Growing up we are taught certain things, such as learning to look both ways before crossing the street. Yet there are also things we must learn alone through our own common sense. One of the beliefs that is part of everyone’s common sense is the idea that a judge is above politics, as they are the ones who decide on whether someone is guilty or innocent. Barbara Johnson challenges this idea in her essay “From Melville’s Fist: The execution of Billy Budd” and suggests that in reality judges are not “above politics” but still under control by them.

Throughout her essay Johnson deconstructs the novella “Billy Budd” by Herman Melville where she looks into the different interpretations of the novella and the characters. One of the characters she looks into is Captain Vere who seems to symbolize a judge like figure. Vere is the man who is left to decide whether or not Billy is guilty or innocent. Although many would assume for him to be able to choose on his own, Vere must consider many other aspects before making a decision.

In law there is always going to be someone guilty and someone innocent, as there is no other way around it. This already makes judges need to confine to politics as they technically need to choose one or the other for the person in question. Additionally, when deciding upon the criminal or victim judges must consider how they will be judged as their decision is still up for judgement afterwards. For instance, in today’s world the idea that everyone must be fairly represented no matter your identity has grown in awareness. Judges today will need to consider how their judgement will be criticized if they do the opposite of that, as they know that the public may rise up against it. Judges will never be above politics because the way politics works influences the judges, and even society.

Johnson’s explanation of this goes hand in hand with Nietzche’s belief that society does not allow one to create their own ideas as we are all influenced by everything around us in the end. Judges will end up being influenced by society or the politics around them, ultimately leaving them to never be above politics. Depending on where you are in the world the government may allow certain things while others do not. Regardless, there will always be someone above the judge whether that be politics, society, or the general public.

Barbara Johnson’s analysis, “From Melville’s Fist: The Execution of Billy Budd,” delves into the story of three major characters: Billy Budd, John Claggart, and Captain Vere. Each of these personalities represents something unique and possesses distinct characteristics, all of which contribute to their demise and troubles. First, we can look at Budd. “the innocent, ignorant foretopman, handsome Billy Budd” (2319). Budd is regarded as a good and innocent person. On the other side, Claggart is the polar opposite of him. Claggart is referred to as the devious, urban master-at-arms” (2319), and he is portrayed as nasty, cruel, and, in many ways, satan since he is always attempting to harm people around him. Billy’s good nature turns out to be his demise, which is ironic. As the evil becomes the innocent, the good becomes guilty. A fairly devastating conclusion to what can be viewed as both an ironic narrative and a natural tragedy. Captain Vere, in the end, sentences Billy Budd to death as he is battling his own sense of self vs. society. Johnson says that the signified is resembled by the inner self, whereas the signifier is resembled by the signifier outer self, based on Saussure’s concepts. Johnson employs Saussure’s theory of signifier/signified to explain the difference between Billy and Claggart as readers in terms of the traits and ideas that they share. Billy Budd is prone to gaps between purpose and action between signifier and signified, thus the comparison of being and doing comes into play here. Billy is a transparent sign with a required link between the signifier and the signified. Billy represents the difficulty of a “transparent” manner of meaning. Billy believes everything he reads and does all he says merely to preserve himself. “As a reader, then, Billy is symbolically as well as factually illiterate. His literal-mindedness is represented by his illiteracy because, in assuming that language can be taken at face value, he excludes the very functioning of difference that makes the act of reading both indispensable and undecidable” (2323). Therefore, Billy’s inability to see things at nothing else but face value put him in jeopardy of being good but guilty. On the other hand, Claggart “is the very image of difference and duplicity, both in his appearance and in his character” (2323). Claggart is the polar opposite of Billy in that he epitomizes wickedness yet, due to his untimely death, he depicts innocence. Claggart always assumes a gap between the signified and the signifier as he assumes the opposite. In essence, Johnson employs Saussure’s theory to demonstrate a distinction between Claggart and Billy. Johnson used the terms signified and signifier to show which character is capable of distinguishing between the two and which is not and how such distinctions create characterization.

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.

     Johnson’s example of Vere shows us that judges are not above politics but instead intertwined; their commitments are constituents of law regulation. The author writes, “While both Billy and Claggart are said to owe their character to “Nature,” Vere sees his actions and being as meaningful only within the context of contractual allegiance…[law] operating through him” (Johnson 2271). Although Vere differentiates Billy or Claggart’s doings or Billy’s intention for that matter, he must still position his verdict as a deduction from precompiled adversaries.

     But it isn’t that simple; Melville’s characters are contrasted “within” themselves, but “between” one another in conflicting ways; inverted parallelism or chiasmus pushes the reader to remold association between things or ideas while maintaining balance. It is one of the central components to which critics dispute the judgment of Vere’s judging and what makes finale commentary challenging for the reader.

     However, Johnson states that When a contrast “within” vague conditions is converted into a contrast “between” them, the result is a conclusive determination (Johnson 2274). Still, Melville demonstrates the dilemma of representation in politics, which stems from our position as constructed in association with dependence, even for a judge, like Vere. Johnson makes the following case ” the maintenance of political authority requires that the law function as a set of rules for the regular, predictable misreading of the “difference within” as a “difference between” (Johnson 2275).

     But if “repression of ambiguity” is present it thus becomes contradictory, making law established on a “difference within.” And because the mere decision of Vere’s speech is a dependent act that results in slaughter, that judgment is thus open for critique, as readers have done. It is a propelling motion with no ethical conscience, just dependent variables bound by perception and regulation. A continuous ambiguous space. 

As Johnson reads the plot of BB against the grain: that is, as if Claggart were right and Billy were guilty of this willfully mutiny. In my opinion the point of this is to get the readers mind running. Basically having us make assumptions on who did what based off of what occurred at the scene and prior to that. From what I’ve read claggart happens to be playful and he hides his messages behind his playfulness. On the other hand billy stutters,  he has anxiety and it happens to be comical to others and he gets into “petty trouble”. As I continued to read things are said about BB that makes is possible to assume that he did kill Claggart. It was also stated that “Billy Bud kills because he cannot speak”, there’s a few issues billy dealt with such as his anxiety and stuttering issue that was provoke and could’ve led to him killing Claggart. Those few things said above about billy bud makes it equally defensible for him to mutinly kill Claggart. Along with it being said that nothing is truly known about Claggart’s origins, to me it’s a bit confusing and somewhat a battle because all the blame is on Billy bud yet nothing of claggart is known.

1. In her piece Barbara Johnson distinguishes a difference between how the affable character Billy reads things and the way that Claggart reads things. In fact they are on completely different wavelengths when it comes to how they see the world around them, which is one of the many reasons that puts them on opposing sides from one and another. The way that Billy reads is incredibly simplistic, which is what leads to his own downfall. In fact, his reading of things is so simplistic he takes everything to be what it is. He wouldn’t find any deeper meaning in the words that someone says or why they would say. In a sense, Billy views the world in a binary black and white way, where no grey can be found. This lack of nuance on his viewing of the world makes him unable to properly express himself and that leads him to throwing punches as he unable to see why others would perceive him as guilty, since he himself knows that he is not. On the other hand we have Claggart who seems to find a deeper meaning in whatever a person says, which causes him to become a distrustful person. He can’t grasp the thought that someone might simply express themselves the way that they are, and must have a certain ulterior motive, which in turn makes him unable to trust a word that Billy says. Instead, when Billy punches him it just reaffirms his belief that Billy was indeed guilty. The way Jhonson shows this difference is through Saussere’s theory of signifier/signified. Billy is unable to see the distinction between the signifier and the signified. In his mind they are the same thing, and can’t be separated in no sense of the word. A chair is simply a chair for Billy. Claggart on the other side of things is able to make a clear distinction between the signifier and the signified but this leads to him becoming more suspicious of language, since he can see how arbitrary words are. He is able to mold what people say to him into whatever fits best into his view of the language. He can’t trust what people say are what they mean because their words can’t be trusted to signify what their true intentions are. This makes Claggart questioning what the others around truly mean, when they say what they say.

As promised, here’s a 15 minute lecture on Johnson:

Johnson480p

Brief lecture unpacking Barbara Johnson’s “Melville’s Fist” for 306 students

After you’ve finished reading and watching, please post on one of the following questions, which will serve as your Blog Post #3:

1. What kind of reader is Billy? What kind is Claggart? How does Johnson use Saussure’s theory of signifier/signified to clarify this difference?
2. On 2268-9, Johnson reads the plot of BB against the grain: that is, as if Claggart were right and Billy were guilty of a willful mutiny. What is the point of this? What does it say about BB that either reading is equally defensible?
3. How does Johnson distinguish, on one hand, a “difference within” and, on the other, a “difference between” in her discussion of Vere’s act of judging? What does Melville’s text tell us about these two different kinds of differences?
4. What does the example of Vere suggest about our commonsensical notion that judges are “above politics”: that is, that they decide on guilt/innocence independently of the practical effects of this judgement (2275)?

“Linguistics is only a part of the general science of semiology; the laws discovered by semiology will be applicable to linguistics, and the latter will circumscribe a well-defined area within the mass of anthropological facts.” -Saussure

Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics chapter III. The Object of Linguistics describes the origin of language as NOT simply a way of naming an object or an action as most may assume (I must admit before entering Intro to Theory I also thought the same), but more so a verbal art form that can be transformed into a symbolic form of written words. Saussure goes on to describe the relationship between linguistics (the study of language and its structure) and Semiology/semiotics furthermore as two different studies that go hand in hand. As Semiology is considered the study of the use or interpretation of signs and/or symbols that one would be unable to transcribe if not for language and the use of literal concept along with it.

Saussure’s belief within the General Linguistics course that language is an especially interesting object to study rather than, say, the symbolic systems that govern cinema or fashion or pantomime or ballet stems from the concept that linguistic signs are tangible assets capable of being appraised at an actual or approximate value through various roots originating from a reasonable system. As I previously mentioned linguistics as viewed as an art form, so is the use of symbolic systems that govern cinema or fashion or pantomime or ballet considered such. However, when it comes down to the topic of cinema or fashion or pantomime or ballet linguistics acts as a source for such branches of semiology. Differentiating from language itself as it is considered to be its own semiological system alone.

Forming sentences to talk to a friend or family member is an action we consistently do every day. But what do our words mean? Why do we form them in this manner? Roman Jakobson‘s Linguistics and Poetics goes on to deconstruct our way of sending verbal communications. As we naturally say what we want to say, why do we choose these words? Words are like these puzzle pieces that we must attach to one another in order to construct a complete sentence. But how do we know what pieces to choose?

This connects to “code”. A code consists of specific keywords that we’re able to use to talk to other people. If you send off this code to another person, will they understand that code? Do they speak the same code as you? According to Jakobson, “No doubt, for any speech community, for any speaker, there exists a unity of language, but this overall code represents a system of inter-connected subcodes; every language encompasses several concurrent patterns, each characterized by different functions”(1147). By what Jakobson means, we humans only understand certain codes (which in this case is referring to languages). Whenever it comes to me talking to my mother, I have to use one of the two codes I know (English and Spanish). If I were to talk to my mother in English, she would not grasp my code, since it makes no sense, and cannot comprehend the pattern to whatever I want to say.

The way we see our own language is nothing more. But questioning why we choose the way we speak can be a bit complex. Talking from one person to another may be a simple task, but there are questions as to what is the message really about? There are 4 functions that are used: Context(What the addresser is saying), Message(Why is the message being sent, the reason), Contact(A physical connection or psychological connection allowing them both to hear the message), and Code(The language that is being spoken and can it be understood?). These steps are always used whenever a phrase or sentence is put into action.

I’ve had no idea that there were special concepts that are used whenever we talk in our everyday lives. We just speak as it’s normal to us and does not think about how are our words forged. After reading through Jakob’s texts, deconstructing sentences can further challenge the way we see/hear important speeches or readings that influence the masses. Some may interpret a speech as it is, while others analyze the intentions of the messages (while it varies differently and gets interpreted in numerous ways).

Upon starting “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense”, I was a bit skeptical of Nietzche’s take on people. He starts off by discussing how we’re insignificant based on how short of a time we’ve existed in the universe (764). He continued on almost a tangent, a rant, or almost just hating on humans, which felt a bit much. He called the creation of our existence the “most mendacious minute in the ‘history of the world’” (764). His view on people seemed quite harsh and pessimistic. He continued to say how people thought so highly of themselves: “The arrogance inherent in cognition…contains within itself the most flattering evaluation of cognition” (765).  After learning the context and time period Nietzche writes this, I can now understand where he is coming from—during a time of a lot of innovations. But when I first read this I strongly disagreed. I think people nowadays are constantly acknowledging what we don’t know and that a lot of things need to change. To change it takes an awareness from people that we are very flawed and don’t understand/know everything and as a result are ever evolving. In present day I find that people are questioning a lot of the traditional methods and ways of thinking. Many people, especially younger generation are challenging big companies, the expected 9-5 jobs, and addressing issues of climate change/ social justice/ racial issues…etc. There’s a lot of turmoil and change in the air. The fact that innovation, self awareness, and self growth is very prevalent right now–challenges Nietzche’s idea that we are arrogant. I think he owes people more credit. We’re definitely flawed and of course have times of arrogance, but if one really considers the human thinking it is very fascinating and impressive, which Nietzche is able to admit. Nietzche says that people create “infinitely complicated cathedral of concepts on moving foundations, or even, one might say, on flowing water” (769). I really liked how Nietzche phrased how people create concepts and ultimately attempt to find/create their truth. I also agree with the idea that to come to a consensus of truth and thinking is very difficult and almost can feel impossible like building on moving water. Moving water also implies that truth and concepts are in constant change because the definition of truth and our language is on a shaky foundation. Because we created our own definition of truth it can easily come toppling down if we decide it’s wrong or simply if we have a change of heart.