The climax of culture

After reading Eagleton and the blogs the general conclusion I get is that culture has taken a turn for the worst. But, I do not know if I agree. In high school we used to have decades parties, and it seemed like every ten years had some kind of social contribution to add. I wonder if we can do the same with the 2000s.

I think a point we are missing is that all these different cultures, different groups of people as America continues to assimilate, are mixed into one so that it keeps growing and changing. I would argue that it has not leveled out and that it cannot level out because everyone will always have something different to add.

Of course it has been said all the time that we are in the age of technology, which I guess is the dominate part of our culture, but is there all that is to it? Are we anything else but technology... oh and sex?? At this point of time I can't think of anything else, so maybe I do agree. Maybe we have come to a cultural standstill.

Religion and Sex

Jonathan Goldberg's article places a lot of emphasis on religion, using Aan Bray's book. What was interesting in this article is the mix of politics, religion, and sexuality. Bray's book discusses the last events of a man's life before he was murderered then accused of being gay. The article touches on the relationship between Christianity and homosexuality. The greatest accusation the man faced was being called a homosexual, which instantly turned into a case of libel
What makes the statement that someone is homosexual an instantly slanderous statement. What about homosexuality can ruin a person's reputation? The article shows how homophobic society is, esspecially in religion.
For example, in Denver during the Martin Luther King parade, many gay and lesbian rights activists march for their rights as well. But, if you think about it Dr. King, an extremely faithful Christian, would probably not have supported the homosexual agenda, based strictly on his religous beliefs.
Will there ever be a point in which religion will accept homosexuality into their society?

Seperate but Equal

I particularly found several parts of Gates's article interesting. First, the part about Abraham Lincoln pulling together some black people to tell them because of their great racial difference, they should go back to Africa. By this point, however, the Africans that were shipped to the United States are not the same black people who overcame slavery. These black people have begun to assimilate, and have never been to Africa, and know nothing about Africa. The equivilant would be telling the Spanish, Italian, or Irish to go back to the respective countries their realatives came from.
This is actually is probably something the English wanted to say based on page 1894 of Gates when the comment was made that the difference could be made between Irish protestants and Catholics based on their race. Of course, this is rediculous. Even light-skinned black people sometimes passed as white without notice.
I think the argument could be made that black people were not allowed to be educated, not because they were inferior, but because it would prove they are of the same intellegence as white people. The example of the black girl Phillis Wheatley shows that black people can be properly educated and create works of literature. Does it define them as a race? Well, I would argue no. If having the ability and freedom to express yourself defines a race as being equal to other races, then it must hold true for all races. Someone's blog (sorry, I forgot who) talked about the concept of "writing themselves into being," applying to everybody regardless of race.

The Power of Words

What interests me most is the beginning of Part II when Bourdieu starts talking about the meaning of words and the uses of language in society. I always thought writing is a powerful form of expression, something that people will read and understand the context and emotion the author was trying to have understood. But Bourdieu states that is not always the case. He says, "The power of words is nothing other than the delegated power of the spokesperson, and his speech - that is, the substance of his discourse and, inseparably, his way of speaking- is no more than a testimony, and one among other, of the guarantee of delegation which is vested in him" (107). I think I have an example of what he is talking about.
An author could be passionately writing her views on a topic (this situation could in fact be happening to me right now), in her mind she knows exactly the tone and emotions she wishes to convey in her writing. Then, when she presents it to someone else who reads her work in a dry monotone voice, missing her sarcasm, humor, and whatever else she wanted expressed, the message losses its power and therefore its meaning on the listeners. If she herself had read the speech the way it is suppose to be read the writing would have had more power and effect on the listener, and made all the difference in the world.
What he is saying is the words by themselves mean nothing, but it is the combined forces of words plus the authorized speaker, "because his speech concentrates within it the accumulated symbolic capital of the group which has delegated him and of which he is the authorized representative" (111).

The Real

Just when I was thinking Terry Eagleton is generalizing a lot of novels written in that time, he says, "It is true some texts seem to approach the real more closely than others" (173). And the point that he makes is that books have their own truth, society, and rules, but in some instances it will parallel that of history. He states that literature has the freedom to veer away from history. I think this ability allows it to exaggerate what was going on socially at the time to make a point, or make a whole other reality to juxtapose with current society. Regardless, I think the text does and should serve a purpose, the author should have a message.

Eagleton tries to make a distinction between expressing ideology and making a production of it. It sounds like the same thing to me. Is the distinction what I said before: that the literature parallels history? The way he explains it it's like he is telling us what it doesn't do, "A dramatic production does not 'express,' 'reflect,' or 'reproduce' the dramatic text on which it is based," but then he goes on to explain that it is a production. So, I take that to mean it makes it's own real that may or may not be similar to its current society.

The men are chillin'

I want to start off by saying that the article (for once) was enthralling. I was most interested in the chapter about women's sexual liberation. Although she focused primarily on the right to an abortion, I thought she left out a critical part in the struggle for sexual liberation. The males' role in it.
Men were always able to do what they want sexually. It was not scandalous for men to go out and have multiple partners and sex before marriage. Isn't this where we get the saying: "boys will be boys"? Yet, women were suppose to hold on to their virtue and wait til marriage. While this theory might be gone today, we have a double standard as to what men are able to get away with and what women are.
The difference is what males think. Men still control the world and the thought process of society. Sure, women can now go out and have sex with whoever they want, but there's a title for those permiscuous women. Whereas men get savvy titles such as womenizers, players... something that boys and foolish men actually aspire to become.
When men start to realize (never going to happen) that they can't do something and expect women not to do it too, only then will we be able to move forward from this double standard. But why would they do that when they are living the good life??

Some thoughts on Barry

"Hegemony is like an internalised form of social control which makes certain views seem 'natural' or invisible so that they hardly seem like views at all, just 'the way things are.' The 'trick' whereby we are made to feel that we are choosing when really we have no choice is called by Althusser interpellation" (158).

When I read this, I actually started paying attention to the text. I think Althusser has a good point. How do we view society, or all the political madness, or every aspect of life? As the norm, "the way things are." And yet, the state has an input on all of it. There is nothing in the constitution about education, yet the federal government finds ways (No Child Left Behind and funding) to make sure they have a say in what goes on in classrooms.

So I'm thinking, in a country where we pride ourselves most on our freedom to do whatever we want, is it really all a charade? Are we programmed by school, media, church, etc. to think that we have the option to choose whatever we want, but in actuality we are following some subtle rules we call custom? Interesting stuff.

All these posts...

It seems as though each era has a post- ... there's modernism and post-modernism... there's Victorian and post-Victorian eras. In Jameson's "Postmodernism" he attempts to describe the difference between the two, and the need for the "post". He states, "It may indeed be conceded that all of the features of postmodernism I am about to enumerate can be detected, full blown, in this or that preceding modernism" (269). Jameson calls this time period "Old Modernism," which is an interesting view point.
When the eras change it is usually because of a rebellion of the current era. For example modernism came into being because the Victorian way was not working for their state of mind or culture anymore. So then postmodernism must spring up because modernism is outdated. What Jameson is arguing against is that just because postmodernism aims to be the exat opposite of modernism (much like modernists' goals were to be opposite of Victorian) it does not mean that premodernism (or Old Modernism) and postmodernism are the same thing. He says that we have to take into consideration the time period, "The first point to be made about the conception of periodization in dominance, therefore, is that even if all the constitutive features of postmodernism were identical and continuous with those of an older modernism... the two phenomena would still remain utterly distinct in their meaning and social function, owing to the very different positioning of postmodernism in the economic system of late capital, and beyond that, to the transformation of the very sphere of culture in contemporary society" (270). What I find is that a different cultural era comes into place due to an rebellion of the current society. In literature the two are always linked, so you cannot ignore the economical and societal changes.

Can't we all be critics?

I was posting a comment on another blog and my ending sentence was: Can't we all be critics with valid points? And that got me thinking.
I argued that critics, in a way, take away the opinion of the readers, because they tell you what to think and what to pull out of a text. There is no room for interpretation and the reader is stuck "learning" only within the abilities of the teacher or critic. What if we gave everybody a clean slate with no critic and let people think what they want about a certain text? If a 100 people read it then we would have 100 different veiw points. And that is beauty. With the various opinions couldn't we exaust most, if not all, the possible meanings of a text? Of course we could. Take for example a high school classroom where a teacher presents a novel and then explains what the author meant, the point, and the significance of each chapter. No group discussions, no room to argue, just taking notes and memorising of the information. Or, we could enter a graduate class where everyone is given a topic and are free to express whatever they got out of it, turning it into a discussion or debate among classmates. There is so much more to learn and accomplish in this setting. This point, is what post-structuralists were trying to make. Barry talks about Roland Barthes' essay The Death of the Author: "...the essay makes a declaration of radical textual independence: the work is not determined by intention, or context. Rather, the text is free by its very nature of all such restraints. Hence, as Barthes says in the essay, the corollary of the death of the author is the birth of the reader" (pg 63-64). Clearly the "professional" critic is the reader, which leads me back to my ending and then beginning question: Can't we all be critics?

The Debate Over Free Will

I find Luther and Erasmus' view points over free will to be insightful. Luther states free will is, "an empty name... a fiction and a label without reality" (Conley 122). As Americans we will fight and die for the freedom to do what we want. But, do we really have complete free will? One could argue that we are able to express ourselves freely and essentially do whatever we want to do, and the restrictions are nessasary in order to prevent chaos. However, the correct answer is no. In certain circumstanses our first amendment is taken away from us. We have laws to abide by. This is Luther's point. No one can fully, completely and entirely be completely free to do whatever they want. In a working society it is not plausible. The best the government can do is give people the essentials, and try to maintain order.

Erasmus, though correct in his analysis, takes a way out of the argument by seeing both sides. He states, "It is not that man's will really is free, but that the only way to arrive at a tenable position is by subjecting it to the skeptical methods of controversia" (123). What? I don't even know what this means. But I'm pretty sure he is taking a semi-middle stance, leaning more toward there being free will. He criticises Luther for being extreme, but all he is doing is choosing a side. He says there is no free will. Luther is not saying: well, there is free will but not always. Anyone can argue that.

History Repeats Itself... maybe

The thing I found interesting about this reading as well as the last reading is how their ways are similar to our own. Yes, there are clear differences but it is clear that some culture has maintained from these previous time periods.

For example the lessons required for rhetoric students in the Roman era are the same lessons I went throught for my undergraduate classes. There is a lot of emphasis put on the way teachers were suppose to teacher rhetoric and different styles and Diodorus argues that speech (logos) is what made people superior to others (Conley 31-32). I can't help but to think that I would be considered inferior for my lack of practice as an orator.

This made me wonder why throughout my education why I only had one communication class. Are we expected now to learn speech as a lesser form of writing? And why does it play such an insignificant role in schools? Now, after my undergraduate education I am looking at the the other side of the education process: how teachers are being taught to teach students and where rhetoric is suppose to take place. Cicero argued that students should be taught rhetoric instead of relying on natural talent. Now it seems that we are more reliant on our own speech skills to lead us through life.