via Academia, Not Edu — Medium.

Since we’ve just read Andrew Ross on “mental labor,” check out this short piece by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, a wonderful scholar of media and the “digital humanities,” about the relationship between academic publishing and for-profit platforms for disseminating such work.

Ferdinand de Saussure and Paul de Man are theorists of different epochs. Yet they focus on the same theme of linguistics. Saussure created the theory in the book Course in General Linguistics while de Man wrote an essay called “Semiology and Rhetoric.” Their theorist share many similarities. But, at the same time, there are many differences in both literary works.

Saussure, as well as de Man, agrees that linguistics should be focused on the structure of language itself and how they convey meaning instead of just the meaning itself. Saussure states that linguistics “never attempted to determine the nature of the object it was studying, and without this elementary operation a science cannot develop an appropriate method.” In this statement Saussure also asserts that the methods of linguistics fail to decipher language itself, and thus, new techniques should me developed. De Man says something similar; he says that: “The code is unusually conspicuous, complex, and enigmatic; it attracts and inordinate amount of attention and this attention has to acquire the rigor of a method.” In other words, de Man also agrees that linguistics needs to develop more techniques to study language. One minor difference in their ideals is that Saussure refers to the creation of a new science called semiology; de Man refers to focus on studying intrinsic formalism.

Another way in which these theorists agree is in the structure of language. Saussure defines language as a “system of signs.” Every sentence, phrase, and moreover, word is a sign. A sign in composed by a signified, the concept or idea, and the signifier, the sound-image. This is the most basic structure of language defined by Saussure. De Man talks about the same concept using the terms “form and content.” Form is language it self and how it convey meaning while content is the concept that we try to convey. When a word is spoken, the sound pups up an image in our heads that is connected to a concept.

However, Saussure and de Man disagree on the degree to which the function of signifier and signified is true.

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I would say that Ferdinand de Saussure’s interpretation of language (commonly referred to as semiotics) only agrees with Friedrich Nietzsche’s interpretation on the very base level. While both men agree that language is fundamentally used as a bridge between concepts and material objects to the communication of such amongst humans, the two have differing views as to the end result of what language brings.

Nietzsche’s analysis of language has its foundation on his exploration of human nature. He asserts that human beings are deceitful creatures that are full of nothing but lies, which ultimately permeates into language itself. Nietzsche states: “They are deeply immersed in illusions and dream-images; their eyes merely glide across the surface of things and see ‘forms’; nowhere does their perception lead into truth; instead it is content to receive stimuli and, as it were, to play with its fingers on the back of things,” (765). The argument of humans unable to understand or even see “truth” is rooted in the conflict of objectivity vs. subjectivity. As people, we often are unable to interpret occurrences beyond our own subjective viewpoint. What one person gathers when seeing (or hearing) something or someone may be different from another person’s interpretation of the exact same context. As a result of being confined to individual subjectivities (their “dream-images” and “forms”), human beings are thus unable to see the ultimate truth. An example of this is modern-day news media; most mainstream television news channels and newspapers have their own obvious political bias and agenda, implanting their subjective account of the news onto the masses, as opposed to informing them of the truth. Furthermore, this lack of objectivity permeates into language itself, especially its application by human beings. Nietzsche states how language is essentially full of lies, stating how “truth” is, “A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations which have been subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification, translation, and decoration, and which, after they have been in use for a long time, strike a people as firmly established, canonical, and binding; truths are illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which have become worn by frequent use and have lose all sensuous vigour, coins which, having lost their stamp, are now regarded as metal and no longer as coins,” (768). Nietzsche argues here that language has been buried by lies upon lies to the degree in which truth ceases to exist. Instead of gaining understanding of the material around us, language has only been used by humans to perpetuate metaphors, which by Nietzsche’s rationale only serve as “illusions”. Due to the saturation of metaphors within language, language itself ceases to have any meaning – it just becomes useless noise. The irony here is how language itself was created for the function of conveying and understanding the truth, but in practice has alienated us from it. As a result, language becomes arbitrary.

To reiterate, Saussure’s understanding of language is coined as semiotics. More specifically, this means that language is interpreted through a system of signs. The concept or material object/being that is being conveyed through language is referred to as the “signified”, while the linguistic term used to convey said concept or material is the “signifier”. When both the signified and signifier are joined together, a “sign” is created (853). Saussure best conveys this language dynamic when he compares the signifier and signified as two sides of one sheet of paper: “thought is the front and sound the back; one cannot cut the front without cutting the back at the same time; likewise in language, one can neither divide sound from thought nor thought from sound,” (857). In the relationship between the signifier and signified, without one the other is lost. Take the relationship between the term “car” and the physical object that the term signifies. Without the physical automobile, the term “car” would be rendered arbitrary and useless. Likewise, without the signifier of “car”, we as humans would be unable to convey to each other and understand what the physical automobile is. Thus, without the signifier, the signified ceases to exist – and vice-versa. This dynamic of language that comes from semiotics is precisely where Saussure contrasts from Nietzsche. From Nietzsche’s perspective, language is fundamentally built on lies, ultimately distorting and shielding us from seeing the truth. By contrast, Saussure’s view of language dictates that we can only understand the truth through language, and that language and material/concepts are bound together. Where Nietzsche believes that language is used for deceiving, Saussure asserts that language is used for discovery and understanding.

How might have Foucault’s enumerations of the consequences of the “new specification of individuals”  been received by Nietzsche? Would he have argued that it was a liberating move or have agreed that it was a repressive one? If the latter, what might be the means to liberation (for Nietzsche)?

Foucault’s “new specification of individuals” refers to the time in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries during which mad men and women, criminals, and homosexuals, yet defined as such, had to “make the difficult confession” as to “what they were” (1515). Foucault focuses on the individuation of sexualities beyond the scope of heterosexual monogamy. Foucault says that once these “scattered sexualities rigidified,” they were given form by being identified in age, place, and type (1520). Thus they were no longer alien but familiar. Although such definitions might be interpreted as recognition and progressive of the “other” and although the individuation of the “other,” once strange, might seem synonymous to the humanization of such a person, Foucault’s point is not to portray these two centuries as necessarily progressive, though, he  definitely agrees they are less prudish than the ones before. Foucault’s main argument is that the individuation and solidification of such sexualities led to the proliferation of centers dedicated to controlling and analyzing sex; sex, which used to be of a private nature became a public discussion by those intent on exerting power over the act of reproduction. Definitions meant boundaries and lines to-be-crossed, it did not mean liberation. Nietzsche would have agreed had he achieved immortality beyond the scope of the written word. However, Nietzsche would focus more on the effects of the newly architected language necessary to an efficient dialogue about sex and less on the insatiable curiosity of the doctors and psychoanalysts and the sexually charged power dynamics between clinician and patient.

According to Nietzsche, the definition of something (or someone, in this case) reached by a group of (or an individual of) the human species will only be accurate in relation to human beings; “truth” manifested by humans will be but a “metamorphosis of the world” (769). All we will ever achieve is the mutation of the Ding an sich, the thing itself. Here is the first problem: while we may apparently individuate the homosexual or the child masturbating by giving him a “case history,” a “childhood,” and so on, we never succeed in actually making him an individual, according to Nietzsche (and Saussure), because his identity depends on its difference or similarities to other individuals. The concept of the homosexual is never independent of the concept of the heterosexual. Thus, those in charge not only rob those who identify with a sexuality different from heterosexual but the heterosexual, himself, against whom few to none have harmful prejudices, as well. Of course, humans succeed in stripping identities from all things due to their “unconquerable urge to let themselves be deceived” (772).

  Furthermore, Nietzsche says that this ability of humans, to form schemata, defined by dictionary.com as “mental models of aspects of the world to facilitate the processes of cognition and perception,” makes possible the “creation of a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, definitions of borders, which now confronts the other, sensuously perceived, [animal’s] world as something firmer, more general, more familiar more human and hence as something regulatory and imperative” (768). It has been established that the recognition of the homosexual or the heterosexual as persons leads only to a “feeling of truth.” Nietzsche tacks on that this feeling is a dangerous and a repressive one. The conceptualization of aspects of the world creates for humans the idea that they have sought and successfully found a truth, when, in reality, the truth is a projection of the human being onto the world. Nonetheless, the familiarity with the “other” and the comradeship now established with the “other” allows the human being to believe he has the right to regulate the “other” due to his new understanding of it. He (or she) now knows best. (See: women’s bodies (abortion), people’s lives (the death penalty), and animals’ lives (food).

Foucault does not address what might liberate us and our sexualities from this increasingly repressive power, but perhaps language, just as it can imprison us, might liberate us too. Nietzsche writes: “whereas every metaphor standing for a sensuous perception is individual and unique and is therefore always able to escape classification, the great edifice of concept exhibits the rigid regularity of a Roman columbarium” (768). Nietzsche offers a leeway to be individual and unique, to be defined intrinsically, in and of ourselves. It is metaphor or myth for the Ancient Greeks (772). To relate this to our class discussion, liberation might be discovered in the word queer. An “anything is possible at any time” type of sexuality which leaves one to play with their imagination and penetrates the boundaries of static definition or of the conceptualization and thereby, de-individuation of something or someone (772). For Nietzsche, liberation is living in the uncertainty and embracing the unknowability of the world by creating illusions which we recognize as such and do not try to install into the memory of the human psyche as factual.

Fanon discusses racism in a explicit way but also very poetic in which a person goes into the inside layers of someone who’s a victim of racism. On page three he says, “…it was no longer a question of being aware of my body in the third person but in a triple person.” He then continues on to say, “I was responsible at the same time for my body, for my race, for my ancestors.” What Fanon is talking about is how he isn’t just representing himself, but his whole race and his past ancestors as well. He carries the weight of many and not just himself, hence why he calls himself a “triple person”.

Fanon writes about what many oppressed groups go through when it comes to racism. Reading Fanon’s work reminded me of the many racist encounters I’ve had and how I’m not just representing myself but my ethnicity and all the Muslims in the world. I remember my first encounter of racism back when I was in elementary school. I wasn’t called out for being a terrorist, but to apologize for what “my people did” because I was “responsible” for a crime that I didn’t do, but some group that has no connection to me besides a belief they pretend to follow. This essay also reminds me of the Japanese Americans in world war 2 who were victims of relocation camps because of racism. Fanon’s essay really awakens the reader about racism and how the oppressed are representing everyone, their ancestors, other people as well as themselves and for this reason they aren’t in control.

Fanon also points out that, “When people like me, they tell me it is in spite of my color. When they dislike me, they point out that it is not because of my color. Either way, I’m locked into the infernal circle.” This also shows how a person isn’t looked at for anything besides his/her race. They are always stuck with being perceived as their skin color and not who they are as a person. If a person does something good it’s because of their race, if they do something bad it’s also because of their race.

Fanon says in his work, “I am guilty. I do not know of what, but I know that I am no good.” This is an example of internalized racism, of self hate in someone who has dealt with racism, with ignorance, with stereotypes. This remind me of all those years when I would apologize on every anniversary of 9/11 in elementary, middle and high school. I felt guilty for something I never did, however I felt obligated to apologize, to prove to people that I am not the stereotype. I remember reading a book about the Japanese Americans in world war 2 in my Asian american literature class and the children would lie to people saying their Chinese, hiding who they were. The would apologize when someone bumped into them, when someone pushed them, and it was all because of the guilt. This guilt that so many people have because of the racism built in, because of how the world has perceived them and this is exactly what Fanon shows as well.

In conclusion, Fanon’s work was one of my favorite mainly because I can relate. He shows racism and he shows the depth of emotions one has because of it. He shows how a person isn’t an individual but a representation for everything in the past and the present.

Jonathan Culler wrote our class’ introduction to the wide spectrum of ‘Literary Theory’. One of the first ideas we were made to grasp is the acceptance that a theory, or the theories we would learn within this class, are much more than just hunches or hypothesis. They are much more complex ideas that come from various factors of the theory’s focus. They are based off of the thoughts and writings of others, which is why they vary. However, literary theories go beyond just literature and become their own genres and subjects as they become a part of the theorist and idea it’s presenting.

Nietzsche proposed his theory that language as a whole cannot be trusted, almost cancelling out or discrediting past works of theoretical analysis. The true traitors are the perception of the theorizer, because of our individual ability to process and pick apart the world around us, thus making one theory by one person make no sense to another because of that individual thought process. Saussure had an interesting thought that reminded me of Nietzsche’s because it also had to do with individual perception, particularly how and why we identify and explain the world around us. Saussure proposes that we see the world through a ‘signifier’ and a ‘signified’, or how we associate sounds, images and the world around us as a whole according to our understanding of it. This could be exemplified by the words or names we use to describe or refer to the things, places and feelings we see, experience and feel. Yet another theory based off of perception, Nietzsche and Saussure approach the idea of literary theory with a challenging explanation to it. Can we really trust ourselves to articulate our theories completely? Poetics forms another challenge, as Jakobson also explains how poetics can be understood and articulated by several different people in several different ways.

We move past just literature and individual perception, as verbal communication is not the only way theory is composed. Saussure’s theory was how we verbalize what we see, but Barthes’ is how we react to what we see. He uses political figures’ portraits as an example. Not only does this show how judgmental people can be based off appearance but also how we analyze the appearance and associate that appearance with our own perceptions of what looks ‘trustworthy’. Which brings us to Johnson’s analysis of the characters of Billy Budd. The characters and plot contradict themselves as it sets up readers to believe that certain characters are ‘good’ while others are ‘bad’, only to make the characters’ actions contradict their goodness or untrustworthiness. Johnson’s analysis is how we react to what we know or what we’ve been told. The discrepancies between the known and the shown.

Marx takes us into society and the real world with his theory of relations within society. His ideology is that society imposes rules and regulations on people that cause them to act as the society wants them to. With a large number of people following society’s expectations, few act out of lines, Marx labels this as “queer”. Marx penetrates the surface and analyzes what materials are manifested to us and shows us how the same literary analysis and unpacking of a novel can happen with labor. He believes that the relationship is based off of alienation, the distance between a worker and its product. This alienation comes from things such as assembly lines that make it impossible for one person in particular to completely construct and finish a product. It also comes from the alienation caused by wages because it puts an association between your being and worth with the money you make. A more common example of this would be a prostitute. Gramsci focuses on a similar analysis having to do with society and its constructs, particularly the organic and traditional features of a society. What keeps a class together, as well as where the class came from and what remains of that past.

Literary theory moves far passed just novels and essays, looking deeper into the consciousness of how people think, react and feel towards things in a whole. These reactions and thoughts work in control of a society and one individual’s perception as opposed to another’s. So how do we decipher a theory? A theory may only be able to be deciphered one person at a time.

Looking at the term “Alienation” from work in the passages of Karl Marx and Andrew Ross what does this term mean to them and how does it apply to the workers in their respected eras? How does this term evolve or change from Marx’s time to the more present time of Ross?

Marx’s alienation was about people receiving wages for labor hours.The hours of labor in production gets the worker money, which alienates the worker from what they have made.”In conditions dealt with by political economy this realization of labour appears as loss of reality for the workers; objectification as loss of the object and object-bondage; appropriation as estrangement as alienation”(653) Marx is talking about how we lose a sense of what we are making when we do not make the entire object. For example in the assembly line each worker has their own specific part of the construction of the object, and they are masters at that one task in the larger project. This causes the worker to feel far removed from the overall production of the object. It also points out that this labor that is put into making this object can not afford you the object. The worker in this industrialized world makes a fraction in labor of what they are producing. Both of these factors cause the worker to feel alienated from their work.

For Ross the term alienation for workers in the technology industries is non existent. “In return for the opportunity to purse personally gratifying work, the liberated individuals takes over, from state institutions or company organizations, all responsibility for his or her economic survival and welfare.(2584) Ross is saying that the new model of workers are thought of as artists in the work are not alienated. This meaning they are more free to handle their work by self managing themselves with little supervision. The work place became not something that was seeking to increase production but to bring a sense of ownership back to the worker. The worker is now more responsible for helping their company because they are in control of their work. The investment that the individual puts into their work will decide if the company will be successful or will fail causing them to be in control of their financial income.

The term alienation changes from the Marx’s perspective of the workers being alienated from the objects they make, how they make them and ownership of their labor; to Ross’s perspective of the worker not being alienated from their work because they have a much greater connection to it.  The assembly line in this post industrialized era does not work in relation to the internet industries. Therefore the work is more “gratifying” because the individual chooses it and they do not need a supervisor or anyone else help in the completion of their work. “The creative entrepreneur is no longer alienated; there are no structures to be alienated from.”(2584) The industrial structure of Marx’s time no longer restricts the technology industries because there are no set rules to follow. Since we are producing meaningful work without the structure that alienated the worker before it allows us to reclaim ourselves as individuals. This means the safety net has been taken away. There is no job security therefore you are solely responsible for maintaining and finding new work. All the great benefits that people get from alienated work such as 401k health care and so on is not available to the newly liberated individuals working in this unalienated jobs.

Drawing from ideas of different arguments, what would be the best solution to “Alienation” in mass production? First describe what it is according to Marx and be able to use examples.

According to Marx’s theory on political economy, workers become a “powerless commodity” and are then alienated by the laws of production, lead by the ruling class. He, the worker, gets no say as to what goes into the product or how it is made, and is instructed in detail on what to do with the parts provided. He becomes less a part of the product by industrialization because he is not allowed creativity, and so becomes the mode of production itself. This opens up to his argument that political economists have created alienation to the worker in three forms: process, wages, and accessibility by the mode of mass production. The consumer, I argue is also alienated then, by his concept of the “queer commodity” in which the consumer knows nothing of the labor by focusing on the “use” and “exchange” values and neglecting the “real” labor values. So, as the consumers disconnected from labors of the product, the workers of labor are conversely disconnected to the product itself. The propertyless worker is unacknowledged and his labor is demanded unfairly. When the worker feels closer to the product, alienation is less persistent.

In occupations today, access to products has become a little easier to the new type of worker because materialism is popular, especially among young workers. For a lot of these materialistic products of brands, showing it off means having it all. People of the middle and lower class have also accustomed to this type of materialistic attitude by the desire to consume the newest and latest, speaking from personal experience. Companies, who are well aware of this trend, have created rules to enforce the use of “employee discounts” as a way to assure that workers are spending their hard earned money towards the company. A smart tactic to keep their money flowing within and outside of the company. Ross also mentions that in the new political economy,

“…play and recreation [is] encouraged in the workplace because [the workers are] perceived to add value to the work product. Employees [are] encouraged to work as and when the spirit [takes] them.” (pp. 2583).

I instantly thought of the retail workers who can most probably relate to Ross’s observation of the new worker’s environment. Though the worker of this sort does not take part in making the product persae, they do become more invested with selling the products and are forced to advertise by being consumers too. The workers have to become models and trained advertisers of the brand. It is then easier to invest oneself into the work when they feel as though they are the faces of the company. The distinguished parts of production: product making and product selling become important when considering alienation. By allowing some access or sometimes enforcing it and paying higher wages, alienation becomes less prominent in new workers and new artists who are the product sellers.

Comparable to Ross’s observation, early philosophers who searched for the meaning of life thought the love for a craft (like art) is crucial for knowing one’s purpose. It was thought by some that everyone is born to do something they are good at in order to contribute to society in some way. People are to spend their lives in search of that craft and become the best at it. However, as Ross mentions, powers higher than the young worker who has found his/her craft is exploited by enforced commitments, responsibilities, and wage agreements in contracts. The agreement is to do work within the department of (name craft) for little to no pay, while also receiving less of the credit for any successful outcomes. Since it is required to have hours of experience, the creative and innovative artist too becomes a powerless commodity. Alienation though, is less severe because of the love for the craft aspect.

Blog #2 Nietzsche

The honest divine truth behind the intellectual which derives them as other than then non intellectual is the natural tendency to steer clear of “wearing the masks worn by most, which consists of lying, cheating, speaking behind the backs of others, keeping up appearances, living in borrowed finery, the drapery of convention”. The intensity of the description of human nature sounds way more harsh than the actuality of what he describes, all these horrific sounding things are completely normal-and really necessary in order to function in society without being labeled “crazy” “rude” “standoffish” etc. The extent to which people play into these roles is contingent on the environment as well as their own relationship with themselves. This leads to Nietzsche’s next point, of the individuals wishes to preserve himself on relation to other individuals, “in the state of nature he mostly used thus intellect for concealment and dissimulation; however because of necessity and boredom also lead men to want to live in societies and herds, they need a peace treaty”. Therefore these masks and compromises within ones “self” to co exist with other “self’s” there is an unspoken peace treaty of agreeing to disagree without letting the other know they do not agree. Ironic. What if the fake agreement-really meant these individuals agreed in the first place? And, because they were conditioned to think a certain way because of unspoken rules-it lead them to put on one of these masks for no reason. Confusing myself with my own point, in this the point Nietzsche was making to begin with? “Everything which distinguishes human beings from animals on this ability to sublimate sensuous metaphors into a schema, in other words, to dissolve an image into concept” IE human beings feel emotion toward their actions, which are generated from want and need, rather than acting out of primal necessity of needing only.

When speaking of the waking human being from Greek Mythology this hits-“the artisan who dreams 12 hours he is king is as happy as the king who dreams 12 hours he is an artisan” (who sleeps 12 hours?) But the point is human beings are happy to live in their dream world or as my mom, bf and grandma love to tell me “lala land”. To enchant oneself with happiness is a human trait-and what is wrong with being happy?

The intellectual’s ability to work on the same task as labors with a different approach than their usual dull-spirited attitude of servitude does not maker them less of a man, at all. To be happy with the job, given the exact same tools and feel content is a beautiful thing.

For a change of pace and to help focus our exam review, please follow the following prompt for Blog Post #5, due Tuesday 10/27:

Put yourself in my shoes and write a plausible essay question for the exam. Then put your own shoes back on and answer it. Some suggestions:

1. The question should require one to marshal evidence from more than one writer we’ve read.
2. Ideally, the question should require an argument to answer it. So it should not ask for description or regurgitation, but for taking a position on something.
3. The question should need a substantial response to adequately deal with it: maybe 1000 words, on the long end of our usual blog posts.

Have fun with it!