Response to Guest Lecture with Ken Rufo

Even though Ken Rufo was a little drawn out at times, I found it easy to keep my focus on what he was writing about. There were times in the lecture where I had no idea what he was talking about but I understood the example he gave. I differently have a better understanding of commodity. “Marx says that money is the pure commodity form because money can be exchanged for anything; in other words, it is pure exchange value and of course this hides all the labor that went into making it, labor that was probably dine in order to make the object have a use-value, and that was probably exploited so that the capitalist could turn it into surplus-value.” Thinking of commodity as money makes it easier to put into perceptive.

In my opinion Marxism is flawed because there can never be a moment where the workers unit and everyone will get equal share of everything. See this was the Chinese government, China claims to still be communist, where in reality their government is slowly but surly turning into a democracy. So when Baudrillard says, “the problem is that once you naturalize labor, the only thing you can focus on is production.” We couldn’t ever naturalize labor even if we wanted to. Unless some can give me an example where a country/counties naturalize its labor, and it now focusing on the production? And yeah sure, capitalism doesn’t care who produces what and only cares about the constant consumption of product. But I don’t understand why having new objects produced in order to consume them, has anything to do with helping out the labor workers.

Does this relate to the idea of the “mass production of objects and the general flow of wealth is making it possible more and more for people of lower classes to ‘simulate’ living like people in upper classes”? The mass production of items helps lower the value which in terms helps the lower class because now they can afford these ideas.

I wasn’t really big on the hay, cow exchange because I couldn’t stop thinking about wouldn’t you need the hay to feed the cow. But I grew up in the city so I’m not quite sure if cows eat hay. Anyways, I did like and understand the idea of the stock market. “Think about the stock if you want to see carried out (principle of simulation) to its extreme: a company can appear to be doing well because it exceeded expectations, even though the expectations were very low and it’s still not making a profit, and yet the value of the stock, and this the company, rises independently of the value of what they produce or how well their good are being received.” But I guess this all goes back to my question, does mass production have anything to do with the lower class balancing out with upper class?

I also really liked the example of the Epcot ride at Universal Studios, which is I’m assuming the ride where you get to see all the different parts from around the world, and the song “It’s a small world after all” keeps playing over and over again. And in the end of the ride Rufo thinks there’s really no hope of uncovering the real on our own. I can understand if you’ve lived or your from one of the countries and you see your culture represented my the dolls, your idea of the ‘real’ would not be corrupted. Whereas, if I see those dolls and go to the one of the countries represented, I’m not going to be influenced or have a preconceived notion of what the country is going to be like. Because I know the dolls or the doll makers interruption it going to be something totally different from what I experience. But I do agree with Baudrillard on that there can be no illusion in a world where everything is “realized”. But for the most part I think there is some and can realized and distinguished from others.

Killing off the "sciptor"

When I first thought about the death of the author in which the authors identity has nothing to do with the literature itself. “Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where out subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing” (Barry, 185). Writing has no definitive meaning and when one is trying to relate the author to the text, the text all of a sudden has a definitive meaning with retrictions and bondaries. Once we begin to examine the author as a single person who is trying to communicate a message, we think more about the author experiences like, what time was the book written in, what was the author going through to make him or her create these characters? When we think as the author having influence over the writing we are constricting our ideas and over looking the literary text. Barry best describes this as, “the image of literature to be found in ordinary culture is tyrannically centered on the author, his person, his life, his tastes, his passions while criticism still consists for the most part in saying that Baudelaire’s work is the failure of Baudelaire the man…” (186).

It is not the author which speaks to us but the language, language is the only thing that is impersonalizing. By restraining the author we are restoring the place of the reader, which enables us to see the text for what it means to the individual. We begin to look at questions like, what kind of impression do literary texts have on us? We have to remember ‘it is language’ which speaks to was and not the author himself or herself. Language is the reader’s ultimate secret, which can not be explained or defined.

The only purpose of the “scriptor” is to produce the text, “the is thought to nourish the book,
which is to say that he exists before it, think, suffers, lives for it, is in the relation of antecedence to his work as a father to his child” (187). I think a better analogy is to say, the author is more like a pregnant women and when she gives birth she is no longer one with the baby. She has little to no control over what the baby is and is not going to eat like the author has little influence over how other people are going to view his or her work.
Dr. Bitch states that by using fictitious name the author kills themselves off and allows for the reader to focus solely on their own ideas. Dr. Bitch states, “pseudonyms make a text more fully public: by hiding the author’s identity, the author becomes potentially anyone.” With the potential to be anyone we are allowing our imagination or ideas on the text to grow. The reader can’t look up the author to see what kind of person she or he was. Once we know who the author is (passions, lifestyles. etc.) the text is at risk.. Because now we are not thinking about our own ideas but we are thinking what the author is trying to say.

It’s like reading one of your favorite books and always having this idea in our head of what the characters look like and then several years later Hollywood makes that same book into a movie. The characters that once were clearly defined by your imagination is now plastered on a big screen in front of you. The idea that you had will never be the same, all the ideas were destroy by Hollywood's interpretation. Just like if you were to look up the author and see how she or he might have been influenced to write the text.

Derrida

Self and other as presented through the Derrida film:
Towards the end of the Derrida film he begins to discuss, this idea of the “self” and how it relates to the “other” or our idea of the “other”. What do we mean when we say, “who am I”? We have to focus on what does the “I” mean? “I” must be the self in which we identify with. Derrida would say that there is no true “I” because everyone is influenced by others. We learn about the world through other peoples perspectives. It’s through these perspective or ideas we gain an understanding of our self. The influence of others inhibits our ability to make improvisations. Therefore there are no originalities because we are always acting upon other peoples persuasions. Sargisson describes it best when she states, “The person, or subject, in question is self-perceived as a unit: coherent, whole and singular (both in the sense of single and unique). The “other” is separate from the Self and is in some significant way different to the Self…. Mind and matter are distinguishable and separable” (Utopian Bodies and the Politics of Transgression By Lucy Sargisson page 119)

Derrida’s comments on love:
It’s no surprise the Derrida is narcissistic when it comes to love. Derrida’s whole thing about theory was that all text has uncertainty because of the possibility of a conclusion. To Derrida there is no conclusion or final interpretation the possibilities are endless therefore the text can never be defined.
Derrida doesn’t say he doesn’t agree or believe in love, he just proposes a question, “Is love the love of someone or the love of something?” Do we love people for who they are or do we love that person because we love something about them. He goes on the talk about the movement of the heart, “Does my heart move because I love someone who is an absolute singularity, or because I love the way that someone is?” He believes that often times love will die because the relationship first starts out as an attraction to the other which is superficial. As the relationship continues we begin to realize that the attraction has faded. And so we stop loving, “not because of who they are but because of they are such and such.” It’s all a question of the difference between the who and the what.

A comparison of statements:
Derrida statement goes back to his statement on the documentary about how it wasn’t about him; it was more about Alex’s perception of him. He can never see his true self. Alex can never see the true Derrida because we are all taught to reproduce or reenact the “stereotypical discourse.” Derrida wishes that there would be such thing as the self with no outside influences but it’s impossible to imagine this idea of improvisation. With Lacan statement, “I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think.” The “I” in this statement is acting as the unconscious mind which makes up the idea of the self. There are no true individuals who are not social constructed.

Saussure's Quote Response

“the bond between the signifier and the signified is radically arbitrary" (35)

When Saussure states that the signifier and the signified are radically arbitrary, he means that the symbolic sign system is random. The signifier is the sound-image “tree” is only called a “tree” in English because that is what English speakers have agreed upon. The signified is the common concept, which we have of the “tree”.

The signified is harder to grasp because we do not have a specific meaning. When it comes to certain things everyone has a different opinion of what the thing means to them. We all understand the sound-image (signifier) but ours thoughts are different. For example, while a green light can mean “go” to some people. The same green light, to English majors also might represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for his feature, in Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby. All the symbolic sign system is, is a matter of interpretation.

Saussure supports this statement by bringing up the notion of value. Saussure argues, that value would be “compromised, for it would include an externally imposed element.” Value is an operative principle which makes the connective relationship of idea and sound random.

This idea is important in understanding Saussure’s theory of language because it helps us to determine the symbolic content. Our idea of signs helps us by categorizing or focusing on a group of the same object, (books, magazines, maps, billboards). No matter how complex and confusing Saussure’s theories are, his main objective is to make the language system more organized. And this goes hand in hand with the importance of the theory of language.

This idea, for me, makes things a little more confusing than it needs to be. Instead of using words such as signifier and signified, he should just simplify it to sound and thought. I certainly appreciate the complexity of the English language more but personally I feel that it would be easier for me to understand if a had a clear and narrow definition of what language theory is instead of giving examples to explain language theory. But on the other hand, there are no clear definitions and that what makes literary theory interesting. And I enjoy intellectual play.

Saussure’s theory of language changed the way I thought about literature because I would have never have thought about the significance of sound-image. And I just assumed that everyone’s thought was the same as the sounds. I understood that everyone thoughts might be random but the basic principle of the word would be the same.