I can see a lot of people reading Althusser’s Ideology and ISAs and finding it either incoherent or irrelevant, but I believe what he has to say in this essay is incredibly relevant and maps out the sickness that invariably comes with a capitalist society. Althusser explains that the average capitalist must be aware of what would be needed to replace what has been used up in the process of production, and then notes that the labour involved in the production process must also be reproduced. Of course, those who are controlling this process of production and reproduction seek growth in production, and must also grow in reproduction to make up for the growth in production (well that’s a mouthful). While production expands and material resources that are used in the process of reproduction, the human labour that is necessary to, in a way, “fund” the production/reproduction process, must also be replenished and expand with the expansion of the production/reproduction process. The issue with this is that the expansion of the non-human resources is so great that it exceeds reasonable human resources– basically, the time that keeping up with the growing production/reproduction necessitates. The drowning of human labour in this constantly expanding production/reproduction process creates the aforementioned sickness of capitalist society. Somewhere in this process, human labour is cheapened because so much of it is required. Companies do not pay their employees enough money to function on. It’s reasons like this that my boyfriend has to work 10 hour days just to get by, as if a 9-5 workday isn’t grueling enough. The reason the 40 hour workweek exists is sickening too. The whole concept is a scheme which forces workers into building their lives on the few hours they have when they return from work and the weekends. Because of the way this system is structured, we often rely on the instant gratification of television, video games, or any other activity that takes money, but not time, because time is so precious to us, thanks to the illness the capitalist system has inflicted upon us. What’s even more sickening is that it’s completely intentional– they want to keep us hungry for high-cost, instantly gratifying means of entertainment. Things that take money, not time. Who wants to go for a walk in Prospect Park, or take the subway all the way to Brighton Beach to enjoy the scenery and relax when your time is so precious? I highly recommend reading this article, which explains what I’ve been writing about in full; I was subtly aware of this structure, but had yet to read it on paper (or screen, rather).

I hope I didn’t get too off topic, but this is something I get rather impassioned about, especially since it’s my future staring me in the face. But I have one more thing to note, which is as disgusting as it is interesting, and unbelievable given what minimum wage can get someone in 2013 (absolutely nothing):

“The premise of minimum wage, when it was introduced, was that a single wage earner should be able to own a home and support a family.  That was what it was based on; a full time job, any job, should be able to accomplish this.

The fact people scoff at this idea if presented nowadays, as though the people that ring up your groceries or hand you your burgers don’t deserve the luxury of a home and a family, is disgusting.”

Here’s a taste of The Clash doing “White Riot,” one of the songs Hebdige talks about in the excerpt from SUBCULTURE.  And I think the commercial that precedes the track, plus the fact that Sony now owns the video, are also richly resonant, given Hebdige’s argument about the capacity of subcultural practices to become recuperated by capitalist societies via the commodity form.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvG3is7Bm1w&w=420&h=315]

There are all kinds of stereotypes in literature. Frantz Fanon talks about how “blackness” is part of society because of the outer appearance people give an individual and how this could separate African Americans. What this causes based of the reading is that there is no chance for American Americans to create a self-image or idea of how they want to be portrayed because of the way people perceive of them. As Fanon continues with this experience, he relates it with the similar experience of Jewish people, “the Jew can be unknown in his Jewishness…His actions, his behavior are the final determinant… [but] He is a white man…he can sometimes go unnoticed…I [however] am given no chance. I am overdetermined from without.” In history, African Americans were seen as inferior, forcing them to be slaves for white people, the cause of Jim Crow laws and other things to be separated by white people, one of the many hated people among the Ku Klux Klan, etc. Jewish people suffered discrimination in the Holocaust, being forced into camps, separation of families and the main thing, genocide. I believe that African Americans, Jewish people and any other racial group that was not white were always and in the slightest way, are still considered inferior. Although inferior, Jewish people had the opportunity to blend amongst white people because of their skin color unlike African Americans with their dark skin color.  

This reading is very different from what we have read throughout the semester. Fanon reminds me of what I am learning in one of my other classes about how Latinos have been discriminated in history. I can actually relate to discrimination. The apartment complex where I live in is mostly composed of orthodox Jewish, meaning if you are not like them, you are not important in their eyes. So when people see me not with my family, they think I am either white or Jewish, which to them, I am accepted. When these orthodox Jews see me with my dad, the superintendent of the complex who all these people rely on, they will not say anything out loud but they will give me dirty looks since they know I am Hispanic based off my dad’s skin color since he has that “Hispanic tan” as I heard it before. Another thing that I can mention is that (forgive me in advance for saying it the way I am about to but, you will see why I do because I took great offence) my brother got accepted to this very expensive private school with an almost full ride, and when one of the orthodox women in the building in heard this, she had the audacity to bring up in the conversation with my mom, “oh, how did he get in? Is he smart and can you offered it?” After this encounter with that stuck up, self-centered woman, whenever I see hear, I pay no mind to her existence. How would you feel as a parent, sibling or even the person being talked about, listening to that?   

As I finished reading this and looking over the blog, I agree with Monazohny’s blog where he talks of “secreting” of racial identity and the example of Miley Cyrus. It is acceptable for white people to do anything “ghetto” or “black” but when a black person does something that is normal to them, it is deemed inappropriate and socially unacceptable. Relating to this topic, one example I want to bring up is that remember in the news a white police officer shot a black teenager for looking suspicious by having his hands in his pockets and his hoodie covering his face? There will always be an opposing side and an agreeing side to any situation, but in this case, many people agreed with what the officer did. Now thinking with the opposing side, imagine skin color was reversed, would people on the white police officer’s side agree? Of course not! People will be like kill him in vengeance of the white teenager.      

I found Frantz Fanon’s piece “The Fact of Blackness” to be a refreshing break from the more dense texts we have been reading. This text reads as a stream of consciousness, which makes it feel very honest and raw. In Fanon’s text, he discusses black identity in a white world. To Fanon, it seems that white people’s racism towards blacks manifests itself in different ways—whites are either erasing or romanticizing blackness/black culture.

Fanon believes that white liberals who say that they accept blacks as part of a universal humanity are erasing black identity because this rhetoric still does not truly acknowledge and accept blackness. Fanon feels “shame and self-contempt. Nausea. When people like [him], they tell me it is in spite of [his] color. When they dislike [him], they point out that it is not because of [his] color.” He quotes what seems to be a white mans take on this: “Understand my dear boy, color prejudice is something I find utterly foreign….the Negro man is a man like ourselves…it is not because he is black that he is less intelligent than we are…” This quote sounds a lot like what many white liberals like to say today—“I don’t see color”. This is a problem because by ignoring a black person’s color, you are erasing their identity, culture, history, etc. For Fanon, this renders him, still unable to view himself as a black man. For instance, when Fanon says that he wanted “to be a man, nothing but a man” he still accepts his history which includes his enslaved and lynched ancestors.

Fanon responds to the quote about color prejudice with a question “where an I to be classified? Or, if you prefer, tucked away?” In this way, he feels as if, instead of being put into a box labeled “dirty negro” for instance, its almost as if he has no place in any category. It is as though white liberals want to hide the black man’s identity and, perhaps ignore their history (including all of the wrongs that have been done to the black race). They want to tuck those things away and perhaps whitewash black culture and history in the process. Fanon mentions the research done on “denegrification” and I think that this concept of color blindness carries the same sentiment. By ignoring differences, the dominant race (in this case white) will expect everyone to follow their standards and be like them.

Fanon also talks about “secret[ing]” a racial identity. This involves embracing many of the stereotypes about blacks that have been created by whites. Fanon accepts them: “Yes, we are—we Negroes—backward, simple, free in our behavior…We are in the world. And long live the couple, Man and Earth!” He states that since he “had rationalized the world and the world had rejected [him] on the basis of color prejudice…[he] threw [him]self back toward unreason.” He talks about the stereotypical magic Negro culture involving black magic and emotion (as opposed to reason) and how this magic substitution differs from the “acquisitive” relationship the white man has with the world. Eventually, the white man will realize that this world has been “forever lost to him and his” and will feel the need to “steal” black culture from their pockets. Fanon states that “The white man had the anguished feeling that I was escaping from him and that I was taking something with me.” Whites as members of the “superior” race and being involved in an acquisitive relationship with the world, feel they must own everything, and that someone who is not white does not have the right to own something that does not or cannot include white people. This “otherness” that black people are a part of is now something to be romanticized and culturally appropriated instead of hated.

One example that comes to mind (which I do feel is overused, albeit recent) is Miley Cyrus’s appropriation of black culture. She wears grills and [attempts to] twerk in her recent music video for “We Can’t Stop”. These are things associated with black culture and usually mocked, given a negative connotation and deemed “ghetto” when blacks partake in it. However when Cyrus takes part in black culture, her grills and dance moves are considered quirky and fun. People are not so quick to judge and police white bodies as they are black bodies. (I am choosing to focus solely on the racial aspect of this issue as opposed to gender). I think this can tie back to the theft of black culture which ironically enough, as Fanon points out in his piece, has been, in many ways, re-appropriated by blacks from the stereotypes created by whites.

Michel Foucault argues in his essay ‘The History of Sexuality,’ it was much easier to talk about sex openly, publicly during the 17th century unlike the following years, it has changed the way people talked about it. According to Foucault the word sex has become more of a form of knowledge and less of the pleasure and fun. It instead turned into something that should be kept composed and in control. Instead of the fun and passionate idea of sex, it became something scientist then studied in psychologically. The stimulation to speak about sex in a serious conversation seemed to be kept down through force or power, by the Bourgeoisie society that suppressed the population. But Foucault explains that the controlling power was also used to increase the analysis of sex.
Common sense tells us that during the Victorian Era we repress our sexuality. No power without knowledge, no knowledge without power (the power of knowledge). The sign of discipline sexuality creates a new pleasure where Foucault argues that “they” took something private and brought it out into the public, into something more like a course to collect data based on other people’s sexual pleasures.
The discourse on sex was for religious confessions that eventually lead to a public interest as in something to study logically and to be observed. Foucault uses an example about expanding the discourse on sex with children sexuality during the 18th century. This was intended and regulated as a course to prevent sexual conducts among the students. As a result, the boys and girls were separated into different schools; curfews were put into place and were taught to speak about sex in a very respectable manner that showed their awareness of sex. This was eventually silence, as Foucault disagrees with the theory regarding how and why this open sexuality was suppressed. Foucault sees this silencing as being an essential result of an urging motivation towards knowledge when it comes to sex. Sex became such an important subject of study when the government became curious, for example Foucault explains about a villager who ‘obtained a few caresses from a little girl,’ was seen an opportunity to be studied, examined and analyzed his behavior because of his choice of young girls. It was an open window to get a better understanding, ‘concerning his thoughts, inclinations, habits, sensations and opinions.’ It seems as though the discourse of the sexual acts were socially constructed among the rising Bourgeoisies society then. People were encouraged to (explosion of discourse) induce to speak about all the sexual acts into a public round, which is sort of private. According to Foucault, ‘it was essential that the state know what was happening with his citizens’ sex, and the use they made of it, but also that each individual be capable of controlling the use he made of it,’ it’s almost as though there were no privacy among people.

Dick Hebdige’s “Subculture: The Meaning of Style” considers the effects of a clash between ideology and semiotics: that clash being in the form of subcultures. He also discusses how the emergence of these subcultures tips the delicate social order off its axes via their grave “violations of [the] authorized codes” (2482). However, his main topic of debate appears to be how these violations and “horrendous aberrations” (2482) are transformed into desirable commodities that are sold and resold to the public until they lose all initial shock value and no longer pose a threat to a society’s conventional manner of conduct.

Through my reading of the essay, a completely unrelated image had to present itself and show some sort of correlation to what Hebdige was discussing (according to my twisted imagination, anyway). I was confronted with the image of a cut on the arm or leg – any external body part, really. The damage done to the blood vessel interrupts the entire mechanism of the body and diverts some attention to the cut. In response, the body secretes platelets and strands of fibrin through the site of the damage to form a mesh layer of sorts over the cut to form a scab and, eventually, restrict the loss of blood to a minimum. This “damage control” allows the body to resume its function. I think this connects to Hebdige’s theory of society’s reassessment of these rising subcultures to manipulate how they are perceived by the public and to “minimize the Otherness” (2487). The burst blood vessel is the emerging subculture and the body signifies community, while the scab symbolizes the restoration of conventional, every day goings on. This marketing method results in these subcultures’ “diffusion and defusion” (2483) into the conventions of society. All order and normality is thus re-established. Huzzah.

The “process of recuperation” (2484) by which the scab is formed is compressed by Hebdige into two courses of action: 1) making sub-cultural staples into mass-marketed commodities, widely desired by members of the public, and 2) marketing the deviancy of these subcultures differently than the way observers have been viewing them. These methods of “dealing with the threat” (2486) are labeled “the commodity form” and “the ideological form”, respectively. Though entirely oppressive and domineering, these are quite brilliant strategies of eliminating the “otherness”; Rather than projecting hostility towards anything that presents conflict to a particular community’s ideologies, that tension-creator is met with deceiving acceptance which will, in time, transform that controversial subculture into a negligible component of community, hereby eradicating its menace.

Fanon compares the ways in which blacks and Jews are hated, labeled, and excluded in order to bolster his bold claim that the suffering of blacks is worse than the Jews. The Jew was hunted and exterminated by the millions, but in society where the anti-antisemitism is far less brutal, Jews can go unnoticed by appearance alone. He goes so far as to refer to anti-antisemitism as a little family feud within the whites (Fanon 5). In an effort to label and exclude white (Jew) from white (non-Jew), anti-semites observe the Jews for specific tells that would reveal this other white’s Jewishness. Fanon describes this particular characteristic of separation and discrimination as “conduct” that is “perpetually overdetermined from the inside” (Fanon 5). Blacks do not share the luxury of the Jews that allows them to blend in with whites. Also, in direct opposition to overdetermination from within that the jews are subject to, savagery is attributed to blacks in what epitomizes “overdetermination from without.” Fanon believes the latter to be worse because it prejudges the behavior of an entire group of people based on their appearance. This idea is comparable to what is known as racial profiling; stereotyping all because of the supposed attributes of a few.

Later on in the paper, Fanon describes an interaction between black man and white man in which the black man has broken free from the stereotypes of overdetermination and, for once, feels like the free master of his own fate. The black man achieves this by joining and embracing the cosmic force of the world as opposed to entering an “acquisitive relation” with the world like the white man. Fanon explains how this “magic substitution” has imbued the black man with a greater poetic ability than the white man could dream of. The white man reaches into the pockets of the black man in a vain effort to reacquire the world. Despite despising blackness, the white man envies the black man’s union with the world. According the Fanon’s description of whites, it is futile to reach into the pockets of the blacks because whites refuse to share with or learn from the blacks. Before trying to share in the blacks poetic mastery of the world, the white man disregards the black man’s triumph as a stage of genetic development. This utterly deflates the speaker in Fanon’s paper who finds himself an orphan of the world who is once again subject to overdetermination from without.

In Antonio Gamsci’s “The Formation if the Intellectuals”, he primarily deals with defining what it means to be an intellectual, the different types of intellectuals and what their functions in society are. He first differentiates between the organic intellectual and the traditional intellectual. The traditional intellectual is the easiest to extract from his explanation as it includes the type of individuals we customarily associate with intellectualism. Gramsci’s examples of these intellectuals are medical men, lawyers, judges, administrators, scholars, scientists, ecclesiastics, and non-ecclesiastic philosophers. He states that they “put themselves forward as autonomous and independent of the dominant social group” (1003). In saying that this is how they represent themselves Gramsci casts doubt on the correctness of this assertion. According to Marx, there is a difference between how men think of themselves and the world around them (idealogical forms) and their “real life-processes” that are “bound to material premises” (663). Traditional intellectuals have the appearance of autonomy and independence because they pre-date the emerging “essential” social group and their existence seems resistant to political and social change. They also involve “special qualification” (1003).

The organic intellectual has a somewhat different characterization. It is the type of intellectual that is created in tandem with “every new class” (1002). Its development is also tied to the growth of this class. These organic intellectuals are described as “organisers” in different spheres of society who are tied to economic production (1002).

Besides citing the types of intellectuals, Gramsci posits that all men, including laborers that participate in physical work, utilize their intellectual capacity in conjunction with their physical capabilities. He states, “in any physical work even the most degraded and mechanical, there exists a minimum of technical qualification, that is, a minimum of creative intellectual activity” (1004). We all have to wear different hats and every individual is a kind of “renaissance man” in his own right. For some reason this reminds me of Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences (1983) that hypothesizes that there are multiple spheres of intelligence instead of just one single intelligence as standard IQ tests appeared to suggest. For example, you can have visual-spatial intelligence like an artist, musical-rhythmic intelligence like a composer and/or logical-mathematical intelligence, and so on. The idea is that you can possess more than one of these abilities to different extents. The same goes for physical and intellectual work or effort because Gramsci suggests that work is never a purely physical or intellectual practice. “Professional activity” is just weighted “towards intellectual elaboration or towards muscular-nervous effort” to different extents (1004).

Gramsci impresses upon his audience that there are only “varying degrees of specific intellectual activity” (1004). The distinction he makes between the intellectual capacities of all men is the application of them. The intellectual, in contrast with someone utilizing their intellectual capacity, has a specific social function to fulfill within society. The intellectual’s function is grounded in directive action – organizing society and participating in hegemony by reinforcing the dominant position in society or voicing dissent. They play a role in the formation of culture and counter-culture.

In Antonio Gramsci’s “The Formation of Intellectuals”, he explores the different forms of free-thinking intellectuals and how they come to perform a regulatory function in society to prevent the overarching capitalist system from stripping members of the community of their will and ability to think for themselves. However, he also highlights the need for a new form of intellectual for which “technical education…must form the basis…” (1005).

He highlights the existence of two varieties of intellectuals: the organic, a group of individuals which binds together without any express consent to steer society in the right direction politically and economically, and the traditional, whose members’ intellect has been passed down to them, if you will, from preceding generations and “[hold] a monopoly of a number of important services” (1002). After numerous readings, I have come to see that Gramsci condemns the latter variety for their passivity in their societal functions: they are not consciously aware of what they are doing and how they are going to work towards the public good. They look out for the little guy primarily because it is what their predecessors did, unaware of the extent to which their active engagement in the regulation of societal affairs could improve conditions for the faceless worker.

Gramsci calls for an “elite” (1002) to step forward and steer society in the right direction, in terms of both politics and economics. This pushed me to imagine a superhero training facility where a group of viable candidates would be technologically enhanced to take on the struggles and issues that a community faces, but instead of those issues being monsters and rogue scientists and what not, they would refer to the day to day struggles of the middle class workers whose needs are cast aside by the rapid industrialization of society.

Intellectuals supposedly consider themselves “autonomous and independent” (1003) from civil society due to their “uninterrupted historical continuity” and “special qualifications” (1003). This reigned in the superhero metaphor for me once more: These specialized individuals have the remarkable capability to separate themselves from their immediate societal surroundings and keep from blending into a certain period of time of political era. They can think and be freely without being “put down by the man”, almost. This leads to their ability to conjure up the idea of a “social utopia” (1003), where a state of perfect democracy and equality is in play. Gramsci pinpoints these intellectuals as rarities in this ability to separate themselves from the day-to-day goings on and to focus on the big picture instead.

But the stereotypically branded intellectual – the artist, the theorist, the philosopher – is not the only intellectual, though. Gramsci agrees when he states, “All men are intellectuals … but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals” (1004). I cannot be sure, but I feel that he inadvertently blames the capitalist system here for forcing members of society into menial occupations just to be able to continue living a type of lifestyle they have grown accustomed to; many of these people could be out, doing what the big shot intellectuals, but monetary circumstances prevent them from doing so and thus, they are put into these compartments where their input in society is practically negligible.
The one thing that I remain totally confused about is what Gramsci says near the very end of this excerpt: “The democratic-bureaucratic system has given rise to a great mass of functions which are not all justified by the social necessities of production, though they are justified by the political necessities of the dominant fundamental group.” (1007) Does this link back to what was said earlier about the compartmentalization of workers into insignificant quadrants to keep them occupied while a handful of specialized intellectuals handles the “big boy” stuff? Since what these people are doing is “not justified by the social necessities”, what happens to the people carrying out those functions?

If we were to summarize the extract from Gramsci’s “The Prison Notebooks”, would we label it a condemnation of the capitalist system for its degradation of the governed or a calling for the need of a being to fight the system or at least keep it from usurping complete power? Or both?