Friday, September 30, 2011

My Brother, Michael Jordan, and Signification

“Hey, Bekah! Watch my mojo!” This was the greeting my 12-year-old brother gave me when I came home today while he was playing basketball. Ben ran up towards the basket and did a sort of hook-shot type thing, sinking the ball into the basket with nothing but net. I congratulated him and walked inside. After dinner, he, my Dad, and I went back outside to play more basketball. Ben made some good shots, and I missed 95% of my attempted shots. Then Ben again asked me to watch, as he made a particular basketball shot, and again said something about “mojo.” I asked Ben exactly what “mojo” is, and in a typical not-so-articulate middle school guy way, he said, “You know, mojo,” and shot another basket. I asked if it was a type of shot, and Ben rolled his eyes at my obvious cluelessness and said no. “Does it have anything to do with Michael Jordan?” I asked, thinking that was what the “MJ” in mojo might stand for. Ben shook his head and gave me the, “you are so out of it” look.

Locke writes, “The imperfection of words is the doubtfulness or ambiguity of their signification, which is caused by the sort of ideas that they stand for” (817). The basketball game with my brother demonstrates this: the word “mojo” was not having the same signification in my mind as in his. Apparently the idea of “mojo” is more complex than a one-to-one relationship with a certain object or action. Locke notes that far less exactness is required in “civil” (everyday) communication than is required for “philosophical” communication, because civil communication is less complex. I’m not sure this is true. “Mojo” is not an academic concept, but it is complex.

Locke writes that a mixed mode is an idea made up of several other complex and simple ideas (818). “Mojo” is a mixed mode. According to UrbanDictionary.com, “mojo” can mean, “Self-confidence, Self-assuredness. As in basis for belief in ones self in a situation. Esp. I[n] context of contest or display of skill.” Another definition is “Your cool/style essence.” So, mojo is made up of at least four or five abstract concept – self-confidence, self-assurance, “cool/style essence,” belief in one’s own skill, and probably even more, given its colloquial use. (I’m sure Locke is rolling in his grave at the lack of agreement on the signification of “mojo” on UrbanDictionary.com.) Locke writes that mixed mode significations cannot be known from the things themselves: one murder does not signify all (818), and similarly one persons “mojo” does not signify another’s. “Many parts of those complex ideas are not visible in the action itself” (818). This may be the reason that I could not get a signification of “mojo” from my brother’s basketball shot.

Interestingly, the OED also offers several (very different) definitions (or significations) of “mojo,” including magical power/voodoo, a Cuban marinade or sauce, and morphine. The standardization of this particular mixed mode in the OED did not set in stone the signification. Rather, the signification continued to develop beyond the established, formal use of the term. It does not seem that, as Locke would say, that the doubtfulness and ambiguity result from the ideas it stands for (817), but from changes in the use of the term and what the term signifies for different groups of people. Locke’s theory adds to my understanding of why my brother and I couldn’t come to a common signification of “mojo” but his theory breaks down at the point of understanding why a signification changes over time despite standardization of a certain term. To answer this question, perhaps a more recent theorist in the anti/signification realm might be necessary. Ideas, anyone?

Signification, Sherman style

Reading J.L. Austin's speech-act theory got me thinking about Locke again, but ironically, not because of the theory itself. Before reading Austin, I had never encountered the words locutionary, illocutionary, or perlocutionary. After some research, I found that these are "terms Austin made up" (Martin 326). Moreover, I actually had difficulty focusing on the reading because these terms so forcefully brought into my head the song "Substitutiary Locomotion," a Sherman Brothers song from the 1971 Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

Last week I happened to watch the documentary The Boys, which is about aforementioned songwriting duo Robert and Richard Sherman. They are best known for composing notoriously catchy songs and music for Disney films or other musical features, mostly between the early 1960's and late 70's. Often in their songs the Shermans created words to suit the purpose of best conveying their meaning, much as Austin has done in Constatives and Performatives.

Locke insists that "commons use regulates the meaning of words pretty well for common conversation; but nobody having an authority to establish the precise signification of words, nor determined to what ideas any one shall annex them, common use is not sufficient to adjust them to Philosophical Discourses" (Locke 819). Complex ideas require complex words.

Sherman Brothers songs are most famous and memorable for doing precisely this. "Substitutiary," for instance, is not a word as propriety would recognize it, but then Locke would have us agree that "propriety is not a sufficient remedy" for uncertain signification. Creativity may be.

Probably the most famous of all Sherman Brothers songs are those from Mary Poppins. For that film, the Shermans invented a word to be used when signification is especially challenging, when a certain idea is difficult to articulate: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is "something to say when you don't know what to say." It's even in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Sherman words - combination of half-words and suffixes, or something entirely new - or even Austin's terms in speech-act theory, approach Locke's concept of signification in an unconventional way. Rather than trying to find existing words to describe an idea, allow your idea to serve words.

Martin, Robert M. Philosophical Conversations. Broadview Press, 2005.

Illocution and Perlocution

One is shy contending with giants but I have a complication--perhaps only a confusion--to propose against Austin's categorization of locutionary, illocuationary, and perlocutionary acts. Austin writes

Speaking of the "use of 'language' for arguing or warning" looks just like speaking of 'the use of 'language' for persuading, rousing, alarming"; yet the former may, for rough contrast, be said to be conventional, in the sense that at least it could be made explicit by the performative formula; but the latter could not.

Austin imagines the hierarchy of speech acts progressing from locution to illocution on to perlocution. In moving from locution to illocution, the language's phatic form becomes inessentialized amid its practical demands and functions. In moving from illocution to perlocution, the supposedly objective performance becomes inessentialized in favor of the affective effects (pardon that maladroit language) the locution has produced. The point is that the illocution cannot but be a reimagination of the perlocution by the listener who attempts to subtract himself from the scene. There is, of course, no speech to speak of but what is heard, and a listener does not merely hear but distorts interpretatively. Locution, illocution, and perlocution tangle for the listener with the stress of adjudications he cannot check, of those verdicts he fails, second by second, to withhold.

Is it not the case, then, that we formulate illocutions by means only of perlocutionary effects? That is, don't we first notice ourselves persuaded, roused, or alarmed, then diagnose the illocution saying, "she argues this," or "she provokes thusly," or "she warns this"? The illocution is conceived as an impression produced by the locution and hence is itself a perlocution.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Locke, Aristotle, and the Dictionary

After Wed's class and reading the Chapter from Locke's essay once more, I was struck by how much Aristotle I saw in Locke's writing. For one, it seems that both feel that it takes a special ability to be a good writer/audience. I remember for Aristotle, it had a lot to do with the age of the person, the young being too emotional, the old being too jaded, and the middle aged being just right. For Locke, it seems the best communicates are kind of like skilled craftmen, artisans whatever you want to call them. To be an effective communicator, Locke writes that "it is necessary that they excite in the hearer exactly the same idea they stand for in the mind of the speaker." (350, sorry I'm using the essay itself) This implies that the speaker has enough vocabulary to use the most precise word, and the reader has enough vocabulary to understand it correctly.

The issue of vocabulary also interests me about Locke. Someone said in class that Locke would have supported a very, very large dictionary where every word has one meaning. This does make a lot of sense because for Locke the reason words are so imperfect is because they signify different images to different people. But then again, even if words have one definition or one thing to signify will it make it any better? Even with a singular definiton, I wonder if people would understand that definition in the same way. It seems as if everyone has a different way of identifying an idea even if it is a common thing, and so even we have one definition for everyword I think we would still see miscommunication. Also, for words like "mad". The OED gives 7 definitions for the word "mad" if we were going to give every word 1 definition, who would decide which of the 7 would be eliminated and assigned to other words? What would be the basis for that decision? Does anyone have the authority to do something like this? I do not know how that process would go down, and I don't think that anyone really has the authority to make that decision. Is the word "mad" more appropriate to fill 1 definition more than the other 6. I think Locke would say "no" because he says words have "naturally no significance". In other words mad doesn't inherently fit into any other those definitons any better than the others, but it's something that we learn to understand. I'm sorry if I am not making any sense, but although Locke might have wanted a large dictionary, I wonder if that sort of thing is even possible.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Words As Fiction

In my critical discussion I expanded Ong's theory of a fictional audience to include also a fictional author and fictional text. Now, after reading Locke and understanding the imperfections surrounding the communication of words, I would like to take my thesis even further. Not only is the text a fiction, in that the work as a whole can mean different things to different people depending on the cultural codes and historical context of the time, but every single word in a text is a fiction.

Words were derived to signify ideas for recording and communicating towards a better understanding, but once these words become communicated the obvious imperfections begin to arise. This is due to the nature of words as signs and sounds, sounds having "no natural connection with our ideas, but have all the their signification from abritrary imposition of men" (Essay concerning Human Understanding, 817). For example, the word horse does nothing more than signify the animal horse in our minds, signify our idea of a horse. And since we all may have different ideas not only about what a horse is but also what it represents to us (summer fun at grandmas, a scary childhood accident or tragedy, etc.), even a simple word like horse will have slightly different significations to various people.

Because words are merely representation, one can dissect a sentence word by word and each word can vary in it's meaning of significance. That is what causes so many discrepancies in language, especially as you change from one episteme to another. And in the same way that Ong says reading, as opposed to spoken word, is an individual task involving more fictionalization, the reading of and finding coherent meaning in arbitrary sign-words is much more difficult than finding coherent meaning in spoken word. Think of the inflections one uses when speaking to denote frustration, glee, sarcasm. The same words can't be inflected this way when written or read (I'm sure we've all had this problem with lost sarcasm through text messages...). In fact, that may be why text emoticons are thriving today, to attempt to excite an understanding that can't be communicated as well through words. The point is thus, that when communicating through words the reader/listener is facing a constant challenge and dissection of each sentence and must fictionalize meaning to each and every s/he reads/hears.

Finally, something I was wondering. How does the desensitizing of profanities fit into Locke's work? The meanings of words are constantly fluctuating through epsitemes by cultural influence. The desensitization of profanity is a big part of this. In the early 20th century fuck was hardly ever used to signify anger, even more rarely in literature. Back then it was extremely shocking and even mid-century it still carried extreme connotations. And yet today's reader would pass over the word fuck barely even noticing it. What does this say about language and words-as-signs? If we continue to dull ourselves to emotional language, will past texts still be able to carry the same extreme emotion? And how will we signify this kind of emotion in the future? By creating new words? This is a sort of tangent but interesting to think about nonetheless.

Alchemy of Vocabulary

John Locke, in his "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding," finds language - specifically, words - problematic. To him, the use of words in communication is only as efficient as a speaker (or writer). Particularly words that are made up of compound ideas are difficult to utilize properly. In cases "where the signification of the word and the real essence of the thing are not exactly the same...[it is difficult to] excited in the hearer exactly the same idea they stand for in the mind of the speaker" (Locke 818).

I wonder if Locke would reevaluate these notions if he experienced the English language today. In Locke's time (1632-1704), it is possible that he simply lacked the range of vocabulary we now enjoy. He did live in an era when vocabulary was being cultivated strongly; a century previous, William Shakespeare was inventing the words he needed. About a century after Locke's death, a William Webster was compiling his dictionary as a Dr. Peter Mark Roget crafted the first thesaurus. This manuscripts have since been invaluable in assembling and disassembling meanings of words, finding more accurate substitutes for them. Mixing nuances of meaning to produce new synonyms is something of an alchemy performed with language. From these exchanged words, one's chance of success in communication increases.

Perhaps Locke was disadvantaged by his place in history, for after his death, the crisis of word comprehension which he addresses in his essay was certainly lessened.

Roget's Thesaurus (http://www.rain.org/~karpeles/rogetdis.html) Accessed September 26, 2011.

Arbitrary Words

While reading the excerpt from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, it was clear that John Locke believes there are flaws within the system of language and communication; however, I think his opinion on words is incredibly interesting. Through his argument, it seems that it can be concluded that words are completely arbitrary, and therefore nothing more than a tool to “fill one another’s heads with noises and sounds” (Locke 818). This statement caught my attention because it forced me to think more about words and the role that they play in language. Without meaning attached to them, words truly are just sounds, that people have been socialized throughout history to understand. Specifically, this can be seen when considering other languages. For example, the word love in English is amor in Spanish and liebe in German. Although there is a simple dictionary definition available for the word, it is granted numerous titles and therefore interpreted differently by people across the world. So, the reader is then forced to think of how this affects communication; of course language barriers are always a challenge, but do meanings translate exactly? Locke notes that words “must be learned and retained” (818). Therefore, it is possible that the meanings of words can change throughout time and across cultures if they taught to have different meanings. The argument presented in the essay draws attention to the importance of words, or lack there of. Are words necessary to communication? Is there any alternative? Or way to create a common language amongst all cultures?

Friday, September 23, 2011

As i was Writing my SCD #1 . . .

As I was writing my first short critical discussion I realized that I at least had not really thought through the implications of one of Foucault's main arguments. It was something I will be bringing out in my paper, but i also wanted to post here about it. It was the very premise that the historical, social and cultural background that the author represents will be something that hinders the reader’s ability to use the text in their lives in present. This supposition is based on the theory that the experiences, culture and society of whatever time period and situation the author is writing in is so vastly different and alien as to hind the transition of meaning from the text to the reader in whatever time and situation they are in. This supposition is both arrogant and illogical. Human beings are at their core very similar to one another; this is what makes us one species. And so, though on the surface the situations of some ones life and experience may seem totally weird and foreign a good writer will write in such a way as to make their theories relatable to anyone no matter where or when they read it. This is not to say that a good work will never fall out of fashion. All books and pieces of writing fall in and out of fashion and that is okay. The cyclical nature of good writing means that authors may go out of fashion, but they will always come back, because they speak to the nature of man and give us something to talk or argue about.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Majority Rules

As I read Barton's "Textual Practices of Erasure," her concept of how United Way advertisements efficiently erased life experiences of people with disabilities reminded me of Gilbert and Gubar's "Infection in the Sentence." In the same way that Barton sees United Way as the agent with the power to erase "the complex experiences of [disabled] individuals" (172) through their campaign ads, Gilbert and Gubar make the case that the experiences of women authors are also being erased or refused by the patriarchal history of male authors.

In Barton's piece, the United Way ads create a stark difference between people with disabilities and the able-bodied donors. The ads are trying to pit the people with disabilities into the category of the "Other," while the donors are stabilized as "normal." Barton sees a problem with this tactic because the ads are representing people with disabilities in a stereotypical way, and as "pitiful cases, [and] dependent adults and handicapped children are lumped together into a class which has to make progress toward being 'normal'" (175). Barton proposes that these ads are exploiting people with disabilities to show "normal" people that they don't have these disabilities, so they should take sympathy and save those who are disabled and abnormal. This denies the experiences of those with disabilities because the ads only use their images to garner donations, rather than their stories or experiences to educate able-bodied people on how to better understand the lives of disabled individuals.

In a sense, this contrast between disability and ability worked for United Way, but for Gilbert and Gubar, the differences between male and female authors worked against women authors. Having a dominating male literary history erases female authors' experiences because "male precursors...fail to define the ways in which [a female writer] experiences her own identity" (Gilbert and Gubar 451). If women's literary works are not represented in literature and women are continually being shunned by critics and other male authors alike, then women's voices and experiences in literature are effectively being silenced.

Gilbert and Gubar see that the collective work of male authors is the the overwhelming representation in literature. The patriarchal history of literature can be seen as giving agency to only male authors and limiting agency to female writers. There's a correlation, then, between how United Way has represented disabled persons in a limited and stereotypical way and how the literature world has limited its representation of female authors. The struggle of a person with a disability and the struggle of a female author are in no way the same struggle, but they can be compared in that both groups of minorities are repressed, silenced, and limited by a more powerful and oppressive majority, be it a charity agency or a history of male literary legacy.

Asch's Agency

After reading Campbell’s text on agency then reading Asch’s story, I found that many of Campbell’s key points on the concepts of “agency” were exemplified throughout Asch’s text. Campbell’s first claim that agency is “communal, social, cooperative… and constrained by the material and symbolic elements of context and culture” what I viewed as the prime source of the agency Asch bestowed upon himself (Campbell 3). Even though Campbell is discussing gender as an identity, Asch’s personal background conform to the idea that “relationships to externals” based on a shared “category/groups” and “attributes” can give agency towards other groups which view their “relationship to externals” with similar regard (Campbell 4). Asch’s Jewish background enables him to better connect to the characters he fictionalizes, giving the narrator agency over characters simultaneously.

Campbell’s second claim of agency as “points of articulation” is easier when viewed in the prism theory; Asch’s narrator (author/rhetor) can be viewed as that prism (Campbell 5). The narrator has evidently heard of the oppressive environments laborers exist in, yet by becoming the willing voice of the oppressed and bring to light something known but disregarded, makes him in a metaphorical sense, the prism. For instance, “We’re going to make people so mad they’ll have to do something about it” shows that society knows about the living conditions, and still have yet to take action in order to change the conditions (Asch 288).

“Agency is linked to and effected though artistry or artfulness; it is learned” (Campbell 6). Asch achieves agency this way, almost doubly. Asch’s narrator takes you on a very long, but narrow journey to learn about conditions and secondly live in the conditions. Asch’s nearly poetic diction helps balance the miserable engagement and design of the story to help draw on the emotion of the audience.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Perfection through Imperfection

Reading Asch, I had a flashback of middle school when my English class was assigned "Huckleberry Finn". I hated it. I hated trying to translate Huck's infernally Southern dialect, let alone Jim's ebonics. I didn't care for its chattiness or its silly/stupid characters. It was not a straightforward and easily-digestible book and I was relieved when the unit was over.

Now that I've done some growing and maturing as a reader, I feel differently. "Huckleberry Finn" is a classic and one of my favorites. It's a time capsule into a place and time past. Most importantly it is an excellent interpretation of a unique pocket of Americana. Unlike Asch, when writing the novel Mark Twain had no need to interpret his subjects: he grew up along the Mississippi and was immersed in the culture and dialect of the South his whole life. Although Southerners and blacks of that era spoke a form of English far removed from the King's English of the upper crust, it was a form which made its own unique contributions to American English.

The point is, despite the apparent imperfections of the language in writing, it is important to remember Ong: it is impossible to get down in writing every idiosyncrasy present in oral, face-to-face communication. However, writing in a rural, local dialect rectifies this lacking quality in the best way possible. Just as every word in the dictionary has multiple meanings, so do dialects have different modes and shades of meaning depending on delivery. In fact, it could be argued that the use of dialect is a more "perfect" means of communication than scholarly language.

I believe that the study of academic English is important as a learning tool and as a means of intellectual discourse, but I would very much like to see a more widespread and universal use of dialect in poetry, novels and other forms of both fiction and nonfiction. It's an essential part of the study of language which demands development and expansion as its own separate field of inquiry.

America: a Marxist Legacy

I've noticed an interesting dichotomy in American history. As a country, America was founded on capitalist principles. However, due to America's unusual categorization in the history of the world's nations, it does not conform to the same literary standards of criticism as, say, Europe or Asia. America was founded and built by-and-large by the working class. The heart of the American story is the heart of the worker. Thus, Marxist criticism.

The birth of the republic in 1789 was the final nail in the coffin of European aristocracy in the New World. All royal titles were stripped, banned or otherwise forgotten, and the American people would build a nation with its bare hands, modest economy and experimental democratic government. The bulk of American literature, therefore, came from the working-class members of society. Despite this literary classification, however, American political and economic policy has been dictated by capitalist principles.

To my eyes this doesn't make any sense. I understand that our country is unique in its history and written heritage, but this seems backwards by all logical standards. Perhaps it is because the upper class of society has taken the place of the aristocracy in America, and even though they do not have the ability to silence the working class thanks to the Bill of Rights, they continue to, for the most part, control the country.

I simply wanted to point out how odd it was that a clearly Marxist literary history could belong to a country governed by the opposite principles.

Elements of "In Search of America" Still Present Today

After reading Nathan Asch’s “In Search of America,” I was immediately struck by the narrator of the story with his seemingly endless optimism and ‘I can change the world’ attitude. As he traveled across the country looking for the true representations of America, I am reminded of my summer and forced to reflect on some personal experiences that are incredibly relevant to the topic.

During the months of June and July, I had the opportunity to work in central Illinois through national Migrant Education Program. There, I was an instructor for both students of all ages in a type of traveling classroom. For the eight weeks, the students and their families, majority being Hispanic or Latino, move from their homes in Texas to work in the Midwest fields de-tasselling, rogueing and eventually picking corn for up to 12 hours a day in unbearable humidity and heat.

I apologize for the immense amount of background information, but I feel that it is necessary to get a full understanding of the lifestyle. In terms of living, entire families share hotel rooms provided by the hiring farmer and assigned by the ‘crew leader.’ The crew leader is the primary contact with the farmer and recruits the workers in Texas. Once a team is assembled, they travel about three days crammed into school busses until they reach their new motel homes; however, I feel it is important to note that the crew leader does not live with the crew but in a much more pleasant area.

This brings me back to Asch and, specifically the experiences in Colorado. The narrator mentions recalls that “Years ago Mexican families had been recruited from Mexico, shipped up North in trucks; during the season they lived right in the fields, in shacks, sometimes in wagons…as not to waste time” (294). Although the living conditions may have improved in relation to the past, the pattern of work is continued despite the narrator’s notion that it occurred “years ago” and assumption that it either no longer happens or will soon be non-existent (294).

Overall, I can identify three main similarities between the narrator’s experience with these migrant workers and my recent work with the same people in current times. First, as I have mentioned before, the living arrangements are sickening in each case. The people with whom I worked lived in dilapidated motels equipped with exposed wires, dirt covered floors and a molding foundation leaving a foul smell in the humid air, which can be compared to the shacks that were utilized in the past. Second, there is the looming threat of deportation that could be enforced in poor behavior becomes an issue. Although I do not know the legal standings of the people I met this summer, as it was of no importance to our program, workers were always conscious of their rights and not questioning anything, like long hours or eligible age of labor, in order to avoid unwanted trouble. Even though the thoughts and feelings have changed, the characters in the story are in a constant state of worry that their “contracts would be taken off relief and would be deported” (295). Finally, just as it is in Asch’s story, “no natives in America want[ed] to do this sunburnt, aching work” (294). In all these years, it appears that nothing has changed. People living in poverty, specifically immigrants are still targeted to occupy the most undesirable jobs as a last resort to provide for themselves and their families.

This now, brings back the issue of agency, and who has control in situations like these. In the case of migrant workers, then and now, it is clear that the government plays a role in keeping a standard in order; however, I believe it is possible that society has an influence over how people are viewed, treated and respected within the country. Essentially, this is problem that the narrator in Asch’s story encounters. Despite making people aware of workers and the struggles that constantly make their lives difficult, will anyone be called to action? Considering that this piece was written quite some time ago, and even references events that happened earlier in history, it seems that awareness is unfortunately not the answer.

Asch's Ending

Asch choose to end the story the way that he did because the final character stood in interesting contrast to the other characters in the essay. The first and foremost being that he isn't a stereotype. Almost all of the other characters in the essay are stereotyped. From the hospitable but mistrusting southerners to the burly lumber jacks who blow their money on cheap thrills in the big city, but the worker we meet at the end is quite different. At first, he strikes us as just another worker who is wasting his wages in a bar, but then he takes the narrator outside to look out at their surroundings and then he confesses that he is a poet. And, much to our surprise, he won't let the narrator see his poems. I do not understand why would he bring up the fact that he is a poet and then not want us to read any of his work.
What can we extract from this? Maybe this is part of the Agent/cy paradox? This worker is kind of an agent for his social class, because he has so many things in common with them, but he also has things that seperate him from his fellow workers, the primary of which being that he writes poetry. Should we assume that all of the other workers are secretly poets? We have not seen any evidence to indicate that any one else is a poet or other artist, but we didn't get any hint about this worker being a poet either. Maybe this teaches us a lesson about stereotyping?

Gilbert and Gubar and Agency, oh my

Well, I think Gilbert and Gubar tell us that the Author can have his (or in this case her) voice muffled or taken away. Also, I think that it goes to prove Campell's point about rhetoric being confined within external (social, cultural etc) institutions. This applies to the things about female poets from the past that we already know. We know they were mistreated as people and that patriarchal literature structure in a way stifled the voice of these female agents. The fact that this conversation is still a debatable, shows how deeply the roots of "authority" in our literal context run into the culture.

It also shows us that Agency is on a certain level a power struggle. Everyone who thinks they have something important to say wants to get it out there, and for awhile I think we thought there had to be clear winners and clear losers. I believe this because we tried to stifle those we didn't perceive as powerful, while celebrating anything written be someone we thought was great. Just look at Charles Dickens, his work at times is impossible to read (in my opinion) because it is so dull and meticulous. History tells us he made it that way to keep his novels running in magazines longer to make more money. This almost seems like shady business, but we still celebrate him for some reason while the Bronte sisters and I think even Jane Austen take a back seat to Dickens in many people's minds. I think the angst that Gilbert and Gubar describe is the manifestation of women writers desiring to be on a level playing field and having their voice heard (a reasonable request right?)

I imagine that the first female poet wanted to write something great, validating her existence as a poet, proving that women could do it as craftily as a man. I think that besides the dis-ease felt by women poets deciding whether or not to write, there is a dis-ease over "what if I fail" to write something of worth. Which is of course decided by men. (who may not understand where this women is coming from)


Gilbert and Gubar show us that Agency is more complex than just the ability to speak or write persuasively. It is governed by the external as well as what abilities the writer might have. I would contend that it is also governed by the reader/audience. I don't think that anyone hears or is moved by a text the same way because of different experiences, attitudes, cultures, beliefs etc. With each article this concept keeps getting more and more complex to show us how widely an idea can be interpreted.
Campell totally rejects Barthes idea of the "death of the author" and I love it. I do see rhetoric written or oral to be an art form like Campell says based on "habits of mind learned through practice" (7).

I think what is important in this article is that we see what happens when the author is irrelevant, the reader loses something, it isn't the full story. I am referring to the section about Sojourner Truth. Campell lays out how Francis Dana Gage's fictionalized account of what Truth said does not quite accurately portray the woman, Sojourner Truth. While it may seem accurate because she was a former black, southern slave, the accent given to her only lumps her in with a caricature of what people thought black people were. Her agency was in part taken away from her. In one section Truth "says", "look at my arm!... I have plowed, planted, and gathered in barns, and no man could heed me..." if she in fact said this, it was to make the point that she is capable, but in a way with her accent (which is apparently didn't have) does that not take away from that message? While her words say, "I can do it, I can be a valuable member of society", they accent given to her in this account to me scream "No, we don't think you can".

Campell says that it helps to think of people in serial relationships or how people relate to external institutions. Throwing out her blackness, which we can't see reading the text, the symbols certainly send the message that she speaks English poorly which in our culture is a major indicator of intelligence. Her accent to me, almost takes away from what she had to say, and it is a shame because it is so profound. For those who understand the accent or do not hold it against her learned something, but I'm afraid many people who read this might miss out.

I think this shows that Agency is a compromise between Author and Reader. The Author is important because without knowledge of the Author it is hard to understand context and allows room for misconstrued information like above.

Asch: Author vs. Narrator

We have dissected the paradox of agent/cy from almost every angle thus far this semester. However, Nathan Asch's narrative entitled In Search of America proposes a new question that I would like to to touch on before we move on. When reading Asch's piece, I found myself contemplating the role of the speaker in the narrative. While I am not certain that this is not an autobiographical account (from research I presume it is not), the question still remains: What is the function of the speaker or narrator? Further, how does the narrator fit in to our conclusions about the agent in literature? Here are just a few thoughts, bare with me...

When considering the role of the agent, I remind myself of what the basic definition of an agent is: something, or someone, that has the power to illicit an effect. While we have all agreed that in some respects audience legitimizes an agent (an author/writer), the writer themselves can indeed accomplish the goal of an agent. In writing In Search of America, Asch acts as an agent to promote and (as Barthe would agree) channel ideas. But in fictional narratives, the relationship between author (or the agent) and text is made more complex by the presence of the narrator. To me, it seems almost impossible for the writer to separate his (or her) own voice from that of his characters. To do so would violate the authors agency in a text. At least in Asch's text, it seems to me that Asch himself, as the writer, lends himself and his agency to the voice of his narrator. The purpose of the text is not typically shared by the author himself, but through his construction of characters, particularly the narrator. While the author and the speaker do not occupy the same role in literature, fictional narratives like Asch's provide an illustration of the speaker can operate as the writers agent, aimed at promoting a specific effect from the audience.

This all leads me back to Ong. According to Ong, the author constructs his or her writing around their conceptualization of the reader. In conceptualizing the reader, the author creates the narrator as a tool that he feels fit to promote or illicit the intended effect on the audience. This , for me atleast, sort of brings full circle the idea that in fictionalizing the audience, the author is also, in some respects, fictionalizing himself. Asch's In Search of America is a prime example of of an authors ability to do just that.

Perspective and Agency

While discussing the ever complicating paradox of agency, first consideration leads one to believe that the battle for possession of legitimate agency is constantly between the writer, or speaker, and the audience; however, in an attempt to explain the concept, it seems that it is necessary to include a third contender: the interpreter. The interpretation of any speech or text will greatly influence an individual’s ability to understand the message that is being conveyed. Therefore, one is forced to think of several questions: who is the interpreter? What factors impact his or her comprehension of the intended (or unintended) meaning? In terms of interpretation, does the writer/speaker or reader/audience have greater authority in a given situation?

Although not directly, some of these questions are referenced in Agency: Promiscuous and Protean, by Karlyn Campbell and consequentially allowing conclusions to be drawn. For example, it is stated that, “we can never recover the authentic voice…inevitably that voice is transformed by those who record it as they hear it” (Campbell 13). So, in this instance, it can be argued that because the audience is the interpreter, those being given the information have the agency to form their own opinions based on individual perspectives and experiences. By contrast, Campbell also mentions how in certain cases, “performative text” or the way in which a message is conveyed, can oftentimes have agency “that is greater than historians’ facts” (13). In simple terms, meaning that the manner in which an audience is addressed can influence the interpretation, giving agency to the writer or speaker for they have control over how the information is presented so it can be interpreted in the intended fashion.

Ultimately, I feel that the reader and interpreter are often times the same person. Despite the speaker being able to alter the presentation of information, it is essentially the role of the audience to consider their morals, values and histories in order to form a valid opinion on an issue. Agency and perspectivism are inevitably intertwined. As Campbell alludes on page thirteen, the person receiving the form of text basically has the authority to transform it within their own mind and subsequently draw a conclusion or stance.

Promiscuous Agency

I know it's real original to start off this way, but the Webster's dictionary defines promiscuous as, "1. composed of all sorts of persons or things, 2. not restricted to one class, sort, or person, 3. not restricted to one sexual partner, and 4. casual or irregular."

So in our context of agency we can easily rule out definition number 3, but I really think the first two definitions are completely relevant to the discussion we had on the promiscuity of agency. In her introduction Campbell prefaces by saying agency is "communal...invented...effected through form...perverse." I think through our discussions it has been made very clear that capturing the absolute intention and function of agency is multifaceted and extremely decentralized. We've even traced out the concept of agency in rhetoric in a swirl to best indicate that the ideas fueling rhetoric and agency are ever changing and, "not restricted to one class, sort, or person."

Although in the context of the everyday the word "promiscuous" is often associated with a lack in morals (particularly in matters of sex), it accurately describes the puzzle that is agency, something we have been working on unraveling now in these first few weeks. We can't classify it, and we certainly can't nail it down to one solid definition. It's too broad to capture in one context, yet can also be chased down to such a narrow term that we wonder where we even began. It's ever changing and is the engine for continued exploration into critical thought.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

In Search of America, a Bildungsroman & Social Critique

(1)

While reading Asch's In Search of America I was immediately struck by its similarities to Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory, the Simon and Garfunkel song "America," Kerouac's "On The Road" or "Dharma Bums" and the film Easy Rider. Its inclusion with this set of works allows me to consider it a Bildungsroman, or a coming of age narrative. This label seems mutually inclusive and this is a good text to show the diverse nature of this type of story; Asch's text capable of being considered other types of story.

The coming of age tale is a lasting style that has shown its brilliance from the quests of Perceval for the Holy Grail through Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced to the story of Alexander Supertramp of Into the Wild. The deaths of all of these characters (and Easy Rider) at the end of their tale (Troyes' dying 'in the midst' of writing Perceval, Kerouac) is death. At some point, everyone dies.

(Barthes/Foucoult on the Author. Writing as self-sacrifice/death. Are we stuck in life? Or is this 'stuck' feeling the symptom of social wrong?)

The 'coming of age' tale is ubiquitous, it speaks from the heart of the human experience finding itself within the given society which produced both the experience and the narrative. In this way it functions as a social window ripe for critique. As a specific character grows and experiences new ways of life and is exposed to different perspectives than their own naive set, the narrator shifts and their perspective comes full circle. The distance between these two points--that of a naive click, and that of the retrospective glance is a bildungsroman; where by a character learn something about him or herself in relationship to their surroundings.

The interesting part of Asch's writing is his perspective, as his knowledge of his country changes rapidly based on the experiences outside of himself that people are willing to share. One of the most striking moments of shared perspective in the story is the conversation with the African American who tells Asch... "I was trained by Southern white folks, and I know my place. Maybe if I had been trained up North, I'd have been different. But I'm here. And I know my place and I keep it" (288). This raises an interesting question about the relationship of 'place,' movement and self growth in the bildungsroman. I ask this as all of the other works I have chosen to include with Asch's writing involve an epic movement across the country. Asch is moving across the country in search of the country (like Easy Rider/On the Road) whereas this man and his family have likely stayed in the same place since slavery ended. What can be inferred by this? That movement yields greater experience, thus more self-knowledge through knowing one's surroundings better?

It seems that the workers in Asch's story are stuck, and they are not all happy about where and how they are stuck, as the conditions seem pretty horrible. The first character introduced in this excerpt has a broken axle and no money. He is stuck. Next episode involves the dust storm in Oklahoma--Asch is stuck. Mexican bar; non-married/Asch stuck. The union workers and the migrant/native workers are all stuck. This makes me ask, how does this sensation of being stuck in a sea of labeled freedom tie into the Bildungsroman?

(2)

This narrative is different from many of the more personal coming of age stories as the narrator is only ever in the shadows of what is happening around him, recording it. Having spent time doing journalism work I know that this is difficult, because the people who know you are a journalist treat you like a journalist. This is shown in the text when the African American share-crop families show their distrust of the man, refusing to tell him anything, fearing he would charge them something.

The perspective of this story is the first hint that this is not a straightforward Bildungsroman, showing that it is written by way of the (first) third person--who falls short of the fourth-person-singular (term for mutually inclusive stylistic bildungsroman, by way of Lawrence Ferlighetti--see What is Poetry). Though due to the malleability or openness of Asch as a receiver allows him to see into and begin to display many different perspectives, united by one nation and a handful of hardship.

Here it is important to note that though this bildungsroman is not of first person experience, it still retains agency because Asch is out listening to the people in order to share their stories and produce tangible change in the American way of life.

The next issue of this text against the Bildungsroman template is that the text is titled "In Search of America" inferring that it is about the sociopolitical conditions of America in the 1930's, not the growth of some specific character. Much like Easy Rider and the Simon and Garfunkel song here we have a sense that this is about a greater understanding of our nation and the wealth of opportunity or lack thereof in existence on a given day in a given place and how that affects the human condition, and ultimately one's perspective.

To tie this together again, all of the other texts mentioned above fit under the umbrella of the migration narrative,' as they are all moving very fast through time and space--see Hendrix. They are also in search of an illumining something--what makes Asch's work interesting in this set of pieces is that the narrator is a journalist who nods the piece into the domain of meta-non-fictional migration narrative.

This migratory nature opposes the stuck sensation of many of the sharecroppers, as its movements take it beyond the cycles of exploitation the farmer and his workers are kept in by the larger companies.

"He (the farmer) owned the house he lived in and the land he planted, but the bank in which the mortgage on these chattels lay was controlled by the sugar company, and the company set the price for beets, arbitrarily, without the semblance of an open market, of competition. he could accept the price that was offered by this one company, or his beets could rot"(294).

The bit about the burning of natural gas and the sense of complete waste in the broken down oil well scene was just a terrible omen of the waste to come from such horrible foresight. This utter lack of foresight was also exhibited in reference to the 'shipping' of Mexican families into the states for work on the Beet farms, only to threaten them with deportation if they refused to sign contracts of diminishing returns.

(3)

A lot like Woody Guthrie, this text was very illuminating in terms of depression era politics and society--standing on the farthest edge of it all organizing unions to stand up for worker's rights, regardless of their heritage or social stratification. The recognition that you and I and that group over there are, at the end of it all, just being human is an overarching truth and is very important to the Bildungsroman, as this realization is a key part of self growth and prosperity without (or growing up from) excessive suffering. It is also important to remember that everyone dies. We live, we live in a society, it affects our experience, we grow or recede and then we die--the Bildungsroman is a snapshot of the greatest leaps that occur in between these places.

This text immediately drew my interest as my grandfather was born on Dec 25, 1924 in Little Rock, Arkansas. He would tell me he had nothing to play with as a child beyond a stick and the mud--when I knew him, he drove a Lincoln Towncar and had recently moved to Northern Indiana from Chicago. My grandfather must have come of age by way of the Marines and his time in San Diego, California--texts like Asch's help fill in the sociopolitical context for this growth.

For now,

Women and Trail-blazing Phobia

I have to wonder, while reading Gilbert and Gubar, why the feminine criticism has to be seen as women clearly differentiating themselves from men. As a female, I cannot think of a time that I've taken the feminine criticism into consideration while reading a text. In terms of poetry, men and women have different writing styles, but what's to say women can't write powerful texts without the guidance of fellow women poets before them? A fear of "trail-blazing" seemingly perplexed the first female poets, but I'm having issues with that because men were at some point the first to write a certain idea (though that had to be years beyond years ago).

Poetry needs inspiration, and, as Gilbert and Gubar note, men typically had muses which were females. What is to say women couldn't have male muses? And I'm not saying men weren't inspirational for many women, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a prime example, but when reading Gilbert and Gubar, it seemed this idea wasn't an acceptable one. Mainly, I can't see why women didn't just write, regardless of how men wrote. I know it's a "man's world," but the joy of writing can be an amazing muse in and of itself.

Dramatization vs. Reality

After our conversation on Campbell's multifaceted discourse, Sojourning with Truth, one of the biggest questions I had concerning the two versions of Truth's speech was the sacrifice of reality for a more convincing and blatantly stereotypical dramatization of the actual event. When reading the version packed with the horribly punctuated and dramatized speech, the text plays on the emotions of the audience. It is engrained in our American history that the contexts of not only gender equality but the struggle for civil rights are marked with the horrors of unjust brutality, especially in the oppressive sins of the south's "Peculiar Institution."

Using dramatization as a tool for drawing attention occurs in many parts of our media, political, and cultural environment. All of our reality TV shows provide stark evidence for the audience's appetite for drama. Important events, both in past and recent times, that are televised or portrayed in TV shows or films, are almost always retold under the interpretation of the director and script author. In these cases, the facts of the actual event are often skewed, forsaking the perhaps bland but factual truth for something that will attract more viewers.

As complex as our social and cultural structure is, it becomes ever more important to hold onto the truth, to make our best effort at avoiding being completely sucked into a world of complete ambiguity and promiscuous information. When there is news coverage on an important sporting event or crime scene, the news team chooses specific words and devices to best grasp the viewer's attention. They will carefully choose where and what to shoot, and what to include or leave out of the report. As an audience in today's growing media world, the powers of TV and the Internet increase with every video watched, and every search posted. It may sound the the beginnings of a paranoid conspiracy theory, but the things we see on the internet, in magazines, and on every TV screen, are sources of persuasion that we must learn to discern between, to trust or disregard. Almost everything we perceive as an audience is part of the agency of an advertisement or information giant; they are aiming to sway our interpretation in a certain direction.

Due to today's culture, our reality is under fire. People wear uncomfortable clothes to appear a certain way, or make choices that are absolutely detrimental without realizing so. In the sense of Sojourner Truth, the drama is focused on the feelings of the audience. However the dramatization of life itself is something that seems to occur more and more in our culture, causing major misinterpretation about what we're supposed to be doing in college, how we're supposed to succeed, and even how we're supposed to be happy. In these respects, it is safer to stick to grounded reality.

Paradoxical Agency in Asch

After our long talks about agency as a paradox on Friday, I could not help but to notice the liberating and restricting qualities of power in Asch's piece. A lot of what Asch points out while searching for that "outside world" is the off-kilter distribution of power in America, specifically American agriculture. The companies (often a one company monopoly) control the system completely, control the prices, products, and in some cases even the citizenship of their workers (295).

Since agency requires the power to act, it would seem as if the corporation had supreme agency in 1930's agriculture dynamic. The workers were in a constant struggle, freezing in paper-thin homes and surviving each year with less and less money. One Negro Asch met proclaimed that croppers "don't live here" they're "just here" (286). And so of course the companies were thriving, the more power/agency taken from the workers the more power/agency given to the companies. This power is freeing for the corporate men. They live lavishly and liberally as does the first landowner Asch meets. The man owns "four hundred acres" and Asch catches him in the act of buying a "beautiful new car" (285). These southern owners experience their agency, the agency to live a comfy life, amidst the surrounding tenant squalor.

But, as we discussed, agency is paradoxical, both freeing and constraining. And so while these companies are able to experience financial comfort and fancy things they also are being mentally constrained. Asch proposes the idea that "the worse you exploit somebody, the worse you hate them" (286). And its this exact intrusion of conscience that is so restrictive on the landowners and corporate men's lives. They are forced to hate, forced out of their own greed and objectification of their lower workers, and certainly the owners Asch meets share this disposition or lack of care. This is the other side of power.

Yet if the corporations are forced to hate those they oppress, doesn't that give the common croppers some power, some agency? The workers have no strains on their conscience. They know they are being oppressed and still don't often seem vengeful, as seen with the lack of participation in Aragon's meetings. But they can hate, and more importantly they can choose to hate, which is power/agency in itself. And they must hate, contrive a collective hate, in order to change this paradoxical power dynamic.

Persuasion without authorship

After reviewing Campbell's "Agency: Promiscuous and Protean," I could not help but keep thinking back to the question we discussed in class on whether or not there can be persuasion without an author. Campbell used the case of the Sojourner Truth speech, which relates well with this question. Campbell contemplates two sides to what authorship did to Truth's speech, writing, "without Gage’s artistry, which gave Truth’s speech dramatic form, we could not participate in what we imagine to be the originary moment or experience the play of ideas, the metaphors, or the interaction between Truth and her opponents. At the same time, Gage’s text contains the malign agency of racist stereotypes that demean Truth and those for whom she speaks (p.14)." What authorship gave to Sojourner Truth's speech was a place and a feeling to go along with the words she said. Authorship does attribute to persuasion in the fact that its dramatization can suck the reader into the moment of the message that was being sent, and allows readers to be more receptive to that message than if it were just reported on word by word. People normally more enjoy reading novels to textbooks. Campbell also states that this dramatization can also bring about negative aspects, such as the stereotyping of black people, but people are seemingly able to read through that and still absorb the higher message. In this sense, authorship does cultivate persuasion, but persuasion can still happen without it. The author of Truth's speech was persuaded with what she had to say at the conference, it just took authorship to branch those ideas to a wider audience. At that time, persuasion without authorship happened on a much smaller scale than with authorship, but in the era we live in now, that method of persuasion can reach a much higher audience. Yes president's speeches are written, but presidential debates happen in real time with unplanned responses. Live video being as normal and accessible as it is today can somewhat through a wrench into Campbell's thoughts on the necessity of an author to fully convey a message. A convention such as the one in which Truth delivered her speech could easily be videotaped in real time today, allowing people to see and hear the message that is being sent in such speeches. There are videos of events like that on television all the time on channels like CNN, CSPAN, and even ESPN. Being able to be somewhere without actually being there is what the modern digital era is all about. A thought like this is rather scary in regards to what might become of most of our traditional ideas of what an author is and what the value of an author is. A massive author evolution may be just on the horizon in order for the concept of an author to stay relevant and alive.

Asch & Agency

What is interesting in Asch's "In Search of America" with respect to agency is the conflict between the mechanistic circumstances the laborers endure and the vibrancy that occasionally flourishes in its spite. It seems that Asch implicitly agrees that agency is found in aberration from the preconceived course--whether nature or wealth is the conceiver.

Images of inclemency abound. The dust storm pervades all, the walls of the houses no sufficient shield. The accidental death of the lumber worker--nonchalantly deployed--suggests that what attracts Asch to the conditions of laborers is the inhumanity of the conditions in which they are compelled to live. This is an obvious point, but what is crucial is that it not be primarily political--rather cosmological: It makes me think of Yahweh, whose voice kills the listener, whose aspect kills who sees him. Then the subject or the agent is what dies in the storm of circumstance, or what is susceptible to death.

The point is that the agent cannot manifest himself but against the matrix that contains him. Or if not against, without reverence for: the soul shows in the useless. "The people living there had a sense of decoration," Asch remarks of the black sharecroppers. Later the saloon poet's refusal to share his verse--recalling subtly Asch's sensitivity to wordless expression, negative expression, his note that "I seemed to feel what [Aragon] said more in the pauses between his words, in the silence which he needed to arrange his thoughts"--humanizes him in obfuscating his interior. It proves, that is, that he is capable of action without impetus.

Violence too is the privilege of the agent, but I suppose only because Thanatos, like Iago's evil, though it is not chaos, not free, recalls the free, chaotic mischief of a Loki or a Hermes; recalls, that is, action without gain. The lumber worker's threat, "You tell that purchasing agent if he ever comes to camp 2, I'll cut him into pieces," summons more sympathy, renders him more tender than it ought because a man dismembered does less work.

The question is whether Moloch that compulsor (I have been thinking of a shot from Metropolis), the inexorable slog of days, is the germ-bed of spirit. Or whether the agent cannot but be dually born--because the agent needs an underminer. Whether to be is to fight.

Legitimately Crazy Female Authors

Gilbert and Gubar describe the female writer's journey as long and somewhat rebellious. It makes me wonder, why did they fight so hard? Why not prove themselves instead of provoking more pigheadedness?

Gilbert and Gubar admit, "... Western literary history is overwhelmingly male" (450). Whether this is sexist or not is debatable. Does that mean that every male author is sexist? Of course not. So, why, then, have women rebelled against their fellow male authors? Gilbert and Gubar describe this rebellion by saying, "The woman writer--and we shall see women doing this over and over again--searches for a female model not because she wants dutifully to comply with male definitions of her 'femininity' but because she must legitimize her own rebellious endeavors" (452). It seems to me that her endeavors were counterproductive since men simply took this as a sign of insanity (456).

I wonder if we would have more female writers today if earlier female writers had taken a different approach? Perhaps if they had tried to blend in more? Prove that they could do exactly as the men did? How then would men claim that female writers were crazy? They would have been doing the exact same things as men. They could have proven themselves as naturally intelligent beings by writing as men did and then doing it better. This might have taken more effort and would have been slow going at first, but this approach could have led to a stronger and fuller future for female literature.

Silence, Powerless in Writing

According to Jane Austen's Henry Tilney - "a woman's only power is the power of refusal" (Gilbert and Gubar, 458). If so, how does the women writer ever accomplish? The literary women of the 18th and 19th centuries were at a constant struggle, Gilbert and Gubar's "anxiety of authorship. If the author exemplifies the historical context of which s/he is in then how can women authors ever have been expected to break free from the oppressive patriarchal society of social prescriptions in which she lived? Not solely through refusal.

Women like Austen and the Bronte sisters suffered the costs of the expansion and publication of female creativity. They were tired of simply refusing patriarchal remedies (anorexia and such mental starvation), tired of simply keeping silent. They acted, "held mirrors up to the discomforts of their own nature", "refused the poisoned apples their culture offered them" by creating characters that embodies this same suffering (458). Austen's novel contained "foolish" women characters not because Austen was "foolish" herself but because it was necessary in order to act, to overcome the patriarchal prescriptions claiming female literacy as lunacy. If all Austen and Bronte did were refuse, women's literature would be nowhere near where it is today.

Todays women writer "feels that she is helping to create a viable tradition", but without the tenacity of the 18th and 19th century women, who truly worked from scratch, today's women would be just as oppressed(452). Today's women can find authority, though they are only able to do so "because their foremothers struggled in isolation that felt like illness...to overcome the anxiety of authorship that was endemic to their literary subculture" (453). These "foremothers" broke through the cast of this subculture and not by simply refusing. They were not silent, not in the least. They suffered the upmost "anxiety of authorship", the extreme "dis-ease", to create a present where today's women have literary predecessors they can be proud of. Women's only power is refusal? Bullshit.

Agent/cy--The Ethical Involvement of Literature (and the Author?)

During our recent class discussions regarding Agent/cy, our list of questions regarding the agent and agency has grown and evolved. Out of our updated list, the question of the connection between ethical involvement and literature has emerged. While we have not spent much time on this issue, I think it is one that deserves a little attention. In the Gilbert and Gubar essay entitled Infection of the Sentence, the authors briefly touch upon the ethical involvement of women in literature. In confronting the "anxiety of authorship" writers such as Dickinson, Sexton and Atwood utilized their poetry to insert themselves into an ethical and cultural discussion regarding women in both society and literature.

As Gilbert and Gubar address in their essay, Dickinson confronts the representation of females in patriarchal texts. In the poem quoted in the epigraph of the essay ("Infection in the sentence breeds/We may inhale Despair/At distances of Centuries") it is evident that as an author, Dickinson is utilizing her poetry to address the conflict of the anxiety of authorship in literature. She is keenly aware of how literature has constantly cast women in a negative and even stereotypical role. As Gilbert/Gubar state "The despair we [female writers] 'inhale' even at 'distances of centuries' may be the despair of...a life that 'has no story'" (Gilbert/Gubar 456). While Dickinson did so privately (her poems were found and published after her death), she as an author has the agency to insert herself into discourse. It seems to me that it is the author, not literature itself, that seems to have the ability (or, the agency) to be ethically involved in such issues. The ethical involvment of the author, and their literature, is further illustrated by both Sexton's poetry and Atwood's prose.

The poetry of Sexton and prose of Atwood featured in the essay are also important examples of female writers acknowledging and confronting the negative portrayal of the female figure in literature. However, in contrast to Dickinson, these two writers also illustrate the constraining boundaries of the female writer in society. Specifically, as Gilbert and Gubar state "The woman writer feels herself to be literally or figuratively crippled by the debilitating alternatives her culture offers her" (Giblert/Gubar 458). As female authors, both Sexton and Atwood utlize their writing as a means to confront the both the restrictiveness of literary tradition. But perhaps more importantly in regards to ethical involvement, they (along with Dickinson) mirror the social realities of women in patriarchal society. Using literature as their weapons, these authors confront both the "anxiety of authorship" as well as the role of women in literature and culture as a whole.

Predecessors: Rough All Over

After another look at Gilbert and Gubar's essay, I noticed that men and women both had problems with predecessors throughout literary history. Men wanted to live up to their predecessors (449), while women wanted to defy their predecessors (452). That led me to the conclusion that, while the essay seems to imply that women did not have predecessors, I would say that their predecessors were male, which only gave them different challenged instead of more.

A male never wrote solely to diminish women's rights. He wrote about women as he saw women. His challenge was to analyze the intents and styles of his predecessors, and not only match but take his own original stand. He had to create his own style in the midst of thousands of other male writers (450). Female writers, however, had no trouble with originality. They themselves were original.

Female writers have had the challenge of forcing America to accept their credibility, never mind originality. If a woman was intelligent, she was crazy (456). And so, as female writers broke through patriarchal society, their works were always new and exciting. The challenge, however, was getting their works read. Once published, the work of a female author was original simply because she had no female predecessors. She could not copy her male predecessors, because she did not think of herself the way a man could think of her.

Female precursors

Gilbert and Gubar talk about a somewhat sensitive aspect of their theory of what inspires a female writer to write in the form that she does when they talk about the male and female disconnect in each genders battle with "anxiety of influence (p.450)" touched on throughout the reading. When discussing what is different from the male's anxiety, the two authors write, "Her battle however is not against her male precursor's reading of the world but against his reading of her. In order to define herself as an author, she must redefine the terms of her socialization (p.452). It was difficult for me to try and empathize truly with this theory being that I am of the male perspective in this situation, but I did find this particular section of the text rather interesting. Women writers want men to change the way that they perceive women battling against the same anxiety of influence that the male writers are. Women want men to know that their anxiety and struggle stems from a different source. Is it really a good thing for women writers to choose to use the influence that they find in female precursors?

It seems that what women find when using female precursors in their writing doesn't seem extremely positive in any case. The two terms used to describe the nature of the feminine precursors are "disease and dis-ease(p.458)." Obviously, using these female precursors has been an extremely successful move by female writers as readers are able to experience the pain and discomfort that the patriarchal world has made the basis of femininity. Yes, men have noticed the distinctions between male and female precursors because of this effort, but does this cause a change? It seems as this may possibly reaffirm negative notions about what being a female in society means. Yes, men can see the disease and dis-ease, but do they care? Is this still how female writers write dating back to the nineteenth century? That doesn't seem to show that progress is being made. Female writers could recognize these precursors, address them in their writing, and then work against them to illustrate the change being made. That also seems like the best way for a female writer to work against her own anxiety of influence and write something original. Again, it's difficult for me to feel sure about a theory such as this, so I might be way off base with how other female writers feel.

promiscuous, constrained learning

Karlyn Kohrs Campbell presents a curious way of identifying Agency in her article "Agency: Promiscuous and Protean," yet when unfurling the definition of 'promiscuous' beyond the low-brow, giggle-inducing association that immediately comes to mind, it seems simple to see what it is she is trying to say. Agency has many roles and to try and assign one concrete meaning to it actually can be daunting. Campbell claims that "The term 'agency' is polysemic and ambiguous, a term that can refer to invention, strategies, authorship, institutional power, identity, subjectivity, practices, and subject positions, among others" (1). My very first thought when glancing at the title was muddled in hesitation because the term 'promiscuous,' does not immediately make me think of something "composed of all sorts of persons or things" (www.merriam-webster.com). Perhaps this is due, in part, the social climate we live in where the label of promiscuity is intended as a way of vilifying people who do not conform to the idea of monogamous interactions. Regardless, I was not quite sure what to expect but, judging from the tone Campbell used throughout her piece, this may have been the effect she was going for.
Campbell asserts that "agency is constrained by externals [...]," meaning that it is not powerful in and of itself (3). It needs other things to give it that levity and Campbell seems to argue that artistry plays a strong role in this, saying that "[agency] is learned" (6). It makes sense then that agency, while being learned, is constrained by society. Take for instance, high school history classes neglecting to point out prominent gay rights activists or failing to point out just how horrible women had it working in factories before unionization. For example, I had never heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, which claimed many of its female workers' lives, until college, despite having discussed other things associated with unionization at that time. Perhaps this constraint is merely for the purpose of sticking with basics yet it seems that important events are neglected in the process.

The Creation of Collectivities

Asch's story also made me consider the role and definition of collectivities. The narrator describes sleeping in a "flophouse" with other men: "And then I began to hear that these men sleeping were beginning to breathe in and out together, as if they somehow had become one homeless unemployed..." (302). In this passage, the idea of the "oneness" of the homeless men necessitates a certain "otherness" on the part of the narrator, whose function here is to observe rather than take part in their poverty. It is because the narrator is not poor and unemployed, and thus not part of the group defined by these characteristics, that he sense the togetherness of the group he is witnessing. Perhaps the idea of collectivity is linked to the idea of separateness, in this way. While there is a group unified by common traits, there must be other groups or individuals who don't have these traits for the idea of a collectivity to exist.

In Campbell's essay, she states that "agency is invention...of personae, subject positions, and collectivities" (5). Thus, it is not so much that collectivities claim agency, as it is that collectivities are created through the use of agency and perform actions based on a shared socio-historical past. "'The people' are a materiality brought into being by discourse" (5). It is text that creates collectivities. To me, this suggests that, according to Campbell, there is no room for existence outside of textual collectivities because texts aim towards a readership, not a particular reader. As the writer is creating his reader, the reader conforms to be the correct type of reader. Although there are different collectivities united by different traits, it is not possible to be separate from any group and therefore outside of the society, history, and discourse that inform human actions. It is not "otherness" which brings the idea of certain collectivities into being, but the idea of classifying an audience as a "togetherness."

Texts Need Readers

The last encounter of "In Search of America, between Asch's narrator and the self-professed poet, was particularly interesting to me in relation to an idea that Ong expresses at the end of "The Writer's Audience is Always a Fiction." In Asch's story, the narrator is talking to a man who says he writes poetry, but when the narrator asks, "'Could I read it?'" (306), the man says, "'It's for nobody to read...I do it for myself'" (306). His statement raises questions about whether one is truly a poet, an author, if one's audience is only oneself. If one has no external audience, what is the function of one's writing? If there is no readership to interpret a text and give it legitimacy, is a writer an author and is their text literature?

According to Foucault and Barthes to some extent, it is the judgment of others that confers the title of author on a person. Ong has a slightly different view, as he believes that the author precedes and provides motive for the text, but at the same time relies on the audience for the perpetuation of the text. If there is no external audience, then the writer is in a sense fictionalizing himself in the act of writing (according to Ong's beliefs about audience), which doesn't allow for self-driven fictionalization by readers. Ong references T.S. Eliot, stating that, "so far as he knows, great love poetry is never written solely for the ear of the beloved" (21). In other words, there is an element of performance necessary in great writing. A piece with no intended audience outside of the writer himself, therefore, does not reach its full potential as a literary text.