There is no spoon?

I’d like to start out by saying I really enjoyed Ken Rufo’s post on Baudrillard.

The connection to structuralism is where I feel I’m a little weak, but here is my attempt to go through it. The connection has to be made through Marxist theory. I recently went on a little consumer binge and purchased a pair of $100 leather boots. I think the connection is that I paid so much to have the Frye brand. Sure, these boots are high quality. But I doubt they would have cost as much under another label.

But what do my boots have to do with all this? I think my boots are like any other commodity. The exchange-value is more important than the use-value. These boots better last awhile, but money!

Alright,that’s enough of me bragging about my sassy leather boots. The connection I see is that theory is a commodity as well. Theory has an important exchange-value just like the boots. “…Something we use to make our class papers or arguments look good…”. Since Marx developed these ideas, he created this commodity of theory.

I have a suspicion that after watching The Matrix, I might grasp the concept of simulation. As for now, it seems like Baudrillard is saying the simulation becomes reality. Through a process, a simulation first substitutes for reality. A simulation hides this substitution. Eventually, a simulation doesn’t even need this model. This is the copy with no origin (which really confused me at first). There is no copy behind it anymore since reality is absent. Bye bye real.

We have to understand our own experiences through these copies with no origin (simulacra). I believe it was Max who said we observe in comparison to something we observe in Die Hard. So when 9/11 occurred, we didn’t experience it in the real. We had to match it up with something we saw in an action movie.

“The world ultimately resists our attempts to theorize it” first struck me as “well then what are we doing?” Is it because of the simulations that it becomes impossible to try to theorize our world? All the theories we’ve studied create a way to view the world. Do these theories cause us to look at the world in a way that simply fulfills that particular theory?

And while I’m on a roll with asking questions, I’m hoping someone can help me out with this. I’m a little confused about ambivalence. Help?

Bang bang my baby shot the author down

"We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single "theological" meaning (the "message" of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture."

This is taken from "The Death of the Author" by Roland Barthes.
The first interesting point I noticed in this quote is "none of them original". That line, I guess, shot the author dead. It's difficult to comprehend no text being original. An author is not having a brilliant and unique idea and then writing it down for our understanding. Whatever a person decides to write about already exists.

The blending and clashing is also significant in regards to the "innumerable centres of culture". I take this to mean that ideas existing in our culture are what make it into a text. So many of these ideas are combined together to form a text. Different elements come together to form something. But everything pre-exists the text.

In the introduction of the Foucault reading, the term "author function" is discussed. It's a notion we seem to hold on to just so we can make sense of stuff in our minds. It seems like without the author, we would have difficulty classifying things. I don't know anything about Shakespeare, but I can list a whole bunch of stuff that he wrote.

After a bit of digging, I found a post by I cite on Making Readers
The initial question is what makes certain bloggers find her post? The post deals with her subject matter drawing in a certain audience. Can the author create a particular audience?
The author is posting subject matter that interests her. An audience with similar interests is drawn in through tagging and searching. There are some topics that she can't write about because the discussion through blogs has already begun.

"I can assume, in other words, that the readers are mirrors of a particular fantasy I have of myself."

But does this really have to do with the author of the blog? I think Foucault would said no. The blogging topics are the "innumerable centres of culture" happening all around us. Blogs are the way of blending and clashing whatever topics are popular right now.

Authorship is something Spencer and I have tried to discuss a few times. I think we attempted to post something earlier regarding the topic? I'm crossing my fingers that he will want to discuss this more.

Is my boyfriend a narcissist?

Derrida’s feelings toward the camera are connected with psychoanalysis. Derrida is uncomfortable being filmed because it is a false representation. He then goes back and views the scene in which his wife and he don’t discuss any details of how they met. He seems interested in viewing actions that he hardly remembers doing. According to psychoanalysis, he is viewing the self through the other. The other in this instance, is himself on film. It is something outside of the self that is showing him something about himself. Derrida seems uncomfortable with the other when he views the portrait of himself. He prefers the actually representation of himself versus a self realized through the other.

Derrida discusses the notion of love between two people. As mentioned previously, he questions whether or not you love a person for their singularity (the who), or qualities that that person has (the what). He further deconstructs love to a level of narcissism. People love themselves through another person. You look for qualities you like in a person. When that person ceases to embody those characteristics, you don’t love them. You really search for what pleases you. People end up loving themselves by finding someone with appropriate characteristics that engages back with them. In regards to post-structuralism, Derrida is examining how we establish the meaning of love. The narcissistic quality of love allows us to also examine the self from the other.

When Derrida discusses improvisation, he is deconstructing the idea that it is done on the spot. Improvisation is all rehearsed. When put on the spot, we refer back onto things we’ve learned or heard before. Things we bring up during improve are already familiar to us, we simply present them when called upon. Improvisation isn’t digging into the self for a creative answer. Responses from improve are from something other than the self. This could relate to the idea of the ego, or the social self. The superego contains everything needed for improvisation. We reach into what has already been internalized for an answer in improve. What is then presented is the ego.

I'm still thinking of the second half of Lacan's quote "I am where I do not think" I interpret this as our unconscious (where we do not think) is where we develop part of the self. The unconscious, according to Lacan, is also a system like language. This implies that we develop the self through language.

Derrida had an adorable cat

Derrida is reluctant to be interviewed throughout most of the documentary. His unwillingness to be on camera actually helped me understand deconstruction a little bit more than before. The interviewers try to get into Derrida’s personal life, but Derrida can’t help but point out that the camera is always present. He is deconstruction the idea of his image on camera. To him, the image is a false portrayal. Derrida is visibly uncomfortable when he is shown a portrait of himself. These are not real representations of him.

I find it interesting that Derrida enjoyed the documentary. I imagine it’s because he views the false image of himself, and he watches himself hide his personal feelings. At one point, the interviewer was digging into Derrida trying to examine his love life. First, Derrida is questioned about the first time he met his wife, in which he kept most of the details to himself. Then when Derrida is asked what he feels about love, he is unable to answer at first. Derrida talks about whether or not you love the single person (who), or do you love things about the person, for example intelligence (what).

Derrida seemed to deconstruct most questions he was asked, and probably answered them in a way that the interviewer did not expect. For example, when he was asked to chose a philosopher to be his mother, Derrida answered his granddaughter. Derrida deconstructed the notion that a person typically thinks of “fathers of philosophy” rather than a female figure.

It was almost uncomfortable to watch an interviewer ask Derrida about Seinfeld. Derrida responded that if she thought a sitcom was an example of deconstruction, then she should go back and reread. It seemed that interviewers sometimes tried to ask him unusual questions hoping for a witty response. Derrida ended up deconstructing their questions and giving them an unexpected, but at the same time, intriguing answer. The documentary becomes a lesson on deconstruction.

The meaning of this title is arbitrary

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


Saussure says that essence is not found within a word. Our minds are what give a particular word meaning. The meaning given to a word is thus random, there is no outside element influencing what meaning is given to what word. He explains this by saying that no ideas pre-exist language. Language is a “link between thought and sound”.

An example I had thought of was when I was younger, I didn’t know what a yield traffic sign meant. To me, it was just a sign with a word on it. Finally, my mother explained to me how cars yield, and what the sign meant for her to do while driving. There is no way I could understand what yield meant just by reading the sign. Once my mother explained the definition of yielding to me, the sign had a new meaning for me.
This has larger implications with Saussure’s langue and parole model. He uses a word in the French language as an example of parole. If a person doesn’t understand the French language (the langue), that person won’t understand that particular world.

Previous theory suggests that language is a reflection of our world. Structuralism, instead, says that language is what constitutes our world. This theory goes against Liberal Humanism in that we are not the source of meaning. Also, words don’t simply define the world around us. They are what give meaning to every single idea. A text is limited language to describe the world around us.

The Eskimo language example that was brought up in class is a good example of how this theory shapes the way I think about language, and ultimately literature. I’m not going to see the differences in snow. It’s all simply snow to me. If we had different words to differentiate types of snow, I would have to examine snow to tell which kind it is. But instead, I lump it all into one word of “snow”. Eskimos will have a different reality from me. They will understand differences in snow that I won’t. I think this transfers into literature as well. I’m only going to see and understand the picture that the language presents in my mind. I will read a text, and create the picture of the text in my mind. I will only picture what the language of the literature presents. If I read the word “snow”, I picture that one type of snow in my mind. I’m limited to the reality of the language.