Literary and Cultural Theory

1. What is a Work of Art? Traditional Approaches and Fish’s Theory of Interpretive Communities

⋆What is Work of Art?

Basic Problem: (identified by Martin Heidegger)

-the definition leads to a hermetic circle:

1. We have to examine the work in order to answer the question.

2. To do that we must first be able to identify a work of art.

3. To be able to do that, we must already know what objects are work of art, what objects are not.

4. If we can do that, we have already had the knowledge of what art is.

WE ARE RUNNING IN A CIRCLE (Summary based on T. R. Quigley´s interpretation)

Ways to approach the problem:

- authorial/artistic intention-problems:

- certain artworks were clearly not intended as such (e.g. the Venus of Millendorf)

- intention vs. result

- multiple and/or unknown author

- canon – problems:

- can only be applied to already established work

- authoritarian

- highly debatable

-artistic value/artistic merit

- does not exist

- hermeneutic circle

- attributed debatable, possibly authoritarian

⋆Stanley Fish – Interpretive Communities:

- a text/work of art does not have meaning in itself

- meaning is established based on cultural context

- cultural context includes:

- values

- symbols

- interpretive strategies

- tradition
 - canon(s)

- …

- the interpretive community makes a text/object/… a work of art

- relative in time and space

- consensual

- liable to changes

- not absolute

High and Low

High Culture: +

- the Arnoldian “best of the best”

- established, canonized works

- supposedly requires a high level of education and/or erudition to appreciate

Low Culture: 0/-

- all the rest

- non-canonized

- supposedly easy to understand and simple;

Mass Culture: --

-low culture with some qualifications:

- negative influence

- making people stupid

- imposed from above

- people are helpless against it

Popular Culture: +

- low culture with some qualifications:

- people are not helpless and passive

- readers/users find their own way of relating to it

- creative, subversive use

- empowering
2. The Basics of Poetry: Rhyme, Meter, Tropes and Figures

⋆Rhyme:

∙ The basis of rhythm in English poetry is stress or accent

∙ a stressed/accented syllable is noted as '

∙ an unstressed/unaccented syllable is noted as x or -

Thomas Gray: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

x ' x ' x ' x ' x '

The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

x ' x ' ' ' x x x '

The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea;

x ' x ' x ' x ' x '

The plowman homeward plods his weary way,

x ' x ' x ' x x x '

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

⋆Meter:

∙The basic unit of poetic meter is the foot, which is composed of a particular number and order of stressed and unstressed
syllables.

∙ Feet commonly used in English metrics:

x ' iambus (iambic line)

' x trochee (trochaic line)

x x ' anapest (anapestic line)

' x x dactyl (dactylic line)

' ' spondee

x x pyrrhic

∙Types of lines based on the number of feet:

∙1 foot: monometer

∙2 feet: dimeter

∙3 feet: trimeter

∙4 feet: tetrameter

∙5 feet: pentameter

∙6 feet: hexameter
∙When noting down the meter of a poem, feet are separated by vertical lines:

x '|x x|' '|x '|x '|

∙Breaks and stops in the poem are indicated by slanted lines: / or // or /// (depending on the length of the pause)

∙ If the break is at the end of the line, the line is an end-stopped line (otherwise a run-on line)

∙ If the break is inside the line, it is called a caesura

x ' x ' x ' x ' x '

The Cur|few tolls| the knell| of part|ing day,| //

x ' x ' ' ' x x x '

The low|ing herd|/ wind slow|ly o'er| the lea; |//

x ' x ' x ' x ' x '

The plow|man/ home|ward plods| his wear|y way, |//

x ' x ' x ' x x x '

And leaves| the world| to dark|ness// and| to me. |///

Sound:

∙Onomatopoeia: a word imitating the sound of something in the real world

cuckoo, bow-wow, meow...

∙ Repetition: the same words or longer units used more times, creating a peculiar effect

∙ Rhyme: the repetition of the sound or sounds at the end of words, usually (but not necessarily) at the end of the poetic
line

be / me; bay / may; bear / hair; breaths / deaths

∙ Eye-rhyme: a pairing of words that only looks like rhyme, but does not work as such when read aloud

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

(Shakespeare: Sonnet 18)

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

(William Blake: The Tyger)

∙ Alliteration:

a) the repetition of initial consonants

b) the significant repetition of the same (or related) initial, medial or final consonants

∙ Assonance: the recurrence of identical (or related vowels)

And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep.

(John Keats: The Eve of St. Agnes)

∙ Consonance: the repetition of initial and final consonants.

boat / bait; meat / mote; light / late

⋆Tropes and Poetic Devices:

Simile: a figure of speech comparing two dissimilar things. The comparison is often shown by “as” or “like”

“O my Luve's like a red, red rose” Robert Burns

“Hills Like White Elephants” Ernest Hemigway

Metaphor: a compressed simile. The two unlike things are not compared, but identified.

“God is a DJ” (Faithless)

“A mighty fortress is our God” (Martin Luther)

“No man is an island” (John Donne)

A metaphor has the following main parts:

tenor – the original subject

vehicle – what the original subject is identified with connecting verb – the verb connecting the tenor and the
vehicle, often “to be”

Time is money.

tenor c.v. vehicle

Personification: a thing, an abstraction or an animal is represented as a person, or distinctively human features are
attributed to them

“Skeleton, you are my friend” (Kate Nash)

Summer grass aches and whispers

It wants something: it calls and sings; it pours

 out wishes to the overhead stars.

The rain hears; the rain answers; the rain is slow

coming; the rain wets the face of the grass.

Metonymy: a change of names; calling something as something else which is closely associated or connected with it. The
ground is not similarity, but contiguity.

- spatial: the camp started to sing

- time-based: we are the children of the 21st century

- material: rubber, iron, glass

- cause and effect: a healthy complexion

- part-whole/synecdoche: give me a hand, the city passed a law

- specific-general: hoover, bug

Synesthesia: combining two sensory inputs into one picture in a way that one is describing the other.

cool green, blue note, heavy silence, …

Oxymoron: a figure of speech combining two contradictory terms, thereby forming a paradoxical relation.

O heavy lightness! Serious vanity!

Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Hyperbole: an exaggerated statement, used to create a strong impression.

I could eat a horse.

The path went on forever.

Litotes: something is expressed by the denial of its opposite.

That [sword] was not useless / to the warrior now. (Beowulf)

Not a bad day's work on the whole.

(Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel)

Allegory: a type of extended metaphor, used to represent abstract ideas or principles by concrete characters, figures or
events that are typically associated with those abstract qualities.

Stories using allegories often have a moral teaching.

Anaphora: a scheme in which the same word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of successive lines or sentences.

In time the savage bull sustains the yoke,

In time all haggard hawks will stoop to lure,

In time small wedges cleave the hardest oak,

In time the flint is pierced with softest shower. Thomas Kyd, Spanish Tragedy
The Fox and the Crow

A Fox once saw a Crow fly off with a piece of cheese in its beak and settle on a branch of a tree. "That's for me, as I am
a Fox," said Master Reynard, and he walked up to the foot of the tree. "Good-day, Mistress Crow," he cried. "How well
you are looking to-day: how glossy your feathers; how bright your eye. I feel sure your voice must surpass that of other
birds, just as your figure does; let me hear but one song from you that I may greet you as the Queen of Birds." The Crow
lifted up her head and began to caw her best, but the moment she opened her mouth the piece of cheese fell to the ground,
only to be snapped up by Master Fox. "That will do," said he. "That was all I wanted. In exchange for your cheese I will
give you a piece of advice for the future:

"Do not trust flatterers."

Polysyndeton: a deliberate, excessive overuse of conjunctions.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth
after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every
thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:24-25

Epizeuxis: a figure in which the same word is repeated consecutively for emphasis.

“Rhett, Rhett, Rhett! If you go, where shall I go? What shall I do?”

(Gone with the Wind)

Asyndeton: the intentional omission of conjunctions for a rhetorical effect.

“that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the
survival and the success of liberty” (JFK)

“He was a bag of bones, a floppy doll, a broken stick, a maniac.” (Jack Kerouac, On the Road)
3. The Basics of Formalist and Structuralist Analysis (de Saussure, Jakobson, Barthes), Key Terms in Narratology

⋆Ferdinand de Saussure – Course in General Linguistics

Language has two components:

∙Langue – an abstract system of language rules internalized by the community of speakers

(Chomsky: competence)

∙Parole – individual acts of speech (how it actually comes out)

(Chomsky: performance)

Language pre-exists thought = there is no thinking before language. Thus, the fundamental characteristics of language
determine our thinking.

A sign is a double entity:

Sign = signifier + signified

The signifier is the sound image. [tri]

The signified is the concept. (what one imagines)

The connection between a signifier and a signified is arbitrary and unmotivated.

The value of a signed is assigned to it by its role/position in the system, and that only. What makes a signifier a signifier
is that it is not another signifier, and not any kind of connection with a signified concept.

A is only A because it is NOT B, NOT C, … NOT Z

⋆Roman Jakobson: Roman Jakobson´s Model of Communication:

context (1)

message (6)

addresser (2) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - adressee (3)

contact (4) code (5)

Roman Jakobson´s Language Functions:

Type Oriented Towards Function

1) Referential Context imparting information

2) Expressive Addresser expressing feelings or attitudes

3) Conative Addressee influencing behavior

4) Phatic Contact establishing or maintaining social relationships

5) Metalingual Code referring to the nature of interaction (e.g. genre)

6) Poetic Message foregrounding textual features

⋆Structuralist Literary Analysis: Usual Features

∙ The originator of meaning, and the proper object of analysis is the text itself. (NOT the Author's Intention, NOT the
historical context, etc.)

∙ Every text has an analyzable grammar, or structure.

∙ There are two levels of structure:

surface structure: characters, plot, etc.

deep structure: binary oppositions, archetypes, etc.

∙ Stories are made up of an identifiable (and limited) set of building blocks/patterns.

⋆The Basics of Narratology

∙ Types of narration:

- 1st person vs 3rd person

- omniscient vs. limited

- reliable vs. unreliable

- single vs. Multiple

∙ The two basic levels of narrative organization:

- syuzhet / plot: the events as they occur in the text

- fabula / story: the events in chronological order

∙ Analepsis / Flashback: jumping back in time

∙ Prolepsis / Flash forward: jumping ahead in time

∙ Protagonist: the main character of the story

∙ Antagonist: the character who is acting against the interests of the protagonist

∙ Helper: a character who helps the protagonist in achieving his aim

∙ Donor: a character who gives an object to the protagonist, without which it would be impossible to reach his/her goal
⋆Roland Barthes - Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives

!(asi to nejpřehlednější, co jsem na netu mohl najít-bohužel nemohu zcela ručit za věrohodnost, avšak projížděl jsem to i
s jednou vědeckou prací a ten diagram odpovídá

http://www.pierregander.com/phd/courses/narratology/barthes.html)

Barthes, R. (1996). Introduction to the structural analysis of narratives. In S. Onega, & J. A. G. Landa (Eds.),
Narratology (pp. 45-60). New York: Longman.

In this article Roland Barthes outlines a structural theory of narrative - inspired by structural linguistics, the Prague
School, Russian formalism, and structural anthropology - that is a grammar capable of accounting for every conceivable
narrative.

He proposes that one should study the structure of narratives, and that, he claims, can only be found in the narratives
themselves. He proposes that one looks at how linguistics have done, and study structures beyond the sentence.
Narratives, as an example of structures of meaning, can be studied on different levels of description. Terms acquire
meaning not in isolation, but in relationship with other terms, on the same level, and on different levels. Narratives are a
hierarchy of instances. Barthes describes three levels: functions (bottom level), actions (middle level), and narration (top
level), summarized in this diagram:

narration (top level)

narrative communication

narrative situation

actions (middle level)

functions (bottom level)

functions (relate to the same level)

cardinal functions (nuclei) (important for the narrative)

catalysers (complementary)

indices (relate across levels)

indices (relate to character, feeling, atmosphere, philosophy)

informants (identifies, locates in space and time)

Functions are the smallest unit of narrative, something that may not have meaning directly but which acquire meaning in
combination with other units, on the same level or on a higher level. Functions can in some cases be shorter than the
sentence, even parts of a word. A unit can belong to more than one class. Informants and indices can combine freely. A
catalyser implies the existence of a nuclei to which it can connect. Nuclei are bound together by a relation of solidarity. A
sequence is a logical succession of nuclei bound together by a relation of solidarity. Sequences can be included in other,
larger sequences, still on the 'functional' level.

Actions is the level of characters. Characters in the narrative are classified, not in terms of psychological essences, but
according to their participation in actions. Actions often have two sides. For instance 'Giving' has a Donor and a
Receiver. Example of actions are desire, communication, struggle.

The narrational level include narrative communication (author, narrator, and 'reader') and narrative situation ("the set of
protocols according to which the narrative is 'consumed'." (p. 58)). Here is included different styles of representation,
'point of view', coded signs of narrative ('once upon a time', etc.).
4. Psychoanalytic Criticism: Freud, Lacan and Kristeva

The Basics of Psychoanalysis

⋆Sigmund Freud

-humans are not (only) rational and conscious beings

-our acts are also (and considerably) influenced by our hidden/repressed:

-wishes and desires

-fears

-traumas

-these repressed elements make up the unconscious

-one‘s actions are more influenced by unconscious factors than by his or her rational decisions

∙ there are three main parts of the human mind:

-conscious (the part of our mind we think of as ourselves)

- preconscious (the effects of unconscious contents appear here)

- unconscious (fears, traumas, wishes, desires, dreams, etc.)

∙ the contents of the unconscious are not directly accessible

∙ there are two main forms of indirect manifastations:

∙ slips of the tongue (Freudian slips)

I live in room sex. (six)

I‘d like an Irish cram, please. (cream)

∙ dreams

-divided into two parts:

- manifest content – what the dreamer would remember

-latent content – the part of real importance, unfortunately not available for study
-the latent content appears in the manifest content, but only symbolically, through two basic processes:

- condensation: two or more unconscious elements combine to make up a complex image or situation

-displacement: the emotion or desire is directed towards another, usually indifferent thing or person

-sexuality, as well as fears and desires appear early on in the psychological development of the child (no innocent child)

-at first the child is one with the mother, and experiences his/her separation from her as a trauma

∙ Oedipus complex:

-the child desires the mother (their previous unity)

-wants to get her back

-sees that his father has the mother

- sees and/or hears the parents having sex, and misidentifies it as the father‘s aggression and violence

- at some point, sees that his mother does not have a penis

- connects these two unconnected facts, and believes that his father cut his mother‘s penis off, to punish her

- concludes that if he continues the rivalization between himself and the father, his will be cut off, too

- thus, he accepts the father‘s absolute power and decides to get a mother, rather than the mother

⋆Jacques Lacan

∙The Mirror Stage:

-the child first realizes that he is not one with the mother when he sees himself in the mirror

-Aha-Erlebniss: Aha, that‘s me!

-unfortunately, he is wrong:

-what he sees is not himself, only a reflection/illusion

-what he sees is never himself as a whole, but always just a fraction of it

- thus, one‘s experience of subjectivity is always fragmented and illusory

∙The Name of the Father and the Symbolic Order:

-one‘s realization of his identity cannot happen without having a knowledge of some language

- thus, identity and subjectivity is only possible following the conditions provided by language

-the concept of me, I is provided by language

- it is ultimately linked with one‘s name

- that name is never one‘s own in the sense of having chosen by one

- it is partially directly provided by the father (last name), partially chosen by him (first name)

- all subjective existence is inherently and unavoidably patriarchal

- no thinking or meaningful human activity is possible without using language (cf. Ferdinand de Saussure)
- language can be conceived as a collection of utterances by individuals

- individuality is inherently patriarchal

- language and thus symbolism is inherently patriarchal

- in the moment a child learns to speak, he is forced to participate in the Symbolic Order, and unconsciously obey its
rules

⋆Julia Kristeva: (from Julia Kristeva: Live Theory, John Lechte, Maria Margaroni)

Oedipus and the problem of identification in Freud and Lacan:

- she commends Lacan for showing how the place of the third-that is, the father who will be put to death by Oedipus- is
the place of the symbolic

- following Lacan, she emphasizes the connecting, mediating value of the paternal space, which she too separates from
the Freudian super-ego

- like Lacan, she places herself among the disciples of the “dead” father→ for it is only he, she insists, who (in the death)
will open up the subject to the realization that there is no signifier that is not lacking

-yet, there is certainly an inverse side in the mirroring relation between father and daughter

-she does not hesitate to mark the site of their difference

-the place of the Third is not only the symbolic but also the symbolic(43)

-Kristeva´s return to Oedipus is accompanied by an investigation of its limits, which is, in her view, precisely what has
been left out in traditional psychoanalysis

-according to Kristeva, the Freudian tradition has the advantage of having underscored the structuring role of Oedipus
and the phallus. →but it perhaps has the disadvantage of having done so without indicating forms of modification,
transgression and revolt vis-á-vis this order

-Kristeva demonstrates an equal concern for the latter as she does for the former→her acknowledged debt to the father
remains inseparable from a more archaic bonding

Rethinking of Oedipus

-in contrast to both Freud and Lacan, her aim is to reconceptualise the production of post-Oedipal subjectivity in light of
a double debt: to the father as well as the mother
5. Gender Studies and Queer Studies in Literary and Cultural Criticism: Rich, Butler, Laqueur

Gender roles

- a set of:

- values

- attitudes

- behavioral models

- responses

- …

- prescribed by society – cf. Althusser's ISAs and RSAs

- acquired both implicitly:

- role models

- unconscious identification with others

- and explicitly (through pressure):

- family

- church

- peer groups

⋆Queer Theory:

- the word „queer" in queer theory has some connotations (odd, gay), particularly its alignment with ideas about
homosexuality

- a relatively new branch of study

-grew out of Gay/lesbian studies→Gay/lesbian studies grew out of feminist studies

-queer theory insist that all sexual behaviours, all concepts linking sexual behaviours to sexual identities, and all
categories of normative and deviant sexualities, are social constructs, sets of signifiers, which create certain types of
social meaning

-follow gay/lesbian and feminist theory in rejecting the idea that sexuality is an essential category

-sexuality is a complex array of social codes and forces, forms of individual activity and institutional power, which
interact to shape the ideas of what is normative and what is deviant at any particular moment→ then operate under the
rubric of what is “natural”, “essential”, “biological”, “god-given”

⋆Judith Butler -(Gender, Sex, Sexuality)

-one of the most important contemporary queer theorists

Gender Trouble (1990)

- gender is not simply a social construct, but rather a kind of performance, a show we put on, a set of signs we wear,
as costume or disguise-hence as far from essence as can be

- gender identification is unconscious → fragmented:

- no person impersonating the ideal "Woman" and the "Man";

- as many types of manhood and womanhood as individuals

- gender is not an internal quality, it is a series of acts → gender is a performance, a drag

- the categories "man" and "woman" are no more than myths

- if it is a performance, it is possible to subvert it:

- underacting: androgyny

- overacting: an ironic, distorted parody of traditional gender roles

-gender as the identification with one sex, or one object (like the mother), is a fantasy, a set of internalized images, and
not a set of properties governed by the body and its organ configuration

- gender is a set of signs internalized, psychically imposed on the body and on one´s psychic sense of identity→ gender
is thus not a primary category, but an attribute, a set of secondary narrative effects

-gender is an act, a performance, costumes rather than a core aspect of essential identity

⋆Thomas Laquer – Sex as a Social Construct

Making Sex:

- historical analysis of the documentation of autopsies:

- before the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries:

- two varieties of the same sex

- "female" reproductive organs are the turned-out versions of the "male" ones

- from the 19th century on:

- the present day conception of a dual model

- the actual drawings are accurate → not because of the lack of knowledge, simply a different interpretation

Sex as a Social Construct

"Scientific" Evidence:

- XX and XY vs the other varieties XXY, X0, …

- development of organs caused not directly by the genes, but the presence or absence of a hormone → possibility of
divergence

- hermaphroditism:

- the "unclear" case

- the "forced identity" case

- transexuality

- non-Western cultures acknowledging a third gender:

- Fa'afafines in Samoa

- Hijras in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan

⋆Adrienne Rich - Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

- an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential
poets of the second half of the 20th century“

- Rich argues that heterosexuality is a violent political institution making way for the "male right of physical,
economical, and emotional access" to women

- She urges women to direct their energies towards other women rather than men, and portrays lesbianism as
an extension of feminism

-Biologically men have only one innate orientation--a sexual one that draws them to women--while women
have two innate orientations, sexual toward men and reproductive toward their young

-he uses eight characteristics of male power in archaic and contemporary societies (from the essay “The Origin of the
Family by Kathleen Cough) as a framework

Characteristics of male power include the power of men:

1) to deny women [our own] sexuality - by means of clitoridectomy and infibulation; chastity belts;
punishment, including death, for female adultery; for lesbian sexuality, …

2) or to force it [male sexuality] upon them-by means of rape (including marital rape) and wife beating; father-
daughter, brother-sister incest, idealization of heterosexual romance in art, literature, media, …

3) to command or exploit their labor to control their produce-by means of the institutions of marriage and
motherhood as unpaid production; the horizontal segregation of women in paid employment, …

4) to control or rob them of their children - by means of father-right and "legal“ kidnapping, enforced
sterilization, systematized infanticide, …

5) to confine them physically and prevent their movement - by means of rape as terrorism, keeping women off
the stress, prescriptions for "full-time" mothering; enforced economic dependence of wives…

6) to use them as objects in male transactions - use of women as "gifts, arranged marriage; use of women as
entertainers to facilitate male deals,…

7) to cramp their creativeness - sexual exploitation of women by male artists and teachers; the social and
economic disruption of women's creative aspirations…

8) to withhold from them large areas of the society's knowledge and cultural attainments- sex-role
stereotyping that deflects women from science, technology, and other "masculine" pursuits…
-The effect of male-identification means:

internalizing the values of the colonizer and actively participating in carrying out the colonization of one's self and one's
sex. . . Male identification is the act whereby women place men above women, including themselves, in credibility,
status, and importance in most situations, regardless of the comparative quality the women may bring to the situation....
Interaction with women is seen as a lesser form of relating on every level.

(Gough does not perceive these power-characteristics as specifically enforcing heterosexuality; only as
producing sexual inequality) (from Zeno´s UDKS link)

- The characteristics show that society has forgotten that it is necessary (in order to function) to include women in both
public and private spheres

- the ignorance of a female’s choice in sexuality has caused her position in society to be thought of as less, and more
importantly, secondary to that of a man

- a recurring point that Rich points out is the destruction of lesbian experiences in history (misplacement of documents,
or destroying them in general) has led to a society in which having a lesbian experience, or being a lesbian all together is
seen as ‘the other’ and unacceptable to most men and women

-Rich argues that part of the lesbian experience is an act of resistance: specifically, a rejection of the
patriarchy and the male right to women

-at certain points in history, homosexual men and lesbians have shared a social existence, and acknowledged a
common fight against society –> but to treat the lesbian experience as a version of male homosexuality is to
discard it, denying the female experience and the realities it brings, falsifying lesbian history

-Rich holds that compulsory heterosexuality denies women of their own sexuality and comfortability in exploring their
bodies and those of others

-she claims that compulsory heterosexuality produces such myths as that of the vaginal orgasm

-that serves to imply that only a man can sexually satisfy a woman (by delivering a vaginal orgasm), and hence that
serves to prevent women from having relationships with other women!
6. Ideology, Discourse and Subjectivity: Althusser and Žižek

⋆Louis Althusser – (from Identity and the Subjectivity)

Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1971)

- Repressive State Apparatuses (RSA): prisons, the police, criminal justice system, mental hospitals, etc.

- Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA): schools, religions, legal systems, stories and myths, etc.

Ideologies Ideology

specific structural

historical eternal

differing unchancing

content form fo

- ideology works UNCONSCIOUSLY

- ideology is a structure/system we inhabit, which speaks us

- gives the illusion that we can freely choose and that we are in charge

- "Ideology is a 'representation' of the Imaginary Relationship of Individuals to their Real conditions of existence"

- the material relations of capitalist production are alienating –> people make up stories to deal with reality

- alienation of alienation, double distancing

- ideology is not some fiction about the real world, but fiction about our relation to that "real world"

- the stories we tell about our relationship to reality become reality

- ideology has a material existence: exists in INSTITUTIONS and SUBJECTS

- "there is no practice except by and in ideology"

- "there is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects"

- ideology makes subjects out of concrete individuals –> no subject without ideological positioning

1. We are born into subjecthood. (Due to our naming.)

2. We are always and already subjects in ideology. Others' beliefs are illusory, ours are true. 

3. Ideology works through interpellation. (HEY, YOU!)

- interpellation is based on misrecognition (méconaissance)

Literary and Cultural Theory:

1. What is a Work of Art? Traditional Approaches and Fish’s Theory of Interpretive Communities
-Identification by M. Heiddeger (running in a circle)
-Stanley Fish (+High and Low Culture)

2. The Basics of Poetry: Rhyme, Meter, Tropes and Figures

-Rhyme (stressed/unstressed syllable)

-Meter (basic unit: foot- Types of lines based on the number of feet-1. monometer, 2. dimeter, etc…)

-Sound (onomatopoeia, repetition, rhyme, eye-rhyme, alliteration, asonance, consonance)

-Tropes and Poetic Devices (simile, metaphor, personifcation, metonymy, synesthesia, oxymoron, hyperbole, litotes,
allegory, anaphora, polysyndeton, epizeuxis, asyndeton)

3. The Basics of Formalist and Structuralist Analysis (de Saussure, Jakobson, Barthes), Key Terms in Narratology
-Ferdinand de Saussure (Sign = signifier + signified)
-Roman Jakobson (model of communication)
-Roland Barthes (structural analysis of narratives)
-basics of narratology

4. Psychoanalytic Criticism: Freud, Lacan and Kristeva

-Freud (his conception of the human psyche-ICEBERG metaphor, Oedipus complex)
Lacan (the mirror stage, The Name of the Father and the Symbolic Order)
Kristeva (zatim Zéno neposkytl)

5. Gender Studies and Queer Studies in Literary and Cultural Criticism: Rich, Butler, Laqueur + Cixious
-Gender roles
-queer theory (all sexual behaviours are social constructs)
-Judith Butler (gender troubles)
-Thomas Laqueur (Sex as a Social Construct)
-Adrienne Rich (Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence-lesbian experience is an act of resistance:
specifically, a rejection of the patriarchy and the male right to women)

6. Ideology, Discourse and Subjectivity: Althusser and Žižek

-Louis Althusser (Repressive State Apparatuses X Ideological State Apparatuses)
-Žížek (zatím Zéno neposktynul)