'It is through interpretation that teachers attempt to transmit cultural values, but...'

On Interpretation and Beyond! | Culler

To Nietzsche, there aren’t facts but only interpretations! Well, he calls it perspectivism, by which he connotes to say that, since perception, experience, and reason change according to the viewer’s relative perspective and interpretation, there is no objective reality that is free from ‘perspective’ or ‘interpretation’!

Susan Sontag’s seminal 1966 essay titled, “Against Interpretation,” is an admonition for all those interpretations on art! And hence her famous dictum that, interpretation had become ‘the intellect's revenge upon art.’

Jonathan Culler, in his profound book titled, The Pursuit of Signs, posits the need to go beyond interpretation. His opening essay to the book is quite an eye-opener of sorts!

To Culler, the nuanced exercise of criticism has a strategic place in the production of literary tradition, but that does not mean that it should dominate literary studies.

He is of the opinion that,

Readers will continue to read and interpret literary works, and interpretation will continue in the classroom, since it is through interpretation that teachers attempt to transmit cultural values, but critics should explore ways of moving beyond interpretation. E. D. Hirsch, for many years a leading champion of interpretation, has reached the conclusion that criticism should no longer devote itself to the goal of producing ever more interpretations: ‘A far better solution to the problem of academic publishing would be to abandon the idea that has dominated scholarly writing for the past forty years: that interpretation is the only truly legitimate activity for a professor of literature. There are other things to do, to think about, to write about.

And therein lies the importance of The Pursuit of Signs, which explores some of the possibilities in this direction of thinking beyond interpretation!

image: amazondotcom

The 'hows' of writing an Effective Abstract

Writing an Abstract | Tips

Those of us who are planning on writing an academic research paper might have had problems drafting the most important part of our presentation or paper, which is the drafting of an abstract. 

Well, these little guidelines would - i'm sure - help give you an outline for writing an effective abstract for a research paper.

And this could be done quite easily by plotting them using the ‘4E’ approach!

And remember, an abstract need not exceed 300 words (maximum)!

They are –

Firstly, Establish the problem clearly!

Secondly, Explain the structure of your paper!

Thirdly, Elaborate on the methodology that you are going to use! (define and justify)

Finally, Emphasise on the importance of this contribution!

Best wishes!

image: ucanwestdotca

We ‘misrepresent the world in ideology’ because we want to do so, because there is some reward or benefit to us in doing so!'

You've Got Mail | As an Example of a Product of Mass Culture

Any discussion on ideology would sure prove grossly inadequate and incomplete without invoking the name of the awesome Althusser!

And any discussion on Althusser would possibly allude much to his student Foucault too! And for added info, it would do well to remember that Macherey, whose Theory of Literary Production we’d discussed in our previous post was also an admirer and devoted student of Althusser!

I should also add to say that it was Louis Althusser who was quite instrumental in reconstructing and reinterpreting the legendary Marx for the lay soul, the literary soul, and the philosophical soul alike, with such simple and refined elegance! 

One reason why, one of his most celebrated of essays, titled, ‘Ideological State Apparatuses’, (1969) elaborates much on the Marxist conception of ideology! This essay also bespeaks to how ideology interpellates individuals as human subjects!

[Well, in his extended notes to the concept of Agency, in an invaluable reference tool titled, Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts, Bill Ashcroft has given us the three chief means by which human subjectivity is constructed. I quote Bill: ‘human subjectivity is constructed by ideology (Althusser), language (Lacan), or discourse (Foucault), the corollary is that any action performed by that subject must also be to some extent a consequence of those things!]

So now let’s begin with Althusser!

‘Althusser’s most influential contribution to literary and cultural studies has been his theory of ideology’, says Luke Ferretter!

And this Althusserian concept of ideology is first explicated in Althusser’s essay, ‘Marxism and Humanism’, published in the year 1963. In this essay he defines ideology as, ‘a system of representations, (images, myths, ideas or concepts, depending on the case) endowed with a historical existence and a role within a given society'.

Giving below, Ferretter’s take on ideology from Althusser’s perspective, for y’all –

Here goes Ferretter –

Althusser means that ideology is primarily the kind of discourse that we do not consciously appropriate for ourselves, rationally judging it to be true. It is not the kind of discourse to which, having critically reflected upon it, a person makes a conscious act of assent. Rather, ideology comprises the stream of discourses, images and ideas that are all around us all the time, into which we are born, in which we grow up, and in which we live, think and act.

Ferretter continues –

The messages of the advertisements by which we are constantly surrounded, for example – the images of a healthy family relationship, of a mother’s role, appearance, weight, hairstyle, reading matter, interests, and so on, of the ideal male and female bodies, of the ideal clothes, lifestyle, home, eating habits, entertainments, of the way in which we are supposed to think, look, and want – all these are examples of ideology in Althusser’s sense. It comes to us primarily in the form of obviousness – common sense, popular opinion, what everybody thinks, what we take for granted.

Continues Ferretter, Western culture is better than Muslim culture; people should get married and have children, especially women; the British are fundamentally decent, tolerant people; hard work brings success. All these assumptions, insofar as they remain assumptions, rather than becoming objects of critical reflection, are examples of the kind of sub-conscious conceptual framework that constitutes ideology.

To Althusser then, says Ferretter, ‘ideology is the way in which people understand their world!’ Or in other words, ‘the set of discourses in whose terms we understand our experience – it constitutes the world of our experience, our ‘world’ itself’.

And he opines that we ‘misrepresent the world in ideology’ because we want to do so, because there is some reward or benefit to us in doing so! A general does not send his men out to die for their country, without firmly believing that it is their duty to do so!

Ferretter is awesome for me, on many counts! He applies Althusser’s theory of ideology for the study of culture, and how! ;-)

Follow the storyline now, to know howww and the wowww of it all!  

Let’s for a moment, get back on track to memory lane, down the days, down a time travel of two decades ago, when the romcom You’ve Got Mail hit our silver screens! Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were the vibrant pair who made such an impact on their roles as Kathleen and Joe! ain’t they!

Well, Ferretter takes up this movie as an example of a ‘product of mass culture’, in which, a representation of an imaginary relationship to real conditions of existence is offered to the reader.

‘Tolstoy’s silences are eloquent’!!!

Interpretive Criticism | An Ideological Fallacy

In the previous blogpost we discussed on a few salients pertaining to ‘consciousness as a social product,’ and how all the literary, cultural and artistic output of a given society, are manifestations of the ‘forms of consciousness’ that’s determined by the given society’s relation to the ‘means of production’; or in other words, how they are all aspects to its ideological conditioning!

This post intends to give an overview of Pierre Macherey’s seminal work titled, A Theory of Literary Production (1966) in which he vouches to this aspect of a literary text as a ‘creation’ of its forms of consciousness or ideological conditioning of which it is a part of!

That said, there are lots of commonalities, similarities and convergences between Gerard Genette’s ‘Structuralism and Literary Criticism’ and Pierre Macherey’s A Theory of Literary Production, but just a cursory look into their hypotheses would give out the proverbial ‘chalk and cheese!’

To Genette, then, Structuralist criticism purposes or proposes to form a poetics or a theory for a scientific study of literature, through a study of literary works. Macherey also in like fashion, advocates the formulation of a scientific theory of literature, and thereby proposes a scientific literary criticism!

However, Macherey’s text takes a sharp detour from thence on, and goes ahead to contest the claims of literary critics who cry on rooftops that the function of the critic is to explicate with finesse the meaning inherent within a text!

To Macherey, since all literary and cultural output are manifestations of the ideology or the forms of consciousness of a given society, if a literary critic has to produce authentic, genuine knowledge concerning a literary work, [and not an ideological misrepresentation of it,] she should avoid the ‘interpretive fallacies’ that have been, by default, the staple of such readings!

To put it short, interpretive criticism is in essence a misnomer or an ideological fallacy!

Because, to Macherey, a literary work is NOT the creation of an individual author! [Don’t you see the savour and the flavour of Structuralism here?] On the other hand, a literary work is an ‘ideological product’ ‘created’ out of a socially determined methodology of production!

‘The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles!'

The Mirage of Individual Freedom | Marx & Engels

Consciousness, is a ‘social product,’ according to Marx and Engels!

If consciousness is indeed a ‘social product,’ then it goes without saying that, all the literary, cultural and artistic output of a given society, are manifestations of the ‘forms of consciousness’ that’s determined by the given society’s relation to the ‘means of production’; or in other words, they are all aspects to its ideology!

And since this relation to the ‘means of production’ has almost always been one of domination and exploitation, Marx and Engels point out in The Communist Manifesto that, ‘The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles’.

Therefore, ideology, which includes all the literary, cultural and artistic output of a given epoch, is in actuality a set of discourses whose sole objective and purpose is to maintain the position of the powerful, or the elite or the ruling class’s status quo!

Take for example the ideology of ‘freedom,’ which the duo discuss in their discourses!

Although a great value was attributed to the concept of individual liberty, equality, freedom and fraternity to mid-nineteenth century in England, the duo strongly beg to differ.

Cos they feel that, this concept of ‘individual freedom’ that was ‘propagated’ during the times of the industrial revolution, was in actuality a mirage-o-mirage! Since this ‘individual freedom’ was the sole preserve and the regal recline of the dominant classes alone! Or to be specific, the industrial capitalists!

For all the pavapetta labourers or the proletariat who worked for the dominant classes, their freedom was of a different kind altogether! Their freedom was a ‘restricted freedom’ of sorts!

They could either accept to work for very low wages, under harsh conditions, for long hours without number, or face the music - prefer to starve and to die! This was their limited ‘choice of freedom’ given to them! Hence the ‘individual freedom’ celebrated by the dominant class was always conditioned by the ‘capitalist ideology’!

As such, there wasn’t a ‘real freedom,’ real liberty or real equality of any sorts!

That’s why in The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels point out this bitter truth about freedom, that,

‘Your very ideas are but the growth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property’.

Capitalism then, according to Marx, dehumanized humans!

'As individuals express their life, so they are.'

Marx & Engels | Materialist Conception of History 

In continuation of our discussion on ideology, we shall pitstop next on the immensely popular book, The German Ideology, authored jointly by Marx and his intellectual friend Engels!

Well, in this book Marx and his intellectual companion of more than four decades – Engels, postulate a ‘new world-view,’ which according to them would be the ‘materialist conception of history’!

Why-o-why do they suggest a new world-view that focuses on the materialist conception of history?

Yes! A materialist conception of history chiefly because, both of them strongly felt the need for people to be liberated from the material conditions in which they live!

And this is exactly the point of contention between the duo and the Young Hegelians! While the Young Hegelians believed that the lives of people can be changed for the better by impacting a change in their thoughts and ideas, the duo beg to differ!

The duo strongly believe that, since it is the material conditions in which people live that shapes every aspect of their lives, change was needed first and foremost in the material conditions in which they lived!

As they themselves put it,

In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process.

Then they proceed to outline the first premises of the Materialist Method!

The first premise of all human history is of course, the existence of living human individuals. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce! The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.

Distribution of Labour, according to Marx and Engels has a debilitating effect on the human being!

On the Capitalist Ideology surrounding Christmas!!! - A Rejoinder!

On Capitalist Ideology | A Rejoinder

This post is partly a response to a gmail I received from a kinda warm and enthusiastic reader from Bengaluru. The post had her bothered much, and after doing a very balanced critique of the post, she then proceeded to ask me, as to why of all festivals, did i have to take up Christmas for a tool of the Capitalist ideology? ;-)

It's like asking Actor Ajith why-o-why he acted in Nerkonda Parvai!?

So well, it's the need of the hour, should i say! 

As Tagore beautifully puts it, the need of the hour is to, 'strike at the root of penury in my hearts'! Penury here could connote to mean the loads and loads of ignorance as regards 'ideological conditioning' into which we have been so luxuriously and regally ensconced all this long!

Still, I don’t have simple elucidations as answers for this thoughty question! I’m giving her a lengthy answer via email. But for readers here in general, a brief one! 

But let's also remember that, nowhere else is this ideological conditioning of a 'capitalist enterprise' so overtly rampant and manifest than in the 'capitalist ideology' that surrounds Christmas. And hence the connect! And pray, it’s not me, folks, it’s Sheila Whitely who had written this massive book on the Capitalist Ideology surrounding Christmas!

Lemme give you an example!

We all would very delightfully remember and enthusiastically recollect with such regal relish, from the time we were paapas, [kids] Sachin Tendulkar and Shahrukh Khan being brand ambassadors for the famed Pepsi ad in the late 1990s. Well, these two greats were paid in crores for being brand ambassadors for Pepsi, we were told.

Or coming quite nearer to our times, we all haven't sure forgotten the famous case involving Actor Kajal Aggarwal who filed a case in the High Court of Madras against VVD Coconut oil just a couple of years back! According to the actress, the company was bound to use her promo-ad only for a period of one year, but they seem to have violated it and continued to use it even beyond 2008, she averred, and hence demanded a whopping Rs 2.5 crores as compensation from VVD owners.

The point here is, VVD makes use of Kajal’s celebrity status and popularity, as brand value to promote their product, and for a whopping premium! Pepsi makes use of celebrity icons Sachin and Shahrukh as brand ambassadors because of their celebrity status, again for a whopping price!

How does a Capitalist Ideology Work?

Capitalist Ideology | How it Works!

Ideology affects the way we view the world [or] reality!

In continuation of our discussion on capitalist ideology, let’s now look at the strategies by which capitalist ideology indoctrinates and conditions our societies!

Well, any capitalist ideology is made up of three postulates –

They are –

First and foremost, it’s made up of exploitation!

Secondly, it’s made up of exploitation!

Thirdly, it’s made up of exploitation!

Indeed these three are the conditioning postulates of any Capitalist ideology! ;-)

And why does the Capitalist ideology revel in exploitation?

Quite simple! It’s again for the sake of three salient reasons –

They are –

First and foremost, for profit!

Secondly, for profit!

Thirdly, for profit!

Wherever we have goods and products that are produced and sold for the sake of making a profit, without a doubt, and quite obviously, Capitalism would be there! And wherever there is capitalism, there is her twin sister, exploitation!

And wherever there is exploitation, there is suffering!

In this case, the working class were exploited and so they suffered untold hardships! In short, they did not have a voice for themelves! Or even if they had, their voices weren’t heard!

This is exactly the issue that Engels discusses with such intrinsic detail in his first ever book titled, The Condition of the Working Class in England, which was published in German in 1844 and translated into English in 1887.

Karl Marx met up with Engels for the first time in 1844, and highly appreciated him for having dealt with the issues and the conditions of the working class, the proletariat in the book! The book assumes added significance because it was written between the years 1842 and 1844, when Friedrich Engels was in Manchester, a city that was the hotbed of the Industrial Revolution!

How a 'Capitalist Ideology' helped shaped Christmas for the Proletariat!

Ideology | Illustrated!!!

In continuation of our discussion on ideology, on how the dreaded ‘i’ word has succeeded in so skillfully concealing or masking or hiding or distorting the truth and the reality from the pavapetta proletariat or the powerless, let us move on to specific illustrations of the same!

Well, as a foreword, let me add here that, some of the things that we discuss on ideology here, may swaing go against established conventions, against the grain, and so let me also remind you that, we do theory, not to rock our boats, but to capsize them! ;-)

To turn turtle our boats, or in other words, to topple our boats a dam damaal full 360 degrees, so that we come to know and to feel and to enjoy an alternate reality, a beautiful reality, a better reality that lies outside our blinkered, tinkered boats, the blinkered boats of religion, caste, race, and colour that have poisoned our pavapetta minds from seeing the humaneness within humans or the warm personality within a person!  

As an example of how ideology operates, let us herewith discuss the manipulative forms of ‘ideology’ that have been subtly woven into the fabric of Christmas celebrations all over the world!

Well, let’s just discuss in brief two important points here!

First of all, how many of us know that the colour red in Santa Claus’s suit is only because of a hugely successful advertising campaign for Coca-Cola that featured a big Father Christmas wearing red robes with a white trim, the soft drink's colours?

Well, before 1930, Santa was depicted as everything from a tall gaunt man to a spooky-looking elf! In 1930, artist Fred Mizen painted a department-store Santa in a crowd drinking a bottle of Coke. The ad featured the world's largest soda fountain, which was located in the department store Famous Barr Co. in St. Louis! Mizen's painting was used in print ads that Christmas season, appearing in The Saturday Evening Post in December 1930. [These are the Company’s own words, btw]!

And hence, Santa Claus transformed in our minds and hearts, from a lean and lanky weirdo into the image of a warm, friendly, pleasantly plump and humane Santa, whom we all very 'fondly' call Christmas thatha! [Christmas grandpa!] Something similar to the ones you find going around homes and institutions, with chocolates and gifts and a thoppai (paunch) included, during Christmas carols, come the annual Christmas time!

And that explains how the corporates or the capitalists have conditioned our religious rituals, and our culture, and thereby our realities for us all! How powerfully they have indoctrinated our festivals, our rituals and our celebrations a full 360 degrees, ain’t they?

Therein lies the power of ideology, ladies and gentlemen, where the distortion is so subtle that the pavapetta proletariat, don’t even realize that they have been tricked or manipulated!

So whenever you see a guy wearing a plump, rounded thoppai-donning Santa Claus in red attire, remember you have been indoctrinated by a Coca-cola-nised corporate ideology! And wait, I ain’t telling you these 'legendary' stuff! It’s there for y’all in the coca-cola company’s website itself for y'all to see! 

Secondly, how many of us know that, the concept of Christmas as a day of grand festivities is an invention of the Victorian urban middle classes? And that this invention was meant to be a celebration of their struggle for hegemony? 

Sheila Whitely says that, Christmas was invented by the Victorian urban capitalist fiefdom as a celebration of their triumph and their prosperity and of their profits made possible by the industrial revolution! Shocking ain't it?

She adds to say that, these urban Victorian elite slowly and subtly passed on to their poor counterparts, the pavapetta proletariat, who succumbing to their wiles, and to this ‘invention’ of Christmas, were forced to dole out all their year’s earnings and savings on Christmas decorations and ‘celebrations’ when the Christ whom they celebrate, as they all know, fully well, was born in a lowly stable or a manger! [a maatu thozhuvam], light years away from the Victorian invention or conception of Christmas!

Professor Sheila Whiteley would then be our launchpad into this example on how these ideologies successfully create a false consciousness and condition and operate our Christmases for us all, annually!

And well, her groundbreaking book that uncovers the ideology hidden behind Christmas festivities, titled, Christmas, Ideology and Popular Culture, is such a revelatory read of sorts!

As I’ve said earlier, our posts here on ideology are not meant to rock our boats, but to overturn them a full 360 degrees! ;-)

Cos the truth may sometimes be bitter! Whereas distortions and masks of the truth would always seem better!

Well, coming back, Sheila Whiteley observes that, for the many, Christmas is an unavoidable expense, one which emphasises giving, but at a cost, as child-centred advertising creates often unrealisable expectations!

The letter to Santa is quickly superseded by a list which not only details the identified gift but also the comparative price offered by catalogues and relevant stores.

The emphasis on harmony, hearth and home versus the bleakness of the outside world is ideologically powerful. For those without families, Christmas is all too often a time of acute loneliness, Sheila quips!

It is also evident that the demands of conspicuous consumption, fed by a diet of advertisements and a heavily depleted cash card, highlight the problems associated with low-income families!

Meanwhile, the ‘construction’ of Christmas in the media often implies that its readers/viewers recognise that commercial interests override any real commitment to universal goodwill!

Sheila continues,

More recently, as George McKay observes, iconic advertising figures like the Coca-Cola Santa and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer have generated a global appeal which includes such Communist countries as China and Cuba, so providing a uniquely rich focal point for the study of popular culture and its relationship to ideology.

The topics explored in Christmas, Ideology and Popular Culture relate to major issues concerning cultural activity (watching Christmas films, television, listening or engaging with popular music and carols), its relationship to a set of basic values (the idealised construct of the family), social relationships (community) and the way in which ideological discourses are used and mobilised, providing insights into how the themes surrounding Christmas are constructed (in the media, films, cartoons and music) through an often idealised nostalgia for the past!!!

For media studies, the case studies offer a compelling account of how Christmas is shaped by the media, by the Corporate giants, and how this relates to social change and how it influences the public perception of the festival.

John Storey’s opening feature article in this book, proves the real icing on the cake!

It takes the reader back to the 1840s, presenting a critical exploration of ‘The Invention of the English Christmas’ by the Victorian urban elite!

In their struggle for hegemony and domination over the pavapetta proletariat, Christmas was intended as both a celebration of the prosperity made possible by the achievements of the Industrial Revolution, and a recognition of the need to ‘exhibit’ that prosperity with those for whom industrialization and urbanisation had not been an unqualified success. ‘If what was invented was commercial out of instinct, it was charitable out of a sense of fear and guilt’!

Deivameyyy! Rakshikaneyyy!

Sheila continues...

The text at the heart of this aspect of the invention of the ‘traditional’ English Christmas is Charles Dickens’s ‘utopian’ novel A Christmas Carol (1843). The story of Scrooge is a clear warning to the class he represents: share prosperity or face destruction. Even so, Dickens’s emphasis is on charity rather than fundamental social change; charity relieves suffering, but what it does not do is change the causes of suffering.

Rather it is a temporary redistribution of wealth, which works to safeguard the hierarchies of wealth.

While the first two chapters focus on the Victorian English Christmas, George McKay turns his attention to the US, where the historical antecedents of Christmas advertising show that, as long ago as the mid-nineteenth century, a Father Christmas-style character had been employed for seasonal marketing. 

‘Consumption, Coca-colonisation, cultural resistance – and Santa Claus’ takes the reader back to Philadelphia where, ‘in 1841, a performer dressed as a character named “Criscringle” publicised a local store’s merchandise to passers-by.

So yup! whenever you see a person dressed as Santa up street, giving you gifts and candies, please rise up in unison to say, ‘Forgive them, Lord, for they know not, what they do!’!!! ;-) 

Cos this is exactly the point where capitalist ideology has succeeded amazingly over all and sundry, to the extent that any Christmas ain't gonna be complete without Santa!

Sheila Whitely continues -

Santa Claus then, became a standardised visual amalgamation – white, white beard, portly, jolly, wearing an identifiable fur or fur-trimmed uniform – developed through the century. It was this image that was most famously exploited by the Coca-Cola Company from the early 1930s on, in the corporate company colours of red and white, as part of its campaign to increase winter sales of its soft drink’.

The most successful of the Coca-Cola Santas was introduced in 1931 by commercial illustrator Haddon Sundblom, and in 1939 the dominance of Christmas within the American seasonal marketplace was confirmed by the introduction of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as a marketing tool by the Chicago-based department store chain Montgomery Ward. The subsequent song, ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’, further popularised this new character on the home front!

The next time when you sing or listen to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, don’t fail to remember the fact that, the song was a powerful marketing strategy by a corporate giant, a capitalist, who wanted to make you consume his products through a subtle use of ideological conditioning!

Sheila Whiteley continues –

By tracing ways in which iconic advertising figures like the Coca-Cola Santa and Rudolph generated appeal around the globe, McKay introduces key issues surrounding the Americanisation of Christmas, and reveals how ‘external forms of American popular consumption (or the consumption of America) have inscribed within them variously power, pleasure and fear’!

Credits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhMVWzVXNNk

Terms describing the process of the consumption of export pop cultures mix critical positioning, political accusation and emotive response: ‘McDonaldisation’, ‘Disneyisation’ and, of course, ‘Coca-colonisation’. 

A question that's worth discussion here is, are we celebrating Christmas, or the Coca-cola-nised versions of Christmas, having fallen 'willing victims' to the wiles and the false consciousness and the dominant ideologies of the corporates who have been all along running and conditioning Christmas for us all!!!

So much for the ‘power’ latent within ideology to condition our lives, our rituals, and our celebrations, in every aspect of our life, all through our lives!

In the words of Carl Jung, 

Who looks outside dreams! Who looks inside awakens!

To be continued…

images: coca-coladotie, coca-colacompanydotcom, 

videos: Please do watch this video at leisure HERE