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