Theory 4 Flashcards
1
Q
In which essay did Adorno discuss mass culture?
A
The Schema of Mass Culture
2
Q
What, to Adorno, is the kind of truth that exists in an original aesthetic image?
A
- truth of imagination
- aesthetic truth
3
Q
When aesthetic images undergo relentless duplication, what happens to the aesthetic truth of an image?
A
replaced by a mechanism designed to ensure that the item of reality is constantly reproduced accurately
4
Q
In mass culture, what happens to every individual object?
A
every individual object is part of the infinite nature of production
5
Q
What does Adorno believe that an authentic and committed reception of an ‘aesthetic image-consciousness’ was questionable anyway?
A
considering how we force ourselves to receive art ie. in galleries, in a certain amount of time etc.
6
Q
Art stands in for a reality that is ‘out there’. When that aesthetic truth (ie. the integrity of that representation of reality) is lost in duplication - what happens?
A
- becomes harnessed as a means for a culture that self perpetuates
(ie. it becomes co-opted by mass culture to operate in a propagandist sense in order to perpetuation a desired ideology)
7
Q
Give examples in which art is now used to perpetuate an ideology?
A
- and now art itself is used in advertising etc. - associated with foods etc.
- films can depict the narrative from an individual’s perspective, effacing the kind of wider exploitative systems to which the character belongs
8
Q
What is the interaction of the aesthetic and the commercial according to Adorno?
A
the aesthetic becomes a commodified servant to commercialism
- mass culture recognises what works and just repeats it
- fundamentally empties the value of the art in itself
9
Q
How does Brecht’s epic theatre act as both a response to mass culture and mass culture’s own reversed consciousness of itself?
A
- resists cultural monopoly - resists the innate lack of conflict that occurs in mass culture
(the figure of the ‘intriguer’ is one that champions this case) - recreates some aspects of mass culture - reducing characters to experimental objects of a predetermined thesis (to show the effects of mass culture)
10
Q
How does Brecht recreate some aspects of mass culture in his epic theatre technique?
A
- reducing characters to experimental objects of a predetermined thesis, which also naturally then assumes an audience that is unmoved and at ease
11
Q
In what sense does Brecht’s epic theatre reveal the ideological character of dramatic action?
A
if the work of art has no aspect of conflict, it lacks the capacity to conflict with the mass culture outside itself
12
Q
What emphasis does Frank O’Hara’s ‘Having a Coke’ with you place on authenticity?
A
It is all about how to retain that authenticity of seeing art works for the ‘first time’ whether that’s second time or third etc. time over
- he is asking us to privilege that first time experience
13
Q
If a poem has kind of repetitions or seems kind of irreverently obfuscating - how might we talk about it?
A
- reflect on anxieties that we can’t know the interior ie. we appreciate the cadences, the refrains, the classical sound
- it seems to hold us outside of any sincere message
- consider if its an irreverent commentary or handling of certain patterns of thinking ie. be that the twists of philosophical rumination or untangling arduous religious or ethical debates etc.
14
Q
What might repetitions such as the ones in Wallace Steven’s ‘The Pleasures of Merely Circulating’
(The garden flew round with the angel,
The angel flew round with the clouds,
And the clouds flew round and the clouds flew round
And the clouds flew round with the clouds)
have to say about authenticity and reproduction?
A
- showing how repetitions trivialise or empty of impact
- the form/ rhythm of the lines seems to overtake the content ie. we become lulled into a comfortable sense of rhythm and we pay less and less attention to the content
(ie. we become less critical, less responsive, less attentive)
15
Q
What relation does Benjamin register between artists and the technological infrastructure?
A
Artists have to perform in front of the technological infrastructure - they performed for artificiality
- they’re trying to perform their own humanity - becomes heightened realism and emptiness
16
Q
What does Benjamin believe art/ advertising does?
A
- represents the real to us in an aestheticised form
- we end up displacing our own humanity, our own reality
- an aestheticised version of reality itself becomes the commodity
17
Q
How does Sontag respond to the urge to carry out in-depth hermeneutic unpacking of art/ literature?
A
Sontag - should just be felt, we should inhabit it
- think about the form/ production
- we have to experience and then know what it is now
18
Q
Why can, according to Benjamin, we no longer engage with the primal experience of art?
A
- no one is making the pilgrimage to see the artwork
- even in the first encounter, we know it can be reproduced
(meaning that now even when experienced in original, they can’t be experienced with that ‘aura’)
19
Q
How might the authenticity of our own actions be under threat?
A
- we can’t have authentic moments to ourselves
- even own own authenticity has been displaced due to the legacy of our actions ie. we are constantly haunted by the memories of our old actions
20
Q
What comment does Frank O’Hara have to make about the relationship between poetry and his own experiences?
A
“It may be that poetry makes life’s nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial”
21
Q
In 1951, what did O’Hara read and what effect did it have on him?
A
Essay by Paul Goodman - he argued that the postwar American “advanced guard” writers must articulate the deep-seated, personal disquiet felt across the culture but left unvoiced
- O’Hara wrote poems that were embarrassing in their directness, and even seen as hostile to literary standards then in place
22
Q
O’Hara was a leading figure of the New York school - who were they and what did they do?
A
informal group of artists, writers, and musicians who drew inspiration fromjazz,surrealism,abstract expressionism,action painting, and contemporaryavant-gardeart movements
23
Q
What does Shklovsky argue about how we perceive things we encounter frequently?
A
- we lose the ability to see what we encounter frequently - we come instead merely to recognise it by its outlines
24
Q
How does Shklovsky believe we see something familiar ‘in all its particularity’ again?
A
- needs the disorientation that arises when the familiar appears before us as precisely, if temporarily, unrecognisable
25
Give an example of defamiliarisation
Hyperbole
26
How might defamiliarisation be used to make a social commentary?
- only from a distance, only at
a remove from how things are, can art find the wherewithal to see and
show that they needn’t be that way
(consider 1984)
27
In what way does literary form 'return us to life' according to Shklovsky?
- combats automatism by slowing down perception and rendering recognition difficult, returns us to life
- arrests attention and combats sleepwalking indifference
28
How might we communicate that a writer demonstrates a certain alignment with a thinker?
‘[X] via his spokesperson articulates a demonstrably
| [eg. Shklovskian] rationale for art...'
29
Which terms does Shklovsky provide us with to discuss story and plot?
Fabula and syuzhet
30
Spell fabula and syuzhet
fabula and syuzhet
31
Define fabula and syuzhet. Who coined them?
Fabula: a series of events in the order in which they must
have occurred, taking the time they must have taken to occur, and so
Syuzhet: those events as narrated—possibly out of order,
or with events that unfolded over a long duration occupying scant space in the narrative, or with a single event narrated multiple times
Shklovsky
32
Give an example of a Victorian writer and a quote from him showing that Shklovsky's defamiliarization and the distinction between story and plot have a particular tie to the Victorian period
Thomas Hardy:
“art is a disproportioning—(i.e. distorting, throwing
out of proportion)—of realities, to show more clearly the features that matter in those realities"
- defamiliarization and the distinction
between story and plot seem to be formalisations of this idea
33
Define polysyndeton
comes from the Ancient Greek πολύ poly, meaning "many", and συνδετόν syndeton, meaning "bound together with". A stylistic scheme, polysyndeton is the deliberate insertion of conjunctions into a sentence for the purpose of "slow[ing] up the rhythm of the prose"
34
Define Apodicticity
"Apodictic", also spelled "apodeictic" (Ancient Greek: ἀποδεικτικός, "capable of demonstration"), is an adjectival expression from Aristotelean logic that refers to propositions that are demonstrably, necessarily or self-evidently true
35
Who is 'the best' in God's eyes?
- ‘the best’ ie. Biblical, follows 5 other virtues God installed into the world and then on the 6th he made the best which was man
36
What did John Donne say on the nature of the poem in his sermon preached April-June 1623?
"...the whole frame of the poem is a beating out of a piece
of gold, but the last clause is as the impression of the stamp, and that is it
that makes it current"
37
What did John Donne say on the nature of the poem in his sermon preached April-June 1623?
"...the whole frame of the poem is a beating out of a piece
of gold, but the last clause is as the impression of the stamp, and that is it
that makes it current"
38
What might the significance of the stamp be in Donne's opinion that "...the whole frame of the poem is a beating out of a piece
of gold, but the last clause is as the impression of the stamp, and that is it
that makes it current"?
- the stamp of a letter tells us that the letter must be unfolded and read
39
What two types of knowledge does Hegel distinguish between in section 31 of the preface to 'Phenomenology of the Spirit'? Define both types
familiar (bekannt) vs. cognitively known knowledge (erkannt)
- erkannt - more thorough and rigorous form of knowledge
- bekannt - ‘that which we’ve gotten to know’
40
Why does Hegel believe we need to scrutinize the familiar knowledge we have?
“What is familiar and well known as such is not really known for the very reason that it is familiar and well known”
41
What layers of deception are contained within our understanding of familiar knowledge?
1. we deceive ourselves about the fact that we have understood
2. we can deceive ourselves about what this process of understanding would entail
42
Why can't we just take for granted that we have at least a basic understanding of things?
(ie. examples: “Subject and object, God, nature, understanding, sensibility, etc.,”)
- even if some bits are familiar - understanding something like ‘free will’ is not something we can assume to know, because it is likely that we have not tangled with it and therefore do not cognitively understand it
43
In section 32, once we have begun this process of questioning, how do we analyse?
analysis is to break it down into its constituents
| - we defamiliarise the idea and then we break it down into its constituents
44
How does Hegel describe the constituent parts of concepts? What is the benefit of thinking of it like this?
to break an idea down in this way is to return to its 'moments'
- each element is not an independent entity that has its full meaning in and of itself but that it is part of a whole
(thinking in terms of ‘moments’ enables us to differentiate wholes apart from each other)
NB: each of these moments can also be defamiliarised, interrogated and broken down
45
What does Hegel believe occurs when the elements of the whole begin to break off?
BUT THEN:
- in the first phase, each element only has its meaning as part of a whole AND THEN it breaks that
- it distinguishes itself from the rest of what gave it its meaning/ function/ purpose
46
Why does Hegel consider the recognition of non-actuality (ie. the beginning of that questioning process of an element) a kind of death?
"Death, if that is what we wish to call that non-actuality, is the most fearful thing of all, and to keep and hold fast to what is dead requires only the greatest force."
47
How does Hegel thus ultimately describe 'the spirit'?
"No, spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face and lingering with it."
it’s not about being something that is and then unfolds itself
- it has to make choices, it has to persevere
- it has to linger with the negative
48
When the subject recognises itself, what does it recognise about itself?
the subject now realises that it is the one who carries out the analysis - the one for whom ideas have being
- the one that can cognise these elements of a greater whole
- the subject is what makes space in itself for ideas
- ideas exist in our minds, in our experience
- in the course of this phenomenology we come to recognise ourselves as subjects
49
What question is asked of the subject in relation to these concepts?
"How is the subject going to make sense of itself in relation to these other things that it comes to know?"
50
If we were to summarise what the 'entire phenomenology' was about, what would we say?
the entire phenomenology is about trying to become authentic substance
51
What does it mean to achieve authentic substance?
instead of having my mediations outside of myself and saying ‘I’m related to these things’ or ‘I’m related to death’ or ‘I’m related to the abstract understanding’
- the mediations are part of what I am
this is what gives us freedom in a sense, bc the things that make us ourselves are not from outside, but are mediations within ourselves
- over which, we have some kind of contribution to make
52
In section 18 of the preface, what does Hegel conclude about the truth of substance?
Section is focused on: what is the truth of substance?
will have unity to some degree but requires us to rethink how we think of unity
truth WILL NOT BE
- primal
- original
- simple
- unity
53
In what context is Hegel unpicking the concepts of 'truth' and 'unity'?
(NB: ‘truth’ and ‘unity’ had been considered transcendentals by Medieval thought - Hegel was taking issue to untangle exactly what they meant)
54
What is the risk of seeing substance as a unity?
S17: if you think of substance as unity, you risk viewing it as a simple and inert state, which has not ‘become' and is therefore not actual
55
How should we conceptualise substance?
need to see substance as subject
| - not something inert but something dynamic
56
What kind of division takes place when the thing (the substance) asserts itself?
it puts itself forward as itself but also as something other than itself
(ie. it becomes alienated from itself - it becomes other to itself - one is not what one thought one is)
- this is a kind of division that takes place in the thing itself
57
Why does the thing divide itself when it asserts itself?
- it becomes other to itself, and only in doing so can it be what it is supposed to be
- only then can it have dynamism
- only then can it have purposeful activity and rationality
58
What are the technical names for what divide out of the thing when it asserts itself?
Thesis
| Antithesis (ie. the substance projects a negated form of itself)
59
How does truth ultimately become actual?
There is a process of reintegration that occurs which forms an amalgamation
60
How does Hegel consider the relationship of form and essence in relation to substance?
- essence - he is saying that the essence does change, it is not an unalterable absolute, there is a process involved
BECAUSE - what is essential to essences?
- it is because it has a form, because it is dynamic, that it is developing
61
How does the dynamic of the form and the essence play out?
- have to be able to think about the essence as it develops, in situation etc.
(use freedom as an example, might have a definition but you need to see it develop)
form enables the working out of the essence
62
Thus, how does Hegel ultimately describe the dialectic?
- this spiralling down process of getting closer and closer to what is really essential (ie. via the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis)
63
If there is a case of triadic listing, what should we be looking out for?
- if this kind of listing indicates a relationship of progression, disintegration, gradual abstraction, shift, if the middle word is in someway a bridge between the two others, if we can hear a resonance of a fourth word beyond the last
64
When looking at syntax what should we be looking out for?
- if the syntax forces us to couple any words and what that might mean - if it is an assumption of similarity, whether they are actually closer in meaning than a reader would assume, whether they're in contrast or supposed to be complimentary
65
When you have turns of phrase like 'O' or 'O woe is me' or 'Oh, to vex me' how might we describe them?
- superficial luxuriating in the fear/ confusion
| - might be a kind of self-flagellating
66
What is via negativa?
- a technical term for the negative way of theology, which refuses to identify God with any human concept or knowledge, for God transcends all that can be known of him
ie. 'God cannot be defined as - he is this - but actually "he is beyond that" or "he exists as the opposite iteration of x"'
67
Post-Chaucer, what did 'the pilgrimage' symbolise?
- emphasises the importance of the journey and the struggle also - a labour
68
What might dashes symbolise? Especially in a line like '“Christ-side-piercing spear
“The six-daies-world"'?
- cutting through the body of Christ
| - striking a division between human knowledge and divine truth
69
What is a succinct way of summarising Hegel's thoughts on the need to recognise 'true substance' as 'subject'?
ie. it is the recognition of the self-generative capacity for ‘mediation’: the breaking up of concepts we consider familiar in order to analyse their components and appreciate their complexity
70
If we recognise that our poet has constructed another voice for the poem that he might be mocking, how might we formally describe this?
The poet ironically ventriloquises the voice of 'x' to make a [n underhanded] critique of...
71
How might we describe the symbolism of the Gordian knot?
- connotes the ease of a solution to a problem of feigned complexity
72
How might self-interrogation and self-surrender both be read into Hegel's work?
In some ways, he envisions the act of self-interrogation carried out through self-surrender ie.
“bear death”, “linger with the negative”, and “find [our] feet in absolute disruption”
73
In what section of the preface does Hegel most explicitly address the necessity of understanding substance as subject? Quote the line
"everything hangs on grasping and expressing the true not just as substance but just as much as subject"
74
What happens, according to Hegel, if our thinking just considers the being of substance as itself and grasps it in its immediacy?
[we might] "relapse into inert simplicity and thereby present actuality itself in a fully non-actual mode"
75
What did Hegel mean by the line "the living substance is the being that is in truth subject"?
the living substance that carries out the "movement of self-positing, or, that [it] is the mediation of itself and its becoming-other-to-itself" is a true subject
76
How does Hegel describe the relationship between form and essence?
"Precisely because the form is as essential to the essence as the essence is to itself, the essence must not be grasped and expressed as mere essence, which is to say, as immediate substance or as the pure self-intuition of the divine"
77
How does Hegel destabilise the way we thinking about what is familiar and well known?
"What is familiar and well known as such is not really known for the very reason that it is familiar and well known"
78
How does Hegel describe the break up of knowledge that we assume to be familiar and well-known?
"To break up a
| representation into its original elements is to return to its moments"
79
How does Hegel describe the activity of separating?
"the force and
| labor of the understanding"
80
When you're looking out for images/ concepts that might be closely associated in visual and symbolic terms - how might you go about doing this?
- consider the geometry of pathways or images sketched out in the poem, see if it matches the form, see if it matches the title, see if there are two contrasting images and how they might geographically map onto each other or interact - consider the context of the poem itself, what is the poet looking at? where is he stood?
81
If you find two forces that engage each other throughout the poem, how might you describe this and what is it important to consider?
eg. stillness and movement
- described as a repeated paradox/dialectic throughout the poem
- while they might be contrasting forces, consider that they could imply a necessary mutual relationship too ie. between liberty and stability
82
What general perspective on freedom does Hegel have?
freedom without constraint, without control or maybe a narrowing of its expansive extent, results ultimately and inevitably in destruction
83
Summarise in more specific philosophical terms how Hegel conveys his thoughts on freedom in the Phenomenology
He looks at the case of the public realm and says that if freedom goes too far then it destroys the organisation of the public area because all individuals are negating others in order to distinguish and conceptualise themselves - no individual can establish a common bond with anyone else
Concludes in death of the public area but also the self/ individual itself because our selves are sustained through our interactions with the world and not in isolation
84
What is the line from the phenomenology that summarises Hegel's view on freedom?
"the sole work and deed of universal freedom is death"
85
What did Ernst Bloch write?
The Principle of Hope
86
What kind of feelings does Bloch contrast hope with?
fear, anxiety
87
What role does he believe daydreams have in the pursuit of hope?
- everybody daydreams and in one sense it is just escapism, that can even keep people in their unsatisfying situations (these are daydreams unregulated)
- but daydreams are also provocative ie. they spark ideas of a better life that can be teachable
88
How does one pursue hope through their daydreams?
- they have to train them, keep them focused on what is important and right and come to understand them deeper and deeper
ie. let them blossom into actually productive ideas that can affect real and ambitious change
89
How do 'hope' and 'the New' interact to Ernst Bloch?
Hope should compel people forwards ie. to think and venture beyond, but this has to happen without what already exists being kept under or skated over
- the new is mediated by what exists and is in motion ie. it should build on and improve what is already there
90
What is one of the benefits of having 'the New' be mediated by what already exists and is in motion?
It prevents one from launching into merely fanatically, merely visualizing abstractions
91
What does Bloch see as the typical end of projects such as freedom movements ie. Enlightenment, philosophical revolutions etc.?
- he finds something that is broken off about them all, broken off by contemplation
- What Has Been overwhelms what is approaching, the collection of things that have become totally obstructs the categories Future, Front, Novum ie. there is the presumption that the world is closed and has 'Become'
92
In what essay does De Man discuss the epistemology of metaphor?
The Epistemology of Metaphor
93
Why does De Man believe that philosophy either has to stringently circumscribe figuration or give it up all together?
- perhaps it is useful to bring in de man's use of the classic trivium (logic, grammar, rhetoric) and the idea that rhetoric never assures a transparent message
(the figurative power of language makes it potentially nebulous or obfuscating)
- thus, when figurative tropes are put to work in philosophy, they pose an epistemological threat because they introduce opportunities for misinterpretation
94
In John Locke's 'Essay on Human Understanding, where does he draw the dividing line between the appropriate and inappropriate use of figurative language?
- in discourses where we seek rather pleasure and delight, he finds it acceptable to have 'wit' and 'fancy', 'figurative speeches' and 'allusions'
- for discourses of information and improvement, full of dry truth and real knowledge they are inappropriate (a great fault)
95
Why does Locke believe for discourses of information and improvement it is wrong to use figurative language tropes?
- to use them would be to deliberately insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and mislead the judgement
96
Why does figurative language/ rhetoric not pose an epistemological/ semantic issue for the 'simple ideas' that Locke describes?
"the nominal and the real essence of the
species designated by the word coincide; since the idea is simple and
undivided, there can in principle be no room for play or ambivalence
between the word and the entity, or between property and essence"
97
When Locke talks about mixed modes, what is the example of a trope that we might say exemplifies the use and abuse of language?
catachresis
98
Why are mixed modes more powerful/ dangerous than simple ideas?
In simple ideas, the words are in service of certain natural entities
- in mixed modes ie. like in the trope catachresis, we see that words themselves produce entities that have no equivalence in nature
- can draw people away from knowledge of empirical entities
99
What kind of qualities might we describe as a 'Romantic ideology'?
valorising solitude, individual genius, nature, interiorisation
100
In what ways is irony arguably on the other side of Romanticism?
- it is tuned into rationality, calculation and self-reflection whereas Romanticism is tuned into feeling, sentiment, and self-expression
101
When was New Criticism emerging?
middle of the 20th century - 1940s
102
How did New Criticism push the boundaries of irony?
- beyond irony just being 'saying one thing and meaning another', irony now enacted questions of epistemology (how we know what we know) and ethics (ie. how reliable our assessment of behaviour/ motives can be)
103
How does Romantic Irony fit into what Romanticism means?
as an element of Romantic aesthetics, it is
104
In what ways is irony on the other side of romanticism?
It is tuned into rationality, calculation, and self reflection rather than feeling, sentiment, and self expression
105
How does Wayne Booth analyse the ethical purpose of irony?
He believes the ironist leads the audience through an intricate process of deciding so that the audience feels affirmed in their intellectual ingenuity and thus having shared this process with the ironist they also come to share the values of the ironist , that comes to define a norm
106
Who in romantic thought gave irony the trajectory that scholars such as booth, de man, and muecke have observed?
Schlegel
107
Give an example of a topic that both the romantics and contemporary critics see irony as putting into question?
Self identity ie. how coherent is a subject’s identity, how conscious of its own motives can a subject be, how much of an agent can a subject expect to be?
108
What kind of strategies of aesthetic disruption did romantics see irony as a device of?
To foreground within the artefact itself the processes of aesthetic production and reflection
109
When might we identify a specifically romantic irony?
When texts become self reflective about their construction as texts, when authors show skepticism about aesthetic control of their products, confronting the audience, shattering facade of aesthetic illusion, acknowledging the artificiality of aesthetic experience
110
As a technical device, how might you describe romantic irony?
Identified as the disruption within a text of its aura of aesthetic illusion - might be a direct intrusion by author or narrator, self reflexivity when characters see or read the text in which they appear, or show up in shifts if modes of reality, or from one narrative thread to another
111
Why does Hegel associate Romantic irony with egocentric aestheticism?
- the Romantic subject believes that it has absolute power to create itself, and thus all the concrete forms through which it does so have the capacity to be destroyed by them at will
- in addition - the 'infinite absolute negativity' of irony (ie. it negates one virtue over another) does not take philosophical/ ethical fields seriously
112
How does the debate between whether the moderns or ancients were better come into the discussion about irony?
- irony was a pivotal idea for Schlegel’s effort to critically engage Schiller’s historicist mediation of the long-standing debate about the relative superiority of ancient or modern literatures
- Schlegel himself advocated not a rejection of the Classical tradition, but its assimilation and revivification
113
How did Schlegel come to rethink Socratic irony?
He worked out Socrates’ ironic pose and his philosophical methods,
and thus to recognize how essential irony was to Socrates’ project of
philosophical inquiry and social critique
114
How does Schlegel's rethinking of Socratic irony help us to rethink it?
- the function of this irony, then, is not rhetorical, but epistemological
and ethical
ie. it does not indicate that the ironist is presuming to
adopt a superior position for himself, but that he is in the same place as his ostensible victim, for he does not have final control over its presence or its meaning
115
What benefits did Socratic irony as a reflection of Socrates ignorance have on Socrates philosophical project?
- drives him to seek out conversation with others
- pushes him beyond any possible philosophical self-reliance
- engaged him in communal thinking for oneself
116
How does irony as a philosophical method work?
- pushes definitions beyond
their ordinary range of use, even to the point where they rupture
- the procedure of many Socratic dialogues thus involves shifting a term from one context to another in order to determine the limits of its applications,
the measure of its particular truth
- it becomes an idea when it has been tested and balanced against its opposite
117
How did the employment of Socratic irony as part of Socrates influence benefit his listeners?
- not only has a pedagogical/ ethical purpose but is as much about the interactive dimensions of the dialogue situation as much as toward the discovery of truth ie. to change others ways of thinking etc.
- such irony aims at enhancing the moral
autonomy of others; its open-endedness is a provocation that seeks to move others toward specific sorts of self-reflection - rigorous intellectual self-examination
118
What is the difference between the interiority and exteriority of irony
- if irony’s interior consists of an earnest pursuit
of reflective self-transcendence, its exterior is, Silenus-like, the mask of
Italian buffo with all of the latter’s vulgar wit
119
What is the fundamental duality of the aesthetic object?
once mimetic and performative,
| and forces the audience to consider both dimensions at once
120
How does Fichte discuss the ego?
1. the ego is the absolute principle of knowing, reason, and cognition
2. all content that does have value for the ego only does so because the ego has assigned it value
(consequently it can easily be denied value)
3. the ego is an active, living individual and thus all content can be connected with as a means of defining one's individuality - and yet this does not mean that the content has intrinsic worth or is valued by the ego as having intrinsic worth
121
Why would one living the form of an ironical artistic life find it ludicrous that some men still count law, morals, etc., as fixed, essential, and obligatory?
- because they live ironically, and thus understand that these things only have value because it has been conveyed upon them by the ego - their value is constructed and is not intrinsic
- thus, the ironist exposes this and can choose to artistically shape themselves along new lines
122
What kind of contradiction might one's ego get caught in in Fichte's eyes?
- both wanting to penetrate the objective truth of concepts, and yet not wanting to renounce the subjective value that they have cast on it
- the ego then becomes inadequate to itself because it cannot experience the finitude of content's intrinsic worth without coming to see their subjectivity as vanity
123
Why does Hegel write in "Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art" that "Irony... ends in mere heartfelt longing instead of in acting and doing"?
- because the ironist (the subject) becomes divided between their desire for truth and objectivity, and yet the inability to pull away from their abstract subjectivity
- ie. it is through this subjectivity that they decide what has value to them and how they create themselves as an individual by assigning value
ie. "This is a longing which will not let itself go in actual action and
production, because it is frightened of being polluted by contact with finitude, although all
the same it has a sense of the deficiency of this abstraction"
124
Why does Hegel use Novalis as a key example of someone who exhibited the "mere heartfelt longing instead of in acting and doing" of the ironist?
- his mythical romance Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802) was set in an idealised vision of the European Middle Ages
(describes the mystical and romantic searchings of a young poet)
- central image of his visions, a blue flower, became a widely recognised symbol of Romantic longing among Novalis’s fellow Romantics
125
In what text did Hegel discuss Novalis?
"Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art"
126
When one employs irony, why does one begin to 'annihilate everything' in Hegel's terminology?
- all content becomes self-serving for the ironist and they can deplete and replace any concept of objective value with their own subjectivity
127
Why is someone who re-values things according to their own subjectivity an 'ironist'?
- their position derives from the fact that the ironist exposes the artificiality of the construct of value
128
Hegel believes the tendency for the ironist to annihilate everything sits in contrast with the 'true Ideal' - why?
- the Ideal or 'true beauty' is the sensuous expression of spiritual freedom
- it shows us what divine and human freedom look like
- it is (I suppose) the highest form of intrinsic value something can have, and thus it sits in contrast to the ironist's tendency to annihilate all intrinsic value of content
129
Where do the concepts of artistic and inartistic come to fit with Hegel's theory of irony?
- the ironist is the artist, ie. one who creates themselves through their relationship with the content of the world
- however, it seems that Hegel believes this has a limit and that one can demonstrate an "aspect of inner inartistic lack of restraint" if one begins to annihilate all value of all content in a destructive manner
130
We need to be careful when loosely throwing around the word 'pseudonym' - define what that is.
pseudonym - refers to a fictitious name, which may or may not entail a fictitious voice
131
Although he doesn't mention irony explicitly, what comment might Marshall McLuhan be making on irony in his 'the medium is the message'?
- a medium can be a tool for irony
132
Give some examples of how the medium might be a tool for irony? (read into McLuhan's 'the medium is the message')
- television's The Daily Show takes other television footage out of context and creates its own 'fake' news coverage that ironically highlights the limitations of the television medium
- when someone speaks to you in the voice of a radio disk jockey they ironically emphasise how the context for speech has changed now that the medium of the radio is absent
133
Finish the quote from Josef Pieper - “In our bourgeois Western world total labor has vanquished..."
"leisure. Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for non-activity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture — and ourselves.” —
134
Finish the quote from JH. Prynne - “The poet works with mental ears. ...."
"Via this specialised audition, the real time sounds of speech and vocalised utterance are disintegrated into sub-lexical acoustic noise”
135
What do you think this quote from JH. Prynne means?
“The poet works with mental ears. Via this specialised audition, the real time sounds of speech and vocalised utterance are disintegrated into sub-lexical acoustic noise”
- that, when writing poetry, the poet is able to employ a specialised way of tuning into the rhythms of words as they are can be dislodged from their immediate communicated meaning
- when writing, the poet then ties words together and composes them in such a way that these rhythmic qualities become a low hum behind the text
136
In James Logenbach's book 'The Resistance to Poetry', how does he describe 'the little word' "or"?
- it is the sound of thinking in poetry
| - the sound of the mind alive in the syntactical process of discovering what it might be thinking
137
How does Simon Frith describe how rock music creates results in his work 'Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock’n’Roll'?
It uses a primitive understanding of how sounds and rhythms—prelinguistic devices—have their emotional and physical effects
138
What is a distinction between the ironic and the comic?
- the comic is restricted to the showing that whatever destroys itself was already null (ie. a whim, an oddity etc.) in comparison to mighty passions/ what is moral and true
(whereas in irony, the ironist declares these moral and true values as null and void)
139
What was the parabasis in Attic comedy?
- this scene was a regular part of Aristophanic comedy;
it consisted of a direct address by the chorus to the audience that interrupted the play’s action with commentary on the play itself, often directly self-reflexive but sometimes highly indirect
140
How could the feature of the parabasis be considered ironic?
- Schlegel saw this interruption of aesthetic illusion as an ironic acknowledgment by the dramatic text of its own nature as representation and of the limits of such representation
141
What purpose did the parabasis have for an audience?
1. reminds the audience that any aesthetic artifact has been produced by an individual author and reflects some particular perspective
- calls upon us to evaluate the author’s views and purposes aside from the views and purposes of those
characters represented within the text
2. locates the play’s purposes within publicly determined
conditions of performance that help determine its meaning
142
What determinant (considered essential by critics) of Romantic aesthetics does comedy destabilise?
- the autonomy of the artwork
143
Where was Schlegel getting his philosophical influence from relating to Romantic irony?
Kant’s transcendental turn, with its
| rigorously argued demonstration of the self-reflexivity and self-limitation of reason ie. Critique of Pure Reason
144
In the spirit of the Yale criticism of the 1980s, what is the relationship they strike between language and intention?
- language trumps intention
- a speaker cannot establish any right to rule out as inadmissible/ as inconsonant with his intentions, all but a chosen subset of possible readings
ie. in the end how we understand what we read depends not on the private intentions of the writer but on the potentialities inherent in the public
language in which he has chosen to write
145
Though it seems implausible and redundant of Derrida to try and dissolve the distinction between literal and metaphorical, what must we keep in mind? How does Derrida's dissolution of the distinction differ?
- there is more than one way of setting up the distinction between the literal and the metaphorical
ie. in the analytic tradition the problem of metaphor arises as a result of the perceived challenge posed by metaphorical utterances to the Fregean principle that the meaning of a statement S is its truth- conditions
- as a condition of meaningfulness, Frege's principle requires that it should be possible to see, at least in principle, how to determine whether S is true or false
Derrida does not understanding meaning as it relates to the Fregean concept ie.
- literal discourse = where the signified of each expression E can be singled out without reference to any relationship between E and any other expression of the language
- metaphorical discourse = singling out of the signified of any E requires reference to relationships between E and other expressions
146
What does Derrida mean by the phrase 'sense transported by a metaphor (Derrida is speaking here of certain founding contrasts of metaphysics which he considers to be essentially metaphorical in character)' is "an essence rigorously independent of that which transports it"?
- (I think!) he means that when one puts language together in metaphor, the sense of the metaphor is something entirely different from the combination of the two words and their referents but the sense actually derives from how the words interact
- thus, this is what plays into the argument that realistically everyday language is not rigorous enough for philosophical thought because its signs are inherently interdependent (which is Derrida's thought that metaphor is the conceptual underpinning of much of language)
147
What is the relationship Nietzsche establishes between truth and concepts in 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)'?
- although all concepts are metaphors invented by humans (created by common agreement to facilitate ease of communication) human beings forget this fact after inventing them, and come to believe that they are "true" and do correspond to reality
148
What can language not capture?
Nietzsche - 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)'
the 'thing in itself'
149
What language tools do we have to employ to describe things?
Nietzsche - 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)'
we only possess metaphors for things
150
How does the fact that we only have metaphors for things and concepts become an ethical issue at some point?
Nietzsche - 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)'
- for example, we don't know anything of an essential quality of 'honesty'
- we know countless individual and unequal actions which we equate with one another and that we designate with the concept 'honest'
151
We do not live with the constant awareness that we are only employing metaphors for things - why do we do this?
Nietzsche - 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)'
- one can only live with any repose, security, and consistency by forgetting the primitive world of metaphor that one lives in
152
Why does Nietzsche conclude that between the two spheres of subject and object there can only really be - at most - an aesthetic relation?
Nietzsche - 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)'
- because man is the artistically creating subject that has constructed the metaphors through which to understand things ie. he cannot reach/ represent the essence of the object and thus he must create the means of communicating
153
What essay did Hart Crane write?
‘General Aims and Theories’ (1925)
154
In ‘General Aims and Theories’, how does Crane believe the poet builds their 'picture of the "period"'?
- their picture of the period is a by product of their curiosity
- a poet reacts honestly and to the full extent of his sensibilities to the states of passion, experience, and rumination that fate forces on him
155
What kind of force does Crane expect to find in American society that needs to come to fruition in the future?
- a spiritual quality
| - a new hierarchy of faith
156
Where does Hart Crane not believe American society is going to discover 'definitions' ie. truths?
- through the surface level phenomena of technology and infrastructure etc.
157
Thus, how does Hart Crane believe American society can access more deeply spiritual truths etc.?
"our submission to, and examination and assimilation
of the organic effects on us of these and other fundamental factors of our experience"
(ie. engaging in the primacy of our phenomenology experience of the world)
158
Why does Hart Crane describe certain aesthetic experiences as 'absolute'?
"it approximates a formally convincing statement of a conception or apprehension of life that
gains our unquestioning assent"
- ie. it seems to capture something of an essential truth about an aspect of our experience (especially emotionally or spiritually)
159
Who first coined the phrase 'nonidentity'?
Hegel
160
How did Hegel and Adorno's views on the concept of nonidentity differ?
- while Hegel (arguably) wanted to collapse nonidentity into identity, Adorno resists this (hence, in turn, his theory of ‘negative dialectics’
161
What is paradoxical about positivism's relationship between subject/ object and nonidentity?
- positivism separates the object and subject precisely in order to obscure the nonidentity between them
162
In what ways does Adorno describe the essay as a form of intellectual freedom in 'The Essay as Form'?
- it does not quite accomplish something either scientific or artistic - it has a leisurely calmness and freedom to take inspiration from other sources etc.
- the essay also has to be freed from the notion that all it has to said is what is said 'there and then' on the page ie. it also provides every opportunity for interpretation
163
How does Adorno describe a bad essay in 'The Essay as Form'?
- if it has an ideological function ie. if it abides by cliches or abstract concepts that are presupposed
164
Why does Adorno assert that the essay must resist the epistemological impulse to ‘not leave anything out’?
intention of the essay gropes its way forwards, and has to be prepared to be broken off at any moment
- has to cause the totality to be “illuminated in a partial feature"
- the essay does not come to a conclusion, and displays its inability to do so
165
In what sense does the essay form differ from scientific format?
(Adorno, Essay as Form)
- the essay does not aim towards a deductive or inductive structure (ie. rejects the typical structure of a scientific essay)
- champions the value of a fragmentary structure ie. 'the partial' over 'the whole'
- it thinks laterally around a topic, not necessarily about digging to the depths of a topic
- works from pre-meditated cultural associations instead of in a clinical vacuum
166
What is particularly significant about Proust and his writing? (as described by Adorno and Rorty)
Adorno:
- Proust - offers insights into human beings and social relations that cannot be reduced to scientific objectivity
Rorty:
- Proust's fiction does an especially good job of enlightening readers to aspects of human emotion etc. that enables us to achieve more solidarity with others because we get to experience their suffering second hand
