The Color of an Artist

The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain symbolically represented the consciousness of the Negro artist in America struggling for an identity. Like the new emerging black middle class, the ‘black’ artist faced a splintering of their own culture. The black middle class, with its Anglo indulgences and assimilation created confusion for the Negro artist caught between two cultures, uncertain whether to create art for the mass culture dominated by whites or stick to their roots, trapped on the lower side of town. Basquiat directed by the great Julian Schnabel is a film portraying this problem. Regarded as the ‘first famous black painter’ Basquiat was faced with the questions Hughes demanded the Negro artist be asked. His rise to fame leaves him vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation at the hands of the whites who hold the real power in the art world. These problems are surfaced in Hughes essay, as he writes: “The Negro works against an undertow of sharp criticism and misunderstanding from his own group and unintentional bribes from the whites” (1195).  Unlike Hughes desire for a strictly black artist separate from the white, Basquiat wished to transcend that realm. But as the film progresses and Basquiat’s fame escalates, the racial mountain Hughes depicted emerges as the whites try desperately to make Basquiat their own creation.   

Work Cited 

Leitch, Vincent B. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2^nd ed. New York:

     W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print.

American Pie and the Sexual Discourse of Capitalism

            In Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, a western society is depicted in which sexuality has been taken out of the reach of the masses and turned into a sort of pseudo discourse monitored and hung high above the rafters. This shift in the societal sexual identity began in the 17^th century, according to Foucault, with the rise of the bourgeois: “From the 17^th century and the rise of the bourgeois, repression circulated and clouded sex, even at the level of language. Sex was taken charge of, tracked down as it were, by a discourse that aimed to allow it no obscurity, no respite” (1505). Sex was no longer amongst the people, but now another tool in the arsenal of those in power. Foucault writes: “Sex became yet another aspect of life to be ‘policed’ or regulated by the state” (1506). Fast forward these theories to the modern culture of American Pie and one can see this discourse embedded into the mainstream culture of Western youth. The film revolves around a group of high school seniors on the eve of their upcoming prom and graduation. The crew is a blend of girls and guys, jocks and nerds, fully encompassing the spectrum of personalities that permeate the halls of American adolescence. The main theme in the film is sex. But it’s an American sense of sex. The discourse embedded in the larger narrative and the language the characters use are both subsequently the creation of the western bourgeois whom Foucault writes of. This rhetoric imposed by the state and thus impose through popular culture shaped the sexual culture of these societies as the film displays. This American Pie, would be a different kind of pie in India, or China for example. It discusses the sexual identity of American youth in an urban setting with technology as its confidant. The characters face existential confusion and self discovery in a society shaped by the discourse of sexuality and indeed one who profits off of it. 

Work Cited

Leitch, Vincent B. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2^nd ed. New York:

     W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print.

The Precession of Italian Upholstery

In light of our recent dive into postmodern thought and with Professor showing us perhaps models of post modern thought in context: (pictures of Disneyland, scenes from American Psycho), I thought it only fitting to introduce another piece of pop culture as pervasive evidence of our post modern decline. In relation to Baudrillard’s ‘simulacra’ and the repercussions of them within our lives, the scene from American Beauty which I have embedded highlights the disconnected behavior all of postmodern people’s are guilty of. The two main characters, man and wife are in the midst of a dying spark of romance in their withering marriage. As they rekindle the flame, inching closer to that old passion which brought them together long ago, the wife, Carolynn, ruins the moment for fear that her husband will spill his beer on the couch. This instance, already neurotic in its infancy to begin with, is the perfect precession of the simulacra that Marx warned of and that Baudrillard blasphemed. “Signs have now taken a priority over the things they have signified,” (1557) to Carolynn it isn’t just a couch as her husband puts it. And to the rest of our postmodern society caught in the strangle of simulacra it certainly isn’t either. It represents a certain class, a certain taste. It is shrouded in Italian upholstery, Carolynn argues. It is seen in its four thousand dollar price tag, “instead everything is capital,” (1559).  This postmodern poisonous mirage has detached us from anything real and dilutes our lives as Carolynn’s, making it increasingly harder to find pure joy; a pure joy where we can take happiness out of something as tangible and organic as a little afternoon delight and set aside our apocalyptic fears of a ruined fabric. 


Works Cited
Leitch, Vincent B. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2^nd ed. New York:

     W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print.

The text is, a person?

The creation of a text is, according to the Phenomenologist’s we have studied, the creation of a living organism. Ideologies, emotions, all aspects of a thinking thing become expressed through this medium that is created for an audience. In the film, Stranger than Fiction, this becomes quite literal. Similar to Sartre and Barthes views on writing, this film becomes the literal embodiment of their metaphorical philosophies. Harry is a living, breathing text. He is the creation of someone else’s doing. He goes nearly his entire life without ever being conscious of himself as a text, until one day when he overhears his life being narrated by the author of what is essential his ‘novel’. This symbolism goes hand in hand with the Phenomenologist’s rhetoric and ideologies. Sartre stated that: “the literary object is a peculiar top which exists only in movement. The writer neither foresees nor conjectures; he projects.” The author of Harry’s novel isn’t writing, but projecting the feelings, the dealings, of his life outward unto him. It is the blend of them both, the partnership they manifest that brings life not only to Harry but consequently back to the text. Similarly, Barthes idea of the death of the author commences at the birth of the reader is perhaps another idea that is visited in Stranger than Fiction. Up until the onset of Harry’s discovery of the voice, the author has been writing nonstop and with success. Then comes the realization of Harry; the birth of the reader. With this awakened consciousness, the writer has now hit a block. She can no longer write- she becomes irrelevant. Her relevance was only needed up until the point of a conscious text. Once Harry has become aware of involvement he takes full control of the text. This not only brings the two together in a twist of textual collaboration but it consequently clouds the author and gives birth to the text.

Works Cited

Leitch, Vincent B. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York:

Progression, meet Postmodernism

The theories and theorists of postmodern thought and analysis came into modern culture with a sledge hammer and an arsenal of disdain for the preceding ideologies. They quickly contended that, “general human emancipation could not be gained through the Universalist strategies characteristic of both liberalism and communism”. Moreover, the age of the postmodern is the age of uncertainty. Unlike the theories before it in which nationalism, unity and a view of human oneness effected the political and cultural implications of the ages, the post modern movement strived for the respect of diversity between mankind and its creations. Postmodernism and its theorists attempt to ignore the implications of modernists ideas of our ‘progression’ and of our connected journey toward some utopian future; replacing them with not only a respect but of an appreciation for diversity, local differences and ultimately in the plurality of ways we as humans chose to live our lives. In defining the postmodern, Lyotard stated that the cultural and societal norms in which humans use to dictate their existent cannot be labeled as definitive rhetoric: “We cannot confidently declare one way of life or thought superior to another.” This idea of progress is hindered by the side effects it creates i.e. (damage to our ecosystem, weapons of mass destruction, etc).Through the lens of the modernist, the postmodernist attempts to violently shake off the old traditions en route to a new truly progressive model of variety. And in the struggle to achieve that, the idea of progression will have to dress its best. It must (through us) learn that progression has many limbs; that it isn’t a universal idea but varies from culture to culture, it will have to stand up to the age’s, past the smoke of the Industrial Revolution, and through the destruction of two world wars, and it will have to meet Postmodernism.

Work Cited

Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.

This is a commodities world.

The film, The Joneses, portrays a family built on the foundation of capital. What appears to be a super successful and thriving young family is really a marketing scheme undercover. They are not family members, but coworkers. Their purpose is to sell the life they appear to be living. Everything is for sale in their world, indeed, everything is a commodity. This film is an excellent portrayal of the capitalistic society Marx concentrated his writings on. Much like Marx’s writings, the film depicts a world completely constructed on the collection of things- the acquirement of commodities. The Joneses move into an upper middle class neighborhood and drive brand new cars. They have the latest toys and display their marriage and family life as healthy and thriving, all for the sake of a sale. The neighbors who surround them, trapped in the system of their materialistic existence, seek to replicate the Joneses happiness through the acquirement of similar or better commodities than they have in hopes of obtaining that mirage of content. But sadly, that day can never come. A capitalist system has one main focus-and so do the Joneses-capital. This relentless pursuit of profit leads the Joneses down a pit of estranged relationships, an end that Marx would very much attest to- an end that the capitalist system cannot escape.

Occupation precedes existence....

In our free market economy it is easy for the trained eye to notice the malignant forms of capitalism Marx and Engels had warned about. The detachment that the capitalist machine demands of the employer and the employee further alienate the human family and separates societies into unequal classes that clash in a bloody struggle to survive. With the state of the global economy in shambles and the American middle class spiraling down a turbulent tornado of unending debt and dried out unemployment benefits, one can turn to the communist writings and see this prophecy fulfilled over a hundred years ago. It is the inevitability of a corrupted system. I found these readings particularly helpful to my arsenal of societal scopes in which to view the various problems the world faces. Marx noted that: “Consciousness can never be anything else than the conscious existence and the existence of men is their life process,” (668). In other words and in opposition with previous enlightenment philosophies prior, our occupations constitute our existence. If a man works 15 hour days in a cramped cauldron of a warehouse with no room to grow and only enough free time to eat and sleep the bare minimum, where is his time for personal growth? Where in this day is he allotted the time to ponder and question within himself? Marx argued that he didn’t and this is one of the fundamental errors within a capitalist society. The man is defined by his work. It controls his being and if he is being exploited for profit, treated like everything else in the free market world; as a commodity, then it is not his existence that precedes essence but in fact his occupation that precedes his existence. It is the narrator of his state of mind and in an exploited economic system it can never lead to a happy ending.

Work Cited

Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.

If a book is never read, does it exist?

Last week’s readings were, for me, very enjoyable. Probably because I was able to understand them coherently but also because I agree in the arguments presented. Sartre spoke of the simultaneous connection between the author and the reader and how the two share an on-going pact, or agreement, between the text and that this union is an active one. The reader feels what the characters feel, go through the same angst and complications that they do and are resolved when their characters triumph. Similar to Saussure and the structuralists, Heidegger spoke of the importance in language not as a device to convey poetry or prose but as the epicenter to our being. With that said in regards to the novel, it is what gives birth to the author. Its language creates the relationship between author and reader but also casts a shadow on the author. With the emergence of the reader comes the death of the author in Barthes view. Whence the reader becomes the controller of the text, investing time and emotions into the text then the author becomes irrelevant. For it is the reader who determines the outcome of the text, the author is merely a dictator, a scribe jotting down thoughts. So, like the age old question of the falling tree in the forest; if a book is never read, does it exist?

Oedipus who?

For Freud, the human race is a bunch of egocentric maniacs who wish to kill their fathers and live happily ever after in bed with their mothers. But the genius of our species is our ability to cover these conspiracies up within our mind, before creating a dystopian reality fit for an Anthony Burgess novel. Our mind, consisting of the main conscience and the subconscious is where we filter these primal urges to fit the face of societal norms. But to the coke snorting psychoanalyst, our subconscious was more influential than we’ve previously thought. Arguing the whole idea of ‘I think therefore I exist’ Freud contested that this wasn’t necessarily so, that ‘human reason is not master in its house’. He firmly believed that our subconscious was the driver of the car; that even though we may not in reality be stabbing our fathers and bedding our mothers we seek in our relationships and in other aspects of our lives what our subconscious really desires. We marry the woman with qualities like our mother or we date men who make us feel safe like our father; all in perfect accord of the super ego’s approval. But whether we live in total light of our ego or id, we’ll all be spending the rest of our days trying to replace the phallus and having nightmares of castration.

I know you are, because I'm not.

It is hard for one imagine a life without language. Our interaction through complex language is what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom, but what is language? And do we speak, even when we don’t? Even in our thoughts there is a sort of discourse going on between the consciences’s and even in the unspoken lies an undercurrent of language. But what is that language? Saussure spoke of language as “a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others” (857). Plainly put, language is a system of binaries. We distinguish a word, an object, from its counterpart, its immediate opposite. We wouldn’t know black without white, a dog without a cat or happiness without some form of pain to separate the feelings. But language is more than that also. It is a system of signs, all arbitrary in which we use myriad of images to place the word with the object. A dog isn’t only a dog. It is man’s best friend, it’s faithful, all loving. The one image of the word or of the creature conveys many different ideas which we connect with that one arbitrary image. If this isn’t confusing enough, Saussure also contended that since we know of something by knowing more clearly what it is not than the whole existence of that one idea exists solely in the basis of everything that exists without it. So, I guess the real saying is; I know you are because I’m not.

Work Cited
De Saussure, Ferdinand. "Course in General Linguistics." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.

When the Tower(s) of Babel Fell.

Well, it goes without saying what this image is. Perhaps no other image in our own time tells a more vivid account of the last decade. September 11th was a day in which the American people saw a shift in their way of life. The destruction of those buildings was also the the destruction of a severe class division within our country. It tarnished the old American way of life, ushering in changes that trickled down to all the social spheres of our society. Forever shaping the way we interact with each other.

The decade leading up to September 11th, 2001 was a sort of golden age of American capitalism. The Clinton administration saw a surplus in the booming American economy and the only valid way to measure our wealth would have been to look up at our skyscrapers. The major cities of the country were blanketed by the cloud touching towers of major imperialist wealth- but a division existed. Wall Street and its allies were a society unto itself. The top mega conglomerates and their political puppets in the Capital were living and speaking in one part of the country, while the vast middle and lower classes lived among themselves, also divided by their own ideological road blocks. Like the Tower of Babel erected in Biblical scriptures, our own consumer crazed society separated the people from communicating with a common tongue. The different social spheres spoke in their own language. September 11th changed all of this. Similar to Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of the carnival, the terrorist attacks on our country lifted the divisions within our own national community. Bakhtin stated that "all were considered equal during carnival"(10), as was the American people on September 12th. Rich man, poor man, school teacher and stock broker, politician and postal worker all shared a common voice- one of patriotic nationalism. We stood together not only in spirit but in the way we interacted. A new vocabulary was adopted were Puerto Ricans, Irish, and Afro-Americans alike were first ‘American’ and second everything else. The heteroglossia that had kept us apart for so long was crushed, our language of freedom was a concrete opinion. Phrases like, ‘the war on terror’ and ‘national security’, were understood by all and the divisions which segregated the realm of society for a decade was toppled by the forces of a peoples pride. Bakhtin stated that, "a unitary language is not something given but is always in essence posited. And at every moment of its linguistic life it is opposed to the realities of heteroglossia"(35). And though the divisions of a heteroglossic world still permeate thru the global community, and American unity was established. We were a nation, standing together towards one common enemy, and we all spoke the same language; freedom.

Work Cited

Bakhtin, Mikail. Rabelias and His World. Trans. Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1984. Print

"Seven Major Events in Afghanistan. Timeline." Dipity - Find, Create, and Embed Interactive Timelines. Web. 27 Feb. 2011. .

Enlighten me, please.

What is enlightenment? Is it Buddha perched upon a large rock in a mist filled forest in the dawn of day? Is it the Pastor preaching parables upon the masses? Or is it the newly liberated people of an oppressed nation? Is it discovering new knowledge or evaluating old ones? Like most of the topics on this blog, if not all, it is certainly objective and open to interpretation but there are some basics for which to guide you in your dark filled corridor toward enlightenment. It is a slow and gradual process, like puberty, sprouting from below and making its way up. The theorist Immanuel Kant simply put enlightenment as “man’s emergence from his self imposed immaturity” (What is Enlightenment?, Kant). This is a unique claim in which our immaturity is self imposed rather than just a habit of our being, part of the human growth. But furthermore, what is immaturity? Is it a lack of peach fuzz on your chin or missing vibrato in ones voice? Again I turn to Kant who said “immaturity is the inability to use ones understanding without guidance from another” (What is Enlightenment?, Kant). As much as it is up to us to rid the mind of the affliction of immaturity it lies also in the hands of the community. An oppressed populace cannot claim enlightenment when their liberties are constricted and confined to the corners of a particular regime or ideology, only freedom can usher in enlightenment. When one is free to think for himself, free from the burdens of a career or designated post, and free from the obligations society demands, then and only then can a public take delight in its own enlightenment- only then can the shackles of an immature mind be lifted and allow man to teach himself and others.


"Kant's "What Is Enlightenment"" University of Pennsylvania | Department of English. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.

May Your Days be Filled with Bunches of Tiny Orgasms...or something like that?

Only a bearded child of my ill mannered up bringing would transition from a title like that to the ideas of a philosopher by the name of, (excuse my language), Longinus. He attempted to conquer the difficult task of defining the “sublime”, and quite frankly, I think it would have been easier to pay a seasoned Sophist to handle the dirty work, but Longinus wouldn’t have it. And neither will I. Longinus professed that “sublimity is a kind of eminence or excellence of discourse” (On Sublimity, 116), among myriad of other things pertaining to human ability and nature. His smooth and subtle way of approaching such a feat as to define the subliminal is, in my eyes at least, a subliminal act in itself. Displaying not only the courage to act, but with cunning and even wit, it defies that of the common man’s valor. Juxtaposing the honorable with the dedicated, produces effects of the sublime and Longinus is a prime example of his own studies. But what else? Like ideas of love, or hate and any of their confidant’s, a subliminal feeling is almost too difficult to explain in mundane words, they seem to taint the utter experience all together. What we can do as students of life is to paint pictures using other examples; i.e. that of nature, or art. The instant endorphin explosion of an orgasm, nature in its primal form, a sun setting behind a snow capped mountain range, the laugh of an infant child or the birth of one. All of these are actions or instances in time, all contrasting, all unique in context but familiar in the way of the feeling. Like the leaders rally of his people, on the battlefield or in the senate, the subliminal moment captures the essence of the human spirit with an unexplainable feeling of utopia that would be lost, tarnished and ridiculed in the sloppy sentences of any nation’s syntax. It is nature or acts, imitations of its methods, which convey the truly subliminal and whether it’s the feeling of an hour long orgasm or a poem written in an honest hand, the sublime is a sublime example of the human experience.


Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Pg. 116. On Sublimity

Plato's perfect Republic, plausible?

In the Republic, Plato prophesizes about the perfect society built and maintained by his ‘Philosopher Kings’. This community would be free from the imitations of poetry which he argued tainted the youth with stories of ill-mannered human beings acting irrationally. In his utopian society there would be no room for lies, no place for deception or distortion of the truth in any fashion and it is because of this lack of falsehood that the ‘Republic’ would thrive. But is a society such as this possible? Did Plato truly believe that this type of community would be able to exist? And more so, did he really have that much faith in humanity? To our dismay Plato couldn’t be with us to answer these long sought questions and though his ideas in the Republic no doubt shaped the democracies of Western Civilization, one must ask if this Republic could ever truly be obtained. To help guide us in the right direction of truth, (or some form of it) it helps to look within our own society to see whether or not Plato’s ideal Republic breathes life into our own. Stepping into the courtrooms of America, the coffee shops and libraries, in the playground and in the office break room one can clearly see that this idea of a society rid of falsehood is nowhere to be found. The film, Liar, Liar, starring Jim Carrey is a perfect example of this phenomenon. When looking past the antics of Jim Carrey, you see a society not only built off of, but in fact thriving on common or ‘white’ lies. Carey’s character is a slick tongued lawyer winning over entire juries with his bombastic speeches and cunning tongue. It seems that everything for this character is going right, until he can no longer lie. It is as this moment that we see our society for what it really is. A society running on what Plato called “spoken lie’s” (Republic, Book II 51). Telling the truth, Carey’s character comes across a myriad of disasters and comes face to face with a society that scorns absolute truth. But did Plato foresee this all along? Even in this perfect Republic Plato knew that the souls of men found solace in appropriate deception. “Aren’t there occasions and situations when telling lies is helpful and therefore doesn’t warrant hatred?” (Republic, Book II 51). I believe that it is our inherent nature and in our over abundant self awareness that not only drives us to deceive but encourages it. No wife wants her husband to tell her she is indeed 37 pounds overweight or that the new dress makes her look like a lamp shade just as no Commander-in-Chief would allow his enemy to know his plan of attack. Thus we find ourselves in a paradox of Plato’s ideal society and the reality of our own human vanity. And though Plato discouraged deception of any kind, I think even he never told his wife not to eat that second serving.

"I see!" said the blind man.

Looking at our culture today, one can picture almost our entire society inside that dark cave. Chained together, wild eyed and belligerent with ignorance they are staring at the wall watching reflections of the Kardashians and Justin Beiber prancing across the stage with child like wonder. The ‘Allegory of the Cave’ is a startling looking glass into modern society and its detachment from any sort of reality. Now I know Plato didn’t exactly mean that we are diluted from reality by way of reality T.V. and underage sex symbols but in context the theory sheds light on our own dwindling state of affairs. We seek today not the light shining through the tiny cracks of the dusty cave but within the pages of “Cosmo” and through the episodes of “Jersey Shore”. We’ve become not only accustomed to the falsehood but addicted to it and as the people around me slither away into the depths of the cave, it is my inherent duty to search for that light, the only question I ask myself is whether or not the people down there, in that cozy cave of distorted comfort are worth saving?

Give me some answers!!

What are the answers? We search for them in religion, in politics, in the nooks and crannies of life but it seems that the more we look, the more we do not know. This blog will try its best to answer many questions brought to the surface throughout this course using the various terms we will learn. I am not claiming that these theories are in fact my theories, or that I even support them but I will try to make sense out of them in a proper context. This is a realm of scholarly debate so I encourage my classmates and people of the world to comment, criticize, or hail me a demigod but do so with intelligent discourse. The shadowy underworld of critical theories is a vast industrial complex of dark corners and mazes where one door closes, another opens and like life, we sift through it with diligence as humans trying to make sense of it all. There are theorists out there, or non theorists I suppose, who like Socrates argue that we do not know anything. That everything is lost through the act of expressing it or as humans we over analyze and dissect anything pure and shape it through our own diluted filters for our own social agendas. Maybe thats the case? Maybe not? Hopefully throughout this semester we will dredge through the heavy terrain and get just a little closer to figuring something out. I look forward to the hike.

JD