Ohmann and Culture

Before reading Ohmann, I had never thought before of exactly how much culture and society influences the books that we read. We read things because we are told to read them, and so that we can participate socially with what we’ve read.

Ohmann really hits the nail on the head when he states that “culture is itself a core industry and a major source of capital accumulation” (NA 1889) because, and this goes for any type of culture, we as humans buy into culture; we see what culture presents, and we want to be a part of it and want to participate in it. When it comes to our literary culture, we hear the books that are being raved about, or the books that are presenting great controversies, and so we read them to be active in the industry of culture.

Ohmann also says that culture “is inseparable from the making and selling of commodities” (NA 1889), that is, commodities practically fuel culture, and are completely engrained in the culture that we live in. Books as commodities was something I had never thought twice about, but they are marketed to the general public in a certain way, targeting specific audiences for profits, just like any other commodity. I never before realized that this would affect the literary canon, and Ohmann proves that it does.

Also on culture, Ohmann states that we have a “rapidly changing cultural process that calls for new and flexible ways of thinking about culture” (NA 1889). In what kinds of ways do we need to be thinking about culture, especially literary culture? Ohmann is obviously making a call to action, and he argues that we need to think differently about social classes and Marxist ideas to begin to understand this new, changing culture that is based on the buying and selling of commodities (NA 1889).

On Storytelling

In the first section of “The Storyteller,” Walter Benjamin immediately argues that the storyteller “has already become something remote from us and something that is getting even more distant,” and declares “that the art of storytelling is coming to an end.” Why is this happening? Benjamin thinks an obvious reason is that “experience has fallen in value.”

While the culture that we live in today is certainly not an oral culture with traditions of stories being passed down, and while our culture doesn’t really offer a career deemed “Storyteller,” I would have to disagree with some of Benjamin’s initial arguments.

Benjamin says that “more and more often there is embarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed.” I think this statement is ridiculous; the majority of the way people communicate is through telling stories, and asking somebody to tell a story is very commonplace. Now I know that people don’t just walk up to each other and say, “Please tell me a story.” But people do say “Remember that time when…” and “So this thing happened Saturday night…” and “This is what happened then, this is what needs to happen now…” etc. Even if people don’t realize it, they tell stories on a daily basis, and need to hear stories on a daily basis for more than just entertainment.

Back to Benjamin’s main argument: “experience has fallen in value.” Does Benjamin mean that what we experience is no longer valuable, or that the value of our experiences has lessened? Experience “that goes from mouth to mouth” seems to be the important kind of experience for Benjamin, but does that mean if our experiences don’t necessarily happen that way, that they are less of an experience? Is Benjamin saying that because we don’t experience something through a story, that experience loses value? Comments?

A Passage from Pope

This week for outside reading, I read Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Criticism,” which is on pages 441-458 of the NA. I wanted to focus on a particular passage of his, and dissect it a bit:

Nature to all things fix’d the Limits fit,

And wisely curb’d proud Man’s pretending Wit:

As on the Land while here the Ocean gains,

In other Parts it leaves wide sandy Plains;

Thus in the Soul while Memory prevails,

The solid Pow’r of Understanding fails;

Where Beams of warm Imagination play,

The Memory’s soft Figures melt away.

One Science only will one Genius fit;

So vast is Art, so narrow Human Wit:

Not only bounded to peculiar Arts,

But oft in those, confin’d to single Parts.

(Pope, lines 52-63, NA 442)

The argument that Pope is making through this passage seems deeply grounded in Romanticism, and, although Emerson is born after Pope has already passed, they write of the same ideas. Pope says “Nature…wisely curb’d proud Man’s pretending Wit” (lines 52-53) to possibly mean that nature has sort of brought the human mind back down to earth, that is, nature has humbled the human mind because the mind is limited. And so the connection can be found to Emerson because he argues that the mind, through poetry, will always fall short. Pope blatantly brings out this notion of the fall of the mind by saying “The solid Pow’r of Understanding fails” (line 57). Emerson would also argue that poetry itself has fallen away, but it can, however, point to the ideal world that poets can never reach. Pope would agree, saying that our “narrow Human Wit” (line 61) is “confin’d to single Parts” (line 63). Having said that, I find it interesting that Pope used an actual poem to express his feelings on the human mind and the ideal world, which poets can never reach, according to Emerson.

Foucault and the Third Scenario

Since we never got to discuss the third scenario that Dr. Powers gave to us in class, I thought I would make a blog out of it.

So in a nutshell, this third scenario is about a writer who achieved great success, and after his death, scholars found out that he plagiarized his plots, some of his actual language, and that some of his passages were products of collaborative exchanges with other artists.

My instinctive reaction? Well, he plagiarized, so the ideas were not his own and his language was copied. Based on this, he should not still receive credit for those works which include those violations. But for his passages that were products of collaborative exchanges, I do not think those should be discredited, because learning happens from collaboration all the time. If someone else’s idea caused him to write more of his own ideas, then write on (no pun intended).

But what about Foucault’s reaction to this scenario? Well in the text, Foucault offers the example of texts that we have deemed “literary” such as folk tales and epics that never even had an author’s name pinned to them. They “were accepted, circulated, and valorized without any question about the identity of their author. Their anonymity was ignored because their real or supposed age was a sufficient guarantee of their authenticity” (1628 NA). With that example, I think Foucault would argue that since some texts that we consider literary don’t even have authors pinned to them, why should it matter about what this writer did? His ideas were still important, they are even used in schools.

To stem from the fact that his ideas, whether original or not, are still important in schools and within culture, Foucault would still say that the fact that he plagiarized doesn’t matter simply because the ideas on which he wrote were worthwhile. Foucault states “the author is a particular source of expression who, in more or less finished forms, is manifested equally well, and with similar validity…” According to these criteria, the writer is still an author because even though he expressed other people’s ideas, he still expressed them. Although the language was not original or his most important passages taken from collaborations, they were still manifested equally well, and each work was valid.

On Subjectivity in “Structural Analysis of Narrative”

Ok, so I’m an English major, and one of my wonderful roommates is a Christian ministries major with a minor in business. Just the other day as she was doing some reading that she had to digest and make sense out of for homework, she said, “I wish I could just be doing math problems right now. Then I would know there was a right answer. This reading is all subjective.”

For AGES, math/science-type people have always been commenting to literature-type people that our work is easier; we don’t have to arrive at an exact answer like they do because anything goes when you’re just reading and interpreting a book.

If my roommate had expressed this to Todorov, he would’ve told her that her idea was “untenable” (NA 2102). He would certainly disagree with this idea, and he also disagrees with the popular argument against using scientific principles in literary analysis (NA 2102), that “…science must be objective, whereas the interpretation of literature is always subjective” (NA 2101). Todorov argues by saying that “ [t]he critic’s work can have varying degrees of subjectivity; everything depends on the perspective he has chosen. This degree will be much lower if he tries to ascertain the properties of the work rather than seeking its significance for a given period or milieu.”

So Todorov is saying that yes, there can be an amount of subjectivity when a work is being critiqued, but if you take a structuralist perspective, the amount of subjectivity will lessen as opposed to if you tried to critique a work based on its context. I would agree with this point that Todorov is making. Whenever I get the “reading is all subjective” comments, my instinct is to think no it isn’t, and to say that there are certain components that a work is critiqued on; one can’t get away with saying just anything in their interpretation of literature.

But then Todorov says, “On the other hand there is no social science (or science whatsoever) which is totally free of subjectivity.” So how does this make sense, and how does this help the structuarlist argument he is trying to make?

Well Todorov is saying that science itself is also subjective because choosing theoretical concepts require a subjective decision, and then he defends literary analysis by scientific principles by saying “[t]he economist, the anthropologist, and the linguist must me subjective also; the only difference is that they are aware of it and they try to limit…[it]” (2102).