Rolln' with Barthes

Rolln' with (Roland) Barthes, bah ha ha.
Yay, more lit theory paper stuffs from a midterm.

*note:
(S/Z) is from one of his structuralist analysis
(W/T) is "From Work to Text"
(Death) is "Death of the Author"

Barthes, like Derrida, rejects the notion of a single, finite, determinate meaning. Barthes applies this in a specific way to literature (or narrative, text, reading, ect. I really don’t know how to say it when I can no longer call it reading I guess). Basically, he is another rejecter of structuralism, a task that is “ultimately undesirable” (S/Z 3). I am going to start with a rather list-y (boring) explanation of the binary work/text. I know of no other way that would not just turn into a big rambling mess. Here goes.

A Text is “not to be thought of as an object that can be computed”, while a Work is an object (Work to Text 156). A Text is not an object because it is a methological field, a process that is acted out. A text cuts across genres, while a work is classified into a genre. A Work goes from a signifier (itself), to a signified (its “meaning”), which is reductive of language to a single meaning. Texts go from a signifier to another signifier, which disseminates meaning, by “practicing the infinite deferment of the signified”(W/T 158). In a Work, Authors create a works that are then consumed by readers, while a Text creates authors (which is what he comes to call readers in S/Z, even if they are just a “paper I”) who “play”. This concept of “play” is “the reader plays twice over, playing the Text as one plays a game, looking for a practice which re-produces it…also playing the Text in the musical sense of the term…the co author of the score, completing it rather than giving it ‘expression’…it asks of the reader a practical collaboration”(W/T 162-3).  The difference is manifested in how the reader takes pleasure (hopefully I get to that later) in the book, one of consumption of a Work, and one of production in a Text.

This leads me to the binary of the readerly/ writerly text. I see this as an extension of our definition of work/text. A readerly text is like a Work, and is what Barthes says we need to be moving away from. Here the focus is on the author and the singular meaning of what that author wrote. The text is written and the reader consumes it. The reader is “left with no more than the poor freedom either to accept or reject the text: reading is nothing more than a referendum”(S/Z 4).  With a readerly text, the reader is a person who is supposed to take in the information and opinion that the author has laid out. In this case, the critic’s job is to decipher the meaning of the text.  In opposition to the readerly text is what we should be shooting for, the writerly text. Here, the “author” is a scripter, a copyist, through whom cultural codes (I will also get to explaining codes in a bit) flow through to the one reading the text, who is also another site for codes to flow. The writerly text is “not a thing”, but a “perpetual present”, the process in the mind of the reader, it “happens” not “is”. The critic’s job is to disentangle the writerly text, to “appreciate what plural constitutes it”(S/Z 5). Again, play is the goal, not mere consumption. The writerly text is the ideal that we can never actually write. The best we can do is “read” plural texts, or create plural texts through the way we approach it. The plural text is what cuts across the binary of readerly/writerly and is what we should be pursuing.

For Barthes, the reason we should work for plural texts is because looking for a single meaning is pointless because there is no meaning there to find in the first place. We are all in a system of codes. When a person reads, the “ “I” which approaches the text is already itself a plurality of other texts, of codes which are infinite or, more precisely, lost…the meanings I rind are established not by “me” or by others, but by their systematic mark…to read, in fact, is a labor of language”(S/Z 10-11). So, we as people when writing and reading are “paper “I”s where codes are reconfigured. In this sense, we do not read, codes read us. We read and write to reconfigure these codes, and lucky for us we always have something to do because “their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language”(S/Z 6). This idea of “paper I” is basically the idea of why the author is dead, and I guess the reader along with him.

Barthes claims we are wrong to attribute creation of a text to the author, and that doing so ultimately pushes us towards trying to find a single meaning and limits our ability to “play”.  If we give the author power, our reading turns into an act of trying to find the author, which we equate to the “meaning” and we believe we have deciphered the text. But, “once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile”(Death 147). This frees the critic from pointless work, as there is no meaning, and then he has to disentangle the codes, or play.

I think that the claim that to give a text an author imposes a limit is not all correct. We always come at reading with some sort of way or process, and thinking about the author can be one of “those ways”. True, we can come up with many ways to disentangle a text without the author, but we can come up with many ways with the author as well. I see it as one of the expanding ways to look at a text. Not necessarily the only one, but a valid way to approach it. I find it a bit ridiculous, and limiting, for Barthes to say that “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author”(Death 148). This last sentence has always sounded funny (ie overly dramatic) to me because a few lines before he says that the reader is “simply that someone who holds together in a singe field all the traces by which the written text is constituted”(Death 148). He tries to “champion” the reader over the author, right after explaining that both writer and reader, equally, are simply places where codes flow. Killing off the author, to me, is ignoring one of the pluralities of the text.
And, now my thing with the “codes”. Say I totally accept his idea that we are all just made of codes in the first place. I still do not fully buy that hierarchy that he implies that we are mere sites and codes use us. That is just a weird flow of logic. Even with codes, we use them. A code is something constructed to be used, a tool of communication, a means to express what you want to express. Something constructed has a constructor. Even if it is all a “system” that we are in, it can be us using the system instead of the system working through us. Maybe Barthes just should have used different words and he meant something else, maybe (probably) my opinion on this is just as equally an assumption, a leap of logic, or whatever, as his assertions. Either way, I just don’t find it quite all thought out correctly.

Recap and Capstone

Grades for Fall 2010
English
451: A
452: A
495: A
French: D-
aawwww yyyyeeeaaaahhhh

Anyway, here is my capstone paper. This is a shortened version, and I'm not including the works cited. Ya, I'm pretty sure you are over it already.



Emerald Guildner
Professor Roberts
English 495
12/15/10
Fact Through Fiction: The  performative act  of Albee’s Zoo Story

“A paradox is fundamentally an idea or concept involving two opposing thoughts, which, however contradictory, are equally necessary to convey a more insightful illumination into truth than either can secure alone”. - Krasner

Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story (1959) begins with two men, Jerry and Peter, talking in a park and ends in a violent murder/suicide. Critics have attributed different symbolic meaning to both Jerry and Peter and give them credit for successfully communicating. Jerry has been compared to Coleridge’s “The Ancient Mariner” by Spielberg, and has most famously been seen as a metaphorical Christ figure whose “sacrifice is perhaps the most effective way that the story has been told’(Zimbardo 17).  Lewis asserts that “Jerry tries to establish contact with a person other than himself, and succeeds in the moment of death”(Lewis 29). What is most agreed upon is that Jerry’s violence is why Jerry is successful, that communication “is accomplished through Jerry‘s violent death“(Baily 33). While I do think that Jerry and Peter have their own roles that have been explained before, they do not fully achieve what the critics have claimed, and certainly not by the means they have ascribed to them. Jerry does not achieve communication through violence. Peter is not merely the character devised to represent a mankind that needs saving. Peter and Jerry are set up against each other as equal opposites.  Jerry’s violent performance actually makes it impossible for himself to communicate with Peter. Peter’s complacency makes it impossible for himself to communicate with Jerry. Jerry does not “save” Peter. But the play itself does communicate to the audience. The play is more than “fundamentally a piece of social criticism” that looks at the state of mankind (Samuels 188). It is also a critic of Performativity. The play contains both Peter and Jerry who together create something performative, though neither Peter nor Jerry are performative themselves. Their interaction on stage successfully communicates to the audience why communication is so seemingly impossible at times. Among all the debate about Performativity, Albee’s play illustrates that neither Peter or Jerry are capable of being performative because they each lack what the other has.

A performative act is one that “does something”, which means that it is one that communicates successfully. There is the commonality that a performance must have a context or intent in order to “do things”. Austin explains that in order for words to not be etiolated they must have an agreed upon context. Even though Derrida argues against Austin in many ways, he still explains that every performance is a citation. J.L. Austin claims that speech can be and act that “does something“, but that this happens under certain circumstances. Though Derrida differs with Austin’s claim that speech on stage is not performative, Derrida agrees that in order for speech to “do” something, there are certain qualifications, or precedents that must be met. Derrida counters Austin’s claim by saying that if language is parasitic when it is a citation, then everything is parasitic because every utterance, especially a performative utterance, is citational and therefore a performance.  In both of these theories there is the common thread of intent, or citation, being necessary for speech - and I would claim, any act or performance -  to “do” something, for it to be performative. Judith Butler further complicates this concept when talking about identity being constructed through performance. In order to create something, it must have a construct or context. Citation is needed for something to be performative. This can be seen as the act having the right intent. Other performative theorists such as Grassner, Brander Matthews, Eve Sedgwick, and Johnson Barbara have given their own views on what Performativity is and where it comes from( Jackson 93, 110-128, 180-191). They all have a commonality that says speech and physical acts need to be in the correct context, or follow the right social conventions, to have their intended effect.  The participants and the audience need to understand the citation in order for a performance to have its intended, purposed, effect. I conclude from this that a performative act is made up of two parts: the act or performance and the context or intent. Jerry and Peter are each representative of the two parts that make up a performative act. The frustration comes to each of them from the very half that they ascribe to. They each try to communicate to the other by using more and more extreme versions of performance or context, respectively. This push to the extreme ends of the halves that make up a performative act ultimately makes communication unlikely to the point of impossibility. One without the other renders itself ineffective, and ultimately pointless. It is  like Jerry says to Peter twice, “sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly”(Albee 25). It may seem contradictory to need two opposite parts to make a whole, but in the end a Performative act does need them.

     Jerry is only performance.  From the very beginning, he flouts social conventions. Jerry enters the stage and says “I’ve been to the zoo. I said, I’ve been to the zoo. MISTER I’VE BEEN TO THE ZOO!” (ZS 12). This is an abrupt, violent way to begin a conversation. There is no greeting given to Peter and no introduction offered. How was Peter supposed to understand that Jerry was speaking to him? How was Peter to know that Jerry wanted him to care without any indication? Social conventions can be perfunctory, but they are also needed in order to communicate. Peter’s response of “I’m sorry, were you talking to me?” shows that he was not ignoring Jerry’s entrance, but that he did not know of it. You cannot ignore something you are not aware of. Yes, maybe then a point could be to “always be aware”, but this point ignores the fact that it would be near impossible to function that way, and that mankind just does not function that way.

   The combative way Jerry talks to Peter also shows Jerry’s rejection of context and his failure at communication. He claims that “every once in a while I like to talk to somebody, really talk; like get to know somebody” but really he just wants to “ask [Peter] questions”( SZ 19). Jerry asks questions that generally shock Peter, questions about his salary, about his family life, about where he lives, and about deeper desires like having a son. Jerry was attempting to shock Peter into awareness, but only managed to annoy him. Peter says to Jerry “you don’t really carry on a conversation; you just ask questions” (ZS 22). This self alienation is Jerry’s way of refusing to contextualize his performance to his intended audience. Jerry continues to approach Peter with “slowly increasing determination and authority” as the conversation goes on( Albee 24). This determination does not come from confidence, but more from desperation. In the end we see that the whole time Jerry “ was so afraid I’d drive you away. You don’t know how afraid I was you’d go away and leave me”(Albee 60). Behind the determination was always fear, a fear that was created in him early on in his life.

     Much of Jerry’s frustration and ultimate rejection of context and social conventions are caused by his past experiences with people close to him whose contexts did not result in Performativity. He has “two empty picture frames” that he explains away by saying he does not “have pictures of anyone to put in them” (ZS 27). The parents that are supposed to be close to him are at best no longer anything to him, and at worst bad examples. His “Mom walked out on good old Pop” and then died soon after. Jerry’s father then commits suicide. Jerry is then left to his aunt who dies the day of his high school graduation. These people were in context with Jerry, but do nothing performative. Jerry refuses to give them a context by framing them. He continues to keep the frames empty, from putting any other people in context, including himself. No family, no friends, not even “the little ladies”( ZS 30). Jerry saw that these people were in context and did nothing performative, so he attributes this failure to the context and leaves it completely behind. Jerry correctly recognizes that context alone cannot create anything performative, but misrecognizes that context is to blame. The reality of context not being enough by itself alludes to the illusion that it is not even a part of Performativity (Althusser). This is a state that Jerry becomes stuck in, “Jerry has been reenacting this same conflict all his life, continuously locked into the role of outcast, locked out of love and belonging”(Gabbard 15). Jerry swings to performance from context, instead of with context.

On the other side of Performativity is Peter. Peter has only context and does not act. Peter asserts his successful inclusion in convention through his position as a married man, who “has a wife”, two children who are “both girls”, two TV’s, two parakeets, cats, and has “an executive position with a small publishing house” (ZS 21). Peter is everything that disappoints Jerry. He is a man who has context and does nothing with it. He is, as Jerry says, “a vegetable”. His state of being is also caused by an illusion that alludes to reality. The reality is that context is necessary for Performativity. The illusion is that performance will take you out of context, and that misrecognition is what frightens Peter into his vegetable state. Peter sees people like Jerry and their performances and is scared of not having influence like them. Peter wants to assume that Jerry “lived in the Village” like most actors and is disappointed to hear otherwise because it would have made “sense out of things” for him, shown to himself that his fears were justified (ZS 25). As hard as Jerry tries to take himself out of context, Peter tries to put him into in, to make sense of him and his situation, but continues to be rather confused. Jerry tells him “You don’t have to listen. Nobody is holding you here; remember that. Keep that in your mind”, to which Peter responds with “I know that” (Albee 35). But he does not really know this. Peter is confused and does not have control over the possibility of performing because of this confusion.

In spite of his efforts to stifle his awareness, Peter does feel the desperation of not being performative. He is in the park alone and does divulge information to a total stranger, even if that stranger seems quite forceful. Peter “ruefully” admits to having cats, and gives long pauses before admitting to having parakeets. His job fulfills financial obligations, but he is not excitedly engaged in any of his endeavors. Peter acts offended at Jerry’s jabs at him not having any sons, but shows his true disappointment when he says “naturally, every man wants a son”. Peter’s impotency, or inability to be performative, is insinuated when Jerry asks “you’re not going to have any more kids, are you?”. At first Peter reacts with anger at the question, but he is more disappointed in the truth than the accusation, the truth that he will “have no more children”(ZS 18).  As the talking and questioning continues “Peter becomes more and more aware of inadequacies not really faced before”(Hewes 43). With all the disappointment, Peter attempts to be performative in the way he believes should work, by placing himself even further in context with society, to more solidly plant himself into the safety of his current situation.

Albee has set the two characters up as clear representations of the halves of Performativity. They are stuck because they do not see that both parts are needed even though they seem to be contradictory to each other. The problem is like the situation that Jerry explains to Peter about the pornographic playing cards. He says, “it’s that when you’re a kid you use the cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when you’re older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy”(ZS 32). Though  this quote has been used to illustrate that Jerry is in a childlike state, while Peter is in the adult role, this statement makes it clear that either way, one state is being used as a substitute for the other, and niether is complete on its own. Jerry sees his own performances as real experiences and Peter as living in a fantasy world where nothing happens. Peter sees his conventional life as real and acceptable, while seeing Jerry as stuck in a realm that is fanciful and unreachable. Each man is incomplete and sees the other half that could complete them as antagonistic instead of complementary. This inability to see the necessity of both is why they will always be substituting things in for the other half, never actually reaching Performativity. So they circle each other, each getting deeper into disliking the other man’s state of being. What is most tragic to Jerry about Peter being a vegetable is that Peter’s life gives him a built in ability to connect with people in a way Jerry failed at. Peter’s respectable life does not guarantee connection, but certainly makes his job easier. The more you are contextualized, the more power you have to use violence and performance to create a performative thing. With all that inherent possibility, he does nothing with it.

As Peter continues to more fully contextualize himself, Jerry’s attempts at Performativity become more and more extreme, with violence being the most extreme and shocking form of performance. He tries to explain how he believes he successfully communicated with the dog that lives in his hallway in “The story of Jerry and the Dog!”(ZS 36).  The experiment Jerry acts out with the dog is to connect with the dog in the hallway of the where he lives. First Jerry is nice to the dog by bringing it food. The dog reacts as an animal does, eating the food and remaining the same. This frustrates Jerry. He says “to be truthful, I was offended, and I was damn mad, too”(ZS 38).  This deepens his desperation to connect with the dog. Jerry tries for days in a row the same experiment, just as he does with Peter. Jerry pushes Peter with questions that all rub him in the same way, each time hoping that Peter will respond in the way Jerry wants him too. When the dog’s response does not change, as Peter’s does not, Jerry moves on to more extreme and violent acts. He does this because he becomes “less offended than disgusted” by this point. This disgust drives his violence. Jerry attempts to poison the dog to death, though only accomplishes making the dog “deathly ill”(Albee 40). After this experiment with the dog, he calls the dog “my friend” because “That’s the only word for it”(Albee 41). Jerry supposes that his experiment in violence was successful, but is shaken to see his mistake when he realizes he did not really connect. He argues with Peter saying “Her dog! I thought it was my…No. No, you’re right. It is her dog” (Albee 45). This same misrecognition of success happens to Jerry in the end when he believes that he has shaken Peter out of his vegetable state, but the violence is so extreme that it masks this realization to Jerry.

Jerry tries to explain that “neither kindness nor cruelty by themselves, independent of each other, creates any effect beyond themselves; and I have learned that the two combined, together, at the same time, are the teaching emotion”(ZS 44). But Jerry is misunderstands the outcome of his experience with the dog.  Kindness and cruelty, or love and violence, are both performances without context. They are merely on opposite ends of the spectrum of performance. Jerry calls himself a “permanent transient”. He is constantly vacillating between different types and levels of performance. They are not capable of being performative without context, so he goes from one type to another in constant search and in constant failure. He manifests his desperation when he says “I’ll kill the dog with kindness, and if that doesn’t work…I’ll just kill him”(SZ 37). The violence that the dog and Jerry experience do not create anything performative. The change in the situation is that they “no longer try to reach each other”. The change in their circumstances is not the same as communication. If it truly was, then Jerry would not have to continue on to even more extreme measures to communicate, his desperation would be appeased. But it is not, so he continues his search.

This violence of the dog story is what causes Peter to shout out “I don’t understand!”. It does not bring Peter closer, it does not communicate with him. It really just scares him. The extremeness of Jerry’s performance comes from Jerry’s desperation to communicate, but in the end it really just pushes Peter further away. The ultimate violent performance is the murder-suicide that Jerry orchestrates. It is Jerry’s final attempt at communication, and is attempt is the most violent act he can come up with. Jerry pokes and provokes Peter into fighting for the bench that they have been having their chat on. Peter talks big and says he will fight until Jerry tosses the knife to him. Jerry wants so badly Peter to “fight for that bench…fight for your manhood, you pathetic little vegetable” (ZS 59). Peter picks up the knife and holds it out “not to attack, but to defend”. Peter is passive throughout the entire act, including when Jerry shouts “So be it!” and them impales himself. The violence shocks Peter and the audience. But Peter does not get shaken to any kind of active performance. This act, as Lewis claims, is not one that “connects” the two characters to save Jerry from his “self imposed isolation”, but is ultimately one that further estranges them (Lewis 3). Jerry misrecognizes, again, what the result of his violence truly does. He says to Peter “you’re not really a vegetable; it’s all right, you’re an animal”(ZS 61). But all Peter really does is flee the scene.

The violence is not what teaches anything, as Baily would argue. Jerry’s extreme performance was his attempt at Performativity, but that violence is ultimately itself what prevents Performativity. Jerry is dead, he has cut off his ability to perform at all, let alone be performative. Peter remains passive. He runs away. There is never an indication that Peter leaves his vegetable state later on in life, and any speculation that he does is just that.  Peter’s understanding of the importance and safety of context is what makes him pull further into himself when Jerry performs his violent act. Jerry understands that “we have to know the effect of our actions”, but he misattributes the cause with the effect in his experiments (sz 40). The very violence that critics claim as what creates connection is the act that drives each character farther from any possibility of  communication, and ultimately cuts both of them off from performing, themselves, anything performative ever again. Violence without context is the ultimate de contextualizing act that Jerry could ever come up with. Jerry claims that Peter “won’t be coming back here any more, you’ve been dispossessed. You’ve lost your bench, but you’ve defended your honor”( Albee 61). Just like with Jerry and the dog, Jerry and Peter’s circumstances have changed, but that does not mean that they have communicated. The ease of getting stuck in one half of Performativity is where so much frustration comes from.

Albee’s play is itself an experiment to see the “effects of [its] actions”. Peter and Jerry are set up as equal opposites. The audience identifies with both characters, sees that the play is “a shiningly sickly and, at the same time, painfully interesting, one-acter”(Luft). We understand and sympathize with Jerry’s frustrations as a “stranger that has a desperate need to make contact with someone”(Hewes). And we know and fear what Peter fears. We want the same securities that Peter wants, and we feel the need to perform that Jerry feels. And we want to connect and communicate with people like they both want to do. The audience does still feel that “no real relationship between the characters is attempted and we were left with a  rather literary dialogue” (Special to the New York Times). We feel the disappointment that they characters do, but the play does successfully communicate this disappointment to us.  The play itself has them both in equal parts, just as a performative act needs them both. This makes the play performative to the audience. The play was received as “an extraordinary first play”(Hewes).

The question of whether or not communication is possible is one of the main themes of the Theater of the Absurd. Amacher explains that the play is about Absurdism, but is not itself absurd, but in fact is “hopeful”(Amacher 42). The paradox of Performativity, that the two seemingly contradictory parts of Performativity are needed together, mirror the Absurdist concerns about the seeming impossibility of communication. Sometimes is seems like the “only sense we can draw from it is the conviction that one shouldn’t talk to strangers in Central Park”(Driver 44). There is definitely a sense Jerry and Peter are individually living this out. The play itself, however, being communicative, is not Absurd. Albee’s work is his proposed answer to the Absurdist problem. In real life they “find it hard to believe that people such as that really are”. Jerry says that “It‘s for reading about, isn‘t it?…And fact is better left to fiction.”(ZS 35). Albee does not necessarily answer the question of whether or not an individual is able to be in possession of both context and performance at the same time, but he does claim that fiction can. This is why fiction can and should be used to communicate. This is why we have it. This is why Albee can claim that his play “is neither nihilistic or pessimistic…the play is obviously not a denial of life”(Gelb). Performativity is paradoxical, which makes it difficult to achieve. “The Zoo Story” illustrates to us the anxiety of it being so difficult, and most often failed. But Albee’s play does successfully communicate and proves that it is not impossible.

There you have it. 

I DID IT!!!

This is my English 495 senior course final exam essay.
It was timed, so excuse any weirdness, if you have a heart.
This paper got a 96. 
That's an A. 
Yes, I am bragging like a total tool.
Yes, I might have made a small scene in the JFSB when I picked it up.
That's ok, happiness excuses most things.
And I am so happy.


Emerald Guildner
Professor Roberts
English 495
11/3/10
Final Exam

Krasner said “A paradox is fundamentally and idea or concept involving two opposing thoughts, which, however contradictory, are equally necessary to convey a more insightful illumination into truth than either can secure alone”. Krasner was referring to the paradox that black writers faced in pleasing both past tradition and trying to create a new future, but this applies directly to how performance works to become a force in the real world and moves beyond its realm on the stage. How can something be both a mere utterance and performative? How can a citation of something be both a parasite and a creative action? How can a play performed on a stage somehow translate into action in the “real world”? Performance in theater brings out a new problem with utterance and speech. J.L. Austin claims that ordinary speech is in the “real world” and has the potential to be “performative”, while theatrical speech is an etiolated form of utterance, or is parasitic upon its normal use”(Austin 22). For Austin, theatrical speech does not “do” something. Derrida counters this claim by saying that if language is parasitic when it is a citation, then everything is parasitic because every utterance, especially a performative utterance, is citational. I would expand this to say that all performance has some sort of effect and therefore an action. The plays we have studied mark the ways that writers work for a change in their audience and therefore a change in the world. They do not write plays to just be watched, but to be something that has action attached to it in some way. In other words, a performance is always somehow performative.

In a theatrical sense, “performance included any live act created for a public audience”(Krasner 11).  In “A New Coon in Town”, Terminus puts on many performances, some meant to push the plot along, and most for farce. He acts the part of Palaver Sauce, “Prince o Phoo Phoo”. Serena and Hebb get quite caught up in his performance and he really does trick them, Serena calls him “your Magnificent Highness” repeatedly. In this performance, Terminus does not actually become a prince by uttering that he is one. Like all actors playing a character, it is a role. This can be seen as being a “parasite” on real life, however, it is clear that by playing a character, action happens. Terminus’s “audience” of Serena and Hebb respond in complete belief, their actions happen because of Terminus’s utterances.

Now, what about “Coon”’s effect on the audience? It clearly is built around farce, with some attempts at changing opinion on how to see black people. Performance was the way that many went about trying. But breaking away is a very hard thing to do. We can see in “Coon” that a play can both be trying to break away from stereotypes, while reinforcing some, and even creating more. In the play, Dennis says about Terminus being the statue, “When he is in the skins, and otherwise ornamented, it’s no one that would identify him” and then later that they “want [him] to stand on the platform, there, and look as if you were not alive”(55,59). The farce of the play masks the attempt to make the audience act differently, it just makes them act the same. As Krasner says, “theatre and performances conspired to encourage the stereotypes”, and so theater continued to try to break away from that. Performance is not a perfect means of changing the world, there are definite risks in making a performance a performative act. There is the risk of what Hartman describes as “fungibility”, the play or performance is in a way a commodity consumed by the audience, which could leave it “an abstract and empty vessel, vulnerable to the projection of others’ feelings, ideas, desires, and values”(Hartman 21). Terminus says right at the beginning to Crank, “Is I one o’ de ‘lect? Co’se I is!”, but Crank responds with “since you are one of us, you will gladly give me your mite”(Downing 9).  In “Coon”, Terminus’s wit hints at his humanness and his internal equality with the white characters. But in the end it seems to work against any fight to change his actual social status. It is only taken as a joke, or not understood. Reinforcement of action is still action, but minstrelsy is proof that performance and positive change do not always follow after each other.

 Writers and actors worked for realism and away from melodrama as another way to influence change. The Krigwa, Crisis Guild of Writers and Artists were a foundational part of this movement. The negro “has been a minstrel, comedian, singer and lay figure of all sorts. Only recently has he begun tentatively to emerge as an ordinary human being with everyday reactions” (Du Bois 134). The break away from melodrama to realism was a move that pushed a performance towards being performative in the way that the writer‘s desired, toward action that changed their circumstances.  She says that she had stopped caring “Because it doesn’t seem deep enough, close enough to what ails mankind! It was a child’s way of seeing things - or an idealist’s” (Hansberry 133). The drive came from the desire for people to see a realistic depiction of black people in order to break stereotypes. The method system of acting and performing also shows this movement to want change. “We might assume that believable acting  is simply a matter of being natural but…acting realistically onstage is extremely artificial and difficult”(Wilson/Goldfarb 99). We have to learn how to act differently, to see things differently. In “Raisin” Beneatha, even as a negro, acted out her perception of what she believed a true African to be. When she gets the dress from Asagai she “starts to wriggle in front of the mirror as she thinks a Nigerian woman might”(Hansberry 66). People are all trained, in a sense, one way or another.

A good play will help to re teach the audience to see with different eyes and act in different, hopefully more moral, ways. Just as the actors had to learn these steps, the people in the audience have to yearn for this change in themselves and in society as well. Beneatha’s experiences with how people act, or perform, towards her help to change the way she sees herself and her situation. Eventually she becomes proud of who she is and where her family is going as she watches her brother Walter’s performance to Lindner in his climactic speech where he tell him “we have decided to move into our house because my father- my father- he earned it for us brick by brick…And that’s all we got to say about that. We don’t want your money”(Hansberry 148). This performance changes the whole family. Ruth gains faith in her husband again, Travis has a father to look up to, Ruth finds a pride that is actually usable, and Mama is restored to her own peace of mind. According to the Stanislavinski system, “all action onstage must have a purpose”(100 Goldfarb). The family takes action as a whole after that and moves to the new neighborhood.

As much as it is argued, there is the view of  “race plays” and “folk plays” as one being propaganda, and the other not. However, both are working to change the way people see black people, and are therefore attempting some form of propaganda. One is just more in your face than the other and they are effective in different ways. Effiong explains that people at the time, particularly those a part of The Little Negro Theater movement, were working to expand these levels of folk aspects in plays. Hughes, however, came out with intense “agit prop” with “Scottsboro, Limited”. The most obvious aspect of the performance being the actors in the audience, the complete breaking down of the fourth wall. It is a direct challenge to what Melodrama and Minstrelsy was doing, to what  Saxon did in “Coon”, which was to create a “barrier, to prevent [others] from approaching the platform too close” so that they are “unable to see plainly”(Downing 65,67). “Scottsboro,Limited” begins with the white man rising in the audience to shout to the eight black boys “What are you-all doing in here? What the hell are you doing in here, I said?” (Hughes 117). They are all there for the play, the performance, both the actors and the audience. With the audience’s own involvement in the play, especially in the shouting at the end, the actors are not merely saying parasitic words from a script that only has meaning that is separate from the “ordinary speech”; The audience is given “new words in their mouth” to cite. This performance is effective because “the ones on the outside fight for us, too”(Hughes 123). Because the performance is of the actors and the audience combines, it all becomes and is “real” and performative. The play ends with everyone shouting “Fight! Fight! Fight!”(Hughes 129). It is all beyond acting. It is more than a call to action. It is action.

The whole point of having these plays being performed can be seen as a way to bring out the “Africanist presence” that Morrison is pushing for. A play is not something to only consume, “imagining is not merely looking or looking at; nor is it taking oneself intact into the other. It is, for the purposes of the work, becoming”(Morrison 4). These plays should be seen as “responses to a dark, abiding, signing Africanist presence”(5). These plays should be studied with the intent on changing racism, if not then studies are “enforcing its invisibility”. There is the need to move beyond seeing things the same way. Walter had said “I didn’t make this world! It was give to me this way!” before he finally stood up and gave the performance that made his family proud again (Hansberry 143). Plays are asserting this presence and the ability to change the “given” world through performance. Without performance “we will be dead /If we stay quiet here”(Hughes 118). Utterances through performance is action, and so “We need not die!”

We should not want to “dismiss the difficult, arduous work writers do to make an art that becomes and remains part of and significant within a human landscape”(Morrison 8-9). Dismissing would be to see theatrical speech as something etiolated but because it happens on a stage. Writers are trying to change the landscape, and can if we see each play as an opportunity for performative speech instead of just statements, or at least a catalyst to action. The play may be “citing” some other action, but its purpose is also to become what the people in the audience “cite” in their future actions, which is how it creates a change in others through its performance.

Deconstruction is the bomb...a bomb?

I don't think posting my weird 452 midterm essay is cheating or anything, as no one who could use this for cheating reads this. Here's hoping. Anyway, this is, in my humble opinion, a pretty good/readable/approachable introduction to deconstruction. Excuse the occasional snarkyness, it was written under time constraints.


 In which I die over Derrida

    Structuralism depends on having, or searching for, a center or presence. Presence is the grounding, first principle that is the center or base of a system of meanings and values. Structuralists see this center as the truth which allows for a system in the first place. The search for the truth of a system (or in literature, the meaning of a novel; in criticism, the grounding theory etc) is the point of a structuralists’ work. Logocentrism is the system’s attempt to establish the justification of its meanings and values through pointing to its “center” as having an original, preexisting presence. We can see that the search turns into one of continual change. Each new theory about what the “center” of a system is was being replaced over and over by the next theory. Derrida says that this “must be thought of as a series of substitutions of center for center”(279). This realization calls into question the idea of a “center” at all, which is why “it was necessary to begin thinking that there was no center”(280). So, Derrida starts to deal with this issue of no center.

    He comes down on Levi-Strauss to illustrate his argument against structuralism. Levi-Strauss does a study on the nature versus culture. The basis of his study is depends on this distinction between human practices. The incest prohibition is a law that is both natural, occurring in all groups and peoples, and cultural, each culture has its own and varying way of dealing with it. This law cuts across the nature/culture binary, a binary that “has always been assumed to be self evident”(283). This cutting across proves that the binary is not only not the original presence that Levi-Strauss says it is, but that it does not exist at all.  Derrida goes on to explain what it is that Levi-Strauss does in the face of this. Levi-Strauss’s decision is to go on as if the center was still there, even while having proof that it is not. Doing this is bricolage. Bricolage is to use and “preserve as an instrument something whose value he criticizes”, tools to be used even when there is “no longer an truth value attributed to them”, and a bricoleur is the person who “uses the means at hand”, those tools (285). In this specific case, Levi-Strauss is a bricoleur who continues his work, and in a broader sense, we can see all and “every discourse as a bricoleur”. All studies that function in a system or try to find  a center, or work with the assumption of a center, have to use bricolage, inevitably. Though inevitable, this very endeavor is what confines, restricts, “closes off the play” (play - which I hope will be coming right up) (179).

  If we see the center as absent, we have the option of filling it in with something if we wish to. The example with Levi-Strauss is when he encounters totalization, well, nontotalization in his study of myths. When comparing myth to speech, Levi-Strauss explains that he would not “feel constrained to accept the arbitrary demand for a total mythological pattern, since, as has been shown, such a requirement has no meaning” (289).  It is not that they system’s center is too big to completely understand or fill, but because there is no center at all. We can replace it with a “sign”, we supplement the absent center with a sign. This “movement of the supplementary” is the idea of “play” (289). This idea of “play” leads to what we now call “trace”( I am already so sick of using “quotes”).  Trace is how we simultaneously produce and defer meaning by outlining the appearance of meaning by marking the gaps and pointing out differences, and by following the movement of the “centered” signifier pointing to a signifier and so on.

So, Levi-Strauss, and structuralism along with him, is caught in this weird world of tension between “play and presence” (292). For Levi-Strauss we have this rather uncomfortable place of existence where “play is the disruption of presence,” yet “one no less perceives in his work a sort of ethic of presence, and ethic of nostalgia for origins”(292). He does his work with bricolage guiltily, asserting a presence while at the same time proving it isn’t even there. This is one of the two interpretations of interpretation, the more depressing one for sure. The other interpretation being the “Nietzschean affirmation” that “determines the noncenter otherwise than as the loss of center. And it plays without security”, and is the “seminal adventure of the trace”. Here, we are able to live in a world without a center, but still with purpose, the purpose being to create concepts ourselves. These two options are “absolutely irreconcilable”. The Nietzschean one is surely more appealing, “joyous” if you will, but Derrida does not let us end with that. He says that he does “not believe that today there is any question of choosing” between them and that leaves us with a “terrifying form of monstrosity” (293). Well, cool. Now what? Enter deconstructionism.

    “Structure, Sign, and Play” is our starting example of deconstruction. Derrida pointed out (or created, or found, or whatever it is that he would let me say here) the binary that was at the “center” of structuralism. He them basically blew it up, proved it was a construct and not a truth. This very action is what deconstruction is, the way that Derrida has decided to get beyond binaries, to show them as binaries to destroy them. I have to say before I further explain deconstruction that I still see it as an assumption on the deconstructionist’s part to even claim that the center is a binary in the first place. The deconstructionist says that a center is created by the system making a hierarchal binary, but that binary is actually in itself  a construct of the deconstructionist, not necessarily the system.  I feel sometimes like it is like someone making a sandcastle next to me, saying it is mine, then knocking it down, all while I am sitting there just making my own sandcastle. Anyway, deconstruction works by pointing out the hierarchical binaries that is the supposed “center”, then reverses them - often by use of supplementation, which I won’t explain right now as I am most likely already off topic - to disrupt the binary. Then hopefully the deconstructionist inscribes a new and better binary in place of the one he shot down, or at least has successfully pointed out the need to replace the binary with something better. In this case the sandcastle destroyer has successfully reached my sandcastle, shown me its faults, smashed it, and built up a better, stronger one with which to make more friends and control the stretch of beach, or whatever, with.  I hope that made sense, as I feel a bit punchy now.

   
    There you have it.

If you can't write right, at least try.

I hope that I am not the only one who flops with their first attempts at creative writing. This is an attempt I made a couple years ago at a short story, and at maybe being funny. This isn't even how my humor works in real life, which is why it sounds forced. Yes, I learned my lesson. Please pretend to ignore the many cliches, both in sentence choice and in the story itself.
You've been warned:


Birthday Fun


Jack stood outside hesitating to ring the doorbell. A birthday party. Why do all occasions call for a party? Christmas party, New Years party, beach party, Happy Halloween party, my-kid-got-an-A party, I-bought-a-new-dog party. And now, a birthday party: the king of all parties. Dr. Lillard told him that going to at least three parties a month would help cure him. Cure. Serious business if there ever was any.
It was now month seven. Jack really impressed Dr. Lillard when he attended four parties two months ago. However, his written tests indicated little change His medication stayed the same. And he went to parties. Depression needed forcing out with company.

Jack checked the invitation and read the name Elizabeth Clark. She was the wife of his boss’s assistant. He read it over five times to commit it to his memory. The sound of hip hop music inside made him want to run back to his car. He rang the doorbell.
Chris, a younger man from Jack’s office, opened the door. “Come on in,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Jack. “Where I should put the gift?” It was a book that he grabbed from a shelf at Barnes and Nobles. A teenage sales associate said it was getting really popular. Jack figured that that was appropriate.
Chris showed Jake to a small side room and then left. Jack set the wrapped book
down next to the other gifts, box shaped and wrapped in one of the four choices of wrapping paper from Barnes and Nobles.

Jack pulled out a piece of crinkled paper from his inside jacket pocket. It was doctor’s orders to not leave a party until he checked off at least three things.
The list read: Learn four new names; shake hands with five new people; bring a good gift if appropriate; meet the host; ask a person of the opposite sex if you can get her a fresh drink; tell a joke/ make someone laugh; make a business connection.
Refolding the list, he put it back in his pocket. One down, two to go.
He rehearsed the joke about the three blue ducks. Someone would find it funny, or at least laugh at it.

Now to find Mrs. Clark. It wasn’t too difficult. She was wearing a gaudy, pink, feather boa to let everyone know that it was her birthday. She was turning 48. For goodness sakes, didn’t she know that? Did she really think it was a secret? And always talking to Chris and his friends; Chris had so many friends.
Jack stood near the edge of the circle, trying to say hello and how do you do to the men around him. The cigar smoke burned his eyes. Young people shouldn’t be smoking cigars. At the end of Chris’ apparently hilarious punch line and the laughter, Jack asserted himself.
“Good evening Elizabeth.”
“Why hello Mr. …”
“Jack.”
“Oh - Welcome to the party, Jack.” Then she turned back to Chris before he could
say another word. Oh? Oh! For twelve years Jack had worked at the firm, working his way up. They were all the same, with white smiles and hair that they could still part. Guys like Chris come straight out of college and sit in the office just one door over, shaking his hand and trying to show him how to do things. What did they know? How to pick a good suit, that’s all. And computers.

Jack sneezed as he was leaving the crowd. That damned feather boa - where on earth do you even find a thing like that? One of the men was carelessly holding his cigar too close to it. Too close? It could work. Jack looked around. No one was looking at him as usual, and this time he was especially grateful. His list jabbed him once more. That was the sign. Jack gently grabbed the end of the furry snake and placed one feather near the smoke. A second later it began to glow.
Jack moved to the other side of the room, smiling. A real smile. It was much easier than telling that joke about the three ducks. He watched as the men near her cried aloud, and one doused her with a nearby ice bucket. The flames went out. Jack laughed out loud for the first time in seven months.

Jack checked his list: Meet the host, check; bring a gift, check; tell a joke/ make someone laugh, check. Jack couldn’t wait to tell Dr. Lillard that his treatment was finally taking effect.

Bah-dum ching. (canned laughter here).

Random Average Paper Time

This was for Bible as Lit class. I should have worked harder in that class.

Emerald Guildner
Professor Walker
English 350
10/5/09
The Lord God Himself

The ever famous creation story has been retold in many ways in all different cultures. Genesis chapters one and two seem to be two different versions of the same event. The translation of Genesis to the King James Version is what I have found to give the most insight when held up against the translation in the Pearl of Great Price. The translations of these passages are important in understanding a people’s interpretation of the creation. In the King James Version, there is a third person narrator whose name we do not know. In the Pearl of Great Price we can see one of the most interesting revelations about the creation. We know from chapter one that the account is revealed to and taken down by Moses himself. This builds trust in the reader and gives the account more credibility. Chapters two through four of Moses is written in the first person, with God as the speaker. The fall of Adam and Eve becomes much more emotional and profound to the reader in Moses because this narration switches to the usual outsider quoting God as soon as they leave the Garden of Eden.

The background given in the Pearl of Great Price helps the reader contextualize why we have the creation story in the first place, and who has written it down. Chapter two begins “And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Moses saying: Behold, I reveal unto you concerning this heaven, and this earth” (2:1). This preface does not exist in Genesis. It dives right into “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). The Pearl of Great Price provides more background, but this does more than simply provide extra information. It enhances the effectiveness of the story to make a person trust and believe the narrative. Even if a reader understands that Genesis is a book of Moses, the King James version is more distant because it does not include the same kind of introduction as the book of Moses from the Pearl of Great Price.

The most important difference between the two narratives is the use of God’s own voice in the Pearl of Great Price. The story begins: And the earth was without form, and void; and I caused darkness to come up upon the face of the deep; and my spirit moved upon the face of the water; for I am God. (Moses 2:2). This much more personal account not only draws the reader into the story in the first place, but establishes authority in the writer and in God himself. God is able to speak with Moses, and God is able to tell his own story. He does tell his own story because man could not possibly understand completely enough to find words himself for it. The reader is more invested when reading that “I, God, saw the light; and that light was good”, than “God saw the light, that it was good”. God not only did the creating, but he created his story as well. This also makes Moses sound more respectful of God’s creations. In giving God a voice, he is also giving god authority and reverence. The constant repetition of “I, the Lord God” in Moses is also helping the reader remember God and his position in the heavens and in the creation of mankind.

The nearness of God to Adam and Eve is enhanced by the use of God’s first person voice. The fall of Adam and Eve is made more intense by the change to third person when they are banished from God’s presence. This change happens in Moses chapter five. Adam and Eve have eaten the forbidden fruit. God continues on with his story saying “after I, the Lord God, had driven them out, that Adam began to till the earth…as I the Lord had commanded him” (Moses 5:1). This is the last time the narrative is written with “I the Lord”. Adam and Eve no longer were able to communicate with God in the same way, walking and talking in person with him. The reader more fully feels what they felt while reading the story from the book of Moses because the reader also becomes cut off. God is no longer personally narrating his story. The next time we see God in the story is in verse four: And Adam and Eve, his wife, called upon the name of the Lord, an they heard the voice of the Lord from the way toward the Garden of Eden, speaking unto them, and they saw him not; for they were shut out from his presence”. To be cut off from the Lord is the worst state to be in. This version not only shows the reader that Adam and Eve were cut off, but that mankind is cut off, no longer able to have the story given to them in God’s own voice.

The version of the creation given in Moses is one of the only places in scripture, besides the Doctrine and Covenants, that we see the Lord speaking to us in the first person in scripture. On a spiritual level, this emphasizes that all of mankind is in a fallen state. It makes us yearn for the direct voice of the Lord. It makes us more acutely aware of the fact that we do not dwell in the presence on the Lord. However, it also gives us hope because it gives us a taste of the Lord’s voice. It shows us that we used to be in God’s presence and that our current state is not a permanent one. It gives the reader a goal, to work towards having the Lord’s first person voice in their life eventually back again.

You can't always get what you wa-hant

I have been thinking about this all day:

"He soon felt that the realization of his longing gave him only one grain of the mountain of bliss he had anticipated. That realization showed him the eternal error men make by imagining that happiness consists in the gratification of their wishes."

Out of context this quote is a very good way to put the famous quote of "happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have".

In context it just makes me sad. A man feels unfulfilled in his relationship with his lover. It goes on to say: "When first he united his life with hers and donned civilian clothes, he felt the delight of freedom in general, such as he had not before known, and also the freedom of love - he was contented then, but not for long. Soon he felt rising in his soul a desire for desires - boredom. Involuntarily he began to snatch at every passing caprice, mistaking it for a desire and a purpose".

This made me think of part of a paper I wrote last year about Keat's Odes.
Line 15-18 "Ode to Psyche":

They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu,

Cupid and psyche are embracing, but not actually kissing or doing anything. This is supposed to be good because fulfillment of desire is apparently what dissipates desire. If you do not actually perform the act, then the act cannot disappoint you or be over. In the next life, that passion will be perfected and will not be lost if you defer it for the present. I think that this idea ignores the possibility of the ability to desire something even when you have it and the ability of something to be even better than what you expected it to be.

I also think that some things make you happy whether you want them to or not. I particularly love that fact.

The "eternal mistake that men make" is a very sad one and causes a lot of heartache.
My lack of further expansion on these things is not laziness this time. I don't want to explain it all. It just makes me very sad.

I went to a smart thing.

I'm just going to put things I learn about and think about in this bloggy and have it serve as a good way to document my notes and such.

So, I went to a lecture on Jane Austen, put on by the English Society of course. The professor, whose name I do not know because I am that lame, had a thesis that I actually liked. He said that there is a stable notion developing about Jane Austen, and that perhaps it is not healthy. The notion is that of Austen being reduced down to "chick flick" material alone, and being seen as "lightweight" reading in the literature department. He said that it is not good that Austen is being used as the "old school Twilight" these days. I am not the biggest Austen fan myself, but I agree that it is a misreading of her works to degrade it down to Twilight.

Jane Austen's novels explore three main kinds of "love" or "relationships" in courtship and marriage. The first is that of monetary/aristocracy. This is of course marrying for the pedigree, the name, the money, the politics. Like signing a treaty, or making a bank transaction, marriage's role is to better the status of the families involved. This is the type of relationship that gets changed first in all the movie adaptations of her novels, as it is the one that makes us most uncomfortable today.

The second "love" is the Mentor relationship. Society is pretty creeped out by some grown man raising his neighbor's eleven year old daughter, then declaring love for her at the age of eighteen. But, it is more accepted because at least there is "real affection and feeling", whether or not that is the type of love marriage should be made of. Film adaptations tend to close in the age gap a bit, while leaving the "mentor" part of it intact. Yes, lots of Freud stuff that can be said, but that is not the point this time.

The last is the one that we all adore so much. The Companionate Relationship. This is the equal, loving, soul mate type that transfers to film so readily. The problem is that all of Jane Austen's stories have been reduced to the Companionate Relationship. She is really exploring them all, and not always ending with her characters in a Companionate marriage. This movement to reduce her novels in pop culture has made a whole lot of money.

I don't mind the explosion of chick flicks from Jane, really. The problem is how the English department has let itself be so affected by the movement. Jane Austen has become the soft read. Yes, she can be read for entertainment, but to hold the study of her work as easy work is mislead. She pushed forth the idea of "the novel", and not just as a woman, but as a writer. It is only recently (last twenty or so years) that her works have been seen as lightweight. I do not think that we are suddenly above studying such an influential writer just because movies have put her in a different light. If we start making a cartoon series about Althusser I hope that his writings do not become light reading alone. Ack.

Ok, that is all for now. That was mainly a regurgitation of someone else's ideas. I'll try to put some actual thought into the next one.