Overall, this reading was honestly depressing. As humans, we think we know things and we think we understand how the world works but we do not. Nietzsche brings up many points and concepts that I usually do not think about because, simply put, it is scary. He questions many things like whether or not humans can really know anything at all, even about humans. “What do human beings really know about themselves? Are they even capable of perceiving themselves in their entirety just once, stretched out an in an illuminated glass case?” Anything we know is through the lens of human interpretation so in reality do we know the truth about anything? How can we if we can not remove the lens of human interpretation to make our observations purely objective? Everything we know and think we know about the world is really just the human interpretation of something that is not remotely human, it is something clearly larger and tremendously more complex than we can ever fully comprehend. It can be said that this is why humans believe in things like religion. We need an order to things so that we feel safe and we need direction and guidance to feel like we are living meaningful lives. By believing in a higher power such as god, it can give a sense of security and a feeling of safety as we go through life. It is easier to go through life believing things happen because they are “meant to be” or because “god has a plan” rather than just because of chance.

Nietzsche explains another way we can realize that there is no truth is by looking at something like a bird in comparison to ourselves. If one was asked who has a better understanding of the world- a bird or human, almost everyone would probably say a human without any hesitation. However, why is that true? We understand the world from a humans perspective and to us that seems to be the truest truth but maybe it is the bird who has a better understanding of the world. They see humans for what we are on our most basic level- a species- and maybe it is foolish to believe we are anything more.

Another way Nietzsche proves that there is just no truth, is by using the example of language. Language is a series of metaphors that we use to label and categorize everything so that we have order. “What is a word? The copy of nervous stimulations in sounds.” He goes on to give the example, “The stone is hard’, as if ‘hard’ were something known to us in some other way, and not merely as an entirely subjective stimulus?” This shows that even something as crucial to human life as language, what we rely on as a truth to communicate with one another, is flawed. It is subjective- everything is. “We believe that when we speak of trees, colors, snow and flowers, we have knowledge of the things themselves, and yet we possess only metaphors of things which in no way correspond to the original entities.” We create concepts and truths that make sense to us and we build on these over time. But in reality, nothing is true because what even is truth? There is a quote from the Broadway musical Wicked that states “The truth isn’t a thing of fact, or reason. It’s simply what everyone agrees on.” This quote is frighteningly accurate and in my opinion directly ties in to what Nietzsche’s whole point is: we think we know, but oh how we don’t.

There’s No Truth and I’m Scared: Nietzsche Notes On Truth and Lies

Nietzsche claims and argues on a variety of levels on the idea that deception lies within language. Pure truth is incapable of being found in our language because words we recite, read, and write are merely metaphors. A metaphor serves as a comparison or analogy that captures the essence of a thing by using another comparison to describe it. They have “no way to the original entities” rendering them only as copies of copies that rely on other essences to define them, further distorting truth. Words within our language act as images of the real thing proving that the words we choose to express ourselves are random and subjective. What we know about the “laws of nature is what we ourselves bring into them-time and space, and therefore the relationship of succession and number”.  He instills the notion that the idea of truth and language are social constructs. He ironically uses more analogies such as a bee working in it’s hive or a man in a house. It is human nature to label anthropomorphize. The consequences to this is that it strips nature of it’s mysticism/surrealism and “lead us to distrust idealism”. I’m pretty sure this means our knowledge is based in anthropomorphism or else we wouldn’t be humans without this defining feature. Though it is ruled to be destructive in it’s own right because human’s are known to label their whole world around them with metaphors which act as a jail. N questions if this human nature only limits us as a race. As an artist it makes me wonder if art is another victim of metaphor and anthropomorphism from a viewer’s perspective. N touches base on art stating that art serves no purpose to seduce our trust or beliefs. Is this liberating then?

It isn’t the duty of language to precisely frame the environment. N pokes at this idea claiming “Thus the genesis of language does not proceed logically in any case, and all the material within and with which the man of truth, the scientist, and the philosopher later work and build, if not derived from never never land, is at least not derived from the essence of things”. We look to records of mathematicians, historians, artists, and masters of their craft which have molded and shaped our world. If their teachings are false due to the deception within language being subjective and random, then is there more depth and truth in lies? I find it quite amusing yet very intriguing that (from what I understand) N is making us stop and rethink about the validation of the greatest minds of our history.
What N makes apparent is that every “concept” consists of what he calls unequal parts. Qualities such as deception and forgetfulness allow concepts to form. The progression of time allows one to forget the origin of truth within metaphors because they’re copies of analogies. Metaphors frequently used soon become devoid of meaning and lose their luster only to become the husk of a cliché. N claims this to be problematic when “the same image has been generate millions of times and has been handed down for many generations and finally appears on the same occasion every time for all man kind…the hardening and the congealing of a metaphor guarantees absolutely nothing concerning it’s necessity and exclusive justification”. We forget the words we use are copies of a copies, which in a way if you really think about it is a lazy way to assume the world and our environment.
N lastly compares the concepts of a liberated mindset of an intuitive man in relation to a rational person guided by concepts. The rational man is regarded as inartistic, less adventurous, guided by concepts, and aims to be free from pain. The intuitive man is opposing in many ways to his peer. He is considered irrational, confusing, believes illusion and beauty is fashioned deeply into life, relies on the culture and art to shape him. N concludes that both men suffer misfortunes but the Intuitive man suffers harsher conditions since he is incapable of foresight and learning from his mistakes. He is incapable of quelling himself emotionally from the inevitability of misfortune. Is this N’s way of showing no matter which man we are, deception is inevitable so the least we can do is learn to cope with it?

A central feature of this course will be the writing we do on this site.  In what follows, I will outline three things:

• a rationale for why I ask you to blog in the first place, rather than write traditional essays
• a quick primer on how to create your first post
• a simple rubric to guide your writing + an example of a good-looking post

First things first: why blog?

1. Blogging is sharable: rather than have a private circuit between you and me, we have a much more dynamic conversation across the entire class.

2. Blogging is public, sort of: I like the idea that we are responsible for our ideas in front of broader audiences.  In practical terms, I doubt anyone is listening in most of the time, but I think it’s important that we roll up our sleeves and defend our arguments in an open and public forum as often as possible.  And of course, you can show your family/friends/pets what we’ve been up to in class.  For those who have reservations about privacy, note that a) you can only be identified via firstname+last initial, so you have relative privacy beyond our class; and b) you are free to delete your posts at the end of class.  If anyone has serious reservations despite all this, feel free to contact me.

3. Blogging is sturdy: rather than forget the piece of paper once it’s been handed back, we can link back to prior statements or observations, or to each others’. If you like, you can leave your posts up for future 306ers to see.

4. Blogging is responsive: rather than only getting comments from me, you’ll comment on and get comments on each other’s work.

So how do you post?  Once you get enrolled as an “author” on the site, it’s really easy.  Here’s a step-by-step with screen shots from Evan Cordulack at William and Mary.  I’ll also note that WordPress gives you several other ways to initiate a post, so feel free to explore the dashboard and find your own best way.

What makes for an excellent post?  For this class, posts should:

• contain at least 400 words (use word count in WordPress or your word processor)
• explain a given text’s argument (or part of an argument), using quotations and paraphrases of the text with page numbers in parentheses
• engage that argument critically, noting its limitations, its links to other texts we’ve read, its unstated assumptions, etc.

Here’s a simple rubric, adapted from Mark Sample, that I will use to evaluate your work (see how the academic blogosphere encourages sharing and exchange?  I told you so!):

Last but not least, here’s an example of a good-looking post.  I’ve linked to it in a Word doc so you can see some marginal comments that explain why it’s good.  And remember: it’s not an exercise in cookie-cutting: your results may vary, and there are lots of ways to write an excellent post.

[scribd id=164214939 key=key-2008aqo3h9215wi7sjm mode=scroll]

I know I said I wouldn’t, but I did: here are a few questions to guide your reading of the Foucault essay for Thursday. It’s rough sledding, but we’ll make sense of it in class.

Hi all,

Looking forward to meeting you in ENGL 306 tomorrow. We’ll take a few minutes to do a quick survey (really just your name and email) to help me get you enrolled in our website. If you want to get ahead of the game, here it is:
https://goo.gl/forms/0CEWz9bGl3ovcY6U2

Best,
JA

In English classes, we have traditionally (for 100 years at least) invested our attention overwhelmingly on THE TEXT, meaning special kinds of writing that are deemed especially beautiful/innovative/profound/relevant/resistant. What is changing, both in the discipline and the technological ecology in which we practice it, to refocus our attention? Who or what are we supposed to be paying attention to, if not (say) Bartleby, the Scrivener? What are some ways that this course itself moves in the direction Liu alludes to?

With the introduction of technology the value of the text has changed. No longer will we be focusing on how beautiful/innovative/profound/relevant/resistant a text my be. Technology has made it so that everyone may become an author and everyone may be involved in the creation of THE TEXT. The modern use of technology i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Vine, etc. thrives on the voice of the people. Its success comes from everyone being able to comment and give an opinion about issues and hot topics. Our focus then changes from the quality of the text and instead just focuses on the bases of the texts. As Alan Liu mentioned in his article, technology is moving a direction where the lines between author and reader are non existent. We are evolving so that a text becomes more of a dialogue or communication between groups rather than a simple text with an author and reader.

I’ve always found it very unusual to witness people posing for photographs, and especially in public.
When I get to observe this kind of thing, I want to note that it generally involves more than one person. The act of the selfie deserves extensive mention, but I’m going to skip over it here. Instead, I’d like to paint the image of a group of people huddled proximate to one another; there is that second or two of motion as every makes their last minute adjustments, bodies shift, faces moving. If you let your eyes fall slack on this act of preparation, you can feel it in the momentary delerium as the image tightens up, focuses, and becomes Correct.

The weird feeling arises out of an understanding that I am participating in a voyeuristic double act, watching someone prepare themselves for visual consumption. That isn’t to say there is anything weird about wanting to look a certain way in the photographs you take. At the same time, the reflexivity present in posing is one that has marred the whole span of my life, as I recall every instance of squinting and squirming among family members at some restaurant gathering (to appease a grandfather, whom out of a simple filial love, I allow to undergo another present act of photographic geneology). But to be on the outside of this whole shenanigan inflects the act with a peculiar kind of mental funk.

This whole event is even weirder when we think of the selfie as the new dominant mode of self-photography. The lens has seldom ever been turned onto us in the way that it is now. In antiquity, one would pose in front of it (the lens, the gaze). But now, with the selfie, photography is not just the gaze turned inward but the mirror too, in whose reflection constitute our selves; Lacan, I think, would have a field day.

What I think makes this more interesting is when we bring in the work of Walter Benjamin, the 20th century media critic, whose seminal text, “The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproduction”, struggled with the implications of what it meant for images to be easily reproduced and disseminated in the media after the advent of photography and film. Beyond Benjamin’s world is the one we live in now, where technological reproduction has been accelerated to breakneck velocities and the concept of Virality is precisely a gauge of that sort of thing. Our Infosphere, where people can release their image into this arena and watch it spore, leaves me wondering how that affects our conception of ourselves, where we no longer deliberate our image as a singular instance outside of ourselves, but as one specifically manufactured for an anticipated level of reproduction, distribution, and consumption.

When “homosexual” first became a term in 1870 that one was defined by. It gave a name to sexual desires, labelling what one “is” instead of what one “does.” To Foucault, sexuality is entrenched in power and politics. Although the Victorian era is today seen as sexually repressed, according to Foucault it was anything but. In this era, around the time when the term “homosexual” first came into use, there seemed to have been a painstaking attempt to turn sex into discourse. The church started shaping and pushing the discourse of sexuality in a new direction, attempting to turn the banal, passing thought into a sin that must be confessed. Foucault sees this as a state apparatus attempting to control thought and power.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, more laws were passed limiting sexual behavior and criminalizing “devious” sexual acts. What once lived in the realm of fantasy, now became something that was intimately connected to who and what one was, and thus, must be governed. Because of the increasing discourse being discussed around sexuality, fringe sexuality was turned into the discourse. Science began quantifying it, the government began to study it, and categories were constructed based upon one’s sexual behavior. Naming this behavior turned a thought into a thing.

By structuralizing and codifying the once-mundane, our thoughts are named and turned into measurable structuralized categories: homosexual, heterosexual, transsexual, transgendered, bisexual, cis-gender, queer, etc. It is if by uttering our thoughts, we essentially box ourselves into a category from which there is no getting out of. Speaking these thoughts, then, gives away our free agency to someone more powerful than us, like the government, a priest, or the analyst. We are turned into a number, or assigned a role, rather than seen as individual. Further, as we confess and give this information away to others, we are also gaining a deeper understanding of ourselves. This perhaps leads to self-censorship and self-restriction, at the behest of state apparatuses seeking to control our behavior.