Better understanding of Derrida

Having watched the biography on Derrida it gave me much more insight into him as a person and I believe made me better understand,"Structure Sign and Play". The whole time Derrida was being filmed he was very conscious of the cameras and was pointing the fact out they were there following him every chance that he got. I do not think the irony of following around Derrida and making a documentary film on him was last on the directors. Just the way they went about posing questions to Derrida or the places they followed him to showed that. I really enjoyed it when they would have the woman's voice saying a quote from one of Derrida's writ ting while he was doing such average mundane things as getting a haircut or buttering his toast. That brought it all back and showed that they understood somewhat what they were actually doing.

I think Derrida's image helps to understand more about his writing because you can actually put a face to what he says, it at least made it more interesting to me. Derrida's hair made a big impression on me throughout the movie as well. When I looked at him I found myself mostly looking at his hair all crazy and white. It just seemed to fit his thoughts and writing that are so deep and hard to grasp it fit for him to have this almost mad scientist type hair. I came away from watching the film feeling as if Derrida was a pretty funny guy. When they were in his library at his home and was asked if he had read all of the books he had. His response that no he had only read three or four but he read those three or four really well was really funny to me. Then in the movie when he mentioned that your eyes never change no matter what made me look more deeply at his eyes and they are just great. He has a very charming look to him and it seemed very uncomplicated, not like his ideas at all.

Being followed and interviewed as much as Derrida was must not of been the easiest thing but he was not going easy on the interviewers which I thought was rather appropriate of him. There was a big disconnect between what the interviewer wanted from the answer and what Derrida was willing to give them, or maybe that is exactly how they planed it. This point was especially clear when Derrida was sitting with his wife and they were asking about how they met and Derrida would only give facts. He would not show anything deep that had to do with feelings or had any real meaning behind it just trivial things like the year they met and where they were. Having Derrida refer to the film process as very American really cleared some things up for me. Americans always want to know more just to expand on a topic, its not really asking any specific question they just want to know more. I found it interesting when I thought about it and that it was very American to do that, that its not really gone about that way in other cultures. So when Derrida was asked to just expand on love he couldn't just talking about it and thinking about it I don't think anyone truly can its silly.

Sassure and Structuralism

"Signs function not through their intrinsic value but through their relative position."


Saussure having said that really seems to me to be making the point that it all depends on what surrounds the big picture. Signs function in all of this not by some deep value that might have but by their positioning and place in reference to other things. I am not exactly sure if that makes sense to anyone who actually know what they are talking about but that is the main idea I think I was able to derive from that. I really think that this quote does an excellent job at summarizing the jumbled ideas I took away after reading this. That everything with language and in a text is all relational. A single word cannot have a true value unless it is able to be compared to other things. For words to have value Saussure talks about that they need both a "dissimilar thing that can be exchanged", and a," similar thing that can be compared with the thing of which value can be determined". Explaining in those two steps help me understand and think about it all more. It put his ideas in a more accessible to me and put them into a real sense for me.

Response on Christopher Craig

After reading Dr. Craig's lecture on Marxism this week it helped clarify some of my mixed up thoughts on the subject.The lecture definitely made some of the more confusing points for me more clear with the examples he used. However with that said not everything is magically all made sense and I didn't expect it to. I'm still trying to figure it all out and work things out in my head on what exactly this Marxist viewpoint is but Dr. Craig definitely helped.

I thought that it really put in perspective how such a serious threat as communism 50 years ago was now being used in a marketing scheme in a trendy store. Having it suggest that buying a pair of jeans is as radical as communism was a little ridiculous. Urban Outfitters is one of the farthest things away from radical change. Having thousands of kids across America buying into the same idea that buying clothes there is rebelling against the norm is really just conforming into what society wants. Having the Communist Manifesto on the same table as pair of jeans shows that communist thought really hasn't gone away. However it is the capitalist ruling class that is trying to downplay that idea by putting it out there so casually trying to down play the true significance. Buying the jeans is not the Marxist belief it is advertised so closely to but it its buying into the capitalist hegemonic ideal trying to make communism cool. The same thing with the Che Guevara t-shirts. The image that once stood for radicalism and rebellion now seems to mainstream in society and people don't understand the meaning.

Having a majority of the things in life such as the news told from one viewpoint that is supposedly true to them all is not. Society is giving us information as it would be important to the rich and ruling class in society not the main working class. It is basically trying to confuse the working class into thinking that things are going great for them. When in reality the ruling class is the only ones benefiting and it is their way of keeping them up and the working class down.

Even with the Marxist thought that the working man could unite and be a power this will always be a class society. It is the environment we live in and it is not going to change easily because we all play into it. There will always be a class struggle in our society that shapes our lives. It is important to see life and literature with a partial Marxist perspective because as I think Dr. Craig was saying it is always shaping our lives.

Marxism vs Liberal Humanism

Marxism is definetly a completely different way of looking at interpreting literature then liberal humanism. Having learned liberal humanism and starting to try and fully grasp that concept of looking at a text and realizing it should go past the time it was written and always be revalent. Good literature relates to human nature which no matter the period or culture it should still hold true. Going from that to now a Marxist view on literature which doesnt neccessarily transcend the time in which it was written it is very culturally specific and holds true always to that time period.

According to a liberal humaist approach to literature human nature stays the same throughout the ages. At first many would look at that in disbelief but it really holds true. No matter what time or place inhistory there are some core elements that hold true. This makes literature always relatable because human nature is not completly changing all the time. Marxism completely challenges this idea with saying that literature is written to change the human nature of the time. It keeps trying to change peoples thoughts and push the idea of a classless society and all decisions should be made to better the society. It seems like a nice idea but rather unrealistic opposed to liberal humanists.

Marxism has the belief that not only do you look inside the text to understand it as liberal humanists say you should it is also or more important to look outside of that. I do not completely agree that in order to fully understand a text you must appreciate what was going on in the political, social and economical situation of the times. That seems helpful to me but it is really not the end all be all to interpreting meaing in a text. Text shouldnt be judged better if a more educated man wrote it than if a lesser educated man did. However with that said I think knowing information such as the authors education gives the reader more insight and can help get a better understanding of the text.

Introduction and Initial Thoughts

Hi my name is Lauren I am a junior and a member of the dance team. As far as theory goes my first thoughts are rather disorderly. At this point I can't exactly form a valid opinion on most of it yet. I appreciate that it is important to understand the context in which literature was written to get a better grasp on the importance. Beyond that it seems much more opinion based and I am really not sure what mine would be on the subject.