“Disgrace” by J. M. Coetzee

I found reading this novel to be very unusual.  The omnipotent narrator added this cold heir of narration to the novel, in a way perpetuatuing the distance of Professor Laurie’s character.  The foreshadowing is so blatent, I almost feel like a five year old, like the narrator is telling the story as though it is not unfolding right before us.  However, simultaneously there is this feeling of illusivness and secresy.  I am not really sure that all is told yet of what has transpired with the studenet and the Professor.  Though there is a third person narrator I think Professor Laurie’s disposition to what happened, is the only way we can get the whole picture.  From the third person narrator we understand the gravity of the situation, but the situation itself is still very illusive.  All we get as a reader is the complaint that is posed against him steril and with out any feeling just like Professor Laurie.  The narrator does not give us a full range of view and only a slight in insite into the nature of Laurie.  At fist I was put off by this writing style and wasn’t sure if I was going to like the reading but now I am captivated by the unsettling silence in the story.  I am eager to see how it all unfolds

The Culture of the once Colonized

At the beginning it was hard to read this, to accept something that I have been internally fighting against since I learned about American history in grade school.  I wanted no part in this racial battle, I wanted to be autonomous, just human.  But as Fanon pointed out, the concept of self for the colonized is much different.  It is always in relation to, never just the pure self.  It is always a measurement and never just existing.

From what I remember of history as it was taught to me, any origin that was “successfully” colonized there was one goal, totaly wipe clean any remenice of individual culture, and assimilation.  But many where greatly mistakin in to what they were assimilating.  This assimilation was not into an equal culture, it was an assimilation into the idea “self” that was preexisting and not ones own.  So African’s turned into “Africans”, Indians became “Indians”, and the Native Americans became “Indians”.  These lables never belonged to the peoples who adopted them, therefore they did not know the connotations of inferiority they where accepting.

Thus the colonized live in a cycle of acceptance, of a system that never will, nor was created to accept them.  They must accept the world and themselves as the culture sees them.  The colonized are a walking symbol, constantly living the stereotype, because the stereotype is magnificently flexible to always perpetuate some form of inferiority.  Individual success is not just success, it is one step forward for an entire race of people.  Therefore when you fail or trip up, an entire people fail and trip up.  But it is not the individuals mistake but that of their natural humanity, or inhumanity.  It was accepted in the cultures that the colonized adapted to, that civilization of these people was never possible.  And though they may appear to be civilized there will always be moments in which their barbaric nature will resurface, “it” is never gone.  The blackness is always there, as a reminder a warning to beware, and never truly trusting.

So what does the colonized do.  They further separate themselves from their own humanity, studying themselves as well as there counterparts.  Always assessing and relating, and adjusting their mask.  So hopefully they become so trained on the outside that it will erase in inadequicies on the inside, erase themselves, to become undetectable.

America the Beautiful

I couldn’t help but feel a chill run down my spine as I read Althussures piece on state apparatuses, it reminded me so much of the framework of our American social systems.  Our government works on both playing feilds with the RSA as our public policies and foreign relations and the ISA as our national policies.  And in todays presidency our ideological majority is no longer hiding behind our repressive nature but is right front and center weilding our might against all those who appose us.

According to Althussure the ISA usually hides behiind the RSA, showing the international communities a unified body of Americans rooting for this idea of the ideal American.  While behind the scenes it is the ideological majority that rules our privatized life, whom in our capatalist system have control of our public relations with the rest of the world. At first while reading Althussure I saw them as separate entities, but for the most part the ISA and RSA use the same tactics.  So what happens when we have an entitiy that controls both, leaving  the minority ideologies powerless to be apart of and represent a fascist nation of centuries of opppression?

The American Obsession with Saving the Damsel.

The key figure in most heroic pieces is the dame, the damsel in distress.  This woman is often portrayed as stupid, blonde and always getting herslef into tough binds.  Then there is the super hero or the “masked avenger” that saves her from her own stupidity.  So who is the damsel in the Watchmen?  Who are these vigilanties saving, themselves nostalgia or the American people?

It seems as though it is more so nostalgia that these men are fighting for and possibly the American people.  I see the American people as the idoit damsel who is too pretty and stupid to know how to get their hands dirty to keep this nostalgia going.  The masked vigilanties, well some of them anyway portray such hostility to thost in which they are supposed to save.  The people are just expendable pieces that don’t really effect the greater picture.  Moore keeps depicting these “heros” as such barbarians with the exception of Dr. Manhattan.  They in fact seem to be playing into the very hands of that which is trying to get rid of them.  None of them are above their idea of nostalgia and it controls their lives.  Rorschach is totally consumed by it, the Night owl can’t get it up out side of the suit, Dr. Manhattan can’t escape it.  This nostaglgia that they were fighting so figerously for has turned its back on them, society changed.  Thus have they become a living pastche, a joke among society that accepts the revernce of a history that never existed.

Sassure and The Watchmen

Sassure argues that the structure of language is homogeneous in nature, however speech is hetergeneous.  Each language has its own set of signifiers and signified but speech actually takes signifiers from many different dialects.  As a culture we make an agreement to name one things as another.  The name of the object is an abstract concept, but when paired with the visual image of that object it is assumed as concrete.

Through out the graphic novel The Watchmen Moore takes these names of the images and gives them an actual face, he makes their idea concrete.  However Moore truly toys with the idea of perception and how that perception is emmulated in something like speech, rather than language.  In chapter 6, during the ink blot tests given to Rorschach, we noticed how Moore uses the test to show how perception is dependant upon the person.  The physical object of the ink blot is the same but society has a different view of what should be its signifier.  Some the ink blots by societies standard norm would be a butterfly or a grasshopper, but to Rorschach they were moments of digust and brutality.

So then if language is controlled by the exceptance to the norm and speech is controlled by this perception of the norm, how can one have a concrete signifier of anything? Moore takes the common vision of the super hero or masked vigilanty and draws it out specifically catering to the nuanses of the genre, but the way that it is described; the signifier does not match up with that of society’s.  One object and multiple depictions.  So who decided which is the right signifier?

The Graphic Novel

What is visual literature?  Is the graphic novel less than literature because it takes that which we see in our heads and place them visually on the page?  Or is it less because most are set in a fictisious world, disbanning all laws of reality?

When one reads a novel we expect the perfect amount of information that can give us a complete picture of the events at hand.  Authors use eloquent words, style and timing to reveal the character that they want us to see.  And a “good” author we give us that through many different avenues, in order to get a well rounded view of the character from all angles.  So then what is the point of recreating something that is already there, just so that we no longer have to imagine it?

Well the point is that though we can imagine it, seeing the words and getting a visual symbol of these words leaves an imprint in our minds.  In a way it prepetuates the whole system of language which is a series of symbols given to abstract ideas.  It is these symbols that make the abstract exist as a concrete and tangible item.  Therefore, the graphic novel makes these images that our minds derive from words concrete. 

One of the central themes of Cubism is to show a piece from all angles simultaneously.  I believe that this is one of the main goals of the graphic novel, such as “The Watchmen”. In a way it is the physical representation of nostalgia giving us the readers a concrete category to put the novel in.  While simultaneously being a parody of the nostalgia that it is apart of.  Meanwhile the contents of the novel stay true to its form, giving both dialogue and narration.  However the pictures give another angle of truth that could be over looked in the text alone.  The pictures give us a concrete image of these broots that may contradict the words they speak.  This novel in a sense shows humanity as it best.  As the saying goes “Talk is cheap.”

Postmodernism

“To write–

          The inkstand, crystal as a conscience, within its depths its drop of shadow relative to having something be: then take away the lamp.”

– stephane mallarme 

 

It is in this idea of recreation and deconstruction that  Jameson analyzes the essence of Post modernism.  This is the era in which that which was new and modern became marginalized, so like wise the new wave of artist must combat the idea of sameness.  But Jameson says that because of our past ingenious modernist there is no more room for new.  However I believe that to only be true with in that sphere of writing.  But if you change the sphere and deconstuct that which we cherish we can recreate from the past creating something entirely different.

If anything today’s consumerist society pushes individualising everything, though undernieth the umbrellaof popular culture.  It is true that there is no room to create actual self identity when the self is what is being marketed and sold to you. On a daily basis we are sold images of our selves and must fit into society’s view of us.  But in order to change  such a thing we must redirect the lense in which the seeing affects the doing (Gertrude Stein).

COmments: Jameson

Kim comment: ha ha ha I thought of Stein as well when reading Jameson last night.  Its almost like Stein was saying about always being in the new… always changing the doing by seeing differently.  So we have to continually deconstruct the formally constructed or “classic”… aaah it is all comming together now.

Joei comment: I totally agree with Esther on this one.  All that is modern is eventually marginalized and becomes classicso to speak.  I think that what Jameson is saying with the postmodernist idea is that we now need to deconstruct the deconstructed.  Only by taking apart that which we see as ideal can we find the real and the new essence

What is Structure? (Derrida)

   Normally when we think about structure we think about a core.  In essence the core is a solid that is unbreakable and dense.  This core holds together all ideals and explains away all ambiguity.  Then from this core all other ideas branch out creating beams that hold up the different sections the come from the core.  According to Derrida this is how cultureworks, taking a set of core ideals that are infallible and disperses them in different societies of that culture.  However, Derrida does not see this as a reality of how the world should be viewed.

    I think he sees the core as less localized, because there is no one explanation to explain away it all.  In some way every theory falls short of completion and the perfect theory is an ideal.  In fact they are linked together each theory pulling weight from where the other theories fall short.  There is more a of a distribution.  Like the metaphor that he used of the chain… instead of a singular bolt holding all theory together, each is intertwined, overlapping.

Raymond William 1/29

Keva Roberts page:

For the first few pages of Williams I had no idea what he was trying to prove about literature.  I didn’t understand what he meant by “abstract” and “concept” at all.  His piece was very abstract if you ask me and didnt get to the real point until the end in which I was wondering what the point then was.

 Michaels page:

I definately understand what your saying… It is kinda hard to understand them but you got more than I did. I was totally confused by him throwing in there his Marxist theory. Seriously I thought that he was just breaking down what literature actually was and how it influenced society in general. He made it seem as though because of the pedistal that we have put creative writing up on it is constantly combating our more practical uses of literature. Is history, or the sciences even considered literature any longer… or just essays? hmmmm