Analysis #5 - Poststructuralism and Derrida

Born in El-Biar, Algeria, to a Jewish Algerian family, Derrida moved to France at the age of 22 to begin his studies at the École Normale Supérieur, university for Higher education in Paris, focusing on the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. His particular interest was in the analysis of écriture, the writing of philosophy itself.What is not commonly known about Derrida is the fact that though he is thought to be French, he is Algerian, since at the time of his birth, Algeria was a French colony.
From 1965 to 1984, Derrida taught at his alma mater, dividing his time between universities in Paris and America, at schools such as Yale and Johns Hopkins. Over the years he wrote several books from Speech and Phenomena , Of Grammatology and Writing and Difference, all in 1967, to The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond (1980), all of which spoke of his “post-structural” ideas as he and other French theorists had their ideas called by the Americans. He was not alone in his theories, one example being Michel Foucault himself.
After his death of pancreatic cancer in 2004, he has without question been labeled one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century.

Post-structuralism is one of the more difficult theories to translate. In short, though, it can be said that is shows human culture to be molded from language itself.
The title itself was created by American scholars to place a name to the series of works done by French academics. The distinction between the two, post-structuralism and structuralism itself forms a distinction between organization of reality with that of imagination and ideas, a sort of ‘third order”. The precise idea of the differences structuralism differ from author to author, with common themes of rejection and self-sufficiency, as well as a series of binary oppositions throughout.
Structuralism itself was a movement during the 1950s and 60s that used analytical concepts of linguistics, psychology, anthropology and other fields to understand the construct of culture itself.
Like any theory, both structuralism and post-structuralism had their faults. Structuralism felt that systems of meaning were arbitrary and unnecessary, though critics would say that this wasn’t completely true since structuralists still found reason to find a fixed point in meaning to be studied.
Like many theorists, Derrida knew that both poststructuralism and structuralism were faulty, which kept him writing like many others in both areas, attempting to find a point that there were no faults, if that is ever possible:
"The future can only be anticipated in the form of an absolute danger. It is that which breaks absolutely with constituted normality and can only be proclaimed, presented, as a sort of monstrosity. For that future world and for that within it which will have put into question the values of sign, word, and writing, for that which guides our future anterior, there is as yet no exergue" (p.1691, Derrida).
Here Derrida gets across that so far, there is no idea where language will lead the world in its ever changing ways. We will just have to stand aside and watch.

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

Weekly Post #8 - D&G and Postmodernism

A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst's couch. A breath of fresh air, a relationship with the outside world.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus.

Deleuze and Guattari, sometimes referred to as D&G, they followed the theory started from Lacan about the human mind not being as clear as the rhyme and reason as why is does what is does, it just does. Freud didn't like to look at this view of things, finding he preferred the more mapped out more predictable map of the human mind he himself discovered.
In class, we viewed part of American Psycho, where a yuppy for no clear reason, starts to kill anyone one he just about comes across, prostitutes, co-workers, by the end of the movie, almost anyone. But then the main character discovers none of what he did happened, and he has a breakdown. This is a prime example of what Freud is against, that he believes that every action a person has is for a clear reason, and Patrick Bateman's actions have no reason, but seem to serve as an outlet from some sort of suppressed emotions, no one really knows.

Weekly Post #7 - Poststructuralism and Foucault

A major part of Foucault's theory included binaries within Poststructuralism in which he is considered one of its founders. Early in his career, he became disillusioned by Marxist, and came to reject the idea of ideology, a big part of marxism. Three parts of this part of his theory include:
1.) ideology is always in opposition with another truth claim. 2.) it refers to something of the order of a subject. 3.) it is based on determinist infrastructure (base) – superstructure model (criticism of economic determinism).
With this, Foucault saw power differently than Marx did, he saw is as something exercised rather than possessed, something that could only be practiced and had to anchors to any one place or institution.

Weekly Post #6 - No Class - A Major Issue with Spring Break

Easter break. Seems that it should come at the same time every year, but unfortunately in today's society, the actual reason for the holiday is dwindling. Its sad that people just look forward to Spring Break, and not the actual reason that this time of year is really so important. From the fact that the Ten Commandments and classroom prayer, even the Pledge of Allegiance are either stricken from public view and away from our children, but that so many people do not realize what is really going on with all these things being wrong. These are things that our country were built on, and instead of respecting them, we are throwing them away or editing them, like a shirt with a fixable tear in it. All you need is a thread and needle. But unfortunately our country has become so blind that that we do not realize that the tear has gotten bigger over the course of the last century. It takes away the fact that one day a year is the day that one man, a simple carpenter died for all of us, so that we could live the lives we have today, and so many of us do not have the gall to celebrate the holiday properly, instead, Spring Breaks are scattered all over the month of April like little kids and their candy wrappers, instead of leaving the week after Easter open for a longer time of realizing what one man gave up for us all.

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.