i humiliate, separate the english from the dutch

tracing the trajectory of theory and the class development, i feel accomplished. i picked a liberal arts school to shield myself and my future from constraints and the almighty meatgrinder called american life. now i only wish that this was the class i took freshman year. i made the comment to a fellow student in the class that all freshman should be required to read foucault's "what is an author." the texts and authors we've been introduced to are invaluable to my academic career, considering that indeed i have one. so, can theory really be as good as i make out to be?

the secular and non-secular world are exposed so that we can see all the tiny gears working. what have we exposed?

we've exposed the individual for starters. althusser's concepts of overdeterminism and interpellation all point to the fallacy of our own agency and individuality. balibar and macherey exposed how literature becomes "literature." politics is pervasive. which brings me to the question whether if art for the sake of art can even exist. i don't think so. theory points to an unconscious interconnectedness, nothing is autonomous.

i was very resistant to lacan at first. i accused him of a certain essentialism with the mirror stage and even as i continued to read him throughout the semester, saw myself fumbling with exactly where he was pointing me. his work is like some strange new religion minus dogma. yet it is also very much a science which brings up so many discourses revolving around science and the humanities. a reconciliation might be needed in the academic world.

but let's go back to the academic world. with all we've studied over the semester, it seems to me what we have been most radically questioning yet sidestepping is the very nature and consitution of academe. this is what is of most interest to me. if my chief interest is in the humanities, i would like to think about why i shouldn't just go out and get a real job. i chose academic life and i've been constantly struggling for an outlook that is going to equate income with critical thinking. of course, i'm not going to just let my world divide before my eyes and this is where theory really pulls it together for me. with it, i can understand who has a monopoly of power within a structure while simultaneously understanding that no one has a monopoly on knowledge. and i guess that brings us all the way back to liberal humanism and theory's rejection to its claims.

as this is my final post, i almost forget that were talking about literature! i want to get sentimental and dramatic.

what we've studied is so important in regards to literary realism. i'll never be able to read realist fiction the same way i used to without utilizing the myriad realm of theory. so if something is considered realist fiction, i'll consider balibar and macherey, i'll think about it in lacanian ways, or perhaps if the work is "great", i'll ask myself what has made this work great and how does it act as a component of an isa. and the question over literary "representation" brings me to structuralism and post-.

language constitutes our reality. being introduced to signs and signification was a defining experience in my studies. saussure simply blew me away with "a course in general linguistics." it's technical yet needs to be understood abstractly. the concept of the sign and signification will be utilized for the rest of my life, especially the lacanian use of the term. of course, then derrida tickled the imagination with dissemination and the supplement and deconstruction, etc. in terms of literary application however, i found both structuralism and poststructuralism the most difficult to apply to literature. i do believe that i can use them for an "everyday" situation, actually let's just say an introspective or perfunctory situation, but to utilize them practically in literary criticism seems a little beyond my capabilities. nonetheless, i've gained invaluable insights from the two theories working together.

i honestly felt that after completion of the argument essay, i was a better person. it was a real challenge. the best part about it was that i wasn't even necessarily invested in any of the theories that we studied. i understood them all pretty well yet kept them at bay and refused to let them break down any walls. when we were studying deconstruction, i got to a point where i felt like i had enough and was ready to move on. i guess my first post said it all, i accepted theory only on my terms. but as we moved on, i understood and learned a plethora about "my terms." i was deconstructing my terms as i went along! in researching lacan for my paper, i stopped looking for the means to the end. i always had the end, or the end already was there. the means became more important. and i was understanding how it was important, i was really using theory! while researching, links between theories were revealing themselves. with lacan, i was jumping into feminism, postcolonialism, and even into postmodernism.

all in all, i know i can speak volumes to the theories we encountered. i know which ones i like to keep to myself, which ones i can utilize in studying literature, and which ones TO ME, have the most practical, political application.