Analysis # 3 - Marxism, Ideology, and "Great Expectations"

The theory of Marxism talks about the need to destroy the hierarchal class system that is structured on the basis of property ownership or economic wealth. For example, "In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property" (Manifesto of Communism 34). In other words, you are what you own. This theory can be applied to Althusser's text, "Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses" because it talks about how we view ideology only as say a group of ideas or beliefs but that they are also materialistic in that they are tangible for us to see. According to Althusser there is a dependence of the individual on their conditions of existence, that creates a material representation of themselves to the world that is represented through class structure and production in the economy. For example, "...'individuals' who live in ideology, ...representation of the world whose imaginary distortion depends on their imaginary relation to their conditions of existence, in other words, in the last instance, to the relations of production and to class relations (ideology = an imaginary relation to real relations). I shall say that this imaginary relation is itself endowed by a material existence" (Rivkin 695). Whole ideologies of cultures are shown through class structure and systems. A person is identified of their class position by their job, place of residence, and clothing. They are defined by the social strutures in which are built and the economies that are class separated. Those that are subject to the subjection (which are the proletariats) of the Bourgois give that subjection freely because they are given the idea that they are free, when the one freedom they do have is to submit their freedom. For example, "a subjected being who submits to higher authority, and is therefore stripped of all freedom except that of freely accepting his submission" (Rivkin 701). They are held captive to society's set position for them. Never able to penetrate the scale of the Bourgeois, the Proletariet becomes stuck or cemented into the position that has been given to them. Thus their lot in life is to fullfill that role that society has molded for them. Fullfilling the need for capital through their acts of labour. Marxism yearns to try and stop this act of exploitation of the laborer, "All we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it" (Manifesto of communism 36). What it comes down to is that the Marxism theory has good intentions to try and give more power to those who do not have much.
In the novel "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens it shows the class differences and the subjection of the proletariet (Pip) from the Bourgeois (Estella). Estella is from a priviledged background and so looks down upon Pip because he is from the working class. She saysin the clip below, "But he is a common laboring boy. And look at his boots!" Insulting his appearance by his attire because he is not of the upper crust or the Bourgeois. She also points out his different dialect when he calls one of the playing cards Jacks instead of Knaves. "He calls the Knaves Jacks this boy! She's commenting on his use of slang words instead of the "Proper" wording, spreading the class difference even further. Then she also points out his hands that are rough which would signify those who had to work hard for their money. "What course hands he has". Finally she insults with the comment, "You stupid, clumsy laboring boy". Because of their class difference she is labling him as "stupid" and "clumsy". Using labels she may have learned from those around her. Later when Pip is in bed he ponders over her insults and thinks about what Estella would think of his family. What Joe does for a living, one of the common forms of labor, a blacksmith. "I thought of Estella and how common she would consider Joe, a mere blacksmith". Finally he thinks about in bed something as simple as his sister and brother in law sitting in the kitchen during the evening and how utterly lower class that would be to Estella. "I thought how he and my sister were sitting in the kitchen and how Miss Havisham and Estella never sat in a kitchen, but were far above the level of such common things". She has opened Pip's eyes to the attitudes and class differences that Marx talked about in a capitalist society and the exploitation of the Proletariet.


Works Cited

Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Blackwell Publishing 2004

Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party. Charles H. Kerr & Company. Chicago 1908

Lacan's "The Mirror Stage"

Lacan’s psychoanalytical essay “The Mirror Stage” goes into Freud’s development of the concept of the Id. The baby though possibly unable to move it’s body much at all, is able to notice its reflection. I found this quite fascinating because if you put an animal in front of a mirror they do not have that same sense of self awareness that a baby has, who can’t move as much as say a dog. For example, “The child, at an age when he is for a time, however short, outdone by the chimpanzee is instrumental intelligence, can nevertheless already recognize as such his own image in a mirror” (Rivkin 441). With this recognition the baby becomes somewhat captivated by its own image. Lacan’s definition of the mirror stage was that it was not just an infant looking at his/her own reflection and that was it. The baby’s perspective on himself/herself becomes what he calls subjective or a human being’s personal perspective on a situation. In other words we all see ourselves in a particular light and are biased with by how we see ourselves. There is a relationship between the Ego and the Body and also what is imaginary and what is real for a child. For example, “Lacan describes his concept of the self as a delusory construct plagued in its very constitution by imaginary identifications with a spurious sense of wholeness or unity” (Rivkin 442).

The "Oedipus Complex" compared to "Hamlet"

Freud delved into this idea of children desiring the parent of the opposite sex for themselves and hating the parent of the same sex because they take away the parent of the opposite sex. His idea of this psychosexual attachment of a parent, which is taboo in most societies, was later named by Freud “The Oedipus Complex”, after the play Oedipus the King, which was written by Sophocles, one of the great ancient Greek tragedians. For example, “At the core of Freud’s sexual theory is the so-called “Oedipus Complex”, something Freud believed all children experience as a rite of passage to adult gender identity” (Rivkin 391). In order to cope with this desire which is not acceptable in society these children learn to repress these feelings and identify with the parent of the same sex. This action allows these feelings to remain in the unconscious and to overcome this desire. For example, “The male child learns to give up his initial ‘pre-Oedipal’ desire for and attachment to the mother; instead, he identifies with the father…and learns to desire other women than the mother” (Rivkin 391). This is displayed in Shakespeare’s story Hamlet which shows the protagonist struggle with his desire for his mother once his father has been murdered and his uncle has taken his Father's place with the mother. With Hamlet's Father's role being retaken, Hamlet must relive all over again the psychosexual feelings that he has repressed for his mother since a child. Hamlet’s expresses this "Oedipus Complex" struggle in the scene where he goes to visit his mother in her bedchamber. The intimate quarrel that appears between the two during this scene seems to trigger about Oedipus’s already disturbed repressed feelings.

Freud's "Second Self" compared to "The Mask"

In Rivkin’s “Intro: Strangers to ourselves” I found the development of psychoanalysis by Freud in his research of the unconscious interesting because his research challenged the idea of the human mind and how it is not chained to its natural instincts compared to animals. For example, “The ‘cogito’ or thinking self defines our humanity and our civility, our difference from animals chained to blind nature and uncontrollable instincts” (Rivkin 389). This idea of psychoanalysis was to access the inaccessible through different means and ways in which had never been approached or analyzed before in the human psyche. The areas that were now looked at were people’s dreams and their neurotic symptoms, which could express repressed thoughts or experiences. For example, “His discovery was that the human mind contains a dimension that is only partially accessible to consciousness and then only through indirect means such as dreams or neurotic symptoms” (Rivkin 389). Freud talks about these repressed feelings which create in a person a double self. We conform to society’s idea of what is appropriate behavior or thoughts and in doing so have two sides of ourselves which creates another area of ourselves in which we do not recognize. For example, “Repression is essential to civilization, the conversion of animal instinct into civil behavior, but such repression creates what might be called a second self, a stranger within, a place where all that cannot for one reason or another be expressed or realized in civil life takes up residence” (Rivkin 389). Freud’s idea of the double self that people create with their repressed thoughts and feelings that are natural or instinct driven and that are not acceptable in society I think relates to the movie “The Mask” with Jim Carey. In the movie the main character fits this idea of an acceptable citizen in society who acts and behaves appropriately. Until he finds this mask in which he uses as an outlet to act upon his hidden desires or impulses. This alternate side to him self is not held back by societies’ idea of appropriate behavior or morals but driven by natural instincts and impulses. He is more animalistic in a sense because he is driven by his instincts and desires and pursues them with full force.

Defamiliarization

The extensive piceous compressed passage weaves in and out of the structures that appear in many different shapes and sizes. Most are box shaped but some are rectangle or round like a circle. Some are very very tall making them appear like they could maybe reach heaven they are so high. And in these different shaped structures many different size and shaped creatures go to and from them. Some very high, some low, some wide around the perimeter, and some threadlike around the perimeter. And besides the different amount of mass that these creatures possess, they also come in many different iridescence. Some are very aphotic in their iridescence, like they’ve been grazed from the golden sphere that sits high about the many shaped structures and many different masses of the multiple iridescent creatures. Some are almost lucent like they have never seen a day of the golden sphere in their existence. Others are a tinge between both, that appear to be somewhat grazed by the golden sphere above them. The creatures also have millions of fibers coming out from one side of the orb shaped ends of their frames. On the other side of the orb there appears to be two smaller orbs that vary in hues of each creature, just like the fibers and the outer covering of these creatures’ frames. The two small circles move around a lot, especially when the other creatures holler to them in their native language that involves a clacking and a clicking of the orb below these two colorful circles in what appears to be an opening. In which the creatures place many different objects into, such as other smaller creatures and substances that become larger, when liquid drawn from a body of hydrogen and oxygen is taken and descended onto the substances. And when the golden sphere spreads its irradiation upon the substance they evolve much faster. Above the opening on the orb of the creatures is an area of the creatures that protrudes outwards. It too contains two holes in which the creatures use to inhale the substances that appear from the crumbly dark entity below them.



Analysis # 2 - Sassure's Theory of the Sign

If Sassure were to view this blog on defamiliarization it would prove his theory of the sign. We all have a picture in our head of what a word means to us. We hear a certain word (the signifier) and think of an automatic picture (the Signified) in our mind of what that word means to us. The words I used in this blog such as creature (for human) and orb (for head) was not the usual signifier that we use to process the pictures of a human and a head that we associate with. Our associations of words and pictures make it so we tend to block out any other possible associations with the word. For example, “…it is clear that only the associations sanctioned by that language appear to us to conform to reality, and we disregard whatever others might be imagined” (Rivkin 61)

Formalism and its movements

The reading in Rivkin on formalism and how two significant movements in history during the twentieth century impacted literary criticism was very fascinating to me because I had not realized that language was not looked closely at. In fact I would have thought that language would have been the priority with all of the rhetorical influence of Shakespeare and many others authors before, compared to the content. It just would make more since that the priority would be on language structure and technique over content. However that was not the case apparently before these two movements. For the first movement they now placed literature as a separate entity from all the other forms of writing because it was not the same. Literature would now not be lumped in with all other writings but have its own separate means of criticism. For example, “The first movement was to attempt on the part of philosophers of science like Edmund Husserl to isolate objects of knowledge in their unmixed purity” (Rivkin 3). The second movement in criticism that changed was in looking at literature as a different kind of truth than the kind of scientific truths that could be measured by scientific methods. The idealist philosophers claimed that this kind of truth that literature provided was a kind of truth that could not be measured with scientific methods like they had tried to previously, due to the fact that they are what they considered connotative language. For example, “The second movement was the attempt on the part of idealist philosophers like Benedetto Croce to develop a new aesthetics, or philosophy of art, which would rebut the claim of science that all truth is grounded in empirical facts knowable through scientific methods” (Rivkin 23). These two major movements gave literature the respect that it deserved. It also developed the idea of defamiliarization which completely revolutionized the way of writing in that it defamiliarized the familiar words that we know by heart. This was accomplished by describing these familiar items and words in ways not done so before. Causing the reader to think harder to figure out what the author is trying to convey to his reader. For example, “Perhaps their most famous general claim is that literary language consists of an act of defamiliarization, by which they mean that such literature presents objects or experiences from such an unusual perspective or in such unconventional and self-conscious language that our habitual ordinary, rote perceptions of those things are disturbed” (Rivkin 4).

Analysis # 1- Aristotle's Aesthetic Theory

Aristotle’s Aesthetic Theory can be applied to the YouTube video “Fireflies” by Owl City through “…prescriptive criticism and description…whose object is to understand how poetry operates and the way in which it achieves its effects” (Murray xxx). It carries out this goal by invoking the audience that watches and listens to interpret or notice the world around them in order to really experience life and to question the dreams that we have so as to experience pleasure or pain. Aristotle finds our emotions that can be triggered by aesthetic appreciation of beauty as an advantage because we as human beings learn and grow through imitation or mimesis. For example, “…according to Aristotle, the ability to engage our emotions is an essential feature of tragedy, and one that is positively beneficial in its effects” (xxx). For example the singer is provoking the audience by saying “You would not believe your eyes if ten million fire flies lit up the world as I fell asleep” (fireflies). He is expressing to his audience the beauty that surrounds him that he is experiencing being apart of. Throughout the video everything is moving so quickly with the music as the chorus shouts, “That planet earth moves slowly”, maybe indicating to the audience that the singer is overwhelmed with life because it is moving by so quickly. The singer/songwriter is an imitator who has the freedom to express his/her ideas in many different ways that do not have to be exactly reality. In the video the singer is talking about his dreams that he sees and his thoughts which cannot be verified as real for his audience. For example Aristotle talks about this issue, “The artist can present things as they are, as they seem to be, or as they ought to be…hence what he offers is a re-fashioning of nature or experience rather than a straightforward copy” (xxxi)

Works Cited

Murray, Penelope. Classical Literary Criticism. Penguin Books: New York, 2004