Title: Contemporary Literary Theory
1Contemporary Literary Theory Feminism
2Agenda
- POSTMODERNISM
- LITERARY THEORY
- New Criticism
- Structuralism
- Archetypal / myth criticism
- Marxist / ideological
- Psychoanalytical
- Poststructuralism
- Deconstruction theory
- Cultural materialism
- Feminism
- Queer theory
- Postcolonialism
3Western Humanist View of Language
What Is Language?
as
- People are the same everywhere
- There are universal laws and truths
- Knowledge is objective, independent of culture,
gender, etc. - Language is a man-made tool that refers to real
things / truths - I, the subject, speak language
- I have a discernible self
- The self is the center of existence
TRADITIONAL WESTERN MODERN THINKING
4Literary Theory
5Modernity PostModern
Universality vs. localism
- Literature as expression of universal truths
contained in archetypal metaphors
- Literature as an ideological expression of local,
culturally constructed truths that are highly
fluid and dependent on the readers perspective
in time and place
POSTMODERNISM
6Modernity PostModern
Universality vs. localism
- Art is representational
- Language and imagery can be used to evoke the
real - Metaphysics of presence (I, the speaker, am
present and impose order on the universe
presence or being is central to all systems of
thought)
- Language is a system of relations from which the
referent is absent - Signification without representation
- I am just a part of the signifying system of
language language speaks me
POSTMODERNISM
7Structuralist PostStructuralist
Universality vs. localism
- Universal meaning
- Meaning is culturally independent
- Culture inseparable from meaning
POSTMODERNISM
8The PostModern Turn
Now What?
- The white-Western-male view of the world is dead
- Truth, identity, gender, etc. are social
constructs, contingent and local - Its all relative and pluralistic
- The author is dead. The reader rules.
- All literature is propaganda.
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
9Literary Theory
Three Perspectives
10Literary Theory
Three Perspectives
11Literary Theory
Three Perspectives
12Literary Theory
Celebrating Diversity
- Different constructs of reality
- Lenses through which we see the world
?
POSTMODERNISM
13Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
Ancient History
as
- POETICS Mimetic Theory (learn through example
representation) - History represents the particular
- Poetry represents the universal
- Complete and unified action, beginning middle
and end, short memorable stories - Good plot reversal of fortune
- Anagnorsis recognition of an unknown truth
- Tragic mimesis Great characters that evoke pity
and fear - Comedy Flawed characters
14Structuralism
Hidden Structures
- The forces governing human behavior are hidden
but detectable - Search for underlying hidden structures
- Science grand unifying theory
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Anthropology universal archetypes
- Language
PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
15New Criticism (1950s)
The Sanctity of the Text
as
- View literature as a valid form of knowledge and
as a communicator of truths inaccessible via
scientific and other discourse - A work of literature has an organic structure
- Objective way of analyzing literature
- Authors intentions are irrelevant
- The meaning is in the text (textual criticism)
TEXTUAL THEORY
16Archetypal Criticism
The Savage Mind
as
- CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS
- French anthropologist
- Took Saussures theories about language and
applied them to the study of myth and culture - Man obeys laws that are inherent in the brain
- Myths are not made by an individualbut by the
collective human consciousness
STRUCTURALISM
17Claude Levi-Strauss
The Grammar of Myth
- Every culture organizes knowledge into binary
pairs - Different myths are all variations on a number of
very basic themes - A kind of grammar for narratives inherent in the
human mind - Certain constant universal structures called
mythemes
STRUCTURALISM
18Claude Levi-Strauss
The Same Old Stories
- LANGUAGE predates the individual
- REALITY is a product of language
- Jonah and Christ are the same story
- Thus all myths are timeless
- Hero needs to overcome an obstacle
- A story about a guy who loves a girl who is
inaccessible - Woman wants to make chicken soup has no chicken
- SAME STORY incomplete/completeness
STRUCTURALISM
19Structuralism
Language Creates Us
- Literature reflects universal psyche of the
human mind - Language and culture produce subjects(the I is
decentered) - Binary oppositions (organizing thought patterns
that are based upon universal laws) - Good / evil
- Spiritual / earthly
- Masculine / feminine
- Rational / emotional
- Community / individual desire
STRUCTURALISM
20Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Repressed Truths
as
- KEY CONCEPTS
- Id, Superego, Ego
- Resolution of Oedipus complex gt the Self
- Repression
- Dreams displacement and condensation(metaphor
and metonomy) - Neurosis and psychosis
- Transference
PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
21B. F. Skinner (1904-1990)
Behavior Modification
as
- We cant know the mind--so why worry about it?
- Focus on behavior what is observable
- Perceptions, thoughts, images, feelings are
subjective and immune to measurement - Operant conditioning (aversive reinforcing
stimuli) - Skinner Box-- rat in a cage
- Walden II (utopian vision)
PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
22Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Class Struggle
as
- Communist Manifesto
- Saw capitalism as a driving force of history
- Predicted that it would conquer the world
- Lead to globalization of national economies and
cultures - Would divide world between haves and
have-nots - Class struggle
- Advocated abolition of private property,
traditional marriage, concentration of political
power in the hands of the proletariat
IDEOLOGICAL CRITICISM
23Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Text as Power
- Questions a Marxist literary critic would ask
- Who was the text written for? Is it a power
play on the part of one class to dominate
another? - What is the underlying ideology?
- Does the main character affirm or resist
bourgeoise values? - Whose story gets told? Who is left out?
- In what way are characters or groups of
peoplecommodified? - Role of media consumerism?
IDEOLOGICAL
IDEOLOGICAL CRITICISM
24Jacques Lacan (1901-81)
(Transitional)
Language Is Us
as
- Self and identity are social constructions.
- Our unconscious is just not inside us.
- It is formed by language which is outside us and
constructs our sense of self. - Language, our parents, the unconscious, the
symbolic order represent the OTHER.
PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
25Jacques Lacan (1901-81)
We Want Our Mothers
as
- IMAGINARY PHASE One with mother (Oedipal)
- MIRROR STAGE We recognize a separate being in
mirror, feel lack for mother recognition of
OTHER but not SELF birth of the never-fulfilled
ego (ideal self-image) - SYMBOLIC (Oedipal crisis) World of language and
authority Father rules reason and order
unconscious is formed emergence of desire - REAL Ultra-conscious experiences that lie beyond
Language such as death, terror, ecstasy, love
inexpressible Kants thing in itself the
complete unattainable world
PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
26Jacques Lacan (1901-81)
We Want Our Mothers
as
- Phallogocentric view of life
- Male bias of authority
- God the Father
- We move from the lost plenitude of the originary
mother-infant symbiotic state to a state
dominated by Language and Logos (reason,
knowledge, systems of order) - This provokes a sense of desire
- Feminists based theories upon Lacan
PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
27Jacques Lacan (1901-81)
We Want Our Mothers
as
- IMAGINARY Privileges fantasies and dreams
- SYMBOLIC Tries to make sense of the sensory
through cultural authority, policeable by the
intellect - (Freud tried to translate the Imaginary Order
into the conceptual Symbolic Order)
PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
28Jacques Lacan (1901-81)
The Unconscious As Other
as
- There is no separation between self and society.
- Society inhabits and informs the individual.
- Humans continue to look for an imaginary
wholeness and unity - We have a perpetual lack of wholeness (perennial
lack).
PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
29Jacques Lacan (1901-81)
The Unconscious As Other
as
- We constantly negate our identities.
PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
30Poststructuralism
Rejection of Essentialism
as
- POSTMODERN LITERARY THEORY
- Not a unified school A group of theoretical
positions - Self-reflexive discourse that is aware of the
tentativeness, slipperiness, ambiguities and
complex interrelations between texts and
meanings. (Lye) - Rejects
- Totalizing view All phenomenon under one concept
- Essentialist concept Reality independent of
language - Foundationalism Stable signifying systems rooted
in human thought
POSTMODERNISM
31Poststructuralism
All Truths Are Cultural
as
- STRUCTURALISM
- The individual is sacred
- The mind as the realm of meaning
- Universal laws and essences
- Inherent universal meanings that precede the text
- POSTSTRUCTURALISM
- The subject is a cultural construct
- Mind created from interactions as situated
symbolic beings - Truth is local language creates reality
- Meaning is intertextual, determined by social
discourse changes with history
POSTMODERNISM
32Poststructuralism
A Rose is Not a Cow
as
- Meanings are often hidden in the texts
- Real meaning can be unlocked by deconstructing
the text - Must consider psychological, cultural,
ideological, gender and other power positions
of author, characters, intended readers - Words are an endless chain of signifiers,
pointing to nothing but themselves
POSTMODERNISM
33Roland Barthes (1915-80)
The Author Is Dead
as
- The author is dead.
- The text is a multi-dimensional space in which a
variety of writings, none of them original, blend
and clash. - The reader produces a text on his or her own
terms, forging meanings from what has already
been read, seen, done, lived.
PRECURSORS OF POSTMODERNISM
34Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Down with Descartes
as
Deconstruction is a theory of reading which aims
to undermine the logic of opposition within
texts.
- Skeptical postmodernist
- Attacks fundamental principles of Western
philosophy - Influenced by Nietzsche and Heidegger
- Attacks from a structuralist foundation
- Agrees that meaning is not inherent in signs
- Strongly disagrees with bifurcation of
structuralism
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
35Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Language as Metaphor
- Nietzsche influence
- Language is radically metaphorical in nature
- Every idea originates through an equating of the
unequal - Metaphors are essentially groundless
- All assumptions must be questioned
- Must consider vast plurality of wills to power
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
36Jaques Derrida (1930-)
The Dangers of Dualism
as
- STRUCTURALISM is inherently flawed
- Argues that all STRUCTURES have an implied center
- All systems have binary oppositions
- One part more important than another (good/evil,
male/female) - This is logocentrismbasic to all Western thought
since Plato
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
37Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Whats Black Is White
as
- LANGUAGE MEANING
- A meaning is always temporal and part of a
network of meanings, part of a chain of meanings
in a chain or system to which it belongs which is
always changing.
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
38Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Viv Le Difference
as
- THE SELF AS FICTION
- Our self-presence is a fiction, we are in a
constant state of differing and deferrence. As
our center is not really a center, our
self-presence is a fiction we create to disguise
the play of opposition and displacement within
which we live.
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
39Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Ecriture
as
- INTERTEXTUALITY
- All texts refer to other texts (just as signs
refer to other signs). - No interpretations are final.
- The authority of any text is provisional.
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
40Jaques Derrida (1930-)
No Final Signified
as
- STRUCTURALISM
- Signified
- Signifier
DECONSTRUCTION Signified Signifier
Signifier Signifier
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
41Jaques Derrida (1930-)
The Unsaid Truth
as
- DECONSTRUCTIVE INTERPRETATION
- Find binary opposition and implied center
- Refute claims
- Find contradictions, self-imposed logic that is
faulty - Focus on what text is saying is other than what
it appears to be saying - Look for gaps, margins, figures, echoes,
digressions, discontinuities
Malerationalism
Femaleemotions
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
42Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Deconstructing Rousseau
as
- BINARY OPPOSITIONS
- Nature / culture
- Health / disease
- Purity / contamination
- Simplicity / complexity
- Good / evil
- Speech / writing
- ASSUMED CENTER
- Nature is good
- WHAT HE IS REALLY SAYING
- Theme of lost innocence
- Naïve romantic illusion
- Western guilt overcolonization
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
43Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Male Domination
as
- Exclusions and repressions as important as what
is saidin fact are more central they point to
the contingency of a central part - What is not said provides clues to authors real
views of power - Male Western authorities have encoded within
their work silence about women and others
(rationalized exploitation of others without
knowing it).
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
44Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Under Erasure
as
- Man can find truth in nature.
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
45Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Richness of Language
- FREEDOM FROM TYRANNY
- Meaning circulates by difference, by being other.
- It is creative and inventive.
- Affirms multiplicity, paradoxes, richness of our
life . - Frees ourselves from tyrannies of univocal
readings. - Opposes humanism, which puts man at the center.
One can talk about ideas and work with views that
man is at the center only by placing them under
erasure. - Closer to reality, less artificial
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
46Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Destruction is Good
as
- "If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive
reading, it is not the text, but the claim to
unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying
over another. A deconstructive reading is a
reading which analyses the specificity of a
text's critical difference from itself."
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
47Jaques Derrida (1930-)
Fuzzy Reality
as
- Some literature that recognizes the highly
mediated nature of our experience, and are
playful, ironic, explicitly intertextual and
deconstruct themselves may be closer to reality.
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
48Jaques Derrida (1930-)
What is Truth?
- What, therefore, is truth? A mobile army of
metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms truths
are illusions of which one has forgotten that
they are illusions - -- Nietzsche
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
49Jaques Derrida (1930-)
A Long Way from Aristotle
- TRADITIONAL THEORIES
- Mimetic
- Didactic
- Expressive of truths
- DECONSTRUCTION
- The author is dead
- History and literature become processes of
intertextuality - The careful reader is king
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
50Jean Baudrillard (1929-)
You Are What You Consume
- Cultural materialist
- Consumer objects signs that differentiate the
population - Our postmodern society is no longer real. It is
a simulation of the real. - Mass media consumerism have created a new myth
of reality that we accept as real. - We live in a state of hyper-reality.
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
51Jean Baudrillard (1929-)
The Myth of America
- America is a spectacle
- An illusionary paradise
- TV is the world
- Advertising gives consumers illusion of freedom
- All is well is the party line
- Illusion perpetuated by media culture
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
52Jean Baudrillard (1929-)
The Matrix
- Simulacrum a copy of a copy whose relation to
the model has become so attenuated that it can no
longer properly be said to be a copy. It stands
on its own as a copy without a model. - The airless atmosphere has asphyxiated the
referent, leaving us satellites in aimless orbit
around an empty center. We breathe an ether of
floating images that no longer bear a relation to
any reality whatsoever.
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
53Jean Baudrillard (1929-)
The Matrix
- In The Matrix, people are living what has
already been lived and reproduced with no reality
anymore but that of the cannibalized image (Paul
Martin). - Neo hides illegal software in Baudrillards book,
Simulacra and Simulation (like Western gun
fighters hid guns in Bibles). - The virtual replaces the real.
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
54Feminist Literary Theory
The Second Sex
- SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR (1908-1986)
- The Second Sex
- Questioned the othering of women by Western
philosophy - Rediscovery of forgotten womens literature
- Revolutionary advocacy of sexual politics
- Questioning of underlying phallocentric, Western,
rational ideologies - Pluralism gender, sexual, cultural, ethnicity,
postcolonial perspectives
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
55Feminist Literary Theory
Gender As a Social Construct
- Exorcise the male mind
- Deconstructs logocentricism of male discourse
- Sees gender as a cultural construct
- So are stereotypes
- Focus on unique problems of feminism
- History and themes of women literature
- Female language
- Psycho-dynamics of female creativity
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
56Feminist Literary Theory
Feminizing Freud
- JULIA KRISTEVA (1941-)
- Psychologist, linguist novelist
- Influenced by Barthes, Freud Lacan
- Dismantles all ideologies, including feminism
- Does not consider herself a feminist
- Disagrees with patriarchal views of Freud and
Lacan - Pre-Oedipal maternal body source of semiotic
aspect of language
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
57Feminist Literary Theory
Feminizing Freud
- SEMIOTIC SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICATION
- SEMIOTIC
- The bodily drive as it is discharged in
signification - Associated with the rhythms, tones, and movement
- Associated with the maternal body
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
58Feminist Literary Theory
Feminizing Freud
- SYMBOLIC
- Associated with the grammar and structure of
signification. - Makes reference possible.
- The logic of signification is already operating
within the materiality of the body. - There is a maternal regulation or law which
prefigures the paternal law which Freudian
psychoanalysts have maintained is necessary for
signification. The regulation or grammar and laws
of language, then, are already operating on the
level of matter (the maternal body).
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
59Feminist Literary Theory
I Am Woman
- ABJECTION (to throw away dispicable)
- Identity is constituted by excluding anything
that threatens one's own (or one's group's)
borders. - The maternal function is a threat to a womans
identity. - In a patriarchial society, we are forced to
accept out maternal bodies (cannot abject them). - Thus women develop depressive sexuality.
- But no need to reject motherhood--just need a new
discourse of maternity--and willingness ti
explore and accept multiple identities.
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
60Feminist Literary Theory
Feminizing Freud
- Maternal regulation is the law before the law.
- Freud and Lacan maintain that the child enters
the social by virtue of the paternal function,
specifically paternal threats of castration. - Kristeva asks why, if our only motivation for
entering the social is fear, more of us aren't
psychotic?
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
61Feminist Literary Theory
Feminizing Freud
- Religion, specifically Catholicism (which makes
the mother sacred), and science (which reduces
the mother to nature) are the only discourses of
maternity available to Western culture.
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
62Feminist Literary Theory
Feminizing Freud
- Maternal function cannot be reduced to mother,
feminine, or woman. - Kristeva tries to counter-act stereotypes that
reduce maternity to nature. - Each one of us is what she calls a
subject-in-process--in contrast with traditional
notions of an autonomous unified (masculine)
subject.
Source Kelly Oliver, Virginia Tech
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
63Feminist Literary Theory
Madness, Holiness Poetry
- Masculine symbolic order represses feminine
semiotic order - Semiotic open to men and women writers
- Semiotic is creative--marginal discourse of the
avant garde - Raw material of signification from pre-Oedipal
drives (linked to mother) - Realm of the subversive forces of madness,
holiness and poetry - Creative, unrepressed energy
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
64Feminist Literary Theory
I Am Woman
- Challenges Judeo-Christian icons of woman.
- Balancing act live within Lacans symbolic order
of patriarchal laws without losing uniqueness. - Women can produce own symbols and language.
- Multiplicity of female expression
- To break the code, to shatter language, to find
specific discourse closer to the body and
emotions, to the unnamable repressed by the
social contract. --Kristeva
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
65Feminist Literary Theory
Binary Equals
as
- ALICE JARDINE, Gynesis (1982)
- Woman as a binary opposition
- Man/woman
- Rational/irrational
- Good/evil
- Implied male logocentricism
- The concept of jouissance
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
66Helene Cixcous
The Joy of Jouissance
as
- Critic, novelist, playwright
- Picks up where Lacan leaves off
- Denounces patriarchal binary oppositions
- Women enter into the Symbolic Order differently
- Deconstructs patriarchal Greek myths
- Femininity (jouissance) unrepresentable in
phallocentric scheme of things - Favors a bisexual view
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
67Helene Cixcous
Deconstructing Sigmund
as
- Women are closer to the Imaginary
- Women more fluid, less fixed
- The individual woman must write herself
- Feminine literature not objective erase
differences between order and chaos, text and
speech inherently deconstructive - Admires Joyce and Poe
- Men can produce feminist literature
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
68Queer Theory
Queer Ideas
as
- Gender and sexuality not essential to identity
- Socially constructed
- Mutable and changeable
- Self shaped by language, signs and signifiers.
- Self becomes a subject in language, with more
multiplicity of meaning. - Western ideas of sexual identity come from
science, religion, economics and politics and
were constructed as binary oppositions
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
69Queer Theory
Deconstructing Sex
as
- Queer theory deconstructs all binary oppositions
about human sexuality. - Encourages the examination of the world from an
alternative view. - Allows for the inclusion of gender, sexuality,
race and other areas of identity by noticing the
distinctions between identities, communities, and
cultures. - Challenges heterosexism and homophobia, in
addition to racism, misogyny and other oppressive
discourses while celebrating diversity.
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
70Postcolonialism
The Myth of the Orient
as
- Attempts to resurrect colonized cultures
- Deconstruct Western view of third-world nations
as otherness - Edward Said Orientalism was an artificial word
constructed by the West to talk about and the
East (Typical binary opposition) - Empire-building nations used literature as power
- Ingrained Western myths phallic logocentricism
in colonized people
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
71So?
Now What?
- The white-Western-male view of the world is dead
- New Criticism, Marxism Structuralism are passe
- We now have a new set of lenses to view the
world - We understand the importance of being
suspicious(literature is not necessarily
sincere) - We recognize that truth, identity, gender, etc.
are social constructs, contingent and local - We recognize the power of discourse
- PM explains the global world in which we live
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
72The Dangers of Postmodernism
Proceed with Caution
- Can lead to intellectual nihilism cynicism
- From the comfortable foundation of humanism to
absolute relativism and pluralism - Whose lens is correct? Who says so?
- Is humanism really all that bad?
- Its all theory
- How do we use theory? Apply all to all texts?
- Glib, hip intellectualism
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
73Where Do We Go from Here?
Proceed with Caution
- Has the progress of history come to a
dead-end?(as Foucault and Lyotard suggest) - Have we reached the point of self-defeating moral
relativism? - Jameson
- We need narratives, and some sort of history
- We need to re-endow the individual
- History, literature have important functions
- Sarup
- We need to keep the Enlightenment project alive
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
74Different Ways to Read a Film/Novel
- Archetypal
- Freudian / Lacanian
- Ideological
- Deconstructionist
- Feminist
- Queer
- Post-colonial