Post-structuralism: Starting Questions

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Post-structuralism Starting Questions

• What are the foundations (or centers) in your
  life? Are they universal foundations?
• Is there any eternal Truth?
• How do you describe your self?
• Is it always possible to find out the central
  meaning, or unity, of the literary texts we read?
  On what grounds can we compare ???? with The Age
  of Innocence, ????? with ??????

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Post-Structuralism Postmodern Texts

1. Post-Structuralism Defined Marxism vs.
   Post-Structuralism
2. Fiction and Reality Examples 1 context into
   text, 2 life//story-telling , 3 parody 4. Other
   kinds of fiction
3. Deconstruction 4. Subject and Power

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Post-Structuralism Defined

• What is post-structuralism?
• An anti-foundationalist mode of thinking
  prevalent in the second half of the 20th c.
• Foundations
• Reality Representation
• Man Subject
• Truth History God, . . ., any kind of
  Totalization and Center. Différance and
  Discourse

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Poststructuralism Major Concerns

• Representation
• Re-presentation or realistic presentation is
  impossible. metafiction
• Meanings of a text cannot be fixed must be
  un-decidable or multiple. Deconstruction
• Textualization of Knowledge, Subject and Society
  e.g. Foucault
• Truth is provisional.
• Subjects are fragmentary.
• Society is a network of discourses.

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Marxism vs. Post-Structuralism

• Society as network
• Provisionary forming of group/personal identity
  
• History is also a narrative.

1. Economic Base as Societys Foundation
2. Class as the most important category
3. History of class struggle, or Materialist view of
   history

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Fiction and Reality

• Fiction

• Reality Belief
• History
• Memory
• Life
• Identity

Metafiction 1. Discuss/expose novelistic
elements or frames 2. Undermining the
Authors abilities to control meanings 3.
Parody or patische

• Realism in novels,
• Historiography, memoir
• Absolute truth in
• Religion and philosophy
• Scientific knowledge
• in the world and self

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Example I Context (Author Viewers) astext
the royal couple put insidethe mirror.

Las Meninas 1656
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Example II-1 Tristram Shandy (1759 and 1766)

• Life // storytellingtelling story to prolong
  life
• Shandy on digression Digressions, incontestably,
  are the sunshine--they are the life, the soul of
  reading--take them out of this book for
  instance,--you might as well take the book along
  with them ... restore them to the writer--he
  steps forth like a bridegroom,--bids All hail
  brings in variety, and forbids appetite to fail.
  (95)

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Example II-2 The French Lieutenants Woman

• Victorian Author-god vs. postmodern author
• The freedom that allows other freedoms to
  exist.
• The author is still a god, but no longer
  omniscient freedom given through the multiple
  endings and leaving Sarah unknowable.
• Is the author free to create?
• Are we/the characters free to choose?

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Example II-3 Six Characters in Search of an
Author

• How do we interpret these characters without an
  author or a script? Why do some characters live
  eternally? Why do they need a producer or an
  author if the script is in them?
• 1. The characters as ideas, and to materialize
  means to find embodiments in performances.
• 2. The characters as outcasts, and the script
  they want is the officially acknowledged/recognize
  d story.

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Example II-4 Lost in the Funhouse as a
Kunstlerroman

• Two major characters Ambrose and the narrator
  and maybe the two are one?
• main actions
• visit of the Ocean City on the Independence day
  during WWII.
• Ambrose --frustrated in seeking for his love,
  ends up staying in the funhouse.
• the narrator trying to tell a good story about
  it. E.g. p. 1944

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Lost in the Funhouse

• chronological sequence of events
• In the car see the Tower arriving at the
  Ocean City boardwalk invitation of Magda --
  Funhouse
• The structure of the story
• part I 1st paragraph (present tense)
• part II chronological
• part III pp. 1939 Ambrose and the narrator lost
  in the Funhouse
• part IV pp. 1974- entrance
• part V pp. 1949 after exposition summary of
  the story and possible endings

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The story as a Kunstlerroman

• Ambrose personality p. 1937, p. 1939
• highly sensitive and shy not able to express
  his love different from the other kids
• his detachment 1943 1948
• his experience in the funhouse 1949
• his becoming a funhouse maker

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funhouse and life

• Labyrinth structure caused by narrative
  intrusions (about italics, names, description,
  metaphoric description, plot) and confusion of
  plot-lines
• the historical relevance WW II and independence
  day pp. 1940 1944
• possible endings and what they mean

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Example III Parody and Re-interpretation (1)
Daffodils poems

• Questions
• What is the poem The Wordsworths critical of?
  Who is the we in the poem?
• What is/are the target(s) of parody of The New,
  Fast, Automatic Daffodils?

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Example III Parody and Re-interpretation (2)
Icicle Thief (1989)

• Questions
• How is the original film, Bicycle Thieves,
  changed? Why is the focus shifted from the
  bicycle to the chandelier?
• How is the director presented in the film?
• How are the two families presented in the film?
• What roles do the TV program host and the
  commercials play in the film?

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Similarities between the film and its original

• Similarities
• unemployment problem
• police inefficiency
• the priest helpless
• the children one neglected, the other helpful.
  
• Differences
• from the need of means of production to that of
  luxury items
• non-realistic exposure of filmic frames, denial
  of the directors power.

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Example III Icicle Thief

• Examples of the fictional frames/context
  Exposed
• (Transition
• 1. Blackout,
• 2. Lake, 3. Train, 4. ? )
• Breaking the frames
• A character in the commercial.
• Brunos seeing the audience boy.
• The mother and the son. 4. The Director

The audience
The TV station The commercials
BT Film
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The Director, Nichetti, in the film

• A. caricatured
• B. signed the release treated as a puppet
• C. Goes into the film to change the plot
• The plot father handicapped, mother becomes a
  whore, and the kid sent to an orphanage.
• In my film, there are no jails, no lawyers.

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The two families in Icicle Thief

• in the film within the film
• Antonio
• Maria
• Bruno
• and the baby

• outside the film
• Father --newspaper
• Mother food and phone
• Son building blocks
• Daughter remote control

The role of the bicycle? And Chandelier? -ridden
by the mother, thrown aside, sold -for sports
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Interruptions of the Commercials

• detergent and happy housewives
• superman
• Big Big
• Liquor

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Example IV-1 Collage and other kinds of
fiction

• Mary Beth Edelson, Some Living American Women
  Artists/Last Supper, 1971.

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Example IV-2 Collage and other kinds of
fiction

• Marisol, by La Visita, 1964

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Example IV-3 other kinds of fiction

• Fiction
• Narratives
• (novel, history,
• life story)
• Virtual reality
• cyber space
• commercial world
• machines and cyborg
• Simulation
• Politics

• Reality?
• Bodily/emotional Experience,
• Memory,
• Historical Facts,
• Identity