the cultural studies reader

Halbwachs' collective memory

2012-03-15T09:32:00.001-07:00

Halbwachs introduced the now common term of "collectivememory" to indicate a type of memory which is shared by an entire society.Through collective memory one member of society can recall and re-experience animportant event that he did not himself take part in. collective memoryaccording to Halbwachs does only tell members of a society what they rememberor can remember but also how to remember and conceive various events in thehistory of a social group.

What is interesting in the concept of collective memory by Halbwachs isthat each and every member of society takes part in building and shapingcollective memory. Thus, personal memory, what Halbwachs calls autobiographicalmemory, is never truly personal because it is always in some sort ofrelationship with the collective memory. Another type of memory contrasted byHalbwachs to collective memory is historical memory. Unlike collective memory,historical memory is "objective" and "scientific"(according to Halbwachs rather naïve take on it), which is written and ordered.Collective memory, on the contrast, is never formally articulated nor is itnever a stable thing which is unified across all members of society. It isimportant to note that there is no one collective memory, and that thecollective memory is in actual fact a collection of collective memories orvarious perspectives and standpoints towards collective memory.

An interesting situation regarding Halbwachs theory is when differenttypes of memory contradict. For instance when the personal,autobiographical memory of an event sucha war as something traumatic contradicts with the collective memory of that waras something heroic and important. Another possible clash is between the fluid,undecided and often highly emotional collective memory and the accuracy seekinghistorical memory. For example, historiography can relate to various events ina very different fashion compared with popular sentiment regarding it.

Durkheim's totemic principle in modern western societies

2012-03-15T09:31:00.002-07:00

EmileDurkheim's concept of the totem or totemic principle is illustrated through theaboriginal practice of creating figures in the shape of plants and animals thatrepresent, according to Durkheim, the group itself which takes on the shape offetishism. According to Durkheim, when a group worships the totem it in actualfact warships itself, thus creating social cohesion and a sense of identitythrough the totem.

Oneof the interesting questions that can be, and often is, asked regarding toDurkheim's concept of the totemic principle is whether and how it translatesinto society's that don't have an actual totem. In other words, is a totem, orthe workings of the totemic principle on society, can be traced and located inthe abstract god of monotheistic religions and in modern western culture.

Insearching for Durkheim's totem or totemic principle in modern times what weshould be asking ourselves, or looking for, is what serves as the symbolic manifestationof society in its own eyes. Also, the totem has to be something public,something that is not only shared by all or most members of the group but alsosomething which has ritualistic characteristic which brings the group together.The modern totem has to create unity in order to exert society's power over itsmembers. For that reason the modern totem has to distinguish sanctity andprofanity, which are according to Durkheim the basic opposition on whichreligion is established. The modern totem has to be some object in whichsociety imagines itself and to which it subjects itself.

Durkheim himself gave the national flag as anexample of a modern object which resembles the totem in its function and assomething which assumes the role of the totemic principle. Another candidatefor the modern totem is of course the television. Television can serve as anexample of the modern totem or totemic principle in that that it is a symbolicmanifestation of society itself which is ritually celebrated (think of variousaward ceremonies), has the capacity to create deities (celebrities) andsomething through which society can understand itself.

Mary Douglas – secular defilement –summary and review

2012-03-14T10:53:00.000-07:00

Chapter 2 of Mary Douglas's "Purity and Danger", titled "Secular Defilement" opens with a review ofresearchers', doctors and religious thinkers to account for "primitive"rituals and religious practices in terms of medical materialism, that is, asbeing a way of preserving public health. Douglas accepts the approach ofmedical materialism as long as it does not rule out other explanations, and sheexpands this notion to a general fear of all people of all cultures fromviolating ritualistic principles and the punish this might bring.

Douglas negated the distinction between "primitive" ritualsand modern hygiene codes. She argues that symbolic system of defilement can berather similar and the only difference is the way in which it is manifested indifferent cultures.

When reexamining the hygiene and defilement concepts of modern secularculture Douglas argues that what separates "primitive" defilementfrom secular defilement is that the secular avoids filth as a result of hisknowledge in bacteriology and pathogens. However, Douglas holds that these principlesstill follow a perception of defilement as something which is not in its rightplace".

Douglas argues that there is an analogy between the concept ofdefilement and social order. What culture ascribes as defilement, profanity or impurityis something which is perceived as an anomaly and a break from the orderly boundariesof social and cultural order.

Douglas understands defilement as something which is culturally dependantand thus she rules out previous takes on the matter from a cultural evolutionand hierarchy standpoint. A critique of Mary Douglas's notion of seculardefilement might claim that her approach is too conservative, rigid andstructuralist. Douglas's approach might be considered conservative in light ofher relating to the social order as a self-evident and natural phenomenon asnot as the result of social power relations that use the detentions of pure andimpure, clean and unclean, to establish social hierarchies. Her rigid distinctionbetween purity and defilement also does not allow for in-the-middle hybrid or liminalstates. Another problem with Douglas's ideas in "Secular Defilement"is that she perceives culture as static and unchanging, and her theory isn'tvery productive when discussing social changes over time.

see also: Mary Douglas - Ritual Uncleanness

Suggested reading:

Mary Douglas – Ritual Uncleanness –summary and review

2012-03-14T09:13:00.000-07:00

Inchapter 1 of her famous "Purity and Danger", titled "RitualUncleanness", structuralist anthropologist Mary Douglas bases her distinctionbetween the clean and sacred and the unclean and unsacred, while refuting dominantattitudes in 19^th century British anthropology. Douglas argues withthe "evolution of culture" paradigm represented by thinkers such asJames Frazer and Robertson Smith.

Frazerdefined three evolutionary stages in the human cultural development: magic,religion and science. This classification established a hierarchy of culturesbased on their position in this evolutionary course. Primitive (or"savage") cultures, according to Frazer, are characterized by faithin magic while modern culture in one of science with religion positioned in themiddle.

Accordingto Douglas, the evolution of culture approach is an example of how western anthropologistsestablished a condescending approach towards other cultures, expressing their eurocentrism and allowing for distinctions between cultures.

LikeDouglas, Frazer, Smith, Durkheimand other anthropologists established the relationship between sanctity andprofanity as central element in religious life, but 19^th centurythinkers saw it as the touchstone for differentiating primitive and advanced cultures.They argued that primitive religions did not separate sanctity from profanitywhile more advanced beliefs, like Christianity, did. Douglas mentions two characteristicsof the primitive religion according to Frazer: 1. Primitive religion is instrumental andmechanical because it perceives rituals (magic) as supposed to bring about apredicted outcome and influence the course of events. The other feature ofprimitive religions according to Frazer is the lack of moral principles.

Douglasheavily criticizes these notions and accuses Frazer of being condescending and theoreticallyinvalid. For Douglas, even if religious and cultural features are differentfrom one culture to another, the substantial manner in which people think isnot that different. Douglas further argues that the differentiation betweensanctity and profanity, cleanness and uncleanness, is exemplary of allcultures, including "primitive" ones. In addition, Douglas claimsagainst Frazer that magic is not a lesser form of faith for like more"advanced" religions it is a symbolic action through which peopleorganize their word-view, values and actions.

A heavyinfluence by EmileDurkheim can be found in Douglas's account of the relation betweencleanness and uncleanness. Durkheim, in his discussion of the "TotemicPrinciple" saw religion as a symbolic manifestation of society itself.But while Durkheim differentiated magic from religion Mary Douglas sees magicas the same in the respect of is social ordering function.

Maurice Halbwachs – "Historical Memory and Collective Memory" – summary and review – part 2

2012-03-11T14:06:00.000-07:00

In the chapter titled "Historical Memory and CollectiveMemory" in his book The Collective Memory Maurice Halbwachs discussesthe function of collective memory in early childhood. According to Halbwachs,the instant children begin to take interest in the meaning of things aroundthem is the instant they start to take part in the collective memory. Therefore,for Halbwachs, inter-generational relations play a key role in the formationand shaping of memory. Childhood memories are always revisited from the presentand Halbwachs attributes a critical function to one's social surroundings inthe manner in which we approach these memories.

Halbwachs suggests collective memory and historical memory as opposed toone another on to key issues:

1. Collective memory,according to Halbwachs, exists outside time and space and is continuesthroughout the generations. Collective memory is neither elaborate nor detailedand is in a state of constant change according to society's needs. Historical memory,on the other hand, schematizes memory, classifies it and views it in greatdetail.

2. Collective memory, says Halbwachs,is not one or something unified. Collective memory is, in fact, an assortment ofcollective memories. It is adapted to various groups and interpretations, andis therefore flexible and fluid, inaccurate and sometimes evenself-contradictory. Collective memory sustains society as such and is thereforeinward-turned and culturally subjective. Historical memory, on the other hand,attempts at presenting a single objective truth and has an outer perspective.

Halbwachs viewed collectivememory as a social fact. He perceived collective memory as something whichexists outside the individual consciousness and there for an inherent part ofsocial life. The function Halbwachs attributes collective memory is one ofsocial consolidation much like the totemic principle suggested by Durkheim. However,Durkheim and Halbwachs are divided on two issues. While Durkheim suggests thepast as leading to the present, Halbwachs suggests the present as returning tothe past. Secondly, Durkhiem's take on things tends to imagine a unifiedsociety, while Halbwachs accounts for a multiplicity of collective memories.

suggested reading on Halbwachs and collective memory:

Maurice Halbwachs – "Historical Memory and Collective Memory" – summary and review

2012-03-11T13:59:00.000-07:00

Maurice Halbwachs –"Historical Memory and Collective Memory" – summary and review - part 1 (part 2)

Frenchsociologist Maurice Halbwachs, one of Emile Durkheim's notable students, ismost famous for introducing the term "collective memory". In hisbook The collective Memory he discusses society's relation to time andthe past and introduces the concept of collective memory as a memory which ismutual the members of society.

Halbachsdevotes a chapter titled "Historical Memory and Collective Memory"which elaborates on the difference between historical and collective memory. WhatHalbachs is after is the simple question of how we remember the past, findingout how the past is represented in an individual's and society's consciousness,and what are the mechanisms which shape memory.

Halbwachssuggests three practices for organizing knowledge of the past in a mannercompatible with contemporary society's need: 1. Autobiographical memorywhich contains personally experienced events. 2. Collective memory whichcontains events that were rendered to an individual by other members of societyand 3. Historical memory which shapes the past through the work ofhistorians. Halbwachs's chapter, "Historical Memory and CollectiveMemory", is devoted to discussing relational patterns between these memorypractices.

Autobiographicalmemory and collective memory demonstrate the individual's role in shaping thepast – first as a first hand accumulator of autobiographical memory and secondas a retainer and distributer of collective memory. For Halbwachs, collectivememory stands apart from autobiographical memory in that that it concerns allor many members of the group. Historical memory only concerns professionals(that is, historians) but it does have a function in limiting and shaping thescope of both autobiographical and collective memory.

Halbwachsadditionaly argues that autobiographical memory is very limited in its abilityto be completely personal. Although it seems that personal experiences andmemories populate our memory, Halbwachs argues that these are often timesmediated by our social surroundings. Collective memory, for Halbwachs, is atype of framework on which we can locate, understand and contextualize our ownmemories that gain significance only in relation, and through, collectivememory.

Suggested Reading on Halbwachs and collective memory;

Emile Durkheim – The Totemic Principle in Modern Religion – summary and review

2012-03-10T04:42:00.002-08:00

EmileDurkheim – "The Genesis of the Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana"– summary and review" - part 1 -2 -3

In TheGenesis of the Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana" (in The ElementaryForms of Religious Life) Emile Durkheim claims that religion does not serve to explainexternal phenomena such as natural life, and that its actual role is in anchoringsocial reality for individuals. Since, as Durkheim argues in The ElementaryForms of Religious Life, divinity is in fact society itself, religion is a conceptualsystem through which the individual is able to imagine himself and hiscommunity. What you feel towards the totem is in fact what you feel towardsyour community.

Durkheimmaintains that religion in the driving force of human intellectual development,be it religious or otherwise, and that it was religion that allowed man to lookbeyond his sensual perception of himself and reality, and in fact attempt to explainthe world. Religion paved the way to philosophy and modern science which areall dependant on social conditions.

Onecritique of Durkheim's totemic principle idea is that he stresses mechanisms ofintegration and solidarity in take on the relations between society andreligion, and he ignores power relations and interests which function withinsociety. Critical approaches (such as the Marxist tradition) feel that thiselement is the one missing in Durkheim's otherwise brilliant analysis of the religioussentiment and its societal origins.

Suggested additional reading by and on Emile Durkheim

Emile Durkheim – "The Genesis of the Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana" – summary and review" - part 1 -2 -3

Emile Durkheim – the Sacred and the Profane – summary and review

2012-03-10T04:39:00.002-08:00

Emile Durkheim – "The Genesis of the Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana" – summary and review" - part 1 -2 -3

In "TheGenesis of the Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana" (in The ElementaryForms of Religious Life) sociologist Emile Durkheim uses the example of the Australianaborigines to explain the manner in which sacred or profane things are awardedtheir status. According to Durkheim, the aborigines divided their time betweentheir daily activates in small groups that were predominantly concerned withmeeting their survival needs, and times in which the whole clan was assembled. Theexcitement of these gathering led to extraordinary behavior such as dance,masks and ecstasy.

Durkheimstresses the gap between routine daily life and the exciting social events. In theseritualistic gatherings, Durkheim holds, the distinction between sacredness andprofanity was formed in people's minds. Sanctity was present in other times andplaces, as did the religion's impositions, but its most forceful appearance wasin social gatherings which led society to the idea that there are outer forceswhich control their lives.

Forthe Australian aborigines, Durkheim holds, these outer forces took the shape ofthe totem that served as the clan's name, symbol and "flag". For Durkheim,the symbolic meanings of the totem consolidate the sentiments invested with itin the social gathering, thus allowing them to exist even after the ritualisticgathering has concluded. This process of symbolizing is for Durkheim thegenesis of religious life and the fundamental form of culture. For Durkheim,religion is the source for all other human cultural formation such as law andarts as well as material practices such as science and industry.

In thefourth part of "The Genesis of the Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana"Durkheim describes the believer's relation to the totem as a relation to"an older brother", and he rules out the notion of prunus in orbe duesfecit temor – that fear created the gods. According to Durkheim: "theprimitive did not see his gods as strangers, enemies, or essentially and necessarilymalevolent beings whose favour he had to curry at all costs. On the contrary,to him the gods were friends, relations and natural protectors… "jealousand trrible gods appear only later in religious development" (Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, p.169)

Suggested additional reading by and on Emile Durkheim

Emile Durkheim – "The Genesis of the Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana" – summary and review" - part 1 -2 -3

Emile Durkheim – "The Genesis of the Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana" – summary and review"

2012-03-10T04:38:00.000-08:00

Emile Durkheim – "The Genesis of the Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana" – summary and review" - part 1 -2 -3

EmileDurkheim's "The Genesis of the Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana",in his important The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, explains Durkheim'sidea of the totemic principle and its role in religious life.

Accordingto Durkheim, the totem, often a plant or animal, to which a social group inattached by a supernatural force and which it considers as representing itsunique is a symbolic representation of society itself.

Australiannatives, which are the case-study for Durkheim's "The Genesis of theNotion of the Totemic Principle or Mana", attributed the totem witha force that exceeds the natural qualities of the animals portrayed in thetotem, a force called Mana.

Durkheimuses the example of Mana to draw conclusions regarding modern social andreligious phenomena. Durkheim argues that when a society worships the totem, orthe divinity, it in actual fact worships itself. The divinity and the communityare one, and as Durkheim put it: "the god of the clan, the totemicprinciple, must therefore be the clan itself, but transfigured and imagined inthe physical form of the plant or animal species that serve as totems"(Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, p.154).

In thesecond part of "The Genesis of the Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana"Durkheim discussed the formation of identification between sacred objects andthe community. For Durkheim, the importance of the totem or god does not restwith their metaphysical traits but rather with their material representation ofsociety. Durkheim compares the relationship between the worshipper and his godto the relation between the individual and society. Both god and society holdan abiding force over the individual, in that they shape his actions andfeelings. The individual is aware of something other than him and outside ofhim which existed before him and will linger after he is gone. This is, for Durkheim,a moral force which induces a mental state. Religion is society's way to enforceon its members adherence to itself, and as Durkheim puts it: "the emblemis not only a convenient method of clarifying society's awareness of itself, itactually creates this feeling".

Suggested additional reading by and on Emile Durkheim

Emile Durkheim – "The Genesis of the Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana" – summary and review" - part 1 -2 -3

The Durkheim tradition in cultural analysis

2012-03-03T15:26:00.001-08:00

Oneof Emile Durkheim's primary occupations was with his notion of collectiveconsciousness. Durkheim understands culture as the mutual ability to perceive realityin a certain manner. For Durkheim culture is the first and foremost mediumthrough which a collective entity presents itself to itself and gains a senseof its own existence.

Durkheimargued that culture maintains these functions through collectiverepresentations and classificatory systems. Collective representations are symbolsand rituals which express values and meanings common for a social group(Durkheim famously gives the example of the Totem pole). Classificatory systemsare ways in which social life are regulated and "wrongs" and "rights"established. According to Durkheim, classificatory systems define subjects suchas the family and kinship, collective time and space and what will beconsidered as sanctified.

Durkheimstressed the functional role of culture and studied the structure of culture'sengagement with society. And this Durkheim is justly associated withstructuralism. Durkheim viewed a given culture's content as something which iscollectively formed and that only exists collectively. There is no one personwhich creates culture and every one of us takes part in a culture (or cultures)which constructs conditions and positions him. In this sense, for Durkheim,culture exists externally from any single person; it exists objectively in theform of objects, symbolism rituals, texts and so on.

Durkheimwidely influenced the fields of sociology, anthropology and cultural studies. Hisapproach continues to occupy a prominent position and influence in contemporarycultural research, as it did throughout the 20^th century, even with structuralismslightly falling out of grace in certain academic currents. Such research whichfollows the tradition Durkheim initiated focuses on social structures whichgenerate perceived solidarity and the manner in which rituals, faith, memoryand other cultural sites function within culture.

Suggested additional reading by and on Emile Durkheim:

article summaries by Emile Durkheim:
Emile Durkheim – "The Genesis of the Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana" – summary and review" - part 1 -2 -3

Problems in the definition of culture

2012-03-03T14:36:00.001-08:00

Definingculture as an ensemble of practices, values and meanings common to a certain collectiveentity, as suggested in our discussion of definitions of culture, brings abouta few theoretical as well as practical problems. To begin with, such adefinition of culture caters for an essentialist perception of culture, holdingthat each and every culture has its own unique practices, values and meanings. Themain problem that arises from such a definition culture comes in the context ofintercultural interactions. A relativistic perception of culture, such asmulticulturalism, could result in negating cultural exchange and the ability ofone culture to communicate and interact with a different culture. However aboundedcultural misunderstanding are, the notion that cultures are essentially incapableof communicating with each other is empirically invalid.

Anotherdefinition of culture offered is that of the totality of activities and objectsthrough which meaning is generated and circulated in a given collective entity.This definition of culture focuses more on the function of culture rather thanon its essence and meaning. This definition of culture stresses the fact theculture is a social practice and a kind of collective practice. A problem thatarises with this definition of culture is that it of delineation. When we viewculture as the mechanism in which meaning is generated and circulated, what exactlycounts as part of culture and what does not? Indeed this is a very wide andoften fluid definition of culture.

In translatingdefinitions of culture into sociological and anthropological practice a few theoreticaltendencies for the analysis of culture can be found in late 20^th andearly 21th century. Culture can be analyzed in the context of power rations andthe battle between perceptions of reality (this approach is associated with thelegacy of Karl Marx). Cultural analysis could also engage with the manner inwhich meaning is constructed onto reality in a given society (the legacy ofEmile Durkheim). Another tradition that of Max Webber, is to analyze specificworlds of meaning to show how perceiving reality in a certain manner has aneffect on social and personal behavior. Otheroptions for the analysis of culture are to focus on daily human interactions orthe analysis of contemporary global culture in the relations between cultureswithin it.

The Marxist tradition in cultural analysis

2012-03-03T14:35:00.003-08:00

Culture is today one of the primary interests of Marxist thought, whichtakes to cultural analysis rather often. Karl Marx himself gave littleattention to the concept and working of culture in his own writings. This as aresult of Marx's focus on economical and political factors, granting cultureonly a secondary position. Marx positioned culture in the superstructure, whichfor him was derived for the economical base of material practice. The role ofthe superstructure, according the Marx, is to mask and justify the inequalitiesand exploitation which take place in the material base. Culture for Marx is therefore something whichabstracts the truth and creates "false consciousness" and anincorrect perception of social, political and economic reality endorsed by theruling class.

Marx's successors in the 20^th century had a hard time maintaininghis perception of culture as secondary to the material dimension. Neo-Marxistthinking throughout the 20^th century began to focus more and more onculture and its workings, giving birth to the discipline known as culturalstudies. One field of cultural research within the Marxist tradition is that ofasking how, and if, art and culture can subvert the workings of capitalism orhow the cater for its greedy needs. The Frankfurt School for social thought isfamous for the notion of cultural industry is an example of such research ofculture within the Marxist tradition. Such a view of culture could stress itsrepressive function, such as in popular and mass culture. Another way Marxistthinkers can analyze culture is by asking how the interchange of power if facilitatedby it, and the battle between different interests drawn through it. Unlike theFrankfurt School, this Marxist approach for cultural analysis, which is oftenattributed to the legacy of Gramsci, feels that culture can indeed besubversive and to challenge the ruling order.

Definitions of culture in sociology and anthropology

2012-03-03T14:07:00.000-08:00

Cultureis all around us, an inherit part of our social life as well as our personalityand sense of subjectivity. However, culture, as cultural studies researcher RaymondWilliams noted, is one of the most complex words in the English language. Cultureis popularly used to denote as narrow sense that is usually related to the artsand humanities. In a broader sense, culture denotes the practices, beliefs andperceptions of a given society. Culture is additionally often opposed with"savagery", relating to something which is "cultured" as aproduct of a certain evolvement from a natural state. In the theoretical senseculture is often related as a system of structures with power relations runningthrough them.

In socialsciences, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, there is hardly a consensusregarding the meaning of the term culture and various definitions of cultureare in circulation. Researchers Kroeber and Kluckhohn (Culture: A CriticalReview of Literature", 1952) gathered an array of various definitionsof culture is sociology and anthropology and have divided them into six primarycategories: 1. Descriptive definitions of culture which view culture asa total system of customs, beliefs, knowledge, laws, means of expression as soforth. 2. Historical definitions of culture which view culture as thecontinuation of generations. 3. Normative definitions of culture which relatedto value systems which construct social and personal behavior. 4. Psychologicaldefinitions of culture which stress culture's role in interpersonalrelations. 5. Structural definitions of culture that focus on relationalaspects of cultural components through abstraction. 6. socio-geneticdefinitions of culture which focus on the genesis and continued existenceof a culture.

A different,more contemporary, way to distinguish definitions of culture is to note the wayin which culture is theoretically perceived as either something which isopposed to materiality, technology and social structures from which culture is somethingdifferent, or as a space of non-material ideas which are also, obviously,abstract. Other definitions of culture focus on its autonomy from social andeconomical structures.

Thisleads us to propose two fundamental understanding regarding definitions ofculture: A. culture is an ensemble of practices, values and meanings common toa collective entity; B. culture is the totality of activities and objectsthrough which meaning is generated and circulated in a given collective entity.

Abdul JanMuhamed / "The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The function of Racial Difference in Colonial Literature" – summary part 1 - 2

2011-11-17T13:29:00.000-08:00

Abdul JanMuhamed / "The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The function of Racial Difference in Colonial Literature" – summary part 1 - 2

At the beginning of "The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The function of Racial Difference in Colonial Literature" Abdul JanMuhamed is deliberating with different thinkers, mostly from the postcolonial tradition. He argues that they have failed to see that the question of representation is not confined to cultural products, but is rather entangled with political, historical and mainly economical structures that have to be taken into account.

JanMuhamed stresses that the center's symbolic superiority is constructed on overt as well as covert aspects. The covert aspect of colonialism aims at exploiting the other while the overt one aims at "civilizing" him. They relations between colonizer and colonized are characterized according to JanMuhamed by the "Manichean metaphor" – a system of dichotomies and oppositions between white and black, good and bad and so forth. This Manichean allegory is esstential in order to constitute the other as other and draw a line between subject and object. The writer is under pressure to cooperate with this system of distinctions as the center wishes, for the center always seeks to be justified and affirmed.

European literature regarding the colonies, says JanMuhamed, faces an ethical problem when it seeks to represent the other, by falling into the traps and stereotypes that are meant to affirm its superiority. JanMuhamed distinguished two types of western writing about the colonies, borrowing apparently from the Lacanean vocabulary: imaginary and symbolic. Imaginary writing projects the westerner on to the other in order to fix the boundaries between them while symbolic writing is more open for negotiations of identity with the colonial other. For JanMuhamed, all imaginary writing and some symbolic writing is made to "articulate and justify the moral authority of the coloniozer and – by positing the inferiority of the native as a metaphysical fact – to mask the pleasure the colonizer derives from that authority".

Recommanded literature:

Abdul JanMuhamed / "The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The function of Racial Difference in Colonial Literature" – summary part 1 - 2

Abdul JanMuhamed / "The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The function of Racial Difference in Colonial Literature" – summary

2011-11-17T13:28:00.000-08:00

Abdul JanMuhamed / "The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The function of Racial Difference in Colonial Literature" – summary part 1 - 2

In "The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The function of Racial Difference in Colonial Literature" Kenya born critical theoretician Abdul JanMuhamed is attempting to describe the central hardship facing every "marginal" writer which attempts to tell himself to a culture that has signed him off as inferior. JanMuhamed talks of the difficulty in escaping the system of representation enforced on the other by the hegemonic western center.

JanMuhamed's central claim is that every writer from the former colonies which seeks to tell the story of his marginalized community to the cultural center will have a difficult task on his hands. The difficulty, JanMuhamed holds, is in locating the postcolonial subject in the center of a literary text. This is because the discursive forces which interpolate literary production work to marginalize such subjects. In other words, JanMuhamed argues that western literature, and its constitutive discourse, is structured, from its very vocabulary to the collective psychology which underlies it, to accommodate a white protagonist, and it will require great ingenuity in order to replace him with a black one.

The post-colonial writer, according to JanMuhamed, needs to avoid duplicating the inscribed identities fixed by the center in regards to his culture of origin, or the general non-western other. JanMuhamed argues that the colonial site has been designated in advance by the cultural center (violent, emotional, sensual, lazy etc.). these stereotypes need to be subverted, and the writer needs to clear the "white" paper from its pre-inscribed representations of the colonial other.

According to JanMuhamed (and others like Edward Said) the cultural center projects its fantasies on minority groups in a manner that denies them the right to an independent formulation of identity, history and self perception and representation.

This turns JanMuhamed to the central question of "The Economy of Manichean Allegory" – how is it possible to be emancipated from the symbolic coercion dictated by the cultural center and to directly, without mediation, to represents the marginal in a manner which does not adhere to preexisting "knowledge" of him?

Recommanded literature:

Abdul JanMuhamed / "The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The function of Racial Difference in Colonial Literature" – summary part 1 - 2

Gayatri Spivak / "Can the Subaltern Speak?" - short critical review

2011-11-16T16:01:00.000-08:00

Gayatri Spivak / "Can the Subaltern Speak?" - review

Gayatri Spivak devotes the first and main part of "Can the Subaltern Speak" to launching a massive attack on Foucault and Deleuze – two of the main figures of contemporary critical theory, and therefore Spivak's offensive can be considered as directed at this academic field in general. Spivak doesn’t hold back in criticizing Foucault and Deleuze , and turns to especially insulting allegations, accusing them in cooperating with capitalism and imperialism, in essentialism, positivism, in false claims to objectivity and transparency, institutionalism and chauvinism. Spivak uses Marx and through rereading him criticizes those that to a large extent work within the tradition founded by him. Spivak employed a deconstructionist tactic which reads the objects of her criticism "against themselves". Finally, to add insult to injury, she appeals to their eccentric "black sheep" of the family, Jacques Derride, who's method she favors over that of Foucalt and Deleuze. And all through her offensive Spivak makes sure to raise the shield of subject position that is supposed to neutralize the meaning of the words at the bottom of "Can the Subaltern Speak?" - "California University, Berkeley".

And so Spivak joins Edward Said and other researchers before her of non-western origin that employ western thought and methods in order to criticize the way in which western cultures and academic discourse are representing the third world.

This means that Spivak's title – "Can the Subaltern Speak?" has another question folded inside of it, a question that is addresses to a larger extent in "Can the Subaltern Speak?" than the question formulated in the title, and that question is "Can the oppressor Speak?". It seems that spivak's (and Said's) answer to this question is a definite no, at least not without having their ethnocentrism and economical interests effecting the way they speak and eventually being a repressive act. The inability, or invalidity, of westerners to speak about the other is derived, so is implied by Spivak, from their inability to listen to the other and understand him without enforcing their own western consciousness and values upon him. In the circle drawn by Spivak the colonial oppressor cannot speak about the Subaltern that he cannot hear since the subaltern cannot speak since the oppressor cannot listen to him. With everybody interlocked in this deaf-dumb cycle, it seems that Spivak leaves room for only one voice to speak – her own ,the female hybrid researcher that now poses the same claim for transparency and objectivity for which she criticized Foucault and Deleuze.

Suggested reading:

Gayatri Spivak / "Can the Subaltern Speak?" - review - summary part 1 - summary part 2

Gayatri Spivak / "Can the Subaltern Speak?" – summary - part 2

2011-11-16T16:00:00.000-08:00

Gayatri Spivak / "Can the Subaltern Speak?" - review - summary part 1 - summary part 2

In "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Gayatri Spivak is criticizing the intellectual west's "desire for subjectivity". Spibak claims that "research" or "knowledge" have served as a prime justification for the conquest of other cultures and their enslavement, as part of the European colonial project. The western scholar authoritatively presented himself and his produced knowledge about the other culture as objective. He presented himself is without interests, and scientific, ethical and accurate. This is, for Spivak, very much not the real case for the opening statement of "Can the Subaltern Speak?" is that knowledge about the third world was always tainted with the political and economical interests of the west.

Spivak points to the fact that the west is talking to itself, and in its own language, about the other. Like other commodities, data or raw material (ethnographical ,for example) is harvested in the third world country and taken back to the west, to be produced and sold for the benefit of the western readers and especially the western writer. Spivak wonders if under these conditions it can be possible for the west to speak about the non-west without sustaining the colonial discourse.

Spivak is hardly impressed with western efforts to speak for the other or try to "present his own voice". She believes that the west is obsessed with preserving itself as subject, and that any discourse is eventually about the discoursing agents themselves. Spivak is opposed to the western attempt to situate itself as investigating subject that is opposed to the investigated non-western object. Spivak's answer to "Can the Subaltern Speak?" is no, they cannot, not when the western academic field is unable to relate to the other with anything other than its own paradigm.

Suggested reading:

Gayatri Spivak / "Can the Subaltern Speak?" - review - summary part 1 - summary part 2

Gayatri Spivak / "Can the Subaltern Speak?" – summary

2011-11-16T15:57:00.000-08:00

"Can the Subaltern Speak?" (1988) by Gayatri Spivak relates to the manner in which western cultures investigate other cultures. Spivak uses the example of the Indian Sati practice of widow suicide, however the main significance of "Can the Subaltern Speak?" is in its first part which presents the ethical problems of investigating a different culture base on "universal" concepts and frameworks.

"Can the Subaltern Speak?" critically deals with an array of western writers starting from Marx to Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida. The basic claim and opening statement of "Can the Subaltern Speak?" is that western academic thinking is produced in order to support western economical interests. Spivak holds that knowledge is never innocent and that it expresses the interests of its producers. For Spivak knowledge is like any other commodity that is exported from the west to the third world for financial and other types of gain.

Spivak is wondering how can the third world subject be studied without cooperation with the colonial project. Spivak points to the fact that research is in a way always colonial, in defining the "other", the "over there" subject as the object of study and as something that knowledge should be extracted from and brought back "here". Basically we're talking about white men speaking to white men about colored men/women. When Spivak examines the validity of the western representation of the other, she proposes that the discursive institutions which regulate writing about the other are shut off to postcolonial or feminist scrutiny.

This limitation, Spivak holds, is sue to the fact that critical thinking about the "other" tends to articulate its relation to the other with the hegemonic vocabulary. This is similar to feminist writers which abide by the patriarchic rules for academic writing.

In the following parts of "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Spivak is criticizing different critical writers and then moves on to the example of the Indian "Sati" practice.

Gayatri Spivak / "Can the Subaltern Speak?" - review - summary part 1 - summary part 2

Jean Baudrillard / "The Structural Law of value and the Order of Simulacra" – summary and review – the three orders of simulacra

2011-11-16T14:20:00.000-08:00

Jean Baudrillard / "The Structural Law of value and the Order of Simulacra" – summary and review

part 1 - 2 - 3

In "The Structural Law of value and the Order of Simulacra" Jean Boudrillard situates pre-industrialism, industrialism and post-industrialism as three periods with distinct differences regarding language and the linguistic market. Boudrillard holds the the pre-industrial, or modern, era had direct and strong linguistic relations between signifier and signified without the risk of confusing meaning (no double meanings).

The industrial, or modern era has multiplied the signifier, according to Boudrillard, and gave rise to polysemy. The stark example of this is the production line – there is no longer one unique product, there is only a model, an abstract universal which designated many signified. Boudrillard argues that the unitary sign system breaks at the signifier's end, which now signifies not one thing but many identical objects.

The third era mentioned by Boudrillard in "The Structural Law of value and the Order of Simulacra" is the postindustrial or postmodern era, which continues the process of deconstruction which began with modernity. One the one hand Boudrillard argues that we reach a point in which the linguistic market has become total – with a multiple of reoccurring and self reproducing signs which take over our perception of reality and replaces it with a system of simulacra. On the other hand Boudrillard thinks that unclarity is brought about regarding the position of a certain object in relation to other objects. This is because of the transition to a world of simulacra which does not abide by a set structure of economy and value but by rules of hyper real and imagined representation. The realness of the industrialized era is replace according to Boudrillard by virtual manufacturing that can in certain cases break the link between signifier and signified.

For example, Boudrillard says that we have no way of knowing if what is said on the news is true or not, with the signifier (the news) replacing the signified (the events). We don’t need the actual signified in order to know it. The news replace reality with accuracy and truthfulness taking second precedent to entertainment value.

You should also read:

Jean Baudrillard / "The Structural Law of value and the Order of Simulacra" – summary and review – part 2

2011-11-16T14:18:00.001-08:00

Jean Baudrillard / "The Structural Law of value and the Order of Simulacra" – summary and review

part 1 - 2 - 3

Television and internet society are one of Jean Baudrillard's focal concerns in "The Structural Law of value and the Order of Simulacra". These societies, writes Baudrillard, cease believing in their own realities, and have traded them for signs. The basic experience of postmodernity is the constant decoding of signs which have taken over the cultural arena and have become an end for themselves. The question of signifying has replace the question of meaning, Baudrillard holds, and has created formal communication which functions at the level of signs without having to be translated into referential reality. For Baudrillard this world, in which signs are endlessly recycled and produce a fictitious reality, undeniable on account of being fictitious, is called "hyperrealism" with relatiy functioning as a simulacra – a copy with no origin.

In "The Structural Law of value and the Order of Simulacra" Baudrillard suggests a "structural revolution of value". For him, the world of hyperrealism creates a market economy of hyperrealist desires (i.e. a use of realistic apparatuses in order to represent simulacra). These desires are spread by the media in different corners of the cultural representation. Unlike the old economy, the Freudian one which deals with balancing the pleasure principle and social needs, Baudrillard's new hyperrealist economy gives itself to the pleasure principle without any restraints. However, Baudrillard notes, this economy is no threat to the social order, for it exits and function in a entirely fictitious world. In this world, it generate legitimacy for perceiving reality as a system of radicalized fantasies, which in time turn into the natural scale by which the world is comprehended. However, simulacra in not unified, and Baudrillard devoted the rest of "The Structural Law of value and the Order of Simulacra" to describing the three orders of simulacra.

You should also read:

Jean Baudrillard/ "The Structural Law of value and the Order of Simulacra" – summary and review

part 1 - 2 - 3

Jean Baudrillard / "The Structural Law of value and the Order of Simulacra" – summary and review

2011-11-16T14:17:00.001-08:00

Jean Baudrillard / "The Structural Law of value and the Order of Simulacra" – summary and review

part 1 - 2 - 3

Jean Baudrillard's difficult "The Structural Law of value and the Order of Simulacra" is an attempted account of the shift in the lingual social field from modernity to post-modernity.

Jean Baudrillard opens his "The Structural Law of value and the Order of Simulacra" with the assertion that "symbolic exchange is no longer an organizing principle; it no longer functions at the level of modern social institutions". This assertion posed by Baudrillard needs to be understood in relation to lines of thought such as Pierre Bourdieu's concept of linguistic market which views linguistic interactions as symbolic interactions following rules and structures of social formations. Contrary to Bourdieu, Baudrillard seems to be arguing that symbolic exchange are no longer an organizing principle and is has stopped functioning as a social institution. The ordered system theorized by Bourdieu collapses, according to Baudrillard, with the transition from modernity to postmodernity.

According to Baudrillard in "The Structural Law of value and the Order of Simulacra" we live at a time in which the linguistic market has no regularity. Words and language gain autonomy of their own and the rigid control over the meaning of language is open for subversion.

Like Bourdieu, Baudrillard thinks that the social system is never without an ideology which hides itself behind what is presented as "natural" and self evident. However, Baudrillard claims that with the transition into the post-industrial era we enter a new structure of simulation and simulacra that operate in the virtual space. This new structure is detached from the "realness" that characterized the modern age. The rules of economy are now replaced by a new order that mixes reality and representation. According to Bourdirllard the economy of production is replaced by simulation.

According to Baudrillard the transition from modernity to postmodernity is also a transition from a "real" order of values to an imagined one. This does not mean that Bourdrillard is arguing that in the modern world things are real and in the postmodern world are detached from reality, but rather that the modern world tends to present its values as real and as having to do with the social system while the post modern world and its relative nature allows for autonomy for linguistic practices which are not measured easily by its value in the linguistic market. If Bourdieu's linguistic market had a closed and hierarchic structure, Baudrillard's simulation allows for much more freedom and equality which are the result of the virtual. Imagined or otherwise unreal nature of the visions we encounter.

You should also read:

Jean Baudrillard / "The Structural Law of value and the Order of Simulacra" – summary and review

part 1 - 2 - 3

Pierre Bourdieu's concept of linguistic market and linguistic capital

2011-11-13T05:08:00.000-08:00

Pierre bourdieu's concept of linguistic market and linguistic capital is the application of his important concept of habitus to the realm of linguistic and more specifically discourse analysis. In a sense, the idea of the linguistic market is the consideration of social structures when talking about what Noam Chomsky defines as lingual competence. While competence for Chomsky is universal, in Bourdieu's sense it very much depends on your background, social status etc. lingual competence, for Bourdieu, in the context of the linguistic market, is the ability to speak to the point, in a manner that fits the circumstances and objectives within those circumstances. It's an ability to use the right words, right grammar, register, tone, body language and so forth in a manner that is favorable by the social structure of the linguistic market.

The linguistic market, as the name implies, in build on economic relation within which certain lingual capabilities have a higher currency than others, what Bourdieu refers to as linguistic capital. The linguistic market, according to Bourdieu, is both substantial in being a certain social situation and an abstraction in the forms of rules that regulate the value of lingual utterances and the spread, accumulation and reproduction of linguistic capital.

To understand Bourdieu's idea of the linguistic market and linguistic capital, think about how Oxford English gives a speaker, in formal situation, much more voice and credibility than someone who speaks, for example, Black English. This is determined by the formation of the linguistic market which gives certain ways of communication a more favorable currency in comparison with others. According to Bourdieu, the linguistic market, much like other markets, in never a free market, for power relations within it predetermine the standards according to which linguistic capital is allocated, thus preserving the rule of the elite (which always speaks the most prestigious language).

see:

Pierre Bourdieu's concept of linguistic market and linguistic capital

wolfgang Iser / "Indeterminacy and the Reader's Response in Prose Fiction" - summary

2011-11-13T05:02:00.000-08:00

Wolfgang Iser / "Indeterminacy and the Reader's Response in Prose Fiction" (1971)

Wolfgang Iser's 1971 "Indeterminacy and the Reader's Response in Prose Fiction" deals with the nature of the relationship formed between the reader and the literary text.

Iser opens "indeterminacy and the Reader's Response in Prose Fiction" claiming that hermeneutics and interpretation were always suspicious of the manifested form of prose fiction, believing that the meaning is always somewhere behind the text, waiting to be discovered and determined by the act of interoperation. Iser's main problem with this perception of prose is the invalid assumption of a fixed meaning of a text waiting to be unraveled. Reading, Iser holds, is an action, and as an action it always involves the actor as an individual. It is the reader who actively responds to the text, and he does so in relation to the text and its content but also in accordance with his own idiosyncratic knowledge, tendencies, experience etc. meaning, for Iser, is not something embedded in the text but rather something which lies in the complex relationship between the reader and the text.

Therefore, Iser's "Indeterminacy and the Reader's Response in Prose Fiction" is an attempt to discuss the nature of relationships between the reader and prose fiction. Iser starts by defining the status of the literary text as one which stands "half way" between the actual world of referential meaning and the readers' own person experience.

Another point made by Iser is the prose fiction is never fully determined, never fully definded. The reason for this is that for every information provided there is information left out, and for every manner in which an object is presented in the text there might be others ways to comprehend it, ways that the reader is aware of. Every gap is filled in by the reader according to his own personal preferences, tendencies and the way he experiences the world.

Every text, according to Iser, invited a certain degree of participation from the reader. What is explicitly said by the text never exhausts its full intentions. However, not all prose fiction invites reader's participation to the same extent and here we arrive at the historical part of Iser's "Indeterminacy and the Reader's Response in Prose Fiction". Iser holds that modern 20^th century prose fiction tends to be more undetermined, invoking greater reader participation in comparison with earlier 18^th and 19^th prose fiction. Such modern prose (Iser illustrates this through James Joyce, Henry Fielding and William Thackeray) utilized the essential gap-filling requirements of reading as a central, not just collateral, part. Readers, according to Iser, are constantly invoked to take part, to bring themselves, and to challenge their own perceptions in their interaction with the text. The reality of such prose fiction becomes dependant on the reader.

In concluding the summary of Wolfgang Iser's "Indeterminacy and the Reader's Response in Prose Fiction" the main point understood is that prose fiction isn't just what is says, but also what it doesn’t say, because that is where the reader gets to work, becoming a partner in the process of creating meaning. The more undetermined the text, there the reader has a chance to see himself reflected from the pages of the book.

suggested reading:

wolfgang Iser / "Indeterminacy and the Reader's Response in Prose Fiction"

Roman Jakobson – On Linguistic Aspects of Translation - summary

2011-10-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

Roman Jakobson – On Linguistic Aspects of Translation - summary

Roman Jakobson opens his seminal paper "On linguistic aspects of translation" by refuting an argument made by Russell regarding the need to know a word's reference in order to know its meaning. Jakobson argues that denotation does not necessarily entail or mandate reference, and that we have the capacity to know and understand words even without having seen their reference in the non-lingual world.

For Jakobson, the meaning of a lingual sign is its translation into another alternative sign (such as translating "bachelor" into "unmarried man"). Jakobson notes three manners of interpreting a lingual sign:

Rewording – interpreting lingual signs by means of other signs from the same language.

Translation – interpreting lingual signs by means of signs from another language.

Transmutation – interpreting lingual signs by means of signs from non-lingual sign systems.

In the case of rewording, Jakobson reminds us the absolute synonymy is rare or non-existent. The same thing goes for translation as well, with words rarely covering the same semantic denotation and connotation in different languages. Obviously, this bears on the ability to exchange word for word in the process of translation.

However, for Jakobson, translation is not about words but about entire utterances which are transformed for the code of one language to be reconstructed through the code of a different language. Translation involves therefore, for Jakobson, two equal utterances in two different codes.

Translation thus appears to be impossible but Jakobson points to simple fact that we nevertheless use translation on a daily basis. We can always use meta-language to fill in for absent words, or borrowing words from another language. Even if our translation is a bit cumbersome, there is nothing about different languages that prevents communication.

Jakobson's point in "On Linguistic Aspects of Translation" is that a lack of semantic equivalences in the target language does not prevent the transformation of conceptual information encoded in the source language.

This becomes more complicated though when trying to transfer meaning to a language that has different grammatical categories. Sex or duration aspects that exist in the grammar of one language but not another might lead to the loss of information or a lack of it in order to choose the correct grammatical form. This can only be compensated for by rich context.

Jakobson famously argues that "Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey". Each language requires different choices of grammatical features, resulting in gaps between them. Poetry, according to Jakobson, is the foremost victim of this lingual shortcomings.

Roman Jakobson – On Linguistic Aspects of Translation - summary

Roman Jakobson – On Linguistic Aspects of Translation - full text

article in Wikipedia

Roman Jakobson - On Linguistic Aspects of Translation - full text

2011-10-27T13:50:00.000-07:00

Roman Jakobson (1959)

On linguistic Aspects of Translation

According to Bertrand Russell, “no one can understand the word ‘cheese’ unless he has a nonlinguistic acquaintance with cheese.”¹ If, however, we follow Russell’s fundamental precept and place our “emphasis upon the linguistic aspects of traditional philosophical problems,” then we are obliged to state that no one can understand the word “cheese” unless he has an acquaintance with the meaning assigned to this word in the lexical code of English. Any representative of a cheese-less culinary culture will understand the English word “cheese” if he is aware that in this language it means “food made of pressed curds” and if he has at least a linguistic acquaintance with “curds.” We never consumed ambrosia or nectar and have only a linguistic acquaintance with the words “ambrosia,” “nectar,” and “gods” - the name of their mythical users; nonetheless, we understand these words and know in what contexts each of them may be used.

The meaning of the words “cheese,” “apple,” “nectar,” “acquaintance,” “but,” “mere,” and of any word or phrase whatsoever is definitely a linguistic - or to be more precise and less narrow - a semiotic fact. Against those who assign meaning (signatum) not to the sign, but to the thing itself, the simplest and truest argument would be that nobody has ever smelled or tasted the meaning of “cheese” or of “apple.” There is no signatum without signum. The meaning of the word “cheese” cannot be inferred from a nonlinguistic acquaintance with cheddar or with camembert without the assistance of the verbal code. An array of linguistic signs is needed to introduce an unfamiliar word. Mere pointing will not teach us whether “cheese” is the name of the given specimen, or of any box of camembert, or of camembert in general or of any cheese, any milk product, any food, any refreshment, or perhaps any box irrespective of contents. Finally, does a word simply name the thing in question, or does it imply a meaning such as offering, sale, prohibition, or malediction? (Pointing actually may mean malediction; in some cultures, particularly in Africa, it is an ominous gesture.)

For us, both as linguists and as ordinary word-users, the meaning of any linguistic sign is its translation into some further, alternative sign, especially a sign “in which it is more fully developed” as Peirce, the deepest inquirer into the essence of signs, insistently stated.² The term “bachelor” may be converted into a more explicit designation, “unmarried man,” whenever higher explicitness is required. We distinguish three ways of interpreting a verbal sign: it may be translated into other signs of the same language, into another language, or into another, nonverbal system of symbols. These three kinds of translation are to be differently labeled:

1 Intralingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language.

2 Interlingual translation or translation proper is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language.

3 Intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.

The intralingual translation of a word uses either another, more or less synonymous, word or resorts to a circumlocution. Yet synonymy, as a rule, is not complete equivalence: for example, “every celibate is a bachelor, but not every bachelor is a celibate.” A word or an idiomatic phrase-word, briefly a code-unit of the highest level, may be fully interpreted only by means of an equivalent combination of code-units, i.e., a message referring to this code-unit: “every bachelor is an unmarried man, and every unmarried man is a bachelor,” or “every celibate is bound not to marry, and everyone who is bound not to marry is a celibate.”

Likewise, on the level of interlingual translation, there is ordinarily no full equivalence between code-units, while messages may serve as adequate interpretations of alien code-units or messages. The English word “cheese” cannot be completely identified with its standard Russian heteronym “сыр,” because cottage cheese is a cheese but not a сыр. Russians say: принеси сыру и творогу “bring cheese and [sic] cottage cheese.” In standard Russian, the food made of pressed curds is called сыр only if ferment is used.

Most frequently, however, translation from one language into another substitutes messages in one language not for separate code-units but for entire messages in same other language. Such a translation is a reported speech; the translator recodes and transmits a message received from another source. Thus translation involves two equivalent messages in two different codes.

Equivalence in difference is the cardinal problem of language and the pivotal concern of linguistics. Like any receiver of verbal messages, the linguist acts as their interpreter. No linguistic specimen may be interpreted by the science of language without a translation of its signs into other signs of the same system or into signs of another system. Any comparison of two languages implies an examination of their mutual translatability; widespread practice of interlingual communication, particularly translating activities, must be kept under constant scrutiny by linguistic science. It is difficult to overestimate the urgent need for and the theoretical and practical significance of differential bilingual dictionaries with careful comparative definition of all the corresponding units in their intention and extension. Likewise differential bilingual grammars should define what unifies and what differentiates the two languages in their selection and delimitation of grammatical concepts.

Both the practice and the theory of translation abound with intricacies, and from time to time attempts are made to sever the Gordian knot by proclaiming the dogma of untranslatability. “Mr. Everyman, the natural logician,” vividly imagined by B. L. Whorf, is supposed to have arrived at the following bit of reasoning: “Facts are unlike to speakers whose language background provides for unlike formulation of them.”³ In the first years of the Russian revolution there were fanatic visionaries who argued in Soviet periodicals for a radical revision of traditional language and particularly for the weeding out of such misleading expressions as “sunrise” or “sunset.” Yet we still use this Ptolemaic imagery without implying a rejection of Copernican doctrine, and we can easily transform our customary talk about the rising and setting sun into a picture of the earth’s rotation simply because any sign is translatable into a sign in which it appears to us more fully developed and precise.

A faculty of speaking a given language implies a faculty of talking about this language. Such a “metalinguistic” operation permits revision and redefinition of the vocabulary used. The complementarity of both levels - object-language and metalanguage - was brought out by Niels Bohr: all well-defined experimental evidence must be expressed in ordinary language, “in which the practical use of every word stands in complementary relation to attempts of its strict definition.”⁴

All cognitive experience and its classification is conveyable in any existing language. Whenever there is deficiency, terminology may be qualified and amplified by loan-words or loan-translations, neologisms or semantic shifts, and finally, by circumlocutions. Thus in the newborn literary language of the Northeast Siberian Chukchees, “screw” is rendered as “rotating nail,” “steel” as “hard iron,” “tin” as “thin iron,” “chalk” as “writing soap,” “watch” as “hammering heart.” Even seemingly contradictory circumlocutions, like “electrical horse-ear” (электрическая конка), the first Russian name of the horseless street ear, or “flying steamship” (jena paragot), the Koryak term for the airplane, simply designate the electrical analogue of the horse-ear and the flying analogue of the steamer and do not impede communication, just as there is no semantic “noise” and disturbance in the double oxymoron - “cold beef-and-pork hot dog.”

No lack of grammatical device in the language translated into makes impossible a literal translation of the entire conceptual information contained in the original. The traditional conjunctions “and,” “or” are now supplemented by a new connective - “and/or” - which was discussed a few years ago in the witty book Federal Prose - How to Write in and/or for Washington.⁵ Of these three conjunctions, only the latter occurs in one of the Samoyed languages.⁶ Despite these differences in the inventory of conjunctions, all three varieties of messages observed in “federal prose” may be distinctly translated both into tradition al English and into this Samoyed language. Federal prose: 1) John and Peter, 2) John or Peter, 3) John and/ or Peter will come. Traditional English: 3) John and Peter or one of them will come. Samoyed: John and/ or Peter both will come, 2) John and/ or Peter, one of them will come.

If some grammatical category is absent in a given language, its meaning may be translated into this language by lexical means. Dual forms like Old Russian брата are translated with the help of the numeral: “two brothers.” It is more difficult to remain faithful to the original when we translate into a language provided with a certain grammatical category from a language devoid of such a category. When translating the English sentence “She has brothers” into a language which discriminates dual and plural, we are compelled either to make our own choice between two statements “She has two brothers” – “She has more than two” or to leave the decision to the listener and say: “She has either two or more than two brothers.” Again in translating from a language without grammatical number into English one is obliged to select one of the two possibilities - “brother” or “brothers” or to confront the receiver of this message with a two-choice situation: “She has either one or more than one brother.”

As Boas neatly observed, the grammatical pattern of a language (as opposed to its lexical stock) determines those aspects of each experience that must be expressed in the given language: “We have to choose between these aspects, and one or the other must be chosen.”⁷ In order to translate accurately the English sentence “I hired a worker,” a Russian needs supplementary information, whether this action was completed or not and whether the worker was a man or a woman, because he must make his choice between a verb of completive or noncompletive aspect - нанял or нанимал - and between a masculine and feminine noun - работника or работницу. If I ask the utterer of the English sentence whether the worker was male or female, my question may be judged irrelevant or indiscreet, whereas in the Russian version of this sentence an answer to this question is obligatory. On the other hand, whatever the choice of Russian grammatical forms to translate the quoted English message, the translation will give no answer to the question of whether I “hired” or “have hired” the worker, or whether he/she was an indefinite or definite worker (“a” or “the”). Because the information required by the English and Russian grammatical pattern is unlike, we face quite different sets of two-choice situations; therefore a chain of translations of one and the same isolated sentence from English into Russian and vice versa could entirely deprive such a message of its initial content. The Geneva linguist S. Karcevski used to

compare such a gradual loss with a circular series of unfavorable currency transactions. But evidently the richer the context of a message, the smaller the loss of information.

Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey. Each verb of a given language imperatively raises a set of specific yes-or-no questions, as for instance: is the narrated event conceived with or without reference to its completion? Is the narrated event presented as prior to the speed event or not? Naturally the attention of native speakers and listeners will be constantly focused on such items as are compulsory in their verbal code.

In its cognitive function, language is minimally dependent on the grammatical pattern because the definition of our experience stands in complementary relation to metalinguistic operations - the cognitive level of language not only admits but directly requires recoding interpretation, i.e., translation. Any assumption of ineffable or untranslatable cognitive data would be a contradiction in terms. But in jest, in dreams, in magic, briefly, in what one would call everyday verbal mythology and in poetry above all, the grammatical categories carry a high semantic import. In these conditions, the question of translation becomes much mare entangled and controversial.

Even such a category as grammatical gender, often cited as merely formal, plays a great role in the mythological attitudes of a speech community. In Russian the feminine cannot designate a male person, nor the masculine specify a female. Ways of personifying or metaphorically interpreting inanimate nouns are prompted by their gender. A test in the Moscow Psychological Institute (1915) showed that Russians, prone to personify the weekdays, consistently represented Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday as males and Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday as females, without realizing that this distribution was due to the masculine gender of the first three names (понедельник, вторник, четверг) as against the feminine gender of the others (среда, пятница, суббота). The fact that the word for Friday is masculine in some Slavic languages and feminine in others is reflected in the folk traditions of the corresponding peoples, which differ in their Friday ritual. The widespread Russian superstition that a fallen knife presages a male guest and a fallen fork a female one is determined by the masculine gender of нож “knife” and the feminine of вилка “fork” in Russian. In Slavic and other languages where “day” is masculine and “night” feminine, day is represented by poets as the lover of night. The Russian painter Repin was baffled as to why Sin had been depicted as a woman by German artists: he did not realize that “sin” is feminine in German (die Sünde), but masculine in Russian (грех). Likewise a Russian child, while reading a translation of German tales, was astounded to find that Death, obviously a woman (Russian смерть, fem.), was pictured as an old man (German der Tod, masc.). My Sister Life, the title of a book of poems by Boris Pasternak, is quite natural in Russian, where “life” is feminine жизнь, but was enough to reduce to despair the Czech poet Josef Hora in his attempt to translate these poems, since in Czech this noun is masculine život.

What was the initial question which arose in Slavic literature at its very beginning? Curiously enough, the translator’s difficulty in preserving the symbolism of genders, and the cognitive irrelevance of this difficulty, appears to be the main topic of the earliest Slavic original work, the preface to the first translation of the Evangeliarium, made in the early 860’s by the founder of Slavic letters and liturgy, Constantine the Philosopher, and recently restored and interpreted by A. Vaillant.⁸ “Greek, when translated into another language, cannot always be reproduced identically, and that happens to each language being translated,” the Slavic apostle states. “Masculine nouns ‘river’ and ‘star’ in Greek, are feminine in another language as река and звезда in Slavic.” According to Vaillant’s commentary, this divergence effaces the symbolic identification of the rivers with demons and of the stars with angels in the Slavic translation of two of Matthew’s verses (7:25 and 2:9). But to this poetic obstacle, Saint Constantine resolutely opposes the precept of Dionysius the Areopagite, who called for chief attention to the cognitive values (силе разума) and not to the words themselves.

In poetry, verbal equations become a constructive principle of the text. Syntactic and morphological categories, roots, and affixes, phonemes and their components (distinctive features) - in short, any constituents of the verbal code are confronted, juxtaposed, brought into contiguous relation according to the principle of similarity and contrast and carry their own autonomous signification. Phonemic similarity is sensed as semantic relationship. The pull, or to use a more erudite, and perhaps more precise term - paronomasia, reigns over poetic art, and whether its rule is absolute or limited, poetry by definition is untranslatable. Only creative transposition is possible: either intralingual transposition - from one poetic shape into another, or interlingual transposition - from one language into another, or finally intersemiotic transposition - from one system of signs into another, e.g., from verbal art into music, dance, cinema, or painting.

If we were to translate into English the traditional formula Traduttore, traditore as “the translator is a betrayer,” we would deprive the Italian rhyming epigram of all its paronomastic value. Hence a cognitive attitude would compel us to change this aphorism into a more explicit statement and to answer the questions: translator of what messages? betrayer of what values?

Notes

1 Bertrand Russell, «Logical Positivism,» Revue Internationale de Philosophie, IV

(1950), 18; cf. p. 3.

2 Cf. John Dewey, «Peirce’s Theory of Linguistic Signs, Thought, and Meaning,»

The Journal of Philosophy, XLIII (1946), 91.

3 Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Thought, and Reality (Cambridge, Mass.,

1956), p. 235.

4 Niels Bohr, «On the Notions of Causality and Complementarity,» Dialectica, I

(1948), 317f.

5 James R. Masterson and Wendell Brooks Phillips, Federal Prose (Chapel Hill,

N. C., 1948), p. 40f.

6 Cf. Knut Bergsland, «Finsk-ugrisk og almen språkvitenskap,» Norsk Tidsskrift

for Sproavidenskap, xv (1949), 374f.

7 Franz Boas, «Language,» General Anthropology (Boston, 1938), FP, 132f.

8 Andre Vaillant, «Le Préface de l’Évangeliaire vieux-slave,» Revue des Études

Slaves, XXIV (1948), 5f.

Roman Jakobson - On Linguistic Aspects of Translation- summary

Roman Jakobson - On Linguistic Aspects of Translation - full text

Zizi Papacharissi / The virtual sphere: The internet as a public sphere – summary and review

2011-09-20T14:46:00.000-07:00

According to Zizi Papacharissi in "The virtual sphere: The internet as a public sphere" web technology has the capacity for reestablishing the public sphere, giving the global public the possibility of freely and equally debate various issues. The problem that Papacharissi points to is the instead of promoting a new and equal behavioral patterns, it seems that the global capitalistic trend is still highly influential with the internet following it. For Papacharissi, the conditions for the constitution of a public sphere do not depend only on technology, but also on its users and owners.

In did today's technology allows more people to engage in politics but this is still not sufficient, in Papacharissi's view, the reestablish the public sphere. At its beginning the internet seemed to hold a utopian promise of democracy. But Papacharissi says celebration were too early.

"The virtual sphere: The internet as a public sphere" tries to find out how political use of the internet will affect the public sphere. Papacharissi thinks that the internet promotes debate, which sustains a public sphere which in turn supports democracy. What Papacharissi is interested in is how internet discourse contributing to democracy.

For Papacharissi, there was never really a true public sphere in the sense that Habermas described. Be it the Greek agora of the bourgeois public sphere, they were always exclusive rather than inclusive. What Papacharissi is asking now is whether the internet is capable of creating the long dreamt of public sphere that never existed. The other option is that the internet will become just another sphere which is controlled by capitalists (Papacharissi leans towards the second option).

According to Papacharissi, access to information in the internet remained unequal and even favors apathy. The exponential growth of the internet and content in it makes it hard for single, especially weak, voices to be heard. The ability to be anonymous allows the individual to say more, but his words mean less.

Papacharissi also holds that the internet is not really a public sphere. It was established by capitalism and for capitalism. The real interesting question that Papacharissi asks in " The virtual sphere: The internet as a public sphere" is weather to new public sphere of the internet be translated into material political action, and will people give up on the anonymity and expose themselves in the public sphere.

Habermas' / The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society - summary

Foucault's concept of heterotopia

2011-09-20T14:18:00.000-07:00

Heterotopia is a concept introduced by Michel Foucault in his 1966 book "Les mots et les choses" to describe the manner in which defined spaces which surround the subject in social existence can reduce his autonomy and even his sense of identity. According to Foucault a heterotopia is the manner in which society and culture, having power on the one hand and the interest of realizing this power on the other, define the subject through his differentiation from general society. Initially heterotopia was uses by Foucault to describe a non-real verbal space and he late expanded to term to refer to a physical as well as non-physical space.

People differed from the public sphere can be seen as subject, members of the social structure and as having free will, but at the same time they are subjects of a culture which examines, labels and constructs them as socially adapted entities. The heterotopia breaks apart the subject through his reconstitution, his "amendment" and "proper" disciplining.

Foucault argues the prisons, mental institutions and even schools are such types of heterotopias. This is because such sites are separated from their surroundings, control movement in and out of them and inside of them and thus these heterotopias are able to control them.

According to Foucault, heterotopias are almost invisible and perceived as natural by members of a society, but they are nevertheless measures of disciplining, controlling and punishing of the different and deviant. In other words, heterotopias are seen as natural, necessary and harmless when in fact they are a way for society to regulate out behavior.

Foucault believes that the formation of heterotopias is a critical process in the formation of social life. A heterotopia allows for the consolidation of a mass into a distinguished society which exists at a given time and space. The concept of heterotopia can be linked to the manner in which ideology is reproducing, creating and imposing its norm on its members. This process of social construction, Foucault says, has the capacity of differentiation the normal from the abnormal and through this to constitute a groups identity as well as the private identity of each of its members.

Habermas' / The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society - summary

2011-09-20T14:15:00.000-07:00

Habermas' / The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society - summary

Jürgen Habermas' The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society is without a doubt on of the most important and constituting books in media studies.

In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society Haberams articulates his famous notion of the public sphere. According to Habermas the 18^th and 19^th centuries saw the beginning of a new type of bourgeois public sphere that subsequently declined in the 20^th century. Habermas explains the development of the public sphere from the monarchical and feudal forms it formerly took that were organized around symbolic representations of power and status. The liberal or bourgeois public sphere appeared when constitutional principles separated the private from the public domain. The bourgeois public sphere developed within the private sphere and gave rise to the democratically significant public opinion. The avant-garde of the bourgeois public sphere according to Habermas was intellectual activities in coffee-houses and salons that saw the inception of a critical attitude towards society. This type of public sphere grew in parallel to early capitalism and liberalism.

The second part of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society relates to the transition from the bourgeois public sphere to modern mass society. Consumer capitalism began to invade the public sphere in the 20^th century, blurring the separation between the private and the public, the state and civil society. The bourgeois public sphere underwent transformation in a dialectic machnism.

Habermas' The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society was later on criticized for supposing equal and open access to the public sphere which was in reality exclusive and reserved only for white bourgeois males. In order to take part in the public sphere one had to have education and property, leaving in fact the majority of the population outside the bounds of the public sphere.

Habermas' / The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society - summary

Jürgen Habermas's Public Sphere explained (summary)

2011-09-19T16:26:00.001-07:00

Jürgen Habermas's concept of the public sphere is a realm within social life in which public opinion can be formed and which is accessible to all. The engagement within the public sphere according to Habermas is blind to class positions and the connections between activists in the public sphere are formed through a mutual will to take part in matters that have a general interest. The public sphere, according to Habermas, is a product of democracy.

For Jürgen Habermas, the concept of "public opinion" is the control and criticism of organized political authority which is officially manifested by the public come elections.

Habermas examines the history of the public sphere and hold that in medieval times there existed no separation or distinction between the private and public sphere, due to the class pyramid of the feudal system. This system for Habermas positioned greater power at every level and to this day conventions regarding the ruler persisted, with political authority retained by the highest levels. Rulers saw themselves as the state and not as representatives of the state – meaning that they represent their power to the people and not for the people.

According to Habermas, by the late 18^th century feudal institutions were finally disappearing along with the church's rule, making way to public power which was given autonomy. Rulers become public entities and professionalism bore the first signs of the rule of the bourgeois which became autonomous in relation to the government. Representational publicity was pushed over by a public force that formed around national and territorial sentiments and individual struggling with public power found themselves outside its collective power. The term "public" did not refer to the representation of a man with authority, but rather became the legitimate power of exercising power. The public sphere, according to Habermas, was the final stage of these developments.

Habermas sees the liberal model of the public sphere as something which is unprecedented in history. Different state constitutions contain clauses specifying the liberal model of the public sphere – private people joining together to form a public and thus mediate the relationship between the state and the bourgeois society in order to supervise over and educate the political government. In the second half of the 18^th century, Haberman holds, literary journalism is on the rise and it is no longer just a supplier of news but rather a weapon in the politics of parties, taking on a new journalistic vocation: editing. Information trade is now the name of the fame, trading public opinion – the quintessential symbol of the public sphere. In other words, Habermas claims that the public sphere as we know it was formed when journalism became a public institution with the aim of promoting public debate. Only after the establishment of a democratic-bourgeois constitution could newspapers deal with public opinion for the purpose of commerce and not only for taking sides in a social-political debate (we are talking 1830's onwards). Due to the flow of private interests into the newspapers and mass media did changes in the public sphere begin to take shape, such as ideological content, commercials and so forth.

But according to Habermas, the liberal model of the public sphere does not sit well with the modern industrialized democratic state, since the ideology involved with this model of the public sphere is tied with values that have changed since the 18^th century. Journalism and propaganda have expanded as well as the boundaries of the public and the public sphere. In addition, the public has lost it cohesion due to the high standards of meritocratic education which have created classes, gaps and conflicts which once resided in the private sphere but have now migrated to the public sphere. The private and public spheres have mixed with each other, social and political organizations are now invading each other. Thus, according to Habermas, a new feudalization of the public sphere is brought about.

The contemporary public sphere is characterized according to Habermas by the weathering of its critical roles and capacities. In the past publicity was used to subject people or the present political decisions to the public. Today the public sphere is recruited for the use of hidden policies by interest groups. For Habermas, the principles of the public sphere are weakening in the 20^th century. The public is no longer made out of masses of individuals but of organized people that institutionally exerting their influence on the public sphere and debate.

see also:

Habermas' / The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society - summary

Zizi Papacharissi / The virtual sphere: The internet as a public sphere – summary and review

Roger Silverstone - "Television, Ontological Security and Transitional Object"

2011-09-19T14:04:00.000-07:00

In his "Television, Ontological Security and Transitional Object" Roger Silverstone argues that television protects the individual and that it is an inseparable part of him in the cognitive as well as the emotional levels, and that television fills his time and space. Silverstone's "Television, Ontological Security and Transitional Object" presents three perceptions that emphasize the importance of television: television offers ontological security – the mechanism which allows the individual to survive in society. According to Silverstone television grants us the sense of personal identity and a feeling of continuity of that identity. This security is established through "remote trust – a sense of ontological security without real life experience. Television (by means of its technological capabilities) links us to the world and gives us a sense of "remote trust" to the truth that it represents. In addition Silverstone argues that television provides us with a transitional object which allows in Winnicott's psychoanalysis to disengage from the mother and gain a sense of selfhood. Television fills the absence of the mother and the functions that she represents such as continuity, indestructibility (which caters ontological security), daily time patterns (regular viewing hours) and it organizes the domestic space with its central position in the household.

Silverstone believes that media in general and television in particular fills many function the everyday life of people. To begin with television structures our daily routine – people watch the same programs at the same hours. Furthermore, television structures the domestic space by the position it has in the house. Television, according to Silverstone, strengths the sense of ontological security in the individual and forms the basis of his personal identity and the continuity of that identity. Television also offers remote trust which helps us sustain our faith in reality without directly experiencing it. To most significant role Silverstone ascribes television in "Television, Ontological Security and Transitional Object" is that of transitional object which is crucial for the formation of an independent identity.

Susan Sontag - On Photography: Photographic evangels - Summary - part 2

2011-09-16T01:50:00.000-07:00

In trying to defend the aesthetic and moral value of photography, the "Photographic Evangels" discussed by Susan Sontag in chapter 5 of "On Photography" had to fight for photography's claim to the statues of fine art (as opposed to craft) in light of its dependency on mechanical equipment.

The initial claim posed by the "photographic evangels" was the photography wasn't a mechanical coping of reality but rather a new way of seeing it which matches the aesthetic value of painting. And after being established and acclaimed as an art form, nowadays photography and its current "evangels" can deny that what they are doing is an art. Now they fight of the modernist imposition of artistic nature on photography. For art to remain art, it must oppose what was up until now considered to be art.

But modern "photographic evangels", according to Sontag, still can't shake the artistic view on photography. Moreover, the dialogue with art and especially painting continues to influence the conception of photography (like the tendency towards black and white photography, which is both "artistic" and a break from painting).

According to Sontag, various discussions on photography have had to do with its relation to art and painting – how close can photography come to painting without losing its claim to being unlimited in scope and capacities of representation. But art, Sontag holds, also shelters photography from being a devouring, coping engagement with reality and safeguards it as a selective, interpretative and unique way to represent to world.

The debate about photography as art was publically decided when photography entered museums and galleries. This was, according to Sontag, the victory of the modern taste which sought a loser definition of what art is. However, with photography entering the museum, the problem of distinguishing the professional artistic photographer from the amateur or the functional became more critical. Deciding photography as an art form drew attention to its stylistic variance and history, which again brought about the problem of delineation. Do functionally intended photographs (such as journalistic photography) belong in the museum? Another problem that Sontag notes it that when photography becomes a part of the museum in becomes more about itself and less about its subjects, in a sense it becomes more form than content. Another problem Sontag notes in this respect is that of photographic authorship.

Sontag argues that it is content and not form which determines the viewer's appreciation of a photograph, but it seems that form still dictates photographic taste. While photography's authority is always dependant on its relation to the object, Sontag holds that all claims to photography as art must address its subjective vision. For this, all aesthetic judgments of photography are ambivalent, which accounts for Sontag for the shifts in photographic taste. Sontag describes how an emphasis on technical ability gave way to favoring "photographic vision" in aesthetic judgments of photography.

The subjective component in the modernistic conception of art requires photography to constitute the photographer as "auteur" and his works as a part of an individual style, his own photographic vision. Another problem of photography as art is the scarce vocabulary which is used to describe photographs, a scarcity which Sontag attributes to the short millage of photography criticism. While heavily borrowing its vocabulary, photography according to Sontag cannot borrow painting's aesthetic criteria such as authenticity. Something that photography and painting still have in common in relation to judgment is novelty, and the value granted for new innovative ways of expression.

In regards to innovation, Sontag notes that museums do not offer normative judgments on photography, but rather only various ways of addressing it, refuting the idea of a photographic canon. Unlike painting, photography is very loosely governed or characterized by "schools" or periods. With photography, painting eventually gave up attempts of accurately and realistically depicting the world (leaving this to photography) and allowed it to move on to its next challenge: abstraction.

Photography, for Sontag, changed art in the sense that the Benjeminic "aura" of originality and uniqueness is no longer so important – photography gave up the original in favor or reproduction, and art followed. Sontag furthers holds that photography is not in itself an art form, like language is not always poetry. Photography is not an art, but it has the capacity of turning virtually everything into art, and in this photography is moving art towards a growing focus on medium, not content.

Susan Sontag - On Photography:

Chapter one - In Plato's Cave
chapter two - America, Seen Through Photographs Darkly

chapter four - The Heroism of Vision

Susan Sontag - On Photography: Photographic evangels - Summary

2011-09-14T17:08:00.000-07:00

Susan Sontag - On Photography: Photographic evangels - Summary

In part 5 of "On Photography" – "Photographic Evangels" Susan Sontag Discusses the nature of the art of photography through various claims to the nature of essence of photography and aesthetic and moral views on photography.

At the opening of "Photographic Evangels" Sontag points to two foundational views on photography – that which sees photography as a sober, minded and knowledged action and that which views photography as an act of intuitive encounter with the world. The latter speaks of a certain state of mind involved with photography which leads to what Sontag calls "an epistemological paradox" in which photography is presented as a kind of "knowledge without knowledge". The former's take on photography is that the photographic image must pre-exist in the mind of the photographer, and that photography is hence a deliberate, crafted and self-aware action. These two views presented by Sontag, it should be noted, mandate different techniques of photography - one which spontaneously shot everything and one which requires prior planning.

Another issue treated by Sontag in "Photographic Evangels" is that of creativity in photography and photography as a means of self expression. Here Sontag discusses the gap between the notion of photography as expression and that of photography as a realist depiction of reality. Whether an individual subjective and creative practice or one which is true only to reality, Sontag notes that both takes on photography converge and the pre-assumption that photography is a unique method of discovery – a way to see reality in a way that in only possible through photography.

This brings Sontag's "Photographic Evangels" to the question of realism. Photography was often held as a realist medium, and Sontag defines photographic realism as claiming not to what there "really" is but rather to what I "really" see. The realist approach to photography as defined by Sontag stays true to the notion of photography as discovery, assuming the reality is hidden and can be revealed by photography. Photography takes on the function of estrangement, with Sontag arguing that this approach holds that representing something through photography is presenting something that is hidden. This, ironically, leads in Sontag's view to the formalist approach that fells that there must be a gap between reality and its representation in which art works. The imposition of form on the realistic, supposedly "transparent" medium of photography, is the way in which the realist vision on photography meats with its opposing theory.

For Sontag in "photographic Evangels", the subjective and objective views on photography converge in what taking a photograph is really all about. Photography depicts realities that are only discernable through photographs (which doesn't make them less of a reality). The camera is a medium for discovery, both self discovery and for discovering reality.

In "Photographic Evangels" Susan Sontag further discusses the notion widely held by the "photographic evangels", early photographers and theorists of photography, of photography as discovery, be it a realistic or formalistic discovery. Both variations deny photography as an aggressive act of exploitatively expropriating reality, objects and people. The subjective approach denies this aggressive nature of photography by emphasizing the kind a gentle gaze of the cameras while the objective realist approach stresses the abolition of the self in the depiction of reality through photography.

According to Sontag in "photographic Evangels", one result of these two ideals is the ambivalence towards means of photography. Many photographers gave up using more advanced photography equipment in order to "disarm" themselves in relation to reality and to preserve the expressional mode of photography that might be lost if photography was to become too accurate. This also leads to technological attempts to realize forsaken possibilities in the early development of photography.

Photographic Evangels - part 2

On Photography:

Chapter one - In Plato's Cave
chapter two - America, Seen Through Photographs Darkly

chapter four - The Heroism of Vision

stuff you might want to read:

Susan Sontag - On Photography: Photographic evangels - Summary

Theodor Adorno - culture industry reconsidered - summary

2011-08-30T06:03:00.000-07:00

In "Culture Industry Reconsidered" Theodor Adorno discusses the Frankfurt School concept of the culture industry and its applications in media. According to Adorno media content is adapted to mass consumption. Content is presented in an ordered fashion and time table, in order to appeal to the largest portion of the public. In order to achieve its appeal, mass media combines high and low culture and mixes the boundaries between them. Masses according to Adorno are perceived by the culture industry as objects for calculation. The consumer is certain that media is adapted to his needs while in fact the culture industry produces this sentiment in order to strengthen its influence. "the voice of the master" – the rulers of the culture industry – transmits humiliating content to the public that all have to do with the ruling ideology, with little critical resistance by the masses.

According to Adorno in "Culture Industry Reconsidered" the culture industry's interest is to preserve its affinity to the narrowing cycle of capital as its source of living. For Adorno, media's influence, its lack of objectivity and monopoly should not be taken lightly. The culture industry gives the illusion of being informed and involved, while in reality the consumer of mass meida is being reduced to minding himself with his own petty matters.

According to Adorno the public refrains from criticizing the media because they are dependent upon it. They need the culture industry in order to achieve pleasure and satisfaction and cannot imaging their lives without it.

The culture industry preserves its power by presenting "the good life" as reality and through false conflicts that trade him for his real ones. The culture industry according to Adorno spreads false values and establish the individual's willingness to be a part of society and to coordinate his interests with it, as they are portrayed by the culture industry. The culture industry takes advantage of the weaker classes by making its content shallow and widely appealing and thus demoting the value of culture.

Adorno concludes "Culture Industry Reconsidered" with the assertion that the "happiness" produced for the masses by the culture industry is imaginary, it induced people to pursue unachievable dreams and represses all those that can oppose it (what Adorno calls "mass deception").

worth reading:

Characteristics of ideology according to Louis Althusser

2011-08-28T15:55:00.000-07:00

In "On Ideology" Louis Althusser describes the workings of the ideological state apparatuses which use ideology as a means of "soft power" hegemonic control.

Althusser lists a few features that make up the concept of ideology:

1. Ideology has not history

This point was already presented by Marx but Althusser's formulation and reasoning is very different. While Marx held ideology to be without history on account of its decisive break from material reality, Althusser thought that ideology has a structure and function the apply in an unvarying manner and therefore ideology is a-historical for being "omni-historical". In other words, ideology presents itself as being constant an valid across history, and it therefore has no history.

2. Ideology operates individuals

Althusser held that his theory of ideology is one which demonstrates how ideology functions in a concrete manner in daily life, employing a mechanism which causes individuals to act on their own free will.

3. Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.

Althusser is critical of the approach that hold ideology to be the imagined representation of the real material conditions of human being (the "false consciousness" tradition). He does so by simply asking why do people need such a representation of their material existence? He offers to further develop the formulation of ideology such that ideology is not a distorted image of reality but rather an imaginary distortion of people's relation to reality.

4. Ideology has a material existence

This point made by Althusser might at first seem odd, since how can something that was just defined as being "imaginary" have material existence? But Althusser's point in made clear when he argues that ideology always resides within a mechanism and its practices. For Althusser a person always acts in accordance with his world view of beliefs. This relations between action and ideology are regulated through material practices (such as going to church). For Althusser, ideology resides in a material ideological apparatus which commands ordered material practices which are regulated through ritual – practices which shape the material action of the subject which acts in conscious adherence to his beliefs.

5. Ideology hails or interpolates concrete individuals as subjects and individuals are always already-subjects

This point is made out of two theses:

1. There is no practice of any kind which is not done by means of ideology and in accordance with it

2. There is no ideology but through a subject and for subjects.

For Althusser ideology exists only through its object – the subject, and in this the subject is the constitutive category of ideology. For Althusser what characterizes ideology most is that it imposes certainties as certainties, and they make denotation meaningful, allowing for words to "point at something" in the world. One of these certainties introduced by ideology is the relation between the subject and his image as projected to him by ideology (Althusser is following Lacan here). The way ideology constitutes the subject (and itself) is through what Althusser refers to as interpolation – the appeal to the individual pre-ideological self, and in this act situating him as the object, the addressed and questioned, of ideology. Ideology gains the recognition of individuals that the space that ideology points out in the world is indeed the space that they occupy.

For Althusser, individuals are always "already subjects", even before they are born since the family, or the ideology of family, has already pre-interpolated the soon-to-born child into its subject.

stuff worth reading:

Louis Althusser: On ideology: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses - summary, review and notes.

2011-08-28T15:52:00.000-07:00

In "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" Louis Althusser asks the traditional Marxist question of how are conditions and relations of production being reproduced and maintained is society. Althusser's answer is that two types of mechanisms are at play here: "repressive state apparatuses which gain abidance and cooperation from the public through physical coercion means such as the police, army, prisons, courts etc. the other type of mechanism Althusser notes are the "ideological state apparatuses". ideological state apparatuses are somewhat reminiscent of Gramsci's concept of hegemony and soft power. According to Althusser ideological state apparatuses" are sustained by cultural institutions such as the education system, the church, the family, media and culture. The ideological state apparatuses gain free willed cooperation and a sense of choice of what is in reality imposed.

Althusser holds that both repressive state apparatuses and ideological state apparatuses operate together by combining repression and ideology, with the difference between them being the different nature of their workings. From here Althusser turns to defining the concept of ideology, dominant in the ideological state apparatuses, which serves to perpetuate class subordination and exploitative relations of production over generations.

In "On Ideology" Althusser lists five key features of ideology:

1. ideology has no history

2. ideology operates people

3. ideology "represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.

4. Ideology has a material existence.

5. Ideology hails or interpolates concrete individuals as subjects and individuals are always already-subjects.

Althusser's ideological state apparatuses work through material practices which interpolates individuals into subjects of ideology. This action is enables by the existence of a unique and total Subject (in religion: god). This can be understood through the role Althusser grants to his concept of double specularity in ideology, double specularity being a doubled mirror effect.

The structure of ideology for Althusser is a centered one with the subject in its middle and society around him in a way the assures all concerned that indeed they are who they are and he is who he is. In other words, ideology and ideological state apparatuses work as a double mirror in that that they first establish the individual's relation to the reality of his life and then certify that this is really the way things are and could not be otherwise. In this manner ideology gets people to operate on their own free will.

stuff worth reading

Todd Gitlin / PRIME TIME IDEOLOGY: THE HEGEMONIC PROCESS IN TELEVISION ENTERTAINMENT – summary, notes and review

2011-08-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

In "Prime Time Ideology" Todd Gitlin Is attempting to demonstrate how the ruling class ideology is transmitted through various features of American television. Giltin follows Gramsci and his concept of hegemony as "soft power" that coerces the working class into obedience without any use of physical power.

At the beginning of "Prime Time Ideology" Gitlin is relating to Theodor Adorno and the thinkers of the Frankfurt school of neo-Marxist though who held popular culture to be shallow and synthetic and as working to subjugate the working class. For this reason, the working class does not revolt. Hegemonic media content dictates public life and it is a medium for transferring ideology. Mass culture does not produce ideology, it merely focuses it and reproduces it in the service of the ruling elite.

According to Gitling, hegemony analysis in media should be conducted from both top to bottom and bottom-up. The integration of the interests of the ruling political and economical systems should be examined. The opposite analysis should examine the function of the Gramscian hegemony in social life, the correspondence between the offered ideology and common sentiments and should relate to the role of media as setting forth the public order of the day.

According to Gitlin, the ruling hegemony is validated by television in various ways:

Format and formula– the broadcasting program is built to meat conventional leisure time. The program repeats itself not only out of economical considerations but also out of a reluctance the deepen popular characters on television. Prime time ideology aims at presenting, and preserving, social stability: programming patterns are contant, alternatives are always available for the disinterested audience, every show has its determined allocated screen time. All these, Gitlin says, are subjected to a rigid rule and regularity. These features of prime time television and the formulas create the illusion of not only stability and the impossibility of change, but also change in the sense that things are constantly improving, a false sense of progress with the replacement of various shows, as if we are always getting better at making television, and there is reason the stay tuned in. Gitlin also employs the concept of "the organization of leisure" – the way television organized our lives around in schedule.

Commercials – commercials according to Gitlin accustom us to behaving like a market rather than a public, and as consumers rather than citizens. Public problems (such as air pollution) are presented as if they can be solved through private consumer products. Commercials gradually invade our lives. We give up fighting them and allow them access to both the public sphere and our own domestic sphere. The problem is that by giving commercials access to our lives we are also granting their distorting and manipulative function a right of way.

Genres – prime time television selects content that appeals to the highest spending audience. Genres indicate social moods and shifts in genres indicate changing mentality. In sports broadcasters transmit ideology since they do not only show the game, but also interpret it. Statistics in sports have a special function of complementing the viewer on him "knowing something" about something.

Background and character types – have you ever wondered why television tends to favor depictions of glamour and success? According to Giltin the answer is that this way commercials, promising glamour and success, work better. Media intentionally avoids depictions of les-missrables with which the public does not wish to identify. Show that do grant thw working class some screen time are aimed at establishing the sense of superiority of the middle and ruling class. Television will fool most of the people most of the time by giving them what they want in exchange for their passiveness and for allowing commercials into their living room and family.

Perspective – according to Gitlin political and social conflicts shape television content by using stereotypical and divergent characters. Television can either legitimize diversions (ethnical or sexual but rarely political) or it can de-legitimize either the mainstream or the alternative. Changes in perspectives are changes in social values.

Media hegemony is not all encompassing and unavoidable. There are a number of ways viewers can employ resistance tactics while watching television (see Stuart Hall's "Encoding, Decoding").

According to Gitlin, cultural hegemony pertains to offer answers to difficult questions by offering a false "happy end" world. Rebellious and subversive films (for example "fight club") allow an outlet for social discontent but they offer unreasonable instant bombastic solutions that have nothing to do with gradual change in actual reality.

Towards the end of "Prime Time Ideology" Gitlin describes the hegemonic process in liberal capitalism. By appealing to popular taste media industries are able to reproduce existing social realtions. Hegemony, as described by Gramsci, has the capacity for assimilating any form of resistance and therefore the prime time ideology has an interest in amplifying alternatives to it in order to dull their edge. It employs closed texts that are not open for interpretation and so on. But the hegemonic system is never final nor stable. It is a constant field of negotiation and struggle between mainstream hegemonic forms and their alternatives. Social conflicts are translated into the cultural system and disarmed there. According to Gitlin consumer capitalism hegemonic ideology holds that happiness, freedom or brotherhood can be sustained through material private possessions. This is the one uneatable starting point of prime time ideology.

Roland Barthes / Rhetoric of the Image – summary, notes and review

2011-08-27T07:53:00.000-07:00

Roland Barthes / Rhetoric of the Image – summary, notes and review

What Barthes is essentially trying to do in "Rhetoric of the Image" is to examine and understand the messages that images contain, and the extent to which they take part in creating an ideological worldview. That is to say, Barthes is asking how ideologically charged are images and transmit an educational message to society. "Rhetoric of the Image" focuses on commercials since they contain a highly condensed image that aims for maximum efficiency in transferring its message. Commercials have to get their message across in 30 seconds and they therefore employ highly charged and intensive images in order to convince us to buy this or that product. Therefore, for Barthes, commercials are a very convenient medium in which to explore the way ideologies are reflected in visual images. Commercials have to be able to speak in a conventional language, use conventional terminology and transmit its message very fast, and therefore they provide access to conventional ideologies of their time.

In "Rhetoric of the Image" Barthes works along the lines of two theoretical distinctions: connotation and denotation, and the internal relations of the sign between the signifier and the signified.

The signified, according to Barthes, has two level of meaning: the denotational and the connotational. The denotation is the dictionary meaning of the sign/word and it detonates something in the real world. The connotation is the interpretative association that comes with the sign and is something which is culturally and context dependant. For Barthes connotation is a higher level of interpretation, and he assumes that being a part of the same culture involves having similar connotations to certain signs.

Additional concepts use by Barthes in "Rhetoric of the Image" are the visual and the audio levels. The visual level of the commercial is everything that we see and the audio level is everything that we hear while watching the commercial. The audio and visual level interact to create the effect of the commercial. The audio level anchors the visual level, it tells where to look and on what we should focus our attention.

In "Rhetoric of the Image" Barthes gives the example of a pasta brand imported from Italy to France. The commercial is in Italian despite the fact that it is aimed at the French customer. Barthes holds that the fact that the viewer cannot understand the things spoken does not stand in the way of associating Italian with quality pasta.

The rhetoric, the repetition of images in commercials, is determined according to Barthes by the sum of meanings yielded by the signs which compose the code and are in the image with ideology tying them together into a coherent utterance. That is, Barthes holds that the repeating images in the 30 second commercial represent messages that are already a code for ideologically determined meanings.

In conclusion, in "Rhetoric of the Image" Roland Barthes is arguing that "natural" reality is not essentially encrypted or encoded but rather that it is its reproduction is a visual image that codes it and enforces cultural meaning upon it. Visual mediums are perceived as portraying reality while in fact they are constructing it.

Roland Barthes / Rhetoric of the Image – summary, notes and review

suggested reading:

Constacne Penley – "Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture" – summary – part 2

2011-08-03T02:17:00.000-07:00

part 1 - 2

In "Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture" feminist thinker Constance Penley analyses "Star Trek" fanzines written by women and depicting written and visual accounts of romantic and sexual relations between Captain Kirk and Spock, written by mostly heterosexual women.

What Penley is trying to figure out in "Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture" is why do these "Star Trek" fans write their sexual fantasies through the bodies of two men, and why specifically Kirk and Spock.

Penley notes that although the stories depict Kirk and Spock as having sexual relations they are not portrayed as gay. Still there is the occasional tendency to "allow" the Star Trek characters to be homosexuals. For Penley this phenomenon enables the women a wider range of identification and desire – the fantasy offers them the opportunity to be either Kirk or Spock along with the possibility of having them both as the objects of their sexual desire, since heterosexual men are not unavailable to women. The binary distinction between desire and the object of desire is not organized according to Penley along gender relations.

Penley holds that the transition from psychoanalytic interpretation models based on voyeurism and fetishism in feminist cinema theory to a model based on fantasy enables an account of a wide range of identifications that transcend gender boundaries.

The fact that women can identify with men is not new. But the question that concerns Penley's "Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture" is why specifically these men, why Star Trek Kirk and Spock?

Penley answers this question my first noting that female characters in Star Trek were always disappointing to fans. This disappointment is what initially led the women who write the Star Trek fanzines to "take over" the world of Star Trek and to propel it in their own desired directions: a better formula of romance and a pornography that is attractive to women. However they were able to do so only through the characters they admired, desired and could identify with. For Penley identification in fantasy is not only with the character, but can also be directed at the situation or narrative. One of the most important aspects of the fan's identification with Kirk and Spock is according to Penley the social and political values that the world of Star Trek represents.

Penley concurs with Lamb and Veith who argued that the Star trek characters of Kirk and Spock allow women to imagine a transcendental unity which is not based on gender power relations, but rather on radical equality. But this for her still does not answer the question of why Star Trek and why Kirk and Spock?

Penly notes the women's Star Trek fanzines often contain S&M scenes between Kirk and Spock. Using the ruse of science fiction the women are able integrate S&M scenes while preserving the distinction between the real and fantasy worlds. If S&M is taking place I these stories, it is taking place in some other universe that has its own rules, among mirror doubles of the heroes, with the occasional flashback that still connects the two worlds.

Constacne Penley's "Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture" and her research on Star Trek women's fanzines illustrates the complexity of relations between women and popular culture. The Star Trek fans in "Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture" are not passive consumers of popular culture and they sustain a complex and creative relationship with it. They use popular culture as the basis for creative action.

suggested reading:

Constacne Penley – "Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture" – summary and review

2011-08-03T02:14:00.000-07:00

Constacne Penley's "Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture" deals with the relations between feminism, psychoanalysis and popular culture by focusing on questions regarding the production of subjectivity and identity. Penley examines these questions by observing a group of female "Star Trek" fans who produce a type of literature that builds on "Star Trek" characters in a genre that combines fiction, pornography and utopian science fiction.

At the opening of "Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture" Penley criticizes the feminist tendency to almost exclusively adopt Nancy Chodorow's model of feminine subjectivity in order to describe the manner in which women consume popular culture products. This model emphasizes a regression to pre-oedipal fantasies as a specific form of feminine identification. Penley argues that this model is too narrow and offers instead a psychoanalytic model of fantasy which enables an account of how the subject shapes a "script" through which he can manage critical questions regarding desire, knowledge and identity, and in which the subject can simultaneously sustain several positions of identification.

Penley follows French psychoanalysis Laplanche and Pontalis who explain that fantasy for the subject is a story that attempts to answer basic questions regarding the origin of the individual, sexuality, gender differences etc. fantasy for them is not the object of desire, but rather the environment which sustains them. Though the subject is always present in the fantasy, he or she can assume several positions which are not necessarily subjective. Laplanche and Pontalis add a Lacanian flavor by pointing to the lack of mutuality between subject and object or the manner in which the subjects is constructed by what is absent in him.

Penley hold that the model of fantasy presented by Freud and Lacan allows the explanation of a number of, even contradicting, subject positions as well as the relation between desire and law – the subject of the symbolic order as well as of the imaginary order. Penley holds that only a detailed account of identification and gender differences can assist in describing what happens in the writing and reading of fanzines, given the multiple options of identification a pleasure presented by them and that do not seem to originate in the pre-oedipal stage.

to part 2 of the summary

suggested reading:

Angela McRobbie – "Post Feminism and Popular Culture" – summary and review

2011-08-02T14:49:00.000-07:00

In "Post Feminism and Popular Culture" (Feminist Media Studies 4, 2004) feminist cultural researcher Angela McRobbie argues that popular culture during the 9o's is characterized by a set back from the achievements of the feminist movement. For McRobbie, contemporary popular culture expresses what has been termed "post feminism".

When relating to post feminism in the context of popular culture McRobbie denies the view on post feminism as a conservative reaction to the achievements of feminism. For McRobbie, post feminism as it is expressed in popular culture relies on the achievements of feminism. Post feminism views these achievements as socially and culturally "obvious". This allows popular culture to portray female characters which lead an independent, equal and free lifestyle (a good recent example is of course "Sex and the City"). However, these independent women, like in Sex and the City, are not abiding according to McRobbie to the principles of feminism and they do not associate themselves with the movement and its goals, therefore not contributing to its political power. Some of these popular culture depictions of modern women use their freedom to chose in adopting female behavioral patterns which feminism tried to abolish.

The second part of Angela McRobbie's "Post Feminism and Popular Culture" uses her critical agenda in analyzing the film "The Bridget Jones Diary" in a manner that illustrates her argument that post feminism is shaping the way women are portrayed in recent popular culture.

suggested reading:

Mikhail Bakhtin: "Carnival and Carnivalesque" – summary and review - part 3

2011-07-22T08:56:00.000-07:00

Mikhail Bakhtin - "Carnival and Carnivalesque" - summary and review

part 1 - 2 - 3

In "Carnival and Carnivalesque" Mikhail Bakhtin describes how starting from the 17^th century the popular carnival life began to disappear. The carnival lost its centrality in people's lives, its forms deteriorated and it lost its authentic meaning of a communal performance in the public square. Still, Bakhtin hold that certain aspects of the carnival persisted and were preserved in modern forms of theatrical and other spectacular performances.

According to Bakhtin, the carnivalesque sense of the world penetrated language and literature and has taking part in shaping their modern forms. The carnivalesque form was manifested in a language of artistic imagery that retained the sensual nature of the carnival. For example, the carnival's familiarity was transformed according to Bakhtin into certain types of prose and is reflected in certain plot structures, situation, narration style and language. During the renaissance the carnivalesque view of the world and its categories of laughter and the symbolic acts of coronation and deposition, of change and ambivalent customs have penetrated and transformed almost all genres of artistic literature. The decline of the carnival in the 17^th century caused it to stop being a direct source of carnivalisation in literature and its effects on the genre was diminished. Thus carnivalization and carnivalesque remained only as a literary tradition. Even though the carnival as a specific cultural form no longer exists in modern times, Bakhtin holds that its legacy, tradition and function live on. Cultural researchers such as John Fiske (in "Understanding Popular Culture" have suggested that certain contemporary cultural forms such as TV game-shows retain the nature and function of the medieval carnival as described by Mikhail Bakhtin.

suggested reading:

Mikhail Bakhtin - "Carnival and Carnivalesque" - summary and review

part 1 - 2 - 3

Mikhail Bakhtin: "Carnival and Carnivalesque" – summary and review - part 2

2011-07-22T08:53:00.000-07:00

Mikhail Bakhtin - "Carnival and Carnivalesque" - summary and review

part 1 - 2 - 3

According to Mikhail Bakhtin in "Carnival and Carnivalesque", the central ritualistic act of the carnival is the false coronation and deposition of the carnival king. In the carnival, the complete opposite of the king – the clown or the slave – is coroneted with all the colors of the ritual, only to be shamefully deposed later. This is the opening act of the carnival and the inception of its reversed world. According to Bakhtin, the core of the carnivalsque sense of the world stands at the base of this act – the pathos of changes and renewal, of death and rebirth. The carnival for Bakhtin is a festival of time which exterminates all and renews all. The coronation and deposition are a dualistic and ambivalent ritual which expresses change the relativity of structure and order and the contingency of authority and hierarchic positions.

For Bakthin carnivalesque imagery is always dualistic and ambivalent. The carnival unites the two poles of change and crisis, birth and death, old and young, down and up, wisdom and stupidity etc. the dualistic imagery is characteristic of the carnival for their contradiction. Things in the carnival are reversed: cloths are worn upside down, household items serve as weapons and the clown is king.

One of the central arguments made by Mikhail Bakthin in "Carnival and Carnivalesque" is that medieval people lived a double life. On the one hand stood the normal, official, serious and gloomy everyday life which were subordinated to strict hierarchic order and full of terror and dogmatism. On the other hand there were the carnivalesque life which were free and unbounded, filled with ambivalent laughter, sacrilegious and the defilement of anything sacred, humiliations and familiar contact with everyone and everything. Both these life forms were legitimate, but they were separated by harsh temporal borders. According to Bakhtin in "Carnival and Carnivalesque", understanding this duality is the key to understanding medieval cultural consciousness.

Mikhail Bakhtin - "Carnival and Carnivalesque" - summary and review

part 1 - 2 - 3

suggested reading:

Mikhail Bakhtin: "Carnival and Carnivalesque" – summary and review

2011-07-22T08:51:00.000-07:00

Mikhail Bakhtin - "Carnival and Carnivalesque" - summary and review

part 1 - 2 - 3

Mikhail Bakhtin's famous "Carnival and Carnivalesque" (in: Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader) deals with the event of the carnival, common throughout European history as a central form of celebration. Bakhtin's opens "Carnival and Carnivalesque" by noting that the carnival is not a performance, and does not differentiate the spectator from the performer. All people who take part in the carnival "live it" but it is not an extension of the "real world" or "real life" but rather, as Bakhtin puts it, "the world standing on its head", the world upside down. The carnival for Bakhtin is an event in which all rules, inhibitions, restrictions and regulations which determine the course of everyday life are suspended, and especially all form of hierarchy in society.

Bakhtin offers four categories of what he calls the "carnivalistic sense of the world: 1. Free and familiar interaction between people: in the carnival normally separated people can interact and freely express themselves to one another. 2. Eccentric behavior: behavior that was otherwise unacceptable is legitimate in carnival, and human nature's hidden sides are revealed. 3.carnivalistic misalliances: the free and familiar attitude of the carnival enables everything which is normally separated to connect – the sacred with the profane, the new and old, the high and low etc. 4. Sacrilegious: the carnival for Bakhtin is a site of ungodliness, of blasphemy, profanity and parodies on things that are sacred. For Bakhtin, these categories are abstract notions of freedom and equality, but rather a lived experience of the world manifested in sensual forms of ritualistic acts that are played out as if they were a part of life itself.

Bakhtin notes that the carnival was confined in time, not in space. It penetrated the house as well and did not exist just in the public sphere or town square. But the town square and its adjacent streets were the central site of the carnival, for they embodied and symbolized the carnivalesque idea of being universal and belonging to all people.

Mikhail Bakhtin - "Carnival and Carnivalesque" - summary and review

part 1 - 2 - 3

suggested reading:

Stuart Hall: "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" –summary

2011-07-22T03:14:00.000-07:00

The first part of Stuart Hall's "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" is an historical account of the development of British popular culture in late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. This period, according to Stuart Hall, saw some deep cultural changes in urban working classes with the appearance of cultural industries products and technologies. Hall holds that this period is characterized by questions which remain relevant to this day regarding the relation between corporate produced culture and the image of popular culture as belonging to the masses.

In the main part of "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" Hall is discussing the problematic meaning of the word "popular" in "popular culture". Hall analyzes two common understandings of this concept. The first meaning of "popular" is the one of wide circulation and commerciality. Subscribers of this view often tie popular culture with manipulative consumerism and regard it as falsification and even degradation of authentic working class cultural content and tradition. Stuart Hall only partially accepts this view for on the one hand it views working class members as easily manipulated passive consumers while on the other hand seeking an "authentic" or "original" working class culture which does not really exist. Hall prefers a more dynamic and changing description of popular content and forms.

The second definition of popular culture scrutinized by Hall is the one which views popular culture as all the cultural activities of "the people". This definition is in fact a massive inventory list of various cultural and leisure activities. Hall is critical of this perspective as well for its essentialist view and it being based on the binary distinction between "the people" and the "elite".

Towards the end of "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" Stuart Hall offers another definition of popular culture which stresses its dynamic nature and constant tension and struggle. Hall understands popular culture as an ongoing process, similar the concept of Hegemony offered by Gramsci, is which relations of control and subordination are constantly shifting and certain cultural forms gain and lose support from institutions. Preferred of marginalized cultural content and forms are not fixed, according to Hall there is a constant movement and interchange between them as a result of shifting power relations, the assimilation of poplar content into "high culture" and vice versa. What Stuart Hall is essentially offering in "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" is a neo-Gramscian view of the power relation between high and popular culture, with a more mutual perspective of the assimilatory take originally offered by Gramsci who thought the high hegemonic culture assimilates and sterilizes popular culture.

see: A review of Stuart Hall's "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular"

suggested reading:

Stuart Hall: "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" –review

2011-07-22T03:10:00.000-07:00

Stuart Hall's "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" initially appeared in "People's History and Socialist Theory" (1981) – a collection of essays concerned with socialism in its British contexts. Therefore Hall's "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" relies on British popular culture and its significance to the lower working class. But since Hall is attempting to deconstruct stereotypical connections between popular culture and the working class, "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" has theoretical value in relation to the understanding of popular culture as a modern phenomenon in industrialized countries.

Stuart Hall's "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" works within the tension between the perception of popular culture as something that emanates from the working class and therefore has something authentic about it, and the understanding of popular culture as an exploitative, commercial and mass communication based ally of modern capitalism. Hall's Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" criticizes views that regard popular culture as an authentic expression of the working class and as a site for cultural resistance. Hall favors a more dynamic approach which views popular culture as changing field and as a site for struggle between different social forces over the meaning and value ascribed to popular culture.

"Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" opens with an historical account of the development of British Popular culture. Stuart Hall then proceeds to discuss the meaning of the term "popular" in the phrase "popular culture". Hall is offering three different definitions of "popular" in relation to culture, and his main point in "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" is to try and point to the complexity of the relation between cultural products and content associated with "the common people" and the products and content of the culture industry. Hall points to the power relation that determine both high culture and popular culture as opposed concepts, while criticizing any attempt for an essentialist view of culture in general and popular culture in particular, and any steady association of content and cultural products with a specific social class.

see: A summary of Stuart Hall's "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular"

suggested reading:

Richard Shusterman: "Form and Funk: The Aesthetic Challenge of Popular Art" – summary and review

2011-07-22T02:08:00.000-07:00

Richard Shusterman's "Form and Funk: The Aesthetic Challenge of Popular Art" (in "pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking art" 1992) is a defense on popular culture or popular art's statutes as an aesthetic and artistic field. Philosophy of aesthetics has often refused to relate to popular culture as a form of art on account of it lacking certain aesthetic qualities. Richard Shusterman is attempting to demonstrate how these qualities do exist in popular art, and he uses the example of rap music to demonstrate his case.

Shusterman counts six common arguments against popular art:

That popular art offers no aesthetic satisfaction; that popular art does not provide as aesthetic challenge of promote an active response; that popular art is superficial and does not appeal to the intellect; that popular art is not creative and is not innovative in its forms and styles; that popular art is non-critical, conformist and formula based; and that popular art is not stylistically developed.

For every one of these arguments against the aesthetic value of popular art Shusterman is offering a counter example or claim in order to show how popular art (in his case, rap music) does have the traits that on account of their absence popular art is denied aesthetic value.

Richard Shusterman's "Form and Funk: The Aesthetic Challenge of Popular Art" and large parts of his aesthetic philosophy thought aims to oppose the elitist take against popular art, such as Dwight Macdonald's "A theory of Mass culture" which sees popular art as a threat to the "high arts" and the public's intellect. Shusterman does not subscribe to a normative judgment of high or popular art, but rather wishes to base aesthetic judgments on art's concrete everyday function in society.

suggested reading:

Richard Shusterman."Form and Funk: The Aesthetic Challenge of Popular Art" .in "pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking art" 1992. Cambridge: Blackwell

R.W. Connell – "Masculinities": Contemporary politics of masculinity

2011-07-07T12:10:00.000-07:00

In the epilogue of "Masculinities" R.W. Connell is attempting to describe the politics of masculinity in contemporary times, flowing the works of Goode and Godenzi which show that despite openness to challenging claims made by feminism, men still have a strong hold in the material world and the equality is still far away. Connell is suggesting a model that has four dimensions of gender relation to try to account for the interests of men in contemporary patriarchy:

Power: man have favorable positions in business, state affairs, public spaces, the family, enforcement agencies and the means to generate violence. On the other hand: men are usually the ones who are arrested and executed, they are the main target of military violence and of liberal economic competition.

Division of labor: men's income is twice that of women and they enjoy favorable position in the economy and have better access to opportunities in the men dominated system. On the other hand hazardous works are mostly held by men and they rate higher as sole-providers. They pay more taxes while welfare divides state income to their disadvantage.

Cathexis: men are given unreturned emotional support from women. Society (for instance the media and culture) favors men's pleasure over women's and legitimizes their sexual freedom. On the other hand men's sexuality is more alienated and restrained. There are less free to express their emotions and they are excluded from contact with their children during their early years.

The symbolic level: men control most of the cultural institutions and enjoy a higher level of recognition. On the other hand humanities studies are becoming more and more a feminine field and mothers enjoy greater legitimization as parents.

in relation to the body Connell notes how men's occupations make them more vulnerable to physical injury while on the other hand they are not required to wear restricting cloths or spend time and money on their appearance.

This "checks and balances" approach might give the illusion that the benefits of masculinity even out with its costs, but Connell makes sure to note that the advantages of masculinity often serve men who are not the same as those who suffers from its drawbacks, and this is where gender crosses with other categories such as race and class. If Connell is talking about a variety of masculinities, than there is a variety of social position that those masculinities provide. But this, for Connell, does not mean we should abandon the category of men all together.

Raewyn Connell – "Masculinities", 1995

Science of masculinity

Chapter two: Men's Bodies

Chapter 3: The Social Organization of Masculinity

Chapter 4: Live Fast Die Young - summary

Chapter 5: A Whole New World

Chapter 6: A Very Straight Gay

Chapter 7: Men of Reason

Chapter 8: The History of Masculinity

Chapter 9 : Masculinity politics

Chapter 10: Practice and Utopia

Contemporary politics of masculinity

R.W. Connell – "Masculinities": Degendering and recomposing hegemonic masculinity and gender relations

2011-07-07T12:07:00.000-07:00

In chapter 10 of "Masculinities" (practice and utopia) R.W. Connell suggests the strategy of "degendering" as a means for social justice in gender relations. Degendering is not to be carried out just at the level of culture and institutions but should also work on the bodies themselves. The mission of such degendering politics is according to Connell to bring about change in the practice of bodily reflection and working through the agency of the body in order to find new ways for men to use their masculine bodies.

The argument for dgendering echoes out of the feminist debate about equality and difference and the fear that equality would result in assimilation. For Connell the same problem holds for the will to criticize hegemonic masculinity that, if indeed degendered, might lose some of its more positive things and throw out the baby with the bath water. For Connell, in order to call for social justice in gender relations we must call for difference and degendering at the same time. Research and Connell's discussion shows that gendered traits and practices are common to both genders and the symbolic reintegration of these can be rather simple: body builders can work at kindergartens, lesbians can wear leather jackets etc.

Forms of Action

Following Andrew Tolson Connell points to the fact the various men's groups (the general men's liberation movement) are problematic in the sense that you cannot adopt emancipatory strategies if you are the dominating group. Anti-chauvinistic male politics that seeks social justice actually works against the interests of those man who take part in it, and such a stance should aim at breaking men's unity, not reinforce it.

But for Connell such a form of politics is still possible, especially outside pure gender politics. Male solidarity for males' sake is problematic, but solidarity (with women) for other sakes has a lot of potential for change in gender relations. The crossing of class and gender politics (and ethnic politics as well) is especially interesting for Connell for the possibility it holds for unity which is not absolute male unity. Instead of a men's movement this will be a politics of alliances, with the struggle for social justice depending on the intersection of interests.

Education for Connell is one of the prime sites for this degendering politics. She holds that every education program must address a variety of masculinities and the crossing of race, ethnicity, nationality and class. Connell calls for a reorganization of knowledge from the point of view of the oppressed and for the pluralization of sources in education programs. Another requirement is the capacity for empathy often so lacking in hegemonic masculinity.

R.W. Connell – "Masculinities": Practice and Utopia

2011-07-07T12:05:00.000-07:00

Chapter 10 of R.W. Connell's Masculinities discusses the meaning of knowledge about masculinity to questions of social justice in gender relation. For this end Connell holds that both existing practice and possible utopia are in need of scrutiny.

Connell research in Masculinities showed some changes in awareness towards gender relations starting from the 70's; however she holds that patriarchy is still very much the order of the day in contemporary western cultures, and that the change in historical consciousness is not yet manifested in the breakdown of the institutional and material structures of patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity.

The discussion of gender relations in the past two centuries are close, according to Connell, to introduce the demise of masculinity as we know it, with the wheels of change already in motion. Even reactionary stances regarding masculinity acknowledge the fact that masculinity is the subject of social transformation and is something which is currently under negotiation. Connell argues that no one assumes, and no one can any longer assume, that man and masculinity are just what they are.

In surveying the possible purposes of political action in the field of gender Connell distinguishes liberal pluralism and postmodernism. Both approaches according to Connell fail to bring into account the importance of practice, and not just politics or consciousness, in generating change or sustaining the current state of affairs. In the context of gender relations working towards social justice means to undermine straight men's favorable positions in social structures. This does not mean striving for uniformity, and Connell relies on Michael Walzer and his notion of complex equality in order to imagine the possibility of gender equality. Masculinity, in other words, does not need to be abolished but rather repositioned in the political and economical structure.

But focusing on hegemonic masculinity's material and political gains alone will, for Connell, miss the point. For patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity, as demonstrated again and again throughout "Masculinities", in sustained through bodily division which are themselves sustained through reflexive bodily practices. The social organization of these practices into a patriarchic gender order is the cause of the hierarchic social order. All this leads R.W. Connell to argue for the strategy of degendering – the dismantlement of hegemonic masculinity and the decomposition of gender relations.