Beating Around the Subliminal Bush

I apologize for the lateness of this post.

I had a little trouble with Benjamin’s article. It seems like he is going in multiple directions throughout the piece. At first I thought he was interested in the breakdown of art from a natural, living entity to the soulless, mass-produced Andy Warhol soup can. I had in mind Wordsworth’s: “ We murder to dissect.” However, while he does spend some time discussing the “aura” of a piece of art, this is not his purpose. He first hints at his goal on page 1237 when he states that art “begins to be based on another practice—politics.” For all his interest in the classification of photography and film as art, and his examination of actor’s role, I think his ultimate goal is to unmask modern art (film in particular) as a tool for subliminal control over the masses. On page 1248, he states that film is a “distraction,” and, as such, “The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one” open to “[r]eception in a state of distraction.”

Let me know if you think I’m reading too much into this, but I think he goes on in the epilogue to show that art can be framed as a medium by which the masses feel they have a way to express themselves, thought it has no affect upon the entrenched political power. The art merely serves to placate the masses into thinking they have a voice. I feel that Benjamin touches on this idea more specifically earlier in text when he states that mechanical reproduction has led to “the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert” (1244). Rather than criticism, the viewing is marked by the “enjoyment by the public.”

Don’t Shoot the White, Male Writer

Usually I avoid the discussion of feminism because I come off sounding like I don’t care. This is far from the truth, but I find that my focus usually lies in rooting out what I don’t like or agree with in a piece; when that piece is feminist, my dislikes are often overemphasized. That being said, I found myself torn when I finished reading Watkins’ piece. Perhaps this is because I was unable as a child to “construct an identity that is not rooted in sexism”, which my has “murdered [my] soul” and left me “as lost as many boys” (70,71).

I like Watkins’ rhetorical approach to redefine feminism instead of just launching into what needs to be changed. She is especially effective when pointing out possible mistakes in early feminism and projecting a possible future that would have been more positive if these mistakes had not been made. Her obvious intension is to imply that if strategies such as converting men and young boys to the cause are adopted, the feminist movement may be more successful in the future. I think she is also very careful not to make broad claims that can be easily undermined. Her points about class and race are pointed as quickly supported with specific examples.

It is not, however, my favorite piece. I think a more direct title for this piece could be “Class and Feminism.” I would go so far as to say that this piece should be read in conjunction with Althusser. In each of her chapters, be it parenting, women in the workplace, or issues of race, class is stated as the root problem entrenched in the internal mechanism of the feminist struggle. Here are a few examples from the first couple chapters.
Consciousness-Raising: Feminist consciousness has difficulty being raised in the university because “the academy was and remains a site of class privilege” (9). Sisterhood: “As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized” (16).

I was also a little disappointed in Watkins’ application of her thesis, “a movement to end sexism” (viii), to her chapter on “Beauty Within and Without.” I read the chapter twice to be sure, and no where in it does Watkins address male objectification. I know this sounds silly, but her entire premise is that she, as a promoter of “visionary feminist thinking” (5), is interested in eliminating ALL sexism, male or female. She does partially rectify this inadequacy in her chapter on “Feminist Masculinity”, but even here her focus is on identity and the vision of men seen by other men. She ignores the issue of male attractiveness being a basis upon which women judge men.

I have only two final notes to add to the blog; although, I am looking forward to listening : ) during the class discussion.
1. Does she really have to plug her book as having been an overlook masterwork in chapter 1?
2. Thanks for the shout-out to founding male feminists as having their motivations purely based on material basis rather than intellectual or ethical grounds: “Their [men] conversion to feminist thinking was often a matter of rising to meet the challenge of risking termination of intimate bonds” (68).

An Attempt at a Humorless Response with Fewer Errors and Claims: Enjoy

Although I’d like to mention Jameson again, I think I’ve written all I dare about his article. I will, instead, focus Barry since he simplifies much of the more important points Althusser makes in his concise article (I can’t help myself). The Barry piece is so helpful because of its direct approach to the vocabulary of Althusser and others. The most important word that I took from the reading was Althusser’s term ‘overdeterminism’. I have never been a big fan of Marxism, specifically because of the one-one ratio of determinism: I have no problem believing that economic ideology affects culture, laws, and art; but I do have a problem with the idea that it (economic ideology, to be very clear) affects all parts of life by itself.

The second term that I found especially compelling was ‘interpellation’. This concept is far removed from scary soldiers wearing red badges and oppressing the people; it rather denotes the more subtle state control: ‘state ideological apparatus’. I think that this makes for a far more acceptable target for the Marxist to raise their fist against because of the way the ‘apparatus’ makes unknowingly-willing victims of the people. I also find this be different from what the Leninist Marxists were concerned with regarding literature. Where the Leninists were concerned with the unknowing embedding of the author’s ideology in his work, Althusser’s more complex theory is concerned with the knowing author purposely embedding his ideas to be absorbed by the unknowing reader (or watcher in the modern age: Go McDonald’s with your urban campaign).

The French Connection and Jameson’s Cool Quote

After reading Foucault for the second week – thanks Nic—I think I have resolved the question from my previous post. Foucault’s work is one of post structuralism in transition. His piece begins by stating, as Derrida does in his work, that “think[ing] in terms of a totality as proved a hindrance to research” because “a certain fragility has been discovered in the very bedrock of existence.” This fragility, of course, is that “the center is not the center.” What Foucault goes on to do is what threw me last week. He begins an examination of history, in which he searches for center in the cyclic struggle for power. He examines history in the search for “subjugated knowledges.” He does this by examining searching for a pattern connecting power and economics; this search leads him to find a relation between power and force. His analysis results in a conclusion of two answers: “the oppression schema…, and domination – repression or war.” He ends with the idea that the research model he used to come to this conclusion may be “insufficient.”

This seems like a structuralist approach, but it is his anxiety about the imperfection of language and his inability to nail down a “center” or reliable locus in his theory that prompts him to write that his “impression” which he has based his entire work on is “wholly inadequate to the analysis of the mechanisms and effects of power that it is so pervasively used to characterize today.” In this piece, Foucault is on the verge (pun on Doug is intended) of making a deconstructionist leap.

Jameson, on the other hand, is wholly certain that he has found a center to base all theory around: Marxism. Jameson is asserts that “only Marxism offers a philosophically coherent and ideologically compelling resolution to the dilemma of historicism.” He goes about proving his point in variety of ways that I’m sure we’ll discuss in class, but the most interesting thing he says is on page 184 when he writes: “the text means just what it says.” What a revolutionary idea! Now, he does go on to point out that that there is a subtext beyond the textual meaning, but that subtext is not centerless as Derrida states. For Jameson, “History can be apprehended only through its effects…This is indeed the ultimate sense in which History as ground and unstranscendable horizon needs no particular theoretical justification.” The "effects" of History are its center which also exist as the interior and exterior of our shared narrative.