Post-structuralism: Starting Questions

What are the foundations (or centers) in your life? Are they universal foundations?

Is there any eternal Truth?

How do you describe your “self”?

Is it always possible to find out the central meaning, or unity, of the literary texts we read? On what grounds can we compare 阿甘正傳 with The Age of Innocence, 人間四月天 with 很愛很愛你 ?

Post-Structuralism & Postmodern Texts

1. Post-Structuralism Defined & Marxism vs. Post-Structuralism

2. Fiction and Reality: Examples 1: context into text, 2: life//story-telling , 3: parody 4. Other kinds of “fiction”

3. Deconstruction 4. Subject and Power

Post-Structuralism Defined

What is post-structuralism? An anti-foundationalist mode of thinking prevalent in the second half of the 20th c. Foundations:

1. Reality Representation2. Man Subject3. Truth; History; God, . . ., any kind of Tot

alization and Center. Différance and Discourse

Poststructuralism: Major Concerns

“Representation” – Re-presentation or realistic presentation

is impossible. metafiction– Meanings of a text cannot be fixed; must

be un-decidable or multiple. Deconstruction

Textualization of Knowledge, Subject and Society e.g. Foucault– Truth is provisional. – Subjects are fragmentary.– Society is a network of discourses.

Marxism vs. Post-Structuralism

1. Economic Base as Society’s Foundation

2. Class as the most important category

3. History of class struggle, or Materialist view of history

1. Society as network

2. Provisionary form

ing of group/personal identity

3. History is also a narrative.

Fiction and Reality

Fiction Reality Belief History Memory Life Identity

• Realism in novels, Historiography, memoir• Absolute truth in Religion and philosophy• Scientific knowledge in the world and self

Metafiction:

1. Discuss/expose novelistic elements or frames;

2. Undermining the “Author’s” abilities to control meanings;

3. Parody or patische

Example I:

Context (Author & Viewers) astext; the royal couple put insidethe mirror.

Las Meninas1656

Example II-1: Tristram Shandy (1759 and 1766)

Life // storytelling—telling story to prolong life Shandy on digression “Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;--they are the life, the soul of reading;--take them out of this book for instance,--you might as well take the book along with them; [...] restore them to the writer;--he steps forth like a bridegroom,--bids All hail; brings in variety, and forbids appetite to fail.” (95)

Example II-2: The French Lieutenant’s Woman

Victorian Author-god vs. postmodern author “The freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.” The author is still a god, but no longer omniscient; freedom given through the multiple endings and leaving Sarah unknowable. Is the author free to create? Are we/the characters free to choose?

Example II-3: Six Characters in Search of an Author

How do we interpret these characters without an author or a script? Why do some characters “live eternally”? Why do they need a producer or an author if the script is in them? 1. The characters as ideas, and to “materialize” means to find embodiments in performances. 2. The characters as outcasts, and the script they want is the officially acknowledged/recognized story.

Example II-4: “Lost in the Funhouse” as a Kunstlerroman

Two major characters: Ambrose and the narrator – and maybe the two are one? main actions

1. visit of the Ocean City on the Independence day during WWII.

2. Ambrose --frustrated in seeking for his love, ends up staying in the funhouse.

3. the narrator – trying to tell a good story about it. E.g. p. 1944

“Lost in the Funhouse” chronological sequence of events:

In the car – see the Tower – arriving at the Ocean City – boardwalk – invitation of Magda -- FunhouseThe structure of the story: part I: 1st paragraph (present tense) part II: chronological part III: pp. 1939 Ambrose and the narrator lost in the Funhouse part IV: pp. 1974- entrance part V: pp. 1949 after exposition; summary of the story and possible endings

The story as a Kunstlerroman

Ambrose’ personality: p. 1937, p. 1939 highly sensitive and shy; not able to express his love; different from the other kidshis detachment 1943; 1948his experience in the funhouse 1949his becoming a funhouse maker

“funhouse” and life

Labyrinth structure caused by narrative intrusions (about italics, names, description, metaphoric description, plot) and confusion of plot-linesthe historical relevance: WW II and independence day pp. 1940; 1944possible endings and what they mean

Example III Parody and Re-interpretation (1): Daffodils poems

Questions:What is the poem “The Wordsworths” critical of? Who is the “we” in the poem? What is/are the target(s) of parody of “The New, Fast, Automatic Daffodils”?

Example III Parody and Re-interpretation (2): Icicle Thief (1989)

Questions:1. How is the original film, Bicycle Thieves,

changed? Why is the focus shifted from the bicycle to the chandelier?

2. How is the director presented in the film?3. How are the two families presented in

the film? 4. What roles do the TV program host and

the commercials play in the film?

Similarities between the film and its original

Similarities: unemployment problem police inefficiency the priest helpless the children: one neglected, the other helpful. Differences: from the need of means of production to that of luxury items non-realistic; exposure of filmic frames, denial of the director’s power.

The audience

The TV station

The commercials

BT Film

Example III: Icicle Thief Examples of the fictional frames/context Exposed:

(Transition: 1. Blackout, 2. Lake, 3. Train, 4. ? )

Breaking the frames: 1. A character in the commercial.2. Bruno’s seeing the audience boy.3. The mother and the son. 4. The Director

The Director, Nichetti, in the film

A. caricaturedB. signed the release: treated as a puppetC. Goes into the film to change the plot: The plot – father handicapped, mother

becomes a whore, and the kid sent to an orphanage.

“In my film, there are no jails, no lawyers.”

The two families in Icicle Thief

in the film within the film:

Antonio Maria Bruno and the baby

outside the film Father --newspaperMother – food and

phoneSon – building

blocks Daughter –remote

control

The role of the bicycle? And Chandelier?-ridden by the mother, thrown aside, sold-for sports

Interruptions of the Commercials

detergent and happy housewives superman Big Big Liquor

Example IV-1: Collage and other kinds of “fiction”

Mary Beth Edelson, Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper, 1971.

Example IV-2: Collage and other kinds of “fiction”

Marisol, by La Visita, 1964

Example IV-3: other kinds of “fiction”

Fiction Narratives (novel, history, life story)Virtual reality cyber space commercial world machines and cyborgSimulation Politics

Reality? Bodily/emotional Experie

nce, Memory, Historical Facts, Identity