Using Key Passages to Understand Literature, Theory and Criticism

Barry Laga

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351357470
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Using Key Passages to Understand Literature, Theory and Criticism is a completely fresh and innovative approach to teaching and learning literary theory: using short passages of theory to make sense of literary and cultural texts. It focuses on the key concepts that help readers understand literature and cultural events in new and provocative ways. Covering a wide variety of iconic and contemporary theorists, the book offers a broad chronological and global overview, including thirty passages from theorists such as Viktor Shklovsky, Roland Barthes, Judith Butler, Diana Fuss, Jean Baudrillard, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Michel Foucault, Monique Wittig, and Eve Sedgwick.

Built on the premise that scholars use theory pragmatically, Using Key Passages to Understand Literature, Theory and Criticism identifies problems, puzzles, and questions readers may encounter when they read a story, watch a film, or look at artwork. It explains, in detail, thirty concepts that help readers make sense of these works and invites students to apply the concepts to a range of writing and research projects. The textbook concludes by helping students read theory with an eye on finding productive passages and writing their own "theory chapter, " signaling a shift from student as critic to student as theorist.

Used as a main text in introductory theory courses or as a supplement to any literature, film, theater, or art course, this book helps students read closely and think critically.

CHAPTER 1

Becoming a subject

All ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects.

(Louis Althusser 117)

PROBLEMS, PUZZLES, AND QUESTIONS

Many read poems to glean a message. What do literary texts convey about, say, relationships? Billy Collins’ short poem “Divorce” (2008) describes a marriage gone awry:

Once, two spoons in bed,

now tined forks

across a granite table

and the knives they have hired.

In this case, Collins’ poem uses figurative language to portray divorce as an unpleasant and violent business. But what goes unsaid in this poem? What does Collins assume about what marriage ought to be? What is taken for granted when we talk about marriage? And why is asking about what the poem does not say instead of focusing on what it does say a useful tack to take?

In 2004, art historian Linda Nochlin delivered a series of lectures at Harvard University that focused on Renoir’s Great Bathers, and the lectures led to Bathers, Bodies, Beauty: The Visceral Eye (2006). She reminds us of the need to understand these paintings in context, for the images are the “result of certain kinds practices, the product of a particular shifting structure of cultural institutions at a particular moment of history” (52). At one point, she describes the formation of particular market forces and positioning of the artist as specialist and genius, and she asserts that “certain positions and formations gradually emerge which call into being subjects who will fill them” (41). Notice the reversal of cause and effect. Instead of saying that artists become specialists and geniuses who then shape the market, Nochlin claims that a particular socioeconomic order and new notions of the artist create new identities. How does that process work? How can, or in what sense, do cultural institutions “call into being subjects who will fill them”?

Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” (1853) describes a clerk named Bartleby who copies legal documents. Although very silent and mechanical, Bartleby completes his work. However, after a few days pass, the lawyer who hired Bartleby asks him to proofread a document, and Bartleby replies with “I would prefer not to” (502). Repeatedly, the lawyer asks Bartleby to obey: “You are decided, then, not to comply with my request—a request made according to common usage and common sense?” (503). Bartleby indicates that he prefers not to complete the task. Bartleby performs fewer and fewer assignments until he does nothing at all. After the lawyer fails in various ways to help Bartleby, the police place Bartleby in prison where he dies of starvation. He prefers not to eat. How do we make sense of Bartleby’s refusal to comply? Is Bartleby heroically resisting social expectations and demands? Is he asserting his agency in the face of corporate culture? Is he subverting “common usage and common sense”? Or, is he trading one identity for another? Instead of assuming his role as legal copyist, is Bartleby taking on the role of sacrificial victim? Is there another way to make sense of Bartleby’s defiance?

These examples share a preoccupation with the role our social arrangements play in constructing identity and our relationships with others. Do we create social relationships, or do these relationships construct us? Does society impose values and hierarchies upon us, or do we willingly embrace them? Can we escape the social system?

KEY PASSAGES

Before Louis Althusser, many Marxist scholars asserted that ideology refers to “false consciousness,” or the idea that ideology serves the dominant classes by hiding the truth about how our economic system exploits subordinate and marginalized groups. According to this view, people comply with the socioeconomic system because they do not know any better. They embrace a fake version of reality. Althusser revises our understanding of how ideology works in “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)” (1970). By combining psychoanalytic concepts with structuralist and Marxist socioeconomic theories, Althusser offers a useful way to discuss how culture encourages us to embrace certain social hierarchies, roles, values, attitudes, and identities, but not others. Althusser’s ideas matter to us because cultural representations—literature, film, art, performances, etc.—serve an ideological function. Along with institutions like religion, education, government, political parties, and family, what we read and watch shapes our identity and relationships with others in subtle ways.

Admittedly, Althusser’s vocabulary intimidates. However, once we explore the terms and concepts, we will see that Althusser helps us better understand the conditions of our social life, and he reminds us that what we think is natural and nonnegotiable is, perhaps, socially constructed and changeable.

I say: the category of the subject is constitutive of all ideology, but at the same time and immediately I add that the category of the subject is only constitutive of all ideology insofar as all ideology has the function (which defines it) of “constituting” concrete individuals as subjects. In the interaction of this double constitution exists the functioning of all ideology, ideology being nothing but its functioning in the material forms of existence of that functioning.

(116)

As a first formulation I shall say: all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, by the functioning of the category of the subject.

(117)

This is a proposition which entails that we distinguish for the moment between concrete individuals on the one hand and concrete subjects on the other, although at this level, concrete subjects only exist insofar as they are supported by a concrete individual.

(118)

I shall then suggest that ideology “acts” or “functions” in such a way that it “recruits” subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or “transforms” the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: “Hey, you there!”

(118)

Assuming that the theoretical scene I have imagined takes place in the street, the hailed individual will turn round. By this mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject. Why? Because he has recognized that the hail was “really” addressed to him, and that “it was really him who was hailed” (and not someone else).

(118)

Ideology has always-already interpellated individuals as subjects, which amounts to making it clear that individuals are always-already interpellated by ideology as subjects, which necessarily leads us to one last proposition: individuals are always-already subjects. Hence, individuals are “abstract” with respect to the subjects which they always already are.

(119)

DISCUSSION

A few concepts will help us make sense of those key passages. We will identify, then connect the dots.

First, individuals differ from subjects. When Althusser refers to individuals, he is talking about unique people who live in the world and whose qualities and attributes differ from other individuals. Individuals are “concrete” in the same sense that a particular red poppy in my backyard differs from the abstraction “flowers.” A subject has at least two connotations. On the one hand, a subject is more abstract and impersonal. For example, when we discuss “the subject” in a sentence, we refer to the grammatical place in that sentence. The subject is defined by its location in relation to other parts of the sentence, not by a particular person, place, or thing. Therefore, when we discuss “subjects” or “subject positions,” we are referring to impersonal roles or positions within an organization or system. For example, my subject position, at any given moment, might be teacher, father, citizen, or administrator, but at other times I am a student, son, tourist, or faculty member. The context and the relationship I have with others define my identity or subject position.

On the other hand, subject also suggests “subject to” in the sense that one is under another’s control or jurisdiction. We are subject to a monarch. We are subject to laws, policies, and procedures. We are also subject to preexisting social codes, categories, roles, and definitions. For example, the moment we are born, we are subject to preexisting ideas about gender, race, class, nationality, sexuality, etc. We do not define ourselves as much as we have to respond to a social framework that exists before we even arrive on the scene. Consider this analogy: when we play chess, we feel as though we are in control. We are free to move a pawn here or a knight there. However, we are subject to the rules that govern chess. We do not determine the layout of the board, the ability of individual pieces, or the goal or aim. Instead, we play within the framework we call “chess.” To act otherwise is to play another game.

Second, hailing or interpellating refers to the specific act of inviting someone to respond, to be recognized. Interpellating “recruits” someone in the sense of asking him to voluntarily enroll or enlist. Interpellation is complete when the person responds: “By this mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject. Why? Because he has recognized that the hail was ‘really’ addressed to him, and that ‘it was really him who was hailed’ (and not someone else)” (118). In other words, an individual becomes a subject in two ways. First, by willingly turning and responding, the individual voluntarily places himself in relation to the one who is hailing him. Second, he takes on the identity that was offered, and he subjects himself to the one who is calling him.

How do the dots connect? What do individuals, subjects, hailing, and interpellating have to do with ideology? Note that ideology is less a noun than a verb: “ideology has the function (which defines it) of ‘constituting’ concrete individuals as subjects” (116). In other words, ideology’s task is to hail, interpellate, or invite us to become subject to particular assumptions, social categories, values, attitudes, and roles. Responding to those invitations transforms us into subjects, for we willingly acknowledge the call or invitation, and we recognize that the call is for us. We willingly become part of the social system.

But what does Althusser mean by “always-already interpellated individuals as subjects” (119)? Althusser admits that he describes the process “in the form of a temporal succession” (118), but he clarifies by saying that “but in reality these things happen without any succession. The existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the same thing” (118). In other words, we never really enjoy a time when we are “individuals” who are free of ideology, free of a social system that constantly invites us to respond to specific values, social arrangements, and categories. Instead, we are born into a social system. We inherit, so to speak, particular attitudes and ideas about what it means to be male, female, Black, gay, Chicana, Scot, Muslim, working class, Catholic, etc. Social hierarchies, divisions, and definitions exist long before we are born. To return to the chess example, we are, in a sense, born into the game. There was never a moment when we were not playing chess, never a moment when there were no rules and identities.

But are we not free to choose? Are we not free agents? Do not people resist socially constructed categories of race, class, gender, nationality, sexuality, etc. all the time? Yes. However, those acts of rebellion still take place within the game, and resistance is always in response to preexisting social codes. And even if we are wildly successful in our effort to redesign the game or system, we have merely replaced one social system with another. A different set of values, hierarchies, and social order will continue to call or interpellate us. We are inevitably subject to social codes and identities. While saying that we cannot escape ideology’s ability to transform us into subjects may make us feel powerless, Althusser’s theory of ideology is, in a sense, neutral. The process of encouraging us to assume that some values and social arrangements are natural and obvious applies to all values and hierarchies, ones that we may even champion and celebrate.

POTENTIAL PROJECTS

We may not be able to escape ideology or be outside of ideology’s ability to transform us into subjects, but we can, perhaps, recognize the subject positions ideology asks us to embrace and identify the strategies texts use to interpellate us. Our task, then, requires us to explore how language and images naturalize and normalize socially constructed values, relationships, and identities.

Identify the invitation

Use as your operating assumption the idea that literature, film, art, and institutions are ideological in that they hail, interpellate, or invite us to become subject to particular social categories, values, attitudes, roles, and identities. More specifically, examine, say, how a novel invites readers to believe that specific hierarchies, social roles, and identity attributes are natural, normal, and commonsensical.

As for method, we are used to looking at the content of images and language. For example, the Batman franchise reinforces the importance of overcoming childhood fears in order to restore law and order. Wordsworth portrays daffodils, and the memory of daffodils is a source of pleasure and joy. Or as we saw with “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” by portraying the effects of mindlessly copying documents, Melville may be critiquing the numbing world of law and commerce. In short, we often read literature like philosophy in narrative form.

However, what Althusser is asking us to do is more subtle. Instead of looking at what is said, focus on what is assumed. What does the text take for granted? How does the text perpetuate assumptions? As I asked earlier when I discussed Billy Collins’ poem, what does Collins assume about what marriage ought to be? What is taken for granted when he talks about marriage and divorce? Importantly, how does his use of metaphor—spoons, forks, and knives—reproduce those assumptions?

Or, let us examine the first line of the “Gettysburg Address” (1863): “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The phrase “our fathers” hails us as children and as brothers and sisters, governed together under patriarchy. The use of “fathers” also constructs men as initiators, innovators, and creators, yet Lincoln excludes women from the conception and even birthing process. The phrase “all men are created equal” perpetuates the notion of men as universal. The “conception” metaphor also transforms political p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: joining the community
• 1 Becoming a subject
• 2 Scripting identity
• 3 Doing not describing
• 4 Enjoying the carnivalesque
• 5 Reading as writing
• 6 Simulating the real
• 7 Creating a space between
• 8 Performing gender
• 9 Locating trauma
• 10 Intersecting identities
• 11 Locating alterity
• 12 Poaching texts
• 13 Cultivating rhizomes
• 14 Reconciling double consciousness
• 15 Shocking readers
• 16 Joining power and knowledge
• 17 Revealing the uncanny
• 18 Questioning human/nonhuman boundaries
• 19 Historicizing and contextualizing
• 20 Signifying through time
• 21 Thinking ecologically
• 22 Recognizing conceptual metaphors
• 23 Representing disability
• 24 Losing and recovering our sovereignty
• 25 Resisting the dominant culture
• 26 Adapting and appropriating
• 27 Describing homosocial relationships
• 28 Defamiliarizing the familiar
• 29 Questioning gender binaries
• 30 Building on another’s work: identifying key concepts
• Index