘undecidability’ or ‘aporia’ regarding which reading or
interpretation is the ‘true’ or ‘right’ one.
He does this to demonstrate that any act of communication or
significance is a function ‘differance’ rather than some stable entity outside
of language.<o:p></o:p></span></em></div>
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<em><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 150%;">The tendency in the western
philosophy to repress or neglect writing- or as Derrida calls it
‘phonocentricism’ is a manifestation of ‘logocentricism’ of the western
metaphysics- the tendency to privilege presence over absence, which is undone
due to the force of ‘difference’ within the mechanism of language.
Interestingly, what differentiates ‘différance’ and ‘difference’ is inaudible,
and this means that distinguishing between them actually requires that they be
written.<o:p></o:p></span></em></div>
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<em><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 150%;">Derrida’s assertion that
‘deconstruction’ is not something that you do, but something which ‘happens’ to
texts implies that it is the force of ‘differance’ which is the part of the
system of thought that brings about the production and signification of
binaries and their subversion and the resultant aporia, rather than a person,
school or a historical period causing it. <o:p></o:p></span></em></div>
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<em><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 150%;">Structure , Sign, and Play<o:p></o:p></span></em></div>
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<em><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 150%;">In his famous essay, ‘Structure,
Sign and Play in the Discourses in Human Sciences’ which was read at the John
Hopkins International Colloquium on “The Language of Criticism and the Sciences
of Man” in October 1966, Derrida demonstrates how structuralism as represented
by the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss which sets out as a criticism or
rejection of science and metaphysics can be read as embodying precisely those
aspects of science and metaphysics which it seeks to challenge. The essay
concludes by saying, “There are thus two interpretations of interpretation, of
structure, of sign, of free play. The one seeks to decipher, dreams of
deciphering, a truth or an origin which is free from free play and from the
order of the sign, and lives like an exile the necessity of interpretation. The
other, which is no longer turned toward the origin, affirms free play and tries
to pass beyond man and humanism.” Thus, we have two diametrically opposite
interpretations of structuralism, and we are unable to decide which the ‘right’
one is. This ‘aporia’ between two interpretations is due to the force of
‘difference’ intrinsic to the structure of language. The force of ‘differance’
makes language characteristically ‘centrifugal’, that is moving away from the
center by ‘scattering’ of the philosophical system or by its ‘dissemination’
into multiple and conflicting interpretations. Characteristically, Derrida in
this essay notes that ‘language bears within itself, the necessity of its own
critique’. The essay is considered as
inauguration of ‘poststructuralism’ (going beyond structuralism) as a
theoretical movement. <o:p></o:p></span></em><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<em><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 150%;"><a href="http://resistancetotheory.blogspot.in/2010/04/before-law-jacques-derrida-and-kafka.html" target="_blank">(For Derrida's essay ' Before the Law' Click Here)</a></span></em></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">The
Yale School of Deconstruction:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Though
Derrida wrote occasionally on literature, his primary focus was on the
classical texts of Western philosophical tradition starting from Plato onwards.
Most of his important statements on literature are collected in the book <i>Acts of Literature</i>. However, ‘deconstruction’ became popular in
literary criticism largely due to the literary theorists and scholars
associated with the Yale School like Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, J. Hillis
Miller, and Harold Bloom <a href="http://resistancetotheory.blogspot.in/2011/05/life-cycle-of-poet-in-poet-harold-bloom.html" target="_blank">( For my entry on Harold Bloom click here)</a> . One of the most important practitioners Paul de Man (1919–83)
in ‘The Resistance to Theory’ <a href="http://resistancetotheory.blogspot.in/2009/12/resistance-to-theory.html" target="_blank">( For my entry on ' Resistance to Theory' click here)</a> says that the rhetorical and figurative dimension
of language makes it an unreliable medium for communication of truths. Literary
language being predominantly rhetorical and figurative, to take for granted
that literature is a reliable source of information about anything but itself
would be a great mistake.</span> <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">This gives rise to a particular
crisis in literary studies because "literariness" is no longer seen
as an aesthetic quality nor is it seen as a mimetic mode. As we consider language
as an intuitive and transparent medium, as opposed to the material and conventional
medium that it is, aesthetic effect, according to de Man, takes place because
we tend to mistake the materiality of the signifier with the materiality of the
signified. Mimesis, like aesthetic quality, is also an effect of the rhetorical
and figurative aspects of language. The assumption of ideological and
historical contexts or backgrounds to literary texts becomes problematic if
language is no longer seen as a transparent and intuitive guide from the
textual material to the historical situation. Consequently, the theorists who
uphold an aesthetic approach to literary studies and those who uphold an
historical approach both find deconstructive approach inconvenient and
challenging. De Man practiced his own
variety of deconstruction in his philosophically oriented literary criticism of
Romanticism, especially the writings of William Wordsworth, John Keats,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, William
Butler Yeats, Friedrich Holderlin and Rainer Maria Rilke. In <i>Blindness and Insight, </i>de Man sought to
deconstruct the privileging of symbol over allegory and metaphor over metonymy
in Romantic thought. In Romantic philosophy, metaphor implied self-identity and
wholeness, decomposition of self-identity implied inability of overcoming the
dualism between subject and object, which Romantic metaphor sought to
transcend. To compensate for this inability, de Man argued that the Romanticism
constantly relies on allegory to attain the wholeness established by the
totality of the symbol. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Legacy
of Deconstruction:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">As
against the Yale School’s obsession with figurative language and the close
reading of the texts, many New Historicist, Cultural Materialists, feminists,
and postcolonial theorists have used deconstruction as a political weapon to
expose the political, historical and the ideological biases built into the
text. While feminists and gender theorists find deconstruction useful in
subverting the gender binaries in literary texts, the postcolonial theorists
find it a powerful tool to undermine and explode the colonizer’s master
narratives from within. Cultural materialists have found Derrida’s emphasis on
the materiality of language and its social and institutional context very
useful to critique the idealistic modes of reading literature. New Historicists
like Louis Montrose have used Derrida to formulate a new way of reading
relationship between literature and history by focusing on ‘reciprocal concern
about historicity of texts and textuality of history’. Thus, deconstruction remains one of the most
influential theories in literary studies till today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">An
Attempt to Summarize:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Though
the term’ deconstruction’ has become very popular in literary criticism and
theory, its precise meaning is extremely problematic. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">It has had an enormous influence in psychology,
literary theory, cultural studies, linguistics, feminism, sociology and
anthropology.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">It
has influenced a wide range of theoretical approaches to literary studies like
feminism and gender studies, cultural materialism, new historicism,
postcolonial studies, Marxism, psychoanalysis and so on. <span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a;"> </span></span>It involves the close reading of
texts in order to demonstrate that any given text has irreconcilably
contradictory meanings, rather than being a unified, logical whole. <span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-color: white; color: #23262a;">Though
it is often misunderstood as negative activity of destruction,</span></span> it
is in many ways continuation of Heideggerian project of dismantling and
transforming the entire tradition and architecture of western thought by
building upon the insights from contemporary linguistics regarding the
mechanism of language and meaning production.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> BIBLIOGRAPHY AND FURTHER READING<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Derrida,
Jacques, Letter to a Japanese Friend<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/simulate/derrida_deconstruction.html">http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/simulate/derrida_deconstruction.html</a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Derrida Online <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/derrida/">http://www.iep.utm.edu/derrida/</a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Ferdinand
de Saussure Course in General Linguistics </span><a href="http://faculty.smu.edu/dfoster/cf3324/Saussure.htm"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">http://faculty.smu.edu/dfoster/cf3324/Saussure.htm</span></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;">Lawlor, Leonard, "Jacques Derrida", The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
URL = <http: archives="" derrida="" entries="" fall2011="" plato.stanford.edu="">.<o:p></o:p></http:></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;">Wheeler, Michael, "Martin Heidegger",<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition)</em>, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http: archives="" entries="" heidegger="" plato.stanford.edu="" win2011="">.<o:p></o:p></http:></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Wikipedia Entries on Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida</div>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_de_Man">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_de_Man</a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida</a><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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FURTHER READING</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Culler, Jonathan (1975)
Structuralist Poetics.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Culler, Jonathan (1983) On
Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Norris, Christopher (1982)
Deconstruction: Theory and Practice.</div>
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</div>Sachin C. Ketkarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09429849773311198305noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4733372530695549738.post-91680417402293690692011-05-09T09:08:00.001+05:302011-05-09T09:08:55.036+05:30Life-Cycle of the Poet-in-the Poet: Harold Bloom and the Writer’s Struggle for Existence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">In an age which treats literature as a pretext for studying other things like ideology, culture and society, Harold Bloom (b.1930), one of the most ‘original’ and fascinating literary theorists of the later half of the twentieth century, provocatively places literature at the centre of his theorizing. In many ways he reminds us of Northrop Frye’s dictum that literature alone is the primary context for literature. However, unlike Frye or Eliot, Bloom often collapses, in Wildean manner, the distinction between ‘critical writing’ and ‘creative writing’.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ohFb3uli_Ao/Tcdg68F4DKI/AAAAAAAACLc/wlN8brcU7CY/s1600/bloom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="195" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ohFb3uli_Ao/Tcdg68F4DKI/AAAAAAAACLc/wlN8brcU7CY/s200/bloom.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Bloom revives the Eliotian theme of the relationship between ‘tradition’ and ‘individual talent’ in a dramatic manner, this time, using Nietzsche, Freud, Vico, Emerson and Oscar Wilde. He aims to ‘de-idealize’ this relationship on the one hand ( “more than ever, contemporary poets insist that they are telling the truth in their work, and more than ever they tell continuous lies, particularly about their relations to one another, and most consistently about their relations to their precursors” )and propose an approach to practical criticism on the other. In Bloom’s theory, tradition is not a benign and empowering presence but something of a threat and a challenge to new writers in the west. For Bloom, one of the functions of criticism is to make a good poet’s work even more difficult for him to perform…… as all that a critic, as a critic, can give poets is the deadly encouragement that never ceases to remind them of how heavy their inheritance is.” A exceptionally prolific writer, some of his most significant books are <i>The Anxiety of Influence </i>(1973), <i>A Map of Misreading</i> (1976), <i>Kabbalah and Criticism</i> (1975), T<i>he Western Canon: The Books and Schools of the Ages</i> (1994), <i>How to Read and Why</i> (2001), <i>How to Read Poetry</i> (2005) and more recently <i>The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life</i> (2011).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">In ‘Poetic Origins and Final Phases’ which is the first chapter of <i>A Map of Misreading</i> (1975), Bloom points out that the relationship between the poets ,or, in his words ‘the poets-in-the-poets’, is that of rivalry and hostility, as they all are trying to achieve ‘immortality’ by securing a place in the canon. Bloom says, ‘poetic strength comes only from a triumphant wrestling with the dead, and from even more triumphant solipsism.’ <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">What makes this rivalry very bitter is the fact that the new poet (‘ephebe’) starts writing poetry by reading his favorite poets only to discover that his poetry is not really his own original work but only a ‘response’ to the works of earlier masters. Thus he suffers from the ‘anxiety of influence’. His love for poetry of the masters which ‘inspired’ him to write in the first place becomes an obstruction in achieving his own place in the canon. The new writer suffers from the ‘burden of belatedness’. His love turns into hatred. The struggle (‘agon’) of the ‘ephebe’, and the precursor poet according to Bloom, is analogous to the Freudian notion of oedipal conflict. “Initial love for the precursors’ poetry is transformed rapidly enough into revisionary strife, without which individuation is not possible”, Bloom notes. The birth of the poet-in-the-poet or the process by which a poet is reborn as a poet is what Bloom terms as ‘poetic incarnation’. The poetic incarnation, in Bloom’s view, results from poetic influence. Bloom sees influence as ‘the giving that famishes the taker’. This influence is ‘catastrophic’ and dualistic as it starts out as love and ends up as conflict. Bloom note that this influence has almost nothing to do with verbal resemblance between two poets or even stylistic resemblance. In strong poets, it works in the depths, “as all love antithetically works”.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The link, the antithetical dependency, between the precursors work and ephebe’s own is that of ‘misprision’. If he is a weak poet, then either he sacrifices his talent or he sacrifices his originality, but if he is a ‘strong poet’ he struggles against the overwhelming influence of the precursor poet in order to give birth to his own voice. The ‘ephebe’ ‘misreads’ his master to produce his own works. The ‘ephebe’ deploys six ‘revisionary ratios’ or strategies to misread the precursor’s poetry. Taking a shot at Wordsworthian notion of poetry, Bloom points out ‘A poet is not so much a man speaking to men as a man rebelling against being spoken to by a dead man (the precursor) outrageously more alive than himself.’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yJWBRZXDo9k/TcdhI6r44uI/AAAAAAAACLg/etUVRTMQYJI/s1600/bloom1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="226" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yJWBRZXDo9k/TcdhI6r44uI/AAAAAAAACLg/etUVRTMQYJI/s320/bloom1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">In ‘Poetic Origins and Final Phases’, Bloom allegorically and metaphorically notes that the poets are born by the side of ocean- the ocean of already written poems which is the feast that ‘famishes the taker’. Then, they move onwards to ‘the land by a drying up of the oceanic sense’. True poets are born because of ‘desiccation combined with unusually strong oceanic sense’ and poetry like sexual love, is regressive – a drive back to ocean. In contrast to the mass of smaller and weaker poets, the strong poet has in his first voice, ‘what is most central in the precursors’ voices. Bloom notes that towards the end of their careers as poets, the strongest poets become obsessed with origins and return to the origins in the end. To make his point, Bloom analyzes the tropes of ocean and desiccation in the strong poets like Shelley, Wordsworth, Swinburne, Beddoes, Auden, Hardy and Wallace Stevens and demonstrates how older Hardy and Stevens returned to Shelleyian vision, their ‘poetic origin’ towards the end of their lives, and hence are the strongest English poets of the twentieth century.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Bloom simplifies his argument by saying, ‘poems…are neither about ‘subjects’ nor about ‘themselves’. They are necessarily about other poems; a poem is a response to a poem, as a poet is response to a poet, or a person to his parent. Trying to write a poem takes the poet back to the origins of what a poem <i>first was for him</i>, and so takes the poet back beyond the pleasure principle to the decisive initial encounter and response that began him….<i>Only a poet challenges a poet as a poet, and so only a poet makes a poet</i>. To the poet –in-the-poet, a poem is always <i>the other man</i>, the precursor, and so a poem is always a person, always the person of one’s Second Birth. To live, the poet must <i>misinterpret</i> the father, by the crucial act of misprision, which is re-writing of the father. But who is the poetic father? The voice of the other, of the <i>daimon</i>, is always speaking in one; the voice that cannot die because already it has survived death-<i>the dead poet lives in one</i>. In the last phase of strong poets, they attempt to join the undying <i>by living in the dead poets</i> who are already alive in them. This late Return of the Dead recalls us, as readers, to a recognition of the original motive for the catastrophe of poetic incarnation…….Literary, poems are refusals of mortality. Even poem therefore has two makers: the precursor and the ephebe’s rejected mortality.’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K4-VjK-gA5g/Tcdhc3V7sDI/AAAAAAAACLk/NWN6N4i0oRg/s1600/bloom2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K4-VjK-gA5g/Tcdhc3V7sDI/AAAAAAAACLk/NWN6N4i0oRg/s320/bloom2.jpg" width="247" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p><br />
</o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p><br />
</o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">References:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">Harold Bloom, ‘Poetic Origins and Final Phases’, in David Lodge and Nigel Wood ed. Modern Criticism and Theory’, 2005 (fourth reprint)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">David Lodge and Nigel Wood ed. Modern Criticism and Theory, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Delhi</st1:city></st1:place>: Pearson Education, 2005, 235-247<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">More on Bloom </span><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/index.html">http</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/index.html">://</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/index.html">prelectur</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/index.html">.</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/index.html">stanford</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/index.html">.</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/index.html">edu</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/index.html">/</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/index.html">lecturers</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/index.html">/</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/index.html">bloom</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/index.html">/</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/index.html">index</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/index.html">.</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/index.html">html</a><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">For more on ‘revisionary ratios’ click here</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">http</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">://</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">prelectur</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">.</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">stanford</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">.</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">edu</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">/</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">lecturers</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">/</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">bloom</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">/</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">excerpts</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">/</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">anxiety</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">.</a><a href="http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html">html</a>) </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><br />
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</div></div>Sachin C. Ketkarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09429849773311198305noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4733372530695549738.post-40202799113553050132010-08-09T13:58:00.003+05:302010-08-09T13:58:47.871+05:30Meet My Talkative Unconscious: Notes on Lacan’s ‘Mirror Stage’<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">One of the most influential French cultural theorists of the twentieth century, Jacques Lacan (1901-1980) is responsible for revival of interest in Freud, notably among the feminists who saw Freud as a typical MCP- Male Chauvinist Psychologist. While most of Jacques Lacan’s writing is willfully obscure and irritatingly playful, one can approximately discern the general thrust of his theory.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TF-4U8hpMBI/AAAAAAAACHQ/zk1tN-wdY9A/s1600/JacquesLacan003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="248" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TF-4U8hpMBI/AAAAAAAACHQ/zk1tN-wdY9A/s320/JacquesLacan003.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Lacan’s emphasis is on the anti-humanistic implication of decentered and split human self in Freud’s psychoanalysis. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Freud’s theory replaced the idea of coherent and autonomous human self (which is a humanist idea) with the idea of human ego existing on the fringe of the all powerful Unconscious- the huge area of human self existing outside of human awareness. In Freud’s view, the car of human life is driven from the back seat of Unconscious. Freudian theory, in Lacanian interpretation, is chiefly about decentering or marginality of human self in relation to itself. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">This notion of decentering ties up with the similar ideas in Heideggerian existentialism. Heidegger’s remark ‘it is language that speaks, not man’ sums up this position of the decentered human self in relation to language. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TF-7pTeb45I/AAAAAAAACHo/MqxMzjkn7JY/s1600/jacques+lacan.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="131" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TF-7pTeb45I/AAAAAAAACHo/MqxMzjkn7JY/s200/jacques+lacan.gif" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Lacan draws attention to the fact that we tend to misconstrue (méconnaissance) ‘I’ of our linguistic utterance (enunciation) - as in “I am going home” (which is grammatically in subject position of enunciation) for the self of the speaker (‘enounce’). This gap between the speaker’s self and the linguistic ‘I’ is due to this decentering of human self in relation to language. Just like the structure of language displaces man by being the real producer of meaning instead of human soul, the unconscious displaces the humanist idea of autonomous coherent self which knows –’the cogito’. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Lacan also notes that as any use of language assumes the presence of the audience, the ‘self’ and ‘the other’ split is built into language. That is, we always assume the presence of someone when we use the language. This someone may be oneself as when we talk to ourselves or when we write things like diaries for one. This means the use of language (as in thinking) results in the split between the self (the addresser) and the other (addressee) who might be the same person.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">It is this conception of decentering and splitting of human self which is expressed by Lacan’s widely quoted dictum, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">‘ The Unconscious is structured like language’.</b> It implies that the laws governing the unconscious and the laws governing human language are analogous and that unconscious functions in much the same way as language does.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Lacan draws upon the works of Saussure and Roman Jakobson on the mechanism of language to demonstrate that the mechanism of unconscious also functions on similar lines. For instance, the dream work described by Freud as comprising of mechanisms of displacement, condensation and symbolism is in Lacan’s view, actually ‘language work’. Drawing upon Roman Jakobson’s work on aphasia and poetics, Lacan notes that the mechanisms of dream work like the processes of condensesation, displacement and symbolism are actually analogous to ‘tropes’ of language like metaphor and metonymy. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">In Lacan’s view, the splitting of human self and the decentering occurs when human beings acquire the symbolic cultural system represented by language. This system as noted by Saussure is the system of differences based on binarisms like the self and the other, man and woman. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With language acquisition, the human beings position themselves within this system of differences and assume identity and the sense of self and the other.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">What is lost in the process of differentiation is the sense of oneness and union with our mothers and we try to regain it in our lives. This is possible only at the level of imagination or the Imaginary where the distinctions and differences are believed to be non-existent. Hence human beings operate on two levels in their lives: the Imaginary and the Symbolic. These levels can only be accessed through human language and hence are seen as ‘registers’ in psychoanalytical theory.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TF-5JHEwNaI/AAAAAAAACHY/vU2DCdHzNHY/s1600/borromeo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TF-5JHEwNaI/AAAAAAAACHY/vU2DCdHzNHY/s320/borromeo.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The humans can articulate desire only through language, the Symbolic domain and as Lacan points out the structure of language is the structure of signifiers where one signifier perpetually leads to another signifier. That is, the meaning of one word is another word or another set of words. Consider a dictionary entry on a difficult word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The entry itself is composed of words whose meanings lay elsewhere. This means that the meaning does not lie ‘in the signifier’ but elsewhere. The signifier ‘lacks’ meaning and it is this ‘lack’ which makes the movement from one signifier to another possible. This movement from one signifier to another driven by ‘lack’ becomes the movement of ‘supplemantarity’ and difference in Derrida’s philosophy.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Lacan points out that the human desire is a combination of ‘the demand’ and ‘the need’. The need which is biological can be gratified, while the demand which can only be articulated through language can never be satisfied. The demand for something (this thing is a signifier) can lead only to another signifier which leads to another signifier ad infinitum. Hence, the Lacanian dictum: <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">‘All speech is a demand and all demand is a demand for love.’</b> The demand which can never ever be fulfilled as each signifier ‘lacks’ meaning and links to another signifier.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Lacan notes that desire is a movement from one signifier to another and hence ‘syntagmatic’ or ‘metonymic’ while the movement of neurosis is the movement of substituting one thing for another (‘a symptom’ for an unconscious wish) and hence ‘paradigmatic’ or ‘metaphorical’.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the phallus is ‘the privileged signifier’, as language and culture in patriarchy function under the ‘Law of Father’. The Phallus, being a signifier also ‘lacks’ positive meaning. The idea of the phallus as a privileged signifier comes from Lacan’s reinterpretation of Freud’s oedipal phase or phallic phase of psychosexual development (see the entry on Freud).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">While most of the ideas discussed above are later development in Lacan’s philosophy, his ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I’ (Ecrits, 1977) is an early essay dealing with question of human identity formation. In contrast to traditional humanistic notion of identity as being innate and organic to human self, Lacan notes that it is formed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in the process of identification with something which is not self and something which is outside of self</i>. Lacan’s views on identity formation resemble the Hegelian notion of dialectic between the self and other as expressed in his ‘Master-Servant’ relationship. The Mirror Stage, according to Lacan, results in child’s recognition and discovery of self as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">reflection<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">. </b></i>This misidentification of reflection for self is central to Lacan’s theory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It implies that ‘identity’ is a product of misidentification and misconstruction (méconnaissance) rather than discovery of ‘true’ or ‘real’ self. Lacan gives instances from neurology and zoology where visual knowledge of similar species is necessary for full biological development of the organism (as in pigeons and locusts). Lacan also points out how this ‘specular I’ contributes to development of motor skills in a child. Hence this méconnaissance is necessary for biological development of an organism. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TF-5sbPqJbI/AAAAAAAACHg/YtcJNu9tX_w/s1600/2152692_com_babymirror.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TF-5sbPqJbI/AAAAAAAACHg/YtcJNu9tX_w/s320/2152692_com_babymirror.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The notion of mirror stage in Lacan also brings to fore his disagreement with Freud. While Freud sees the oedipal phase or phallic phase as being crucial to identity, including the gender identity, Lacan points out that the processes of identity formation start even earlier at the pre-linguistic and pre-phallic stage of psychological development. This idea in Lacan also prefigures his theorization of ‘the Imaginary’ register in psychoanalysis. The Imaginary is the register where human beings are able to imagine themselves as undifferentiated totality and where the complete intimacy with the other is possible. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">There is a huge amount of good quality reference on Lacan available on the Internet. Here are links to a few:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.5in;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">i)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Excellent annotated guide to the essay on the Essex University website: </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://courses.essex.ac.uk/lt/lt204/Mirror%20Stage.htm">http://courses.essex.ac.uk/lt/lt204/Mirror%20Stage.htm</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.5in;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">ii)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-US">Very Brief introduction to Lacan: <a href="http://web.uvic.ca/~saross/lacan.html">http://web.uvic.ca/~saross/lacan.html</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.5in;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">iii)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-US">Also check out very useful Lacan.com <a href="http://www.lacan.com/">http://www.lacan.com/</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.5in;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">iv)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-US">At Purdue university website: <a href="http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/psychoanalysis/lacandevelop.html">http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/psychoanalysis/lacandevelop.html</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.5in;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">v)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-US">For interesting collection of Lacan quotes at Brainyquotes.com: <a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jacques_lacan.html">http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jacques_lacan.html</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div>Sachin C. Ketkarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09429849773311198305noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4733372530695549738.post-48007615204494772162010-07-20T11:18:00.001+05:302010-07-20T11:18:26.888+05:30From Oedipus to Anima: Carl Jung’s `Psychology and Literature’<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TEU2KmY1DCI/AAAAAAAACHA/ZTobKA2vc6M/s1600/CarlJung.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TEU2KmY1DCI/AAAAAAAACHA/ZTobKA2vc6M/s200/CarlJung.jpg" width="166" /></a></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Carl Gustav Jung’s ` Psychology and Literature’ (1930) can be read as a critique of classical Freudian psychoanalytical approach to literary studies. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">The essay is notable for its ambitious attempt to discuss the social role of a creative writer from a psychological and psychoanalytical perspective. It is also remarkable for its similarities with the impersonality theory’ of creative process put forth by TS Eliot in the early part of the twentieth century.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Carl Jung (1875-1961) believes that though the psychologist’s approach to literature varies significantly from that of a literary critic, there is a possibility of an interesting dialogue between the two as all the sciences and arts have a common origin- human psyche. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Jung notes that the primary difference between literary critic’s approach and the psychologist’s approach is that psychologist may be interested in the works which might be of little artistic merit for the critic such as pulp romances or popular detective fiction. For a psychologist, a` psychological novel’ may be the most uninteresting one as most of the elements of fiction like motives or thoughts of the characters are explained and are made explicit by the author. The more interesting novels for a psychologist would be the works where these things are not explained and made explicit by the author and there is a room for interpretation.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Jung goes on to make a distinction between ` psychological’ literature and ` visionary literature’. Jung points out that as a psychologist, he would hardly be interested in ` psychological literature’ which primary deals with the material drawn from conscious mind. `Visionary literature’ draws its imagery, content from materials drawn from unconscious mind and hence is of great interest to a psychologist. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Jung points out that the first part of Goethe’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Faust </i>is an example of `psychological literature’ while the second part is `visionary’ in nature. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Jung critiques Freudian emphasis on the personality of the author in interpretation of the text by stating that author’s personality is not the most important aspect of a literary work as the writer usually has to transcend the personal and the subjective in order to make his work appealing to others. Freudian approach which hardly goes beyond deriving the work from author’s neurosis, fails to explain why not all neurotics are authors. Moreover, such an approach cannot understand the function of a creative writer in the society.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Jung notes that the contents and materials of `visionary’ literature are not just drawn from the author’s psychosexual history as Freudians would insist, but are also from `racial memory’ or the collective unconscious of the entire human race. Such images, figures and symbols are primordial and not specific either to an individual or even to a culture. Such contents of `collective unconscious’ are called `archetypes’ by Jung. He gives an example of the figure of cross which becomes a sacred symbol among the Christians as well as other pagan cultures (like `swastika’ among Hindus). Archetypes manifest themselves not just in mythology, folklore or `visionary literature’ but they affect human behavior deeply. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Some of the most important archetypes in Jungian psychoanalysis are the persona, the shadow, the anima and the wise old man. The goal of human life, Jungian theory is `individuation’ of the becoming complete and whole by synthesizing the varied fragments of our being.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">The persona is the mask which human beings carry around all the time and when it drops, they have to encounter their dark repellent side- their shadow. As the process of individuation continues, one comes across the anima or the creative and feminine aspect of our unconscious self. In Jung’s scheme of things visionary creative writing is often a manifestation of this feminine component of our self. The archetype of the wise old man is the archetype of guiding higher wisdom which leads us towards completion of our individuation. Individuation is often represented archetypally as closed geometric figures like the mandalas. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">The function of creative artist, according to Jung, is to express the contents of collective unconscious in a society which is gradually losing its touch with this side of its personality due to the processes of modernization and secularization. A work of art, thus in Jung’s scheme would lead to man’s reconnection with the collective unconscious thus assisting him in the process of individuation. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Shifting of the focus of psychoanalysis from the personal psychosexual history to collective spiritual history in Jungian `analytical theory’ made it extremely influential among the writers and critics. However, Jungian theory fell out of favour with more materialistic oriented and relativist cultural theorists along with scientific psychologist due to its universalizing and idealistic notions and its preoccupation with vaguely spiritual orientation.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">Freud himself criticized Jung of compromising with the basic principles of scientific psychoanalysis in order to make it more palatable to large section of public by reducing its emphasis on infantile sexuality and neurosis. As a doctor, Freud probably thought, giving sugar coated pills was ok but distributing sugar was definitely a form of deception and a compromise with the basic ethics of medical practice!!</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">However, Jung’s ideas have greatly influenced ` Myth and Archetypal’ theorist of literature like Northrop Frye and Maud Bodkins. </div>Sachin C. Ketkarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09429849773311198305noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4733372530695549738.post-39759646503243024192010-07-14T15:38:00.000+05:302010-07-14T15:38:07.036+05:30Dostoevsky the Oedipus: Freud’s Dostoevsky and Parricide<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;">Sigmund Freud’s `Dostoevsky and Parricide’ (1927) is an excellent example of application of Classical Psychoanalysis to literature. The essay is significant because it contains Freud’s classic exposition of the Oedipus Complex and its relation to literary texts. The essay can be read together with Freud’s other famous and insightful essays on literature like `The Uncanny’ (1919), `Creative Writers and Day Dreaming’ (1908) and `The Theme of Three Caskets’ (1913). That Freud should write extensively on literature is not surprising as he considers psychoanalysis as being ` art of interpretation’ and that many of his ideas are drawn from literary texts.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TD2IBpou7AI/AAAAAAAACGY/SiQFgAcaiAU/s1600/freud_wideweb__430x395.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="294" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TD2IBpou7AI/AAAAAAAACGY/SiQFgAcaiAU/s320/freud_wideweb__430x395.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TD2IBpou7AI/AAAAAAAACGY/SiQFgAcaiAU/s1600/freud_wideweb__430x395.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br />
</a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Freud is fascinated by complex and rich personality of Dostoevsky. He points out four facets of Dostoevsky’s personality, viz., the creative artist, the neurotic, the moralist and the sinner. Freud, characteristically, declares ` before the problem of creative artist, analysis must, alas, lay down its arms.’ Freud is more interested in Dostoevsky the neurotic and the causes of his neurosis. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Freud argues that Dostoevsky’s epileptic attacks, compulsive gambling, his latent homosexuality and his submissive attitude to religious and state authorities are manifestations of his neurosis resulting from his `Oedipus Complex’.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">The Oedipus complex is an essential concept in Freudian psychoanalysis. According to the theory, during the `phallic phase’ (the phase where child’s phallus is the centre of his erotic interest –his love object) of psychosexual development of a child, the child recognizes that he is not a sole object of his mother’s love and sees father as his sexual rival. He is jealous and directs his aggression towards his father. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">During the Oedipal phase, the child wants to take place of his father and thus become the object of his mother’s love. This requires identification on the part of the child with his father to obtain his mother’s love. Freud points out that the child identifies with the father to an extent that the father becomes the part of child’s personality. This part of child’s personality formed by identification with parents is called `Superego’ by Freud. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TD2Jfmvj8PI/AAAAAAAACGo/1PWhsjYyxzE/s1600/freud%27s+typology+of+self.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TD2Jfmvj8PI/AAAAAAAACGo/1PWhsjYyxzE/s320/freud%27s+typology+of+self.jpg" width="238" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">However, during this based on his knowledge of girl’s genitals, the child develops the anxiety of losing his prized possession, of being castrated and losing his masculinity. His aggression towards his father, the desire to kill him has to be repressed or driven away beyond his conscious mind into the unconscious part of his psyche out of the fear of father and father’s power to castrate him. Freud also points out the `ambivalence’ towards father in the mind of child where there is distinct love and tenderness for the father along with the desire to kill him. This gives rise to deep guilt in the mind of the child. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TD2IhN35OuI/AAAAAAAACGg/kjWA-kPXNrM/s1600/dostoevsky.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TD2IhN35OuI/AAAAAAAACGg/kjWA-kPXNrM/s320/dostoevsky.gif" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">In Dostoevsky’s case, Freud argues, this emotional crisis arising in his phallic phase is unresolved and gives rise to his neurosis. Dostoevsky has identified with his father and hence the wish to kill his father is also a desire to kill oneself. This unresolved and unrepressed conflict results in `epileptic attacks’ which resemble the experience of dying for Dostoevsky. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">The guilt arising from his unconscious parricidal desire manifests itself in self-punishing attitudes in Dostoevsky. This severe guilt and desire for self punishment, according to Freud, is at the back of Dostoevsky’s compulsive gambling, which Freud sees as a self punishing activity. As Dostoevsky’s internalized father, his superego, Freud says, is sadistic and Dostoevsky’s ego is masochistic in its desire for self punishment. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Freud also says that gambling which is a form of play is also a substitute for masturbation and hence a cause for guilt for Dostoevsky. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Freud remarks that the three masterpieces of literature Sophocles’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oedipus Rex</i>, Shakespeare’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hamlet</i> and Dostoevsky’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brother Karamazov</i> should deal with parricide carried out of sexual rivalry for a woman is not an instance of coincidence. In the light of his theory, all literature embodies neurotic conflicts and unconscious instincts in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a disguised and indirect ways</i> so <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as to make them acceptable</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">The writers employ literary devices to make these unconscious sexual and socially unacceptable contents of psyche acceptable to people. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oedipus Rex</i>, the hero kills his father unintentionally, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hamlet</i>, it is carried out by someone else and in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brothers Karamazov</i> the deed is carried out by the brother of the protagonist Dmitri. Freud also draws attention to a scene in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brothers Karamazov</i> where Father Zossima bows down at the feet of Dmitri when he learns Dmitri is planning to kill his father.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Freud seems to imply that creative writing is similar to dreaming or neurotic symptoms which he sees as camouflaged and indirect expressions of conflicts arising from early sexual development of the child and unconscious instinctual wishes. This is obviously very `reductive’ view of literature which is a far more complex artifact. Freud himself does not seem to be entirely unaware of this limitation. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Another problem with such an approach is that too preoccupied with ` origins’ of work of art instead of its structure and meaning –critics term as originological fallacy or genetic fallacy. Hence, the obsession with biographical details and personal neurosis of the author.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">As Jung (1930) points out the man who suffers and the man who creates are not identical and personal history of the artist is not very useful for understanding the works of art because the artist has to transcend himself in order to create so that he may reach out to the entire humanity. But, remember what Freud has said about `analysis…laying down its arms in front of creative artist’ in the beginning of the essay.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Freud’s ideas have been received very skeptically and often with hostility ever since their statement. Critics have pointed out that they cannot be proved rigorously and scientifically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other critics have also pointed out the deep seated gender bias in his theory especially his ideas like `penis envy’ which is feminine counterpart to man’s `castration anxiety’. However, Freud has always been very influential thinker whose influence is felt not just in literary criticism but also on the creative writers themselves. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Freud’s ideas regained prominence in literary theory in the twentieth century largely due to Jacques Lacan’s semiotic and structuralist reading of Freud. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TD2LtVr4BSI/AAAAAAAACGw/FWzXcQu4kHw/s1600/unconscious-freud-v-jung.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/TD2LtVr4BSI/AAAAAAAACGw/FWzXcQu4kHw/s400/unconscious-freud-v-jung.jpg" width="302" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><br />
</span></div>Sachin C. Ketkarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09429849773311198305noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4733372530695549738.post-13627208349900617532010-04-08T12:32:00.001+05:302010-04-17T13:18:54.304+05:30Before the Law: Jacques Derrida and Kafka<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><b><br />
</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/S71-X0nMmCI/AAAAAAAACAI/pEbh80wX7xY/s1600/derrida_main.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/S71-X0nMmCI/AAAAAAAACAI/pEbh80wX7xY/s200/derrida_main.jpg" width="160" /></a></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-IN"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</span></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-IN"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida">Jacques Derrida</a>‘s “Before the Law” was first given as a lecture to the Royal Philosophical Society in London in 1982. An English translation by Avital Ronell was published as “Devant la Loi” in Kafka and the Contemporary Critical Performance: Centenary Readings. Ed. Alan Udoff (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). The following text is from Derek Attridge (ed.) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Acts of Literature<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=excersblog-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0415900573&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe></i>, Jacques Derrida, N.Y, London, Routledge, 1992.</span></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-IN">The importance of Derrida’s essay lies not just in his `deconstructive’ questioning of the autonomous status of the literary and the legal discourses, but also because of his autobiographical asides regarding his own recent Kafkaesques experiences of arrest and interrogation in Prague on the charges of drug trafficking. </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-IN">The discursive categories of the `literature’ and the `law’, here, conceived as broadly as possible, are usually perceived to be distinct and autonomous domains of discourses. Often the literary is conceived as being fictitious, while the legal domain is seen to more `secular’, `pragmatic’ and having `truth-value’. In fact, they can even be seen conventionally as `binaries’. </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-IN">Derrida reads <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka">Kafka</a>’s parable of “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_the_Law">Before the Law</a>” to put into question the conventional distinction between the literary discourse and the legal discourse by pointing at the problematic interrelationship between the two. What is identified and classified as `literary’, often depends on the legal discourse of authorship and `legal’ category of `literature’. At the same time, Derrida also demonstrates the dependence of legal discourses on narratives which are usually classified as `the literary’ like the myth, fable and fiction. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/S71-ms8LtTI/AAAAAAAACAQ/bUfrrA6PmFM/s1600/kafka1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/S71-ms8LtTI/AAAAAAAACAQ/bUfrrA6PmFM/s200/kafka1.jpg" width="146" /></a></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-IN">Derrida, in a typical deconstructive mode, reads Kafka’s literary parable (or allegory) AS the parable (or allegory) of literature and about the relationship between law and literature. As in Paul de Man, ` the act of reading of an allegory” becomes an “allegory of the act of reading.”The Kafka’s parable also becomes the parable of undecidable aspects of literature. </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-IN">In a typical Derridian gesture, Derrida DRAMATIZES the parable (“Stages the parable”) and discusses the multiple ( often contradictory) implications of his deconstructive reading for the literary theory and legal theory.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-IN">Strategically,he focuses on the topology or the metaphor of place as well as the metaphor of space in the parable.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-IN">The Law becomes <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>a place</u></b> which the man from countryside wants to enter but is prevented from entering by the door keeper. The doorkeeper does not prevent the man directly.<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=excersblog-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=1451578644&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-IN">This place where the Law which is supposed to exist is believed to be open for all but is actually guarded by a series of doors and doorkeepers (each more powerful than the first one). This means that the Law can never be accessed- it is promised but at <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the same time deferred.<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/S71--l3LkFI/AAAAAAAACAY/FCxGbJ_UIpU/s1600/trial.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8N14Ygk6t2s/S71--l3LkFI/AAAAAAAACAY/FCxGbJ_UIpU/s320/trial.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-IN"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br />
</i></b></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-IN">The accused is summoned `before’ the law and by extension of the topological metaphor, the metaphor of place, the accused is `outside’ (and hence outlaw) of the space of law <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">but then so is the doorkeeper.</i></b> The guardians (the judges, the state, the police, and the doorkeepers) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have their backs turned to the Law</i></b> and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">consequently have no more access to the Law as the countryman or the accused</i></b>. By implication, the guardians of the `law of literature’, the people who decides what is literature and who should judge it (critics, publishers, teachers, reviewers etc) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>too have no access to the very law by which they determine what is literature and who judges it and by what `laws’ can the judge it.</u></i><u><o:p></o:p></u></b></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-IN"><o:p>Derrida also notes that the word `before’, also means <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">PRIOR, </i>something that comes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">before something else in a temporal sequence. </i>So `before the law’ also implies something which comes into existence PRIOR to the Law. In Derrida’s view what comes `prior’ to the Law is `<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">difference’: the structure of differences and deferrals, which <u>postpones the presence of the law indefinitely at the same times is the condition for its existence. </u></i>It is this structure of `differance’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>which constitutes and at the same time postpones the existence of the Law.</u></i> It is this structure of differance which creates the deconstructive aporiartic existence the heart of both leagal and the literary discourses.</o:p></span></div>Sachin C. Ketkarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09429849773311198305noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4733372530695549738.post-61555569452103384712009-12-09T10:12:00.001+05:302010-04-17T13:31:23.706+05:30The Resistance to Theory<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><br />
<div style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 12pt; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 1ex; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><b>I first posted this article on wikipedia, but I thought it would be a better idea for me to start blog so that I am more in control of the article. This becomes the first entry for the blog. Sachin</b></div><div style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 12pt; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 1ex; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><b><br />
</b></div><div style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 12pt; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 1ex; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><b>The Resistance to Theory</b> is an essay by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_de_Man" style="color: #8d0749; text-decoration: underline;" title="Paul de Man">Paul de Man</a> (1919-83), a renowned <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_critic" style="color: #223366; text-decoration: underline;" title="Literary critic">literary critic</a> and theorist belonging to the <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_School" style="color: #223366; text-decoration: underline;" title="Yale School">Yale School</a> of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction" style="color: #223366; text-decoration: underline;" title="Deconstruction">Deconstruction</a> which appeared in <a class="new" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yale_French_Studies&action=edit&redlink=1" style="color: #cc2200; text-decoration: underline;" title="Yale French Studies (page does not exist)">Yale French Studies</a>, 63(1982) and is widely anthologized. The essay later became part of the book by the same name.The essay remains a key statement in <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poststructuralist" style="color: #223366; text-decoration: underline;" title="Poststructuralist">poststructuralist</a> approaches to literary studies.</div><div style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 12pt; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 1ex; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Paul de Man says that the essay was written at the request of the Committee on the Research Activities of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Language_Association" style="color: #223366; text-decoration: underline;" title="Modern Language Association">Modern Language Association</a> as a contribution to a colleictive volume entitled <i>Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures</i>. However, the essay was not accepted as it argued that "the main theoretical interest of literary theory consists in the impossibility of its definition."</div><div style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 12pt; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 1ex; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">But keeping in view with the proposal the essay discusses the rise of literary theory in America in the twentieth century and the challenges it faces. He points out, " literary theory can be said to come into being when the approach to literary texts is no longer based on non-linguistic, that is to say historical and aesthetic considerations." This introduction of linguistic and semiotic terminology into literary studies, according to Paul de Man, gives the language, ` considerable freedom from referential restraint' and makes it ` epistemologically highly suspect and volatile.' Drawing on the ideas of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saussure" style="color: #223366; text-decoration: underline;" title="Saussure">Saussure</a> and <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzsche" style="color: #223366; text-decoration: underline;" title="Nietzsche">Nietzsche</a>,Paul de Man points out that the rhetorical and tropological dimension of language makes it an unreliable medium for communication of truths. Literary language is predominantly rhetorical and figurative. Therefore, to take for granted that literature is a reliable source of information about anything but itself would be a great mistake.</div><div style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 12pt; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 1ex; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">This gives rise to a particular crises in literary studies because `literariness' is no longer seen either as an aesthetic quality or as mimetic mode. Aesthetic effect, according to Paul de Man, takes place because we tend to mistake the materiality of signifier from the materiality of signified by considering language as an intuitive and transparent medium instead of material and conventional medium that it is. Mimesis, like the aesthetic quality, is also an effect of rhetorical and figurative aspects of language. The assumption of ideological and historical `contexts' or backgrounds to literary texts becomes a problematic if language is no longer seen as transparent and intuitive guide from the textual material to the historical situation. Consequently, the theorists who uphold aesthetic approach to literary studies and those who uphold historical approach both find `theory' inconvenient and challenging.They are the polemical opponents of theory.</div><div style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 12pt; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 1ex; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">As theory is as much a verbal construct as literature, it falls prey to the same problematics of literary language. Paul de Man says that the resistance may be `a built-in constituent of its discourse' and the real debate of literary theory is `not with its polemical opponents but rather with its own methodological assumptions and possibilities.'(p. 358) This is because `the resistance to theory is a resistance to the use of language about language'.The resistance to theory is, according to Paul de Man, a resistance to reading. He says, `Nothing can overcome the resistance to theory since theory <i>is</i> itself this resistance.'</div><div style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 12pt; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 1ex; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Yet, Paul de Man concludes, literary theory is not in danger of `going under; it cannot help but flourish, and the more it is resisted, the more it flourishes, since the language it speaks is the language of self resistance.' (p. 365)</div><h2 style="font-size: 1.5em; font-weight: bolder; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span class="editsection" style="float: right; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 5px;">[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Resistance_to_Theory&action=edit&section=1" style="color: #223366; text-decoration: underline;" title="Edit section: References">edit</a>]</span></h2><ul style="margin-bottom: 0.5em;"><li style="line-height: 12pt;">Paul de Man. `The Resistance To Theory', in Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=excersblog-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0582312876&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>,ed. David Lodge and Nigel Wood, 2005, pp 349–365</li>
<li style="line-height: 12pt;">Paul de Man<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=excersblog-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0816612943&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>. Resistance to Theory. University of Minnesota Press, 1986, <a class="internal mw-magiclink-isbn" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9780816612949" style="color: #223366; text-decoration: underline;">ISBN 978-0-8166-1294-9</a></li>
<li style="line-height: 12pt;">David Lodge and Nigel Wood. ed. Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader (1988), New Delhi: Pearson Education, 2005</li>
</ul>Sachin C. Ketkarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09429849773311198305noreply@blogger.com15