Theory 6 Flashcards
(101 cards)
1
Q
How is metalepsis connected with metaphor?
(NB: metalepsis is a figure of ‘missing out the figure in between in order to create a figure that stretches the sense or which fetches things from far off’)
A
- associated with a deeply metaphoric focus on substitution
2
Q
What does Brian Cummings define as the ‘sheer thrill of success’ of metalepsis?
A
- the sense of sharing something secret/ mysterious ie. language pulls together something which in principle exist far apart
3
Q
What happens to the hearer’s understanding at the point of metalepsis?
A
- because the reasoning is far-fetched, the hearer’s understanding is ‘entangled’/ momentarily bewildered
- patience of the reader/ auditor is strained
4
Q
In which text was metalepsis foregrounded as a figure that foregrounds the period of intermission in metaphor between the term transferred and ‘the thing to which it is transferred’?
A
Erasmus, De Copia
5
Q
What is deixis and what might we experience if specific deictic details are lacking?
A
- used to locate the self and the relations of things
- we might not know exactly where the voice is coming from/ one’s physical positioning in relation to something
6
Q
Why does Plato express his distrust of art in the 10th book of The Republic? Why does he subsequently distrust poetry even more?
A
- to Plato, all art is a mimesis of nature (copy of objects in the physical world)
- poetry is a copy of a copy - leads away from the truth rather than towards it
(AND: those things themselves - in the world - are only copies of timeless universals (Forms/ Ideas))
7
Q
How does Kenneth Clark define the difference between nakedness and ‘nude’?
Ways of Seeing, John Berger
A
- nakedness is to be without clothes, the nude is a form of art
(to be seen as a ‘nude’ is to be objectified - also reduced to surface level understanding/ presentation of the self)
“The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress”
8
Q
How might a depiction of nakedness resist becoming a ‘nude’?
Ways of Seeing, John Berger
A
- when the painter acknowledges he is an outsider
ie. acceptance that women have bodily autonomy and has exposed her nakedness of her own accord - equally accepting that men cannot control female sexuality/ bodies
“He cannot deceive himself into believing that she is naked for him. He cannot turn her into a nude”
9
Q
How do men and women’s presence differ?
Ways of Seeing, John Berger
A
men’s presence
- depends on the promised power they could inflict on someone
women’s presence
- speaks of the ways in which she can have power inflicted on her
10
Q
How does John Berger support his point that women are both ‘surveyors’ and the ‘surveyed’?
A
- has to have control over how she is perceived because the role of the surveyor is there to ensure that behaviours are only shown that would - in turn - only allow permissible behaviours in response from men
“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself”
11
Q
Who said that “patriarchy is discrimination in the name of God”?
A
feminist and former Latter-day Saint Marilyn Warenski
12
Q
Why is the male condemnation of women for their vanity hypocritical?
John Berger, Ways of Seeing
A
- women are painted nude for male pleasure
13
Q
Which writer, along with John Berger, believes the mirror in actuality was part of the indoctrination of the female into seeing herself as a sight?
A
Simone de Beauvoir (as influenced by Lacan in The Second Sex)
14
Q
What does it mean when Mary Devereaux describes that women are also able to internalise the male gaze?
A
“Both men and women have learned to see the world through male eyes”
ie.
- women are turned against each other and themselves
- women’s self-judgment is based on internalised standards of what is pleasing to men
15
Q
What consequence for film does Mary Devereaux describe on the basis that women are also able to internalise the male gaze?
A
- even when films are directed by women the male gaze can be projected
- the male gaze creates new standards of womanhood and femininity that embed themselves which appeal to “male needs, beliefs and desires” and become part of an interior narrative
- when women perform for the camera - feels like it surpasses female viewing
- female audience is also made to feel like the other
16
Q
Why does Mary Devereaux conclude that female sexuality has to be harnessed in a gendered power play?
A
- women have no other power
- men exist in networks of other men who also hold the capacity to harm (whether physically or by protecting the man who does)
17
Q
On the basis of what arguments does Ann Kaplan conclude that the “male gaze involves more than simply looking; it carries with it the threat of action and possession”?
A
- idea that men have to be kept satisfied otherwise they will potentially look for other ways to gain sexual gratification
- because women have been associated with the domestic sphere they are also in charge of satisfying male sexual drive
- as well as men holding power over the ability of a woman to have children which is perceived as a woman’s greatest desire and fulfilment
18
Q
What does Mary Devereaux mean when she describes women as the ‘other’?
A
- women’s identities are shaped in relation to men
19
Q
How do films function as demonstrative frameworks for women according to Mary Devereaux?
A
- they show women how to behave and conduct themselves
Mary Ann Doane: Hollywood film functions as a “recuperative strategy” designed to return the wayward woman to the fold
20
Q
On what basis do feminists argue that art is a medium of political oppression according to Mary Devereaux?
A
- art reflects conditions of life and helps maintain them and thus…
- in both its high and low forms, feminist theories argue, art inscribes ‘a masculinist discourse’ which we learn to reproduce in our everyday lives
21
Q
Why is the basis of liberal humanism literary criticism challenged by the premise that art is political or ideologically charged?
Mary Devereaux
A
- it contradicts the deeply held belief that art speaks to and for all human beings in relation to the essential aspects of them
22
Q
Why does Mary Devereaux suggest that feminist theories remain marginalised?
A
- due both to their difficulty and unfamiliarity
- the academy is also male-dominated
- the fundamental necessity of feminism and the benefits for both genders has not been recognised
- paradox of the necessity for men to privilege women with equality in order to actively contribute to equality
23
Q
What is a possible criticism of Laura Mulvey?
A
- the female gaze and male gaze cannot be essentialised
- the male gaze cannot simply be identified with the way men see the world and thus we should be referring to it as the patriarchal gaze ie. any way of looking at women that benefits the patriarchy
24
Q
In Roland Barthes’ The Death of the Author, instead of it being the author who speaks out of a work, who/ what is it?
A
- it is language itself that speaks
- language is able to act and perform alone
- the use of language itself means the work reaches impersonally into various other networks
- the author is a kind of collage maker
25
Roland Barthes' The Death of the Author challenges the thought that the Author is thought to nourish the book, which is to say that he exists before it, thinks, suffers, lives for it - what does he say?
- the author and book come into being simultaneously
ie. the voice of the author and all of the interpretations that we take as the message of the author come into being as a reader engages with the book itself and creates its meaning
26
What are the consequences that Roland Barthes points out if one believes that the author has authority over the production of one single ‘message’ of a work?
- one imposes a limit on that text, furnishes it with a final signified, closes the writing
- when the Author has been found, the text is “explained’ = victory to the critic
27
What two famous lines summarises Roland Barthes' new take on the author?
"the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture"
"the space of the writing is to be ranged over, not pierced"
28
On what 3 points does Foucault challenge Roland Barthes' argument?
1. the author has not really died but has been transposed into transcendental anonymity
2. the concept of hidden meanings and deliberate obscurity has been transferred onto the writing itself
3. how do we organise literature without any notion of author?
29
What does Foucault mean by his comment that "the author has not really died but has been transposed into transcendental anonymity"?
- the way in which we process content is still through the idea of the author
- Barthes is trying to overcome this conceptual framework but instead of just saying the author is dead, we have to investigate the void
30
What concept manifests the idea that hidden meanings and deliberate obscurity have been transferred onto the writing itself?
Concept of ‘ecriture’
- refocusing on the writing and the origins of writing as opposed to the author
- supplies the religious associations of hidden meanings
ie. reintroduces in transcendental terms the religious principle of hidden meanings and the critical assumption of implicit significations, silent purposes, and obscure contents
31
Roughly when was the Romantic period?
1780 - 1840
32
When the phrase 'the people' is used in Victorian literature, why is it a less straightforwardly used term than just being a sincere expression of understanding, vigour, or assurance?
Jon Cook
- it has a suspicion around it because it was frequently used by professional politicians
- it was a deceptive use of language - a pretence of democracy which attempted to mask the exercise of domination
(ie. presenting oneself as a 'man of the people' at once implies you are intimate with their needs AND yet you are set apart from them by virtue of being their representative)
33
In the late 18th century there were a number of pushes for reform in the name of 'the people' and the idea that they should have more political representation. Who were these 'free agents' included as 'the people' and who was this group separated from?
Jon Cook
- these free agents were male and property-owning
- the people were still (even by radicals) distinguished from the 'illiterate rabble'
(underpinning idea was that political engagement was deserved by the educated)
34
Why might we think of 'the people' as the prototype of the silent majority?
Jon Cook
- they had to wait for professional politicians etc. to give them a voice and claim authority for doing so
- in this complex negotiation of equality and hierarchy, the representative can claim to be part of the group but they always have the security of separating themselves
35
How did attitudes towards 'the people' change/ become more hostile after the French Revolution?
Jon Cook
- they were seen as a threat to aristocratic distinction and the destroyers of a culture maintained by gentleman and priests
- Edmund Burke called them the 'swinish multitude'
HOWEVER: soon (because they were the 'middle class') they were ready to be conservative and felt threatened by ideas of revolution from 'below' - ie. from the rural/ urban proletariat
36
Jon Cook believed there was a kind of 'mystical charge' around the term 'the people' because they were perceived to carry with them the traces of society in its natural state ie. before the corruption of government/ artificial social distinctions. How does this premise then feed into how the people and their role in political discourse are presented in the pastoral genre?
- they were associated with the pastoral ideal of political relations
- ie. balanced between the needs of rich and poor
- establishing co-operation rather than conflict between social groups
- they are presented as bearers of a fundamental truth about what society should be like
- they witness what we have in common/ might be forgetting in our corrupt/ artificial society
37
William Empson argued that pastoral was a genre that was always likely to carry powerful political messages - especially as a form that presented an ideal version of social life. What quotation sums up his ideas?
Jon Cook
"The essential trick of the old pastoral, which was felt to imply a beautiful relation between rich and poor, was to make simple people express strong feelings (felt as the most universal subject, something fundamentally true about everybody) in learned and fashionable language (so that you wrote about the best subject in the best way)"
38
How did the pastoral genre negotiate the complicated demand for greater realism in the 18th century?
Jon Cook
- pastoral became nationalised ie. it began to represent English rural settings that people could recognise
(representing labour as well as leisure ie. as a celebration of England's growing economic power - which took the combined efforts of different social classes)
39
How did the pastoral genre begin to present the rural poor in order to assuage hostility towards them amidst the growing political and social tensions?
Jon Cook
- they were presented as industrious because this assuaged concerns about their moral degradation
- showing them as domestically settled, ie. confined to home/ village assuaged concerns that they might be developing a consciousness of their own with class interests
40
Why might Crabbe be called a writer of the 'anti-pastoral'?
Jon Cook
- some of his key works ie. like The Village - is a refutation of the conventions of the pastoral idyll because he believes it encourages a superficial/ hedonistic attention to the lives of the rural poor
- by providing the 'real history' of late 18th century rural labour he does invite compassion to a degree - HOWEVER he does not believe their sufferings derive from the denial of their natural rights and thus he does not argue that they are deserving of political representation
41
What does Jon Cook explain was so culturally significant about the project that Wordsworth and Coleridge introduced in the preface to the Lyrical Ballads?
- they proposed a language that would represent the feelings of the poor or the ordinary as if they were exemplary of human feeling in general
(and it would mean that readers could identify with the characters represented, instead of the readers being ones who held a cool distance between themselves and the characters in the book)
42
Who described Shakespeare as the 'poet of nature'?
Jon Cook
Samuel Johnson
43
What was the significance of Shakespeare being understood as the 'poet of nature' in relation to pastoral and social classes etc.?
- this meant that Shakespeare's characters and their language reminded us of what we all had in common
(and thus an invocation of Shakespeare carried these kinds of associations)
- Southey used it as a ready-made attack on aristocratic/ monarchic government
44
What famous work did Laura Mulvey write?
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
45
What does Mulvey describe as the paradox of phallocentrism?
- it depends on the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world ie. it is the woman's lack that gives the phallus a symbolic presence
46
In a psychoanalytical sense, what does the woman represent to Mulvey's mind?
- the castration threat for a man by her real lack of penis
| - she only exists for man in relation to her as a figure having been castrated and she cannot transcend this association
47
In what way does Mulvey believe that cinema is particularly relevant to the discussion of the unconscious and pleasure etc.?
- cinema poses questions about the ways the uncon. (formed by the dominant order) structures ways of seeing and pleasure in looking
(NB: in essence because mainstream film coded the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order)
48
What does scopophilia mean in the way Mulvey uses it? What is the reverse?
- it means pleasure in looking
| - reverse is the pleasure in being looked at
49
How did Freud first theorise scopophilia?
- her associated it with being an active gaze in which pleasure was found by taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze
50
How does the circumstance of the cinema allow the audience to play on their voyeuristic fantasy?
- a hermetically sealed world is presented with indifferent to the presence of the audience
- the extreme contrast of darkness of the auditorium and brightness of the screen separates viewers from each other
- both mean the spectator is able to engage in the illusion of looking into a private world
51
In what way does scopophilia have a narcissistic aspect?
- a spectator wishes to recognise himself in the situations and characters etc.
52
Thus what are the two ways in which the cinema can produce pleasure for a viewer?
- the pleasure of using another person as an object of sexual stimulation
- identification of the ego with the object on the screen through the spectator's fascination with and recognition of his like
53
How has the active/ passive heterosexual division of labour controlled narrative structure according to Mulvey? What are the consequences?
- it means the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification
- thus, in the film the man progresses the narrative so the male audience can identify (and identify with a specifically idealised version of the ego - which is what a child recognises of themselves in Lacan's mirror stage) and then the woman is the 'spectacle' who has periods in which she is purely sexualised
54
Though the woman in cinema is pleasurable to watch as a sexual object - what does she also provoke a kind of anxiety?
Mulvey
- she connotes castration and thus unpleasure
55
How does the man escape the anxiety of the woman's connotations as a castrated male?
Mulvey
1. preoccupying themselves with re-enactment of the original trauma (ie. investigating the woman and demystifying her mystery)
2. complete rejection of the castration connotation by substituting the threat with a fetish object/ turning the whole figure into a fetish so it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous
56
What are the distinctive differences between the two methods through which a man can alleviate the anxiety that a woman (as a figure connoting the castrated man) stirs?
Mulvey
1. the first is voyeurism, and has associations with sadism ie. pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt and asserting control
2. the second is fetishistic scopophilia which builds the physical beauty of the object and transforms it into something satisfying in itself
57
What do 'cultural materialist' argue about 'the text'? Give two examples of cultural materialist scholars
- they argue that the literary commodity of 'the text' is inseparable from the context of its production ie. meaning that literature is implicated in the production of political meaning
- Alan Sinfield and Raymond Williams
58
In which year did the Gay Rights campaign begin?
1969
59
At the end of which century did 'the homosexual' as a type emerge?
- end of the 19th century
60
Why was queer a particularly good term to reclaim and use?
- because trans and non-binary people had already been grouped with homosexuals under the umbrella of 'dissident gender expressions' and thus to reclaim this grouping and make it into a community was empowering
61
Who made the link between urbanisation and gay culture, what did he say?
Michael Sibalis - "urbanisation is a precondition to emergence of a significant gay sub-culture"
62
In what sense was the 'Roman a Clef' used as a kind of 'lesbian counterplotting'?
- it was used as a satiric/ parodic mode of address that spoke uncomfortable truths from behind a fictional screen ie. they could embed autobiographical truths in a fictional register
- the form thus "circumvented the panoptic gaze of the obscenity legislation"
The layering of the textual and subtextual meanings meant that a process of coding took place in the writing and decoding occurred for the queer reader
63
Who made up 'the New York school of poets'? How did they approach contextual readings
- O'Hara
- John Ashberry
- James Skylar
- they developed similar context-specific ways of reading and writing
64
In which decades was same-sex desire more widely expressed and read? However, what kind of queer representation did the dominant culture allow for?
- 1940s/50s
| - queer representation had to be sad and self-hating
65
In the post-war period, where were gay men finding their pleasure, community, and a sense of identification?
- in Hollywood films and musical theatre
66
Why is Judy Garland such an icon for the queer community?
- in her films, Garland upheld the all-American standard of femininity
- in 1947 she had a breakdown and attempted suicide - this marked a fall from idealised normality
67
Why did 'West Side Story', and other musicals of the period have such resonance for the queer community?
- in WSS, Tony and Maria's longing for a place in a culture that wouldn't accept their love resonated strongly at a time when homosexuality couldn't be expressed
68
Why did the line 'get out before I kill you', from the film 'Mildred Pierce' become a kind of queer cultural shibboleth?
- Halperin theorised that it was because the film was soaked in such overwrought heterosexual sentimentality that it demanded a camp response ie. it was so ludicrously over-dramatised that it could only be processed through the same theatrical and dramatic lens
69
How can 'campness' be understood as a queer social critique?
- it ridicules the performed nature of hetero-normativity
70
Why does the queer subject have a formative relationship to inauthenticity?
- they are aware of how heteronormative society requires everyone to play a role
71
What impact did the French revolution have on the Romantics?
- as young adults they were confronted by political cataclysm
72
What did John Keats say a poet should work as?
- flags up both the spirit of equality in the Romantics
- stood in opposition to the idea that the poet was a dreamer, and actually spoke to the poet being grounded and pragmatic
a poet should work as 'a physician to all men'
| Keats himself had been a doctor
73
The Romantic period was considered a 'Revolutionary Age' - in the areas of science, technology, agriculture, industry, transport etc., why was this?
- revolutions transformed the map of Britain and ensured that much of the world would soon be mapped as belonging to the British Empire
74
Who had to 'price the human price of war'?
- it was often the ordinary people of Britain rather than the relatively privileged, poetry-buying elite
75
In which years of the Romantic period did recession and rocketing food prices crush labouring families but even many highly skilled workers or small tradesmen?
(what effect did this have on writing?)
1794-1796
1799-1801
- references to hunger/ nakedness that the modern reader can mistake as a metaphor can have bitterly literal resonances
76
In response to the situation of the French Revolution and bouts of famine etc., how did the poets (and thus the people of England), especially Coleridge respond to the PM, William Pitt, and the ruling class?
(who all represented positions of privilege and policies of repression)
- anti-Government posters and pamphlets which supplied an increasingly literate population with protest poems
77
What ideas regarding poetry, solitariness, and introspection were developed across the period?
- that poetry was suitable for solitary introspection
- such introspection is healthy
- human consciousness at its most vividly and intensely alive, is not a communal response to a shared experience but the isolated insight of an essentially individualised self
- introspection could be used as a atretegy for self-preservation in the emergencies at once political, moral, and psychological at the time
78
How did one's personal and public commitments align in the period?
- in light of the French Revolution, people were thinking about how communities, friendships and even loves of an intimately personal kind could support and be supported by one's larger commitments to class, nation, and humanity
79
What is the moment of 'epiphany' that James Joyce characterised as a trope in modernist writing (especially in their investigation of experience)?
- it is a sudden moment of "strange enchantment" when the consciousness divides and one acutely perceives a contrast between the mundane routine of a life of simplicity and this moment of transfiguration which appears to burst in from another realm
80
Why is one more likely to be confused after an experience of 'epiphany' rather than enlightened?
- via modernist interpretation, what is key about these experiences is the sense of their utter discontinuity with the world of the everyday and the language we use to describe it
81
What do Adorno and Heidegger have to say about the confusion experienced after the moment of epiphany and why confusion occurs?
- they believe that the individual is experiencing the non-traversable schism between the moment in which 'meaning' seems to be disclosed (which urges one to speak out about the world) and the moment in which one tries to articulate the significance of their current experience and thus comes to recognise the inadequacy of their current language
82
On what basis does Nietzsche critique epistemology?
- our claim to possess knowledge through concepts rests
on an implicit denial of the process of transference
ie. the aesthetic activity that
underlies all attempts by the subject to express how the world is
(the concepts we use to describe the world are metaphors that have forgotten that they have a metaphorical basis)
83
When was 'the meaning maintenance model' proposed?
2006
84
What does the meaning maintenance model propose?
- suggests that surreal and absurd art can be so unsettling that the brain reacts as if it is feeling physical pain
YET: it ultimately leads us to reaffirm who we are
AND: sharpens the mind as we look for new ways to make sense of the world
85
How does the concept of the meaning maintenance model relate to 'fluid compensation'?
- in order to mitigate the feeling of the absurd, we strengthen other beliefs and values - even those relating to a completely unconnected domain (retreating to a safe place in which things make sense) - this is fluid compensation
86
Who were the psychologists inspired by when they devised the meaning maintenance model? Why?
- the psychologists were inspired by Albert Camus
In The Myth of Sisyphus - he argues that the human mind continuously attempts to construct a view of reality as a singular, coherent whole
“nostalgia for unity”
87
When was the 'heyday' of poststructuralism?
1980s
88
Who was writing in the heyday of poststructuralism and who were they influenced by?
Michel Foucault
Gilles Deleuze
Jacques Derrida
- Nietzsche’s example
89
What did Nietzsche admire so much about Wagner?
He hoped his work (esp. Wagner’s operatic cycle, "The Ring of the Nibelung”) would revive the cultural paradise of Ancient Greece
(fusing Apollonian beauty and Dionysian savagery)
90
How might we align Wagner and Nietzsche to certain centuries?
Wagner embodied the nineteenth century, in all its grandeur and delusion; Nietzsche was the dynamic, destructive torchbearer of the twentieth
91
In what sense was Nietzsche vs. the Romantics?
- he rejected Romantic metaphysics
- he rejected the sublime longings of 19th century Romanticism
He also rejected the concept of historical progress that governed European thought since the Renaissance
- he found Hegel to be its most formidable advocate
92
What version of naturalism did Nietzsche ground himself in?
the post-Darwinian conviction that humans are an animal species, led by no transcendent purpose
93
What did Nietzsche's post-Darwinian conviction that humans are an animal species, led by no transcendent purpose lead to?
This turn yields some of his most profound ideas:
- the death of God
- the idea of the ‘eternal return’ ie. the framing of existence in terms of endlessly repeating cycles
- the will to power - which involves a ceaseless struggle for survival and mastery
94
What debate broke out between the two writers Obi Wali and Chinua Achebe after the 1962 African Writers of English Expression conference?
```
Obi Wali (a critic)
- argued that African literature in Western languages would become - “a minor appendage in the main stream of European Literature”
```
Chinua Achebe - argued against Obi Wali
suggested that using Western languages meant that Western audiences could be reached too - and that English could be Africanised to reflect their experiences
95
In what sense is 'Decolonizing the Mind' a useful conceptual tool?
- it is a tool through which to understand the ways in which power imbalances were practiced as culturally encoded automated reflexes
(Systems of domination and subordination are not always readily recognisable when not in official cultures ie. in interpersonal politics etc. )
96
How does Mukoma Wa Ngugi discuss the learning of English from his cultural background?
- English as a language was not just communicative, it was not just the language that can propel you through education and schooling etc., but it was the language of the cultured and the high class that was supposed to be aspired to and emulated
97
What ethnicity is the artist Neri Oxman?
Israeli-American
98
How does Neri Oxman characterise the effects of the Industrial revolution on design?
Since the Industrial Revolution - world of design has been dominated by rigours of manufacturing and mass production
the assembly line has trained designers into thinking about their objects as ‘assemblies’ of discrete parts with distinct functions
99
What does it mean for the artist Neri Oxman that she 'moves away from assembly and closer to growth' in her designs?
- she creates objects that function not by adding/ assembling additional parts - but by delicately varying the property of the material itself
100
Who wrote the most famous work discussing 'the sublime'?
Edmund Burke
101
What might we describe as typically 'Popeian' in relation to his pastoral works? (eg. Spring/ 1709: Pastorals)
- having almost hallucinatory overlaying of registers and landscapes
- crossing of the Classical mythology with natural, rustic imagery connected with 18th-century British woodland
(because he figures England as a site of a second Golden Age)
