Analysis # 5 Post-Coloniality, "Borderlands/La Frontera", and "Walkout"

The critical theory of Post-Coloniality explains the text “Borderlands/La Frontera” by Gloria Anzaldua by demonstrating its ideas of combating colonialism’s enduring effects on cultures by challenging the indoctrination of the grand narrative, expressing the multiple voices, and showing the importance of language identity. Anzaldua talks about this in her essay and how she has felt that she has not been able to be anything else but what she has been told or taught to be. She recognizes the need for her people to be one of the many voices in the narrative of the United States in order to tell her people’s story also. She demonstrates this by giving examples of history and the civil rights movement. This is an example of challenging the grand narrative and the Mexican American people’s efforts in history to work towards adding their voce to the many voices in America, “Chicano’s did not know we were a people until 1965 when Ceasar Chavez and the farmworkers united and I am Joaquin was published and la Raza Unida party was formed in Texas” (Rivkin 1029). For the expressing multiple voices she differentiates ethnicity from being part of a country or coming from a country. She says she is Mexican because it is in her blood. She appreciates that part of herself that in innately inside of her and that is passed down in her family. For example, “Deep in our hearts we believe that being Mexican has nothing to do with which country one lives in. Being Mexican is a state of soul – not one of mind, not one of citizenship” (1029). She shows the pride that she feels and expresses it so the audience can know that being Mexican is not just where you are from. For the importance of language identity she continues Anzaldua goes into her essay of the need for her people to preserve their native tongue. she talks about how it is not just a language, just as how she had talked about how being Mexican is not just being from the country. She explains that being Mexican and the language are tied together. Language is not just and expression of their ethnicity. For example, “Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity – I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself” (1027). She is urging her readers to understand the immense tie that there is between the two. Language is an expression of someone’s very soul and they take pride or should take pride in how they want to express themselves. For example, “If a person, Chicana or Latina, has a low estimation of my native tongue, she also has a low estimation of me” (1026). A combating of colonialism’s effects can be used through language. Anzaldua talks about her effort to learn a combination of Spanish and English that was created to rebel against the constant pressures of the colonialism efforts to speak correct English and her cultures expectations to speak proper Spanish. There is a lot of pressure on both ends but she comes out strong as ever with urge to want to feel the pride she wants to express. For example, “From kids and people my own age I picked up Pachuo. Pachuo (the language of the zoot suiters) is a language of rebellion, both against Standard Spanish and Standard English” (1025). There is this sense of empowerment here that she has created for her self and that she wants her readers to understand.
The power of language is demonstrated in this video from the movie "Walk Out". In the movie they are trying to fight for the respect from the government to create better school systems for the Chicano community. During this immense effort they learn to take pride in their ethnicity and language screaming "Que Viva La Raza" to motivate each other.

Group Project on Postmodernism

For my group’s presentation we focused on the Postmodernism theory where I contributed by explaining Deleuze and Guatarri’s theory, we used media to show differences between Modernism and Postmodernism, and a fun group activity to help the class be able to understand this idea better. Modernism set the stage for what postmodernism would soon come to fully develop into. In saying that we did a brief overview of what modernism was and what it affected. The idea of Modernism affected identity, authority, unity, and rejected the Enlightenment thinking and existence of an all powerful creator. After giving a brief summery of what modernism was about we gave an example of modernism by showing a clip of the 1960’s version of Romeo and Juliet.

We introduced Postmodernism by explaining what the movement was all about and how it affected society. Complete beliefs of societies were questioned and everything was affected by this new idea of viewing the world. After we discussed modernism we explained the main ideas of what postmodernism is and what it affected in society. It displays rejection of objective truth, and the grand narrative. There is an emphasis or focus on linguistics and language. What used to be comfort in discovery or seeking knowledge became distrust of science, skepticism, and separation. Here’s a definition I found in the online dictionary of what postmodernism looks like for a little more in depth look, “any of a number of trends or movements in the arts and literature developing in the 1970s in reaction to or rejection of the dogma, principles, or practices of established modernism, esp. a movement in architecture and the decorative arts running counter to the practice and influence of the International Style and encouraging the use of elements from historical vernacular styles and often playful illusion, decoration, and complexity” (dictionary.com).
My contribution to the group was to explain how Deleuze and Guattari’s essay “A Thousand Plateaus” also emphasized these main ideas of eliminating the grand narrative and old forms that people would look to for models. He instead went into these ideas into more depth of describing the new way of looking at things, or rather through the postmodern lens. For example, “Deleuze and Guattari…describe a conflict between two modes of social organization that coincide with two models of reality. One is arboresque (treelike) and favors order and hierarchy. The other is rhizomatic (rootstalk) and favors an undoing of all such orders and hierarchies” (Rivkin 378). H took these analogies to help his readers to understand the idea he was trying to convey. The first model of reality being called arboresque or treelike because it has more of a hierarchal aspect or look to it, compared to the rhizomatic or rootstalk which grows horizontally and has its roots and shoots sent everywhere. For example, “A horizontal, usually underground stem that often sends out roots and shoots from its nodes” (dictionary.com). Which gives you not the hierarchal feel that you get from the arboresque mode, where there are people on the top and people on the bottom. The rhizome displays that that everyone’s equal and also that in the case of the grand narrative that there are many mini narratives instead. The other point that I talked about was this idea that much of what was in modernism had a fixed quality and there wasn’t a lot changing, which Deleuze and Guattari called territorialization. However, deterritorialization represented the postmodern view of constant deconstruction. The idea is that everything has already been constructed so we must work on new material by deconstructing. For example, “History…alternates between moments of fixity and power that they call ‘territorialization’ and moments of ‘deterritorialization’ or undoing, when fixed orders fall apart and are transformed” (Rivkin 378).
We also demonstrated this idea of postmodernism by creating an activity for the class by giving them construction paper and chalk to so that they could interpret the work painting “The Birth of Venus” that we displayed on the screen. It was very enlightening to see the variety of interpretation and deconstruction of the painting that everyone shared once they were done. Everyone had a different idea of what they believed the painting was trying to express. This coincides with the idea that I explained earlier of the rejection of the grand narrative and its new emphasis on individual experiences and voices. At the end of the presentation to sum up, we showed the postmodernist version of Romeo and Juliet that was made in the 1990’s, which was a perfect example of postmodernism at work in our society.

Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" vs. "The Matrix"

In "The Matrix" Neo is pulled out of the simulated or dream world of the matrix into the real world of the rebellion against the agents or the machines that have taken over the planet. He has a choice to live in the dream world of the humans that is completely unaware of everything because they are blinded by the truth. The humans are watched completely by the agents of the world. This is very relevant to what Foucault was talking about in "Discipline and Punishment". In the essay it talks about those that are infected with this disease or plague are watched like the humans in "The Matrix". For example in the trailer agent Smith says, "Human beings are a disease. You are a cancer of this planet and we are the cure" (The Matrix). When they say they are "the cure" they really are what Foucault talked about as the syndics, intendants, or guards who survey the area all the time and make sure that those that are quarantined do not leave their houses. For example, "Each street is placed under the authority of a syndic who keeps it under surveillance; if he leaves the street, he will be condemned to death. On the appointed day, everyone is ordered to stay indoors: it is forbidden to leave on pain of death" (Rivkin 551). In the matrix these agents jobs are supposed to prevent people from leaving the Matrix, just like it’s the guards jobs in “Discipline and Punishment” to have those infected to not leave their houses. In Wikipedia they talked about the agents positions and abilities, “He is warned of the presence of Agents, fast and powerful sentient computer programs with the ability to take over the virtual body of anyone still directly connected to the Matrix, whose purpose is to seek out and eliminate any threats to the simulation” (Wikipedia.com).The houses that the humans are forbidden to leave represent the world or the matrix that is used to block the people from learning the truth about what is going on and the ability to leave the house. For example in the trailer Morpheus says, "The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth" (The Matrix). With the gain of the truth in the real world Neo also learns that the technology of his body as a human was only partially being used. In this new state he discovers that the body has new knowledge and that he has the ability to conquer the physical inabilities he experienced as a human. For example, "there may be a 'knowledge' of the body that is not exactly the science of its functioning, and a mastery of its forces that is more than the ability to conquer them: this knowledge and this mastery constitute what might be called the political technology of the body" (Rivkin 549). In Wikipedia they talk about the abilities he acquires as, “Within the Matrix, they are able to use their understanding of its nature to bend the laws of physics within the simulation, giving them superhuman abilities” (wikipedia.com). In the trailer it shows them running from building to building and fighting in very precise slow moving actions.

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.