Sunday, November 27, 2011

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is use of language as a mode of persuasion. Rhetoricians can often be described as "silver tongued devils" "Slick talking" and "lobbyists".. Some are so masterful in the art of Rhetoric that they can use language in such an influential way that they can convince entire masses that all there problems could be held responsible by a particular race of beings...

What makes music "classic"?

We have a definition for what classical music is, but what makes music "classic" in the sense that it stands the test of time and resonates in people for generations?

Thinking Outside the Box

In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato uses the cave itself as a description as the limitation to our thinking and that it takes the journey to the surface (metaphor for education) to be able to reach enlightenment. The men shackled to the cave are the mentally narrow minded while their ability to only see the shadows before them symbolizes their inability to comprehend the ideas behind what's in front of them.

Sartre's own vision of Hell in of itself is a challenge to the way we think. His rather personal Hell was meant to challenge traditional views of Hell, presenting a radically different view of something we all thought we knew. Besides setting alone, while Plato uses an allegory to create a metaphorical vision of his concept, Sartre shows the limitations to thinking through the interactions of the three "damned", the three being unable to cope with each other if only because of the fact they serve as punishments to each other. The three's inability to stand each other could be seen as reflecting man's inability to cope with thinking outside of his own.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Literary Analysis 3: One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest

1. One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest by Ken Kesey is the tale of the struggle between the free spirit Randal McMurphy and the authoritarian Big Nurse, told from the perspective of one of the acquitted, the Chief. McMurphy finds himself immediate at odds against the Big Nurse as his mere presence in the ward promotes change and incites reckless behavior in the ward attendees. In other words, he creates discourse in the Big Nurses otherwise smooth, carefully orchestrated production of a ward. He is ultimately what could be considered by some to be martyred in the attempts to liberate his friends from the firm grasp of the Big Nurse and in the end his friends are indeed capable of sticking up for themselves and what they think is right through the inspiration of their fearless leader's civil and at times not so civil disobedience.

2. It's too facile to place a theme of good vs evil on Kesey's work, as the struggle between McMurphy and the Big Nurse can be uses the symbolize a multitude of things: man vs woman (Kesey's writing does seem to reflect machismo, sometimes even chauvinistic behavior), the oppression of an easily manipulated masses. The struggle between an authoritative figure and the resistor has almost endless applications symbolically.

3. Kesey uses the Chief to almost be a metaphoric measurement of the effect of McMurphy's presence in the ward.  Accordingly, as the novel progresses the tone of which the narrator speaks grows from solemn and almost hopeless, to ever increasingly more confident, defiant and noticeable cheerful.


"While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top, spreading his laugh out across the water—laughing at the girl, the guys, at George, at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier and the bicycle rider and the service-station guys and the five thousand houses and the Big Nurse and all of it. Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy."

4. Kesey makes use of several motifs in Cukoo's Nest, one in particular being the fog in which the Chief often would hide in. The fog itself, which I believe never actually existed, it was only referenced to by the Chief alone and I believe to be a side effect of the fact that he is mentally "not all there", is a symbol for the control held by the Big Nurse and the Combine (also fairly certain didnt exist). The fog which in the beginning was a regular presence was something that rendered him utterly helpless, however through the persistent presence of McMurphy, the fog ceased to appear.

As I alluded to earlier, I personally theorize that Kesey uses the Chief as a way of showing the audience the effect of McMurphy in the ward. Nothing exhibits this more clearly than when McMurphy restores the Chief to his former strength and "bigness".

Kesey also makes use of foreshadowing in that the many reference to lobotomy in the beginning of the story foreshadowed the ultimate fate of McMurphy.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Plato Essay Beginnings

Plato's Allegory of the Cave uses the hypothetical tale of prisoners in a cave whose vision has only seen the shadows on the cave of the wall and know only of the shadows on the wall to represent the hidebound public of his day and the dire need for education and enlightenment. Plato stresses the need to seek out the truest form of knowledge, that being original ideas which from comes forth all we perceive with the senses, and this true knowledge which is sought is figuratively described in the allegory as the surface outside of the cave. When one man had found enlightenment (reached the surface) and sought to enlighten the others, he was rejected and killed for the men were shackled by their own ignorance and unwilling to believe anything other than the cave they were familiar with. Plato's entire allegory is an extended metaphor for the need of education and pursuit of higher knowledge in a world where such enlightenment  is rejected because of the unwillingness of it's people to explore outside the realm of what they are familiar with. 

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

What is good music?

In a world where classical masterpieces and marvels of culture can be regarded as unbearable to some and music that is fairly superficial and lacking in areas such as meaningful content or skill can be consumed by a massive audience, how can there be an authority on a subject as arbitrary as music? 

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Hamlet and the Performative Utterance (and you)

The Performative Utterance provides an interesting lens to view the work of Shakespeare’s Hamlet under. Contrary to ancient notions, the ideas surrounding the theories of the Performative Utterance claim language has the power to make change and create facts in reality rather than being restricted to merely describing said reality. Such a concept allows the perception of language creating a substantial impact on the events in Hamlet. Language acquires such agency through the forces of the locutionary (pertaining to the message or point being delivered through a locution), the perlocutionary (the consequences and results of said locution) and the illocutionary (the force that drives such perlocutionary results). When the power of language is dissected as such, it’s applications to the text of Hamlet provides interesting insight to the course of plot lines and character developments.

Hamlet himself when analyzed with the performative utterance in mind conveys a fairly consistent locutionary message of avenging his father’s murder. That being said however, the illocutionary force to create such intent into a reality remains absent for the majority of the play. When seen from this angle, Hamlet is seen as rather than the tale of a man who could not make up his mind, but as the tale of a man who could not make what was in his mind into a reality. This however sets up Hamlet’s character arc and createds the dynamic element of Hamlet being a man who through the course of the play must overcome his tragic flaw of being unable to generate absolutely no illocutionary force; zilch, from such ample rhetorical prowess. One way to explain the evolution of Hamlet’s character arc is through a concept of informational processing and reasoning known as “self-overhearing”.

Bloom’s theory of self-overhearing can be described as gaining self-knowledge and/or understanding through the act of hearing one’s own utterances; generally talking yourself through concepts and information so you can understand them. Relating to Hamlet, it can be said that beyond the theatric practicalities of the characters’ soliloquies, in the hypothetical worlds of Shakespeare’s soliloquies (currently Hamlet in specific), characters develop through the self-overhearing of their own utterances in a similar fashion to how you or I would mull over a subject in hopes of clearer understanding. Hamlet over the span of the play manages to develop into a character which can fulfill his quest for vengeance and it can be theorized that the concept of self-overhearing could be the cause that lead to the consummating effect.

Through the act of self-overhearing, the question still arises, “Has Hamlet merely had a self-revelation, discovering what was always there?” If so, this statement would imply Hamlet has always been able to generate the illocutionary force necessary to form physical, factual, perlocutionary results, he merely had uncovered his innate ability. An Aristotelian view of a “true-self” aligns its self rather nicely with the hypothesis of Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov; some people are naturally capable of or even have the right to commit murder. From the view point of Raskolnikov the question could be asked “Is Hamlet a natural born killer?” Hamlet’s rash killing of Polonius could support the claim. Also is Claudius, like the pawnbroker, a being whose true self is so unworthy that his murder could be viewed as completely justifiable? When Claudius is seen simply “going through the motions” of prayer, this supports the notion of a true-self, Claudius’ being so debauched he cannot conduct even a simple prayer. When applied to one’s own self, the notion of self-overhearing, although somewhat superfluous in the real world, uncovering the person you’ve always been is a ball game played in the field of the philosophical. A I’ve mentioned above, the physical act of self-overhearing, while applicable and possibly beneficial to some, isn’t necessary in a world where our inner most thoughts need no to be broadcasted to an audience, the locutionary force necessary to drive perlocutionary results, however the general concept of Aristotle’s true-self allows us to individuate ourselves by asking the same questions we ask of Hamlet, “Am I a natural born killer?” Although currently I am confident I am not, there’s nothing to stop me from discovering later that I’ve always been a fratricidal psychopath.

Self-overhearing however also presents a completely contrasting angle to view Hamlet in which through the knowledge he gains through hearing his own utterances, Hamlet self-fashions, self-individuates his own self. Rather than discovering a revenge driven Hamlet that has always existed, he creates one. The perlocutionary consequences of self-overhearing are the development of a Hamlet which is capable of making impulse into a reality. Ironically this relatively modern view compared to the “true-self” model supports the more traditional view of Hamlet as an indecisive man in that it takes a culmination of events for Hamlet to reach fulfillment. The fluidity of the concept in comparison to the unswaying rigidness of the “true-self” model is an appealing trait in a world where everybody wants to be their own master; the idea that your own state of being is malleable, being formed and reformed like clay as a reactive or adaptive consequence of just being alive and therefore submitted to the events and locutionary and illocutionary forces conjured in life.

Language having agency to make fact in the world creates yet another angle to view how language and subsequently self-overhearing creates impact in the hypothetical world of Hamlet and raises philosophical insights into the worlds of our own.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Video test

Hamlet vs Epic Heroes


Despite obvious differences separating Hamlet and the traditional epic hero such as an epic hero being the epitome of a society’s values i.e: Beowulf, Achilles, and Hamlet himself being questionable of holding the title of “hero”, perhaps he could more accurately depicted with a milder “protagonist” role, another defining factor that defines Shakespeare’s tragedy from epic works of old is Hamlet’s use of language.  Hamlet along with other Shakespearean protagonists uses language with an agency to make realities in their own world. Shakespearean characters often use language to not only affect the world around them but also to instate change in themselves as well.
“To be or not be, that is the question”.  Hamlet’ soliloquy of internal turmoil provides an excellent example of Hamlet using language as an agent of change in himself. Hamlet manages to develop as a character by musing over his own thoughts and reacting to his own utterances. This starkly contrasts epic heroes who were generally rather static. Beowulf from the moment he ripped off Grendel’s arm to moment he thought it would be a good idea to fight a dragon by himself never faltered from the Anglo-Saxon values of bravery and loyalty. It could be argued however that the purpose of an epic hero was not to spend his time searching through himself, but rather champion the values of your society, so there was neither the need nor room for Bloom’s theories of self-over hearing. Whether needed or not, the idea of language as an agent of intellectual growth or maturity is still a factor in dividing Hamlet from the epics.
It can’t be said that epic hero’s of old did not use language to affect the world around them, the concepts around the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary can be applied to any piece of literature. When Beowulf promises to kill Grendel and indeed does, this accurately illustrated the forces of the performance utterance at work. What separates Hamlet from the likes of Beowulf or Achilles is his ability to become a kinetic character and create a dynamic character arc through the ability to fashion himself as a character and develop himself through the response to his own use of language.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Dr.Preston and Why I'm a Selfish Bastard

After much thought and fruitless angst, I've managed to reach a conclusion that my ultimate issue, is not at all you which my self and others would like to believe, but in fact the problem is indeed me. I am my own problem I am therefore eating away at my own success and progress. Ultimately the majority of this is directed at the task of active reading notes. Dr.Preston if you have not caught on by now, I have participated in the act of note taking only once and that was only to try it and I concluded that my preconceptions were quite right; I did not like active reading notes. The practice in my opinion is an absolute aberration to the natural reading process. The closest way to describe it would be if during a movie your friend would constantly pause the movie to recap and analyze the scene, which although informative, maybe even beneficial, would always result in a reaction from me of  "Stop it or GTFO". In the practice of active reading notes however its even harder if only for the fact that I don't a vexing film nerd next to me to analyze a given passage against my will; I must push myself against my own will to interrupt my reading. I could relate it to an ascetic's  self-mutilation. Exaggerated I know, but both require a level of discipline I presently lack. Anyways, all this animosity towards active reading notes was by nature of the beast, also directed at your self. You were the malignant master bent on breaking me like a stallion with assignment after assignment of note taking and I like a valiant free will would resist for the glory and honor in the resistance. The struggle moved from just the the topic of note taking to more than just that; in-class notes, journals, all were fare game in my war of civil disobedience because I would not be the loser in the fight, I would not be broken. Like a terrorist I would hijack journal topics and twist them into what I would prefer them to be. Only what struck my interest was worthy of my attention and all else would either fall to way-side or be reformed to my liking. This was my stratagem of war. In my eyes I created an oppressed proletariat out of our class and you were rather unjustly pronounced our Big Brother. My role as a McMurphy and my noble fight against the Big Nurse was totally just in the world I had created..However Dr.Preston, a thought always remained in the back of my mind. It sat eerily in a dark corner observing my campaign of bitter struggle and slowly, but surely that corner became illuminated, until finally it revealed its self as teenage angst. A skinny-jean clad, way-fairer donning fool with a mohawk to boot and when I saw him my banner fell. My war was over. Embarrassing it all was! Where was the virtue in my fight now? Once the angst in all his teenage immaturity muddled himself into my cause any sense of right or nobility was gone out the window. I realized all of this was not for the proletariat, but for my self. This grandiose struggle of myself against an authoritative figure was spawned from what originally was myself simply disliking a reoccurring assignment. I could not believe my own effrontery! Had I no shame? Running amok, throwing tantrums like a spoiled child whom never before had the need to take notes, and therefore couldn't conceive a world where it might even be advisable that he do just that.I realize now that my efforts were indeed foolish and that up to this point I have been a self-described "Selfish Bastard"... It appears that I may have fallen to my old ways in hijacking an assignment for my own purposes, however I argue that although this revelation was not formally instructed in class, it's a lesson that needed to be learned and only through your class was I capable of doing so.


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