Keepin' It Greek

In Sedgwick's essay from "Between Men" I was interested in the dynamic presented by her concerning the ancient Greeks, where she linked them to today's homophobia. She says: "The continuum between 'men loving men' and 'men promoting the interests of men' appears to have been quite seamless" (1686-87). Earlier she mentions that the same system that suppresses homosexuals is the same system that oppresses women. Even in relation to the Greeks, taking on a boy as your apprentice still gave him power over women as well as slaves. Tue Sedgwick is arguing against homophobia, but I might need some clarification on what she is trying to say in relation to her larger essay.It seems to me that today's gripe with homosexuality is in some aspects incomparable to the system of learning and transferal of power that the Greeks established.

You Can't Teach That

Guillory states that : “If the formal study of Latin-American novels in the university does not really transmit or reproduce Latino culture, it follows that the relation of even Latino students to these artifacts will not be entirely unlike the relation of “American” students to the works of “Western” (American of European) culture”(1474). Guillory says this in relation to the alienated atmosphere the school creates, and it seems to me that it is a false one, one that pretends to transfer useful information but instead ends up creating something entirely different than the intended material. I agree that culture can’t be taught, that the only pure way is to live culture and it makes sense that one can get only ideas of a culture in a school setting rather than being able to “learn” a culture.

I think it is important to separate a text from the absorption of culture, as text isn’t the only thing that a culture relies upon. Guillory address the subject of oral tradition, which to me is just as important as text, if not more so. Oral tradition seems to have more of a personal aspect because its only means of transfer is between people. You can’t have oral tradition without a gathering of some sort, whether it be between two people or a group of people. This seems more beneficial to culture.

Arse Over Head

Bourdieu pouints out that : "...the relaxation of articulatory tension', which leads, as Bernard Laks has pointed out, to the dropping of the final 'r' and 'l'...is associated with rejection of the censorship which propriety imposes, particularly on the tabooed body, and with the outspokenness whose daring is less innocent as it seems since, in reducing humanity to its common nature- belly, bum, bollocks,grub, guts, and shit- it tends to turn the social world upside down, arse over head" (88).

According to Bourdieu, politeness is inflicted onto the lower class by the upper, and it seems to me that by speaking plainly without any of proprietary hindrance, the lower class gains some sort of power through their language use and perhaps this is why politeness is so stressed. The fact that upper class speech limits the view of the natural body, suggests a self-imposed godlike nature and deems the body as the opposite of what it is, unnatural and perhaps even filthy. The lower class sees the body for what it is and talks about it freely.

He goes on to say that "from the standpoint of the dominated classes, the adoption of the dominant style is seen as as a denial of social and sexual identity, a repudiation of the virile values which constitute class membership" (88). So there is a clear link between natural speaking and belonging in the lower classes, though it would seem to the upper class that impolite speaking would be an alienating factor. But there is also boundaries placed on the lower class, for if they do change their way of speaking, they may not be accepted by other members of the class. It seems to me that there are rules for both classes, each with limiting factors.

Read This, See This

I was really compelled by what Benjamin said about captions: "At the same time picture magazines begin to put up signposts for him, right ones or wrong ones, no matter. For the first time, captions have become obligatory. And it is clear that they have an altogether different character than the title of a painting" (1239).

So instead of providing something for a viewer to consider, as the title of a painting would, captions tell the viewer what to see. There is no room for initial interpretation when a caption accompanies a picture. It's just another form of reproduction, but in this case it's the reproduction of thoughts. Someone writes a caption of what they see in a picture and then passes this same thought to the masses. Reproduced thought on reproduced art.

Praise Bell Hooks

Thank goodness for a finally readable, clear, organized piece of writing dealing with theory!

I was really intrigued by the information about women keeping women down that Hooks brought up throughout the book. I think it important to blame sexism and not just men for the problems that many women experience. The fact the rich with women often times held other women down solely to get ahead in a patriarchal industry is an important issue to be aware of in concerns with feminism. I also like the points Hooks made about mass media skewing feminism. It's apparent that the media has their own agenda based on profit. This also comes out in Hooks' chapter on beauty, and the commodification of a women. Feminism also deals with action against capitalism and I thought Hooks made great points about comfortable clothes and the fashion industry.

TMI

Jameson quotes in his essay in relation to “interpretation proper” that:

“This is the place to answer the objection of the ordinary reader, when confronted with elaborate and ingenious interpretations, that the text means just what it says. Unfortunately, no society has ever been quite so mystified in quite so many ways as our own, saturated as it is with message and information, the very vehicles of mystification (language, as Talleyrand put it, having been given us in order to conceal our thoughts)” (184).

I believe that the point he is making here is one of awareness. Not having knowledge about mystification is a great hindrance to the “ordinary reader.” It seems to me naive to think that someone might think that a text meant exactly what it says. In the sentences before the quote, Jameson talks about “interpretation proper” and “strong rewriting,” so is it that the critic must determine what the text is really saying to present to the reader, or should the reader already be doing this? Also, does the reader believe what the critic is saying or should the reader look even deeper into the text interpreting another text?

I will agree that our current age is complex in terms of information and one can be easily tricked into only seeing surface information or don’t care enough to interpret due to the constant stream of information. Jameson's essay brings to mind memes, as they are propagated by information that is recurrent.

Art Commodified

In his essay "Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" Jameson states that "aesthetic produciton today had become integrated into commodity production generally; the frantic economnic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods (from clothing to airplanes), at ever greater rates of turnover, now assigns an increasingly essential structural function a nd position to aesthetic innovation and experimentation" (269-70).

I take this quote to mean that in general, people are being creative solely due to the prospect of getting paid for it, and that our system demands that they operate this way. I can see how this plays out in most cases, though some modes of creative expression yileds less payoff. We have put value on creativity and instead of representing feelings or ideas, it is assigned a monetary worth. Art is often times judged on how much it costs. The higher the price, the better the art is supposed to be. Also with odder aesthetic design comes a high price tag and people strive to develop oddball art, design, clothes, etc. to catch that golden dollar sign. I think that one of Jameson's points is that the way we think about creativity, the way we produce a piece, and the way it is seen in society has changed: everything now revolves around money.

Modernism vs. Post-Modernism

While modernism calls attenttion to the real nature of the world post-modernism tells us that everything we are subjected to is not real. Eliot and the Modernist authors were bringing attention to the fact that the 20th century was not an ideal time. In the past authors and poets had glorified war or nature, or their surroundings, whille Modernists told the truth: that their world was a literal and spiritual wasteland and that war was not glorious.

Post-modenists strive to reveal the truth about the modern world , claiming a "disappearenc of the real" While both classes are trying to change thought, realities change frequently and posssibily can never be clearly defined.

Cleanth Brooks: 'The Formalist Critic" is WRONG!

Brooks' attack on formalist critics surprised me. I have always liked formalism and believe that sometimes too much is taken away from the text by looking at outside influences. Yes, social aspects, etc.  of a piece are important, but so is the text. Augustine came to mind.  He said that a person should learn rhetoric by example: by reading past speeches made by great orators.  Can we trust the author to transfer their knowledge and influences into their work so that we don't have to rely on outside sources? Does the author oblige to the reader instead of expecting the ideal reader? 

Brooks say that to make a "poem or novel the central concern of criticism has appeared to mean cutting it loose from its author and from his life as a man, with his own particular hopes, fears, interest, conflicts, etc."  Am I wrong to assume that all the emotions from the author should be apparent in the text? Anything that the author intended the reader to know he/she would transfer it into the text itself. But then again, what if the author is writing something that is opposite of what they believe?  So many questions.

Brooks places a lot of weight on the readers' shoulders.   I agree with him that there is no ideal reader (and perhaps no ideal author).  But I do think that there is some merit in formalism and close reading of the text without outside influences.    

Learn by Example

I like Augustine. Very readable.

Mixing the pagan with the Christian is an interesting thing for a Catholic to do. But I think that Augustine realizes that there are valuable things to learn from the ancient orators. He cites Cicero quite frequently and it's always relevant to his idea of rhetoric, which he has baptized Christian in "On Christian Doctrine." His mix of ideas reminds me a bit of Eliot's "The Wasteland." Eliot combines many elements of different religions as well as pagan ideals to get a good, sort of moral point across, much like Augustine does.

Augustine recognizes that bad people may use eloquence to sway a crowd, which is sort of the topic we were discussing in class last week. Augustine clears it up for me. Though the wicked may employ eloquence for their dastardly deeds, their actions don't match with their speech, making them irrelevant. He says "For how can they express in words what they do not express in deeds" (377). This contrast between what you say and what you do makes a lot of sense to me.

Augustine places a lot of importance on practice of rhetoric rather than just learning the rules. He says that basically if you want to learn rhetoric you should learn by example, studying past speeches, which follow all the rules you need to know anyway. However, if you don't have wisdom behind your eloquence, anything you learned is pretty much useless. In this case, Augustine says you must know the Scripture to back up your eloquence, "For those who speak eloquently are listened to with pleasure; those who speak with wisdom are heard with profit" (363).

Different from Cicero, Augustine says that you should pray to aid your speeches. He says that you should pray to know the material and pray for the crowd so that they will absorb and understand what it is that you are trying to get across. He has given the reader a pretty detailed guide to good speaking already and yet he still keeps the religious aspect which the reader doesn't even need for persuasive speech. The religious aspect throughout the essay fits surprisingly well with rhetoric. Instead of trying to convince a crowd about the innocence or guilt of a person, or about the function of art, Christians were vying for conversion, which doesn't deal with human law, but with human souls. Persuading someone to save their eternal souls seems less pressing than persuading a group to save someone's life.

Rhetoric Saves Bears

I was quite impressed by the turn that rhetoric took in the Second Sophist period.  Rhetoric as entertainment as "a humane substitution for gladiatorial matches and bear baiting" (Conley 61) is a big difference from what Aristotle was doing.  True rhetoric was a sort of art to A but as entertainment?  Rhetoric must have been highly artistic to achieve the status of entertainment and to be performed at public celebrations.   To hold the attention of the masses and be substitute for the more barbaric shows, rhetoric held some power during the period.  

The difference of function at public display speeches compared to imperial orations is an interesting one.  Instead of being propaganda for the ruling class, like it might be used for in modern times, rhetoric does not serve as mass communication due to the fact that the performance is solely for the elite.  Propaganda takes on a different role in a  time with no internet or CNN. 

As per Classic Rhetoric: Has anyone seen the HBO series Rome? I've been watching the first season and realized when I was reading Cicero that he's in the series.  Of course his role and relationship to Caesar is exaggerated, but there he is!  Giving Julius a hard time.  I thought that out of his selections Rhetoica ad Herennium  was the most useful to me. It is well organized and clear. His later selections get a bit wordy. 

His dig at women in RaH: "Sharp exclamation injures the voice and likewise jars the hearer, for it has about if something ignoble, suited rather to feminine outcry than to manly dignity in speaking" (pg. 169)

Philodemus' dig: "Not even a woman would be so foolish as to choose the worse when the better is present" (203).

Philodemus' view that epideictic rhetoric is art but not the deliberative, forensic, or political science branches makes sense by modern standards. We don't consider law as an art form, though it takes considerable talent. Creative is expressive of one's self and not just organized facts. 

Rhetoric in the European Tradition

I apologize for the lateness of this post. I'm home in the boonies where the internet is slow and connections are few and far between.

Conely's quick summary of the different classes of rhetoric proved to be interesting and extremely helpful for me to put my rhetorical understanding in focus.  His comparison of each thinker was brief and to the point which was a good way to handle the summary.

What struck me the most was the power assigned to language by all the thinkers.  They did not focus on a person's actions but by his words or his delivery of them.  Persuasiveness as a force that could be used for the good of the people or for the opposite presents an interesting connection with the behavior of  one person or a crowd.  Gorgianic rhetoric seems to rely a lot on the mood of an audience and how effectively the speaker manipulates them.  This is why I lean towards the thoughts of Aristotle as my preferred school.  Aristotle realizes the "wool over the eyes" nature of Gorgianic rhetoric, says it's still relevant, but develops his own method of figuring things out. 

To my ultimate dismay the book store still hasn't stocked Readings from Classical Rhetoric...