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.