A Marxist American Lit Class

When I signed up for a 20th Century American Lit class, I was unaware of the topic of study chosen by the professor. It was, therefore, a pleasant surprise to hear that we'd be studying literature as it relates to the work place. My first thought was, "Oh! I can relate to this!" My second thought was, "How very Marxist!" because not only are we reading a book called Microserfs, we're also reading a few stories by Kafka.

"I know he's not American," my professor explained as he justified his logic behind this choice. "But he's so appropriate for this class that I had no choice but to add him."

Indeed...

Roseanne, this one's for you! Because of your Literary Theory class, I have been able to categorize this class and its readings, and underline a basic study plan that will help me understand my travels through this class.

Culture in Action: Another Journal Entry

While Old Historicism considers history a necessary background to literature, it also considers history to be objective and consistent. This belief held through the 1940s and into the 1960s, until Structuralists (1950s-1960s) and Deconstructionists (mid-1960s) began to study our cultural habits and use this material to analyze a text. Hew Historicists (aka Cultural Poetics) took this one step further and, during the 1970s and 1980s, decided that history is both subjective and interrelated. History affects--and effects--art, society, and culture. This group of Poststructuralists questioned the act of reading, the reader, and the definition of a text.

During the February visit of the Visiting Writers Series, I watched Laura McCullough read a "work in progress" off her BlackBerry and was struck by the image. She may have used her smart phone out of necessity; after all, if it's not in print then she can't read it from the anthology to which it belongs, and if she were to print it out on a piece of computer paper (or <gasp> scribbled it on a piece of loose-leaf!) then she risked looking unprofessional. Or maybe she hadn't planned on reading it at all, but the moment felt right and, that being her only copy...

Because culture influences everything, New Historicists believe that culture is an interconnected social creation of art, politics, literature, and anything else that creates a society. Text, therefore, is a "culture in action;" everything is textual, Bressler explains, from Swift's "A Modest Proposal" (an essay I fell in love with in high school, btw! and deserves more study), to a presidential inauguration. This helps Laura's digital reading make sense. She read a graphically disturbing poem, with dark images and serious undertones (I wish I could remember the poem, but all I kept was the image.), yet managed to remove herself from the poem. Modern society's digital dependency desensitizes us; video games like Call of  Duty and Grand Theft Auto have belittled crime, death, and war enough that we can accept it.

The text becomes a social document that reflects and responds to a particular moment. Because text is culture in action, the author, society, customs, and almost anything else you can think of, are sorted and shaped by both the author and the reader. Language, culture, and society shape and interact with each other. The Cultural Poetic might study everything that effects society, but will focus on a certain moment, considering Laura's poem to e one text, her poem and her method of delivery to be another text, and her poem and a future reading as yet another text. And each would be studied in relation to that particular moment in time.

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Laura's "BlackBerry Reading" might be interpreted as a sign of how our reading process has changed. Because of digital apps, we now have a greater variety of reading material, and easier access to them. My smart phone holds my Kindle, Nook, and Google Books apps, and each app has a different book open. I no longer need to wait until I get home to finish a chapter, or carve out an hour of time in my favorite reading chair. (Although I still do that! That's the best way to read!) I can stand in line at the grocery store, open up my phone, and read a page or, if I'm bored with that text, then I can download a new one. I now take for granted what I once thought unthinkable. My digital library will soon rival my traditional one.

But that's another thought for another time.

Deconstruction, Narnia, Derrida and Cougar Town: A Journal Entry

Structuralists study the social and cultural practices that occur around someone while they read, and then apply that knowledge to the text you're reading to discover the meaning of the text. When a group of critics challenged these structuralists, citing the impossibility of "knowing" a text because too many interpretations exist, they became deconstructionists. They claim that every time we read (and reread) a text, we pull something different from it and, therefore, find a new meaning. Because of this, a separation exists between what the author writes and what the reader learns.

For example: I've read The Chronicles of Narnia so many times that I've given up counting; the boxed set always has a prominent spot on my "currently reading" bookshelf. Each time I read the stories, I learn something. When Lewis wrote The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, relating King Caspian's search for seven lost lords, and Reepicheep's quest to find Aslan's world, he filled the story with religious imagery and symbolism that was lost to my ten-year-old mind. At that time, I read the story at face value and enjoyed it for the adventure that it was.

Several months ago, I reread the book and was surprised to find an element of loneliness that I'd never noticed before. As I read about Eustace discovering himself to be a dragon, I remembered my first read-through: curled up on a pillow in my closet. "Good!" I thought to myself. "He deserves this after acting so mean."

I didn't say that this time. Nearly thirty years later, what ran through my head was "How lonely that poor boy must have felt." And then I compared this reading to my first reading, and realized that I might have missed Eustace's loneliness because I was living in a solitude of my own (let's be honest: how many kids read in their closet??).

Even now, I'm only just realizing that the Eustace-dragon transformation is a HUGE religious theme: salvation. It's blatantly obvious, but because I wasn't looking for it, I didn't see the author's intent. My focus was elsewhere. This is deconstruction: separating the author's intent from both the written text and my personal interpretations.

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But all this deconstruction talk would not be complete without addressing Jacques Derrida's theory on binary oppositions and the Western metaphysical belief that one concept is always superior to the other, and that the superior concept is defined by its inferior opposite. We understand the concept of "good" because we know "evil."

Derrida believes that this has happened to speech and writing, and blames Plato's belief in writing as only a copy of what was actually said.. Derrida created a binary opposition in which speech signified a presence and writing signified an absence, and created a new way to interpret a text.

SPEECH = PRESENCE

WRITING = ABSENCE

SPEECH VS WRITING

PRESENT VS ABSENT

If speech is superior to writing, then writing becomes symbols of what was said. But if we recognize this, then we can reverse it, and examine the values and beliefs that created both speech and writing. We can see this in a recent episode of Cougar Town. 

Grayson: "Sorry, Bobby. I'm out."

Bobby: "Aahh. That really kicks ass."

Grayson: "You know, when something 'kicks ass,' that's a good thing."

Bobby: "However, any time I have my ass kicked, it's been horrible."

Andy: "We've been misusing that phrase for years. So. All agree to change it?"

Laurie: "Absolutely." 

Grayson: "No. You can't just change common phrases. Words have meaning."

Laurie: "Whatever. Slap out of it."

To relate this to binary oppostion and the speech/writing hierarchy: if we watch Bobby says, "That really kicks ass," we see him hang his head in disappointment. We know exactly what he means because we not only hear him, but also see him. This is why Plato valued speech over writing--the first-hand experience.

But if you read the line, you can inflect any tone you want: irony, sarcasm, happy, dejected. Uttering the phrase, "That really kicks ass," can now be analyzed several different ways, all leading to different interpretations.

LOL, OMG, the OED, and Literary Theory

I thought I was absolutely on to something when I tried to link the Oxford English Dictionary's adding of LOL and OMG to their new definitions this year. At first I thought of structualism: Saussure's synchronic method (focusing on the language at that particular time). He claims that language has its own structure and rules that a speaker identifies as meaningful.

Structuralists believe that both social and cultural communication are governed by codes, signs, and rules (language), and that meaning is found in the system, and not the practice. Studying around the act of interpretation.

But then I read that structuralism studies how the device functions, not how it imitates reality or expresses feeling...And then I realized that while I might be on to something with this theory, I might have to fish around too much to create something instantly. LOL! I'll let it simmer on the back burner for now.

Jonathan Culler's "Structuralism and Literature"

I wonder if I might apply this to Edward Tulane and Mrs. Charbuque? Hmmm...It seems that Culler's not only a structuralist, but also a reader-oriented critic.

Jonathan Culler's "Structuralism and Literature"

Psychoanalytic Criticism and the Heroine's Quest

Jacques Lacan

Both Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan believe that the unconscious largely factors in to our everyday. Lacan believes that this unconscious is highly structured and can systematically be analyzed. Carl Jung also believes in the unconscious, but took his theory one step further with the "collective unconscious," a universal part of our psyche that stores humanity's knowledge, experience, and images.This inherited "collective unconscious" holds archetypes (powerful themes and common characteristics).

Lacan believes that all individuals are fragmented, that a "whole" self is not attainable, and that this occurs during the "imaginary" phase (birth to 6 months), a pre-verbal state that holds our wishes, fantasies, and images. During this time, we are united with our mothers, and rely on her for everything. Because of this, we have no clear image of "self." Lacan states that literature offers us a chance to return to this "imaginary" phase.

The Hero's Quest is a monomyth, a basic pattern found in many narratives around the world; it is also found in Jung's collective unconscious. The hero recognizes that a lack of something exists, forcing him on a quest to resolve this. While on this quest, he meets a magical helper and is subjected to tests. After passing these tests, the hero receives his reward.

The Hero's Quest represents our search for "self," and the "wholeness" that Lacan claims we are unable to achieve. Joseph Campbell created a popular version of this monomyth in The Hero with a Thousand Faces: a masculine journey made popular by Star Wars, The Matrix, and Spiderman.

Maureen Murdock reconfigures this masculine journey to create The Heroine's Journey. This is more of an internal journey than Campbell's, and reflects Lacan's theory that we are searching for the "wholeness" of the imaginary order. According to Murdock's journey, the heroine of Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, is incomplete, because she ends her journey as 100 per cent masculine.

Reader-Response, T. S. Eliot, and Jung

I may have joked about the "heresy of the skim" when I ran my finger across an Eliot essay and saw Jung references, but it would also appear that my second glance--my actual reading of the piece--changed my perception. This, apparently, is a reader-oriented critical response. According to a PowerPoint presentation found on the Philadelphia University website, "rethinking one part of the text after reading another" means that I engaged in literary criticism.

Hmmmmm.......time to research Rosenblatt.

Something like this makes me stop and consider the books I've read lately, and if any of them are Literature. I know that the Sookie Stackhouse novels are fluff and not literature. Not because I can read a book a night, but because they don't force me to think (or re-think!). But I wonder about the Game of Thrones series I'm reading now. Too bad I've just started the fourth book, because I might have to re-visit the first book, and each book is 1000 pages. D'oh!

...on the other hand, maybe I'll finish my midterm essays first.

Recognizing a Literacy Experience

I have an idea about why I read both The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque aloud. Some of it might have to do with their similar writing styles; both authors are modern and writing in the style of "ago," and I found a certain lyricism in them that might deserve further study. But I can also relate this to the type of literary criticism I'm currently studying--Reader-Oriented Criticism.

Assigned as homework in two different classes and two different semesters, both books were required, and I read them as an efferent reader, looking only for what might help me in class. As a student, mandatory reading assignments are usually given a quick skimming instead of an in-depth read (more on the skimming theory later!). But my subconscious said, "NO! Enjoy these books! Don't read because you have to, read because you want to!" And suddenly, I found myself reading aesthetically. Instead of rushing through each page, I experienced the words, sounds and phrases.

I became an active participant in the literacy experience.