Introduction to Postmodernism

1
Introduction toPostmodernism Contemporary
Literary Theory
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Agenda

• POSTMODERNISM
• LITERARY THEORY
• New Criticism
• Structuralism
• Archetypal / myth criticism
• Marxist / ideological
• Psychoanalytical
• Poststructuralism
• Deconstruction theory
• Cultural materialism
• Feminism
• Queer theory
• Postcolonialism

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Why Reality Isnt What It Used to Be
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Questions

• 1. What is postmodernism?
• 2. Why should we care about it?
• 3. Have you received a modern or postmodern
  education?
• 4. What does postmodernism have to say about
  your identity?
• 5. What does postmodernism have to say about
  truth, beauty, and goodness?
• 6. How is postmodernism is impacting K-12
  education, religion, the arts, and our daily
  lives?
• 7. How are postmodern scholars trying to change
  the way we understand contemporary literature
  and film?

5
Modernity
Newtonian Order

• The Renaissance and Enlightenment project of
  Western civilization
• God, reason and progress
• There was a center to the universe.
• Progress is based upon knowledge, and man is
  capable of discerning objective absolute truths
  in science and the arts.
• Modernism is linked to capitalismprogressive
  economic administration of world
• Modernization of 3rd world countries (imposition
  of modern Western values)

TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Western Humanist View of Language
What Is Language?
as

• People are the same everywhere
• There are universal laws and truths
• Knowledge is objective, independent of culture,
  gender, etc.
• Language is a man-made tool that refers to real
  things / truths
• I, the subject, speak language
• I have a discernible self
• The self is the center of existence

TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Western Humanist View of Literature
Purpose of Literature

• Good literature is of timeless significance.
• A literary work is "sincere," meaning it is
  honest, true to experience and human nature, and
  thus can speak the truth about the human
  condition.
• The literary text contains its own meaning within
  itself.

TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Evolution of Western Thought
Timeline
as
TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Modernity
Timeline

• RENAISSANCE TO ABOUT 1900 (/- 30 years)
• Baudrillard
• Early modernity Renaissance to Industrial
  Revolution
• Modernity Industrial Revolution
• Postmodernity Period of mass media
• The world according to white Anglo-Saxon males
  from Europe

TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Your Place in History
Timeline
14th C 1900
2000

• Modern

• Modernism

• Postmodernism

TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Your Place in History
Timeline
as
14th C 1900
2000

• Modern

• Modernism

• Postmodernism

Your teachers were / are here
TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Modernism
Death of the Old Order

• Early 1900s
• World War I
• Worldwide poverty exploitation
• Intellectual upheaval
• Freud psychoanalysis
• Marx class struggle
• Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Neitzsche
• Picasso, Stravinsky, Kafka, Proust, Brecht,
  Joyce, Eliot

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Relativism
The Bending of Time Space

• Einstein relativity, quantum mechanics
• Refutation of Newtonian science
• Time is relative
• Matter and energy are one
• Light as both particle and wave
• Universe is strange

Emc2
PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
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Modernist Art
Breaking the Rules

• Cubism
• Surrealism
• Dadaism
• Expressionism
• Different ways of depicting reality
• Fragmentation of reality
• BUT STILL A BELIEF IN AN OBJECTIVE REALITY (for
  the most part)

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
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Modernist Art
Breaking the Rules

• Cubism
• Surrealism
• Dadaism
• Expressionism

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
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Modernist Art
Breaking the Rules

• Cubism
• Surrealism
• Dadaism
• Expressionism

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
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Modernist Art
Breaking the Rules

• Cubism
• Surrealism
• Dadaism
• Expressionism

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
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Modernist Literature
A World with No Center

• Things fall apart,The centre cannot hold,Mere
  anarchy is loosed upon the world.
• --Yeats, The Second Coming

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
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Modernist Literature
Breaking the Rules

• Emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity
• Movement away from objective third-party
  narration
• Tendency toward reflexivity and
  self-consciousness
• Obsession with the psychology of self
• Rejection of traditional aesthetic theories
• Experimentation with language

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
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What is Postmodernism?
Acceptance of a New Age

• A term applied to all human sciences
  anthropology, psychology, architecture, history,
  etc.
• Anti-foundational, anti-reason, anti-progress
• No center to the world

POSTMODERNISM
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Postmodernism Basic Concepts
The End of Master Narratives

• Rejection of all master narratives
• All truths are contingent cultural constructs
• Skepticism of progress anti-technology bias
• Sense of fragmentation and decentered self
• Multiple conflicting identities
• Mass-mediated reality
• Life just is

POSTMODERNISM
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Postmodernism Basic Concepts
The End of Master Narratives

• All versions of reality are SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS
• Concepts of good and evil
• Metaphors for God
• Language
• The self
• Gender
• EVERYTHING!

POSTMODERNISM
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Modernity PostModern
One vs. Many

• History as fact
• Faith in social order
• Family as central unit
• Authenticity of originals
• Mass consumption

• Written by the victors
• Cultural pluralism
• Alternate families
• Hyper-reality (MTV)
• Niches small group identity

POSTMODERNISM
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What is Postmodernism?
Acceptance of a New Age

• Continuation of modernist view
• Does not mourn loss of history, self, religion,
  center
• A term applied to all human sciences
  anthropology, psychology, architecture, history,
  etc.
• Reaction to modernism systematic skepticism
• Anti-foundational

POSTMODERNISM
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What is Postmodernism?
Acceptance of a New Age

• The Enlightenment project is dead.

POSTMODERNISM
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Frederick Jameson
Culture Capital

• Modernism and postmodernism are cultural
  formations that accompany specific stages of
  capitalism
• 1. Market capitalism 18th-19th C. Steam
  locomotive Realism
• 2. Monopoly capitalism Late 19th C to
  WWII Electricity and automobile Modernism
• 3. Multinational/consumer capitalism Nuclear
  and electronics Postmodernism

POSTMODERNISM
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Postmodernism Basic Concepts
The End of Master Narratives

• Life just is
• Rejection of all master narratives
• All truths are contingent cultural constructs
• Skepticism of progress anti-technology bias
• Sense of fragmentation and decentered self
• Multiple conflicting identities
• Mass-mediated reality

POSTMODERNISM
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Postmodernism Basic Concepts
The End of Master Narratives

• All versions of reality are SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS
• Concepts of good and evil
• Metaphors for God
• Language
• The self
• Gender
• EVERYTHING!

POSTMODERNISM
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Postmodernism Basic Concepts
Language As Social Construct

• Language is a social construct that speaks
  identifies the subject
• Knowledge is contingent, contextual and linked to
  POWER
• Truth is pluralistic, dependent upon the frame of
  reference of the observer
• Values are derived from ordinary social
  practices, which differ from culture to culture
  and change with time.
• Values are determined by manipulation and
  domination

POSTMODERNISM
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Richard Rorty (1931-)
Relativism Pluralism

• A pragmatic philosopher
• Anti-foundationalist
• No reality independent of our minds
• Truth is the result of inter-subjective agreement
  between members of a community
• We must choose between self-defeating relativism
  or solidarity of thought within our group
• The goal of the search for truth is to help us
  carry out practical tasks and create a fairer and
  more democratic society

POSTMODERNISM
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Postmodern View of Language
The Observer is King

• Observer is a participant/part of what is
  observed
• Receiver of message is a component of the message
• Information becomes information only when
  contextualized
• The individual (the subject) is a cultural
  construct
• Consider role of own culture when examining
  others
• All interpretation is conditioned by cultural
  perspective and mediated by symbols and practice

POSTMODERNISM
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PostModern Literature
Play and Parody

• Extreme freedom of form and expression
• Repudiation of boundaries of narration genre
• Self-reflexive (this is only a work of art)
• Intrusive author
• Parodies of meta-narratives
• Deliberate violation of standards of sense and
  decency (which are viewed as methods of social
  control)
• Integration of everyday experience, pop culture

POSTMODERNISM
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PostModern Literature
Fragmented Identities

• Parody, play, black humor, pastiche
• Nonlinear, fragmented narratives
• Ambiguities and uncertainties
• Conspiracy and paranoia
• Ironic detachment
• Linguistic innovations
• Postcolonial, global-English literature

POSTMODERNISM
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PostModern Literature
Fragmented Identities

• Parody, play, black humor, pastiche
• Nonlinear, fragmented narratives
• Ambiguities and uncertainties
• Conspiracy and paranoia
• Ironic detachment
• Linguistic innovations
• Postcolonial, global-English literature

POSTMODERNISM
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Modernity PostModern
Binary Oppositions

• History as fact
• Faith in social order
• Family as central unit
• Authenticity of originals
• Broadway musicals
• Mass consumption
• Hierarchy between high and low cultures

• Written by the victors
• Cultural pluralism
• Alternate families
• Hyper-reality (simulacrum)
• Music videos
• Niches small group identity
• Mixing of high and low disruption of high by pop
  culture

POSTMODERNISM
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Modernity PostModern
Binary Oppositions

• Belief in real, lasting truths
• Seriousness of intention middle-class
  earnestness
• Red Skelton
• New York skyline
• Moral boundaries in art

• Truth contingent and localizedbooks as marketed
  productswhoever is hot at the moment
• Irony challenge to anything serious
• Jon Stewart
• Las Vegas
• Anything goes

POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?

• POSTMODERN
• Breathless
• Natural Born Killers
• Blue Velvet
• Pulp Fiction
• Blade Runner
• The Matrix
• Moulin Rouge

• POST-POSTMODERN (Post-Punk)
• American Beauty
• Being John Malkovich
• Magnolia
• Memento
• Fight Club

POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?

• POSTMODERN
• Cynicism
• Irony
• Playful deconstruction of the rules
• Mixing of real and hyper-real
• No sincere attachment to characters
• Story not important

• POST-POSTMODERN (Post-Punk)
• Visually radical, but...
• Nostalgic for some mythic, uncomplicated,
  preconsumer culture movement
• A new sincerity
• Postmodern metaphors of self-reference, irony,
  sumulation absorbed into American culture
• Narrative matters
• Nicholas Rombes

POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?

• POSTMODERN
• Retro-styles homage to classic films and
  directors
• Mixing and reinterpreting the old and the new
• Playing with old myths and old stories (nothing
  new)
• Characters occupy different worlds at the same
  time
• E.g., Blue Velvet, Run Lola Run, Brazil, Blade
  Runner
• Mixture of truth and fiction (e.g., JFK)

POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?

• POSTMODERN POP CULTURE
• Homer Simpson
• Hip Hop
• Civil unions
• Diversity training
• Casual wear in formal places
• Body piercing

POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
A gay Southern Baptist who practices Buddhist
meditation and believes in the Big Bang theory.
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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Modern or Postmodern?
POSTMODERNISM
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PostModernism
An Epochal Shift in Thinking

• The narrative is unravelled, the author is dead,
  the Enlightenment project is toast, and history
  is history.
• An epochal shift in the basic condition in
  being.
• --Geoffrey Nunberg

POSTMODERNISM
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PostModernism
Battle of World Views

• A Global Battle THE OBJECTIVISTS vs.
  THE CONSTRUCTIVISTS

POSTMODERNISM
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PostModernism
My Way

• OBJECTIVISTS

When I said during my presidential bid that I
would only bring Christians and Jews into the
government, I hit a firestorm. How dare you
maintain that those who believe in the
Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to
govern America than Hindus and Muslims?' My
simple answer is, Yes, they are.' -from
Pat Robertson's "The New World Order"
POSTMODERNISM
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PostModernism
Metaphors Kill

• People were burned at the stake for believing
  there was more than one version of reality.

POSTMODERNISM
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PostModernism
God is Not Dead

• Our public schools have become a postmodern
  battleground.

POSTMODERNISM
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PostModernism
God is Not Dead

• You can be a Christian (or Buddhist, or
  Hindu, etc.) in the postmodern world.

POSTMODERNISM
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PostModernism
We Live in the Middle

• We all slip and slide between the objective and
  constructive views
• 1. We live in a world of naïve realism.
• 2. But when we think about things, or
  have to explain our views, we become
  constructivists.

POSTMODERNISM
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How Popular Culture Changes
as

• RAYMOND WILLIAMS
• Dominant ideology controls
• Human agency people work together to bring
  about change
• Takes into account pluralismof a culture

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
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How Popular Culture Changes
Acceptance of Pluralism
Playboy Bunnies June Cleaver
Carrie in Sex The City
Samantha in Sex The City
Monica in Friends
Courtney Love
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PostModernism
Celebrating Diversity

• THE HOPE OF POSTMODERNISTS
• The deconstruction of foundational views will
  lead to a recognition and acceptance of a
  pluralistic worldview.
• Create a truly global civilization.

POSTMODERNISM
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PostModernism
Celebrating Diversity

• DOOM-SAYERS
• A Godless world.
• Late capitalism will lead to the complete
  digitization of hyper-reality no hope for an
  alienated, fragmented world duped by the
  machinations of a commodity culture
• We become simulacra the cloned robots win.

POSTMODERNISM
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Literary Theory
69
Modernity PostModern
Universality vs. localism

• Literature as expression of universal truths
  contained in archetypal metaphors

• Literature as an ideological expression of local,
  culturally constructed truths that are highly
  fluid and dependent on the readers perspective
  in time and place

POSTMODERNISM
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Modernity PostModern
Universality vs. localism

• Art is representational
• Language and imagery can be used to evoke the
  real
• Metaphysics of presence (I, the speaker, am
  present and impose order on the universe
  presence or being is central to all systems of
  thought)

• Language is a system of relations from which the
  referent is absent
• Signification without representation
• I am just a part of the signifying system of
  language language speaks me

POSTMODERNISM
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So What?
Now What?

• The white-Western-male view of the world is dead
• Truth, identity, gender, etc. are social
  constructs, contingent and local
• Its all relative and pluralistic
• Anything goes?

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
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The Dangers of Postmodernism
Proceed with Caution

• Can lead to intellectual nihilism cynicism
• From the comfortable foundation of humanism to
  absolute relativism and pluralism
• Is humanism really all that bad?
• Its all theory
• How do we use theory? Apply all to all texts?
• Glib, hip intellectualism

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
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Where Do We Go from Here?
Proceed with Caution

• Has the progress of history come to a
  dead-end?(as Foucault and Lyotard suggest)
• Have we reached the point of self-defeating moral
  relativism?
• Jameson
• We need narratives, and some sort of history
• We need to re-endow the individual
• History, literature have important functions
• Sarup
• We need to keep the Enlightenment project alive

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
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Literary Theory
Three Perspectives

• THE AUTHOR

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Literary Theory
Three Perspectives

• THE AUTHOR

• THE TEXT

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Literary Theory
Three Perspectives

• THE AUTHOR

• THE TEXT

• THE READER

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Literary Theory
Celebrating Diversity

• Different constructs of reality
• Lenses through which we see the world

?
POSTMODERNISM
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Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
Ancient History
as

• POETICS Mimetic Theory (learn through example
  representation)
• History represents the particular
• Poetry represents the universal
• Complete and unified action, beginning middle
  and end, short memorable stories
• Good plot reversal of fortune
• Anagnorsis recognition of an unknown truth
• Tragic mimesis Great characters that evoke pity
  and fear
• Comedy Flawed characters

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New Criticism
The Sanctity of the Text
as

• View literature as a valid form of knowledge and
  as a communicator of truths inaccessible via
  scientific and other discourse
• A work of literature has an organic structure
• Objective way of analyzing literature
• Authors intentions are irrelevant

TEXTUAL THEORY
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Ferdinand de Sausurre (1857-1913)
Structural Linguistics
as

• Course in General Linguistics (1916)
• General structures by which language, myths and
  literatures work
• Language is a system of signs
• Individual units of a linguistic structure only
  have meaning in relationship to other units
• Meaning is in the structure not the content

STRUCTURALISM
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Ferdinand de Sausurre
Signifier Signified
as

• SIGNIFIED
• Meaning
• SIGNIFIER
• Sound or written word

STRUCTURALISM
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Ferdinand de Sausurre
Signifier Signified
as

• SIGNIFIED
• Meaning
• SIGNIFIER
• Sound or written word

SIGNM
STRUCTURALISM
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Ferdinand de Sausurre
Signifier Signified
as

• SIGNIFIED
• Meaning
• SIGNIFIER
• Sound or written word

The bond between the two is arbitrary
SIGNM
STRUCTURALISM
84
Ferdinand de Sausurre
Signifier Signified
as
May or may not exist not important to
structuralist only how system of language gives
order to what we perceive as reality

• SIGNIFIED
• Meaning
• SIGNIFIER
• Sound or written word

Dog / Cat
STRUCTURALISM
85
Ferdinand de Sausurre
Signifier Signified
as

• SIGNIFIED
• Meaning
• SIGNIFIER
• Sound or written word

Dog / Cat
STRUCTURALISM
86
Ferdinand de Sausurre
Signifier Signified
as

• SIGNIFIED
• Meaning
• SIGNIFIER
• Sound or written word

Dog / Cat
Freedom
STRUCTURALISM
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Ferdinand de Sausurre
Binary Oppositions

• Differencethe relation that creates value
• Binary oppositionsThe idea of difference is
  based upon the concept of opposing binary pairs
• Day / night
• Male / female
• Goodness / evil
• Reason / madness
• Spiritual / earthly

STRUCTURALISM
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Ferdinand de Sausurre
Language Speaks Us
as

• LANGUAGE SPEAKS US

STRUCTURALISM
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Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-)
The Savage Mind
as

• French anthropologist
• Took Saussures theories about language and
  applied them to the study of myth and culture
• Savage mind civilized mind
• Man obeys laws that are inherent in the brain
• Myths are not made by an individualbut by the
  collective human consciousness

STRUCTURALISM
90
Claude Levi-Strauss
The Grammar of Myth

• Every culture organizes knowledge into binary
  pairs
• Different myths are all variations on a number of
  very basic themes
• A kind of grammar for narratives inherent in the
  human mind
• Certain constant universal structures called
  mythemes

STRUCTURALISM
91
Claude Levi-Strauss
The Same Old Stories

• LANGUAGE predates the individual
• REALITY is a product of language
• Jonah and Christ are the same story
• Thus all myths are timeless
• Hero needs to overcome an obstacle
• A story about a guy who loves a girl who is
  inaccessible
• Woman wants to make chicken soup has no chicken
• SAME STORY incomplete/completeness

STRUCTURALISM
92
Archetypal
Myths Archetypes
as

• NORTHROP FRYE, Anatomy of Criticism (1957)
• Literature formed an objective system that could
  be analyzed scientifically
• Laws archetypes, myths, genres are basic
  structures (universal patterns)
• Four narrative categories
• Comic Spring
• Romantic Summer
• Tragic Autumn
• Ironic Winter

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
93
Archetypal
The Universal Conscious
as

• NORTHROP FRYE, Anatomy of Criticism (1957)
• All these patterns spring from the COLLECTIVE
  UNCONSCIOUS to reveal universal archetypes
• Myth Hero is superior
• Romance Superior in degree
• Tragedy and epic Superior in degree but not to
  others
• Comedy and realism Equal to rest of us
• Satire and irony Inferior

STRUCTURALISM
94
Archetypal
Archetypal Genres
as

• NORTHROP FRYE, Anatomy of Criticism (1957)
• Tragedy About human isolation
• Comedy Human integration

STRUCTURALISM
95
Structuralism
Hidden Structures

• Reaction against fragmentation of Modernism
• The forces governing human behavior are hidden
  but detectable
• Search for underlying hidden structures
• Science grand unifying theory
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Anthropology universal archetypes
• Language

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
96
Structuralism
Language Creates Us

• Language and culture produce subjects(the I is
  decentered)
• Binary oppositions
• Literature reflects universal psyche of the
  human mind

STRUCTURALISM
97
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Repressed Truths
as

• KEY CONCEPTS
• Id, Superego, Ego
• Resolution of Oedipus complex gt the Self
• Repression
• Dreams displacement and condensation(metaphor
  and metonomy)
• Neurosis and psychosis
• Transference

PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
98
Jacques Lacan (1901-81)
Language Is Us
as

• Self and identity are social constructions.
• Our unconscious is just not inside us.
• It is formed by language which is outside us and
  constructs our sense of self.
• Language, our parents, the unconscious, the
  symbolic order represent the OTHER.

PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
99
Jacques Lacan (1901-81)
We Want Our Mothers
as

• IMAGINARY PHASE One with mother (Oedipal)
• MIRROR STAGE We recognize a separate being in
  mirror, feel lack for mother recognition of
  OTHER but not SELF birth of the never-fulfilled
  ego (ideal self-image)
• SYMBOLIC (Oedipal crisis) World of language and
  authority Father rules reason and order
  unconscious is formed emergence of desire
• REAL Ultra-conscious experiences that lie beyond
  Language such as death, terror, ecstasy, love
  inexpressible Kants thing in itself the
  complete unattainable world

PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
100
Jacques Lacan (1901-81)
We Want Our Mothers
as

• Phallogocentric view of life
• Male bias of authority
• God the Father
• We move from the lost plenitude of the originary
  mother-infant symbiotic state to a state
  dominated by Language and Logos (reason,
  knowledge, systems of order
• This provokes a sense of desire
• Feminists based theories upon Lacan

PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
101
Jacques Lacan (1901-81)
We Want Our Mothers
as

• IMAGINARY Privileges fantasies and dreams
• SYMBOLIC Tries to make sense of the sensory
  through cultural authority policeable by the
  intellect
• (Freud tried to translate the Imaginary Order
  into the conceptual Symbolic Order)

PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
102
Jacques Lacan (1901-81)
The Unconscious As Other
as

• There is no separation between self and society.
• Society inhabits the individual.
• Humans continue to look for an imaginary
  wholeness and unity
• We have a perpetual lack of wholeness.

PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
103
Jacques Lacan (1901-81)
The Unconscious As Other
as

• We constantly negate our identities.

PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
104
Jacques Lacan (1901-81)
The Voice of the Father
as

• How does the language of the text signify
  something other than what it says?
• What aspects of the text reflect the Imaginary,
  Symbolic or Real orders?
• Is there a voice of a mother or father present?
• Is the mothers voice (less structured, more
  associational, more fluid) suppressed by a
  phallogocentric symbolic order?
• Evidence of a splintered, constructed self?

PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
105
B. F. Skinner (1904-1990)
Behavior Modification
as

• We cant know the mind--so why worry about it?
• Focus on behavior what is observable
• Perceptions, thoughts, images, feelings are
  subjective and immune to measurement
• Operant conditioning (aversive reinforcing
  stimuli)
• Skinner Box-- rat in a cage
• Walden II (utopian vision)

PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
106
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Class Struggle
as

• Communist Manifesto
• Saw capitalism as a driving force of history
• Predicted that it would conquer the world
• Lead to globalization of national economies and
  cultures
• Would divide world between haves and
  have-nots
• Class struggle
• Advocated abolition of private property,
  traditional marriage, concentration of political
  power in the hands of the proletariat

IDEOLOGICAL CRITICISM
107
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Silent Ideologies

• APPLICATION TO LITERARY THEORY
• Hermeneutics of suspicion
• Focus on what the text hides (ideology is silent)
• Hegemony A pervasive system of assumptions,
  meanings and valuesthat shapes the way things
  look, what they mean, and what reality is for the
  majority of people within a given culture
  (Antonio Gramsci)
• How characters are shaped and controlled by
  economics

IDEOLOGICAL
IDEOLOGICAL CRITICISM
108
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Text as Power

• Questions a Marxist literary critic would ask
• Who was the text written for? Is it a power
  play on the part of one class to dominate
  another?
• What is the underlying ideology?
• Does the main character affirm or resist
  bourgeoise values?
• Whose story gets told? Who is left out?
• In what way are characters or groups of
  peoplecommodified?
• Role of media consumerism?

IDEOLOGICAL
IDEOLOGICAL CRITICISM
109
Jean Baudrillard (1929-)
You Are What You Consume

• Cultural materialist
• Consumer objects signs that differentiate the
  population
• Our postmodern society is no longer real. It is
  a simulation of the real.
• Mass media consumerism have created a new myth
  of reality that we accept as real.
• We live in a state of hyper-reality.

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
110
Jean Baudrillard (1929-)
The Myth of America

• America is a spectacle
• An illusionary paradise
• TV is the world
• Advertising gives consumers illusion of freedom
• All is well is the party line
• Illusion perpetuated by media culture

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
111
Jean Baudrillard (1929-)
The Matrix

• Simulacrum a copy of a copy whose relation to
  the model has become so attenuated that it can no
  longer properly be said to be a copy. It stands
  on its own as a copy without a model.
• The airless atmosphere has asphyxiated the
  referent, leaving us satellites in aimless orbit
  around an empty center. We breathe an ether of
  floating images that no longer bear a relation to
  any reality whatsoever.

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
112
Jean Baudrillard (1929-)
The Matrix

• In The Matrix, people are living what has
  already been lived and reproduced with no reality
  anymore but that of the cannibalized image (Paul
  Martin).
• Neo hides illegal software in Baudrillards book,
  Simulacra and Simulation (like Western gun
  fighters hid gins in Bibles).
• The virtual replaces the real.

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
113
Poststructuralism
Rejection of Essentialism
as

• POSTMODERN LITERARY THEORY
• Not a unified school A group of theoretical
  positions
• Self-reflexive discourse that is aware of the
  tentativeness, slipperiness, ambiguities and
  complex interrelations between texts and
  meanings. (Lye)
• Rejects
• Totalizing view All phenomenon under one concept
• Essentialist concept Reality independent of
  language
• Foundationalism Stable signifying systems rooted
  in human thought

POSTMODERNISM
114
Poststructuralism
All Truths Are Cultural
as

• STRUCTURALISM
• The individual is sacred
• The mind as the realm of meaning
• Universal laws and essences
• Inherent universal meanings that precede the text

• POSTSTRUCTURALISM
• The subject is a cultural construct
• Mind created from interactions as situated
  symbolic beings
• Truth is local language creates reality
• Meaning is intertextual, determined by social
  discourse changes with history

POSTMODERNISM
115
Poststructuralism
A Rose is Not a Cow
as

• Meanings are often hidden in the texts
• Real meaning can be unlocked by deconstructing
  the text
• Must consider psychological, cultural,
  ideological, gender and other power positions
  of author, characters, intended readers
• Words are an endless chain of signifiers,
  pointing to nothing but themselves

POSTMODERNISM
116
Roland Barthes (1915-80)
The Author Is Dead
as

• The author is dead.
• The text is a multi-dimensional space in which a
  variety of writings, none of them original, blend
  and clash.
• The reader produces a text on his or her own
  terms, forging meanings from what has already
  been read, seen, done, lived.

PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
117
Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Down with Descartes
as
Deconstruction is a theory of reading which aims
to undermine the logic of opposition within
texts.

• Skeptical postmodernist
• Attacks fundamental principles of Western
  philosophy
• Influenced by Nietzsche and Heidegger
• Attacks from a structuralist foundation
• Agrees that meaning is not inherent in signs
• Strongly disagrees with bifurcation of
  structuralism

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
118
Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Language as Metaphor

• Nietzsche influence
• Language is radically metaphorical in nature
• Every idea originates through an equating of the
  unequal
• Metaphors are essentially groundless
• All assumptions must be questioned
• Must consider vast plurality of wills to power

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
119
Jaques Derrida (1930-)
The Dangers of Dualism
as

• STRUCTURALISM is inherently flawed
• Argues that all STRUCTURES have an implied center
• All systems have binary oppositions
• One part more important than another (good/evil,
  male/female)
• This is logocentrismbasic to all Western thought
  since Plato

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
120
Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Whats Black Is White
as

• LANGUAGE MEANING
• A meaning is always temporal and part of a
  network of meanings, part of a chain of meanings
  in a chain or system to which it belongs which is
  always changing.

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
121
Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Viv Le Difference
as

• THE SELF AS FICTION
• Our self-presence is a fiction, we are in a
  constant state of differing and deferrence. As
  our center is not really a center, our
  self-presence is a fiction we create to disguise
  the play of opposition and displacement within
  which we live.

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
122
Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Ecriture
as

• INTERTEXTUALITY
• All texts refer to other texts (just as signs
  refer to other signs).
• No interpretations are final.
• The authority of any text is provisional.

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
123
Jaques Derrida (1930-)
No Final Signified
as

• STRUCTURALISM
• Signified
• Signifier

DECONSTRUCTION Signified Signifier
Signifier Signifier
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
124
Jaques Derrida (1930-)
The Unsaid Truth
as

• DECONSTRUCTIVE INTERPRETATION
• Find binary opposition and implied center
• Refute claims
• Find contradictions, self-imposed logic that is
  faulty
• Focus on what text is saying is other than what
  it appears to be saying
• Look for gaps, margins, figures, echoes,
  digressions, discontinuities

Malerationalism
Femaleemotions
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
125
Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Deconstructing Rousseau
as

• BINARY OPPOSITIONS
• Nature / culture
• Health / disease
• Purity / contamination
• Simplicity / complexity
• Good / evil
• Speech / writing

• ASSUMED CENTER
• Nature is good
• WHAT HE IS REALLY SAYING
• Theme of lost innocence
• Naïve romantic illusion
• Western guilt overcolonization

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
126
Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Male Domination
as

• Exclusions and repressions as important as what
  is saidin fact are more central they point to
  the contingency of a central part
• What is not said provides clues to authors real
  views of power
• Male Western authorities have encoded within
  their work silence about women and others
  (rationalized exploitation of others without
  knowing it).

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
127
Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Under Erasure
as

• Man can find truth in nature.

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
128
Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Richness of Language

• FREEDOM FROM TYRANNY
• Meaning circulates by difference, by being other.
• It is creative and inventive.
• Affirms multiplicity, paradoxes, richness of our
  life .
• Frees ourselves from tyrannies of univocal
  readings.
• Opposes humanism, which puts man at the center.
  One can talk about ideas and work with views that
  man is at the center only by placing them under
  erasure.
• Closer to reality, less artificial

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
129
Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Destruction is Good
as

• "If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive
  reading, it is not the text, but the claim to
  unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying
  over another. A deconstructive reading is a
  reading which analyses the specificity of a
  text's critical difference from itself."

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
130
Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Fuzzy Reality
as

• Some literature that recognizes the highly
  mediated nature of our experience, and are
  playful, ironic, explicitly intertextual and
  deconstruct themselves may be closer to reality.

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
131
Jaques Derrida (1930-)
What is Truth?

• What, therefore, is truth? A mobile army of
  metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms truths
  are illusions of which one has forgotten that
  they are illusions
• -- Nietzsche

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
132
Jaques Derrida (1930-)
A Long Way from Aristotle

• TRADITIONAL THEORIES
• Mimetic
• Didactic
• Expressive of truths

• DECONSTRUCTION
• The author is dead
• History and literature become processes of
  intertextuality
• The careful reader is king

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
133
Feminist Literary Theory
The Second Sex

• SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR (1908-1986)
• The Second Sex
• Questioned the othering of women by Western
  philosophy
• Rediscovery of forgotten womens literature
• Revolutionary advocacy of sexual politics
• Questioning of underlying phallocentric, Western,
  rational ideologies
• Pluralism gender, sexual, cultural, ethnicity,
  postcolonial perspectives

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
134
Feminist Literary Theory
Gender As a Social Construct

• Exorcise the male mind
• Deconstructs logocentricism of male discourse
• Sees gender as a cultural construct
• So are stereotypes
• Focus on unique problems of feminism
• History and themes of women literature
• Female language
• Psycho-dynamics of female creativity

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
135
Feminist Literary Theory
Feminizing Freud

• JULIA KRISTEVA (1941-)
• Psychologist, linguist novelist
• Influenced by Barthes, Freud Lacan
• Dismantles all ideologies, including feminism
• Does not consider herself a feminist
• Disagrees with patriarchal views of Freud and
  Lacan
• Maternal body source of language and laws (not
  paternal anti-Oedipal drive)

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
136
Feminist Literary Theory
Madness, Holiness Poetry

• Masculine symbolic order represses feminine
  semiotic order
• Semiotic open to men and women writers
• Semiotic is creative--marginal discourse of the
  avant garde
• Raw material of signification from pre-Oedipal
  drives (linked to mother)
• Realm of the subversive forces of madness,
  holiness and poetry
• Creative, unrepressed energy

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
137
Feminist Literary Theory
I Am Woman

• Challenges Judeo-Christian icons of woman
• Balancing act live within Lacans symbolic order
  of patriarchal laws without losing uniqueness
• Women can produce own symbols and language
• Multiplicity of female expression
• To break the code, to shatter language, to find
  specific discourse closer to the body and
  emotions, to the unnamable repressed by the
  social contract. --Kristeva

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
138
Feminist Literary Theory
Binary Equals
as

• ALICE JARDINE, Gynesis (1982)
• Woman as a binary opposition
• Man/woman
• Rational/irrational
• Good/evil
• Implied male logocentricism
• The concept of jouissance

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
139
Helene Cixcous
The Joy of Jouissance
as

• Critic, novelist, playwright
• Picks up where Lacan leaves off
• Denounces patriarchal binary oppositions
• Women enter into the Symbolic Order differently
• Deconstructs patriarchal Greek myths
• Femininity (jouissance) unrepresentable in
  phallocentric scheme of things
• Favors a bisexual view

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
140
Helene Cixcous
Deconstructing Sigmund
as

• Women are closer to the Imaginary
• Women more fluid, less fixed
• The individual woman must write herself
• Feminine literature not objective erase
  differences between order and chaos, text and
  speech inherently deconstructive
• Admires Joyce and Poe
• Men can produce feminist literature

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
141
Queer Theory
Queer Ideas
as

• Gender and sexuality not essential to identity
• Socially constructed
• Mutable and changeable
• Self shaped by language, signs and signifiers.
• Self becomes a subject in language, with more
  multiplicity of meaning.
• Western ideas of sexual identity come from
  science, religion, economics and politics and
  were constructed as binary oppositions

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
142
Queer Theory
Deconstructing Sex
as

• Queer theory deconstructs all binary oppositions
  about human sexuality.
• Encourages the examination of the world from an
  alternative view.
• Allows for the inclusion of gender, sexuality,
  race and other areas of identity by noticing the
  distinctions between identities, communities, and
  cultures.
• Challenges heterosexism and homophobia, in
  addition to racism, misogyny and other oppressive
  discourses while celebrating diversity.

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
143
Postcolonialism
The Myth of the Orient
as

• Attempts to resurrect colonized cultures
• Deconstruct Western view of third-world nations
  as otherness
• Edward Said Orientalism was an artificial word
  constructed by the West to talk about and the
  East (Typical binary opposition)
• Empire-building nations used literature as power
• Ingrained Western myths phallic logocentricism
  in colonized people

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
144
So?
Now What?

• The white-Western-male view of the world is dead
• New Criticism, Marxism Structuralism are passe
• We now have a new set of lenses to view the
  world
• We understand the importance of being
  suspicious(literature is not necessarily
  sincere)
• We recognize that truth, identity, gender, etc.
  are social constructs, contingent and local
• We recognize the power of discourse
• PM explains the global world in which we live

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
145
The Dangers of Postmodernism
Proceed with Caution

• Can lead to intellectual nihilism cynicism
• From the comfortable foundation of humanism to
  absolute relativism and pluralism
• Whose lens is correct? Who says so?
• Is humanism really all that bad?
• Its all theory
• How do we use theory? Apply all to all texts?
• Glib, hip intellectualism

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
146
Where Do We Go from Here?
Proceed with Caution

• Has the progress of history come to a
  dead-end?(as Foucault and Lyotard suggest)
• Have we reached the point of self-defeating moral
  relativism?
• Jameson
• We need narratives, and some sort of history
• We need to re-endow the individual
• History, literature have important functions
• Sarup
• We need to keep the Enlightenment project alive

POSTSTRUCTURALISM
147
Different Ways to Read a Film/Novel

• Archetypal
• Freudian / Lacanian
• Ideological
• Deconstructionist
• Feminist
• Queer
• Post-colonial