An Inside Job

Now feminism is one literary theory I can tell you about from the inside. Of course, if you've been reading my blog all semester, you'll know what I mean. You see, Harriet Vane in the Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries is certainly a study in feminism. Let me explain....

I wasn't always part of the story, you know. In the beginning, it was just Lord Peter and his butler, Bunter, going around solving impossible cases, leaving a trail of awed and grateful English citizens in their wake. Of course, Dorothy Sayers knew this couldn't go on forever. Lord Peter was dashing, of course, but it did seem a bit cliche to expect him to go on playing the superhero forever, in a world devoid of significant female presence.

That's when I got my chance. Now, this was 1930, so I think it's safe to say that, historically, we were still dealing with first-wave feminism. So it was pretty avant-garde for me to be an author and a graduate of Oxford, to boot. (In both respects, I have a lot in common with Sayers herself). Of course, I was still the "damsel in distress" and Lord Peter's new love interest. To my credit, however, I resisted being reduced to these labels.

I'm sure you're going to check out the series once the semester ends, so I hate to give any spoilers, but suffice it to say that if and when I decided to "give in" to Lord Peter's brains and charm, it was to be on equal terms: a meeting of two human beings on an equal footing. If I was to be reluctantly rescued by a would-be knight in shining armor, there would be no suggestion that I was simply swept off my feet. (I've often reflected since, however, that it's curious that readers would see Peter being swept off his feet as something noble and touching, whereas for me it would have been a sign of weakness. He had to assure readers of his sensibility, while I had to prove my good sense.)

Dr. Krouse notes that in traditional masculine discourse, women "may be 'honored' or 'cherished' or 'adored'--even loved--but they are not, necessarily, respected." And this is where I drew the line. I insisted on respect--mutual respect--in my relationship with Lord Peter.

Dr. Krouse goes on to say that "what we think of as 'feminist theory' or 'feminist literary criticism' emerges out of [a] deep ambivalence between a desire to celebrate women’s literary production and a desire to critique the ways in which gender inflects not only that literary production but also literary representations of women."

My own approach to feminist literary criticism has a lot in common with Sayers'. Less concerned with the discovery of differences between genders, Sayers focused on commonalities. And the primary issue seems to come down to mutual respect, the foundation of true equality. In an article discussing Dorothy Sayers and feminism, Susan Haack writes:

Sayers defends two main positive themes: that women are fully human beings, just as men are; and that, like all human beings, women are individuals, each one different. These are so closely interrelated that disentangling them is close to impossible—but probably, as this passage [by Sayers] reveals, also undesirable:

"What," men have distractedly asked from the beginning of time, “what on earth do women want?” I do not know that women, as women, want anything in particular, but as human beings they want, my good men, exactly what you want yourselves...."

Until next time,
H.

P.S. If you're up for a good read that blends mystery and first-wave feminism, check out Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers--starring yours truly!

Crime Scene Investigation

Ever watch CSI? I'm always amazed at the details those people uncover! The strand of hair, the microscopic fibers, the invisible traces of chemical compounds--that invariably provide the key to the case. I figured this close reading would require that kind of attention to detail, so I pulled out my magnifying glass and started dusting for prints....

From shoeprints to epithelials, the evidence all pointed in one direction: The author function had been here.

My quick take on the Mantissa case as a whole: While I can understand the "cleverness" of the concept for this story about stories, the way in which Fowles chose to make his point turned this reader off. Disregarding the gratuitous details, however, I'd like to focus this close reading on the following passage from part one of Mantissa, in which Nurse Cory brings the "newborn novel" to Miles: "It's a lovely little story. And you made it all by yourself."

In class Tuesday afternoon, we discussed the idea that Fowles is exploring the identity of the author and then related this to the concepts of writer's block and Lacan's mirror stage, in which an infant gains subjectivity through recognition by an "other." It seems curious to me that the regaining of Miles' subjectivity is equated in this first part of the book with overcoming writer's block. In other words, authorship and identity seem to be one and the same for Miles. Writing isn't something he does--it's who he is. It seems to me that in this way, Miles stands for the author in the sense of Foucault's author function.

In this first part of the book, we can see illustrated the four elements of Foucault's author function:

1. Connection to the legal system: Who has responsibility for the text (it's immediately handed over to Miles, the author).


2. The author function applies to Miles as a fiction writer, though it would not have applied in the same way if this had been a medical treatise instead.


3. This passage also raises obvious questions of attribution, since the story did not come about in isolation.


4. And finally, as we saw above, this author function doesn’t refer simply to a real individual, but refers in a sense to the "writing voice" of the author.

In saying that Miles has "made" the story all by himself--false, according to the story--the relationship of author to text is being called into question. This comment by Nurse Cory seems to be in line with the liberal humanist view of authorship, in which texts are products of authors, whose intention dictate meaning.

Another point made in class gives another insight into this passage, as well: At the same time that the liberal humanist point of view is being challenged, it also seems that the limits of critical theory are being tested. By implicitly questioning the role of the muse in the creation of this story, this passage also asks what place the creative imagination, inspiration, holds in the world of theory. Since the entire novel takes place within the mind of the author, however, we seem to be led back to the beginning. In the end, Miles never interacts with anything outside himself.

In Pursuit of the Hero

This is my proposal: To write a deconstructionist critique of 24’s Jack Bauer. I'm hoping to explore Bauer’s character in light of the role of the hero in American pop culture, paying particular attention to the characteristics that define Bauer as a hero and differentiate him from the story’s villains. He's a fascinating character to me, since he is compelling enough to cheer for, and at the same time takes action that is sometimes so illegal or violent that those around him (and possibly some of his audience) have questioned the nature of his heroism. I also hope to uncover some of the assumptions about the nature of heroism/villainy underlying his character.

The primary source for this paper will be, naturally, the television show, 24. (If you're not familiar with it, the basic premise of the show is that each season of 24 follows one day in the action-packed life of federal agent Jack Bauer, relating events in supposed real-time.) I plan to use Day 3 (the third season, which ran until spring of 2004) as the basis for the paper.

Now, given the ongoing motif of this blog, I suppose I ought to be giving a critique of some Dorothy Sayers mystery (and that would be fun!). But the truth is, I've had an ongoing interest in the subject of heroes and in particular, the enigmatic character of Jack Bauer. He is a compelling hero embodying a variety of contradictions. And since it first aired, 24 has received a lot of press precisely because of some of these contradictions. In Jack, we see a television hero inflicting violence on others in ways that would never have been allowed on primetime television until recent years.

I am especially interested in the factors that allow "us" (as a collective television audience) to make meaning out of Jack Bauer and see him as a heroic character. I recently discovered a book called The American Monomyth, which suggests that there is an established pattern for American heroes.... So, without writing my entire paper right here and now, I'll just say that this seems to me a good place to begin a deconstruction of one especially interesting American hero (a.k.a. Jack Bauer)--a hero whose actions sometimes toe a fine line between heroism and villainy. Seems to me that's a binary just waiting to be deconstructed!

In doing this, my hope is to learn how to uncover (personally) some of the cultural presuppositions that go into our definition of heroism, in order to learn to view/hear/read with a more critical (thinking) eye. For me, this is where theory and practice can meet.

I'd love to hear what you think about this. Does anyone see any connections I might want to make to other theories? Any fans out there have suggestions for particular episodes/events in the series that might be good to look at? And if you happen to check out the link above, let me know what you think about that article. I thought it raised some interesting questions....

Good luck on your essays!

Until next time,
H.

The Perfect Crime

In Poster’s introduction to Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, he observes that: “Marxism emerges in Baudrillard’s pages not as a radical critique of capitalism but as its highest form of justification or ideology” (4). The rather ironic image this brought to mind for me was an example used earlier in the semester—the Manifesto as an advertising piece promoting designer jeans. Though I’m taking this example out of context, it does to seem to illustrate Poster’s comment: Rather than inciting revolution, Marxism actually supports the system it opposes.

After reading Ken Rufo’s post, it seems to me that Baudrillard’s insights into Marxism may be among his most immediately accessible concepts. What he’s saying about Marxism, in other words, is that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Marxism is essentially starting from the same premise as capitalism—the primacy of production—with different motivations. What neither capitalism or communism have articulated, according to Baudrillard, is that the real key to the whole system is consumerism. And this is where he begins to bring in Saussure, linguistic theories of reality, exchange value, and ultimately, the value of illusion (see below for an awesome quote on Baudrillard, media, and illusion).

Although it is not addressed in Rufo’s post, from my other readings it seems generally acknowledged that not all of Baudrillard’s work was of the same caliber. His later work, in particular, attempted to address vastly complex political/historical situations, with varying degrees of accuracy and even acceptance among scholars. I was very interested to find that, although he explains rather convincingly the limitations of Marxist theory, when Baudrillard applied his own theoretical concepts to actual political situations (such as the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and later, terrorism and 9-11), he seems to have often missed the mark himself. As I read through the extremely negative piece written after his death (posted as a comment after Rufo’s post), I couldn’t help but think Baudrillard would have to have expected to take some flack for pointing out other theorists’ flaws, and then proceeding to publish such controversial work himself.

A closing quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which I found interesting and seemed so appropriate to this blog: “Baudrillard claims that the negation of a transcendent reality in the current media and technological society is a ‘perfect crime’ that involves the ‘destruction of the real.’ In a world of appearance, image, and illusion, Baudrillard suggests, reality disappears although its traces continue to nourish an illusion of the real.” (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/baudrillard/#4)

Until next time,
H.

Whodunit?

I've been waiting all semester to use that title--and good ol' Foucault finally gave me an excuse! So, in keeping with this doubly appropriate question, I'd like to make a few observations on the concept of author function.

First of all, my basic understanding of the author function is that it refers to all the baggage and status associated with the proper name of the person who wrote a text. I love the example given in the intro to our copy of "What is an Author?" in which Shakespeare the Person--about whom we know very little for certain--is compared with Shakespeare the Author, who is pretty generally accorded a lot of respect and admiration.

So the author function is something different from the actual person himself.

Foucault then spends several pages explaining how this author function isn't something intrinsic to literature, but that it evolved over time. As it came about, it began to limit the interpretations that could "validly" be given to a text. People were interested in what the Author had intended. This gave rise to the idea that there was a single, unified meaning to a text. Which in turn led to the need for experts to give official interpretations.

Foucault, instead, calls for freedom from the tyranny of the author function, in favor of reader interpretation. He ends his essay by asking, "What difference does it make who is speaking?" What difference does it make whodunit, now that the deed is done?

Since we were also sent out to hunt down other blogposts on the topic, I checked out the first link on Dr. M.'s list. Lucky for me, it fit the bill perfectly, albeit in a quirky sort of way. The post I discovered is apparently a parody on the concept of "erasure," which I discovered is connected to Foucault's author function. If you check out the post, you'll see that the (anonymous!) author/writer has written a review (presumably of a journal article?), "erasing" all references to both him/herself AND to the author of the original work. Every proper name, pronoun--every reference to someone who put pen to paper--has been conspicuously deleted. The point, I suppose, is to show how the author function helps us make meaning, imperfect though the system may be. Foucault himself admits that some reference point is needed, noting that "It would be pure romanticism... to imagine a culture in which the fictive would operate in an absolutely free state..." (558).

A little more investigation then turned up class notes on the subject (from a professor of Critical and Cultural Studies in Canada), and I was able to figure out what "erasure" meant. It seems to be a deconstructionist's compromise with the problem of authorship--a little like bricolage. In other words, we make a big deal about authors, allow them to limit meaning, etc., but at the same time we can't quite get along without them. So we place them "under erasure." We take the author off the pedestal, but we let them stick around after all.

Until next time,
H.

"The case has, in some respects, been not entirely devoid of interest." --Sherlock Holmes

I've been intrigued by Derrida's statement (from the film): "There is not narcissism and non-narcissism; there are narcissisms that are more or less comprehensive, generous, open, extended. What is called non-narcissism is in general but the economy of a much more welcoming, hospitable narcissism, one that is much more open to the experience of the other as other. ...Love is narcissistic."

In terms of post-structuralism, it seems that Derrida is trying to break apart the commonly understood structure between the binary opposites narcissism and non-narcissism. He does this by introducing the idea of love (ideally thought to be non-narcissistic) as being somehow in relation to narcissism. Love is generally thought of as being other-directed, whereas narcissism is, by definition, focused on oneself. Defining love in terms of narcissism seems to exemplify Saussure's idea that there are no positive meanings in language. Meaning is relational. Love, then, would have no meaning if we had no narcissism to measure it against.

To find a point of connection with psychoanalytic theory, we can note that this relation of meanings also reflects a concept from psychoanalytic theory: metaphor. In the use of metaphor, one thing is described in relation to something else. In Freud's work concerning dreams, the notion of displacement has a similar meaning, in which one image comes to symbolize something else.

The second concept of deconstruction that comes in to play here can be described using another example from Derrida. In speaking about forgiveness, Derrida says that there is no such thing as pure forgiveness. Acts of forgiveness may be made for a variety of reasons, but pure forgiveness is impossible. It seems to me that he may be saying the same thing with regard to love. Whereas we may be capable of greater degrees of openness and welcoming of the "other," we are unable to reach a state of complete forgetfulness of self. This concern with "self" and the "other" are also classic psychoanalytic categories.

The point of his quote as I understand it, then, might be put this way: That only in the measure in which I am aware of myself as a person, am I able to recognize--and therefore love--the other. This would be the open, hospitable narcissism of which he speaks. But we are not able to become completely and perfectly free from this innate self-interest (Freud would seem to agree with that). And so Derrida sees pure love as humanly impossible.

Before you hear what I think about all this, check out the following quote. It's taken from a letter by Benedict XVI on the nature of love (Deus Caritas Est), and I found it very meaningful:

"....Eros and agape—ascending love and descending love—can never be completely separated. The more the two, in their different aspects, find a proper unity in the one reality of love, the more the true nature of love in general is realized. Even if eros is at first mainly covetous and ascending, a fascination for the great promise of happiness, in drawing near to the other, it is less and less concerned with itself, increasingly seeks the happiness of the other, is concerned more and more with the beloved, bestows itself and wants to “be there for” the other. The element of agape thus enters into this love, for otherwise eros is impoverished and even loses its own nature. On the other hand, [one] cannot live by oblative, descending love alone.... Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift" (#7).

Although I appreciate the insight of much of what Derrida says, it seems to me it tells only part of the story. His point in deconstructing love/narcissism is, I would guess, to point out that there is no ideal "love" somewhere out there, in the sense of classical philosophical forms, essences, etc. However, it seems to me that the very point of love lies in the fact that it pulls us out of ourselves, to look toward the other. In other words, Derrida (and Freud, too, perhaps) seems to address what is referred to above as eros, denying the possibility of agape--which is essential for true growth as persons and genuine human freedom.

Under the Magnifying Glass

Now that we've finished watching the documentary on Derrida (French philosopher and deconstructionist), I'll just make a few observations regarding the film's use of images....

I think that there are two primary images used by the filmmakers in telling this story about Derrida: Derrida, the celebrated philosopher and Derrida, the man. Throughout the film, we cut back and forth between scenes like Derrida being greeted by admirers--and then his wife kissing him goodbye before leaving for work. This juxtaposition creates a visual contrast between his celebrity status and his ordinary life, which leads us to wonder about the nature of this celebrity status--and this is probably what Derrida would have hoped.

He himself makes it clear that an exalted view of the philosopher places emphasis in the wrong place. When asked what he wished would be included if someone were able to make a similar documentary on Socrates, for instance, Derrida states that he would want to know more about the philosopher's personal life and what was important to him (I suppose that's a pretty liberal paraphrase, but the general idea, I think!).

The often off-center, partially obstructed shots throughout this documentary serve to further emphasize the humanity of the documentary's subject. There is no slick, seamless editing; no pretense of perfection. The viewer is constantly reminded that we are watching staged scenes, as Derrida reminds us himself.

These juxtaposed images of the celebrity and the ordinary man do not seem to be in conflict, however, as Derrida manages to carry both with simplicity and refuses to let artificial constraints be forced upon him.

At one point in the documentary, Derrida also comments on the significance of a person's gaze--their eyes--and also of the human hand. I noticed that throughout the film, frequent close-ups of both Derrida's eyes and hands were included, perhaps in recognition of what he thought you could learn about a person in this way.

This sleuth gives Derrida (the movie) two thumbs up, for not only giving us a sense of the life, thought, and personality of Derrida, but also for demonstrating through the film itself, some of the key concepts of his thought.