I am the Walrus, goo goo g'joob

In the mind, all things are possible, and in the mind, all things that could be, might be or should be become signifiers. To know whether what we think is the signifier or the signified is the real trick; a trick I still haven't mastered.

The metaphor of "ordinary language" as the soil and of there being a displacement made me think of a bulb. Derrida uses the words "rupture," and that made me think of something very similar to the destabilization of the image of reality. You have a bulb, planted in the ground, then you apply some water and all of the life inside the bulb bursts out and spreads until the bulb is no longer the center. The roots take up a life of their own and they grab hold of the ground, but the life doesn't stop there, it pushes its way up to the surface to the sunlight, where it learns to feed itself without having to explain why it does so. Essentially, I see poststructuralism and deconstruction as a way to get out of the damned cave.

And the things outside are scary, and messy and chaotic.

The professor I mentioned before in the previous blog gave a lecture on the limits of our perception, and he "blew my feeble clerk mind." I was so freaked out and I blithered on so much that the professor called me later that day to make sure I was all right.

For so long the idea of a cohesive universe was all that kept me together, and I think that, since that time, I have felt distinctly uncomfortable with the world. There are moments, of course, that stick out, and that moment, when nothing had changed except for my perception, was a defining moment in my life.

I like how Derrida emphasizes (or, perhaps, I emphasized the words myself) the words "concept" and "thought." Perhaps that the "desire for a center" is what created structure rather than an actual center. Maybe the center was an idea that had to be believed in so that it could "function" in order to spawn countless other "sign-substitutions." Or perhaps a center has to be believed in so that we can feel at ease with the world.

Yet Derrida does not exclude himself from the "conception, the formulations, the gestations, the labor," because we cannot actually choose to live beyond the cave and still operate in kind society, because society, and language, is constructed on order and cohesion (which is why I think Derrida can be so incomprehensible).

Centering

This blog is in response to Barry’s questions on page 8 of Beginning Theory.

I first decided to study English because I enjoyed reading and writing. Simple. The stories that we read in high school, though more limited than what I was exposed to in college and after, were new to me. Until I reached high school, my reading was mostly limited to R.L. Stein, Christopher Pike and Anne Rice.

The first real piece of literature that I read was Gone with the Wind, and I loved it. I hadn’t realized that books could entertain as well as educate (which is what rhetoric is supposed to do, no?). Over the next few years I read Arthur Miller, Shakespeare, Homer, Mark Twain and several other big names, but I never gained an appreciation for them until college.

What my experience with literature has taught me (which also pertains to what I thought was absent) is that everything has multiple sides to it, not just one, and not just two, and that each side could be equally as valid as the others. It taught me that there are multiple ways to think about anything, to view anything, and it taught me that, without an open mind, it is impossible to appreciate anything.

I had one particularly brilliant professor in my first two years of college who taught me all of these things, and who refused to teach in the way of the New Critics. While studying any piece, we studied it from any angle that there was, and I learned history, philosophy and even science while in his classroom (though he made it quite clear that it was fairly impossible to study the author when it came to Shakespeare, since authorship is so frequently controversial).

Ultimately, I think that any reading of a text is important, and valid, but with New Criticism books are studied as if they were holy or unbroken; there is no context, and I think that literature without a context is difficult for many people to appreciate. I could read all of the entertaining young adult horror novels without a context, but what did I learn? Not much.

In Praise of Satire

Many of the philosophers, orators and rhetors that we have read so far have pretty much agreed on the fact that rhetoric is supposed to educate and delight an audience: "to invent arguments that move audiences as well as instruct them" (127), and I believe that satire does both. At the same time, satire acknowledges the other side of the argument through "embellishment" and contrast, in a very Agricolaean way.

Erasmus was a satirist, and perhaps the most interesting of the rhetors we have studied so far. I also agreed with his line of thinking: possibility rather than certainty, exploration and argumentation rather than judgment, and though his works were satirical, he did not tell others what to think, he merely gave them an opportunity to liberate themselves from ignorance. 

Ramus, on the other hand, seems to take the opposite tact. He believes that there are certainties, there is Truth. Yet the methods of finding this Truth seem to assume a lot of things. In my experience, topics that are immune to argument are either irrational or they conform to alleged Truth, and not necessarily because it is actual Truth, but because it has been engineered to be irrefutable, through circular logic and the like. I much prefer Erasmus's take on argumentation: the world is fundamentally unknowable, and "only probabilities are by and large accessible to anyone" (126).

Over the last few weeks we have been arguing a great deal about the idea of true eloquence and the ideal orator as a good man. Erasmus, like Quintillion, favored the idea of "eloquent persons of character" (120), and I think that Erasmus was lucky enough to find exactly the sort of man to fulfill Quintillion's prophesy (despite all of our accusations of extraordinary naivete). Thomas More was a good speaker, a good advisor and a very good man. He was also good humored, and did not seem to take himself too seriously. Though history is (supposedly) full of good men, I would think it difficult to find a man as good as More was. It is, however, interesting (and very sad) that More found his neck on the same block as people of half his worth. 

This, perhaps, is a very tragic example of what happens to good men. It also might explain why so many others in that time period were publishing for wealth and fame. It was probably safer.

And All That Jazz...

The Rhetorica ad Herennium is a fundamental guide on how to swindle a crowd. While reading that and Cicero’s excerpts I was reminded of the musical Chicago and the character Billy Flynn. Billy Flynn is exactly the kind of orator/defense attorney that is encouraged in these texts. In ad Herennium, the truth is not even secondary to the delivery; it isn’t mentioned at all. And the outcome of a particular dispute is not determined by the veracity of a particular argument, it is determined by who can best “razzle dazzle.”

With the trick of amplification and diminution, which Cicero suggests in De Inventione, Billy underplays Roxy’s responsibility in the murder of her lover, Fred, and overplays Fred’s malicious intentions toward Roxy. If the murder had really been self-defense, then the law would support such action, says Cicero, and Billy represents the murder as such. Cicero, admittedly, touches on morality, but only as a way to appeal to an audience, and he certainly does not champion ethics as vehemently as Quintillian does.

And speaking of morality... I have a feeling that it it too early in the semester to start railing about Marx theory and feminism (especially involving a society that is so completely stratified), but I’m going to do it, anyhow. I’ll start with the former theory and work forward (since I really only have one female remark to make about the texts).

One only has to see or read The Satyricon in order to see how highly the “humane and cultivated” Romans valued “all forms of virtue.” I also find it interesting that, throughout history, the wealthy have underestimated and undervalued the lower classes. I believe that morality is actually more real amongst the lower classes, because they have less to gain by false morality. The higher the classes get, the more creative are the crimes, the more fluid the morality. As Quintillian said, “There is always the risk of falling into the common fault of condemning what one does not understand.” Even as an afterthought, Cicero characterizes morality as belonging solely to an educated and superior class.

Perhaps I misconstrue. (?)

All I have to say about feminism relates to Philodemus. I’d be willing to bet that he never thought it possible that mere "foolish" women would be reading his words.