Upcoming…

1. Upcoming… • IC Critique paper due on Mon • Email on Mon by 8:30 • Paper copy to the final on Tues • Final!! • Bring a Blue Book • 5 out of 10 Short Answer/Quote Identifications • 2 out of 3 Essay Responses • 2 hours

2. What is Ideology Critique? Being Subjects to Language

3. Recap – History of Criticism • The “Communication” Model: • Attempts to locate and “guarantee” meaning in a stable location (author’s mind, text itself, reader’s choice or preconditioning). • Largely sees language as a means of communicating ideas • Neglects the “social character” of language – its reliance on interintelligibility and convention

4. Recap – New Theory of Language • “Post Saussurean Linguistics” Model: • Language is an arbitrary system of signs and signifiers • Language is a system of differences • Language is a social fact • Language “speaks us”

5. Post-Saussurean Model • Language: Mediates experience and communication with a limited set of constructed differences which come to be perceived as natural. • Meaning: Originates in the social/symbolic order itself where meaning is plural and generated out of convention Text Audience Author(s) Social/Signifying Order

6. What does this mean for literature? • “If signifieds are not pre-existing, given concepts, but changeable and contingent concepts, and if changes in signifying practice are related to changes in the social formation, the notion of language as a neutral nomenclature functioning as an instrument of communication of meanings which exist independently is clearly untenable” (41).

7. What does this mean for literature? • “There is no unmeditated experience of the world; meaning is possible only in terms of the categories and the laws of the symbolic order. Far from expressing a unique perception of the world, authors produce meanings out of the available system of differences, and texts are intelligible in so far as they participate in it” (42). • Texts only have meaning at all because they participate in the system • Texts are “realistic” not because they have a transparent “authentic” account of reality. • They reflect not reality, but the signifying (symbolic) order – the source of its “truth”

8. What does this mean for literature? • Does this mean that nothing new can be said? Are we doing away with creativity or change? • NO! • “Participation” is not the same as “determination” • It DOES mean that writing is never a purely individual act – it is always, in some very basic senses, a social practice! • Authors construct meanings out of the available differences, which are often, themselves, contradictory and multiple. We do the same when we are reading.

9. What does this mean for literature? • Literary meaning is… • Plural! (but not subjective!) • Historical! (produced through the “available system of differences”) • Active! (a social process of signification, helping to define “the differences that matter” in any given moment)

10. Questions for Literature • How do we read the novel as a signifying practice, whose meaning is in constructed difference? • What are the “differences that matter” in the text? • How do these differences “order” the social world of the text? How is it signified over the course of the narrative? • What are the potential contradictions or problematics that arise out of these ordering differences?

11. What is “Ideology”? • Common Definitions: • Self-consciously held beliefs/ “world outlooks” • “illusions” or lies • Louis Althusser’s definition • “not the system of real relations which govern the existence of individuals, but the imaginary relation of these individuals to the real relations in which they live” (53)

12. What is “Ideology”? “…meaning is socially constructed, and the social construction of the signifying system is intimately related, therefore, to the social formation itself. On the basis of Saussure’s work it is possible to argue that, in so far as language is a way of articulating experience, it necessarily participates in ideology, the sum of the ways in which people both live and represent to themselves their relationship to the conditions of their existence” (39).

13. What is “Ideology”? • Both “real” AND “imagined”? • “REAL in that it is the way that people really live their relationship to the social relations which govern their existence… • but IMAGINARY in that it “discourages a full understanding of these conditions of existence and the ways in which people are socially constructed within them” (53)

14. What is “Ideology”? “Real relations in which they live” • Material differences • Relationship to institutions and to the state • Living conditions, economic wealth, employment, traditional practices • Social relationships and forms of authority “Imaginaryrelations to those real relations” • Symbolic differences • Stock narratives and myths, figures • Identity categories, cultural distinctions • Constructed systems of difference, roles • Statements about the “way people are” or “how the world works”

15. What is “Ideology”? “Real relations in which they live” Material Difference Some people are masters and some people are servants • The difference in living conditions, comfort, and health between the two classes is pronounced • Masters are frequently abusive to their servants “Imaginaryrelations” • Symbolic Difference • Disposition and ability located in “breeding” and “blood/lineage” means that some people are naturally more suited for authority • “Humility” is the proper place of the laboring class • Uneducated workers are difficult to handle and must be kept in line

16. What is “ideology”? • Ideology looks like: • Common sense notions of “how the world works” (and people’s place within it) • Proposition of “essential” differences which are lived and reproduced in practices, institutions and representations • Neither totally “real” or “imagined” – real in that these concepts are lived as a part of your social being and imaginary in that their terms are symbolic in nature • There is no non-ideological position!

17. What does ideology do? • “Ideology obscures the real conditions of existence by presenting partial truths. It is a set of omissions, gaps rather than lies, smoothing over contradictions, appearing to provide answers to questions which in practice it evades, and masquerading as coherence in the interests of the social relations generated by and necessary to the reproduction of the existing mode of production”(53). • Not easily “true” or “false” • Provides answers to questions about legitimacy produced by the social relations and the system itself • Reproduces consent in the interests of that system and the forms of privilege inherent to it

18. What does Ideology do? “Real relations in which they live” Material Difference Some people are masters and some people are servants • Due primarily to differences of property, masters hold a significant amount of power over their servants • The difference in living conditions, comfort, and health between the two classes is pronounced “Imaginaryrelations” • Symbolic Difference • Disposition and ability located in “breeding” and “blood/lineage” means that some people are naturally more suited for authority • Uneducated workers are difficult to handle and must be kept in line • “Humility” is the proper place of the laboring class • “Cultural Practices” Maintaining Difference • Narratives, genres symbolic meanings • We need to be critical of how stories mobilize ideology and for what ends • Institutions, traditions, political and social structures • We need to be critical of how culture reproduces ideology • “Subjects” who recognize themselves in the ideological discourse

19. What does ideology do? • “The destination of all ideology is the subject” (54). • Ideology produces subjects by defining a limited set of subject positions which offer self-recognition • The Subject: • Subjective – particular, individual perspective • Subjection – being in submission or “subject” to power • Grammatical Subject – position in a sentence that is authorized to action – the agent

20. What does ideology do? • Ideology presents certain types of difference and meaning as “natural” or “obvious.” It offers a position from which these differences seem to present unmediated descriptions of the world. • Subject Positions: • the limited set of categories/positions that are made available to us in language/ideology • The terms that we use to make ourselves and others “legible” or “recognizable” in and through language • Subject vs Identity • Identity: The terms which describe you • Subject: The limited set of differences by which people are made “legible” and meaningful to themselves and others • There is no identity without subjection • Identity becomes a complex “matrix” of different subject positions

21. Questions for Ideology Critique: • What are the “differences that matter”? • What is the meaning of those differences as stated OR assumed by the text? • Are these differences ideological, in the sense that they organize or give meaning to social relations? • How do these differences “position subjects” within it? What are the available positions? • What does this ideology “do”? (who does it serve and how?)

22. Jane – Rochester – Bertha Mason • The text certainly both “positions” these characters in relation to each other (as well as defining each of them in terms of the “differences that matter” to Victorian English society). • It also positions us, as readers, to interpret these character’s differences in such a way that is most satisfying to the aims of the story. • Find passages in the text which help us to understand the meaningful differences that construct these positions.