Ray Nipper 

Hortense J. Spiller  “Mama’s baby Papa’s maybe” 

From the beginning Spiller goes into alot of the demeaning nicknames often tossed at African-American women. She brings up terms like “Peaches” or “Brown sugar”.  She refers to herself as being a marked woman. She writes alot about the Moynihan report and the lambasting it essentially gave to the black community.  The report according to Spiller makes the claim that the black community pretty much has no fathers at all. Moynihan makes the assertion that blacks essentially cannot fit into the vision that america has for it’s families. As if space was ever made for them to begin with. 

     She feels that the report not only dehumanizes blacks but it almost has this dissolution of gender in black families. She argues that according to this report that ethnicity is a driving force of the issues facing the black community. As if there issues were inherent. Moynihan argues that there is a sort of pathology that stifles the progress of African-Americans. 

     Spiller believes this report allows individuals like moynihan to in a way apply a sort of mythology to blacks. She goes on to mention barthes with his writings on  the signifier. She believes moynihan is essentially projecting his ideals and abstractions onto african americans. She feels that the bodies of black youth are pretty much turned into tools. They are forced into becoming political tools. The body then becomes more of a thing than a human. 

     I believe spiller makes some good points. Her essay points out the dehumanization of the moynihan report and US history at large. She argues that the bodies of blacks become “Captive” in a way. I don’t believe she is robbing them of autonomy however. I feel it’s similar to Fanon’s essay.  There does seem to be this sort of conflict of self-image vs public perception. Where one has to wrestle with how they are treated with how much they perceive their own self-worth. And when these two things aren’t consistent is can lead to a ton of internal issues. 

     She writes alot about slavery towards the end. Which gives me the idea that she’s addressing the african-american experience as a whole. She argues that blacks experience  a sort of “Collective humiliation” due to how they are often given insulting nicknames in society. Also due to the way in which their behaviors or supposed failings are instantly perceived as pathologies. 

Ray Nipper 

Marx on the economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844  

Karl marx is known for his numerous stances on economics and the role of the state. In his essay “From economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844” Marx puts his focus mainly on the sort of objectification of the worker. He believes that with the way the state operates as of now the worker is essentially relegated to an inferior position. He believes that whether it’s capital being in the hands of a few or those who are a “Land rentier” these all in a way squeeze the worker.

     He says “The whole of society must fall apart into the two classes, the property owners and the propertyless workers.” He has a point here. He essentially is saying sooner or later it’s going to be tension between the haves and the have nots. Marx believes that the “Political economy” as he says could care little about the priorities or needs of the worker. He states that when it comes to the wages of the proletariat the political economy essentially only hears the needs of the capitalist. I personally don’t find money making evil. I don’t believe marx thinks that profit is inherently bad either. However even if we look at our own society people aren’t receiving proper or even equal wages compared to what they do for work. He also seems to make a distinction between a plain economist and a “Political economist”. He feels a political economists lives in a “Fictitious primordial condition”. He feels a political economist sadly ignores the relationship between labor and exchange. 

     Marx states “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces,the more his production increases in power and range.” He believes the worker being cut out of the deal so to speak.According to Marx the worker himself is a commodity producing other commodities. Marx feels men are essentially being reduced to and by their labor. There is some truth to this. Labor itself is a product. If someone works a job like being a mechanic they are essentially selling their ability or the commodity they possess of being able to fix cars. There is a sort of detachment when it comes to things like this. I think marx believes the more products a man makes the lesser he becomes. Almost as if the society he lives in values the commodity more than it does him. 

     I feel whenever we read Marx we have to remember the time period he lived in. It’s fair to say he lived in a different world than ours. The main point of ire for me nowadays is the wages people are paid vs the cost of living. I’m not a communist. To be frank I believe communism is a utopian ideal and I’m not too trustworthy of utopian ideals. Utopian ideals cannot be actualized because they depend on everyone being able to see the light essentially. That cannot happen. I don’t believe in a perfect society, I believe in a better one. So with that I believe taking some aspects of socialism as opposed to communism makes more sense and is more reasonable. Profit and money aren;t inherently bad,people getting paid next to nothing while still being expected to make a living however is. It is a shame how many people cannot afford to live alone in this society. Everyone cannot simply be dismissed as lazy or unwilling. 

     Who doesn’t want a good place to stay? Who doesn’t want a nice car? Who doesn’t want to be able to go on vacation with their partner? We are not lazy because if we were lazy we’d lose everything. The average person probably wishes they were a bit lazy just so they could relax for once. The minimum wage is still about 7 dollars while the cost of everything else has skyrocketed. Some may dismiss what I’m saying as liberal ramblings but i’m serious. What’s political about wanting to live? What’s political about wanting to have the funds to potentially raise a family? What’s political about happiness? This is why politically I could care less about exhausted titles and silly tropes. People deserve better because for so long we’ve received worse.  

Ray Nipper 

Blog post #3 

Barbara Johnson’s “Melville’s fist” seems to be about the gap between being and doing.  She chooses a novel essentially as a canvas for her argument. The characters Billy Budd and John Claggart  seemed to get into a quarrel in the story. In the novel Billy seems to be falsely accused by John of mutiny. They’re men at sea and John seems to find Billy untrustworthy. He even tells the captain to essentially keep an eye on him. Apparently it’s mentioned that Billy is good looking. It seems that bothers John. Billy sadly ends up shooting John after he makes these false accusations towards him. Johnson seems to argue that plots essentially are rebuttals to figures of authority. She says this because Billy gets swept into the story or plot by John’s accusations. John honestly just seems to have it out for Billy. It honestly seems like he thinks Billy is up to no good. He so much as even sends a guard to try to sell Billy on betraying the rest of the crew. Even though Billy rejects the false offer it doesn’t seem to slow John’s suspicion. Johnson relies heavily on what we would call “interpretations.” She believes that the story is not a fight between two characters but a fight between two readings. She claims Billy takes everything at face value and upfront while John seems more untrusting and to me a bit paranoid. Captain Vere though seems to be the one who has to judge Billy in the end. It seems the captain could care less about what may have motivated Billy to pull the trigger. It seems he’s only concerned about the fact that it happened and what that means in terms of the law. I’m actually not sure how johnson ties this into politics itself. What’s political about a murder at sea? Is it the motivation or is it what the captain is unaware of? She mentions that vere essentially has to go off the history of the two characters but that information is unbeknownst.I’m assuming that Johnson is trying to imply that the captain is judging from a place of ignorance. As if the judge must somehow know every detail of their lives in order to speak on the situation. It’s like Johnson seems bothered by the fact that no judge or captain is perfect.  She says judging is always a partial reading. Well that’s really too bad. All a judge can do is reach a conclusion with the information they’ve been provided. How is that political? Johnson says that this story reminds us that there’s a bridge between knowing and doing. It’s really too bad If Johnson doesn’t like the fact that judgements happen. It’s really too bad if she doesn’t like the fact that judges can have biases or not know every single detail of one’s life.

I think Roman Jacobson is a bit puzzled here. It seems like he’s trying to address whether poetics and linguistics have a connection. Or whether it seems poetics is a tenet of linguistics or not. Towards the beginning he says “Since linguistics is the global science of verbal structure,poetics may be regarded as an integral part of linguistics.” I think since poetry is “verbal art” as he says maybe they’re not exactly the same. Linguistics is the scientific study of language while poetry or poetics if I understand it right is simply a form of expression. Not that language isn’t expression but I don’t exactly perceive linguistics as an art form.  He goes on to say that poetics is not confined to verbal art. He claims that forms of poetry or stories can be transferred into music or say ballet. He doesn’t seem to have the same feeling about linguistics however. Jacobson confuses me a bit. I wonder if my interpretation is off or if I’m not getting him. Later on he gets on what we call or should call a “Literary critic”. He says “Why is a clear-cut discrimination made between pure and applied linguistics or between phonetics and orthepy, but not between literary studies and criticism?” I think maybe he wants them to be seen as one and the same but academia may be getting in the way of that. Maybe he seems to think that linguistics and poetics should be more seen as siblings rather than neighbors. He says language must be investigated in all of it’s forms and functions. He seems to think that the position of poetics has to be accurately placed among other types of language. It also seems like he think some are essentially reducing language or cutting it in half. He says ” No doubt,for any speech community,for any speaker,there exists a unity of language,but this over-all code represents a system of inter-connected subcodes; every language encompasses several concurrent patterns, each characterized by different functions.” Later on he talks about the addresser and the addressee.  Which to me tackles the bridge between the speaker and the listener. I believe he sees language more as a tool. He says how simple statements like “Are you listening?” can serve to essentially hook the other person in. He says these comments essentially are supposed to either bring attention to something or prolong it. He says that the lingustic scrutiny of poetry should not limit or confine itself within the function of poetics. 

So Nietzche pretty much confirms my belief that most people aren’t exactly so great.  Towards the beginning he says “What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case?” It’s almost like he believes most of sort of lack self-awareness. And maybe alot of us do. After that he goes on to say “Man wishes to exist socially and with the herd”, almost like individuality doesn’t exist. I don’t exactly get his gripe with the concept of the truth or what exactly constitutes as the truth. It seems he believes we sort of lie or just conform to whatever those in our surroundings deem the truth. Which is silly to me because over the course of history people have been fighting and disagreeing over damn near everything. He says “What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding.” Well, of course there are truths that people agree upon. That isn’t inherently problematic. I kind of disagree with this idea or suggestion that to classify something as the truth must involve some level of assimilation or even sacrifice. I know what I believe to be true because maybe I’ve studied it or maybe I’m aware of it. People have a right to reach conclusions and classify something as true so long as their conclusion is reasonable. Later he says “If but for an instant he could escape from the prison walls of this faith, his “self consciousness” would be immediately destroyed. It is even a difficult thing for him to admit to himself that the insect or the bird perceives an entirely different world from the one that man does, and that the question of which of these perceptions of the world is the more correct one is quite meaningless, for this would have to have been decided previously in accordance with the criterion of the correct perception, which means, in accordance with a criterion which is not available.” I do understand that perspective has value and that obviously lived experiences plays a role. I obviously believe that an animal or say a child certainly has a different view on the world than I do.  I don’t think I really get the source of his frustration. nietzsche actually seems a bit hard to read here. It’s like he’s saying that I have my truth and you have your truth therefore there is no truth. This however is odd to me. There are most definitely falsehoods and lies out there. If people want to believe the sky isn’t blue I have no reason to argue with them. it’s like Nietzsche doesn’t believe in conclusions. I like conclusions and I like objectivity. Some ideas by some people should be dismissed. Some ideas are silly and serve no benefit. What’s wrong with saying that? Some ideas aren’t as good as others. Not because they aren’t generally accepted or because they aren’t derivative, but because they are poor and nonsensical. Why can’t this man face that? Why can’t he just relax and understand that some ideals should be put to the side? Why can’t he face that some thoughts aren’t as good or as valuable? The rest of us have already landed at these conclusions.