Theory 5 Flashcards
1
Q
What did George Steiner write on the topic of silence?
A
Silence and the poet
2
Q
What position does the poet stand-in in relation to God?
A
- speaking is to rival God’s language and thus the poet becomes a sacrilegious character (which is a recurrent trope in the Western literary tradition)
- in the beginning was the Word and thus Logos, total communication, is the act and essence of God - how does it coexist with the living fragments of our own speech?
3
Q
What significance does speech have in relation to humans and animals?
A
- it is the dividing line between man and myriad forms of animate beings
- it defines man’s eminence above the silence of a plant or the grunt of a beast
4
Q
In what kinds of poetry does the trope of the poet as a sacrilegious character/ the necessary limitations on human language feature?
A
Medieval Latin poetry, Mallarme, the Russian symbolist verse
5
Q
What does the poet have to keep in mind?
A
- has to hesitate from the Icarus-style hubris that oversteps the capability of man’s world
- the mystic tradition addresses that “what lies beyond man’s word is eloquent of God” (in reference to the fact that there is a limitation to our own speech, there are the frontiers of light, music, silence where speech has to stop and there is the evidence of divine meaning that surpasses our own
6
Q
How does Dante’s Paradiso reflect a calculus of linguistic possibility?
A
With each ascent, language is submitted to more and more intense pressure of vision
- language is stretched further and further as he ascends into the divine realm
- aesthetic conventions are brought nearer to the source of pure creative energy
- the poet moves upwards and his words fall behind - until language becomes inexpressible of his experience
7
Q
What happens when poetry reaches the maximum intensity of its being?
A
it passes into music - it is based on the same logic as the music of the spheres (ie. the myth embedded in the Western tradition that the universe is structured in harmony, which influenced the poet’s own project)
ie. rhetoric has a vocabulary of musicality
8
Q
What is the aspiration of language?
A
language aspires to the condition of music
9
Q
What techniques does Dante use to try to continue expressing his transcendent experience?
A
exhaustive metaphor and similies
10
Q
What is at the crux of Wagner’s vision?
A
the relationship between language and music
11
Q
What two motifs did Wagner’s vision lead to?
A
- the motif of the poet as being ‘almost’ a musician
- despair at being restricted to a form of expression thinner, narrower, and much nearer to the surface of the creative mind than music
12
Q
What kind of circularity does Dante end up falling into by the climax of the Paradiso?
A
his language becomes that of a babbling infant before he has mastered language at all
13
Q
How does Rilke relate to the power of language?
A
- he celebrates the power of language to rise towards music and considers the poet as the chosen instrument to facilitate this ‘upward transmutation’
(he works on the frontier of both language and music, and wishes to guard both the genius of language and the rights of its kinship to music)
14
Q
In modern civilisation, of mass culture and mass politics, what has become of language?
A
- there has been a brutalisation and devaluation of the word and an exhaustion of verbal resources
15
Q
Steiner details another mode of transcendence for language. Instead of into music, what happens to language and whose view does this reflect?
A
- the poet enters into silence
- this is essentially what Sontag discusses
16
Q
In modern poetry, what does silence come to represent?
A
- the claim of the ideal - ie. to speak is to say less
17
Q
Why might there be a certain hopelessness to the modern writers’ task?
A
- one has to find language that has not been sullied/ worn to the point of cliche/ having been emptied of all meaning
18
Q
In what literary tradition can one find the fullest statement of the submission of the word to the musical ideal?
A
German Romanticism
19
Q
How might a musical analogy deepen/ reinforce a literary structure?
A
ie. like Eliot’s ‘The Four Quartets’
20
Q
How might a poet’s choice to use silence reflect their attitude towards the condition of language? Why has language taken this turn?
A
- chooses it to demonstrate that words have lost something of their humane genius - the communicative act has become precarious and vulnerable and thus a poet might choose the suicidal rhetoric of silence
- language has been injured by the political inhumanity of the 20th century
21
Q
What question does Steiner ask about the relationship between civilisation, inhumanity, and literature?
A
“Has our civilisation, by virtue of the inhumanity it has carried out and condoned - we are accomplices to that which leaves us indifferent - forfeited its claim to that indispensable luxury which we call literature?”
22
Q
Why does Steiner conclude that we are writing too much?
A
- the constant inflation of writing has devalued the once numinous act of written communication
- valid and new pieces find it hard to be heard
- when trivial works are lorded as erudite and critical, they threaten to obliterate the work of art itself - in a political sense, writers should stop gifting a culture of inhumanity with the luxury of literature
- if one cannot critique, they should not gift
- when language has been perverted to be used savagely and in lies, unwritten poems are the greatest protest
23
Q
How do we become ‘deaf to certain sounds’?
A
We become accustomed to faint hum of sound that we take to be silence - we drown out certain sounds and our minds grapple for stimulating thought which means it becomes difficult to tune into these sounds
24
Q
How does Kierkegaard link silence with waiting?
A
silence has been politicised as agreement, or relinquishment to the fate of change/ stagnation
25
How might we say that Quakerism rethinks the relationship between speech and silence?
Quakers believe that speech has to arise out of silence, that we need to clear the clamour and emotions of our mind before we can speak the truth
- speech also requires silence, the silence of the speaker's mind, but also the silence of the listeners' hearts and minds to give attention
26
What does Aldous Huxley say on the topic of silence? It relates strongly with the conclusion that George Steiner came to
"unrestrained and indiscriminate talk is morally evil and spiritually dangerous"
27
If one has earned silence, what might we call it?
a presence instead of an absence
28
What are the drawbacks of hearing people only being able to think of silence from a hearing perspective?
- we don't necessarily know how deaf people experience silence ie. we can only ever think of silence as an absence of external noise, but they are always in that world
- sign language as experienced differently by a deaf and a hearing person flags up that one's interior voice and internal soundscape can play a far greater influence in some lives than others
- might have different connotations of hearing and silence ie. safety/ community etc.
29
What piece did Susan Sontag write on silence?
The Aesthetics of Silence
30
In Sontag's The Aesthetics of Silence, she argues that art was once thought "an expression of human consciousness" - why is it not now?
- art does not only express the human consciousness, it also interrogates how the mind can be estranged from itself ie. there is a spirit that is trying to be embodied in art but is at odds with the 'material' character of art itself
- the artist is constantly trying to transcend what is achievable with a material form of art
31
In Sontag's The Aesthetics of Silence - what does she believe that 'formerly' artists were able to achieve/ aim towards in their works?
- when an artist would create their art, it was a deliverance ie. an embodiment of aestheticism
(the aim was to reach 'the good' ie. mastery of and fulfilment in his art)
32
In Sontag's The Aesthetics of Silence - how is the artist freed when he resorts to silence?
- he is freed from the bonds of serving the world in a material way (ie. esp. in the materialism of the art world in which there are networks of patrons, clients, and audiences)
- instead, to work through silence is the ultimate transcendence - the ultimately 'other-worldly' gesture
33
What does it mean when Sontag describes modern art as 'inaudible'?
- it pushes the boundaries and asks questions to the point at which the artwork becomes almost inaudible
ie. it becomes unintelligible to an audience
34
What is the intended purpose of having art be almost 'inaudible' as Sontag describes in The Aesthetics of Silence?
- it means their art does not have to be focused on communicating with an audience and instead its silence provokes contemplation, interrogation etc.
- eventually also the artist's transgression becomes legitimate and an audience comes to understand the intention after contemplation etc.
35
What quote summarises John Cage's thoughts on silence?
"there is no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound"
36
What quote summarises John Cage's thoughts on the relationship between silence and its environment?
"one must acknowledge a surrounding environment of sound or language in order to recognise silence"
37
What kind of audience interactions with an art piece does silence provoke?
- it prescribes a more immediate, sensuous experience of art (ie. as linked to Sontag's 'Against Interpretation') OR a means of confronting art in a more conscious, conceptual way
- art also focuses attention and teaches skills of attention which in enhances when one reduces the means and effects of an art work
38
Instead of interpreting 'silence in art' as a literal manifestation, how might we describe it?
- part of a methodology of minimalism
39
Why does Sontag assert that language is one of the most impure mediums out of which art is made in her 'The Aesthetics of Silence'?
- it is contaminated by its associations and denotative/ connotative meanings ie. it is given weight by its cultural code
"it's impossible for the artist to write a word (or render an image or make a gesture) that doesn't remind him of something"
ie. intersubjectivity, each person is a being-in-a-world has become a wearying problem
(meaning the artist dreams of a wholly ahistorical/ un-alienated art)
40
Due to language being contaminated, what does an artist have to contend with?
- their own meanings, but also the series of second order meanings that accumulate
41
Due to the 'contamination' of language, why might we say language has its own sense of loudness?
- it has its own accumulation of sounds and voices etc.
42
In what two ways might we identify a poem's emulation of silence?
1. in stillness or in reflection/ rumination
2. minimalism/ aiming to focus ones attention (maybe like Verity Spott's work who leaves a lot of space around her words to let the poem breathe etc.)
43
How does art that is silent try to capture one way in which art might be capable of being ahistorical/ unalienated?
- silent art encourages a 'stare' instead of a roaming, mobile look - it does not release attention
- silent artworks do not demand that an audience 'add' something, they simply need to be contemplated in silence
44
What four uses of silence does Sontag describe in her work 'The Aesthetics of Silence'?
1. certifying the absence/ renunciation of thought (ie. can be an ascetic act) but can also be the indication that one is 'full' (perhaps full of thought/ stimulus etc.)
2. certifying the completion of thought
3. providing time for the continuation/ exploration of thought - speech closes off thought, silence keeps things open
4. silence can help speech attain its maximum integrity/ seriousness
- speech can become fully untethered from the 'body' ie. from the centres of sincerity/ empathy - silence can counteract this tendency and even correct/ re-centre language when it becomes inauthentic
(there is a resistance to keep proliferating language and images which seems to empty language)
45
How does Sontag summarise her feelings towards the proliferation of language? (just give like brief sections of quote)
"words are crude, and they're also too busy... [which] actively deadens the mind and blunts the senses"
46
What was the attitude of Mallarme towards the 'job of poetry'?
- to refine our word-clogged reality - the aim of poetry is to introduce silence around things
- to quieten language and to purify it
47
In her work 'The Aesthetics of Silence', summarise Sontag's work on Rilke and Ponge
- she describes as advocates for almost a new phenomenology of experience through the sharpening of our vocabulary we use for describing our sensory responses
48
What is the result of creating a new phenomenology of experience through the sharpening of the vocabulary we use for describing our sensory responses?
- stress is often put on things that are considered trivial/ unimportant (like Cage's focus on the sound of street traffic)
49
How is the attitude that art should have room for all experiences manifested in contemporary art work today?
- it is based on principles of minimalist presentation of language/ items in a levelled, equal way
50
What is the benefit of purifying language as described in Sontag's The Aesthetics of Silence?
- when language is purified, the focus shifts from ideas of digging out the meaning of language and towards focusing on how language has aesthetic value in itself
51
How does Sontag use the examples of Kafka and Beckett to exemplify how the purification of language allows it to be converted from 'meaning' into 'use'?
- their narratives seem to invite high-powered symbolic and allegorical meanings and yet they also repel such ascriptions too bc they employ a widespread strategy of literalness (their language discloses no more than what it literally means)
52
In John Cage's work 'Lecture on Nothing', what does it mean when he says 'what silence requires is that I go on talking'?
- silence exists in the spaces of absence of speech ie. we need something to pierce through the silence in order to identify that it is there
53
What relationship between silence, speech, and productivity does John Cage highlight in his 'Lecture on Nothing'?
- we are so impatient and so conscious of productivity that we do not build in time to linger in the silence
- however, if you build silence into a piece of music, it can be marked out and licenses people to be able to savour it (ie. Cage 4'33)
54
In John Cage's work 'Lecture on Nothing', what does it mean when he says 'our poetry now is the realisation that we possess nothing'?
- ie. we have nothing to give/ to make material - works of art are not just saying something as a material manifestation but are actually interrogations of absences (ie. as Sontag says in 'The Aesthetics of Silence')
55
Once we recognise that silence is a structural tool in poetry, what should this make us also do?
- apply it as a structural tool in our own lives
56
What might the effect be when a speaker pauses for slightly too long?
- we see that silence is more fluid, it leaks into places, it expands out
- it is also the default of our experience ie. it lingers behind everything we do - we talk about falling into it (like an abyss/ darkness)
57
How does John Cage describe music as it relates to sound in the YouTube video 'Cage on Silence'? How does Cage believe people 'listen to music'?
- music is sound, with meaning
- sound itself acts, changes volume/ pitch etc.
- people listen to music through 'inner listening' - they hear its meaning etc. whereas he discusses sound (ie. without meaning) as heard by one's 'exterior ear'
58
How does Duchamp rethink the description of music as a time art?
- he thinks of music as a space art ie. it has dimensions and shape etc.
59
How does Cage's 4'33 oppose 'composer-fetishism'?
- the composer frames the sounds that others are making but he has to relinquish control of the performance because he does not control what is happening
60
In her YouTube talk, 'Learning How to Embrace Silence' by TATIANA OLIVEIRA SIMONIAN - how does she describe silence?
- she considers silence the ability to create stillness so that you are present to hear the world around you
- the gift of silence is not to prepare 'counter-arguments' in your head while someone talks, but actually to have a truly silent mind
61
How did Claude Debussy/ Miles Davis express the relationship between music and silence?
'music is what is in-between the notes'
62
How does Kierkegaard distinguish between sound and noise?
- sound has to be autonomous and motivated
| - noise is unmotivated/ is a response to stimuli
63
What are kind of interpretations are possible of Hamlet's closing line 'the rest is silence'?
- throughout the whole play, he has seemed to have voices in his head - one might suppose that the fatal poison (or his impending death) is enough to silence the voices for a moment, the voices will be gone forever
- perhaps Hamlet is aware of being a fictional construct - it's only in the denouement that he takes on his rightful role - thus his final words are a stage direction to himself
- the "silence" of death will finally allow him to "rest". "Going to your rest" is, of course, a common euphemism for death
- little left to watch, after which the characters will be silent - and in the context of the play itself, Hamlet himself will be silenced by death
- could be a statement of uncertainty: Hamlet is about to find out the answer to what happens after mortality but he cannot tell anyone what it is (the answer may be "silence", i.e. oblivion)
64
How does Andri Snaer Magnason's (he/him) novel 'On Time and Water' summarise the relationship between time and the ecological crisis?
- nature has left its own geological speed and has changed to human speed
65
Why does Andri Snaer Magnason conclude that discussions of the future are so vague?
- because a phenomena like 'ocean acidification' has no cultural significance, ie. it cannot be connected to any experience we have ever known
66
Why does Andri Snaer Magnason specifically write about 'time and water' and not 'climate change'?
- because people hear white nose when others talk about climate change
67
What are some of the spiritual/ holy effects of nature?
- can evoke a very basic, Romantic, semi-Christian holiness (ie. the feeling of the numinous)
- one poet described: "his soul resonated with the silence-loaded space dimension of God"
68
Why does Andri Snaer Magnason discuss sci-fi texts alienating us from the 'core of the future'?
- because the people we see in the works are only semi-human ie. because these texts just focus on technology and transportation
69
How might we respond to a comment that says "...our purpose was just studying something to place ourselves in a well-paying job somewhere to have a good life"?
- contemporary generations are born with more responsibility
- how do we square the lifestyles we want to lead with what is needed of us? how do we atone for being alive?
- how do we not tip into nihilism?
- no one is willing to give up what has been promised, ie. few are likely to resist technology and resources that are already here
- we have ideas of progress as ideas of maximum, working towards larger scales rather than on balance
70
Why does eco criticism demand that we rethink our ethics?
- we have to extend our notion of responsibility for others into the future
(maybe link in effective altruism and existential risk)
71
What forms of religion imply that nature is something that is outside the human? Who would contest this?
- those that believe in creationism as opposed to Darwinian evolution
- Darwin and the Western scientific paradigm believe that humans are part of nature
- eco-criticism aligns itself with the scientific ie. human as animal
72
How might we agree that there is no such thing as 'nature'?
- there is no such thing as the unmediated, unsullied, non-human nature
73
Who coined the term 'nature writing' - which (notably) is different from eco-criticism - ?
Laurence Buell - he uses it to describe writing that takes humanity and the environment as its primary subject
74
What evidence is there to support the idea that in novels of the 18th/ 19th centuries, being in possession of a 'good fortune' (like in Jane Austen's famous line) was patriarchal, anthropocentric, and bourgeois description of one's exploitation of nature and other men?
- a good fortune was premised on the private ownership of land
- privatisation of the commons
- slave economy of the Caribbean plantations
- newly industrialised exploitation of minerals and other resources
75
What did Amanda Ackerman write?
Plant Poetics & Beyond: Plant
Meditation: How to Communicate
with Plants
76
In what sense do we have an immaterial relationship to the atmosphere and the world around us?
- through the process of breathing
77
In what kind of social infrastructures do you see as reflecting patterns of nature?
- governmental infrastructure
- decision trees/ flow charts
- family trees (that can be displayed both top down or bottom up)
78
Why do we need to free trees from the frameworks and narratives that we have overlaid onto them? (what are these frameworks?)
- for example, we believe that the trunk is the stem, the core, the origin point from which complexity sprouts
- in fact, complexity sprouts from both ends of the tree (ie. in the roots)
- trees need to be returned to their alien/ strange status
79
If we recognise that we need to free trees from the frameworks and narratives that we have overlaid onto them - how does phenomenology play a part?
- the phenomenological process emerges and is helpful to 'bracket off' our narratives etc.
- instead, the trees are allowed to enter into a more ambiguous relationship of recognition and estrangement (the ecological uncanny)
80
How does Deleuze and Guittari's rhizome theory challenge the human-centric views that we overlay onto nature?
- challenges that there are points of origin from which complexity emerges because this is not how nature works
- non-hierarchical, decentralised, non-linear
81
What do we mean when we describe a 'forest of trees'?
- non-hierarchical - not just a single plane of communication or in one medium (like a sound/ gas exchange)
- 3D multi-dimensional conference - multi-sensory and in different modes ie. physical overlap, gas exchange, binds and animals, pollination and growth as well as beneath the roots
82
What are the 3 key points to know about the rhizome theory of Deleuze and Guittari?
1. any part of the rhizome can be connected to any other
2. rhizomes have the principle of multiplicity ie. they refuse singularity which could cut off complexity
3. they have the principle of overcoming rupture ie. if there is the destruction of one point, another path opens
83
Describe what Merleau Ponty means by 'double sensations' in his work 'Phenomenology of Perception'
- for example, like what you press your hands together - they are experienced through their alternating roles of being experienced as subject or object ie. touching or being touched
84
If we are to free nature of our pre-determined ideas, how might Merleau Ponty's phenomenology be useful?
- when we construct this language for experiencing nature, it has to be a language that summarises our lived experiences through the body
85
In what way might we say that we too are in an immaterial relationship with the world/ nature?
- natural scents permeate through our lives and the olfactory sense is most closely tied with the limbic system (ie. our primal memory)
- it can link us through our life histories
- there is thus a balance between our human activities and how nature can be fitted with those activities
86
Ackerman speaks a lot about communication with plants, what quote from her might summarise her thoughts?
"All languages exist on an
| interspecies, sensory, and meta-sensory spectrum"
87
How might we apply Merleau Ponty's idea of our engagement with Others to our relationship with nature?
1. M-P emphasises that we are engaged with a world outside of ourselves and that has its own projects, one that we must adapt and synchronise ourselves with
- so too does nature in this sense ask us to adapt and synchronise ie. changes in weather, with its growth and potential destruction - we are asked to respect and to accommodate it
2. M-P also emphasises how our interactions with Others is based on the shaping of each other's projects until we look towards a single project which is a joint creation
- we see this in the communication between plants themselves, and we might learn from their communication and apply it to our own social networks
3. also M-P emphasises how this shaping of each other's projects tends to take an embodied form (like dancing) - which is also like the communication between trees but also between us and nature, experiencing natural scents and the relationship to our atmosphere
4. all of these projects are only possible when we recognise each other as free consciousnesses ie. as subjects - which Ackerman suggests that we need to do with plants, instead of just seeing them as 'setting'
88
What role does Janice Lee imagine the breath can play in our breaking down of the boundaries between plants and ourselves?
- breath can de-categorise the arbitrary categories of living ie. because all living things breath in some way, and thus our mutual respiratory processes can break down the boundaries of our categories
89
How does Janice Lee believe that plants might be able to help us rethink the ideas of the singular self we hold onto and how we safeguard ourselves against permeability?
- plants understand cycles of growing and dying and acting interdependently/ having their bodies in communication and in community with one another
90
How does Pantha de Prince's 'Conference of Trees' link in with mythology?
- there is a certain ethereality he looks to create which revives the mythology of nature ie. recalling the rhythms and energies of nymphs
91
When we come across an untranslatable work in a text/ work of art, how might we react and what does this tell us about ourselves? What happens if this word in repeated?
- we might feel unnerved because we fear the unknown and we want names, beings, matter etc. explained - our impulse is to translate, categorise, and analyse
- if repeated, the word might become a kind of chant or incantation
92
How does the geometry of the natural world clash with that of industrialised structures?
- man-made structures are sharp, they have invasive shapes that interrupt the natural curvatures of the landscape
93
What comparison between nests and our homes does Gaston Bachelard make in his 'The Poetics of Space'?
- "The well-being I feel, seated in front of my fire, while bad weather rages out-of-doors, is entirely animal"
- we want them to be perfect, to bear the mark of a very sure instinct
- nests can be botched and can fail
94
Why does Bachelard argue that our interactions with nests are often very childish/ nostalgic in his 'The Poetics of Space'?
- we impose our human images onto what is essentially functional ie. for warmth and to protect the young
- when a nest is discovered today, it harks us back to childhood, or a childhood that should have been ie. when one might go out and discover a nest etc.
- one might feel very disappointed if one finds an empty nest with nothing in ie. there has been activity that we have not been privvy to
95
How paradox of sensibility does Bachelard describe of nests in his 'The Poetics of Space'?
- A nest-and this we under stand right away-is a precarious thing, and yet it sets us to daydreaming of security
96
What two opposing visions of the domestic home as presented in Victorian literature (ie. of the 1830s) does
David Ellison outline in "All Shut Up:
Carlyle and the Pursuit of Domestic Silence"?
- as a form of super secure refuge
(image of the hearth-scene; a utopian assemblage that joins ambient light, consoling and familiar aromas)
- supposed to filter undesirable stimuli by way of sheltering purposeful, unsentimental, domestic possibility
- as a mode of dizzying flux and tumult
(domestic instability - the bankrupt’s scattering of goods on the lawn, and the home ceaselessly remodelled a la mode ((in fashion)) )
97
What does David Ellison's anecdote of Thomas Carlyle's desire for a silent room in his house tell us about the Victorian dwelling?
- construction of the room speaks to the idea of the Victorian dwelling being held to its
promise to protect its occupants from the irritations of the world beyond its boundary
98
What kind of contemporary (ie. Victorian) struggle does David Ellison's anecdote of Thomas Carlyle's desire for a silent room reflect?
- pressures that beset contemporary
notions of domesticity, particularly from the requirements of the stay-at-home
professional
99
What does Thomas Carlyle's desire for a silent room reflect about interiority?
- The silence he desired is an acoustical construction amenable to the projection,
amplification and persistence of Carlyle’s sole voice
(and thus, desire for silence is the desire for a return to our own selves and the soundscapes of our own bodies)
100
What theoretical model of culture is most popular in the 1980s?
poststructuralism
101
Who were the most famous proponents of poststructuralism?
Michel Foucault
Gilles Deleuze
Jacques Derrida
102
What aspects of Romanticism/ Enlightenment progress did Nietzsche resist?
he rejected Romantic metaphysics
he rejected the sublime longings of 19th century Romanticism
- He also rejected the concept of historical progress that governed European thought since the Renaissance
he found Hegel to be its most formidable advocate
(Nineteenth-century thinkers in the tradition of Hegel anticipated the attainment of a perfected state of humanity)
103
How did Nietzsche respond to Hegel's concept of historical progress?
- Nietzsche grounded himself in a version of naturalism—the post-Darwinian conviction that humans are an animal species, led by no transcendent purpose
This turn yields some of his most profound ideas:
- the death of God
- the idea of the ‘eternal return’ ie. the framing of existence in terms of endlessly repeating cycles
- the will to power - which involves a ceaseless struggle for survival and mastery
104
Why have Nietzsche's works been taken up by many far-right/ fascist thinkers?
He wrote:
- equality is the “greatest of all lies”
- he did split society into a hierarchy of weak and strong
- he did write a diatribe against compassion in ‘The Antichrist’
Nietzsche has a hostility towards the concept of absolute truth
- Ronald Beiner has written that this has “left us vulnerable to harsh new ideologies that appear to regard respect for truth as a snare”
105
When Nietzsche talks about a 'will to power', he does not mean achieving domination over others but actually...?
Nietzsche understands power as a struggle for power over oneself ie. one should aim to harness and master the will
106
How does Nietzsche reach his conclusion that the ultimate truth is that no claim should achieve dominion over all others?
Derives from his militating against monopolistic power
- particularly attached to the Greek agon (ie. competition between worthy adversaries)
- Greeks abhorred the idea of ‘domination by one’
- ie. in Athens - there was an institution of ‘ostracism’ which works on the basis of expelling someone who threatened the balance of power
THUS: what lies behind his philosophy is an attitude that basically says - the only healthy state for humanity is one in which rival perspectives vie with one another (this is the same as his idea towards truth)
each competitor in the agon is supposed to stake his/ her own claim on truth
107
When thinking about music and the education of the soul, what is a really essential starting point?
- thinking about the mimetic quality of music ie. music is capable of imitating moral qualities and human attitudes via rhythms and harmonies
108
In the education of the guardians of the city (in their childhood), what did Plato propose?
- that only certain (Phyrgian and the Dorian) rhythms should be kept, because they imitate the sounds and accents of a courageous and temperate man
(and these same qualities are thus imparted to the soul, meaning the virtues are stimulated)
- ie. music was useful in educating the irrational part of man's soul
109
What is the relationship between the irrational part of the soul, pleasure, pain, and the good?
- the irrational part of the soul ultimately pursues pleasure and expels pain
- the rational and reasoned part of the brain pursues the good
(it can pursue pleasure if it is a rational pleasure)
110
As opposed to the idea in The Republic that music was part of childhood education, how does Plato's 'The Laws' differ?
- in 'The Laws', music plays an educational role throughout a citizen's life
- music continually re-establishes and reorientates the balance of pleasure and pain
111
What is the technical term for the biological pathways of communication between trees in a forest?
Suzanne Simard
mycorrhizal networks
112
What does the discovery of mycorrhizal networks tell us about the forest as a network/ system?
Suzanne Simard
- the plantation grows interdependently, they are co-operators existing in a symbiotic relationship
- there is a non-hierarchical distribution of resources, and they are part of a greater project
113
What can we say about the relationship between mothers and children in the forest?
Suzanne Simard
- there are certain 'mother trees' that 'feed' their young by sacrificing their carbon
- they also recognise their own young
- an injured tree will pass on defence signals to its seedlings
114
When discussing 'nature' in any context, what is an excellent line to drop in?
Raymond Williams in his 'Keywords' asserts that "Nature is perhaps the most complex word in the language"
115
When we use the word 'nature', what is reduced to what?
- a multiplicity is reduced to a singularity
116
What two ways does Raymond Williams details that the term 'nature' been understood across human history?
- at one extreme as a literal goddess, and the other as an amorphous but all-powerful creative and shaping force
117
What does Raymond Williams reflect about the relationship between Mother Nature and God across history?
- it is complicated to have a singular religious/ mythical abstraction co-existing with a monotheistic God
- in Medieval European belief, both were used as singular absolutes but God was defined as primary and Nature was his minister/ deputy
BUT there was also a recurrent trend of seeing Nature as an absolute monarch
118
What was the significance, as Raymond Williams outlines, of nature being understood through an attitude of fatalism rather than providence?
- the emphasis was on the power of natural forces and the seemingly arbitrary/ capricious exercise of these powers with inevitable and often destructive effects on men
119
What is the relationship of nature to innocence as outlined by Raymond Williams?
- nature can be understood as at once innocent, unprovided, sure, unsure, fruitful, destructive, a pure force, tainted, or cursed
120
In the 18th/19th centuries, the laws of nature began to be explored, which led to Nature being associated with Reason. What was the subsequent product of this?
- the 'state of nature' became a concept used to argue:
1. society is corrupt and needs redemption and renewal
2. society is 'artificial'/ 'mechanical' and needs to learn from nature
(these two phases are broadly the Enlightenment and the Romantic)
121
Raymond Williams seems to strike a difference between 'nature' and 'natural', what is the difference?
- nature has typically meant the 'countryside', unspoiled place, plants and creatures other than man
- natural might describe an aspect of the landscape that was man-made (like a hedgerow) but has had time pass and is still obviously natural
122
What roles does Raymond William identify with nature?
- goddess
- minister
- monarch
- lawyer
- source of original innocence
- the selective breeder
123
What are the two sides of nature as 'selective breeder'?
1. inherently involves ruthless competition, natural selection, laws of survival/ extinction
2. inherently involves mutuality, co-operation, symbiosis etc.
124
How does the phrase 'music is the space between the notes' also relate to meditation?
- it speaks to the concept that what is not there is more important than what is there
- can also be applied to meditation
125
What does decalcomania mean in relation to the rhizome theory of Deleuze and Guattari?
- the rhizome structure forms through continuous negotiation with its context, constantly adapting by experimentation
- thus performing a non-symmetrical active resistance against rigid organisation and restriction
126
What was 'Reclaim the Frame'?
A Q and A with Laura Mulvey
127
When did the theory of the 'male gaze' come about and the critique of how women were presented in film?
1960s
| - watching the films in a different way - influenced by the women’s liberation movement
128
How did Mulvey's film 'Riddles of the Sphinx' contribute to the feminist movement in cinema?
- contesting conventions
| - also trying to think of ways in which cinema - going beyond negative aesthetics, ie. contesting, into what should be
129
The opening sequence of Mulvey's film 'Riddles of the Sphinx' is a long, extended shot of a domestic scene of mother and child - how does this rethink the female experience of their domestic space?
started in domestic space, the interior
1. the womb-like space, mother and child enclosed together - space of comfort/ enclosure
2. or a space of imprisonment/ claustrophobia
- both sides in play at the same time
- nest and imprisonment
130
How did Margaret Thatcher's election in 1979 affect the landscape of British feminist film? How and when did Channel 4 come on air and affect things again?
after the election of 1979
- Margaret Thatcher
- crazy utopian optimism was hit with what was going to be faced
- difficult to sustain, these films were of a moment
1982 - Channel 4 came on air, different possibilities
131
Can a man subvert the male gaze?
Vertigo - suggests Hitchcock has a level of self-awareness
- both investigating the male gaze while promoting it
using psychoanalysis to examine the patriarchal psyche
132
Which 1985 film followed the lives of two female artists who both contributed to how feminine creativity and political activism was rethought?
Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (1985)
133
How might gender impact translation work?
- there might be centuries-old masculinist readings embedded into the poem
(eg. male translations have a habit, perhaps quite unconsciously, of letting Odysseus off the hook (he tried his best! He just couldn’t manage it!)
134
How does Keston Sutherland link his project of creating a culture of free exchange of works (a 'political poetry') with an anti-capitalist revolution?
- I was joining a culture of gift exchange, a culture of militant samizdat exclusion from the circuits of mainstream publication
135
What is the aim of Keston Sutherland's "imperative need for the comprehensive revolutionary transformation of human experience and relations"?
- we can rebuild and redesign our own ways of relating to each other, against those formal institutions
- it is direct, that it is completely undisguised, that it is aggressively emphatic, and that is a socialist and realist art
136
How does Keston Sutherland address the difficulties of his poetry?
- when they are really lived with, begin to metamorphose, they shift, they metastasise, they become different objects
- living in this world etc. requires at least the outwards expressions of acceptance, whereas his work investigates the most profound difficulties of acceptance that I can find
137
What are the differences in the use of aposiopesis between the EM period and Romanticism? Speculate why this is
- early modern texts harbour more of an anxiety about the potential for alienation from meaning
i. e Sidney, Taylor
- perhaps as the Romantic period was so concerned with the transcendental etc. then potentially more earthly topics could be embraced alongside aspects of bawdiness etc.?
138
List the three moments in which a writer might choose to employ aposiopesis
1. at a point of volta/ reconsideration
2. point of retreat or hesistation
3. moment of bawdiness or comedy
139
In what sense is aposiopesis a 'Self-regulatory figure of thought'?
- emphasises the idea of speech as construction that accumulates over time
(Saussure: parole - sentence, language is diachronic)
- caught at the crux of two temporal states ie. the mind is capable of conceiving of future and present at once
potentially quite politicised
- when language be dangerous
140
In his 1961 work 'silence', what does John Cage say?
“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear."
141
How does John Cage's statement on silence relate to aposiopesis?
- accompanied by a mental resonance of what was left unsaid but is entirely predictable
- the sentence still occurs but in different form (subvocalisation, silent speech)
- transposition of the communicative mode or a conversion of energy
- especially in anger - it is more powerful for the sentence to resonate internally rather than aloud
142
What is anadiplosis and what could it represent when used?
- when another person finishes off the sentence of the other
- indicates a metaphorical passing of the linguistic baton to reflect respect
143
What is auxesis?
arrangement of terms in ascending order of importance
144
What does Ovid say of concealment?
‘If any things are concealed, he imagines them even better’
145
In Alexander Pope's ‘The Art of Sinking in Poetry’ (1819), who does he describe the aposiopesis was an excellent figure for?
"The Aposiopesis, an excellent figure for the ignorant, as ‘what shall I say?’ when one has nothing to say"
146
What does Jonathon Shears comment about Byron's use of aposiopesis?
Self-consciously breaking off in mid-sentence is part of Byron’s way of continually presenting himself as though he were present to the reader, ‘feeling as he writes’
147
What is hysteron proteron?
- occurs when the first key word of the idea refers to something that happens temporally later than the second key word. The goal is to call attention to the more important idea by placing it first
The standard example comes from the Aeneid of Virgil: "Moriamur, et in media arma ruamus" ("Let us die, and charge into the thick of the fight"
148
Hysteron proteron was typical of the EM period - was it always a blemish of the writing?
no - sometimes it was an exploited licence of order and style
149
How might hysteron proteron have theological implications?
- it is often used in scripture
150
Hysteron proteron is also a general term for 'the preposterous in writing, ie. strange inversions - give some examples
These included not only the reversal of elder and younger, ruler and ruled, but the hierarchies of gender, whereby the elevation of female over male
151
What are the four recognisable ways that Shakespeare uses hendiadys?
Shakespeare’s usage:
1. the second may unfold the first
“ponderous and marble”
2. the first may unfold the second
“from cheer and from your former state”
3. or may logically modify the other
“law and heraldry” for “heraldic law”
4. parallel structure might mask a more complex and less easily describable dependent relation
“perfume and suppliance”
152
In what sense might hendiadys be seen to demonstrate one being baffled/ unsteady?
- can betray a sense of feeling divided in the self
| - might appear elegant but be underpinned with anxiety
153
Though appearing to unite two concepts, what might the hendiadys actually be?
- can accentuate disunion, or disequilibrium (imbalance)
| - mocks the normal union of concepts
154
What did Wimsatt and Beardsley’s 1946 work ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ establish?
- focus on authorial intent is a redundant approach
155
How does Wolfgang Iser reflect on the development of meaning in a text?
- reading has to be an interaction between text and reader through a process of a text being ‘concretised’ ie. given shape and meaning
156
How might different power relations be established by different punning styles?
- Wheatley’s punning (for example) has to be subtle, where Donne’s witticism can afford to have that authoritative edge
157
What is antanaclasis?
literary trope in which a single word or phrase is repeated, but in two different senses
158
What is aphasia? Who discusses it and in which text?
- an impairment of language, affecting the production or comprehension of speech and the ability to read or write
- Roman Jakobson, On Language
159
When suffering from aphasia, what is the difference between stop sounds and continuous sounds?
Roman Jakobson, On Language
stop sounds: ones that are clipped
continuous sounds: ones that are usually introduced before stop/ clipped sounds
- they can be prolonged or stretched
160
How might we describe aphasic regression?
Roman Jakobson, On Language
it is a mirror of the child’s acquisition of speech sounds - it shows child’s development in reverse
161
What are the symptoms of a 'contiguity disorder' in relation to aphasia?
Roman Jakobson, On Language
- impairment of the ability to combine simpler linguistic units into complex ones
ie. loss of syntactic rules organising words into higher units
- the approximate identifications of things are of a metaphoric nature
(quasi-metaphoric expressions)
ie. fire for gaslight
162
If someone is suffering from a similarity disorder as an aspect of aphasia, what symptoms of selection deficiency might they get?
Roman Jakobson, On Language
- context becomes the indispensable/ decisive factor
- able to respond, but not to construct
- the deeper the communication is embedded in context, the higher the chance of successful communication
163
If someone is suffering from a similarity disorder as an aspect of aphasia, what symptoms of substitution deficiency might they get?
Roman Jakobson, On Language
for an aphasic who experiences an impaired substitution, but intact contexture - operations involving similarity yield to those based on contiguity
- this is why/ how they exhibit a tendency towards metonymy
ie. saying ‘glass’ for window, or ‘heaven’ for God
164
What does Roman Jakobson mean when he says "communication relies on the mutual understanding of a common code"?
- speaker and listener have to both make the identical choice of meaning from the array of preconceived possibilities
165
What do the terms concurrence and concatenation mean in relation to communication?
Roman Jakobson, On Language
Concurrence: the simultaneous rejection of certain entities ie. different phonemes in order to comprehend a word
Concatenation: the process of joining up phoneme sounds to form the word
166
What did Saussure mean by the two terms ‘in presentia’ (actual series) and ‘in absentia’ (virtual series)?
They are his two ways of splitting up the internal and external relations of any communicative phrase ie. one must combine the present units to build a superior unit, but one also has to select the specific meaning of the word and reject the other possible substitutions
