Saturday, October 24, 2009
Maxist Theory
Marxism seems to be the story of paradox and that nothing is as it first seems. We are tricked in life, by our eyes and our dreams reams. Promises dissolve in the reality of clas control and man's inhumanity to one another. Marxism is a grim tale and difficult to agree with, as we cling to our ideals of democracy,freedom and capatalist success. I was raised on a farm and it was very hard at times, yet also immensely reassuring in the stability living on a farm afforded me. But the cold ax of bankruptcy loomed more than once. The sadness of shipping cattle to slaughter never left me. The ambivalence of the goodness of feeding the human race versus the destruction of living fellow creatures was always a conundrum. Growing vegetables and fruits seems like a much more honest way to make a living, but is frought with pesticides to earn survival. Can pastoral beauty be celebrated without ownership, classism and destruction? Are National Parks the new Marxism?
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Feminism
Linda Daly
Well I remember participating in a burn the bra protest in about 1969. I also remember the push for women to have access to birth control, including abortion and how the pill made it possible for everyone to have a real good time without too much fear of an unwanted pregnancy. The lesbian aspect was always there though as a double edged sword of getting too involved with feminist issues, would make people question your sexual orientation. I do think that feminism has been responsible for more women having more access to a variety of careers and promotion opportunities that did not used to be available. Sexual harassment laws have also greatly improved working conditions in my own career. Equal pay for equal work, got me a $25,000.00 a year improvement in my paycheck over a 5 year period. So there really have been improvements that I can see in my lifetime. Race and class issues of equality are still of course at work. More disturbing has been the great increase in domestic violence. The issue of women as abusive with children, certainly has been a continued reality. I have done child protection work from late 2005 to mid 2008 in El Paso County and certainly I have seen women abuse their children, but more often the situation is neglect, complicated by poverty, poor education, poor mental health and poor parenting skills. A number of women have also been involved in substance abuse, which men have often been responsible for in exposing the women to drugs and encouraging their addiction. And there are still a lot of women having children whom they are not prepared to raise. Looking at feminism in literature as a method of criticism, I am wondering how it informs literature, other than as a social reality that should not be ignored? Is it really the underlying basis of the writing? It can be but then what happens to other theories that might hold equal apparent worth such as post structuralism or psychoanalysis? Does feminist criticism get a backseat if more than one critical approach can be taken to the same literature? How does a feminisgt perspective inform morality, truth and whether an idea has a center?
Well I remember participating in a burn the bra protest in about 1969. I also remember the push for women to have access to birth control, including abortion and how the pill made it possible for everyone to have a real good time without too much fear of an unwanted pregnancy. The lesbian aspect was always there though as a double edged sword of getting too involved with feminist issues, would make people question your sexual orientation. I do think that feminism has been responsible for more women having more access to a variety of careers and promotion opportunities that did not used to be available. Sexual harassment laws have also greatly improved working conditions in my own career. Equal pay for equal work, got me a $25,000.00 a year improvement in my paycheck over a 5 year period. So there really have been improvements that I can see in my lifetime. Race and class issues of equality are still of course at work. More disturbing has been the great increase in domestic violence. The issue of women as abusive with children, certainly has been a continued reality. I have done child protection work from late 2005 to mid 2008 in El Paso County and certainly I have seen women abuse their children, but more often the situation is neglect, complicated by poverty, poor education, poor mental health and poor parenting skills. A number of women have also been involved in substance abuse, which men have often been responsible for in exposing the women to drugs and encouraging their addiction. And there are still a lot of women having children whom they are not prepared to raise. Looking at feminism in literature as a method of criticism, I am wondering how it informs literature, other than as a social reality that should not be ignored? Is it really the underlying basis of the writing? It can be but then what happens to other theories that might hold equal apparent worth such as post structuralism or psychoanalysis? Does feminist criticism get a backseat if more than one critical approach can be taken to the same literature? How does a feminisgt perspective inform morality, truth and whether an idea has a center?
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Marxist Theory
Marxist Theory
Marxist theory makes me think of books that focus on underprivileged people in our society and the conflict that comes out, such as T.C. Boyles work on migrant laborers and their interface with upper middle class families in the hills of LA. Steinbeck shows some of this same interface between the impoverished Okies and the camps that they lived in, among the fertile riches of California landowners. These examples of literature, lay bare the realities of our times and place, while revealing inner character, building tensions and a climax, as the underlying conflicts between characters and classes boil over. The climax strips any illusions away about our inner strengths and weaknesses.
If more recent Marxist theories allow for the “art” of literature to move away from the center of economics, or a central focus or essence, what kind of literature is being endorsed? Can magical realism, fantasy and leaps of imagination through time and space be endorsed? If the subtle and more flexible perspective and revealing of the unconscious, in finding historical truth is not incompatible with Marxism, would Butler’s Kindred find a place in Marxist theory? Class and power differences are certainly a focus, along with interior psyche issues of dealing with these inequities from a moral high ground, as the main character and her husband confront choices that impact their survival, amid time travel in different places, as well as time realities. What kind of literature do you think of that meets these expanded visions of Marxism?
Marxist theory makes me think of books that focus on underprivileged people in our society and the conflict that comes out, such as T.C. Boyles work on migrant laborers and their interface with upper middle class families in the hills of LA. Steinbeck shows some of this same interface between the impoverished Okies and the camps that they lived in, among the fertile riches of California landowners. These examples of literature, lay bare the realities of our times and place, while revealing inner character, building tensions and a climax, as the underlying conflicts between characters and classes boil over. The climax strips any illusions away about our inner strengths and weaknesses.
If more recent Marxist theories allow for the “art” of literature to move away from the center of economics, or a central focus or essence, what kind of literature is being endorsed? Can magical realism, fantasy and leaps of imagination through time and space be endorsed? If the subtle and more flexible perspective and revealing of the unconscious, in finding historical truth is not incompatible with Marxism, would Butler’s Kindred find a place in Marxist theory? Class and power differences are certainly a focus, along with interior psyche issues of dealing with these inequities from a moral high ground, as the main character and her husband confront choices that impact their survival, amid time travel in different places, as well as time realities. What kind of literature do you think of that meets these expanded visions of Marxism?
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Post Modernism
If the provisional or contingent is the definition of postmodernism, along with the use of space versus time, then what that means is that the meaning is not clear, it is contingent on something else. A truth that cannot be relied on. A truth that only works in some situations. A truth that cannot really be known. A truth that is up to interpretation. A truth based on space and not time. A truth based on what is in the room,not memory. A truth based on what is present and can be seen, not absent and in the past.
Now this part about the past and memory is something I do not quite understand. How can it be that the past would not be present, when the past is a part of us. Marks of the past are all about us, even in nature. Dreams, are usuaally our efforts to work out the past, as is most fiction that is written. I am not sure that I agree with the tenets of postmodernism in this regard.
Now this part about the past and memory is something I do not quite understand. How can it be that the past would not be present, when the past is a part of us. Marks of the past are all about us, even in nature. Dreams, are usuaally our efforts to work out the past, as is most fiction that is written. I am not sure that I agree with the tenets of postmodernism in this regard.
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