It’s a Docu-Parody

Using Baudrillard to analyze our text is quite interesting, since the very text its self is a network of simulacrum.  Each theorist is detached from his or her theory in the form of parody, which alienated the true meaning and goal of the theory.  In one respect we have the image of the pimp and then we have the ideals of Althussure dressed up as the ultimate Marxist, Marx himself.  Using a pimp as the simulation of as Althussure’s alienation of labor in many ways takes away from the reality of Althussure’s societal analysis.  The way in which society uses ISA and SA to control the masses is summed up into a gold chain and him pimping out a young girl.  This comedic simulation of a pimp alienates the actual reality of alienation  that happens through prostitution.  Therefore, while the pimp is comedically summed up into a few chains the comedy also turns Althussure’s theory into a comedy summed up into golden chains.

Simultaneously, while this parody over simplifies Althussure’s theory it also over simplifies Baudrillard’s theory of the simulacrum.  His entire theory is summed up into his hatred Disney Land’s parking lot.  His hatred for the parking lot is then emulated through Adorno and Horkhiemer’s disdain for the usage of simulations in American theater.  They note that the media has the ability to create reality out of simulations which is the biggest fear of Baudrillard.  However instead of emphasizing this, a joke was made of the way in which social apparatuses have a way of creating reality out of simulations.

Beyond the Twilight Zone

What is the true power of a symbol? And does it have the ability to take on or become a separate entity from that which it symbolizes? Does the simulation of reality equal a relative reality?

These were some of the question that arose while I was reading the piece on Bauldrillard. It seems as though he is arguing that the lines between reality and imagination is blurred by the existence of hyperreality. Reality is based in absolutes and truth, meaning that these out comes will cause this effect. However, Bauldrillard notes that the same effects can be produced from a different source. For instance he talks about religion and how this symbol of God results in creating a certain reverence and respect from its followers, but the same reverence and utmost respect can be replicated by creating idols. In a way creating many idols is mass producing God which is blasphemous in the eyes of the church. This is the culture of the industrial revolution, the mass production of an essence, never really the actual thing. And what is it that we say makes something real and separate from its counter parts that may look similar; the “real” has an essence that can not be recreated by any other means other than that specific item.

hmmm… i think i need to do more deciphering this i feel is just the tip of the iceberg……

Culture: a massive dose of conformity ( Horkheimer)

One of the first things that struck me while reading this piece was the very first opening lines, explaining or pointing out rather the shift from religion to culture! Which I find scarily relevant to today. Neo-Conservatives argue that we have strayed away from morals, but our entire culture is a policing mechanism of “morality”. As they say it on the streets, everyone is put on “Full Blast”. It was so erie to read this and know that this is happening right now in our own very country. I grip and moan to my friends all the time about the lack of soul and talent in the music industry today and Horkheimer has been writing about this many years before. Therefore is this a continual process and does it take each individual country by storm?

Culture as the Mass Producer: Althussure talked about how Society and in the particular capatalist societies have been able to gain control of the masses by separating the labor from the person (mass production). And I think the Horkheimer would agree “the technology of the culture industry no more than the achievement of standardization and mass production, sacrificing whatever involved a distinction between the logic of work and that of the social system.” I find it interesting that he used the word the logic of work rather than some other word, alluding to our more zombie like nature, in which we do not really think or analyze what it is that we are doing. In a way sleepwalking is the normal way for American’s to live. But to think that we are singular in this “progression” towards masked totalitarianism we are absolutely mistaken.

Horkheimer really delves into and uses the technological and architectural advances as a tool to illuminate this artificial framework. Which is interesting because in fact we are the result of the industrial revolution and the thought that continual modernization must occur in order to civilize the world.
to be continued…

Active vs. Passive: Judith Butler

While reading Judith Butler’s piece I kept wanting to know what the answer was. It is so depressing sometimes when you realize that almost (or according to Butler; all!) of our ideas and perceptions of ourselves are constructed by society. I mean she even goes as far as to say that this metaphysical self that we all are so attached to, does not exist. So what on earth is the “soul”.

Butler really gets into this idea of the body being the prisoner of the soul, which is the reverse of what most gnostic faiths would say. Religion teaches us that man is haunted by desire and the animalistic instincts of the body taints the purity of the soul. Butler on the other hand is saying the total opposite. To me, she is saying that this construct of the pure soul is a figment of our imaginations constructed by culture and society. This soul is meant to fight against our desires our innate behaviors. She does not refute that the body moves and reacts in specific ways, such as gender differences. However, what I think that Butler is saying that the habitual movements of the body have been nurtured by society, that innately we our physical body does not think in gender relations but conditioning based on “nessesity or survival”. Therefore, a woman’s distinct femaleness is not natural but nurtured by society. Other than the biological tendencies of the female body, it could behave like a male body on the surface if conditioned to.

Thus I think that Butler is saying that our identities as we know them are not our own but are conditioned behaviors and thought patterns that our soul implements onto us. So I kept wanting to know how one would get out of such gender roles. And I thought well one would have to eradicate gender from language and behavior would have to be seen as asexual. However, Butler doesn’t really support this either. The only solution that she seems to give to this role of identity is if people consciously step out of their specific roles, and into another. She gives the example of Drag shows, in which one is taking a social identity and performing it, disturbing one conditioned mannerisms. However, I feel that this would just be perpetuating these socially constructed identities, that the soul is just imprisoning the body in another prison.

The one place that I do find hope in Butler’s argument is when she talks about “action” and the liberation in not thinking about what it means to be something or fitting into a category all the time but to do what you are doing regardless. Because a hermaphrodite is both gay and straight at the same time. Now the soul would limit the body to then only experience the world through one gender, where as I feel Butler would say that the person should not worry about there gender category and be whatever gender suffices them at the time. Maybe this is why if everyone where to experience being in a Drag show it would take them out of feeling as though they have to be one thing at all times.

So if the body is at a constant battle with the soul, who does Butler think could win? Does the body have a chance or has the soul already entrenched it in its web with no where to go but to another web?

Birth of the Sexual Identity!

“On the surface, what appears in both cases is an effort at elimination that was always destined to fail and always constrained to begin again.”

Foucault begins his argument at the turn of the 19th century, in which he mainly focuses on the shift of the person and their identification.  One might think that in order to repress something that one must hide it and tuck it away, which is sort of what happened to sexuality at the turn of the century.  It became something that no one talked about.  However, how would one go about ensuring that everyone adheres to these rules.  From reading his piece it is y understanding that Foucault believes that before the 19th century that sexuality was something that was in the private sphere of a person’s life, however it was not something that was feared in the public sphere.

He talks about this idea of confession, which is the act of consciously putting ones faults on display.  This increase in confessionals seems to be directly linked to the shame that is brought on by public recognition of these sexual acts.  Thus something that was understood in the public sphere as a private personal matter, is now thrusted into the public sphere as a matter of public safety.  I found it amazing how in this network, as Foucault stated, we end up policing ourselves.  And of course how do we keep track of such things, by categorizing them.

I found it interesting how Foucault’s argument then shifts into how we have, or this system rather has been set up to always heir a feeling of caution over sex through silence, but it is a loud silence.  Because instead of people’s sexual acts being a mystery, it has become a “discourse”, furthering the shift from a personal preference to an identity.  These discourses describe sex clinically removing almost all emotion and desire from it creating nothing but an act, an act that is suppose to cause a feeling of disgust.  It seems as though every action was then analyzed in some sort of sexual manner, which is how the discourse is increased in our culture.  So as Foucault noted we are repressing this sexual desire by putting it at the forefront of everything.  He talks about how in the early 19th century how even the most innocent of things that would seem to be untainted by sex, a child’s laughter, was being censured and analyzed for traces of sexuality.  Culture became consumed with identifying sexuality and bringing it into the public eye (everyone policing each other).

However as the quote above suggests, this plan of suppression of this libidinal  desire is not with out fault.  This repression of sex not only put all sorts of sexual desires on the map but also in a forced the manifestation of other sexual desires.  Foucault would say that the sterilization of sexual desire forces people to seek out this desire in other forms, manifesting other avenues of desire.  This is the idea of perversion at its best, an unnatural manipulation in order to achieve a very natural desire.  At the same time though I can’t help but feel as though Foucault feels that this is all apart of that self policing system.  He talks about this idea of repressing this sexual desire in order to achieve a specific manifestation of desire which will keep people in this economic cycle of trying to achieve this desire.   This leads me to believe that the system was created only to profit off of these perversions that will continually pop up.  Therefore the heterosexual male for whom this economic transaction is built for understood that desire will always manifest itself in other forms, and then makes an economic profit off of it.

So maybe this system was not created for the soul purpose of repressing sexual desire, but in order to give the notion that one is repressed so that way those in power can continually profit off of the ways in which everyone is trying to fulfill their lackluster desire.

Rubin: De-Sex Me.

The oppression of women has become so interwoven into society that it has almost become engrained into females as “femaninity”.  In some way sexuality has been translated into an invisible stamp that lables ability as well as net worth.  A woman’s worth thus conotates a material value.  A value that is interchangable between hands, particularly male hands.

The worth of a woman is bartered in society, which is her ability to blend into society in order to be an acceptable gift.  Rubin really goes into this idea of gift giving.  The image of the perfect woman comes to mind, neatly wrapped in smooth tight skin, creases are a bad sign of aging.  Inside of the package is the perfect gift; everything a man always wanted.  A complaicent, docile person(really automated robot, but softer) that is there just to tend to his very needs.

As Althusser noted, once a persons produce is separated from their labor their worth or wealth is then owned by who they are working for.  Therefore, a woman who is separated from her worth and production is doubly oppressed with in a capatalist system.  Not only does the ISA program women to always view themselves in relation to an idea of maleness, but what ever it is that they makes is always attributed to that maleness that they seek to serve.  So how would one even the playing field.  Marx would say instill as system rid of class structure.  Rubin says rid the world of the idea of sexuality.  If the world were asexual, then there would be no need for the rhetoric used to describe the difference between maleness and femaleness.  Those two words in effect would not exist.

Symposium!

 ”Psychologically our thought– apart from its expression in words– is only a shapeless and indistinct mass.” (Sassure 966)

When I think of poetry, I think of the manipulation of sound, space, and meaning.  I also think in images.  While sitting in the student reading protion of the symposium, I was not think in particular about the words that they were saying.  I was thinking mostly about the feeling and the images that they created if I closed my eyes.   From reading Sassure I have learned that language is a very abstact thing, and that the words alone are  nothing, just manufactured sounds.

While Tim read his award winning piece from the “Bad Poetry Reading” I was focused on the paculiarity of sticking ones tounge into someone’s eye as though licking out the peanut butter in a Reesses Cup.  However, these quezy feeling of peculiarity would have no meaning with out the context of words to give context and meaning to the image.  Words and language set up boundaries in which a “sound becomes the sign of an idea.” (Sassure, 967) 

In poetry we mix the context of sound with the context of imagery, but can we ever separate the two.  Could anyone ever listen to pure phonetics and not create a mental picture with it? Or have a mental picture of something in which the meaning is not derived from the symbolic sounds attatched to the physical?  Sassure says that this is as impossible as trying to cut the front of a piece of paper without cutting the back.

So why write, why try to create meaning in a system built by random?  Why have poetry and literature when there is no poetic liscence to meaning?  Some poets fill their poems with symbolic references to religion and anciete myths.  This, however, according to Saussure does not stop a person who knows nothing of these before mentioned, from gainging an “understanding”.  Since meaning and symbolism is arbitrary in the intial sense then meaning is derived upon relativity to the reader.  This then makes truth relative, because all you need is a meaning that creates some sort of proof.

Where does this leave English, or language in general as a tool of explination and standardization?

(a very delayed althusser) The realization of exploitation.

What is the point in which we all becomes slaves to a system, walking zombies whose only goal is to make our oppresive bosses richer.

According to Louis Althusser, it is the point in which our government or controling body has the ability to forever remove the person from that which he produces.  In a way, in a capatalist system we are what we produce.  A person does not fit into society if their is not a part of himself that he can sell.  We go to college to find our interest and eventually turn it into a lucrative money making machine.  This is the cycle that we all live in.  However it is only a select few who reep the direct rewards of their labor, others have been perfectly sown into the fabric of society as worker drones for the hive.   This, according to Althusser is upheld and recycled through two apparatusses.

The Oppressive State apparatus is created as the muscle behind this beautifully oiled machine called capatlism.  It is the law that sets in motion a series of reprocutions, standards and limits.  This apparatus creates an ideal person that “easily” adheres to a set of morals, and codes of ethics as though it comes naturally.  However, such and apparatus does not leave room for those that do not fit in this mold of easy living, most need to be programed to accept this way of life.

Thus the Ideological State Apparatus arises to answer the call for a proper brain washing.  This apparatus focuses on breaking down these morals into learnable traites, that apear almost untracable.  It teaches us to think out side of the system, but always in reference to.  The self is never really distinguishable from that identity that the system has placed upon a person.  Therefore, each ideology that we build ourselves on has been manufactured through the lense of this oppresive society that teaches us to continually be in the prostitution buisness.  Each ideological apparatus may seem as though it is working in different spheres, when in all actuallity it is a bricolage of ideologies.  They all manipulate and play off of one another, diverting the center of each sphere.

So how do we break free of a system that in a way has calculated each way in which we may break free of the system.  It is though it eats us whole, gobbling our souls and selling it back to us in the form of media.  Tricking us that we are living these ideal lives that we have manufactured for them.

Ludeness and Tastefull: human sexuality

Is it the case that our natural sexualities have been so repressed that the media now finds it marketable to place it at the fore front.  In about every movie as well as many sitcomes there is a sex scene or some hints of a sexual act taking place.  And what does society end up asking itself: “Was is nessissary or done tastefully?”  Sex is such a taboo in our culture today that parents can’t even speak to their children about it without in some way feeling as though they are betraying their child’s innoscence. 

However Foucault notices that in the nineteenth century, children were not seen as untouched by sexuality.  In fact Foucault notices how society in attempt to police all notions of sexuality even took it as far as to surpress any hint of sexuality in children, right down to their “seductive” laughter.  This idea of programming children as a tool of deffurance is still used today, though we think of our children as having a blank slate when it comes to sexuality.  Instead of a reprogramming, we deter our children from sex by never speaking about it.  By answering questions about sex in a round about fairy tale way.  This act alone almost perpetuates what Foucault was saying about changing sex from an act to a discourse.

We have mastered the art of explaining sex without actually using any references to the act alone, thus the idea of ludeness and tastefull mastery of sexual explination has seeped into our everyday life.  When there is a very graphic sexual scene in a m ovie the audience asks themselves: “Was this done in good taste, or was this a lude and outrageously inflamed way of using sex?”  Sex has become a tool of shock factor, instead of a depiction of desire, love, or physical bonding.

Sexuality has become a door way to the unconscience in many phsycological fields.  That perversively a person’s sexual nature is in a direct link to a person’s unconsious desires.  In the unconsious mind there are no boundaries, and one is not hampered by societies moral and silence about sexuality.  Has this idea of a sexual discorse pushed a natural act back into the crevise of our minds, that can only be fully tapped into in the comfort of our dreams?

Lord Byron in “Disgrace”

While reading through the end of the novel I wondered if David had really saw a change in heart as he had seen the eventual change in his status with in the social sphere that had been created for him.  For the most part his power, his leverage and control of his social sphere has been stripped from him.  So why does he write?  What is this Opera really other than a manifesto of his still lingering beliefes.

Poets often write about the mortality of the human soul, and how this beauty that they lust after will soon wither away, and like wise the enchanment of it.  However, the immoratlity is in the words.  David’s ability to woe and slither into the arms of unprotected young women if finite, over.  In a way his firing and public humilation has further castrated him as a grown man, and can no longer exert his sexual power.  In this way Althussure would say that he has lost that Repressive State Apparatuse, but as an intellectual he will always be apart of the ISA.

Maybe his living power is over but his words if finished will last forever, immortal reppression.  Simultaneously, Lord Byron, David’s alter ego is tormenting his Countess even from the grave with his tauting letters of love, lust, and mochery.  It was kind of amusing that David couldn’t create a true picture of the Countess while Byron was alive, because there would be an exchange between them.  He would have to create a true depiction of Byron through the Countess in order to make the story line complete.  However, with Byron dead he is allowed to fashion the Countess in the image he sees fit, giving the control to Byron’s letters which she morns.

I feel as though David has not changed but he has accepted his loss, for the most part.  But like the ISA it is repressive through time and conditioning.  He has already to some extent sown his seed into society, and this Opera will be his finial act.