Ideology:

A set of beliefs underlying the customs, habits, and practices common to any given social group. To members of that group, the beliefs seem obviously true, natural, and even universally applicable. They may seem just as obviously arbitrary, idiosyncratic, and even false to those who adhere to another ideology. Within a society, several ideologies may coexist; one or more of these may be dominant.

Ideologies may be forcefully imposed or willingly subscribed to. Their component beliefs may be held consciously or unconsciously. In either case . . . [they have been] called “the unexamined ground of our experience.” Ideology governs our perceptions, judgments, and prejudices—our sense of what is acceptable, normal, and deviant.

--from The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms

I am conscious of myself and become myself only while revealing myself for
another, through another, and with the help of another. The most important acts
constituting self-consciousness are determined by a relationship toward another
consciousness. . . . The very being of man (both internal and external) is the
deepest communion. To be means to communicate . . . .To be means to be for
another, and through the other, for oneself. A person has no internal sovereign
territory, he is wholly and always on the boundary: looking inside himself, he
looks into the eyes of another or with the eyes of another . . . . I cannot manage
without another, I cannot become myself without another; I find myself in another
by finding another in myself.
--Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination

Notes from J. Hillis Miller's "Narrative" Essay (included in Critical Terms for Literary Study, Eds. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. 66-79.

--Telling stories natural to human experience
--critical discussion of narrative as old as narrative tradition, dating back as far as Aristotle, who in Poetics stated that plot was the most important feature of narrative. A good story has a beginning, middle, and an end. All other features (specifically character, setting, and diction) are all subsidiary to plot.
--according to Aristotle, narration plays a fundamental social and psychological role. Narratives (specifically tragedy) effect a catharsis of the undesirable emotions of pity and fear. After arousing these emotions, tragedy purges them.
--all forms of narrative (fictional and factual) are "order-giving" and/or "order-finding"
--narratives provide a detachment from immediate circumstances and obligations
--just as we [humans] are tool-using animals, we are symbol-using animals, and thus we are fiction-making animals
--make-believe is a fundamental human activity
--according to Aristotle, we enjoy fictions as a source of imitation (mimesis) for two reasons: imitation pleases the imagination by providing rhythm and order, and imitation gratifies the intellect by offering learning experiences. We learn by imitation.
--What exactly do we learn? We learn the nature of things as they are. We need fictions in order to experiment with possible selves and to learn to take our places in the real world. We learn about our world, or other possible worlds, and how we might experience our world[s].
--in fictions we order or reorder the givens of experience. We experience a form and a meaning, a linear order with a shapely beginning, middle, end, and central theme.
--The human capacity to tell stories is one way we collectively build a significant and orderly world around us.
--with fictions we investigate, perhaps invent, the meaning of our lives.
--Do fictions create or reveal?
--To say reveal presupposes that the world has one kind or another of preexisting order and that the business of fictions is in one way or another to imitate, copy, or represent that order. In this case, the ultimate test of a good fiction is whether to not it corresponds to the way things are.
--To say create presupposes that the world may not be ordered in itself or, at any rate, that the social and psychological function of fictions is what speech-act theorists call "performative." A story is a way of doing things with words. It makes something happen in the real world: for example, it can propose modes of selfhood or ways of behaving that are then imitated in the real world.
--Would we know about love if we had not read fictions about love?
--Fictions have a tremendous importance not merely as reflectors of a culture but as makers of that culture and as ostentatious--but therefore all the more effective--policemen of that culture. Fictions keep us in line and tend to make us more like our neighbors.
--Fictions tend to draw attention to cultural boundaries.
--Yet there is a function that runs counter to the "policing function. Narratives are relatively safe or innocuous places in which the reigning assumptions of a given culture can be criticized. In narratives, alternative assumptions can be entertained or experimented with--not as in the real world where experimentation might have dangerous consequences, but in the imaginary world where safe experimentations are possible.
--Narratives both reinforce the dominant culture and question it at the same time. The putting into question may be obliquely affirmative: we can ward off dangers to the reigning assumptions or ideologies of our culture by expressing our fears about their fragility or vulnerability in the safe realm of fiction.

Engl 30103, Intro to Lit theory
Williams, Fall 2010
Comprehensive Subjective Midterm

I. You get 5 points for holding up the “official” theory card I distributed two weeks ago. You can use the card to answer Part II.

II. Complete the following:

1. Theory Rule Number One: Everything is ______________.
2. Politics is __________________.
3. Language is _________________.
4. Truth is ___________________.
5. Meaning is ___________________.
6. Human nature is a ___________________.

II. Match the following:

1. “There is always a return of the repressed.”
2. “There are no facts, only interpretations.”
3. “There is nothing outside the text.”
4. “I am where I think not.”
5. “ I think, therefore I am.
A. Derrida, B. Descartes, C. Lacan, D. Nietzsche, and E. Freud

III. Using Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalytical theory, interpret the following dream:

A man or woman is late for an important meeting and is riding in a taxi. S/he then discovers that s/he is naked. When s/he tries to tell the driver where s/he lives, s/he realizes that s/he has forgotten her/his address. Frantically s/he gets out and starts running around looking for her/his house while trying to hide her/his nakedness from people on the sidewalk. S/he trips over a red tricycle and hides under a rose bush.

IV. Short Answer, more or less:

1. Cite at least 5 of the social categories that you are subjected to.
2. Cite at least 5 of the ways you communicate non-verbally.
3. Cite at least 5 instances when you have been interpellated.
4. Cite at least 5 instances when you have gone out and bought something as a result of a TV commercial or magazine ad.
5. Cite at least 5 reasons why you disagree—or agree—with Theory Toolbox’s argument that there is no objectivity and/or no essential self.

The Subjectivity of Self
(from The Theory Toolbox, “Subjectvity”
Meaning is made, not discovered.
Subjectivity is not the opposite of objectivity (“there are no facts, only interpretations”)
Wherever we see a “fact,” an interpretation has already taken place.
In traditional Western thought, the “self” is viewed as that which is primary, untouched by cultural influences. We tend to think that our selfhood is the essence of our unique individuality; the intrinsic, singular qualities that define who we are. These intrinsic qualities preserve our unique individuality without regard to external factors. This insistence on selfhood is culturally pervasive and popular.
The subject is the opposite—anything but unique. The subject is defined by its place among various social positions. To be a subject means that one’s personhood is defined not by intrinsic or internal qualities but by external factors.
The “self” is generally viewed as an inwardly generated phenomenon, a personhood based on particular qualities that make us who we are. The self is the strangely intangible core (the soul?) that we take for the cause of our lives and our actions.
The “subject” is an outwardly generated concept, an effect, an understanding of personhood based on the social laws or codes to which we are made to answer. We recognize ourselves as subjects when demands are made on us.
“The “subject” is always understood in reference to preexisting social conditions or categories (gender, race, class, ethnicity. We do not choose our categories.
We tend to understand the “self” as always in the driver’s seat, whereas the “subject” is the passenger. The self is causing things to happen, whereas the subject is responding to things that happen. Yet the driver is already a passenger.
The fact that the driver feels like she is in control is a cultural response that’s been learned. Ultimately, the driver is like the passenger—always responding to things that are already there.
If we track the driver’s imaginary history, we will see that she’s been a “subject” much more often in her life than she’s been a “self”: subject to her family, her economic status, her ethnic background, her nationality, her education, her employers, the cultural expectations of her race and gender, event he language of her native country. All of these things preexist and outlast her, and her life is determined by the ways she responds to these social conditions., which she has little or no voice in determining.
Eminem, Dennis Rodman, and Rush Limbaugh? They’re supposedly unique “selves,” and if you buy their books or cds, imitate their actions, and follow their lead, you can learn to be unique too.
The self, our supposed driver, is already and always will be a “subject,” a passenger. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a completely unconstrained “self,” somehow free from its social contexts.
The meaning of a subject/ self (identity) always exists within a specific cultural context; the things that make us who we are are found in the context of where we live, where we’re from, and where we’re headed.
Our subjectivity (our inner self) is socially constructed, not mystically or naturally found.
There is no meaning or self that exists temporally before the law; meanings and selves are only articulated in terms of certain laws—linguistic, social, economic, cultural, scientific, etc.
Race is a culturally constructed phenomenon. The seemingly neutral or scientific categories like race are not in fact natural but are rather constructed along political and ideological lines.
Subjects or selves are constructed by being subject to certain social categories or definitions: race, class, gender, ethnicity, etc.
Identity is socially constructed.
The tricky thing that “subjectivity” adds to the vocabulary of the “self” is that the interpreter is herself also one of the cultural signs within the process of making meaning. The subject makes meanings, but the subject is also acted upon by meanings. An absolutely “free” interpreter—a wholly unconstrained self—simply doesn’t exist.
Identity is a product of culture, and thus inexorably dependent on social and cultural categories.
Who you are is dependent on the recognition of your identity by others. Our various identities (the various roles we perform) can only come into being with a recognition from others.
All meaning, and all identity, can only come into being through a process of social negotiation, which involves the recognition of others.
We are social animals, and one of the things we want from each other is recognition.
To be subjected to culture is a process known as interpellation. The individual is constructed or interpellated as a subject by the various institutions of contemporary life.
Our identities only take shape in response to already given codes.
Every time we recognize ourselves—every time we say, “yeah, that’s me—we confront not the freedom and uniqueness of our individual selfhood but rather the cultural codes of our subjectivity.
We cannot escape social categories, particularly labels. We can always quarrel with specific labels fairly or unfairly imposed in specific contexts, but the very act of labeling cannot be renounced. It is impossible to deny the act of labeling (the process of making meaning by using and revising existing cultural categories).
There is no “escape” to some place of perfect freedom where we are untouched by culture. In fact, the dream of such a place is one of the most