General Terms

Question 1

Idealism

Answer 1

A group of philosophical doctrines that share the monistic view that material objects and the external world do not exist in reality independently of the human mind but are variously creations of the mind or constructs of ideas.

Question 2

Dualism

Answer 2

The theory that the universe has been ruled from its origins by two conflicting powers, one good and one evil, both existing as equally ultimate first causes.

Question 3

Noumena

Answer 3

Component of Plato’s model/original/idea theory of forms; essence, immutability, TRUTH

Question 4

The simulacrum

Answer 4

Baudrillard — is never that which the truth conceals – it is the truth.

Question 5

Simulacra

Answer 5

A slight, unreal, or superficial likeness or semblance.

Question 6

Dialectical materialism

Answer 6

Developed by Greek philosophers – Socrates and Plato: a form and method of logical argumentation that typically addresses conflicting ideas or positions.

Question 7

Commodity fetishism

Answer 7

Karl Marx – “Capital”: The in authentic state of social relations, said to arise in complex capitalist market systems, where people mistake social relationships for things.

Question 8

Alienation of labour

Answer 8

Karl Marx: the separation of things that naturally belong together, or to put antagonism between things that are properly in harmony. It refers to the social alienation of people from aspects of their “human nature”.

Question 9

Superstructure

Answer 9

Karl Marx: an edifice of interdependent agencies of the state, including legal and political institutions and ideologies, each possessing some autonomy but remaining products of the dominant mode of economic production.

Question 10

Infrastructure

Answer 10

Sometimes used as a synonym for base in the dialectic synthetic pair base and superstructure.

Question 11

Symbol

Answer 11

Something that stands for or suggests something larger and more complex – often an idea or a range of interrelated ideas, attitudes, and practices.

Question 12

Phoneme

Answer 12

A basic sound unit in a language

Question 13

Morpheme

Answer 13

The smallest meaningful parts of words. Composed of phonemes.

Question 14

Synchronic

Answer 14

Linguistics – Saussure: The relationship between the components of language are the same at any given time; individual speech acts may vary, particular words may change, but language will always work the same.

Question 15

Diachronic

Answer 15

A term used in linguistics to refer to historical linguists’ study of the evolution of a language or family of languages over time, that is to say, of changes in languages overtime. Example: ‘gay’.

Question 16

Sign

Answer 16

Saussure: Something that stands for something else; composed of a signifier and signified.

Question 17

Referent

Answer 17

Semiotics: what the sign stands for; compare to the orders of Psychic functioning it is compared to The Real.

Question 18

Signifier

Answer 18

Saussure: Are linguistic “sound-image” used to represent one comparatively abstract concept; compared to the orders of Psychic functioning it is compared to The Symbolic.

Question 19

Signified

Answer 19

Saussure: The concept being represented: compared to the orders of Psychic functioning it is compared to The Imaginary.

Question 20

Semiology

Answer 20

Saussure: Refers to the study of signs, sign systems, and the way meaning is derived from them.

Question 21

The Symbolic

Answer 21

One of the three orders of subjectivity according to 20th century French psychoanalytic critic and theorist Jacques Lacan. The realm of law, language, and society; it is the repository of generally held cultural beliefs. In the reworking of the Freudian model, it is the Superego.

Question 22

The Real

Answer 22

One of the three orders of subjectivity according to 20th century French psychoanalytic theorist and critic Jacques Lacan. It is the intractable and substantial world that resists and exceeds interpretation. It cannot be imagined, symbolised or known directly; it constantly eludes our efforts to name it. In the reworking of the Freudian model it is the Ego.

Question 23

The Imaginary

Answer 23

One of the three orders of subjectivity according to French psychoanalytic theorist and critic Jacques Lacan. It is most closely associated with the five senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell). In the reworking of the Freudian model it is the Id

Question 24

The Mirror Stage

Answer 24

A concept of that psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. The young Childs identification with his own image, a stage that occurs anywhere from 6 to 18 months of age. This act marks the primordial recognition of oneself as “I”, although at a point before entrance into language and the symbolic order

Question 25

Formalism

Answer 25

A general term covering several similar types of literary criticism that arose in the 1920s and 1930s, flourishing in the 1940s and 1950s, and I still evident today. Literary work is seen as an object in its own right. Refers to critical approaches that analyse, interpret, or evaluate the inherent features of a text.

Question 26

New Critical Formalism (New Criticism)

Answer 26

Type of literary criticism characterised by close textual analysis that reached its height in the US in the 1940s and 1950s. It’s dresses close attention to the internal characteristics of the text itself, and it discourages the use of external evidence to explain the work.

Question 27

The Culture Industry

Answer 27

Term coined by critical theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Who argued that popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardised cultural goods — through film, radio and magazines — to manipulate the masses into passivity; The easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture make people docile and content, no matter how difficult the economic circumstances.

Question 28

Aura

Answer 28

That which Withers in a work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction; the unique phenomena on of a distance, however close it may be. Borders on the mystical; Involves an experience of transport that is distinctly material and provides a sense of history.

Question 29

Structuralism

Answer 29

A theory of humankind whose proponents attempted to show systematically, even scientifically, that all elements of human culture, including literature, may be understood as parts of the system of signs. Heavily influenced by linguists, especially Saussure, (His concept of the phoneme and his idea that phonemes exist in two kinds of relationships: diachronic and synchronic). Also heavily influenced by anthropologist, Levi-Strauss, who studied hundreds of myths, breaking them down into the smallest meaningful units called “mythemes”.

Question 30

Structural linguistics

Answer 30

Saussure: Are usually synchronic approach to language study in which are language is analysed as an independent network of formal systems, each of which is composed of elements that are defined in terms of their contrasts with other elements in the system.

Question 31

Structural anthropology

Answer 31

Levi-Strauss: an anthropological theory that they are unobservable social structures that generate observable social phenomena.

Question 32

Poststructuralism

Answer 32

The general attempt to contest and subvert structuralism and to formulate new theories regarding interpretation and Meaning, initiated particularly by deconstructors but also associatedWith certain aspects and practitioners of psychoanalytic, Marxist, cultural, feminist, and gender criticism. Arose in the late 1960s, include such a wide variety of perspectives that no unified theory was ever identified. Distinguished by opposition to structuralism and by certain concepts held in common.

Question 33

The Death of the Author

Answer 33

Essay written by Roland Barthes, A structuralist transferring to poststructuralism, viewed the author not as an original and creative master and a manipulator of the linguistic System but rather, as one of its primary vehicles, a “script or” Who is “born simultaneously with his text.”Barthes Argued that a text “does not consist of a line of words releasing a single “theological” meaning, but is a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original.”

Question 34

Author vs. Scriptor

Answer 34

Argued in Barthes’ ‘The Death of the Author.’ The author is no longer the focus of creative influence, but has become the ‘scriptor’ Existing to produce but not to explain the work and “is born simultaneously with the text.”

Question 35

Work vs. Text

Answer 35

Present in Roland Barthes ‘The Death of the Author.’ Argued that a text “does not consist of a line of words releasing a single theological meaning, but is a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original.”

Question 36

Deconstruction

Answer 36

A post-structuralist approach to literary criticism involving the close reading of texts in order to demonstrate that any given text has irreconcilably contradictory meanings, rather than a unified, logical hole. Created and profoundly Influenced by Derrida.

Question 37

Differance

Answer 37

“Neither a word not a concept;” can only be perceived in writing; cannot even use it, only used as a gesture to a word its self; coined by Derita to show that words are only the deferred presences of the things they “mean;” that every meaning invokes others in a never – ending string of connotations; and that the meaning of words is grounded in both the difference from and relationship to other words.

Question 38

Binary opposition

Answer 38

A concept borrowed from linguistics by poststructuralist theories Derrida to suggest that people in western culture tend to think and express their thoughts in terms of country pairs; something is white but not black, masculine and therefore not feminine, a cause rather than an effect.

Question 39

Supplement

Answer 39

In terms of Deridder to discuss western thinking; (1) serves to enhance the presence of something which is already complete and self-sufficient. (2) also has within it the idea that a thing that cannot be truly “incomplete in itself”.

Question 40

Decentering

Answer 40

Aim of deconstruction, to undermine the texts presumed centre and its concomitant structure. By drawing attention to the divergent meanings that arise from the diverse connotations of signifiers within the text, they challenge the assumption that it’s “meaning“ is either determinants or determinable.

Question 41

Essentialism

Answer 41

The view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described. In this view, it follows that terms or words should have a single definition and meaning; certain properties possessed by a group (e.g. people, things, ideas) are universal, and not dependent on context

Question 42

Discourse

Answer 42

Term proposed by Foucault; Ways of constituting knowledge; coherent sets of statements, rules, and conventions that in tandem with social practices and power determine the regime of truth of a particular period and culture. Both constitutes its object and generates knowledge about that object.

Question 43

Discursive method (episteme)

Answer 43

Term used by 20th century French philosophical historian Michelle Foucault To refer to (1) a network of thoughts, concepts, and cultural codes, dominant during a given historical period; and (2) the rules governing the transformation of those practices.

Question 44

Gender

Answer 44

A term referring to the perceived identities man and woman in the range of characteristics commonly associated with masculinity and femininity. Most critics agree that western civilisation has been predominantly patriarchal and has this tended to extol the masculine and devalue the feminine, associating masculinity with “positive” traits such as activity and rationality and femininity with “negative” traits such as passivity and emotionality.

Question 45

Hegemony

Answer 45

The dominance or dominant influence of one nation, group, or class over another or others. In literary criticism, most notably Marxist criticism and cultural criticism, it refers especially to ideological and cultural manipulation and control. Adapted by Gramsci.

Question 46

Ideology

Answer 46

I set of beliefs underlying customs, habits, and practices common to a given social group. Represents the imaginary relationships of individuals to their real conditions of existence; present in Althusser. Has no history, no location, not traceable origins; it is a constant force that stuff uses all social practices. It can only be known through its affects, there’s no position outside of it.

Question 47

Logocentrism

Answer 47

Used by Derrida to describe and characterised western thought, language, and culture since the time of Plato; centred on and revolving around the word (or speech or reason). More broadly, the term implies a belief in the centrality and, more important, the determinability of ultimate Truth.

Question 48

Performativity

Answer 48

an interdisciplinary term often used to name the capacity of speech and language in particular, but other forms of expressive but non-verbal action as well, to intervene in the course of human events. A term used to distinguish between two classes of locutions

Question 49

Panopticism

Answer 49

A social theory originally developed by French philosopher Michelle Foucault; The general principle of a new “political anatomy” who is object and and are not the relations of sovereignty but the relations of discipline. The purpose of the design is to increase the security through the effectiveness of the surveillance.

Question 50

Repressive State Apparatus (RSA)

Answer 50

A term coined by Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser; Those systems and structures in a society that control the relations of production through mainly repressive, physical means. He claims that these structures are necessary to maintain the reproduction of the relations of production, in other words, to keep the labourers labouring for the State and the bourgeois society.

Question 51

Ideological State Apparatus (ISA)

Answer 51

A concept introduced by Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser; those institutions and systems that legitimate and reproduce the state, above all by producing consent to the regime on the part of subordinated groups. For Althusser, religion, education, the legal system, mass culture, and the family all buttresses the ideology of the ruling class by naturalising its privileges.

Question 52

Interpellation (hailing)

Answer 52

A concept of Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser; To describe the process by which ideology address is the (abstract) pre-ideological individual does effectively producing him or her as subject proper; I want interprets them self; complicit with the interpretive power of society; calls us out of individuality to subjectivity. Used by ideology to acquire subjects, providing identificatory positions that we believe we have freely chosen.

Question 53

Theos

Answer 53

Plato’s representation and understanding of God.

Question 54

Phaenomena

Answer 54

Component of Plato second theory of Forms, the copy/things model; physical matter; forms rather than Forms

Question 55

Dialectic of Superstructure and Infrastructure

Answer 55

Marx: The dominance of the superstructure is determined by the complicity of the infrastructure – the labourers.

Question 56

Index

Answer 56

Saussure-semiology: Has a direct physical/causal relationship (is often a part of the thing represented) e.g. thumb print: direct physical imprint, not a drawing of a thumb, it is left by the thumb.