My Final Post

At the beginning of the semester liberal humanism made a lot of sense to me; after all, it's the way I learned how to study literature my whole life. I had studied Marx and Freud before, but did not know that there are critical theories based on their work. Studying Marxist criticism was a good way to begin the semester because, in my opinion, it's the most obvious and the easiest to grasp. Of course the society we live in shapes who we are, and of course there is hegemony going on; although, I don't think that societal forces control everything (nurture plays a major role, but so does nature).

Structuralism was interesting because it made me analyze language in a deeper way than I ever had before, and made me realize that meaning comes from difference between signs. And Post-structuralism was probably my favorite theory. Derrida made me conceive of the world in new ways. The idea of supplementation of the absent center made perfect sense once I thought about it; everything is in constant process of continual change, so it makes sense that this process is a supplementation of identity after identity.

This also ties into psychoanalystic theory, namely Lacan's mirror stage, where a child falsely acknowledges his/her own unified self as distinct from the 'other.' Since that mirror stage point, a child goes through life conceiving of him/herself as an 'I' but is really a plurality of egos, as Foucault talks about in his discussion of the Author Function. A writer assumes a role, a specific ego, and functions as an author, though the writer is not writing as him/herself (since there is no central essence, no self). As Barthes says, the author is dead and meaning from a text comes from the interpretations of readers. Though each interpretation is a fleeting thing, because of the supplementation of reality (though the writer, or 'scriptor' as Barthes says, has no say once the text is completed, and the reading/interpretation process will continue for as long as the text is around).

Even though this makes sense to me, I have trouble with the idea of the writer not actually writing the text. As a writer, I want to believe that what is produced by my author function had at least something to do with my conscious choices. Despite the limitations of a writer, I still think that a writer has some control over what he/she writes. After all, with control comes responsibility -- so how can I be held responsible if this post sucks, if it is not really me that is writing it? Or, if it happens to be good, how can I be praised for it? I don't deserve praise for something that I had no control over (what is the point of writing a research paper if we are not really writing it?).

So, I guess my beliefs about writing fall somewhere in the middle: a lot of what comes out through writing is unconscious, yet with conscious effort a writer can edit, revise, and shape the text, ultimately determining how it turns out. However, it can always be argued that the source of the writer's desires to consciously revise a text in specific ways came from unconscious desires before entering into consciousness. Yet, it still does not matter because the writer is able to consciously choose which desires to act upon (though the choices may be limited, the choices that are there are our only true freedom).

I enjoyed learning about feminism and post-colonialism, since they apply the theories we studied in specific ways, and opened up questions about theory vs. practice. If we know that women and colonized cultures have been are are still being oppressed, then how and when do we make change? Of course, it's not that easy. In my opinion, we must solve the problems of Capitalism in order to end these types of oppression, or perhaps find a new form of government that works better (as one of my professors said in class yesterday, all forms of government that have ever been put in place have failed; people think that capitalism will last forever, but it too will eventually fail). The most important questions to ask are where do we go from here? How do we make change for the better? How do we achieve equality and leave room for freedom, as well as not leaving room for corruption? These are perhaps the most difficult questions our society faces, but we must address them and we must find answers. Humanity is a history of adaptation; and the problems we face now are greater than ever before...we must rise to the occasion and adapt once again.