Once upon a time, between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Age of Reason, the church was the dominant ideological state apparatus by which the bourgeois could control the masses, but, as Eagleton declares, the church’s influence was near to none or, at least, “in deep trouble” during the mid-victorian period and being replaced by another ISA (2140). In listing the ways in which the church had formed an efficient and all-encompassing ISA, Eagleton, perhaps consciously or not, echoes Louis Althusser, his contemporary, and his enumerations of the different ISAs, their audience, and the ways in which each functions. 

Both, Althusser and Eagleton, believe that an ideological apparatus replaced the church, but they disagree on which ISA succeeded in replacing it. Eagleton says Literature whereas Althusser argues that it was the School. Althusser asserts that the ISA of “Good Books” or literature is just as powerful as the church, the family, and other less influential and wide-reaching apparatuses than the School. Literature, according to Althusser, is a supplement to the dominant ideological apparatus of the School (1347). Indeed, literature is only a subject of the many which students are required to study, and Althusser suggests that even arithmetic and the sciences as subjects promote the ruling ideology (1346). Moreover, Althusser asserts that the School is essential to a well-functioning, meaning, controlled capitalist society because it can dictate who fits where in the social strata, whose body performs which labor; each level of education is relative to the type of work one does. Thus, the government can rule over the job market without ruling; whereas, Eagleton associates the effects of controlling and incorporating the working class to English literature (1347; 2141). As a result, I agree with Althusser in that the school is the dominant ISA. The obligation of going to school to be taught a government-mandated curriculum reduces the individual’s autonomy and subjects him to the State’s dominant ideologies, and such an implicit ISA succeeds in a capitalist society —allegedly laissez-faire — because it efficiently advertises itself as the road to unique thought and, as a result, manages to teach an essentially “voluntary” audience only one way to think (1347).

While I agree with Althusser on what is the current dominant ISA, Eagleton’s English is more analogous to the Church than the School, and, replaced a part of it that the latter could not and cannot. Each, the Church and Literature, serves an imaginary doctrine and transforms it into something palpable. They both tell consuming stories to achieve a smooth swallowing of their ideologies. They are “closed to rational demonstration.” (2141). Each succeeds in persuading people to accept the invitation into their fictional, but self-materialized worlds. Both have a nature of choice on the part of the member. In contrast, the School demands its audience “eight hours a day for five or six days out of the seven” (1347). Furthermore, due to its rational approach to teaching —where right is right and wrong is wrong — the School fails to create much of a fictional, dream-like world in which one is lost and which one believes to be as true as anything, and instead creates an allegedly “factual” world; allegedly factual because this world is only correct and universal in States governed by the same ideologies. They are not “absolute.” (2141).

The requirement of teaching conformity reminds me of a scene in the Dead Poets’ Society where the principal asks Robin Williams’ character, John Keating, a professor, what exactly was the demonstration outside in which a handful of students fell into stepping in unison after a little while of walking around the square. Professor Keating explains that it was an illustration of the dangers of conformity; he was teaching the students to think for themselves, believing that school is supposed to teach such lessons. The principal, outraged, demands that he stick to the curriculum and the system because it gets them into ivy leagues and it works. They are too young to think for themselves.

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If you walk in the shoes of a labor worker, life would be very differently perceived than the life of a businessman. The businessman probably has a more optimistic view on life, particularly the economic basis of life whereas the worker shows how hard it is economically. The worker isn’t in complete control since he/she only works on one part of the process and even then they don’t have a  voice on the product or the outcome of their work, they are told by the bigger boss on what to do. This leads to alienation and disconnection from not just work but other aspects in life. As Marx puts it, “…capitol is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society. To the out-cry as to the physical and mental degradation, the premature death, the torture of over-work, it answers: Ought these to trouble us since they increase our profits? But looking at things as a whole, all this does not.” Marx really gets into the eyes of a laborer who works through sweat and blood and in the end still be alienated.

Even though the worker is alienated, if it weren’t for the worker, the owner wouldn’t be in control and wouldn’t be successful. Marx gives an example saying that, “the slave-owner buys his labourer as he buys his horse. If he loses his slave, he loses capital that can only be resorted by new outlay in the slave-mart.” This shows how dependent owners are of workers. For example, Apple relies on factories to create their products and even though the workers aren’t in control of the product or the idea of it, if it weren’t for them there wouldn’t be any products to sell. The same goes for any other company as well. In this way, the worker is in a way in control for it’s because of his labor that there is a business and for it he gets paid. Marx points out that, “the establishment of a normal working-day is the result of centuries of struggle between capitalist and labourer.” What this means is that, despite the two being dependent on each other, the two do clash because of the difference of positions. The laborer is at the bottom because of economic difference and so there will always be a struggle.

Another thing I would like to point out is that even though while we live in a modern capitalist world, we still are very much still part of the past in our way of labor. As Marx puts it, “…thanks to the development of capitalistic production, agrees, i.e., is compelled by social conditions, to sell the whole of his active life, his very capacity for work, for the price of the necessaries of life…” This shows that yes we have rights for labor workers and we pay them, workers are still much slaves to the system, they put in all their energy to work and get paid very little in return. They’re chained to their work and yet still alienated.

In conclusion, if it weren’t for the creator of a product there would be no company, however if it weren’t for the worker there would be no product. But there’s still divisions between the two, and the worker will still be alienated since he/she is only doing one part of the whole process whereas the owner is in control of everything.

Marxist’s idea of alienation can be applied to the contemporary world using the idea of process of production and set wages. By simply identifying the types of labor induced in productivity, and by not only paying attention to the workers in factories, but also looking to the distributors of a given product we get similar patterns toward the inauthentic interactions involved in the point of product exchange. The salesperson is asked to carry along the spirit and express the experience, without actually necessarily having a particular liking of it at all. It is a live advertisement. I wonder, though, if it is possible that the increased consumerism by today’s workers is a way to void this affective alienation by becoming connected to a product almost spiritually in order to relate it to the way that the product is advertised. Not that the workers then become “fortuitous” in any sort, but in fact that the workers invest in attempt that is not beneficial to the worker and instead helps the income of the producer.

Salespeople are figures shaped to convince and persuade an audience to buy products they have no relationship to, and is not included into the process of making the product, thereby does not themselves understand the framework of productivity. More often than not they have to present the “perfect” product they do not themselves own. However, companies are starting to realize that some accessibility should be granted to the distributor. This sort of detachment from a product can be detrimental to our wage because there now exists a society of increasing consumerism, with advertisements to the workers so they that they are not only the worker, they are too the consumer.

We make the factory function by producing their goods or distributing the product; we are as a union the mode of production. Our paychecks are a planned expense to the company, but we want what we can have, and so we still focus on the paycheck. Moreover, we are not only the mode of production for the companies, but we too are the consumers. I like the idea of using consumerism as an example of the Marxist theory and bring to light that over recent years, consumerism has reached its peak by focusing on the changing culture of consumerism especially toward products of technological advancement that is continuous.

“The only wheels political economy sets in motion are avarice and the war amongst the avaricious – competition” (pp.652).

Extra thought:
It would probably come strange to Marx the obsession that had evolved over consumerism across all classes that has become possible through engines like the media, an intelligently thriving business transaction. Even celebrities today have managed to convince people the brad is the experience. I think this can even relate to create brands of their name, enough to invest money, time, and other types of devotion. The idea that fandom and brands have a way of enact certain behaviors, like waiting all night on a line for a pair of Jordan sneakers or the iPhone 6S. The consumer is drawn to popularity and to the idea of owning a specific product not all can afford rather than its actual value of functionality, and they even come to believe that the quality is better than another’s because of the value price it is given. Brands evoke a sort experience that matches exactly what it advertises, but may just be imaginary.

As described by Marx commodity is “an external object, a thing which through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind.”  He furthers by describing it as “a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties” (663). Commodity, as the average consumer may view it, far exceeds just the simple physical qualities of the commodity, use-value. Commodity has three values; the use-value may be dictated by the physical attributes of a certain commodity and how it may be applied to human use; the produce value, may be dictated by the labour that is put into the commodity, time and effort; the exchange value is the quantitative value of the commodity, or simply the cost of it.

This is all so relevant because we have become what Marx calls a “consuming nation.” Our entire culture relies on commodities and consumption. The issue with commodities lies within the workers. It has become so that the worker-labourer, who produces becomes lost in the product. That a worker’s value is “reduced to a quantity” (Allred). And because of this there lies a form of alienation from the product, the process and the wage. Now understanding commodity, how it works, who is involved and what it and their value may be is good but then the question becomes what does that have to do with English?

During a lecture Professor Allred quoted someone saying, “Theory is a set of writing that is used outside the boundaries for which it was intended.” So the question still remains, how may we then apply Marx interpretation of commodity and the value of the producer to literary analysis?

In 1967, a french literary critic by the name of Roland Barthes wrote an essay titled “La Mort de L’auteur” or The Death of an Author. His essay argued that when critiquing literature one need not care for the intention or biographical influences of the author. He argued that interpretation of a text may be evaluated on the text and text alone. Many people have debunked this theory but it still exists. A case such as this may be seen as a parallel of the Marx’s commodity theory. A literary text is commodity and we as the critics are the consumer. The value of the commodity, or interpretation, may not simply be determined for our use of it. One must delve deeper and review the workers labour, or author’s intention, when interpreting the commodity. To review a text alone, without author intent, would be to lose sight of the author and is similar to reducing the author to a quantity.

In this reading Louis Althrusser expands upon Marxist “Theory of the State” by adding to the definition of the repressive State apparatus and also adding a new term called ideological state apparatus. The repressive state apparatus is used by the people in power to control the people in the society.  The keyword being repressive meaning to repress the people to follow the rules that are imposed. Althrusser says this is done by ” The state functions by violence.”(1341)  He states this is done by the government, the army, the police, but you can also add on to this with the FBI and CIA and all other agencies that have access to people who can use deadly force or controls them. An example of this could be during the 1992 Los Angles Riots where the National Guard was called in to restore the natural order of society. This was done by violence and force to physically restrain and stop people.

Althrusser gives us his definition of ideological state apparatus which is the people are control by different ideologies. These ideologies are based upon religion, education, communication, culture, legal. This meaning the churches, the schools. Here we have some very distinct differences on how these State apparatus ‘s work. The first way they differ is that the repressive State apparatus is in a public domain whereas the ideological State apparatus is in a private domain.  This public domain means how it sounds, the use at this time was only in public where the state could impose violence upon it’s citizens. The private domain controls people with what there are being taught by religion, or by school, or ruled by their own culture. The next big difference Althrusser identifies to use is that the repressive State apparatus uses violence but ideological State apparatus uses these private domains to keep rule of the dominant power.  For example if we refuse to go to church we become outcast in our community that will not accept us in society. Therefore to be apart of this community we must follow the dominant powers ideology of going to church and being brainwashed to think and act the way they want you. The fear of being outcast is what makes ISA work. On the other hand the fear of violence is how RSA works. They both work in a similar way of keeping order and the status quo. I just find these two concept very interesting in relation to our lives today. Social media is the predominant means for imposing these rulers on us. We see images, watch videos, read articles on the internet that are controlled by the dominant power to spread their ideology. We see the RSA being overtaken by the ISA through the outrage of the powers at be killing innocent people. The use of ISA through social media and through news shows us that the violent force imposed onto the society by police will not be tolerated any longer. Not to be mistaken the RSA and ISA work together but my point meaning that this knowledge of what the ISA were doing to people was not documented to the point we have now where cameras are so readily available. It overall makes the ISA have to think more rationally when imposing their will onto others because they are actually being held accountable for their actions.

In his essay, Paul de Man talks about intrinsic and extrinsic criticism in terms of inside and outside. Intrinsic criticism is focused on form as the outside and content as the inside (). On the other hand, extrinsic criticism is focused on content as the outside form as the inside (). His means that intrinsic criticism is about analyzing the language itself without emphasis on the meaning while the extrinsic criticism is exactly the opposite. De man says that American literature has to return to intrinsic criticism, but moreover, he states that language must be seen from a different perspective: language can be syntagmatic and pragmatic at the same time. This is a paradoxical statement that seems incoherent at first glance but proofs to be a very interesting theory.

The syntagmatic and pragmatic characteristics of language are described as grammar and rhetoric by Paul de Man. De Man says this when talking about semiology. He says “one of the most striking characteristics of literary semiology is the use of grammatical (especially syntactical) structures conjointly with rhetorical structures (de Man 1368). That is to say that the syntagmatic structures of language are what is described as grammar by semiology; the pragmatic characteristics of language is what semiology describes as rhetoric. It is important to highlight that rhetoric I define as “the study of tropes and figures” (de Man 1368).

According to de Man, grammar refers to the structure of the language itself. Additionally, grammar also refers to the syntactical relationship of signs and logic. Also it has to convey a meaning both “locutionary” and “illocutionary”.  The locutionary part of grammar is the sentence while illocutionary is the tone of the sentence” “ordering, questioning, denying…” The illocutionary part of grammar seems to be a direct transition to rhetoric (de Man 1369).  Rhetoric refers to how one sentence can have more than one meaning and each of these meanings can be “mutually exclusive” (de Man 1370); this is the work of metonymies and metaphors. More importantly, rhetoric allows us to understand which meaning we should choose.

Grammar and rhetoric are very complex ideals to understand. Let’s look at the following example: In a conversation between two individuals, one of them says, “What did you just said!” Grammatically, this could mean two things: “I am very surprised by what you said” or “what you just said annoyed me.” However the illocutionary tools of grammar cannot help us decide which content is used in the conversation. Only through the means of rhetoric we can understand which definition is the correct. Yet, it does not mean that a text is rhetorical when one meaning is right and the other is wrong in a particular situation. As de Man states “The grammatical model of the question becomes rhetorical …when it is impossible to decide by grammatical or other linguistic devices which of the two meaning (that can be entirely incompatible) prevails” (de Man 1371). That is to say, that the rhetorical component is what help us find the meaning that prevails through other means that are not grammatically. It is something that is beyond the sentence content may include a whole paragraph or even the whole book.

Franz opens his essay with a racial slur to show his audience just how easily a human being can be put into an objectified state. His opening exclamation can remind us of times where someone could have easily have been saying things such as, “Look, a train!” or “Look, a _____”, as we often times do when an object captures our attention, or we want to bring others’ attentions to it. His unnamed speakers throughout his paper give the general effect that emphasizes how often this type of objectification occurs and how many people took part. It gave it a type of casualness, as it was during the time he was experiencing it.

When Fanon speaks about himself being a ‘third person’ or having that effect in his life, he is referring to the objectification warping the mind of the black men. He is conscious of his body in a way that it creates a certain uncertainness of his own movements because his body physically becomes his main attention because of the attention that the ‘white world’ gives it. He is under scrutiny and therefore becomes hyper aware of his own body, not only in the physical, but metaphorical sense. He talks about how the movement against this ‘white world’ caused him to live under a stronger scrutiny, which would make any person in such a serious and stressful position aware of the spotlight they are under.

The difference between white and black being based completely on physical appearance is what causes this stress on the actual color of the narrator and his people. He reflects on this when he speaks of laboratories and doctors trying to create ‘whitening’ practices in order to help the ‘Black’ change to ‘White’ in the literal sense. This goes beyond self-consciousness as the twistedness of such an absurd situation could make someone try to be ashamed of the color of their skin. Not only is the actual color being scrutinized, but the character and history of the ‘black’ people are being put into a negative perspective just based off the word “negro”. This splits the person into a “triple person” as every aspect of the being is picked apart and analyzed and in this case, all with negative connotations. This left the being cursed by these connotations of their body, their culture and their history. Every part of them neatly cut into pieces that could be ripped apart and negated.

Fanon does discuss other discriminated groups, such as the Jewish. He believes that there is a significant difference between the discrimination the Jewish face and the discrimination that the African American do. His difference is explained by the fact that the Jewish are white, there is no outer indication of their religion, unless they are outwardly representing it, but they must be ‘found’, while the black man is pointed out and cannot even be considered found, but identified, making the skin an indicator or scarlet letter of sorts. Their own skin is betraying them, and they have nothing to hide from being identified (unless they are light skinned). He is “overdetermined from without” (page 5) by the fact that he is stripped of his own individuality and cut down by the perspective of the world around him, slicing away pieces of his humanity so that they can see him as they believe him to be. Nothing more or less of their expectations and ideas of a black man.

Fanon’s essay puts the idea and connotations of ‘black’ in a ‘white’ world into perspective of readers as he examines what it is for him to be black in a world where language is used against his entire race in order to brand him, take away his individuality and doom him. It is disgustingly sad to think that such a time existed in any world and caused any person to feel the way Fanon expressed his emotions.

I was thinking about how to talk about the except from Capital that we’ll be discussing tomorrow, the famous riff on the “fetishism of commodities.”  And I thought about commercials, naturally, especially the amazing Apple ads in the first decade of the 2000s, that push Marx’s notion of the commodity as “fetish” to an extent that he scarcely could have imagined:

Apple COMPLETE iPod “Silhouette” ad campaign compilation (2004-2008)

Uploaded by Tech World Newss on 2014-04-23.

And I really wanted to show the one with disembodied hands playing “Heart and Soul” on a virtual keyboard on an iPad, but all I can find are hundreds of people offering to teach us how to do it ourselves.  I’ll leave it to you to figure out what Marx would say about YouTube:

Apple iPad Mini Commercial Song – Heart and Soul

After watching the iPad Mini ad, I decided to try to play that myself. I got my iPad 2, learned the song from watching the ad repeatedly, and videotaped me playing it.

Finally, here’s a spoof of the original commerical that performs a bit of “ideology critique” by way of satire:

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And of course no discussion of Marx and Apple would be complete without a discussion, at least glancingly, of the way Apple’s products embody both the “fetishization” process and the grim face of the “alienation of labor” that Marx examines in Philosophical and Economic Manuscripts of 1844.  This report from China Labor Watch from 2012 gives some sense of how, as Marx and Engels put it in the mid-19thC, the “animal becomes human, the human becomes animal” today.

First off, I want to say I’ve really enjoyed reading your posts.  Keep up the good work on that.  And don’t forget to look at the study questions available via the homepage as you read.

Second, although Marx is the oldest writer we’ll be reading this term and might be thought to be irrelevant after the post-89 collapse of the Soviet Union and many supposedly “Marxist” governments around the globe, one finds Marx everywhere these days, and not only among left-leaning humanities scholars in the academy.

One notable such place is the wonderful publication Jacobin, a relatively new magazine/site that is infused with Marxist modes of thought/practice, a global perspective, and a youthful vibe that shows the deep relevance of Marxist ideas in our moment of looming ecological catastrophe and ever-increasing inequality.

Another is the awesomely comprehensive collection of Marx’s and Marxists’ work at marxists.org, which collates a deep, deep trove of e-texts and distributes them for free.

For those interested in taking a deeper draught from Capital than the Norton gives you, CUNY’s own David Harvey has made available his classic lectures/discussions that walk through all three volumes of Capital.  For when you have a few hundred hours of free time.  And that’s not counting doing the actual reading.

Ferdinand De Saussure’s analysis of language alludes to Nietzsche’s theory on lying and human’s false cognitive truths, though Saussure’s theory took the analysis one step further than Nietzsche’s, they are relatively one in the same. Saussure’s theory, like Nietzsche’s, explains how humans attempt to use an arbitrary system based on sound or language to capture the tangible and make it intangible for learning and speech purposes. The words that Saussure uses while theorizing is Signified and Signifier. Where the Signifier is the sound or written word and the signified is the concept that is lent to the sound. The actual object or “ding un sich” is referred to as the referent. A signifier may not exist without a signified or rather lacks meaning without a signified. And while a signified may exist the meaning of a signified may change between persons and context. The relationship that exists between the two are considered arbitrary relationships and are only as real as they are made. Nietzsche elaborates on his theory by explaining how value is equated with signification. Nietzsche says, “(1) of a dissimilar thing that can be exchanged for the thing of which the value is to be determined; and (2) of similar things that can be compared with the thing of which the value is to be determined” (858). In this case, the signified is being exchanged for a signifier or a word is being exchanged for a meaning. The value is determined by the sender and receiver or group of persons in discussion. The idea that is lent to a word is not fixed, it is capable of being exchanged so long as it is stated that it is being exchanged. In this way language is very much like money.

Saussure explains that money and language are similar in the ways that they can be exchanged for similar or dissimilar things. Money may be exchanged for something of a fixed quantity. Something such as a bag of apples may be purchased for $3.00. While you may also go to another country and exchange a U.S. dollar for the equivalent $16.90 Pesos (in Mexico). If one wanted to delve deeper into the comparison of money and words one could also argue that language and money are alike in that they are both the Signified. Like words, money means nothing without the signifier behind it. In this case each country has an amount of gold that signifies how much their dollar, peso, pound, rupee, etc. is worth. The referent is gold, the dollar is the signified and the signifier is the value we put with a dollar. Money and language are alike in many ways. In both cases we have signifiers and a signified and we also have exchanges and arbitrary equivalents.