This blog is an experiment in using blogs in higher education. Most of the experiments done here are the first of their kind at least in India. I wish this trend catches on.... The Blog is dedicated to Anup Dhar and Lawrence Liang whose work has influenced many like me . . . .
Friday, March 11, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Study Questions on BA EST431 Literary theory Course - PSEng, JPEng, CEP
Psychoanalysis
Notes by Yolmo Urgen
Sigmund Freud
· Sigmund Freud is the father of psychoanalysis. He wrote about psychoanalysis sometime during the 20th century.
· It was the time when practical thinking and reasoning had come into being.
· Germany in the 18th and the 19th century was dominated by German philosophies and had a Nazi rule thus it was not possible for Freud to write freely on his theories. Thus due to this plight he went to England and started writing and expressing his views on psychoanalysis.
· Later there were many philosophers like Lacan Derrida who followed Freud footsteps and wrote on psychoanalysis and also tried to complete it.
· Freud eventually completed his work, publishing many books which were on psychoanalysis:
1. Civilization and its Discontents: In this book he writes about two prime principles which dominate human civilization. A) The pleasure principle and B) The reality principle. The pleasure principle is the principle which states that human beings only want pleasure in life and this is naturally seen in them( For Freud the only model of pleasure is sexual pleasure). But then he talks about the reality principle due to which the pleasure principle is sacrificed. This process is called sublimation. Due to this all the desires and the pleasure repressed, cannot be expressed. Freud thus talks about the unconscious mind which according to him is the space which is created in the mind to repress unexpressed desires.
2. The Interpretation of Dreams: In this book he further goes on to talk about the unconscious saying that we have no access to our unconscious mind and the only access to the unconscious is through our dreams. Dreams according to Freud do two things to the repressed desires: either condense (metaphor) or displace(metonymy). Condensation is just the constant vision of one image(for example, a snake representing a penis) and displacement is just a part of one image(for example, desire to be a king but only a part of the royalty seen, say the crown)
3. Psychopathology of everyday life: In this book Freud talks about parapaxes, which means “slip of tongue”. He says that our repressed desires are also expressed sometimes when we talk through slip of tongues.
4. The Jokes and their relations to the Unconscious: Here again he writes about the repressed desires coming out through the day to day jokes that we make. He says that jokes are a way of showing a glimpse of people’s repressed desires.
5. Three essays on the theory of sexuality: In this book he again talks about the content of the unconscious being only the sexual desires. Here he talks about the erotogenic zones: the oral, the anal and the phallic, which are the various stages of development of the unconscious. In the oral stage the child gets pleasure from his mouth: in the anal stage it learns toilet culture and also learns about the concept of inside and outside: in the phallic stage it realizes that it can take pleasure from its genital organ. The child then becomes polymorphously perverse, a term Freud uses to describe a being hose sexual or libidinal drives are relatively unorganized and are directed at any and every object that might provide sexual pleasure. He then goes on to talk about how incestuous the child becomes as it starts developing an attraction towards its mother if its a male child or towards its father if its a female child. Thais is where he talks about the Oedipus Complex. The polymorphously perverse phase of the child ends here and forces the child into the latency phase.
Freud says that the ‘I’ does not exist and that it is split between ego and the id.
Jacques Lacan
· For Lacan the ego can never take the place of the unconscious, of empty it out, because according to him the ego or ‘í’ self is only an illusion, a product of unconscious itself. Thus Lacan talks about the formation of the ‘i’ self.
· Lacan, in order to explain the similar trajectory from an infant to an adult like Freud, talks about three concepts- need, demand and desire- that roughly correspond to three phases of development – the Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic.
· The Real phase is when the child is only concerned about its needs and it has no demands. At this point the child does not know that it is in an independent state.
· Slowly it begins to understand that it has to start demanding when the mother leaves or goes away from it for sometime.
· It realizes that the nipple it sucks for food is not its and that the one standing in front of the mirror is itself. This is the point where it reaches the Imaginary phase where it starts learning language because it has demands.
· Here Lacan talks about the capital “Other” and the small “other”. The small other is when the child gets to know that the figure in front of the mirror is the” other” image of itself and the capital Other is the other which includes all the central institutions in the society which govern everything.
· Then the Symbolic phase starts where the child completely requires but has a desire to go back to the real stage which is not possible. Thus a centre is created.
· This centre is the phallus. Phallus for Lacan is not the penis. It can be any centre which the society creates to move away from the Symbolic state. Then all the legal understandings and norms and rules begin.
· All centre are the lack that people have. And all lacks are different.
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Ph.D in Journalism and Mass Communication from IGNOU
Doctor of Philosophy in journalism & Mass Communication (PhD in journalism & Mass Communication)
Maximum Duration: 5 Years
Course Fee: Rs. 13,200
Minimum Age: No bar
Maximum Age: No bar
Eligibility:
Or
Masters Degree with fifty-five percent marks in any subject, with five-years experience in the Media Industry/Teaching/Research in Mass Communication.
Candidates who are employees of the University should have completed at least two years of service in the University on the date they submit their application for admission.
Post-symposium Workshop on Subjectivity - A Report
Monday, March 07, 2011
FEMINIST THEORY
Notes by Jyotsna Subramaniam.
(NOTE: everything here is just a summary of notes and ideas pertaining to the chapter on feminist theory. I repeat, Summary. )
A (slightly subjective) introduction:
Anybody who’s somebody in the world of literature cannot claim a position of importance without having read Freud. And of course, anybody who has indeed read Freud will agree when I say he ...well, has certain rigid ideas about the functioning of the minds of bodies of women.
Let’s start from the very beginning. Derrida’s ideas about the ‘’phallogocentric’’ culture or systems are centred around binary opposites in which the right side is always preferred over the left, such as:
mind/body
active/passive
rational/irrational
culture/nature
public/private
reason/emotion
subject/object
self/other
and,
men/women.
The last binary opposite obviously links these concepts to a primary metaphor of one being more powerful than the other, and effectively superior to the other. And Freud is just one person who used this to come up with ideas about how every heterosexual (let’s get to this bit a little later) , adult woman is neurotic. NEUROTIC.
Why?
Because according to Freud, girls have to make two major changes in their lives following the impact of the Oedipal period:
1. They must refrain from desiring their mothers ( men aren’t an exception to this one)
2. They must refrain from desiring women in general and must now shift all their sexual energy on the opposite sex.
This apparently, is too much for women to take, thus making any heterosexual adult woman a perfect client for any psychiatrist. This particular theory is not only offensive to women, but also undermines and attributes a certain derogatory value to homosexuals. Queer theory of course, takes off from here. But let’s take a look at feminist theory now, in particular Helene Cixous, and Luce Irigaray, and the inevitable thrashing they give Freudian theories, giving rise to a new domain in literary theory.
Before we examine these theorists however, it is important to understand a few things about feminist theory in general:
There is a major shift from looking at the prescribed status that gender gives women, to the understanding of women’s experiences and sexuality itself, whether in isolation or as expressed in literature. This has been the focal point of post structuralist feminist theory at large and to a certain extent, pre-post structuralist feminist theory.
Pre-post structuralist feminist theory: ( also referred to as the Anglo-American feminist approach)
-basic argument: Why has western literary tradition had difficulty in joining the words ‘’woman’’ and ‘’writer’’ together? Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar ask if the pen then, is a metaphorical equivalent of a penis.
-the predominance of this metaphor lies in the fact that women produce babies, who are of course mortal, while men produce great literary or artistic works that have an inherent immortal quality in them. This idea could be a possible response to the anxiety that men face in determining if a woman is carrying his child or someone else’s.
-therefore, Gilbert and Gubar ask with what part of the female anatomy women are supposed to produce immortal works of art and literature.
Post structuralist feminist theory:
- takes off from Lacanian ideology that in the symbolic order, the position of women is founded on ‘lack’, so women can’t misidentify with the phallus as the centre of the symbolic order.
- Therefore, since women are pushed to the margins of the symbolic order or centre, they are not strictly governed by the rules of the system and are free to do as they like. This freedom to escape the rules of the centre in a system is called ‘’jouissance.’’ In post structuralist terms, this refers to a pleasure that is beyond language / that cannot be expressed in language and effectively, something that becomes disruptive to the structure.
HELENE CIXOUS (http://bilgi.academia.edu/SaideElifOzkorkmaz/Papers/126289/The_Laugh_of_the_Medusa)
- Takes off from Freud and Lacan’s theories about women being neurotic( mentioned at the beginning )
- Woman must write woman. This means that women but both, write themselves about their own experiences and connect the signifier ‘woman’ to ‘I’ in a new way within the symbolic order.
- Argues against presupposing the superiority of either men or women over the other group, as this leads to suppression as well, thus effectively criticising structures that enforce gender dichotomies as being too oppressive, towards both men and women.
- Argues that women write and speak only from a masculine position , thus there has actually been no feminine writing. She introduces the concept of l’ecriture feminine, to refer to a notion of feminine writing that she sees as only being possible in poetry and that cannot be defined.
- A new sense of bisexuality is also advocated by Cixous, which she refers to as the non exclusion of either sex, which would become a deconstructing force to erase slashes in all binary opposites.
- The myth of Medusa , according to Cixous, can be analyzed as one that scares men into upholding the phallogocentric order.
(http://www.bethspencer.com/BethSpencer-chapter2.pdf)
- Demater-paternalization of the family system: Cixous sees the traditional family as a social unit that generating the ideas of castration and lack forming the feminine identity as created by Freud and Lacan. She thus wants to break up traditional systems so that the phallogocentric system won’t be recreated every time a child is born.
LUCE IRIGARAY
-Irigaray points out that female sexuality has always been defined in male terms, as well as always being described as passive, or lacking, and that males fill in the absences that females inherently experience.
- a central flaw in western ideology, she argues, is that nobody knows exactly how to talk about female sexuality as we are all constantly trying to find the one female sexual organ that corresponds to its male counterpart.
-commenting on Freud’s ideas on how women’s identities are based on lack, she argues that female anatomy is created in such a way that it can fulfil its lack by itself, that is, without the help of man. From this, she sees heterosexual intercourse as a violation of female sexuality, and calls it ‘rape’, and a tool of patriarchy. Consequently, she says that female desire can only truly be expressed in female terms, and advocates lesbianism.
Friday, March 04, 2011
Post-symposium Workshop on Subjectivity
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
UGC sponsored National Seminar on “Vision and Performance: Commonwealth plays in English”
Virudhunagar - 626 001 INDIA
Email:rgbaskaran AT gmail.com
Conference on Cultural Transformations: Development Initiatives and Social Movements
- Social movements and struggles
- Development initiatives and cultural change
- Asian feminisms and social change
- The Post-colonial, the national and the pan-Asian in the formation of new cultural identities
- Changes and developments in popular cultural practices, including music, dance, film and popular literature
- Other topics in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies are also welcome
Mediations Journal
Mediations Journal |
- Editors' Note
- Fredric Jameson: A New Reading of [Capital]
- Anna Kornbluh: On Marx's Victorian Novel
- Roland Boer: Marxism and Eschatology Reconsidered
- Reiichi Miura: What Kind of Revolution Do You Want? | Punk, the Contemporary Left, and Singularity
- Alexei Penzin: The Soviets of the Multitude: On Collectivity and Collective Work: | An Interview with Paolo Virno
- Nataša Kovačević: New Money in the Old World: | On Europe's Neoliberal Disenchantment
- Kevin Floyd: Queer Principles of Hope
- Madeleine Monson-Rosen: Under a Pink Flag
Posted: 24 Feb 2011 12:36 PM PST |
Posted: 24 Feb 2011 02:19 PM PST |
Posted: 24 Feb 2011 02:17 PM PST As out of place as Marx himself might have been in Victorian England, Capital is less out of place than one might have thought among Victorian novels. But this does not have to mean that its mode of truth is literary. Anna Kornbluh explores the tropes that propel Capital in order to establish the novel relationship Marx produces between world and text. |
Posted: 24 Feb 2011 02:11 PM PST |
Posted: 24 Feb 2011 02:08 PM PST What does punk have to do with Empire? What does singularity have to do with identity? What does the logic of rock 'n' roll aesthetics have to do with a politics of representation? What does the concept of the multitude have to do with neoliberalism? The answer to all these questions, argues Reiichi Miura, is a lot more than you might think. |
Posted: 24 Feb 2011 01:06 PM PST |
Posted: 24 Feb 2011 02:25 PM PST |
Posted: 24 Feb 2011 01:02 PM PST |
Posted: 24 Feb 2011 01:05 PM PST |
For fresh journalism graduates- Foreign Correspondent's programme in Finland, Aug 2011
- Are you interested in the work of a correspondent in a foreign country? Would you like to spend the month of August in Finland learning more about the country, its society and the Finnish way of life?*
- If you are a newly graduated journalist or a student of journalism/communications due to graduate soon, you may be eligible to apply for a scholarship to take part in the Foreign Correspondents’ Programme (FCP) in Finland in August 2011.
- The Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland now welcomes applications from citizens or residents of the following countries: Armenia, Brazil, China, Denmark, Egypt, France, India, Japan, Germany, Poland, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States.
- The programme provides an excellent opportunity for you to learn more about Finland, Finnish society and the Finnish way of life. It also offers you the means to enhance your professional skills, as well as expand your network of professional colleagues and international friends. Programme
- The programme starts on August 1st and ends on August 26th, 2011. It includes briefings on Finland today; meetings with professionals, politicians and people; and visits to business enterprises, cultural sites and institutions. It includes a weekend as a guest of a Finnish family, as well as trips to different parts of Finland. During the programme you will have an opportunity to cover additional aspects of Finland in which you have a particular interest. You will also have access to working facilities with PCs, internet, telephone, printers and copiers at the International Press Centre. *What does it cover?* * *
- The scholarship covers the costs of travel to and from Finland, local travel in Helsinki, accommodation in a single room in a student residence and the daily programme including meals, events, transportation and lodging. The programme does not cover medical insurance or per diem allowance. Requirements
- Applicants should possess a good command of written and spoken English, be from 20 to 25 years of age and have the ability to adapt to a multinational group of people. The application documents should be sent by email only to the Embassy of Finland. The application documents should include: 1. Application form 2. A curriculum vitae using the CV template 3. An essay which emphasises the applicant's particular interest in Finland (600-800 words). Note! Be sure to include a photograph in the CV. Please include in your application copies of published articles, transcripts and other documents that may be helpful in the selection process.
- The closing date for applications is March 31st, 2011. *Contact information *Ms Sara Haapalainen or Ms Marjaana Sall Address: Embassy of Finland, 628 Leyds Street, Muckleneuk, Pretoria 0002 Telephone: +27-12-343 0275 E-mail: sanomat.pre AT formin.fi