African-Canadian Literature: A-
Text, Context, Intertext: The Touch of Evil Project: A
Bibliography: A-
I felt kind of depressed yesterday, but I did lay down the Race and Cinema presentation. I guess it went okay, though I was asked a question about Louis Althusser that made me realize I don't really know shit about him.
From Wikipedia: Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation: altuˡseʁ) (October 16, 1918 – October 22, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser was a lifelong member and sometimes strong critic of the French Communist Party. His arguments and theses were set against the threats that he saw attacking the theoretical foundations of Marxism. These included both the influence of empiricism on Marxist theory, and humanist and reformist socialist orientations which manifested as divisions in the European Communist Parties, as well as the problem of the 'cult of personality' and of ideology itself. Althusser is commonly referred to as a Structural Marxist, although his relationship to other schools of French structuralism is not a simple affiliation and he is critical of many aspects of structuralism.
Although Althusser's theories were born of an attempt to defend what some saw as Communist orthodoxy, his manner of presenting Marxism reflected a move away from the intellectual isolation of the Stalinist era - Althusser argued strongly for what he called a left-wing rather than liberal or reformist critique of Stalinism - and furthermore was symptomatic both of Marxism's growing academic respectability and of a push towards emphasising Marx's legacy as a philosopher rather than as an economist.
Althusser has had broad influence in the areas of Marxist philosophy and post-structuralism: Interpellation has been popularised and adapted by the feminist philosopher and critic Judith Butler; the concept of Ideological State Apparatuses has been of interest to Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek; the attempt to view history as a process without a subject garnered sympathy from Jacques Derrida; historical materialism was defended as a coherent doctrine from the standpoint of analytic philosophy by G. A. Cohen; the interest in structure and agency sparked by Althusser was to play a role in Anthony Giddens's theory of structuration; Althusser was vehemently attacked by British historian E. P. Thompson in his book The Poverty of Theory.
Anyway, if you ever need an explanation of Jacques Lacan's mirror stage theory, especially how it applies to cinema studies, I've worked out a handy diagram that I drew on the board before my presentation.
Good old Wikipedia: The mirror test is a measure of self-awareness developed by Gordon Gallup Jr. in 1970. The test gauges self-awareness by determining whether an animal can recognize its own reflection in a mirror as an image of itself. Animals that have passed the mirror test are all of the great apes (humans, bonobos, chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas), Bottlenose dolphins, elephants, rats, octopuses, and rhesus monkeys. Initially, it was thought that gorillas do not pass the test, but there are now several well-documented reports (such as one gorilla, Koko) of gorillas passing the test. Human children tend to fail this test until they are at least 1.5 to 2 years old (mirror stage). Dogs, cats and 1 year old children, for example, usually react to a mirror in fear or curiosity, or simply ignore it, while birds often attack their own reflections. Capuchin monkeys react to their reflection either with hostility or affection but there is no conclusive evidence that they recognize themselves in the mirror as opposed to believing their reflection is another capuchin monkey.
Speaking of animals, I made a lolcat:
I hope we learned something today.
Today I'm putting together a list of work to do on my five-day weekend, and then I'll start chipping away. I'm seeing Kurt Cobain About a Son at 9 with Dru. Really looking forward to it.
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