I’ve just posted study questions for the entire unit with corrected page #s, FYI.  And I wanted to share with you an image of a “camera obscura” to make Marx’s metaphor a bit less, well, obscure:

[description from the Cabinet of Wonders blog]: The camera obscura works under the same principles as the pinhole camera: you make a small hole in the side of a box (either a real box or a room-sized box) and the light outside will get in through the hole and project itself onto a piece of paper or a wall, showing you a perfect image of the scene on the outside of the box. Because light travels in a straight line, and because the hole is small, the light on one side of the scene will have to come through at an opposing angle from the light on the other side of the scene.

As we discussed, the metaphor points at the way cultural representations preserve a kind of fidelity to social reality (i.e., the representation issues from the real thing) but in a distorted manner.  So the work of “ideological criticism” is to re-establish the relationship between reality and representation, a job that’s much more complex in most cases than the simple two-dimensional “flip” in a camera obscura would suggest.

Sorry for the delay, but the study questions on Marx are posted as of Sun evening.  See you Tuesday.

“The better formed his product, the more deformed becomes the worker.”

1). Just from the title and the opening paragraph, I’m willing to suspect that intersectionality between philosophy and economics can be found in political realities. How this pans out for Marx and Engles I’m not sure yet, but hopefully I can get a better grounding of Marx’s work, before I start making contemporary references (which I’ll try to refrain from, or at least save until the end).

2). Political Economy – an institution with it’s own set of laws and language. Characteristics of this economy include: private property, the separation of labor, capital and land, wages, profit of capital, rent of land, division of labor, competition, exchange-value. This type of economy commodifies not only the work that people do, but workers themselves, and there value is based on their scope of production – or rather, their lack of value is inverse to their scope or production. Large economic gaps are therefore created between the haves (owners) and the have-nots (workers).

2). “Political economy proceeds from the fact of private property.” So, in keeping with the title of this essay, and my earlier thesis, when capitalistic economic systems are in play, capitalistic philosophies and values govern our society (“the interest of the capitalists to be the ultimate cause”), and this is reflected by the laws passed by the government. Competition is posited to be an external characteristic of this system, instead of something produced within the system itself.

3). Alienation of Labor:

The money system gives rise to the characteristics of the political economy. Workers lose value as they produce more.
—> This can be scene with the rise of outsourcing. For example, interesting fact: iPads would be about 3 times the price (at 1,140) if they were produced in America and it’s workers were paid for their labor. Similarly, what allows companies such as Walmart and H&M to price their goods so low is that they are only paying for the materials, not for the cost of the labor.
—>This objectification of labor can be recognized in a process called “estrangement” or “alienation.”
—>Workers are kept in conditions of abject poverty and given only enough to sustain their work, nothing more. Very true, if one examines factory and sweatshop conditions that American companies impose globally in India, China, Bangladesh, and numerous Latin American countries. This also manifests itself inside of America, especially among those who work in the service industry.

4). “So much does the appropriation of the object appear as estrangement that the more objects the worker produces the fewer can he possess and the more he falls under the dominion of his product, capital.” This idea that the more a man/woman puts into their production of goods/God, the less they have in themselves. Their work becomes external to themselves, and by extension, their “life no longer belongs to [themselves] but to the object.” The parallel of religion to capitalism is an apt one, and one I think would be fruitful to explore in a later post. At the end of this essay, Marx and Engles write “Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the heart, operates independently of the individual – that is, operates on him as an alien, divine or diabolical activity – in the same way the worker’s activity is not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self.” The ultimate goals, or if not goals then consequences, of forces such as religion and money are to fragment the worker, reduce, distort, and destroy one’s humanity, and make them controllable.

Within this exists a Marxist dichotomy of Freedom/Spontaneity vs. Object bondage/Alienation

Additionally, Christianity acts as a representation of people in society – there is a camera obscura affect, and ideology is topsy turvy to the reality in a way that rationalizes injustice in the world. Religion does reflect real material conditions and indexes things the way they are, but distorts them.

5). Workers use the materials provided by nature to allow their labor to manifest itself. The resultant is that nature provides 2 type of materials: means for a worker to produce labor, and means for a worker to live (food, shelter, etc.). Therefore, the more invested a worker becomes in one usage of nature, the less important the other becomes. Just as the more a person invests in their identity as a worker, the less they are valued as a physical subject. It is only through their work that they are able to sustain their human needs.

Additionally, many of these natural are considered to be zero-sum resources: clean water, housing, food – so if one person gets it, it means another is being deprived of it. However, for the worker, it means that the more natural resources that they appropriate for labor, the less they are able to utilize for their survival, and the worker becomes a double slave of his object (the object of labour).

6). So in the next paragraph, Marx and Engles talk about the ramifications of labour for the pour, versus the ramifications of labour for the rich. The rich get things, while the poor get privation, hardship, and destitution. My question is the role that education plays in this political economy. When universities are more concerned with their brands then their students, does this reflect a commodification of education? When even something like education, which was once used as an infrastructure to raise people out of poverty, is now serving to reinforce divides between social stratospheres, how can does this illustrate communist doctrine, and explode what’s increasingly becoming a myth of meritocracy? I still don’t think I understand Marxist doctrine enough to argue it, but I think it would be fascinating to research. This is a great article about internships and this sort of “prestige economy” that unpaid internships have created, and I think it really helps makes some of the more abstract principles in this text concrete. How would Marx react to such an article? http://www.policymic.com/articles/48829/why-you-should-never-have-taken-that-prestigious-internship

It ties into the expendability of workers, and the idea of surplus labor – I think Marx would argue that free labor is an ineluctable (am I using that right?) consequence within a political economy. Prestige economies are a microcosm which reflect this. It might even be tenable that prestige economies are metonymic of the other systems produced by the money system.

7). Forced Labour – “[Work] is not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it.”

8). This quote, which is the last sentence of the essay, relates to point number 4: “As a result, therefore, man (the worker) no longer feels himself to be freely active in any but his animal functions – eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc.; and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and why is human becomes animal.”

I’m slowly making my way through all of your posts thus far and giving some feedback via email.  I’m about halfway through, so over the next few days, I should be getting to you if I haven’t.  As was the case last time, I’ve given a provisional grade to let you know where you stand.  If you think my tally of your posts is in error or you otherwise don’t understand my feedback, please get in touch.

In Jakobson’s paper “Linguistics and Poetics”, he first elaborates on two terms that are central to his argument as they are broad classification systems that are thought to be in opposition. He states that “poetics deals with the problems of verbal structure” and linguistics is defined as the “science of verbal structure” (1145). Although some would separate poetics from the linguistic field, he argues that linguistics and poetics are intimately related. He remarks that “many poetic features belong not only to the science of language but to the whole theory of signs, that is, to general semiotics” (1145). For that statement to be valid, poetics and linguistics must be interconnected because the foundation of the study of language has been built on the theory of signs and semiotics. He also discards another objection in regards to the nature of poetry being “noncasual” as opposed to other verbal communication’s “casual” nature (1145). To debunk this belief he states, “any verbal behavior is goal-directed, but the aims are different…” (1146). As aforementioned, language itself is highly structured and this is validated by the fact that the study of language has spawned a wide variety of theories and fields such as semiotics.

Jakobson’s argument rests on theories grounded in and in contradiction to works by his predecessors and contemporaries. Jakobson concludes that “every language encompasses several concurrent patterns, each characterized by different functions” but that specific “speech events” are comprised of primary factors as well as “secondary factors” (1147). He expounds the six factors of a speech event which consist of an addresser (the person giving the message), context (the person, place or thing being referred to), message (the sound or utterance being made), contact (the medium used to convey the message to the addressee), code (the language or rules used in the code) and the addressee (the “decoder of the message”) (1147). After delineating the structure of a verbal message he outlines the function of various verbal messages. These functions include the emotive (focused on the addresser), the conative (focused on the addressee), the referential (focused on the context), the phatic (focused on the context) and the metalingual (focused on the code) and poetic functions (focused on the “message for its own sake”) (1148-1151).

Jakobson finds the use of the poetic function within and outside of poetry. Just as the interjection or the imperative are the purer forms of the emotive and conative functions respectively, “verbal art” is one of the purest embodiments of the poetic function (1150). However, verbal art isn’t the exclusive use of this function. This is one of the reasons that Jakobson argues against restricting the poetic function to the analysis of poetry. He states that even within poetry “the particularities of diverse poetic genres imply a differently ranked participation of the other verbal functions along with the dominant verbal function” (1151). A message’s structure is governed by a primary function and its subordinate functions (1148). Jakobson gives examples of the use of the poetic function in our daily lives through the use of poetic devices such as paronomasia and alliteration.

Jakobson opens “Linguistics and Poetics” with the question, “what makes a verbal message a work of art” (1144)? Hitherto, I was taught that what constitutes as “art” is completely subjective. Whether it be a painting by a well renowned artist like Van Gogh or an exhibit including everyday objects, self-expression seems to be whatever you deign to call it. Art comes in such a broad spectrum of forms that this very characteristic of diversity is why one might be inclined to assume that it has no real structure. However, this is a deceptive notion because when this generalization is applied to different forms of art such as poetry it falls short. Jakobson’s analysis of verbal utterances and poetics is so illuminating because poetry, arguably the most structured form of language (in the eyes of many), can be found in practically all walks of human life – from works designated to the field of poetry to marketing slogans and everyday speech. The poetic function is utilized constantly. In fact, it was probably used in writing this blog post.

In Paul de Man’s “Semiology and Rhetoric,” he discusses the development of different literary theories over time including formalism, structuralism and post-structuralism, and then denounces them all. Instead, de Man proposes his idea of deconstruction. It was important for him to discuss all previous theories in his essay because deconstruction is not exactly a new theory—it is a way of pulling these existing structures apart. He believes that all previous theories have one thing in common—these binaries of form/grammar and content/rhetoric that he disagrees with. De Man criticizes formalists such as Saussure for focusing solely on form (grammar) and ignoring content (rhetoric). He feels that this method of reading severely reduces the meaning of a given text. De Man’s argument here is that there needs to be more emphasis on rhetoric but that neither rhetoric nor grammar can stand alone in providing literary meaning. Instead, both grammar and rhetoric must exist together, although you can only read a text focusing on one or the other, its important for the reader to see that the text can have multiple meanings.

De Man discusses the argument regarding the binary of form and content and how they’ve switched roles over time. “The polarities of inside and outside have been reversed, but they are still the same polarities that are at play: internal meaning has become outside reference, and the outer form has become the intrinsic structure.”  However, according to deconstruction it does not matter what is inside or outside. What matters is that both of these things are connected and interdependent. Grammar on its own, for instance, cannot grasp things such as sarcasm and rhetoric alone cannot exist on its own because it needs structure to be understood. However, de Man points out that the two ways of analyzing a text cannot exist together or else they would undo each other. This made me think of the metaphor Saussure used for the signifier/signified—comparing it to a sheet of paper where you can only see one side at a time and the two sides cannot be separated.

De Man uses the example of the conversation Archie Bunker has with his wife Edith when she asks him about how he would like his bowling shoelaces tied. Archie replies with a rhetorical question—“What’s the difference?” Edith represents a formalist in this situation in the way that she takes his question literally, i.e. focusing on grammar, and begins to respond when clearly he was not asking what the actual difference was. Using the lens of rhetoric is the best way in this case to see what Archie actually meant—“I don’t give a damn what the difference is.”   However, de Man’s point is that the question can be read both ways and its important as a reader to understand that and be able to read it both ways in order to extract as much meaning from the text as possible.

Paul De Man makes a very important and compelling argument on semiology and rhetoric. Using Saussure’s discussion on semiology, De Man uses it as his vehicle to show how complex rhetoric is within language. In the beginning he speaks about the opposition between the form and content and that this ongoing debate is completely useless. “It matters little whether we call the inside of the box the content or the form, the outside the meaning or the appearance”, he tells us to forget about this debate between form and content and draws our attention to grammar and rhetoric. He says that there is a deep connection between the two. Grammar is the structure, or little pieces that make up the word and structurally allow it to work while rhetoric uses the structure of words to create a bigger picture. Rhetoric is the meaning behind the words which is completely dependent on the context it is being used in. There is a big relationship between the two, rhetoric is completely contingent on grammar. An idea to be questioned here is whether grammar is completely contingent on rhetoric. If something is grammatically correct, does it necessarily HAVE to have a bigger picture behind it? Can you not simply have a grammatically correct structure with a literal meaning?
A problem De Man brings to our attention is the fact a sentence can have two meanings: a literal meaning and a figurative meaning. The way we discover which meaning it can have is by looking at the “extra-textual intention”, by looking at the way the sentence is presented and the context around it, we are able to grasp what the author will truly mean. He uses Yeats’ poem as an example of how an author uses a literal example to mean something figurative but can still go either way.
I’d like to lastly bring up the point of opposition between metaphor and metonymy which I find, to be the hardest point to fathom. Metaphor is indirectly comparing something to another, or substitution versus metonymy that uses a part of something to represent the whole. De Man brings to our attention the power of the metaphor in the example over the power of metonymy “…the ‘necessary link’ that unites the buzzing of the flies to the summer makes it a much more effective symbol than the tune head ‘perchance’ during the summer” instead of using a tune that is usually played during the summer, substituting the the buzzing of the flies to represent and describe summer provides much more of an effect on the reader. Metaphor’s give us “syntactical paradigms” while metonymy gives us “syntagmatic structure”.

To create a solid definition of what is considered art is one of the more strongly debated topics amongst academics who enjoy it. Poetics being the verbal/written counterpart to the visual art is just as difficult to define. One of the many problems that arise from attempting to declare what is poetic is the connection that poetry has to other forms of art that do not incorporate the verbal aspect of poetics. An example used by Jakobson is the Baroque period in art when he states that, “The problems of the baroque or any other historical style transgress the frame of a single art”, in other words art belongs to the entirety of signs or to “general semiotics”. 

The link between poetics and linguistics is that poetics is part of the existing structure of language, not some interdependent distant form of communication. Poetics entails all the different functions used in linguistics to designate meaning to signs we use all around us. The resulting signified properties of poetics are as much a part of semiotics as they are a part of art, because both of these components of poetics, the structural semiotics, and the substantial content (art) of it play an equal role in determining what is poetry.

Referring to the Jakobson’s explanation of the “emotive elements” of speech, we can conclude that the emotive elements of speech link the structures of poetics to the semiotics of the real world. This connection through semiotics to the real world solidify even more sternly the relationship between poetics and the real world. 

While semiotics can definitely allow us an insight into how we translate what we see around us into verbal message and thoughts is fascinating in its own right, yet that kind of analytical objective analysis of  the world has its shortcomings. The use of poetics within the study of semiotics “promote *s the palpability of signs, deepens the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects”.

After reading page 1150 of Jakobsons on Linguistics and Poetics I became aware of why there was some difficulty for me when we first began reading Semiotics in class a week ago, and that is the objective and deeply analytical style of the semiotic reading. It was not the complexity but rather the absence of poetics in the early readings. The palpability that is promoted through the use of poetics creates a springboard from which to understand semiotics by allowing a more accessible point of reference for reading it. Though now through Jakobson I have begun to experience a different understanding when re reading earlier readings like Strauss, by reading it as poetry like I would read a book,  rather than trying to wrap my head around everything that is being said in an analytic frenzy.

 The inner workings of language seem to be so much more complex than I would have ever expected…I though we just spoke.