Having suggested semiotics for the course work, I did not nearly anticipate the depth of these readings! This is the topic most relevant to my studies, but its has thus far been the most difficult to grasp mentally. I think a 15 page paper might do justice as an overview of all these readings let alone the 1000 or so words, but I’ll do my best to paraphrase each briefly without bastardizing the intense content for this week’s blog.
In Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction, Elliott intends to provide an informative overview of the contemporary relevance of psychoanalysis to theory and social practice. As may academics declare Freud’s theories dead or disproven, Elliot thinks we need to think about Freud’s continuing importance politically, culturally and theoretically. Freud’s specific theories (Oedipal complex, etc.) may have been disproven, but his identification of ideas such as the submerged, repression, projection, fantasy, repetition, etc. still have a lasting cultural impact today. Even the most post-modern anti psychoanalytic theories owe a Freudian debt to his concepts of ‘remembering’, ‘repeating’, and ‘working through’ to help define the ‘end of modernity.’(pg. 5)
We see this shift in how Freud’s work can be understood in a more post-modern context in the way we have classically understood our ‘self’ as having a stable core identity. This modern concept of the self, the Cartesian idea of selfhood as fixed, permanent, rational and unified can be dismantled through psychoanalysis as it reveals the self to have multiple dimensions that are subjectively fashioned through interpersonal relationships.
This is particularly interesting because on one hand Freud has been heavily criticized in an for being old fashioned, and disproven for patriarchal unsubstantiated theories, but on another the other hand his work has been taken to another level where his ideas in psychoanalysis have evolved into much deeper postmodern themes, positioning the self as an imaginary construct with many interpersonal subjective levels.
Next, in the The Nature of the Linguistic Sign Saussure deconstructs speech and language to their physical, psychological and social sides. Saussure defines languages as “the social side of speech…where an auditory image becomes associated with a concept.” It is a homogeneous system of signs, a set of meanings and sound-images. Language is a system of signs in which the only essential thing is the union of meanings and sound-images, and in which both parts of the sign are psychological.
These things together create linguistic signs, associations which bear the stamp of collective approval. The “linguistic sign as not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image”; not only the material sound, but the psychological imprint of the sound on our senses learned from society. The association of a ‘concept’ with a psychological ‘sound-image’ he calls a sign, which is the whole that results from associating the signifier with the signified.
In the readings by Barthes, he discusses various phenomena in French culture which he was inspired to analyze after reading Saussure. Intrigued by the language of mass culture Barthes takes a first stab at semiotic analysis. In the preface to his work he realized that by “treating ‘collective representations’ as sign-systems” he can “account in detail for the mystification which transforms petite-bourgeois culture into a universal nature.”
In our three selections Barthes looks at ‘Wrestling’, ‘Wine and Milk’, and ‘Steak and Chips’ semiotically in mini essays written as social commentaries on interests of his at the time. He shows us how these cultural images, or signs as Saussure would call them, become universalized in society.
In wine Barthes enumerates the semiotic associations with the drink in France. The French as a nation feel that they possess wine as a very own part of their culture. Wine is signified on a different level in France where it is not a drink to get drunk—as it may be in other countries—but implicit in wine is the act of drink, not with the intention to get drunk, with quintessential French gesture of decorative value. Barthes contrasts wine with whiskey. Contrary to wine, whiskey is drank for its type of drunkness—“with the least painful after effects…reduced to a causal act.” These mythologies have moral significance. Since whiskey is viewed as a drink only to get drunk it is going to be amoral vis-à-vis wine which carries connotations of sociability, knowledge, gesture and restraint which are central to the universalized culture of the French state. Here Barthes has given us more practical examples to see first hand the kind of signs that Saussure was theorizing earlier.
Lastly, we are going to need to discuss The system of Objects at length in class in the same manner as Marx’s Captial. I feel that I understood the basic concept of Baudrillard’s argument, but know that there is so much more to it that I need to better understand. As I understood it, he presents consumption from another angle. It is a Marxist viewpoint, but it does not put production at the fore of our capitalist culture. Consumption, he states, “is an active mode of relations…a systematic mode of activity and a global response on which our whole cultural system is founded.” He stresses that this consumption does not refer to material goods in the classical sense, but rather images and messages signifying our need and satisfaction, the ideas and relations signified.
Advertising is the fuel for this fire. It is no longer the physical object and its use-value that is advertized, but rather its related symbolism which is purchased and consumed: “Today every desire, plan, need, every passion and relation is abstracted as a sign and as object to be purchased and consumed…it is never consumed in its materiality, but in its difference.” (22-23) He is suggesting that there is no limits to consumption anymore because everything signified and consumed semiotically, not physically, or else we would achieve absorption or satisfaction. This new consumption is “organized as a discourse to oneself.”(54) Whereas traditionally morality required an individual to conform to a group and consume accordingly, the new idea of consumption is related to the multifaceted self and the consumption of images, ideas and relations to conform and satisfy those selves.
What does this do to Marx’s theories about the proletariat’s control by the means of production if consumption, not production, is now the global cultural framework? These works all concern signs and representations on multiple levels but is there a way to tie them all into one idea? Blog away, my brain is fried.
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Wow, there is a lot of material to get through this week, not sure what we are going to concentrate on but I would selfishly like to spend half the class talking about psychoanalysis (if possible). I’m really excited to have Dr. Macdonald join us this Tuesday and talk more on Psychoanalysis; at least I’m hoping that is what she intends to do. My excitement stems partly from a lack of background in psychoanalytic theory, and partly from a new found interest in the subject after reading Elliot’s overview. In short, I can’t wait to learn more about psychoanalysis because I find it fascinating.
Now, I must clarify my level of excitement because it stems from pure disbelief about how psychoanalysis is still relevant. Oedipus complex? Castration complex? Was I reading that correctly? Apparently I was.
Right from the start Freud’s idea that the self is an outcrop of unconscious fantasy is troublesome because of how speculative his idea of unconscious fantasy appears to be. He must have used his imagination when formulating some of his ideas about unconscious fantasy and childhood development’s affect on the development of the self. I take particular issue with his idea of the “hidden self” as the “dimension of subjectivity that is cut off from self-knowledge” that “constantly disrupts and outstrips our intentions...” (p. 10) I don’t think I would ever lean that heavily towards our unconscious having such an effect on our day to day actions and experiences. Furthermore, I find the Oedipus and castration complexes quite outlandish because they seem to rely on speculation more than anything. I guess that’s why Freud’s own brand of psychoanalysis has been largely cast aside in favour of new approaches? But still, new approaches to psychoanalysis are built on what I see as a base of speculative reasoning. Did anyone else have as much trouble buying this as I did?
When Elliot talks about ‘transference’ I begin to see how Freud’s contribution to understanding the self is still relevant. Elliot sees the idea of transference as a “strong argument” because “the individual self holds a transferential relationship to other people, to social bonds and to the cultural realm more generally.” (p.17) He goes on to state that we people our world with emotions and fantasies drawn from the past and project it on current experience. Now I begin to see how we internalize our experiences and they in turn shape who we are as subjects. Thus, I suppose I can start to see how important psychoanalytic theory is because we are complicated beings and understanding the self is perhaps the most important project in understanding our world.
Ferdinand de Saussure and Roland Barthes remain important and relevant because of their work on the structure of language. I wrote a paper on Barthes last year because I found out that he wrote the commentary for a National Film Board production called “What is Sport?” In my preliminary research on his work and his influences I kept coming across de Saussure, and it became apparent to me that de Saussure is really the “father” of linguistics in the 20th century. In Mythologies, Barthes applies the study of linguistic signs in order to deconstruct everyday life. For my own selfish purposes, I especially enjoy his take on wrestling because it represents one of the first critical studies of sport in society, although Barthes equates wrestling more with theatre than sport. Regardless, to Barthes, all sport is spectacle, and wrestling is specifically “meant to portray a purely moral concept: that of justice.” (p. 21) The idea that sport displays morals, but also ideas of civilization, to the population coincides with all his writing on sport. For instance, his particular take on hockey was that it shows Canadians that we have civilized the frozen and barren wasteland in which we live. Apparently there was no one here before European contact? Barthes own conclusions aside, I think Mythologies remains important because of how it purposes to deconstruct cultural material to expose how dominant groups assert their influence on the population.
What a fantastic bundle of readings about psychoanalysis and semiotics this week. I found the common denominator to be needs and desires, meaning and codes (language) and identity. For Elliot, psychoanalysis is concerned with needs and desires in relation to self-identity and subjectivity and the interconnections between self-hood/personal meanings and culture. Barthes does a terrific job of teasing out the specific meanings invested in cultural activities. I enjoyed how he deconstructed meaning from a national perspective to show how things like wrestling mean different things in different countries.
de Saussure took on the task of deconstructing language and exploring the arbitrary connection of sounds and objects. However it is non-linguistic signs interest me. Signs of the body like the universal recognition of obese, thin, and muscular and their ability to be recognized and judged collectively that particularly interest me. Baudrillard uses notions of needs, desire and language to interrogate consumption and the formation of codes of ‘social standing’.
I agree with Baudrillard that people define themselves in relation to objects. I also agree that this form of socialization is totalitarian— inescapable, for even acts of ‘resistance are carried out in relation to a society that conforms to it (p. 19)”. Consumption for Baurdillard, is like a language (minus the syntax), it is a system of meaning based on a code of signs.
I also found it interesting to see that in order for consumption to rid itself of its older disease related association, puritan ‘themes of thrift’ had to be replaced. This was partly done by the proliferation of ‘credit’ (by now, pay later). Baudrillard also talks about how consumption is social labour (remember after 9/11 when Bush told everyone to go out and ‘shop’).
So well all participate in consumption to define our identity. According to Baudrillard, we consume both to conform but mainly to express difference. At first glance this appears quite contradictory. I can make more sense of it if I think about body ideals (my favourite). That is many people consume (not just material objects, but Pilates classes etc.) to bring themselves closer to the ideal. Magazines often have articles that suggest accepting your body as it is, they encourage you to work with what you’ve got. This is key, accept yourself as you are, but we will give you advice on how to manipulate what you’ve got to bring you as close as possible to the prescribed ideal (i.e. jeans for people who are bottom heavy, that slim and create the illusion of longer lines/legs). Conformity is in the striving towards the ideal and the difference is the degree to which you have achieved the ideal.
EASIER TO READ
What a fantastic bundle of readings about psychoanalysis and semiotics this week. I found the common denominator to be needs and desires, meaning and codes (language) and identity. For Elliot, psychoanalysis is concerned with needs and desires in relation to self-identity and subjectivity and the interconnections between self-hood/personal meanings and culture. Barthes does a terrific job of teasing out the specific meanings invested in cultural activities. I enjoyed how he deconstructed meaning from a national perspective to show how things like wrestling mean different things in different countries.
de Saussure took on the task of deconstructing language and exploring the arbitrary connection of sounds and objects. However it is non-linguistic signs interest me. Signs of the body like the universal recognition of obese, thin, and muscular and their ability to be recognized and judged collectively that particularly interest me. Baudrillard uses notions of needs, desire and language to interrogate consumption and the formation of codes of ‘social standing’.
I agree with Baudrillard that people define themselves in relation to objects. I also agree that this form of socialization is totalitarian— inescapable, for even acts of ‘resistance are carried out in relation to a society that conforms to it (p. 19)”. Consumption for Baurdillard, is like a language (minus the syntax), it is a system of meaning based on a code of signs.
I also found it interesting to see that in order for consumption to rid itself of its older disease related association, puritan ‘themes of thrift’ had to be replaced. This was partly done by the proliferation of ‘credit’ (by now, pay later). Baudrillard also talks about how consumption is social labour (remember after 9/11 when Bush told everyone to go out and ‘shop’).
So we all participate in consumption to define our identity. According to Baudrillard, we consume both to conform but mainly to express difference. At first glance this appears quite contradictory. I can make more sense of it if I think about body ideals (my favourite). That is many people consume (not just material objects, but Pilates classes etc.) to bring themselves closer to the ideal. Magazines often have articles that suggest accepting your body as it is, they encourage you to work with what you’ve got. This is key, accept yourself as you are, but we will give you advice on how to manipulate what you’ve got to bring you as close as possible to the prescribed ideal (i.e. jeans for people who are bottom heavy, that slim and create the illusion of longer lines/legs). Conformity is in the striving towards the ideal and the difference is the degree to which you have achieved the ideal.
In thinking about how to tie the articles together I was stumped at first. How do you tie together food and language and Freud and wrestling and De Saussure without making it too complicated? Could we simply look at the connection between the unconscious and language??
Like Marty, I would love to spend a large portion of the class looking at psychoanalytic theory (for different reasons) and am also looking forward to our guest speaker.
As Andrew mentioned, we can see how Freuds ideas have evolved (in postmodern theories), and after reading Psychoanalytic Theory first, I ended up seeing it seeping through each of the other articles we read this week.
The importance of Freud’s introduction of the notions of repression/ hidden identities/ projection/ fantasy/ etc can not be minimized… they are terms that are very much a part of our everyday lives and underlying ideas that I am seeing EVERYWHERE. In The System of Objects we saw philosophical (advertisement slogans?) jargon telling us to “Overcome your superego! Take courage in your desires!” (p. 17), we heard about consumption appearing to be “irrepressible” because it no longer has to do with the satisfaction of needs (p.25), we heard about the fluidity of desire (p.45)… all of these ideas that stem from Freud’s “dead” theories (which seems like a contradiction – how can something “die” when you can’t stop talking about it?).
Freud believed the self is not a stable or unified entity, unlike the modern fixed concept of self that Andrew mentioned, and saw sexuality as being “created” – that there is an enormous fluidity of sexual desires shaping human experience (p.19). I understand your argument Marty that Freud is likely giving too much credit to the unconscious’ role in shaping our day-to-day experiences, but I really like the ideas of the interconnectedness of our unconscious and our actions, our “desires” and our “needs”, of our “self” and “society”. I don’t know… something about that just makes sense to me.
I also feel that we can’t escape (capitalism?) consumerism – and am fascinated in the wide variety of ways this consumer society seems to appear everywhere. Karima mentioned how we all “consume” to define our identities and I am very interested in this idea of defining the self through consumption – I really see the advertising methods, the consumer culture, as relying on Freuds ideas of our unconscious and repressed desires and wishes.
Could we expand Freud’s idea that we’re all “polymorphously perverse” (p.19) and say that we’re not simply looking for sexual gratification but for physical gratification – in, say, consumption or (socially constructed in order to converse) language?
I just want to start by saying that Marty, your post made me ecstatic! I also would like to spend some time on psychoanalysis but also because I don’t see its relevancy anymore.
I was surprised by how well the articles on semiotics allowed me to continue to engage with the Elliot readings and use what, most often Saussure was saying to further launch my attack!!!
First, I wanted to state that I have a giant problem when in discussions of Freud talk about him discovering anything in relation to psychoanalysis. Can you discover something that isn’t really there? Do you discover ideas? I would happily give him creator of many, but this stems from my disbelief in his results. It might not be a fair comparison, but it feels in many ways equivalent to William Reich’s discovery of Orgone. (look it up if you are interested and have free time because it’s a realy strange moment in history relating to sex and psychoanalysis, but it’s not an important example)
And moving on. . . I wondered throughout this reading if Freud, or psychoanalysis is post-modern. Elliot tried at several points the address the ways that psychoanalysis can be appropriated by post-modern thinkers, much in the same way that it has by feminists (interestingly the two examples used in the article that made sense to me were both post-modern feminists, Kristeva and Irigaray). However, just because post-modern thinkers have utilized psychoanalysis, doesn’t make the theory actually post-modern. Just as Kristeva and Irigaray’s use of psychoanalysis doesn’t make Freud a closeted feminist. I was especially jarred by the use of Lacan as an example of a post-modern psychoanalytic perspective, given that I think psychoanalysis is all about “under lying truths” and “universal truths” that, with my understanding of post-modernity, are inherently contradicting. For Freud every person with a penis (conflated with boy) who sees the genitals of someone without a penis (conflated with girl) develops castration anxiety. And every “girl” who sees the penis reasons that hers must have been cut off. It is completely unfathomable that this person without a penis (who is defined by lack and not by a vagina/vulva/clitoris/labia/etc) would look at one and wonder what that strange growth is. (I apologize for the tangential nature of this response).
Lastly I wanted to discuss Lacan and Saussure in the same breath. When Saussure is criticizing the over simplification of the process of binding the signifier and the signified to the sign, he argues “It assumes that ready made ideas exist before words” (p. 26). I felt that this sums up very well part of my problem with psychoanalysis. Freud, and the psychoanalysts to follow, created signs, called them discoveries and in giving these ‘concepts’ names assumed that they had always been there (hence the use of the word discovery). Where this becomes even more conflated with language for me, is the ways in which psychoanalysis draws upon language to create its concepts, such as Lacan’s example of the Name of the Father, a pun in French based upon “le nom de le pere” nom, meaning name, phonetically undistinguishable from non, meaning no. I guess I am asking if we are looking to language to access our psyches do these rules translate? What are the implications of the different linguistic anomalies that will affect our Freudian slips? This is especially true given the distinct differences between, German, French, and English diachronic history, and I am thinking specifically of the ways in which French caters itself more readily to polysemy than English.
Thanks to Andrew for leading this week's blog under adverse conditions. Because Dr. MacDonald has kindly agreed to lend her expertise in the form of a guest lecture on psychoanalysis, my suggestion is that we spend the rest of the class on de Saussure, Barthes, and Baudrillard.
I will just say though that, like Marty, I struggle with the speculative nature of psychoanalysis. In trying to reflect critically on my own response I wonder about the extent to which I am, after all, invested in a modernist notion of the subject and in the privileging of that which we can see over that which is hidden from us.
Andrew's suggestion that we figure out how these authors and their ideas are related to one another is a useful exercise. To that end I spent some time yesterday constructing a diagram that maps the relationship between psychoanalysis, semiotics, structuralism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism. I'll bring it to class in the hope that we can "finish it" (an impossible task at one level) together.
Building on last week's discussion it makes sense to figure out Baudrillard's relationship to Marxism and what it means to argue that consumption, not production, is the primary engine of capitalism. It will also be necessary to understand how he builds on and reworks the insights of de Saussure and other semiologists.
Karima's query about consumption as conformity and difference is also worth pondering. This quote from Gary Genosko in the issue of the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies dedicated to the memory of the recently diseased theorist is quite helpful: "One of the greatest ironies and a cogent definition of consumption, Baudrillard claimed, was that industrial production of differences that allegedly allow individuals to be themselves, to have their own style and personality, simultaneously erase singular differences between persons for the sake of replacing them with signs of difference, more and more subtly and minutely defined, in conformity with abstract, artificial models. The consequence is that to be yourself under the terms of consumer society is to be what you are not (that is, they are embedded in a structural theory of value)" (http://www.ubishops.ca/BaudrillardStudies/vol4_3/v4-3-article15-genosko.html).
What are these "abstract and artificial models"? Sign systems? "The production of a code of social values through the use of differentiating signs" (Baudrillard, p. 46)? "The production of marginal differences"? Marketing strategies? Advertisements that ensure we consume and capitalism expands?
All of the above?
Thanks to Andrew for leading this week's blog under adverse conditions. Because Dr. MacDonald has kindly agreed to lend her expertise in the form of a guest lecture on psychoanalysis, my suggestion is that we spend the rest of the class on de Saussure, Barthes, and Baudrillard.
I will just say though that, like Marty, I struggle with the speculative nature of psychoanalysis. In trying to reflect critically on my own response I wonder about the extent to which I am, after all, invested in a modernist notion of the subject and in the privileging of that which we can see over that which is hidden from us.
Andrew's suggestion that we figure out how these authors and their ideas are related to one another is a useful exercise. To that end I spent some time yesterday constructing a diagram that maps the relationship between psychoanalysis, semiotics, structuralism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism. I'll bring it to class in the hope that we can "finish it" (an impossible task at one level) together.
Building on last week's discussion it makes sense to figure out Baudrillard's relationship to Marxism and what it means to argue that consumption, not production, is the primary engine of capitalism. It will also be necessary to understand how he builds on and reworks the insights of de Saussure and other semiologists.
Karima's query about consumption as conformity and difference is also worth pondering. This quote from Gary Genosko in the issue of the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies dedicated to the memory of the recently diseased theorist is quite helpful: "One of the greatest ironies and a cogent definition of consumption, Baudrillard claimed, was that industrial production of differences that allegedly allow individuals to be themselves, to have their own style and personality, simultaneously erase singular differences between persons for the sake of replacing them with signs of difference, more and more subtly and minutely defined, in conformity with abstract, artificial models. The consequence is that to be yourself under the terms of consumer society is to be what you are not (that is, they are embedded in a structural theory of value)" (http://www.ubishops.ca/BaudrillardStudies/vol4_3/v4-3-article15-genosko.html).
What are these "abstract and artificial models"? Sign systems? "The production of a code of social values through the use of differentiating signs" (Baudrillard, p. 46)? "The production of marginal differences"? Marketing strategies? Advertisements that ensure we consume and capitalism expands?
All of the above?
What does it mean, moreover, that to be yourself is to be what you are not? My sense is that this references Baudrillard's claim that "a need is not a need for a particular object as much as it is a "need" for difference (p.45). This means, of course, that this need can never be fulfilled, because difference becomes sameness all to quickly through the proliferation of signs. Moreover, consumption is not a function of individual choice, but of production, it is "directly and totally collective" (p. 46).
Here Baudrillard is elaborating on Marxists theories of capitalist (re)production but he is also responding to psychological, economic, and sociological studies of consumer behaviour. Perhaps we can also discuss why he finds these theories inadequate and how he uses structuralism, psychoanalysis, and semiotics to construct a response to them.
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