1.3 Consider the following: “first of all, there is a property of behaviour that could hardly be more basic and is, therefore, often overlooked: behaviour has no opposite. In other words, there is no such thing as a non-behaviour… one cannot notbehave. Now… if all behaviour… is communication, it follows that no matter how hard one may try, one cannot notcommunicate.� Explain

 


by doing nothing I still exude an aura. I agree that we cannot not behave. As I sit and do “nothing� I am doing something. Nothing is something so to speak. My behaviour is always feeding someone, I guess in my colloquial speak, my aura is vibes, good vibes, bad vibes, a sixth sense maybe.


So to take behaviour at face value, stripping it of any definitive divisions of different behaviours (learned in psychology class or whatnot) would be to see me as I am. Or it could be me in a yoga class having a bad class. My yoga teacher always exists the class saying thank you fo sharing your energy with me today, nemeste. And we reply: nemeste. This energy we share is our behaviour. And I guess I become a message. I communicate something, even if I’m not trying or wanting to. The receiver may choose to look at me at a moment and get something from me, where I didn’t’ even intend for to happen. At all times I will be communicating, as long as other people are around. What if I as in a sterile room with no windows, with nothing on the walls, and alone? Now I’m digressing to existential ranting perhaps. But in all, what I do has an impact. I don’t choose to communicate, but in the presence of other people, I will be sending out a message with my presence, there is no non-behaviour because I am a medium. I carry messages, signs on me, my looks, my clothes, if I was naked, people would read into that in many different ways, my race, my smell, my aura.  

EMILY GAN (who is aweseom)

i think that's a really interesting way to frame it but there's also the fact that even alone we are communicating with OURSELVES. our body communicates with it's different parts, and we're even communicating with the innanimate objects around us.

THomas Sebeok says that communication "can be regarded as the transmission of any influence from one part of a living system to another part, thus producing change."

"the intricate interplay of nucleic acid and protein, the essence of life on earth, provieds a prototypical model for all life forms on earth."

if you are sleeping you are communicating tha tyou are asleep. dead/dead.

communication DOES NOT have to mean MESSAGES.

(sorry if that sucks, it's a weird question and you can probably just ocme up with something holistic for your answer)

jer
posted by Jer Clarke at 5:14 PM

2.5 How would you apply our readings and discussions over the last three months, to recent media coverage of the "war" in Iraq? Please make specific reference to concepts we have discussed.

Essay skeleton:

Thesis: John Fiske identified two main streams of communications theory, the Process School and the Semiotics School, both of which can be applied to recent media coverage of the "war" in Iraq.

Argument 1: The Process School relates to recent war coverage.

Proof 1: The Process School is rooted in war. It was created during the second world war to discover how to use channels of communication most efficiently (radio, television). War made communication important and forced it to evolve.

Proof 2: As communications technology has evolved, war coverage has changed. We can now see war as it occurs (live via satellite), without the worry of overloading the channels of communication.

Proof 3: There are issues of semantic errors (e.g. translation errors) in the recent war in Iraq (whether intended or not) that can exploit the Iraqi side of the story in the media. Level B Noise (distortion in meaning) is evident.

Argument 2: The Semantics School is related to recent war coverage.

Proof 1: The Semantics School is less concerned with the sender, more interested in the way readers interpret signs. So, unlike the process school, it is less concerned with the media and more with people's reaction to it.

Proof 2: Recent media coverage of the war in Iraq has been important in the changed signification of signs; e.g. Signifier: a person of Arab descent. Signified: the idea of a terrorist. OR, Signifier: Saddam Hussein. Signified: "evil doer"...etc.

These examples are from an American perspective, and an Iraqi perspective would undoubtably oppose them.



Notes on the Process and Semiotic Schools of Communications Theory

The two main streams of communications theory as identified by John Fiske:


Process School: communications in a specific way; a transmission of messages—senders/receivers, encoding/decoding. Media of communication concerned with efficiency.

Defines communication as how one person relates to and affects the behaviour/state of mind of another.

Says that a message is that which is transmitted by the communication process.

War was the root of the process school. Its main concern during the second world war was how to use the channels of communication most efficiently (radio, television).

War made communication important and forced it to evolve.

Levels of errors:

Technical Problems: problems of form (interference, something inverted in message)

Semantic Problems: problems of content (unable to define what you mean, translation problems, lack of specifics)

Effectiveness Problems: ambiguity.

Noise: anything added to a signal between transmission and reception, not intended by the source (sender).

Level A Noise: easy to deal with, technically fixable.

Level B Noise: any kind of distortion in meaning of communication.

Noise is defeated by redundancy in the process school.

An encoder (artist, preacher, politician) breathes redundancy into a message through focusing on an audience. Communication, being understood, sending an effective (technically and semantically whole) message.


Semiotic School: production of meanings more concerned with messages ‘texts’ that interact with each other or people to create meanings. Meaning, signification, texts, misunderstanding, can result from different/interesting things.

Study of texts and culture drawing from linguistics, philosophy, the arts, anthropology.

Defines communication as that which constitutes an individual as part of a culture.

Says that the message is that construction of signs through which people interact to produce meanings.

Shifts away from concern with the sender, more interested with readers- how people interpret signs.

Sausseure said that signs are made up of the signifier and the signified.

Signifier: stop sign

Signified: the idea of stopping.

The relationship between the signifier and the signified is ARBITRARY. There is no natural connection.

Sign- similarity -> an ICON (bears resemblance to its object)

Sign- contiguity (connected) -> INDEX (link between sign and object, e.g. Smoke to Fire.)

Sign- conventional -> SYMBOL (people agree that they are held together. Habit ties some words to some things, connection is created by convention, they are arbitrary.

Signs are usually mixed, so something can be more than JUST an index or symbol or icon, it can be all of them at once.



posted by Jer Clarke at 3:36 PM

2.1 the documentary seeing is believing could be viewed as a set of working examples of mechel de certeau's notions of MAKING DO. tactics and strategy. discuss de certeau's text in relation to this film. if you didni't attend the class when this film was screened it is available at the library.

De Certeau sees ordinary people as developing 'tactics' (an 'art of the weak') that he contrasts with the 'strategies' of the dominant élite, tactics for carrying out 'raids' on the dominant culture. 'Strategies' are used by total institutions such as the army, cities, supermarket chains to create and delimit their own place. Tactics are the response of the powerless. De Certeau sees ordinary people as 'poachers', pinching the meanings they need from the cultural commodities which are offered to them.


DeCerteau's ideas in this book primarily deal with control and resistance: he finds that average people have developed various strategies that establishes their independence in a world that seeks to dominate them


In order to highlight the differences in the ways of operating of the 'strong' and of the 'weak' he distinguishes betweenstrategies and tactics. Strategies command a place of their own which serves as the basis for generating relations with an exterior distinct from it. They belong to a subject of will and power (for instance an enterprise, a city, a scientific institution) which has been separated from an 'environment'. In contrast, a tactic is a calculus of force-relationships which cannot count on a spatial or institutionalized localization. It operates within the place of the other, without taking it over in its entirety. According to De Certeau, a strategy is the victory of space over time, whereas a tactic depends on time: it depends on 'opportunities' which have to be seized, that is propitious moments when the agent, combining heterogeneous data into an intellectual synthesis, takes a decision of what to do and how to do it (De Certeau 1984:xix). Being dependent on time, subversive tactics are characterized by a degree of uncertainty and indeterminancy. In addition, tactics, when perceived as a kind of 'improvisations', seem to carry in them a greater capacity for (gradual) innovation of normative social order, because they - operating on the 'fringes' of this order - reshuffle and recombine heterogeneous elements of culture.

(this is on the video we saw in class)

nadaa baqui
posted by Jer Clarke at 2:27 PM

Question 2.4: outline the differences and similarities of the semiotic theories of de Saussure and C.S. Pierce. Apply your understanding of these differences and similarities to a specific media example.

Guys please don’t hesitate to comment or add anything, im really insecure about this answer to be honest, so don’t be shy to give me some feedback!!! Email: tanyafa@hotmail.com

Semiotics is the study of signs and signifying practices, it is largely the creation of the SWISS LINGUIST FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE AND THE AMERICAN PRAGMATIST CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE. Independently, they worked to better understand how certain structures were able to produce meaning rather than work on the traditional matter of meaning itself.

Saussure's work on semiotics is better known, and he argued that there was no inherent or necessary relationship between that which carries the meaning (THE SIGNIFIER, usually a word or symbol) and the actual meaning which is carried (THE SIGNIFIED). For example, the word "car" is not actually a car - the meaning of car could be carried by any random string of letters. It just so happens that, in English, that meaning is carried by the letter c-a-r.

Peirce's ideas about semiotics distinguished between THREE TYPES OF SIGNS: ICON, INDEX AND SYMBOL.

ICONS: these actually resemble the things they refer to (e.g., a photographic image or an ISOTYPE pictograph)
INDEXES (or indices): these "point to," or result from, something else (e.g., forensic evidence, a signature, a brushstroke, a scent, a sound)
SYMBOLS: these are entirely culturally determined (e.g., red rose = love)

For Pierce, whether a sign belongs in one category or another is dependent upon the NATURE of its relationship between the sign itself (which he called the referent) and the actual meaning. An icon is a meaning which is based upon similarity or appearance (for example, similarity in shape). In Peirce's theory the sign relation is a triadic relation, a special species of the genus: the representing relation. Whenever the representing relation has an instance, we find one thing (the "OBJECT") being represented by another thing (the "REPRESENTAMEN") to (or: in) a third thing (the "INTERPRETANT"), and represented in such a way that the interpretant is thereby determined to be also a representamen of the object to yet another interpretant in the representation relation. OBVIOUSLY, PEIRCE'S DEFINITION ENTAILS THAT WE HAVE AN INFINITE SEQUENCE OF REPRESENTAMENS OF AN OBJECT WHENEVER WE HAVE ANY ONE REPRESENTAMEN.

For Saussure, whether a sign belongs in one category or another is dependent upon the DIFFERENCE of its relationship between every other sign that exists. A sign means something because it IS NOT another sign. He also came up with the Positive and Negative value theory where in the negative value, something has meaning or value because it is NOT something else within a system or language.
According to Pierce, icons are "the only means of directly communicating an idea." An index is a meaning based upon some cause and effect relationship (for example, a weathervane carries certain meaning because of the wind): "Because the indexical sign is understood to be connected to the real object, it is capable of making that object conceptually present."

Finally, a symbol carries meaning is a purely ARBITRARY way - this is the way natural language carries meaning. Saussure's system is appropriate to language and texts, for the most part, he says that signs are arbitrary (random) because a community has agreed upon what the gesture, sound or symbol signifies. For example, there is no connection between a letter and the sound it designates.

HOWEVER, PIERCE'S HAS A WIDER APPLICATION, INCLUDING NOT JUST LANGUAGE BUT ALSO THE VISUAL ARTS.

To apply my understanding of these two theories, I will use the example of the new famous word used in the media to represent Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s relationship: the word is “Bennifer”. This word does not seem so arbitrary at this point because it is easy for one to realize that the word “bennifer” is simply the mixture of the names “Jennifer” and “Ben” to make “Bennifer”. It’s funny because this word is the mixture of their name, or the “union” of their names and its purpose is to represent the ‘union” of these two celebrities. So here is, in point form, how I would apply Saussure and Pierce’s theories on this new word in the media:

SAUSSURE:

SIGNIFIER: The actual word “Bennifer”, all those letters put together will lead to the signified.
SIGNIFIED: The union of J.Lo and Ben, their engagement and all the controversy going on in their lives that the media has access to.

This word has value because it does not represent anything else, it is NOT Justin and Britney, or Demi and Ashton, it IS J.Lo and Ben and everyone agrees upon that, so in consequence, the word “Bennifer” is used amongst the people in the media and society.

PIERCE:

ICON: The actual persons of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck or a picture of them together.
INDEXE: When we hear the word “Bennifer”, we picture them or a picture we once saw of them in a magazine.
SYMBOL: The union of the 2 celebrities, the union of their names. It symbolizes all the controversy going on in their lives that we all know about.

In addition, Pierce’s theory about “representamen”, “object” and “interpretant” is in some way similar to Saussure’s “signifier/signified” theory because the “representamen” is like the “signifier” and the “interpretant” and the “object” are together the “signified”.

In brief conclusion, Saussure and Pierce’s semiotic theories have a few similarities as well as differences. Their theories are similar because they both study the structure and the meaning of words; however they use somewhat different methods/terms to define their conclusions. But in the end, I think if Saussure and Pierce had the chance to discuss their opinions on the semiotics of signs, they would probably agree with each other more than anything.




posted by Jer Clarke at 12:48 PM

josh's answer (about choosing a text and talking about it) is really really long. so it gets it's own page.
posted by Jer Clarke at 11:12 AM

Question 1.2

Dominant/Preferred Reading:

Mainstream media outlets always have a slight bias or ‘preference’ which strongly suggests a single correct; meaning which, generally, promotes the dominant ideology.
In the case of Canadian Idol this meaning would be something along the lines of:

• It’s a competition that serves as a way of letting every man and woman across the nation who has a will to sing compete in an open forum and be judged by their peers until only one true ‘Idol’ remains.

Negotiated Reading:

A negotiated reading accept aspects of the preferred meaning but rejects others; a number of negotiated meanings can arise from a single text.

Examples of this could be:

• It’s a competition that serves as a way of letting every man and woman across the nation who has a will to sing, and fits the profile of the young attractive artist, compete in an open forum and be judged by their peers until only one true ‘Idol’ remains.

• It’s a competition that serves as a way of letting every man and woman across the nation who has a will to sing compete in an open forum and be judged by their peers until only one true ‘Idol’ remains, who can then be mass marketed to the public so as to profit the contests’ promoters.

Oppositional Reading:

Oppositional readers flatly reject the preferred meaning. They also generally tend to accept an ideologically opposite point of view.

In the case of Canadian Idol such a view would be:

• The contest serves as a talent search for money-grubbing corporate executives eager for new talent to exploit for their benefit. The “jury of their peers” only serves to guarantee that the eventual Idol will have an existing fanbase even before his record hits the market, thereby guaranteeing sales. Ugly people and those with a conscience need not apply.

kevin grumberg.

posted by Jer Clarke at 9:49 AM

2.5:

-How recent media coverage of Iraq relates to class material. The first thing I'd think of for this is the documentary we saw on handycams. There we saw (desperate) native people who could use handycams to help them get back land that may rightfully be theirs, and protect themselves from a corrupt system. It is raw, and it is intensely real. By contrast Iraq is reported on by Western journalists who leave relative safety, to film foreign war. And unlike the protagonist from the handycam thing, they are profit motivated, more on that later. We subsequently get edited, sensationalized, pre packaged reports of this. If the handycam is a tool of the people, the standard news camera is a tool of the corporate west. We get our news from profit-centric organizations. This relates to what John Fiske calls the process school. One of the three factors to gauge messages in the process school is effectiveness. But the news we see, its effectiveness is not measured based on how informed the public gets, but rather on ratings, so we must be ever skeptical of our news, as really its just there to hold our attention between advertisements. The war in Iraq does not decrease in importance, but even as the problems there are constant, coverage declines significantly when micheal jacklson needs news covergae, as not to would decrease ratings -> profits.

-We can also think about the abundant redundancy in news coverage. Especially on 24 hour news channels. Not only is the same story likely to be broadcast multiple times each day, but we even have a ticker beneath the screen, which may be reporting on the same story as is in focus at any given time. In most reports, even commonly used terms are explained if there is even a hint of complexity to them, for if not an audience member may switch to the competition, The war in Iraq has been on for how many months, and still we need to see a map of Iraq's placement in thew world almost every time it is reported on. Entropy is the enemy of any newscast, as it is always aimed at the lowest common denominator, so as not to miss anyone.

-News media is of course concerned with the viewer, so we may use the term 'Audience Centered' (used in class) to define them.

- We have 3 levels of media. Mechanical, as means of broadcast are mechanical. Representational, unless you're all sitting in the news studio. And even presentational. Anytime you see the anchor or correspondent they have facial expressions and body language that cannot be discounted. As mentioned in class these categories bleed into each other notoriously.

-Looking. Most of us get our news 'watching television. For those of you who swear by radio you can skip this point (communists…). We have the power in the relationship, because news has to ask itself how can we make them look at us. They employ a lot of ideas for that. Visual effects, good presentation, competition for exclusive stories, and of course hot news anchors. In class one pete said we live in a society that values beauty over intelligence. Full of crap, but that’s not the point. He said it, so he wants to hear it (I really hate that guy!). Seriously though, most news people are young and attractive. But if you've ever seen them try to have a decent conversation with a visiting expert, you know they weren't hired for their GPA,.

- As for how we read the news coverage well that’s dependant on your stance. Intelligent people will probably have a negotiated reading from all sides. But those with really strong beliefes may read sources more like this.

	CNN	Fox News	BBC	Al Jazeera
Moderate	Dominant	Negotiated	Negotiated	Oppositional
Liberal	Negotiated	Negotiated	Dominant	Oppositional
Conservative	Negotiated	Dominant	Negotiated	Oppositional
Saddam Sympathizer	Oppositional	Oppositional	Negotiated (as they are not too pro american)	Dominant

That’s all for me,
Jerry
posted by Jer Clarke at 11:46 PM

Communications theory
# 2.3

Merits of Process School:

Deals with the transmission of a message
Deals with senders, receivers, codes, decode efficiency and accuracy.
Analyses how one person’s behavior affects the other.
Misunderstanding in a message is bad.
Process school is about social interaction, one person relates to another, one person affects state of mind of another.
A message is that which is transmitted be communication process.
Intention: Crucial factor
Interested in what people mean in message.
Set an agenda for Communication theory.
Main concern: figure out scientifically hoe communication channels can be used
3 levels of how communication failed: Technical problems, Semiotic problems and Problems of Effectiveness
Technical: how accurately can the symbols of communication be transmitted?
Semiotic: How precisely do the transmitted symbols convey the desired message?
Effectiveness: Propaganda How it affects people.
Try to take away the problem : NOISE
Insert Redundancy: That which is predictable of conventional in a message.
3 mediums : -Presentational: Where something is present ex: dialog
Representational: Things that are not like the later ex: paintings
Mechanical: technology ex: telephone

Merits of Semiotic School:

Concerned with meaning, signification, text.
Misunderstanding is good.
Sign, Symbols, Analysis of the nature and relationship of signs in language.
Things that spark are involved in the production of meaning.
Texts
Individual as part of the culture
Not about the message but about the meaning
Declaring bond with community
Message is about the a construction of signs through which people interact to produce meaning
Sing: Something standing for something else
6 Constitutive factors of communication: (things that have to happen for communication to take place) Content, Message, Addresser, Addressee, Contact, Code.
Functions of Communication: Referential, Poetic, Emotive, Conative, Phatic, Metalingual.
Meaning does NOT reside in the message, it is in every thing else.
Answering question:

The Process school is definitely the better choice for an advertising firm. The process school is mainly concerned with the transmission of a message, the main concern for and advertising firm. As it deals with senders and receivers (The sender being the advertising firm and the receivers being the public) this school is perfectly set up to deal with ads. For the Process school misunderstanding in a message is bad, as is misunderstanding in an ad. An ad has to be very clear, simple, and redundant and void of info. (Things that are ideas from the process school) so that it is catchy and sticks with the receivers.

But the main argument for the Process school is the fact that Shannon and Wever have already set up a good theory and guide line of how to convey a message. Their three steps that show the problems the transmission of a message could have (look above) gives an advertising firm an ideal tool to works with. They fill a message with redundancy, wipe out all the noise, and solve the three problems and Pouf! They have created a beautiful piece of propaganda and a highly efficient message.

Another good things is that this school is that it also points out the three types of mediums that an ad can use (also seen above) this is important because then they do not have to worry about adapting their ads for different mediums

That’s all I can think of. Just put it into your won words. Hope it’s satisfactory.

Zarrin
posted by Jer Clarke at 7:42 PM

1.1 Writes Roalnd Barthes in the "Photographic message": "... thus can be seen the spatial status of the photographic image: it is a message without a code..." Making reference to terms he employs, outline what he meant by this.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


TERMS USED by Barthes:
message: a construction of signs
code: (mostly what was discussed in class)
- an agreement
- a system of meaning
- prohibitions (such as dress codes).
- A code consists of 2 things: (1) signs: a significant unit, (2) rules: (for understanding the signs) ways to interpret the signs.
- social convention: codes tell us what to do.
- The physical nature of a channel determines the kinds of codes that we can choose, that we can transmit.
- Codes can also be observations of what some people think are "best."
- the concept of a code is bigger than language.
- All mediums have codes that are specific to them.

signs:
- anything that signifies something, one thing that stands for something else
- signs are culturally dependent
Peirce:
- a sign has 3 elements: (1) Representamen: the "form" that a sign takes, (2) Interpretant: the "sense" that a sing makes, (3) Object: that to which a sign refers
- there are 3 types of signs: (1) ICONS: similarity - looking like, bears resemblance to its object (2) INDEX: contiguity - contiguous, connected, a link between the sign vehicle and the object (gave the example in class about how we use indexes to move the action along in movies, Ransom with Mel Gibson), and (3) SYMBOL: conventional, people agree that they are held together, habit, agreement, rule

medium: a medium is necessary to communicate. We can't have a message without some kind of medium. it is a technical of physical means of converting a message into an appropriate signal.

Language: according to Saussure, launguage is something we are born into. Speech is the actualization of language - individual

where is the meaning when looking at an image?

Stuart Hall: (don't know if this is relevant to question 1.1)
reading images -
(1) Dominant Reading: hegemonic, preferred reading of the text, accepts connotations as being more natural than they are
(2) Negotiated Reading: slightly more critical, involves contradictions
(3) Oppostional: counter hegemonic


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

quotes from the the text that might be relevant: (the quote in Q 1.1 is on page 85 col.1 para.2)

page 84 col.2 top: "the emission and the reception of the message both lie withint he field of sociology... For the message itslef, howver, the method is inevitably different: whatever the origin and the destination of the message, the photogrpah is not simply a product or a channel but also an object endowed with a structual anatomy."

about space:
page 84 col.2 more down: he is talking about text and photograph combined basically and how "These two structures are cooperative but, since they are heterogeneous, necessatily remain separate from one another... Moreover, the two structures of the message each occupy their own defined spaces, these bieng contiguous but not "homogenized"...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

and now, to answer the question:
Messages without codes are analogical reproductions of reality. A photograph shifts from the object to its image. In this shift, Barthes doesn't see the need to "divide up reality into units and to constitute these units as signs substantially different from the object they communicate; there is no necessity to set a relay, that is to say a code, between the object and the image." There is clearly a duality between connotations and denotations (one could say the tangible and the abstract). The reproduction of an image can first be seen as the analogical content itself (perhaps being a "dominant" reader), second, there is the "treatment of the image by the signifier who also comes from a certain socio-cultural background.
Essentially, within the photographic image, are two message. the denoted message is the message without a code, which is analogon itself. The connoted message is how cociety (to a certain extent) communcates what it thinks of the photographic image (maybe elaborate about feeback in the process of communication)

nothing can strictly be detoned without it finally be read as a sign of some sort. Basically, what is connoted (WITH codes) is based on stereotypes.
all of the above covers the range of analogical reproductions such as drawing, cinema, and theatre. However, when it comes to photographs, many people think that it is a depiction os truth, purely objective, more than the other types of anaological reproductions. it almost seems as though the denoted message is dominant to the point where we cannot describe the photograph. (because describing the photograph would then relay a second-order message: that of language, of signs or the code of language we use to describe the image)

(This was mentioned in class:) He goes on to say that (these texts are fucking potent with information jesus...) photographs have a chance of being "mythical." In class, Peter mentioned how myths take a connotation and make it seem like it's a denotation. (i dunno if that clarifies anything or confuses) Anyway, but there photographs are int he end connotative as well, not just denotative.

he concludes (finally... well sorta concludes i think):
He is talking about the photographic paradox, where it can be seen as a co-existence of two messages: (1) the photographic analogue, and (2) the code. But it is not the "collusion" of these two structures; it is more how codes (connotions) are developed on the basis of a message without codes (denotions).
but prior to that conclusion, Barthes states that "the photographic message is a continous message" By continuous, he means analogical, the first-order message where "there is no need to look for signifying units. The second-order message, however (connotations), is further analyzed.

in essence:
the spatial status of the photographic image is the first-order message where the perfect "analogon" of reality. It is this perfection that defines a photograph (as opposed to a painting, drawing, film). This denotation is obejective and is a message without codes. without codes, meaning no signs.

his whole rant about the photographic paradox is almost like a looong preamble for his analysis on the connotative aspect of the photographic image.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


hey guys,
please tell me if something seems wrong, or weird, or incoherant :)

good luck and thanks!

emily
ganemily@hotmail.com
e_gan@alcor.concordia.ca

posted by Jer Clarke at 7:41 PM

QUESTION 1.5 DUALISMS AND FEMINISN

* this part isn’t all that imp, but I thought I’d send it as some background! *

So what is a dualism exactly?

A dualistic approach to thinking tends to be hierarchical in the sense that one term is given a higher value than other

We often think of things in pairs such as good and evil and light and dark with one term being seen by our cultural standards as better than the other

Since these value assumptions seem to be inherent in our language system they ‘naturalize’ social inequalities in such a way that causes them to appear unchangeable or inevitable

Dualisms are such a large part of western thought that they seem like natural categories, and feminists are now calling for an integration of such dualisms into a more wholistic approach

Meaning that each pole of a dualism is seen as necessary to the whole entity

So for the dualisms about to be discussed both feminine and masculine components must be accepted and valued in order to be complete

However, this wholistic, equal value approach is wishful thinking and thus feminists believe women, as a group, to be affected by the devaluing connotations of such dualisms,

Cirksena and Cuklanz identified the five dualisms of:

Reason and Emotion, Public and Private, Nature and Culture, Subject and Object

And Mind and Body To be the most instrumental dualisms in the justification of female subordination and secondary status


Liberal Feminism: REASON AND EMOTION

- Has a more historical perspective that examines how reason and emotion affect ways in which both men and women are able to participate in liberal, democratic forms of political organization

-Trouble is, Liberal theorists didn’t consider women capable of rational thought and thus grouped women as an emotionally motivated group incapable of intellectual thought and education

-Meaning that handling the responsibilities of citizenship would be far too pressing of a task for the irrational female

-Liberal Feminists, like Mary Wollstonecraft, argued for a ‘fully human’ status of women, and blamed a woman’s irrationality on the narrow range of social roles

-After all, if you never educated a woman to use her mind, or gave her the chance to have political responsibility how would you know what kind of rational thought she was capable of?

-Liberal Feminists today base their arguments on equal rationality for women and men, with both genders being capable of fulfilling social and political roles at any level

-An example of liberal feminisms achievements and failures is the current job market

-Women and men are considered potentially competent for all jobs, but problems still exist in areas such as equal pay for equal work


Socialist-Feminists: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

- focus their attention on issues which relate to the public/private dichotomy that is perpetuated by capitalism and patriarchy and also divides western culture into a male ‘private’ sphere and a female ‘public’ sphere

-A major flaw to pointed out in Marxism is its failure to consider the work done by women in relation to the capitalist state: work such as childbearing, rearing, and household maintenance

-The maintenance of a ‘public’ male sphere and a ‘private’ female sphere actually helped perpetuate capitalism by:

-providing a constant surplus labor supply that fulfilled the reproductive function of the state free of charge

-By keeping women only working in the home, their was also an emergency labor force, for war time ect, and whenever women did enter the workforce their wages were kept low

-By being forced to stay at home the women’s role became that of consumer, providing a population ready to purchase capitalist products

- They believe that class oppression is more inevitable than gender oppression

-Socialistic feminists aim to theorize the private sphere in areas like sexual reproduction and make it as important in western culture as that of the public and political spheres

-Other theorists proposed a model society that included communal housework, and childcare, as well as creating paid specialists in all areas of community life, even in traditionally female ones


Radical Feminism: NATURE AND CULTURE

-Tends to be criticized by other strands of feminist theory for being uncritically essentialist in its understanding of differences between women and men

-Simply put, radical feminism can be horribly ‘anti-male’

-Radical feminism is often found in small alternative publications, resisting affiliation with the mainstream areas of western intellectual thought

-Not only considered ‘anti-male,’ but ‘anti-intellectual’ as well, radical feminists reject scholarly thought as an institution thoroughly entrenched in patriarch cal foundation and structure leaving very little room for a women’s interests to be fairly considered

-The correlation between nature and culture comes from the fact that men have traditionally attempted to control cultural elements which allow for civilization to dominant the natural world

-In addition men have also traditionally viewed women as uncivilized and closer to nature

-Combine these two elements together and it is easy to see how this branch of feminism interprets male pride on being superior to the natural world as an attempt to force control and dominance over the natural female world.

-Because of their view of an abusive, controlling patriarchy, radical feminists often advocate for the disbandment of western culture and the creation of a completely new form of social existence -Meaning the creation of a separate women’s culture

-Many radical feminists are lesbians who firmly believe that a life spent entirely in the company of other lesbians is a viable escape from male dominance and that this form of ‘lesbian separatism’ is a worthwhile political endeavor

-While radical fem seems a little extremist Radical feminism’s rejection of things like conventional ways of institutionalized thought is not completely negative, as it allows for new ways to create value and invent alternative modes of knowledge

-such as recreating the English language to reduce the male dominant nature of certain words

- unlike most branches of feminism, radical feminism is expanding its outlook to take in factors of race, heterosexism, and classism, while taking on environmental and animal rights issues


Psychoanalytic Feminism: SUBJECT AND OBJECT

-is a reaction and interpretation of Freud and Lacan’s theory of psychoanalysis and is thus concerned with how an individual develops a sense of self and a sense of others during their childhood

-In keeping with the comparison of self and other, psychoanalytic fem uses another theory, called object relation, which postulates that during identity formation infants establishes themselves as the subject and all others around them as objects

-For males, the challenge of identity formation comes from being separated from the maternal as well as the realization that they have a penis and their mothers do not

-Lacan and Freud felt that identity was indistinguishable from gender identity, but left the formation of female identity unexplored and explained in contradictory manner

-Despite how underrated the female development process is for Freud and Lacan, psychoanalytic fems use the theory of psychoanalysis because of its emphasis on the gendered nature of the identity acquisition process,

-thus they explore how women view themselves as subjects and others as objects, as well as how being viewed as a male ‘object’ effects identity formation

-since psychoanalysis is so firmly based on the male experience, many feminists feel that when applied in reverse to the female the impact is lost and theories foundations offer no real explanation of the complex feminine identity process, even psychoanalytic fems themselves realize how deeply patriarchal attitudes are ingrained in the process of understanding male and female childhood development

Cultural Feminism: MIND AND BODY

-is a reaction to how western culture has traditionally viewed the mind and all its faculties of reason as what sets us apart from the animal, natural world, and gives us the ability to conquer and control the environment and any physical limitations we face

-The association of women with the animal, natural world came from two different situations:

-The first being how a women’s role in childbirth was thought to make her intellectually inferior and thus making her closer to the natural world.

-The childbearing role was thought to be a women’s main importance, and a depiction of what was inherently female

-This view of what was inherently male and what was inherently female was used to legitimize the structuring of gender roles: females were offered roles involving childbearing and caretaking and which was later expanded outside of the home so women could be nurses, maids, and school teachers: while men were open to the cultural pursuits of art, music, finance, trades, industry, politics, and finance

-The other situation influencing the mind/body split was b/c of how women were represented in the symbolic realm, or in other words how the male dominated area of creative expression and art viewed the female body in sexual or natural/animal terms

-male dominance in art, literature, and later film, deeply connected the female form with the sexual, physical side of existence and thus the ideal feminine archetype was defined through artistic expression

-In order to counteract the cultural belief that the feminine is part of the natural, physical world, cultural feminists argue that the mind and body are not something that can be that easily separated

-They believe that the body should not be seen as this great obstacle to thought, but rather as a necessary component through which mental information can be gathered

-Cultural feminists also try to minimize the effect of the mind body relationship by theorizing the body; which is an attempt to display how the ideal images of both male and female forms are products of language and images that reinforce beliefs of what is desirable and normal in relation to the body

-Cultural feminists are quick to point out that we see as natural, realistic divisions of sexual roles is really nothing more than social, language construction


-heather berard

posted by Jer Clarke at 7:41 PM

Coms theory final question

1.6: Mary Ellen Brown, and Darlaine Gardetto claim that while women are always signs, men are not. Explain what they mean by this.
(10 point question, short answer format)

- there are many ideological frameworks/preconceived notions in media
- difficult to represent people outside of these frameworks in the media
- condensing symbols – reflect a particular set of social relations invented not by individuals, but larger social groups
- these condensing symbols usually create tension in media instead of resolving the issue of preconceived notions
- we live in a patriarchy – a social system in which the father if the head of the family and men have authority over women and children)
- it’s hard for women to break out from this common conception – women are seen as intruders in public realm
- women are seen as primary worker in family and they become the crucial signifier of the family
- our public sphere is male dominated and women are forced to speak out from a masculine realm
- news is mainly masculine narrative – more likely to cover interests of men over women
- women speaking out, regardless of what they’re saying, act as a symbol of breaking out of the male realm
- when a male speaks out, he doesn’t have to break through anything because the realm he’s speaking from is male and people are more focused on what he’s saying as opposed to what he symbolizes
- women in news always function as the “sign” woman, but men in news don’t “symbolize” man because culturally maleness is a given
- women don’t appear as speaking subjects in news, but as signs that carry meaning instead of creating it
- example: Hillary Clinton – conflicting symbols about first ladies and women in general
- Hillary Clinton’s association with public power and her own job as a lawyer and advocate for women’s rights conflicts with the symbol of the first lady as being just the president’s wife

posted by Jer Clarke at 4:45 PM

Q. 1.4 For Peirce there were three (3) main kinds of signs. Identify these, and, giving examples, show how each works with reference to the representamen, interpretant, and object.

A. 1) The three (3) main kind of signs:

    a) By SIMILARITY: Icons, by looking like what it represents. i.e. A photograph on a passport.

    b) By CONTIGUITY: Index, when one is the result of the other. i.e. As in smoke means there is fire

    c) CONVENTIONAL: Symbol, no direct connection of ressemblance, simply by convention and habit. i.e. The Red Cross logo.


2) The three (3) things that signs are made of:

    a) REPRESENTAMEN(Signifier): The form of a sign. i.e. The word "CAT" or the drawing.

    b) INTERPRETANT (Signified): The sense that a sign makes. i.e. The concept, mental image/idea of a cat.

    c) OBJECT (signified): That to which a sign refers. i.e. The actual cat, living creature in meat and bones.

3) Connections between the two:

    a) Icon or By Similarity as:
   
       1) Representamen: The icon itself, out of any context i.e. A picture alone, a series of letters, a group of lines.

       2) Interpretant: : The mental representation inspired by the similarity. i.e. The mental concept of object or action represented

       3) Object: The actual object represented by icon i.e. A physical object.

    b) Index or by Contiguity:
       1) Representamen: The result of the sign i.e. Smoke is to fire

       2) Interpretant: The deduction made in relation to the result (representamen) i.e. There is fire

       3) Object: The actual object implied by the index i.e. The fire

    c) Symbol or Conventional: 1) Representamen: The logo, lines, letters, etc themselves i.e. RedCross logo

       2) Interpretant: The mental idea socially accepted to be linked to logo i.e. Humanitarian help

       3) Object: The actual thing, the physical reality of the representation i.e. A group of helpers in an organization ···

Note: I know that point 3 is repetitive of 1 & 2, but it will be up to all to put the points together in their own personal manner as an essay.

I hope that you will find this useful
GOOD LUCK FOR THE TEST!
Philippe-Olivier Contant
posted by Jer Clarke at 9:09 AM