Brain Drain Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Louis Althusser’

These?are merely a few thoughts that presented easily for me.

Foucault and Cho sittin’ in a tree…
There are SO MANY different types of sexual discourse within Cho’s performance of I’m the One that I Want: gay, straight, drunk, slutty, medical – and people pay to hear all about it. We are not a prudish population overall. (In fact, after posting?about foot lickers and 7 feet of sex, my?blog traffic?went through the roof.)

The most pertinent point where Cho and Foucault align is the moment when?Cho’s small desire in the grand scheme of her identity briefly defines?her identity as a whole. Cho tells her mother that she?has a?sexual encounter?with a woman while working on a lesbain cruise line. This is not typical behavior for Cho and she asks herself if she’s gay or straight. She decides she’s just slutty but her mother needs to classify Cho and calls her machine asking:

Are you gay? Are you gay? Are you gay? If you don’t pick up the phone, you’re gay. Okay, you’re gay.” Her mother then continues with “Why can’t you talk to Mommy? Mommy is so cool… Mommy know all about the gay!”

Suddenly, Cho is seen differently through her mother’s eyes in light of a singular experience. Cho’s mother is interesting in that she is deeply effected by racism when she arrives in the States in the 60′s. Knowing that classification is hurtful and dangerous, she reproduces the same behavior with her daughter. I’m seeing both Althusser and Foucault here. Ideologies are in place to perpetuate the system.

Butler and?Cho sitting in a tree…
So, Cho’s?performance includes?the roles of both men and women. How do we, as an audience, know which role she is playing? Gender roles are important here. Cho seems to prove Butler’s point that gender is imposed, learned and performed. In playing the role of a man, Cho displays mannerisms belonging to that gender. When she depicts her gay male friends, she displays?more forced feminine gestures as performed by these men. Certainly, these performances play on stereotypes, but Butler would say that stereotypes are as false as the gender we assume. Butler would also use the example above to say that there is no true identity/soul. There are just chaotic desires within us that are reigned in by social expectations. These expectations are?placed upon us?and we, in turn, place them upon ourselves.

Again:

Why must women carry the shame of violation when men are guilty of committing the crime?

I can’t depart from?this nagging question. Lucy, her life changed forever, still won’t talk. She?can?do no more than survive, engaging with the culture of the time, marrying a man for protection,?giving up her land,?and doing it all at the expense of her “self.” I?had hoped?Coetzee would provide?the reason for?her burden of silent shame, something?beyond his provocation of the reader to?ponder the practice.?(Alliteration abounds.)

I consulted JSTOR and stumbled?upon Reading the Unspeakable: Rape in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace?by Lucy Valerie Graham. (Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2. (Jun., 2003), pp. 433-444.)

Graham?finds that while Coetzee?could?be categorized as a?male-author questioning the practices of rape discourse, unable to escape the trap of ambivalence, she instead believes that “not only is his reticence self-reflexive, it also leaves a certain responsibility with the reader” (434).

(That’s what I said.)

Although Graham’s focus is on Coetzee’s effort to use silence in order to question silence, what particularly interests me is?her investigation into?women’s silence?as present in?life, lit and art.?Particularly in?life, “place and time” are everything.

Disgrace points to a context where women are regarded as property and are liable for protection only insofar as they belong to men. As a lesbian, Lucy would be regarded as ‘unowned’ and therefore ‘huntable’ and there is even a suggestion that her sexuality may have provoked her attackers. Lucy insists that in South Africa, ‘in this place, at?this time’,? the violation she has suffered cannot be a public matter, and her refusal to report the crime may represent a rather extreme refusal to play a part in a history of oppression.

I find this only partly true. Life and culture certainly dictate the circumstances in which reporting such a thing matters. In a legal system unable to accurately?locate a stolen car, there is no purpose. In addition to the inability, if we?assume that the?justice of law enforcement?reflects the culture described above,?they will do nothing more than turn a blind eye. Such a refusal of help would do no more than trivialize the act, further negating Lucy’s worth in their eyes and her own as well. On these?points, I agree. What I can’t agree with is that Lucy’s silence is?a “refusal to play a part in a history of oppression.” Staying on the farm? Yes.?That is?obvious resistance against the forces trying to run her?off.?Keeping silent??That is?oppression in?its own right.?

Graham says this is not the sole reason why Lucy’s?account isn’t present in the novel. As for lit and art,?the “unspeakable act” is classically?left as such:

Although sexual violation was common enough subject matter in classical art, the violence of the act was both obscured and legitimised by representations that depicted sexual violation in an aesthetic manner. (440)

“Legitimised” is the word that?strikes me. To leave?details to the imagination is one thing, but to leave them so vague as to be blind to the wrong doing is, well, a disgrace. (Sorry.) Graham brings to light?Coetzee’s knowledge of this tradition.?Coetzee uses examples of actual art and lit to emphasize the need to read?beyond it’s limitations, something his character David eventually begins to do.

After the farm attack,?David finds?a reproduction of Poussin’s?The Rape of the Sabine Women… and asks: ‘What did all this attitudinizing have to do with what he expected rape to be: the lying of a man on top of a woman and pushing himself into her?’.

Men carrying women off in public, women cowering in submission, rioting in the streets under the dominant male in a red cape says nothing directly about the actual horrific act of rape. To seek the meaning behind the painting doesn’t gratify?David’s expectations.?He would be more satisfied with an internet bondage site?depicting?male power?and female submission. Taking?pornography into account,?it has only one purpose.?The?imagery created, if particularly horrific,?is solely for the pleasure of those who wish to dominate or enjoy being dominated, not as forms of expression for those who are victims.

As?Graham points out, David is wrapped up in another, more prominent example of art legitimising the act:

Thinking of Byron who ‘pushed himself into” and possibly raped ‘countesses and kitchenmaids’, Lurie speculates that from where Lucy stands?’Byron looks very old fashioned indeed.’ Here is a critique of the Romantic/humanist posturing that obscures, even justifies, forsaking ethical responsibility in the realm of life. And yet David, scholar of Romanticism, is left ‘attitudinizing’when he excuses his violation of Melanie Isaacs as an act motivated by Eros. (441)

David’s?speculation is interesting here. He knows that the art falls short in depicting the horror his daughter experienced. Coetzee shows?David’s smallest sliver of enlightenment through?his changing interpretation of art, providing?the reader?with the power to see the clues as David does.?Enlightenment has little effect here.?To present her trauma, even if she had the desire, Lucy still has no imagery short of?the failure of pornography,?nor useful language as she dances around the loaded term “rape.”?(Hello, Saussure.)

I admire?Coetzee’s creativity and desire to challenge tradition and culture, using the lack of realistic?representation?in art to speak out against the very lack in question. (Hello, Derrida.)?Okay, so Coetzee?wants?the reader?to question life, and art as reflection of that life, at once.?To parallel?the effect of this technique?with Lucy’s ineffectual use of silence or “oppressed truth”?to combat oppression, it doesn’t appear that it will get us very far. As readers, we’re left to question without the benefit of a solution.

I still?want an answer to my particular?query. How does being a victim of violence translate to shame in any culture, not just in Africa? We?continually see examples of peacekeeping by attempted assimilation and/or separation, yet the shame produced by violation of “body and being”?still exists.?(Hello, Fanon.) To take this stance means the power of culture is too strong to change. It must be toppled and rebuilt. (Hello, Rubin.) To change who has political power is not enough. Oppressive and ideological state apparatuses continue to survive the change. (Hello, Althusser.) So, when do we get to read a theorist who has all the answers?

PS:?Pardon my very narrow approach to Lucy’s experience, without further exploration of the complicated layers of race and gender relationships. I just couldn’t fit all that in. Seriously, read the criticism I cite. It’s worth it.

—— Fun with Observations ——

I’m still hanging with Derrida. It’s all a bunch of chaotic and?shifting centers of understanding bumping up against one another. We don’t have the perfect tools of observation and theory?to get it right. Like a Rubik’s Life Cube, we spin the different combinations until, we hope, one cube twists into place along side another and?aligns in harmony. We just can’t seem to harmonize one side, let alone the whole darn thing. My?Rubik’s theory is broken too. Even if?the individual cubes?are considered centers, they all revolve around one central point,?and harmony is dependant upon separation of?color… unless you break with the traditional cube?and use the one to the right.?It’s?a perfect example of seeing people rather than color, and yet it does nothing to solve the problem of abusive?power.

WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP SHITTY JOBS?
Louis Althusser has the situation pegged. The (repressive) State Apparatus keeps things status quo because they can beat you into submission with their repression ‘machine.’ Ideological forces lead us to believe we have a choice even though they dictate the social norm. All this exists in an effort to ensure reproduction of labor power for the capitalists. “Relations of exploitation” contributing “generously to its own reproduction” (1492).

Damn, I want to quit and I don’t even have a job!?That’s it. I’M NEVER GOING TO WORK AGAIN.

IDEOLOGY IN PROGRESS
I saw the perfect ideological example in the documentary, The Myth of the Liberal Media. Noam Chomsky said that journalists are groomed in school to churn out information in a particular format after years of conformist instruction at Universities across the nation. When they enter the work force, they don’t have the freedom to write what they wish, although they believe they will. Instead, they must honor the capitalist machine, careful not to offend advertisers or people with connections to the boss. Each of these outside influences are considered filters on our media, preventing truth from being told.

The film?describes a journalist who investigates and writes an article about the lack of “trustworthy” used car salesmen in the area. He caught several in lies. When the article went to print, the newspaper lost thousands in advertising per day. Since used car lots provided the bulk of the paper’s advertising revenue, they had pulled out in protest until the paper wrote a retraction. When the paper rescinded it’s backing of the article, did it mean the salesmen were any less snakey? Obviously not. But the ideological pressure to conform was surely present for the journalist.

BACK TO ALTHUSSER
The intricasies of the dance between repressive and ideological State Apparatuses is intense. They are completely reciprocal. The RSA exists in the public legal realm, is unified, can survive shifts of power in government, and functions first by repression/violence and secondarily by ideology. The ISA exists in the private sector, is plural (although unified beneath the ruling ideology), and function first by ideology and secondarily by force…

Land of the free, huh? Who are we kidding. We can’t even up minimum wage without giving CEOs a tax break because THEY drive our capitalistic society and want to KEEP US DOWN. (<-She said?with a morning voice that resembles Rorschach’s.)

BEATING THE SYSTEM
That’s it. I have?to quit school. And I’ll protect my kids from the oppression of kindergarten by?not having any.?Not that I was going to anyway…?

(Well, I was – until I spent a?week with my husband’s family of 26 for Christmas. The two year old screamed, “No!” The 11 year old asked “Why?” THe 5 year old beat up the 6 year old, and the 19 year old tried to hop in the 24 year old’s car for hard night of drinking.)

My husband just walked by my office. I yelled, “Honey, I’M A MARXIST!! This stuff is everything I bitch about: standardized testing?, the administration… and … and… It’s one more we reason we shouldn’t have kids!”

The only reply is the sound of his shower water flowing down the drain.

I’M?NOT DEAD YET! RUN AWAY!
If ideology is socially constructed, a dream, pure illusion, why don’t we, as a human race,?envision better for ourselves??Must the greedy bad guys always win?

All in all, I’m ready to run off to my own island and govern it the way I see fit, just like the Bates’ family?on?Sealand. It went up for sale a few months ago for $998 Mil. This is my kind of situation… If only it had the land it sports in it’s name. I know, I’ll dream some up.