Structuralism (2)

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Structuralism (2)

• De Saussure Q A
• Structuralist Anthropology
• Levi Strauss The Lesson
• Structuralist Narratology
• V. Propp The Lesson
• A. J. Greimas The Lesson

Readings for next week
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Q A (1) Language and Reality

• Does it make a difference to call your mothers
  sister ??, aunt or Jenny?
• If we do not have the word, ?, will we feel that
  meeting someone is a matter of fortunate
  pre-destination?
• Is there any eternal, unchanging essence of
  mother or maternal love? Can we define them
  without using language (as a system of relations
  and difference)?

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Q A (2) de Saussures Major ideas?

• 1. The synchronic vs. the diachronic langue vs.
  parole
• 2. Language is a system of difference. Meaning
  occurs in binary opposition between two signs.
  (e.g. toy, boy)
• 3. sign signifier and signified the connection
  between them is arbitrary.

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Q A (2) about de Saussure

• Q Anyway, maybe I am kind of confused, but
  somehow I just feel he simply tries to reverse
  the places of reason"(creation of words) and
  results (things represented by words) through
  making up so many linguistics elements, such as
  phoneme, morpheme, syntax, semiology, parole and
  something like that. My brain is really full now
  with all these abstract ideas.
• A Whats reversed is the meaning-language
  binary. Language produces meanings (or we
  produces meanings through language) we dont
  just use language to reflect our ideas. The
  above terms can be an example of this idea.

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Q A (3) Form and Structure?

• Form is inseparable from meaning
• (composed of all the literary elements in a text)
  
• Structure is what makes meaning possible.
• (e.g. b vs. p subjpredicate cooked vs.
  raw, etc.)

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Claude Levi-Strauss

• 1. Studies culture as a sign system e.g. eating
  customs, taboos related to menstruation,
  initiation rites, kinship relations. (e.g. ring
  in Chinese society ??)
• 2. Kinship system structures how things or
  people are exchanged within a culture. e.g.
  women in exchange for dowry.
• 3. We think in terms of binaries. (e.g. raw vs.
  cooked good vs. bad)
• 4. Myth basic units mythemes, e.g. in Oedipus
  myth overrelating and underrating of blood
  relations

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Claude Levi-Strauss on Oedipus the King

• overrelating of blood relations Oedipus
  marries his mother Antigone buries her brother,
  despite prohibition
• underrating of blood relations Oedipus kills
  his father, Laios
• The heroic Oedipus kills the Sphinx
• The supernatural/pre-destined
  Oedipusswollen foot prophecy
• Mythical thought always progresses from the
  awareness of oppositions toward their
  resolution. (Structural Anthropology 224)

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Levi Strauss examples (2) The Lesson

• preliminary understanding
• -- setting a ghetto in NY and FAO Schwartz
• -- social background children with Aunt
  Gretchen, but not with their mothers some
  richer, some homeless.
• -- narrator Sylvia
• -- plot (beginning-middle-end)

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Levi Strauss examples (2) The Lesson

• initiation story (e.g. Araby AP)
• a child playing in a group ? rites of passage
  price check at F.A.O. Schwarz? learning
  something separated from the others
• ? between self-indulgence and self-improvement

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Levi Strauss examples (2) The Lesson

• binary opposition
• between the poor and the rich
• between the non-educated and the educated

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Brooklyn and Bronx in NY

• View of the Kingsborough Houses, Brooklyn,
  1989.(image source)

• Woman addict entering an abandoned building on
  Vyse Avenue, South Bronx, 1989, to go to a
  crackhouse in the basement.

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F.A.O. Schwarz

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The uneducated the educated Sylvia Ms. Moore

• Sylvias language Colloquial Black English
  (Ebonics)
• Syntax Run-on e.g. Back in the days when
  everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish
  and me and Sugar were the only ones just right,
  this lady moved on our block with nappy hair and
  proper speech and no makeup.
• Pronunciation, slang and dirty language Aunt
  Gretchen been screwed into the go-along for so
  long, it's a blood-deep natural thing with her.
• it's puredee hot and she's knockin herself out
  about arithmetic (2nd par)
• And the starch in my pinafore scratching the
  shit outta me
• learn (unwillingly) from Ms. Moore . . .being
  surly, which is a Miss Moore word

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The narrator ? Ms. Moore

• ? laughs at her as she does at the junk man who
  went about his business like he was some big-time
  president and his sorry-ass horse his secretary
• ? hates her as much as the "winos who pissed on
  our handball walls and stand up on our hallways
  and stairs so you couldnt halfway play
  hide-and-seek."
• ? Not related in blood
• ? Hates her goddamn college degree dislikes
  her plans "boring-ass things for us to do" (1st
  par 872-73).

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The narrator ?? the other kids

• 1. Bonds with Sugar
• 2. Knows what Ms. Moore will teach (p. 873 And
  Miss Moore files that remark away for next week's
  lesson on brotherhood, I can tell.
• 3. Wants to refute her (about slums).
• 4. Wants to escape and use the money elsewhere.

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Levi Strauss examples (2) The Lesson

• money as a sign whose meaning determined by
  what it is associated with
• e.g.1) 35 dollars clown toy ? the rich
• 35 dollars having a bed and being with
  ones family ? lower class,
• 2) money 300 (microscope) ? 480
  (paperweight) ? 1195 (sailboat). 5-cent
  sailboat
• 3) haves and have-nots no desk (Junebug), no
  homework (Big Butt), no home(Flyboy)

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Structuralist narratology Vladimir Propp

• syntax as the basic model Subject predicate
  Actor function
• Propp 7 actors, or "spheres of action"
  (villain, hero, false hero, donorprovider,
  helper, dispatcher, princess and her father)
  and 31 functions.
• Actors are not characters they are narrative
  functions, or types of actions of the characters.
  
• One character can be different actors at
  different moments. (e.g. Cinderella Snow White,
  The Long Enchantment.)

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Propp examples (1)

• James Bonds 007 films
• actor female helpers (usu. appearing in double,
  one from the enemys side and one as Bonds
  comrade)
• 1 major function sex (which usu. the films
  begin and end).

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Propp examples (2) Characters ? Actors

• no princess and her father or Donor
• Who is the dispatcher? Who the helper? Whos
  the hero? False hero? Opponent?

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Propp examples (2) Characters ? Actors

• Food Flyboy -- checking out what everybody
  brought for lunch.
• Junebug -- punchin on Q.T.'s arm for potato
  chips.
• Fat Butt -- was already wasting his
  peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich like the pig he
  is"
• Attention Rosie Giraffe -- shifting from one
  hip to the other waiting for somebody to step on
  her foot or ask her if she from Georgia . . .
• (p. 873)

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Characters (2) funs

• Sylvia rather go to the pool or to the show
  where it's cool terrorize the West Indian kids
  and take their hair ribbons and their money too.
• In the taxi Flyboy and June Bugg are
  fascinated with the meter ticking and Junebug
  starts laying bets as to how much it'll read . .
  .
• ? None of them receives Ms. Moores message at
  this point.

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Characters (2) ? F. A. O.

• Can we steal?" Sugar
• Want to buy that there. Big Butt
• Mercedes says, . . . I have a box of
  stationary on my desk and a picture of my cat, My
  godmother bought the stationary and desk. There's
  a big rose on each sheet and the envelopes smell
  like roses."
• Rosie Giraffe says that "white folks" are crazy
  in the way they spend money
• "I'd like a shower. Tiring day," say Flyboy.

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Sugar the narrator ? sailboat

• Sugar criticizes democracy
• Sylvia "Unbelievable," I hear myself say and am
  really stunned. . . . "My sailboat cost me about
  fifty cents."
• Wants to know how much a real boat costs. Going
  in, she feel funny, shame.
• ? "Watcha bring us here for, Miss Moore?"
  (anger)
• What kinda work they do and how they live and
  how come we ain't in on it?
• ? But ain't nobody gonna beat me at nuthin.
• Is Sugar the false hero and Sylvia the hero?

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Propp examples (2) The Lesson

• Hero Sylvia
• Opponent themselves, in their refusal to learn
• False Hero Sugar
• Helper the toy store?

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Propp Greimas

• Propp's seven 'spheres of action?
• Greimass three pairs of binary oppositions
  including

and three basic patterns 1. Wanting (Desire,
search, or aim), 2. Exchange (communication) 3.
Contradiction (Auxiliary support or hindrance).

• six roles (actants)
• 1. Subject/Object,
• 2. Sender/ Receiver
• 3. Helper/Opponent-

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Propp Greimas (2)

• Propp's 31 functions ? further abstracted into
• Greimass 3 structures for example

• Propp One member of a family either lacks
  something or desires to have something.

Disequilibrium, contract broken, disjunction
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A. J. Greimass universal grammar

• three pairs of actants Helper/Opponent,
  Sender/Reciever, Subject/Object
• three basic patterns of action
• contractive (breaking/setting contract,
  alienation, reintegration ),
• disjunctive (departure, arrival),
• and performative (trial, task).
• ? deep semantic structure of human thinking and
  narrative.

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"the semiotic rectangle

• elementary structure of signification
• a binary opposition their negation
• A - A
• (e.g. marriage/normal)
  (e.g. incest/abnormal)
• -A1
  A1
• (e.g. male adultery/non -abnormal)
  (female adultery /non-normal )

contradiction
Simple negation
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"the semiotic rectangle the neutral term

• Setting the semiotic rectangle in motion
• A - A
• (e.g. marriage/normal)
  (e.g. incest/abnormal)
• -A1
  A1
• (e.g. male adultery/non -abnormal)
  (female adultery /non-normal )

Complicated by Platonic love
Neutralized by divorce
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Greimas Example The Lesson

poverty wealth Self-Presumption Education/field trip
ignorance knowledge funs Daily reality (desk, family separation)
The only right one, hates her college degree.
Rich lower class
Self-Presumption
Steal cheat and pretend
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Greimas Example The Lesson
Self-improvement Ignorance, Fun, Hatred

Knowledge power Racial/Class inequality
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Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995)

• born in New York City and raised in the Citys
  Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant sections.
• A writer of essay, film scripts and novel, a
  civil rights activist.
• As a writer, she works to "lift up a few useable
  truths " in a "racist, hardheaded, heedless
  society."
• But she also says that writing is a way for her
  to "hear myself, check myself," a discipline that
  makes her more honest and clear-headed. (source)

Image source
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Reading for next week

• 1. Textbook -- Structuralism Levi-Strauss
  Vladimir Propp
• 2. Textbook pp. 40- 41 Propp and Greimas
  
  
  
  
• 3. "The Purloined Letter
• 4. Lecture video Theory 2 (review) Practice 2
  (preview)
• Start to read M. Butterfly.