Men, Will They Ever Grow Up?

In the novel Mantissa, we follow Miles Green, the main character, a male fiction writer, with strong masculine views. Throughout the novel Miles, and Erato, the beautiful muse, have an on going power struggle which in turn creates a sexual energy between both characters. Miles for most of the novel controls Erato, but Erato eventually rejects the idea of a muse after being disgusted on how Miles was portraying her, and in part II becomes an ultra feminist, wearing a black leather jacket and boots, becoming a punk rocker. Through this, Erato takes control and defines her power. However, Miles, the writer has the ultimate control of Erato. 

At one point in the novel, Erato states “Darling, you mustn’t feel jealous just because my one clumsy little attempt at writing has become a kind of a fluke best-seller” 

This follows by Miles arguing that the Odyssey must be written by a man because of its brilliance. This goes against the theory that there is no connection between the author and the text. 

Go Ask Alex!

With all of the talk about Canal Street, I thought it would be great to send out this AMAZING link! My friend Alex is a food extraordinaire and happens to have a lovely blog to help you find exactly what your heart desires while visiting the Big Apple. Just ask away and he will be sure to get back to you with a personalized response. New York is full of gems most tourists do not know of and with Alex's help you'll have an experience other than the Hard Rock Cafe... come on folks, it gets old. It is NYC, not Disney World. Enjoy!

Ask Alex What To Eat! - click it, do ittttt

Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

So here I sit, overwhelmed with ideas … Where to begin? The easiest place, by thanking Ken Rufo for enlightening us all on Baudrillard. Oh that Jean Baudrillard - French sociologist, philosopher, pataphysician. Here I was not too long ago sitting through three long hours of my senior seminar reading Simulacra and Simulation … confused and lost just thinking to myself it is almost over! After this class Baudrillard is out of my life... FOREVER, and BAM the next day he reappears in yet another class of mine. Maybe it is fate? Baudrillard is just meant to be studied in my life. So forgive me if I make no sense, but I shall try to attempt to comprehend this super cool fantastic man’s ideas through the post by Ken Rufo (who did a very good job at getting me to understand Baudrillard more than before ... it was definitely the jeans, cow, and the hay)

“Baudrillard felt that structural Marxism was too limited, and that it needed to incorporate "sign-value" into its analysis. By sign-value, Baudrillard is pointing to something that seems obvious to us today, namely that often what an object represents or signifies is more important than how much it costs or how high quality is its construction. If you want a really obvious example, think about Tommy Hilfiger, who doesn't even make his own clothing, but instead buys cheap, sweatshop made clothing and adds his brand to it - that's sign value, pure and simple. Baudrillard argues (this is back in the 60s and early 70s) that focusing on sign-value means that you have to focus on patterns of consumption rather than the modes of production.”

I think I get this … Capitalism is all about consumption. Not the maker or the means behind the product. People buy Tommy Hilfiger for the label, the name. They don’t buy the jeans because Tommy himself constructed the pants they are now wearing. Imagine that? Tommy Hilfiger having his hands all over your clothes. I can bet he does not even take a look at the final product before it ends up in the store and into our closets. He has hired someone to do that too. Tommy Hilfiger signifies style, what those jeans will represent, when someone sees me walk by in Tommy Hilfiger jeans, the quality of construction or how much I had to pay. The little red, white, and blue label clicks in their heads as Tommmmy, that is all. Exactly what Baudrillard describes as the “sign-value”. However, capitalism is here to stay folks, resulting in a society wrapped around this theory.

“What he does say is that the mass production of objects and the general flow of wealth is making it possible, more and more, for people of lower classes to "simulate" living like people in the upper classes. I, too, can have representations of fine art on my wall, or something that looks like a good desk. It won't be a family heirloom made by Master Deskmakerman, but it won't be a beat up bit of plywood laid across some half-broken bricks, either.”

I LOVE the point above!!

I need the quotes in my blog so I can make sure I stay on track, so apologies if you don’t want to re-read the post, but I swear my ideas are floating around in here.

“In the years after System of Objects, Baudrillard sticks with his interest in simulation (though again, he doesn't really focus on it in those terms), and does so following two basic themes: first, the new media of television (mostly television), though all media do it in some ways, seems to increasingly speed up, copy, and generally make artificial things appear real, and second, all these theoretical models, like Marxism, are functionally critical simulations, constantly making artificial meanings appear as if they are the real meanings, and pretending to discover insight when in reality they created the model that produced the insight, so they produced more of a simulation of insight rather than anything novel.”

Media making artificial things look real. The Bachelor ring a bell? Let’s make a two week long reality show look like a long journey to finding REAL and TRUE love. Blehhh. IMPOSSIBLE. Television does a great job of editing two weeks of fakeness into a few months. Designer bags found on canal street in sketchy apartments that you are led to through a series of running and whispering (not that I’ve ever done it) simulate the look of a real Louis Vuitton purse. Class and luxury can be purchased for only $50 and the risk of being led into an alley. These are all artificial things that appear real following right along with Baudrillard’s thought. Who knew canal street, Louis Vuitton, and Baudrillard would be like peas in a pod?

With that being said I hope I have made some sense. I actually really enjoyed this post ... who knew that was possible? And now a quote that I feel sums up my explanations perfectly!

"To dissimulate is to pretend not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have what one doesn't have." -Jean Baudrillard

Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions.

In Barthes's "The Death of the Author" we learn the text exists without the author. “Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where out subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing” (Barry, 185). By this, Barthes explains that writing has no meaning, and the reader may associate the author to the text, trying to find a definite meaning with restrictions and boundaries.


Overall, the text has no one defined meaning or explanation. However, when the reader focuses on the author of the text, we add meaning behind writing that does not exist. Certain experiences of the author, such as their life history or the time period the text was written alters the affect of the text. “The image of literature to be found in ordinary culture is tyrannically centered on the author, his person, his life, his tastes, his passions while criticism still consists for the most part in saying that Baudelaire’s work is the failure of Baudelaire the man…” With this, the reader must look at the impact of the text, not the impact of the author on the text. The author or scripter has the purpose of scripting the text that is all.

Dr. Crazy, a fellow blogger brings up interesting points on this topic. “But, historically, anonymity has been about effacing one's identity even as one writes. Now, Virginia Woolf famously suggests in A Room of One's Own that "Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was a woman" (49). Maybe this is the place where the problem with distinguishing between anonymity and pseudonymity begins, as in making this claim; Woolf assigns an identity to the anonymous writer.”


With that being said, Virginia Woolf is using the assumptions she has created about the author to decide the poems are written by a woman. She is identifying the text with the idea that the author was female, altering the outcome of her experience of the text.

"But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think. "
-Lord Byron

You Probably Think This Post is About You

“There is not narcissism and non-narcissism. There are narcissisms that are more or less comprehensive, generous, open, extended. What is called non-narcissism is in general but the economy of a much more welcoming and hospitable narcissism. One that is much more open to the experience of the Other as Other. I believe that without a movement of narcissistic reappropriation, the relation to the Other would be absolutely destroyed, it would be destroyed in advance. The relation to the Other, even if it remains asymmetrical, open, without possible reappropriation, must trace a movement of reappropriation in the image of one's self for love to be possible. Love is narcissistic.” -Derrida


Watching the documentary about Derrida, he brings up interesting concepts above love. According to Derrida, love is narcissistic. Any interesting thought, yes?


Derrida goes on to explain love as something almost impossible to describe and posts the question if we love someone for who they are, or what they are. To love someone for what they are, you love the certain qualities they possess, which can mean you do not love the “whole” person, just some of what makes them up. To love someone for who they are can be considered different; as you love the entire and actual individuality of the person. In which it can be said that when love has ended, we had only loved the certain qualities of the person, not the person as a whole. This makes it possible to end such a relationship when only the qualities where liked because life can continue on without those, and can be found within someone else.

But how is this narcissistic? In a relationship full of love don’t we care unconditionally for the other person, making sure we can continue to make them happy? Don’t we go out of our way to do whatever it takes to make sure we never lose this love? But why are we doing all of this? For our own benefit. Yes, we go above and beyond to show how much we love our person, but for their sake or ours? Ours. We only are driven to act this way for our own selfish reasons. We want this love to never die, we want our lover to be happy, but only so the love we want can continue on. We may seem to be acting selfless in the name of love, but we are actually narcissistic, caring so much about what we want that we go to many lengths to secure what we want, in this case love.

We can also focus on "love at first sight". What is the basis behind or feelings towards this person? Strictly the way they look. We tell ourselves we are truly deeply in love and this person is amazing, yet the only quality we have experienced about this person is their physical appearance.

And if we dig deeper and find someone with a connection strong enough to call love, why are we in 'love'? We are in love because this person possesses qualities we like, that we want, that we are looking for. This has nothing to do with the other person. We are not falling in love with qualities we never knew existed, we are creating an ideal person in our minds, and falling in love with others we feel fit the mold.

This brings up the question, do we only ever fall in love with ourselves?

The Value of the Word

"The bond between the signifier and the signified is radically arbitrary"

-Ferdinand de Saussure

What can we make of this?
To start off, we can identify the signifier verses the signified. The signifier, being the image or sound we see or hear, and the signified being the idea or concept behind the image or sound we see or hear. You cannot have one without the other; however there is no natural relationship between the two.

In a structuralism theory, we recognize the word spoon only because we know what not a spoon is. We know a fork and knife are not spoons, so therefore a spoon must be a spoon because it is not a fork or knife. However, this language of signs is arbitrary. Why a fork and knife? Why not a straw? Anything you can think of that is not a spoon then helps you to identify a spoon, forming no relationship between the signifier and the signified.

How would this bond between the signifier and the signified work in post – structuralism?
It would not. Post – structuralism reads the text against itself as opposed to finding an outside meaning. In structuralism there is a unified system of difference; day is only day because it is not night, whereas in post – structuralism, difference is not a stable cause and will not work. Philosophy is used in post – structuralism, making the meaning unstable in itself sing no facts only interpretation, unlike structuralism.

The Cherry on TOP

Communism deprives no man of the ability to appropriate the fruits of his labour. The only thing it deprives him of is the ability to enslave others by means of such appropriations.

KARL MARX, The Communist Manifesto

Do we agree with this quote? How can we appropriate the fruits of our labour if we are allowed no recognition for our accomplishments and hard work?

Thank you Dr. Craig for such an interesting post. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your thoughts on Marxism.

Using communism as an advertising ploy does in fact "offer an example of how the ruling class appropriates those ideas which it finds most threatening."

The ruling class has now learned that instead of silencing the problem, they are able to make a commodity out of the issue. By turning communism into a product it satisfies the radical urge in consumers by displaying their rejection of capitalism by purchasing a t-shirt or poster. As a result, they are buying their values as designed by the ruling class.

Instead of the working class taking the issues to the streets in protest, they are simply satisfied by purchasing products marketed to them for that sole purpose. This in turn, keeps the oppressed quiet, and capitalism thriving. Without realizing it, this makes a mockery of the plight of the working man.

A stated, "It encourages consumers who purchase products from the store to imagine themselves as radically different from those who do not."

However, this only feeds into capitalism, making the consumer just as unoriginal as the next who gives in to this consumption.

This "ruling class ideology" does in fact exist in everyday ways of life. Clothes, literature, the media, it all supports this exact theory. The masses must realize this, and do something more about it than using consumption to express their values.