Speaking about the threat of "cultural policy" and the art and book market, Lyotard writes that "What is advised, sometimes through one channel, sometimes through the other, is to offer works which, first, are relative to subjects which exist in the eyes of the public they address, and second, works so made ("well made") that the public will recognize what they are about, will understand what is signified, will be able to give or refusal its approval knowingly, and if possible, even to derive from such work a certain amount of comfort" (Lyotard, 76). From this statement I gather that realist art, or any art that attempts to mimic real life is really not art at all in Lyotard's view, but simply commodity. Artists are advised to appeal to pre-negotiated cultural laws, and make references that are easily communicable. It is in this condition that artwork exists as something to be bought and sold at market. Its beauty, it would seem, is correlated to its trendiness. Real art, for Lyotard, then, must escape definition and referentiality. Its focus should be on the sublime. Does this mean that art should become a more private endeavor? I feel this is an especially important question in regard to making the "unpresentable" become "perceptible." Is Lyotard assuming that there are absolute concepts whose essences we have similar capabilities of imagining?
Also, Lyotard states that “our business is to invent allusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented.” Again, I am wondering if there are some universally discernable absolute concepts. Furthermore, I am concerned with whether Lyotard subordinates the private experience and self-expression which art makes possible to the communicative ability of art.

-Daliso Leslie
4/26/07

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Each of the theorists we have read for this week seems to have their own definition of what modernity is versus what postmodernity is, which I find to be very confusing. In his essay “Modernity versus Postmodernity”, Habermas uses the word “modernity” and multiple variations of it numerous times, but I did not really understand what his definition was. According to Habermas, what is modernity? Does he think modernism is a good thing, or does he prefer postmodernism? What is the difference between modernism and postmodernism?
Throughout the essay, there appear to be different types of modernity, such as classical, cultural, and aesthetic. Do all of these mean different things, or are they just different ways of saying the same thing? If they are different, does Habermas prefer one type of modernity over another?
On page 6 of his essay, Habermas talks about Daniel Bell, who “argues that the crises of the developed societies of the West are to be traced back to a split between culture and society. Modernist culture has come to penetrate the values of everyday life; the life-world is infected by modernism.” What does Bell mean when he refers to the split between culture and society? Is he making a point about the lack of ethnic diversity in society or am I misreading that quote completely? Does Bell view modernist culture as a bad thing? Referring to modernity as an “infection” of society would suggest that he is against it, but I could not tell just from this quote. Reading this reminded me of a scene from the end of “The Matrix” when Agent Smith is talking to Morpheus (sorry, I could not resist). Agent Smith refers to the human race as a disease, as the cancer of the earth, and they (the agents) are the cure. Is this what Bell is trying to say about modernity? Is modernity the cancer of society? What is the cure?
- Monica M. Carvalho

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So, as coincidence has it, we talked about this philosopher named Levinas in one of my other classes today, and he had some pretty interesting ideas about "the other" that I will try to apply to Spivak's theories (though it was really difficult to understand either text). Levinas, I think, would criticize Spivak for being so married to an ideology of subjecthood, of the other as a type of subject. Levinas seems to criticize the narcissism of extrapolating one's own subjecthood to the other--of allowing internal life to dominate the external world. He questions the subject that only arises out of discourse, and instead proposes a sort of mutual "being for each other." He redefines the other as a sort of mysterious, unreachable being, a third party to the I/You of discourse. It seems that Spivak is too willing to apply the notions of "speech" and "subjectivity" to the other, and that she doesn't recognize the inability of the theorist to understanding or capture that other. Levinas is deeply distrustful of conceptualizing the external; rather than theorizing a conceptual understanding between subjects, he posits a sort "face-to-face" interraction with an actual person. In this interraction, each person is, in a way, buoyed toward a transcendent state by a language that pre-exists selfhood, that exceeds the totality of understanding. In this sense, language is not a violent tool for carving subjectivity, but a common plane upon which all personal interraction is grounded. While an internal world still exists, it is overwhelmed by the irreducibility of a "third party" exceeds any sort of narcissistic, subjective understanding. I think Spivak could have been more aware of the problems of subjecivity (especially of the other) rather than attacking at a chiefly political and ideological angle. Spivak might argue that the other is precisely at a disadvantage because of the imperialism of subjectivity, but she certainly upholds the primacy of the subject.

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I think Freud tends to be quite hypocritical when he depicts women. He states that psychoanalysis alone couldn't define a woman, but then describes how both men and women develop and come in being. He clearly believes there are many differences between men and women, but he argues that both sexes are first in love with their mother and women quickly grow out of that stage and begin to "love" their fathers. How do women go through that first stage of loving their mother's and on to loving their father's? I don't think his theory on how women are "biologically destined" to live in a feminine stage has enough evidence. Going along with that theory, I also don't agree with his theory on how women are born bisexual. Is he just going against "the Oedipus complex"?

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Foucault opens "Discipline and Punish" with a graphic discussion of the execution and desecration of a regicide, and then explains how that model has shifted over the past three centuries to emphasize a medico-juridical disciplinarity acting on the soul of the criminal. In the chapter "Panopticism", he extrapolates this former model of punishment to characterize "antiquity" as a "civilization of spectacle" in which the many could inspect the few. In the modern age, he claims the great problem of surveillance is giving access to a multitude to the few/the individual. Other theorists have described modern Western civilization as the "society of the spectacle", notably Debord and Baudrillard. Is there a way to reconcile the tensions between these theorists? Could discipline in the modern age perhaps be characterized as spectacle insofar as everyone can watch everyone else, thus allowing access to an infinite amount of vision to each individual?

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Cameras and microphones are prevalent in today's world. There's hardly a place on earth that has been untouched by surveillance cameras, microphones, reality TV shows, etc. Especially with reality TV shows and implicitly with cameras and microphones, these devices require an audience. Everywhere we go nowadays, we are used to the idea of having an audience. With all of this "naturalization" of surveillance, can we still care if we are being watched or heard? That is, if we understand that we can be watched or heard almost every minute of every day, can we still worry and think about this surveillence at every point time? Or do we eventually become immune to its effects?
This makes me think about what a Panopticon would be like in today's world. I don't know too much about prisons, but I feel they are not places of self-discipline and self-seclusion, but of violence and groups of inmates. Is this an effect of a Panopticon in today's world? Or do prisons now not bother with watching and listening to their inmates because it won't work in the intended way anymore? Perhaps the Panopticon model is useless in today's world when applied to prisons, but still true in other models. I am still trying to think of a place where a Panopticon would be useful (perhaps hospitals...? but even with that there are problems), though.
Furthermore, it seems as if "inmates" would also grow accustomed to a Panopticon setup even in Foucault's times if an "inmate" spent a long enough time in a Panopticon. With the older discipline and punishment system, new punishments could be thought of when the old ones were of no use. With the Panopticon, what happens when the "inmate" becomes used to being watched? Perhaps the watcher starts listening to every "inmate", too, but what then?
It is difficult to think of answers to these questions because it requires an extrapolation of the Panopticon into the world today and further knowledge of older working Panopticons.

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"As commodities, women are thus two things at once: utilitarian objects and bearers of value. (p. 175)"
Breakdown: The object is the body. The utilitarian object is the body in relation to the way it is used by men. The exchange of women abstract her body. The physical material "woman" has no value by itself, only once the female body is put in relation to another female body can a woman be appraised. But how are two women to be compared? They are put in "a relation of equality with a third term that is neither the one nor the other. (p. 175)" "It is only her measurement against a third term that remains external to her, and that makes it possible to compare her with another woman, that permits her to have a relation to another commodity in terms of an equivalence that remains FOREIGN to both. (p. 176)." Okay, so women are not actually "bearers" of their own value. Their value is activated in the moment of transaction (gain, expenditure). Much like oil and calories, the value of a woman does not "lie within itself. (p. 176)."
I am interested in Irigaray's discussion of the differences in exchange value between the mother, the virgin, and the prostitute (all "social roles imposed on women"--p. 186). I would like to explore these differences in greater depth. It seems to me that there are greater similarities both between the mother and the prostitue, and the virgin and the prostitute, than between the mother and the virgin. And it seems that the prostitute, although on the surface perhaps the most male-determined or man-made if you will, is actually the truest semblance of a woman. Do I think all women are whores? No, no, bear with me.
The virgin is "pure exchange value. She is nothing but the possibility, the place, the sign of relations among men. In and of herself, she does not exsist...(p. 186)." The virgin is defined by what she has not done (or what has not been done to her), the term is completely negative, it does not describe

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Going along with poetic language, is “thetic language” (being opposed to poetic language, according to Professor Doane’s lecture) language that does propose a critical thesis or opinion? Would Kristeva’s “From One Identity to an Other”, along with the other essays we have read for this class, count as “thetic language” since each essay proposes a thesis of some sort?
On page 125, Kristeva introduces the term “crisis” and mentions “crises of meaning, subject, and structure.” What does she mean by “crisis”? Is a crisis, for Kristeva, anything which challenges one’s already existing belief system (such as a crisis of faith)?
What does Kristeva mean on page 129 when she talks about the “noesis” and “noemis” (in relation to the sign and the signified)? What do these two terms mean?
On page 142, Kristeva introduces the “obscene word”. Does this refer to any curse word, or is something more complicated than that? Professor Doane said that the obscene word is a semiotic moment. Can we go over what exactly this means?
Lastly, I had a hard time discerning Kristeva’s thesis in this essay. I think that her main thesis is introduced on page 125 when she says, “I shall therefore and in conclusion argue in favor of an analytical theory of signifying systems and practices that would search within the signifying phenomenon for the crisis or the unsettling process of meaning and subject rather than for the coherence or identity of either one or a multiplicity of structures.” What does this mean?
- Monica M. Carvalho

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Thus, I would criticize Marx and Althusser for failing to take into account their own negation of history, their engulfing of it, in their structural analyses. On the other hand, I would also be wary of works like "From Work to Text" that see, in essence, the whole world as their infinitely discursive oyster. Can one really ignore the time in which Hamlet was written and instead opt to read the play as a text written, in essence, by their reading of it? Doesn't that practice run the risk of mythologizing The Text? Find out on the next episode of: "Space Invaders."

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When I told a friend I was reading Althusser, his response was “oh, I’ve never read his work, but I’ve seen The Matrix.” While referring to The Matrix in a discussion about theory has gotten cliché, I’ve never thought about it from the perspective of ISAs. Thinking of ‘The Matrix’ as the ultimate ideology, a metaphor for ISAs, made the concepts more digestible. Humans function in ‘The Matrix’ just as unconsciously as we function within our individual ideologies; it seems “obvious” (or natural) as one does not question it. It also carries over to how if you claim that you don’t subscribe to a specific ideology, it is the most dangerous as you are not aware of it. It also produces a subject (in both forms of the term), and even is necessary for the reproduction of the means of production. It is also not an imaginary relation between man and his real conditions, but more the relation of the relation. The place where this becomes interesting is the internal/external idea of being “in an ideology” (pg 175) How similarly to the myth, you can’t function within in it if you know that it exists. While Neo explicitly got to choose whether or not he wanted to be aware of the ideology he was function within, I wonder how much Althusser feels we can ‘free’ ourselves from our ideologies once we acknowledge their existence? Also, is there a certain “ignorance is bliss” quality as well? The pleasures of firmly believing in something and not having to question its appearance as ‘obvious? ‘The Matrix’ example also brings into the forefront of how many other ‘obvious’ things in our lives may actually be an ‘apparatus’ of some sort.

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