Analysis #4 - Marxist Theory

 

Marxism is a fouled up attempt to create a society where  everyone is equal in economic status, political status, etc. Unfortunately those that attempted to create societies based on this theory instead made it come out as a totalitarian society. This meaning there was one person above them all calling all the shots making the society therefore unequal, since Marxism was meant to make a non-class system with no government, not one with two classes and a single person overseeing the whole thing. The mistranslation of Marxism also has led to several other versions, such as socialism and communism. As a result, this caused a lot of turmoil and as said before, various forms of Marxism that played on several elements of the original theory, without actually following it. One element that is played a great deal is that there is not such thing as private property amongst this theory's followers; this is something seen as a major proponent of socialism. 
This theory of Marxism, communism and socialism unfortunately still exist in many countries for example, Korea. North Korea to be more precise, since as a result in the severe change in government, caused the country to split in two, the northern part remaining communistic.
Of the many attempts to design a form of society that brought all classes into unity, Marx's dream of it coming true did not work out:
"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes" (p. 657, Marx).
This is in fact what continues today. Marx's original dream of a class-less society, where everyone was equal is something the world isn't ready for yet. It may never be ready for. Marx's ideal society, a utopia if you will, is something that may never exist in any realm of possibility, except in a dead man's dreams.

Works Cited
Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton, 2001. Print.

Weekly Post #5 - Barthes and Reader Response

Reader Response is one of those theories that is easily understandable. It speaks of how the reading of a book, an article, etc. any kind of readable media, and how it effects the reader and how the reader responds to it. Not many writers write for the joy of knowing how the reader will respond to their writing, but sometimes to fulfill some inner desire they themselves have for what they are writing or for money.
With Barthes view of reader response, he is wary authors, seeing their view points are often times to closed off for the reader to get anything out of what they are reading. I agree with this, as once I attempted to read Lord of the Rings, but found it a little difficult to really get into, since Tolkien had put so much detail into his writing, that it was almost impossible to really immerse yourself into the reading without drowning. Their is no leeway for the reader to imagine Middle Earth on their own.

Analysis #3 - Psychoanalysis

Freud first wrote psychoanalysis in an attempt to understand why people act the way they do and tries to connect it with childhood behavior. This is a form of therapy he devised to understand the way people ultimately think. Freud says that the super-ego as he calls it and the unconscious mind are in fact two separate but equal perpetrators of why a person may think and behave as they do and how their emotional state steers the way they think. As for Lacan, he sees no separation in the two and that they are in fact one and the same, no dividing factors involved.
Freud also sees that people in many cases act and do the same or similar things for the same reason, such as if they hate their father, they perhaps see themselves in the position of their father next to their mother, etc. The hate may be lying elsewhere for different reasons, this is perhaps one of the reasons Freud isn't followed as literally today as it was back when he was still alive. People have discovered other reasons for many of the things that they do as adults that connect back to when they were children, and not necessarily for the reasons Freud says they do.
Of Freud's theories on a persons childhood this stood out:
"Being in love with the one parent and hating the other are among the essential constituents of the stock of psychical impulses which is formed at that time and which is of such importance in determining the symptoms of the later neurosis (p.814, Freud)."
This rather bothers me in the fact that this is not the case with all people in their relationship with their parents. Yes, it is true that a child may prefer one parent over the other, and sometimes with good reason, but some children love both parents, just in different ways. This is the same with a person who may love two people, but it is just in different ways, depending on how each person treats them and might speak to them, any number of factors can feed into the reasons that create the different forms of love between them.

Works Cited
Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton, 2001. Print.

Analysis #2 - Structuralism - Lacan and Language - "The Mirror Stage"

Jacques Lacan, one of the precursors to post-structuralism, combined Freud's psychoanalysis theory with Saussure's structuralism, leading to a theory sometimes called "Lacanian psychoanalysis". He believed, unlike Freud, that the ego itself could not take place of the unconscious, if the unconscious mind created the ego, or the 'I' self, making it but an illusion.
Such as that rather than considering the ego as a central part of a person, whereas Lacan places the consciousness as the center, and the ego just a part of it.
This theory appears quite true since not all people look at themselves as the center of every thing and rather look to others to be the center of their worlds. Lacan takes apart Freud's idea of consciousness and ego helping others realize their true selves rather than a self-centered version. This turns Freud's fragmented idea of self into a more unified structure, changing language and ideas into a far more coherent form.
In Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience, Lacan states that:
"This form would have to be called the Ideal-I, if we wish to incorporate it into our usual register, in the sense that it will also be the source of secondary identifications, under which term I would place the functions of libidinal normalization. But the important point is that this form situates the agency of the ego, before its social determination, in a fictional direction, which will always remain irreducible for the individual alone, or rather, which will only rejoin the coming-into-being (le devenir) of the subject asymptotically, whatever the success of the dialectical syntheses by which he must resolve as I his discordance with his own reality" (p.1165, Lacan).
This, albeit, passage, brings forth the center of Lacan's Mirror Stage theory in that it is about discovering ones self outside the usual pretenses society brings forth, and discovering the I instead of the we or us, in a conversation, but the individual.

Works Cited
Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton, 2001. Print.

Weekly Post #4 - Saussure and Semiotics

Saussure is perhaps considered the founder of Semiotics, sometimes called the study of signs, that deals with how language deals with social life and how it directs it. A single word in the English language is capable of changing peoples view on life in a single moment.
Apples are normally several different colors in nature, but when a child thinks of an apple, they see it as red and usually is the same shape as others, but is always red. As a child, you are taught words and how to connect them with images, these images though are just one view point. Then the word dog, there are several types of dogs but we may associate the word dog with a picture in our head that is completely different from what we see.
In other countries the word dog or cat or apple may be completely different, but the picture may be the same. Other words may not exist in that language but mean the same thing when associated with something else. Like the Internet. Other languages have no real way of taking such a word and fitting it into their language structure.