There is No Spoon

Eagleton’s discussion of what is ‘real’ was very interesting. It made me think of the discussion that I have had every time I introduce the idea of realism to a literature class. The students are unable to distinguish between realism and truth. They assume that if a story is labeled as realism that means that it is actually a work of nonfiction. Eagleton would suggest that this mistake is often made with just about every type of literature out there. He claims that we cannot mistake fiction as a means of “imaginatively transposing the real,” but rather as “the production of certain produced representations of the real into an imaginary object” (173). We often hear that literature is a way for us to see and understand the world. Eagleton would disagree in the sense that literature does not show us some insight into what is real through a fictional medium. He would say instead, at least in the fictional conversation that I had with him in my head, that literature provides a way for us to see the products that come from the various representations that we call the ‘real’ world. Through varying degrees, literature can present us with an imaginary setting that is similar to, but never the same as our world. The degree of ‘reality’ is based on the work’s focus on the imagined representation or on the ways that the real signifies itself.

Take Off the Glasses, It's Dark Out

Jameson seems to take the argument away from anyone who would claim that Marxist, or any other theory with the exception of new Criticism, is just a bunch of hooey. I often hear people try to discredit theory by saying that it is just for those with too much time on their hands. They claim that all of these theories just serve to confuse the average reader. They muddy up the “straightforward” close readings of New Criticism, or just reading the text, by reading too much into the context and the structures surrounding the text. The “elaborate and ingenious interpretations” are too much for them to handle. Jameson would say to them that there is no such thing as a close reading that is completely free from any outside influence on the reader. Every reader who picks up a text and reads it is doing so with a lens that has been developed through centuries of struggle between any number of forces. Through mystification, most readers have been blinded to the very existence of this lens. Without even realizing it, most people will live their whole life looking at the world with a tinted and skewed vision of the way things are. This lens is kept in place through the ignorance of the masses. If there was no mystification, ”then no ideology would be possible, and no domination either.” As long as the majority of a given population believes that literature is just words and their culture is” the way it has always been,” then there can be no change. You need to know that you are wearing the sunglasses before you can even begin to try and take them off.

In This Corner....

Foucault seems to be setting himself up for a theoretical throw down. He uses his discussion of the genealogies, or subjugated knowledges, to establish his starting point. His claim that these knowledges have been repressed by “globalizing discourses” serves as the focal point of his argument. The strictly scientific and systematisizing knowledges that had become the leading forms of theory, had pushed aside all other forms of knowledge and understanding. Foucault does not seem to make the claim that these theories are evil in nature. He does not rise up and call for their annihilation. He is searching for a way to examine these theories and bring light to the effects that they have on the societies in which they have gained so much power. He is not trying to limit the number of ways that we can understand the world, but rather, open up our thinking to some approaches and understandings which have been swept under the rug.