Monday, February 28, 2011

Raymond Williams "Culture is Ordinary"

Although I am going to present on this tomorrow, I'll give you a brief summary of what Williams is talking about in this reading (or at least what I understood of it).

The most important phrase in this whole reading, which is repeated several times throughout the text is when Raymond Williams states that "culture is ordinary". However, what exactly does he mean by this? Generally, it means that every human society has its own shape, meanings and expresses these in their own institutions and thus the making of a society is the finding of common meanings and directions- i.e writings themselves into the land (p. 4).  According to Williams, a culture has 2 aspects:
1) known meanings and directions
2) new observations and meanings

This seems to imply that there are things in a culture which is more or less static (traditions to a degree?) but also that the aspects within that culture are continuously changing and adapting. He also says there are two meanings of the word culture:
1) a whole way of life
2) the arts and learning

Williams uses both of these usages rather than just one or the other. I think we all use both of these meanings, depending on the context of what we are trying to say. Generally when we say someone is 'cultured' we think of 'the arts and learning', yet when we ask someone what their culture is we are referring to 'a whole way of life'. There are also two senses of culture which seem to have been born within English society (but also could be a more general sense, I'm not sure if he meant it to be global):
1) cultivated people, apart from the ordinary people
2) 'culture-vultures'- highbrows who use this argot as an attempt to influence ordinary people

Williams refuses to acknowledge these two sense of culture (actually he denies a lot in this reading). He believes that culture is not limited to a certain group of people but rather is structured and available to and by all, that is why it is 'ordinary'. It is a very democratic approach towards the definition of culture, especially when referring to a time period such as industrialization in which the distinction between the elite and the masses was quite distinctly separated.

There is more to this reading (of course, there always is), but I'll leave it at that and expand more during my presentation.

Monday, February 21, 2011

PE: Deus ex Machina

I don't consider myself to be a very good fiction writer, so I found the reading "Deus ex Machina" quite useful and interesting. It gives tools towards how to steer a plot line in the direction that you want it to through the use of 'machines'. Basically, the writer of the text states that "any artistic text is a machine working on the reader: a 'machine' not only in the figurative sense, but in the strictly cybernetic sense as well- as a transforming device" (p. 53). So to me this means that the 'artistic text' (as a tool for transformation) allows the reader to follow the plot the way that the writer of the text wants he/she to. Or, in other words, the writer uses these 'machines' to make the plot develop in a certain way.

The writer of PE then goes on to explain different types of machines that are present in artistic texts.
1) Physical machines (example: the water pipe in Lawrence's story as a mover of the action)
2)Social and Linguistic Machines (example: the legend of Romulus and Remus in the time machine story)
3)'Ready-made' objects (example: the legend can also be considered a 'ready-made' object which guides the story plot)
4)Magical Machines (example: fairy tales which are also 'ready-made' objects and steer the plot a certain way)
5) Universal Plot Machine and Denouement Machine (example: a ferris wheel moves in the same way as a story line- from up to down, etc.)

What I found most interesting about this reading was the following lines: "That is why the role played by the machine is often predictable. A gun must fire; a horse, car or train can be ridden; a wheel turns; and so on" (p. 55). These objects give off a sense of fate- their function is sealed. Often when I read things, if there is say, a gun, in a story, it is true that I automatically predict that something regarding the gun will produce a change in the story- for example someone getting shot. However, even though I realize that certain objects in a story have more significance than others, I never thought of them as machines that are transformative devices. It just never occurred to me to classify them that way but after reading this text, it does make sense to do so. This reading should be used in a "Learn to write fiction class" (if it isn't being used in those types of classes yet), it could be very useful to people, myself included. It would be interesting to analyze a text while comparing and connecting the 'machines' to the literary themes.

Monday, February 7, 2011

"The Death of the Author" and Barthes short snippets on culture

I actually really like "The Death of the Author" by Roland Barthes. From what I understood, he's basically saying that the idea of "authorship" no longer exists (or never did, we just chose to attribute an author to a text). The person writing the text is taking ideas and words from a bank of information which is technically available to everyone and anyone, so we can't really attribute a book to an author but rather a 'modern scriptor' who is born simultaneously with the text. Thus, by taking away the importance of the author and all the power that goes along with it, the importance of the text turns to the reader. This is what I especially like about what Barthes is arguing- the power is no longer in the author but in the reader. It is the reader who determines the interpretation of the text. Since I don't consider myself a spectacular writer but rather a spectacular reader, this particularly tickles my fancy. Quoting Barthes, "to give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing". This is because then we are interpreting the text based on how the Author wanted us to. We do this through the biographical information of the author, his expressed desires and motifs about the text, etc. However, when we choose to say that the text has no author, just a scriptor, then we no longer have the latter elements to deal with in our interpretation. It really becomes about us (the readers)- how we choose to approach and view what we are reading. It really is a completely different way of looking at books and literature.

However, I can see how people would find it difficult to completely disassociate the author from the text. We've been taught for our whole lives to look at the author's historical and biographical context and how that influenced the text that he/she was writing. I can't help thinking that this really does influence the text, but perhaps I can't shake that thought because I've been taught to associate the two together (that is, author and text)? Can we completely get past the idea of "author"?

As for the other little texts by Barthes, "Toys", "Striptease","Wine and Milk" and "The Blue Guide", I found them all very entertaining. He introduces us to several aspects of French culture and tradition and breaks them down so as to show what the meaning behind them is (or, cultural significance). I especially enjoyed the "Wine and Milk" short text, in particular the following sentence: "There is no situation involving some physical constraint (temperature, hunger, boredom, compulsion, disorientation) which does not give rise to dreams of wine".