Notes for 9 November 2015

LITCS 114
Teaching Associate: Patrick Mooney
Bldg. 494, room 160B
Fall 2015

So what is this blindness in Blindness?
- Is it in fact a parable, as the sales verbiage on the back of the novel claims?
  - What, after all, is a parable? (Wikipedia has a decent overview.)
  - What are the implications of treating the novel as a parable?
    - What does this say about the structure and the purpose of the novel?
    - If it's a parable, what do we take the allegorical element to be? What is it a parable of/for?
What about proverbs, and how they are deployed in the novel?
- Cf. Orwell's prefabricated hen-house?
- Also truisms, other conglomerate units of text?
What is the apocalyptic reduction operation that occurs in the fictional world here?
- Well, yeah, we're missing sight, of course.
  - But what goes along with that, thinking back on our previous conversation about sight's close relationship to knowledge, wisdom, etc.?
  - What else goes along with these reductions, even if it's not (directly) sight-related?
    - Ultimately, how does the world change?
Close reading and parsing exercise:
The doctor identified himself when they replied, then said rapidly, I'm fine, thank you, no doubt the receptionist had inquired, How are you, doctor, that is what we say when we do not wish to play the weakling, we say Fine, even though we may be dying, and this is commonly know as taking one's courage in both hands, a phenomenon that has only been observed in the human species. (32)
- First, where in the plot are we here?
- What's going on grammatically in this passage?
  - What punctuation is missing here?
  - How is this different from missing punctuation in The Road?
  - What else is missing? What interpretive signposts aren't here?
    - conjunctions
    - semicolons
    - other things?
  - Parataxis and hypotaxis: what are the politics of the sentence construction here?
  - What does it mean to construct the sentence in a way that makes an implicit claim that the whole thing is a single unit?
On Althusser's Ideology:
- Althusser's first thesis: Ideology represents the imaginary relationships of individuals to their real conditions of existence. (1264)
  - For those who are external to an ideological practice, it seems that an ideology is a false world outlook, and therefore needs to be interpreted to get at reality.
    - Althusser notes: ideology=illusion/allusion.
  - What is represented in ideology is therefore not the system of the real relations which govern the existence of individuals, but the imaginary relation of those individuals to the real relations in which they live. (1265)
- Althusser's second thesis: Ideology has a material existence. (1265)
  - Ideology is not (only) a set of ideas that then have real-world implications, but is, rather, inscribed in a set of practices.
  - Althusser's primary example: the Christian (≅Catholic, for this particular Frenchman) ideology is not merely a set of beliefs, but the practice of attending Mass, receiving the sacraments, kneeling to pray, etc. (1266)
  - Other examples are provided on 1269.
  - Everyone is obliged to act according to his/her beliefs. If he does not do so, that is wicked and implies ideas contrary to those that the individual professes. (1266-67)
  - actions inserted into practices […] governed by the rituals in which these practices are inscribed, within the material existence of an ideological apparatus. (1267)
- Some implications
  - There is no practice except by and in an ideology.
  - There is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects. (1268)
  - One of the primary functions of ideology is to constitute subjects as subjects. (Althusser sketches out a quick history of the idea of the subject, noting that it goes by different names in different ideological systems.)
  - More specifically, ideology has the function of producing subjects who live spontaneously within the bounds sketched out by the ideology.
- The elementary ideological effect
  As St. Paul admirably puts it, it is in the Logos, meaning in ideology, that we live, move, and have our being. It follows that, for you and for me, the category of the subject is a primary obviousness (obviousnesses are always primary); it is clear that you and I are subjects (free, ethical, etc. …). Like all obviousnesses, including those that make a word name a thing or have a meaning (therefore including the obviousness of the transparency of language), the obviousness that you and I are subjects – and that that does not cause any problems – is an ideological effect, the elementary ideological effect. It is indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes (without appearing to do so, since these are obviousnesses) obviousnesses as obviousnesses, which we cannot fail to recognize and before which we have the inevitable and natural reaction of crying out (aloud or in the still, small voice of conscience): That's obvious! That's right! That's true! (1268)
- Let us summarize …
  … what we have discovered about ideology in general.
  
  The duplicate mirror-structure of ideology ensures simultaneously:
  1. the interpellation of individuals as subjects.
  2. their subjection to the Subject;
  3. the mutual recognition of subjects and Subject, the subjects' recognition of each other, and finally the subject's recognition of himself;
  4. the absolute guarantee that everything really is so, and that on condition that the subjects recognize what they are and behave accordingly, everything will be all right: Amen – So be it. (1271)
Today's whiteboard snapshots