160 characters

11:31pm on December 12th, Lisa and Sarah are texting each other about their critical theory papers. All statements had to be under 160 characters. Lacan, Cixous, and Flannery O'Connor's Hulga make an appearance.
 
LB: Tomorrow's my birthday
SG: !!!Woot woot!:)
LB: Yeah except I'm verbally making love to a dead french guy and a chick with a wooden leg
SG: When this is done we will pretend that it is your birthday...it will be like a resurrection from your symbolic death!
LB: A birthday only has meaning because we projected meaning onto it. This is an ultimate exercise in me accepting literary theory into my life
SG: Look at you my little socially constructed female projection, growing up right before my very eyes and accepting your future within the symbolic

Wait, Lisa Simpson Is Gay?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “queer” is defined as, “Strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric. Also: of questionable character; suspicious, dubious.” This definition functions as an opposition to normative views, all of them. Heterosexuality, acting as the regulatory regime, has conquered this word to have a perceived connotation of any sexuality that is strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric, of questionable character, suspicious, or dubious. “Queer” is a blanket term for everyone who exists outside of the parameters of what it means to be heterosexual. However, in discussing queer theory, sexuality is not in the forefront of the definition of “queer.”

Queer theory creates a discourse that removes sexual identity as an essentializing aspect of existence. In titling this type of discourse “queer” theory instead of “gay and lesbian” theory, it removes the sexual identity aspect of discourse from the theory itself. Butler states in Imitation and Gender Insubordination, “identity categories tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes, whether as the normalizing categories of oppressive structures or as the rallying points for a liberatory contestation of that very oppression,” bringing attention to the complications that come along with identifying as a sexual identity. Since Lacan says that sexual identity is an oxymoron because of the idea of “jouissance” as the moment of the real, removing sexual identity from this discourse is a way to examine how identity is performed.

Butler’s Imitation and Gender Insubordination discusses the issues of sexual identity, identity politics, and in particular, gender performance. On sexual identity, she comments on the complications of “coming out” as a lesbian. In identifying herself as this title, she is accepting the essentialized definition of “lesbian.” She asks an important question in this article: “Is the ‘subject’ who is ‘out’ free of its subjection finally in the clear?” The answer is no because one of the complications is that the essentialized definition of “lesbian” is in a heteronormative discourse. To identify as lesbian assumes a disempowered subject position. Butler, after analyzing and recognizing this as what it means to be lesbian, discusses gender performance. The only thing that stabilizes heterosexual discourse is gender performance. Men act as men “naturally” act and women do the same. This doing of gender is something that is hegemonically made into something that needs a normative. Butler, in identifying as a lesbian and commenting on its meaning in relation to queer theory, is creating a space in which sexual identity is not the primary factor in queer theory’s discourse after stating that sexual identity and normative ethics is based in a heterosexual, normative discourse. While this assertion is made, Butler must still participate in this type of discourse. Therefore, her identifying as a lesbian is complicated by her perspective on identity politics which complicates the definition of the very word she finds that she must identify as.

Butler’s catch-22 is shown in popular culture explicitly through a cartoon. (Perhaps because cartoons can more acceptably assume alternative or irregular characteristics and identities because they are explicit simulations of people.) Lisa Simpson is a queer, but not explicitly a lesbian, character. In her family unit, she is the “strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric” one. She is an intellectual. She enjoys music, and is persistently questioning the motives and morality behind all the adults and children within her milieu. She is forever questioning (however whiningly) her complications with Bart’s assertions. In a clip attached, she is complicating Bart’s use of the word “gay.”

This is an example of why “queer” does not necessarily have to imply a sexual identity connection. Lisa dates Nelson in an episode and is explicitly shown as being mostly (or as much as cartoon characters can be) what it means to be heterosexual, however there is the slight implication that she is a lesbian because of her queer discourse. Butler, in discussing her sexual identity as something that cannot be explicitly achieved through language, is commenting on the discourse that Lisa Simpson is subject to through being made fun of by other characters for being queer. Lisa’s queerness is complicated because her sexual identity is not fixed, but in flux because it is not explicitly commented on since sexuality can never be fully explicit through language (or through a cartoon). Lisa Simpson can thus be queer without being a lesbian.                                                                             

Link to Lisa Simpson Clip

Cixous versus Butler: The Ultimate Showdown

This week, we determined that our discussion of Cixous and Butler would pale in comparison to what a conversation between them could look like.

Enjoy.

A conversation between Cixous and Butler, presented to you in part by Lacan and Foucault (with a little help from Derrida):

CIXOUS and BUTLER walk into a “play”ful bar, L’object petit a.
Cixous: Cixous/Butler
Butler: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Not cool.
CIXOUS and BUTLER begin a dialogue on feminist theory. Guns are drawn. They have a drink.
Cixous: The subordination of the feminine to the masculine is hierarchical. History is dominated by men. History’s phallocentric perspective persistently refers back to the torments and desires of man. The hierarchy of man over woman extends through to language, which is EVERYTHING. I repeat: Language is EVERYTHING. The hierarchy and play between the sexes on sexuality politics keeps the linguistic machine going.
Butler: You create a binary with your theory. You state that there is a value of male over female because you look at the male-female binary as a natural thing, not as a culturally created performance.
Cixous: You don’t understand Lacan. I am discussing hierarchy within language, not gender identity within culture and performance.
Butler: Whatever.
Cixous: I continue. Language creates the binary and keeps the binary going. I am not stating that this binary is natural; language is a hegemonic structure. Both males and females contribute to the perpetuation of these fictitious binaries.
Butler: I’m really into language too, but the PERFORMANCE of language. Gender is a discursive production. The discourse that uses the binaries, the discourse that seeks to dismantle these binaries…I use language to break down the hierarchical discourse that language perpetuates. I am a Queer Theorist.
Cixous: You participate in language, you aide those you deride.
Butler: We all use language, Helene.
Cixous: Can it, Judy.
Butler: In utilizing language and discourse, which are based on and perpetuate binaries, I seek to theorize beyond the categories that language uses, like male/female or masculine/feminine in particular. I’m more interested in the “masculine/feminine” hierarchy. Drag in particular is a performance of gender. It utilizes the hyperbolic signs of “girl” and “boy” to create a discourse on performing gender. It decenters the subject, which is generally seen as male/female, by making the person not have to act their sex with their gender. It’s not about what your parts are—it’s about how you act.
Cixous: I actually agree with you, but what you’re not understanding is that I’m discussing male authority over the female in terms of language, not in terms of gender performance. The discursive power of gender is culturally created, through language rather than performance.
Butler: Okay, so you would agree that gender is a performative way of policing and shaming what language makes to be the subordinate sex or gender.
Cixous: We give up meaning to be; we act the way that we are culturally created to act. I believe Lacan would be in accordance with this.
Butler: So would Foucault.
Cixous: This reminds me of Jackie*…
Butler: Of course you’d bring up Jackie.
Cixous: Well, yeah. Wouldn’t you? Just look at his hair…and his deconstructive view of language.
Butler: His discourse on signs is enthralling.
Cixous: Logocentrism is more his thing. I would know. *wink wink nudge nudge*
Butler: Touche.
MAN sits by CIXOUS and BUTLER. He smiles and winks.
Man: Two drinks for the ladies.
BUTLER turns to CIXOUS.
Butler: About phalluses. The idea of the phallus is important, but not so much the presence of the flesh penis or the flesh vagina.
Cixous: We’ve created this phallocentric shit. It defines our perspective on history and is a danger to us all, regardless of where you fall in the false binary. The phallocentric presence undermines the feminine absence which constitutes our fundamental perception of everything that is. That’s why in “Sorties” I use a visual writing style that lists common binaries and asks the readers to identify the sex of each.
Butler: Yes, yes, how very modern of you. I prefer a more academic, linear discourse. I lay out my argument and follow it to the end. Just like Jackie.
Cixous: I write like the sun and the moon.

* * *
SEVEN WHISKEY SOURS LATER…
Butler:Lessjus disagree to agree
Cixous: Oui, je besoin…anotha draaaank!

CIXOUS and BUTLER end their night by agreeing to disagree. Several copies of Lacan and Foucault’s works were torched by their opposition.

*Derrida

so as to not have a BLOGLESS week...

enjoy

A "Real" Great Chat With Ken

   Ken Rufo's guest blog post on Jean Baudrillard gave a good perspective on the process through which Baudrillard worked through the various theories. With the first few reads I thought we could come at Baudrillard with guns blazin', but after further examination, I came to realize that what he has to say and Ken's explanation of it is really quite thorough and hard to contradict.
   Baudrillard, the French sociologist, philosopher and pataphysician who claimed to be actually arguing against postmodernism (though many consider him a postmodernist) started his critical analysis as a Marxist. What Ken Rufo explains is that Baudrillard began to find fault with Marx's idea of commodity. Marx in his theory neglects to recognize the significance of sign-value. Sign-value, Rufo explains is, "namely that often what an object represents or signifies is more important than how much it costs or how high quality is its construction".
   While Rufo uses the example of Tommy Hilfiger to explain what he means by this, another very useful example is automobiles. A Bentley for example does the same job as a Hyundai but it is seen as of lesser value because it does not have the name Bentley written on it. It is not about what the two vehicles are comprised of or what their function is, its value is in the brand name. Baudrillard adds that it’s needed to focus not on the production aspect, but on the modes of consumption (i.e. people are buying a brand; they don’t care how or where it was made).
   Rufo then discusses Baudrillard’s next shift with his book For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. Though Baudrillard was once saying that sign-value was to be added to a commodity, now he is saying the sign-value is what allowed for any analysis of said commodity. Rufo goes on to say that “we cannot assume that the commodity, as analyzed by Marx is really a discovery.” Instead, Marx creates the commodity as he sees it working, since as by analyzing the commodity and how it supports capitalism, he creates a set of “theoretical principles that make of the commodity-object a set of theoretical commodities.” In other words, theories and concepts within Marxism are like making purchases with money.
Rufo continues to discuss that Marx's commodity is structured like Saussure's sign. However, instead of signifier and signified, commodity has use-value and exchange-value. For Marx exchange-value is key in discussing, for example, money. Money attains its value through its exchange with other commodities. Marx, of course explains that money, like other objects, is a commodity. Rufo sums this up to say that money is an example of a pure exchange value.
   After this, Rufo explains that Baudrillard is starting to get a little frustrated. Baudrillard comes to explain that Marx had it backwards. Baudrillard believes that when Marx 'naturalized' labor he believed that people would simply want to produce things for its use-value. As Rufo says, “each of these is actually sign-values, that is, theoretical sign-values.” Baudrillard argues that Marxist theories actually mirror production, and are in turn a “rhetorical balancing act” that supports capitalism rather than being in opposition to it. What troubles Baudrillard is that capitalism does not care who is producing, rather what is being produced. Capitalism is all about consumption. (Give me more!) Capitalism is all about what is coming next, which maintains the flow of production. No matter who controls the modes of production, they will still be necessary.
   Baudrillard doesn't stop after Marx. Rufo explains that Baudrillard finds fault with Lacan and Foucault as well. The stem from which he contest each theory is that each of these man have claimed to discover something and from this discovery they are creating truths and meaning. In reality however, they are simply inventing these pretenses.
   "Ok, cue the exciting music." Picture it: it's the 80's, you're inside Baudrillard's head, he's about to write this book that mad heads are going to read. It's called Simulacra and Simulation. The book stresses two major points. The first is focused on the third model stage as a simulacral stage and not a simulation stage like the first stage which is a reflection of basic reality, and the second which hides the absence of reality. Therefore the third stage is where these simulations produce their own reality. In class, and in Ken Rufo's examples, we've discussed Las Vegas and Disneyworld as examples of simulacra. As another example, take a look at a Barbie doll. The measurements of the doll are an impossibility for a real woman, yet the doll is supposed to be based on a human being. Thus, the doll is creating it's own reality.
   But, what about Baudrillard's fourth stage? Up until this point, we have been exploring what Rufo had to say about Baudrillard's history. From here, we want to expand on a new topic. This is where the discussion of the fourth stage comes into place. The fourth stage is where simulations no longer need models, because it holds all meaning and no meaning at the same time. And with that, our conclusion leaves you with a question.
   Baudrillard points out how, for example, Marx, Lacan and Foucault have through various ways produced their own truths, and placing them within the first three stages of the simulacra, yet he never associates himself within these contradictions. Thus, these theorists give truth and meaning to the system they are in, by inventing truth. Whereas, Baudrillard says that there is no truth; that we all exist within the hyperreal and are representations of representations. Therefore, if Baudrillard is placing himself within an argument that seems to not spring from within the system, but as from “outside the sign”, is he in fact placing himself within the fourth stage of the simulacra?

As a Writer, I’ve Always Been Extremely Conscious of My Place

Novelist Stephen King may not necessarily be placed in the ranks of the great scholarly writers, but why does he have to be placed at all? After a close reading of an interview that The Paris Review conducted with King a couple of years ago, the reader finds that questions of authorship seem to be all that anyone is concerned about. The article begins with a summary of King covering topics such as his wife and kids, his love for the Boston Red Sox and a near death experience he had when he was hit by a car. Then, in a relaxed and conversational way, the interview constructs a sort of narrative about King. It follows a rather chronological path starting with tales of King’s first days writing, his first novels, his more popular work and finally where he sees himself today. While this information is fairly interesting enough, a closer reading reveals that the interview is trying to build some sort of essential Stephen King. Based on our class discussion thus far and the work we recently read by Foucault this idea becomes heavily problematic. As many theorists have shown, there can be no essential author because language cannot be controlled. Yet, as this interview displays, there is still a desire for the presence of an author. Why is this desire occurring? A good place to begin to answer this question is to turn to the work of Foucault.

In his article, What is an Author?, Foucault discusses the functions of the concept of the author in literary settings. Particularly, Foucault discusses how the author is involved with the need to create genres out of a huge realm of fragmented literature. Foucault writes, “These differences may result from the fact that an author’s name is not simply an element in a discourse…it performs a certain role with regard to narrative discourse, assuring a classificatory function. Such a name permits one to group together a certain number of texts, define them, differentiate them from and contrast them to others” (p. 243) Thus the author becomes an essential element within the realm of literature as he or she provides a sense of stability and genre. Knowing the author enables the reader to place the work and develop an idea of how the work relates to other works that are supposedly like it. Foucault further clarifies this idea with what he calls “the author function.” The author function is the idea that the author’s name can characterize a text’s mode of being. Some texts have an author, like novels for example, while others, like contracts, do not. Further, Foucault writes, “literary discourses came to be accepted only when endowed with the author function. We now ask of a poem or fictional text: From where does it come from, who wrote it, when, under what circumstances or beginning with what design? The meaning ascribed to it and the status or value accorded it depend on the manner in which we answer these questions.” Clearly, as Foucault states the author function is rather important to the ways readers classify writing. This statement by Foucault is rather insightful when considering the interview with Stephen King.

The interview with King is full of references to the author function. Below is a short list of some of the questions posed:

• In On Writing, you mention how the idea for your first novel, Carrie, came to you when you connected two unrelated subjects: adolescent cruelty and telekinesis. Are such unlikely connections often a starting point for you?
• Are there other sources for your material besides experience?
• Would you say then that this fear is the main subject of your fiction?
• So if Cell is an “entertainment,” which of your books would you put in the other category?
• But did you ever feel you had to make as big a score as someone like Clancy or Danielle Steel?
• Do you ever feel typed by your reputation?
• Do you still feel a strong sense of exclusion from the literary establishment?

All of these questions are interesting in that they seek to characterize the essential King. For example, when the interviewer poses the question as to whether or not fear is the main subject of King’s fiction, there is an implied idea that King’s writing must have some sort of main subject. Particularly though, the questions near the bottom of this included list are especially interesting. When the interviewer brings up the names of Clancy and Steel it becomes apparent that King himself is being placed in a genre. He is included the realm of books that may sell well but are not always perceived as high literature. Further questions get at King’s reputation and his relation to the literary establishment. Now knowing what a substantial role the author function plays in literature the reader can see the reason why King is not covered as one of the “greats” during grade school. It is because his name is not included among a list with Aristotle, Shakespeare and others and rather it is included within the realm of Clancy and Steel that King becomes separated from high literature. The simple fact that these questions are even being asked shows King’s cultural status.

             

"I'm starting with the man in the mirror"...hint: I may (or may not!) have died recently

Lacan and psychoanalytical theory’s challenge of the cogito provides insight into the role that language plays on meaning as well as what constitutes meaning in relation to reality, or Lacan’s “the Symbolic.” Ashley Sheldon’s post clarifies aspects of Lacan’s argument, such as the Symbolic, the Imaginary, the death drive, and the mirror stage in a very thorough manner and inspires further questioning into Lacan’s “The Mirror Stage…” and, in particular, the concepts of identity and further discussion on the topic of jouissance.

Upon reading the post, an immediate clarification of the Symbolic and the Imaginary solidifies understanding in the psychoanalytical land of Lacan. The Symbolic is a representation of reality that, as Ashley says, “We cannot enter and exit [the Symbolic] as we choose. Rather, we are born in the Symbolic; we live in the Symbolic; and we die in the Symbolic.” This Lacanian perspective is different from what we generally consider to be reality (which Lacan complicates in his discussion of the Real) and acknowledges the Saussurean application of language as constitutive of reality. The constitution of the Symbolic with language makes the Symbolic, otherwise known as the world we exist in, ultimately unstable. This unstable reality of “the Symbolic” is what brings “the Imaginary.”

“The Imaginary” is a Lacanian way to describe our visual and linguistic sense of the world. It uses image, in particular, self-image, as both an illusion of the stability of existence and further, to provide a promise that identity exists and further, that identity can be achieved.  In “The Mirror Stage,” Lacan refers to identity as the “Ideal-I” (pg 190) and therefore the subject “I.” The post describes Lacan’s “Mirror Stage” as a source of anxiety—it is a realization of the illusion of a complete self-image, or “Ideal-I” and annihilates the person as a subject. Anxiety in reference to “the Mirror Stage” affirms that the image a person has of themselves comes as a double edged sword which follows the post’s statement that “even as the joyful promise of identity exists for the infant in the mirror stage, coinciding with this promise of coherence is the danger of incoherence.” Lacan thus states ipso facto that a person becomes further absorbed in the Symbolic after their experience with the Mirror Stage. With the desire to annihilate the coherence danger that one feels in the Mirror Stage, Lacan next provides insight into human response to this danger within the Symbolic, which is the death drive.

The death drive and jouissance are a person’s desire for, and slight achievement of, existence outside of the Symbolic. Searching for the Real is the “drive” of the death drive.  Jouissance happens, according to Lacan, in the most concentrated manner during orgasm. This topic seems clear, but still induces some questions. If the death drive occurs within the Symbolic, jouissance (the explanation of the goal of the death drive, if there is one?) exists within the Symbolic. Jouissance is like a glitch in perception of images. If jouissance occurs as a glitch, and the death drive is experienced within the Symbolic, isn’t the drive for the Real rooted out of the Symbolic? For example, erogenous stimuli comes out of the Symbolic because that’s where people spend all of their time. Whatever makes a person achieve orgasm exists as an image in the Symbolic. So, the Real is achieved through acknowledgement of images within the Symbolic, and goes as far as preferential acknowledgement of images within the Symbolic. For me, this is problematic. If erogenous stimuli comes from the Symbolic, does that imply that there is some of the Real within every image in the Symbolic? Further, is it the images within the Symbolic that bring people to jouissance? In my understanding right now, the death drive is the desire for jouissance and orgasms are the result of stimulation from images within the Symbolic, which means that the Real is actually never achieved, not even a little bit, and that it only exists out of desire for it to exist.

Further in the description and significance of the death drive is the preferential aspect of jouissance. Orgasm is (generally) not sporadic. A person feels compelled, for whatever reason, to an image that is, what seems to me, different for each person. This seems problematic because it implies subjectivity to the person, so what would Lacan have to say about preferential choices as far as erogenous stimuli goes in the death drive’s goal for jouissance in relation to the idea of “I”?