Here are two video excerpts with Angeline Ball as Molly Bloom, the lusty wife of Leopold Bloom the protagonist of James Joyce's novel ULYSSES (1922). Molly Bloom's Soliloquy is perhaps the most famous section of the book.
Like the writings of Virginia Woolf, James Joyce's ULYSSES helped to solidify the extraordinary early 20th C. style of novel writing known as stream-of-consciousness. Thoughts of every sort- memories, fantasies, alternative experiences, regrets- merge with the emotions and the sensations of the body to convey the very real, confounding experience of being alive.
Do you sense any connection between the stream-of-consciousness method of conveying events and the cinematic art of montage? Do you think these bring us closer to how we actually experience the world? Or is it possible that we now experience the world in a more cinematic way because of changes in the styles of literature and the century long dominance of cinema with its quick cutting and optical flights from one scene to the next? Does the cinematic eye which moves at the speed of thought affect the modern human gaze and its expectation for what it will witness in the world?
Molly Bloom's Soliloquy is both deliciously erotic and incredibly moving stuff (the novel was first published in 1922!). James Joyce battled with censors at home and abroad for years due to the sexual frankness (and physical honesty) of his work. Molly Bloom lays abed thinking about a million things. Consider WHY this text is so shocking (in style as well as in substance). Consider how its frank discussion of taboo topics relates to its ability to move us emotionally. Consider how its fresh and fearless style can still startle us intellectually.
One last thought: how does this relate to Freud? Molly pours forth her heart and soul and reveals her deepest desires. She considers out-loud (though this is actually an interior monologue) the ramifications of her drives and choices. Is this an example of "the talking cure"? It would be interesting to know how much of Freud James Joyce had read and more importantly what Joyce thought of Freud's work.
It appears that these two are connected by common creative, intellectual and cultural queries.
This is a recent production for Irish television which has received wide acclaim. Enjoy! YES!
MOLLY BLOOM'S SOLILOQUY PART 1
MOLLY BLOOM'S SOLILOQUY PART 2
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Reading Questions, 9 (The New Woman: Woolf and Hermann)
Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (1938)
Two of the great problems of the twentieth century; gender equality and war. But how exactly are they related?
[Three explanatory notes: on Guineas, see here. "KC" means "King's Counsel" (title for an experienced attorney). On women at Cambridge, see the history of Girton College.]
Study Questions:
1. What constitutes gender equality for Woolf? She wrote this book some 20 years after the opening of the processions to women and the attainment of women's suffrage. What difference has that made? Is liberal-political equality enough? (Recall how Marx demanded economic rights and equality in addition to purely political equality.)
2. How do you evaluate Woolf's argument that it is men rather than women who are attracted by finery, ceremony, etc? Woolf refused several honorary degrees; why do people really want those letters after their names?
3. What about Woolf's connection of men and war, and her reference to war as a source that produces good male qualities? Does this make us view Nietzsche or Freud's views on values or drives differently? That is, were they only ever talking about men's values, men's drives?
4. How about her even more dramatic assertions (p. 103) about the relationship between tyranny (especially fascism -- it is 1938 after all) and the oppression of women? What is her argument here? Does it stand up to scrutiny?
5. We've talked about nationalism and national identity, but what actually constitutes or creates loyalty to the nation? What does Woolf's view of women as "outsiders" do to the idea of women as equal citizens of the nation? If women have no stake in society, do they also have no obligations to the social contract? What about other "outsiders"?
6. How, according to Woolf, can women and other "outsiders" become insiders? How would society and the modern nation-state change if they did?
7. What for Woolf is the boundary between public and private? Is the private world the source of positive values, or is it only the result of exclusion from public power?
8. Elsa Hermann ("This is the New Woman") presents the new woman as a by-product of modernization. Do she and Woolf agree on the sources of change in gender relations? If not, how do their views contrast?
And now, some questions from this week's group....
1. In "This is the New Woman," Hermann notes that the "woman of yesterday was intent on the future", whereas the "woman of today is oriented exclusively toward the present". What are the characteristics of this new self-orientation, and what is the woman of today's ultimate goal in this?
2. Are there any similarities that can be drawn between Woolf and some of the other readings that we have done thus this semester? If so, with whom and why? If not, how is Woolf different?
3. What social role does Woolf place in the clothing of men and women ? How important do you feel this role is in her discussion and compare with atmosphere in current times?
4. For Woolf, how does education of the private house limit the influence of women? Do women have any influence through this type of education?
5. How does Woolf see the education of women outside the home as a way of preventing war? How can not educating women be viewed as in favor of war?
6. When the discussion of the salaries of women are brought up, what are a few of the injustices listed? Have you seen similar occurrences more modern history?
7. What does Woolf mean by "freedom from unreal loyalties" (78)? Describe how women in the professions can maintain this and the other related teachers of women, unlike professional men.
8. In Three Guineas , Woolf presents the scenario of "some daughter of an educated man who has enough to live upon and can read and write for her own pleasure", making it a crucial point to "take in three dailies" (newspapers) to "know the facts" (95). For Woolf, why is the examination of 3 sources necessary, and how is this belief reverberated throughout the text itself.
9. Why is Woolf so offended at the idea of protecting cultural and intellectual liberty? How does this affect her views on scholarships being awarded to women? What methods does she use to get this point across to the reader?
Two of the great problems of the twentieth century; gender equality and war. But how exactly are they related?
[Three explanatory notes: on Guineas, see here. "KC" means "King's Counsel" (title for an experienced attorney). On women at Cambridge, see the history of Girton College.]
Study Questions:
1. What constitutes gender equality for Woolf? She wrote this book some 20 years after the opening of the processions to women and the attainment of women's suffrage. What difference has that made? Is liberal-political equality enough? (Recall how Marx demanded economic rights and equality in addition to purely political equality.)
2. How do you evaluate Woolf's argument that it is men rather than women who are attracted by finery, ceremony, etc? Woolf refused several honorary degrees; why do people really want those letters after their names?
3. What about Woolf's connection of men and war, and her reference to war as a source that produces good male qualities? Does this make us view Nietzsche or Freud's views on values or drives differently? That is, were they only ever talking about men's values, men's drives?
4. How about her even more dramatic assertions (p. 103) about the relationship between tyranny (especially fascism -- it is 1938 after all) and the oppression of women? What is her argument here? Does it stand up to scrutiny?
5. We've talked about nationalism and national identity, but what actually constitutes or creates loyalty to the nation? What does Woolf's view of women as "outsiders" do to the idea of women as equal citizens of the nation? If women have no stake in society, do they also have no obligations to the social contract? What about other "outsiders"?
6. How, according to Woolf, can women and other "outsiders" become insiders? How would society and the modern nation-state change if they did?
7. What for Woolf is the boundary between public and private? Is the private world the source of positive values, or is it only the result of exclusion from public power?
8. Elsa Hermann ("This is the New Woman") presents the new woman as a by-product of modernization. Do she and Woolf agree on the sources of change in gender relations? If not, how do their views contrast?
And now, some questions from this week's group....
1. In "This is the New Woman," Hermann notes that the "woman of yesterday was intent on the future", whereas the "woman of today is oriented exclusively toward the present". What are the characteristics of this new self-orientation, and what is the woman of today's ultimate goal in this?
2. Are there any similarities that can be drawn between Woolf and some of the other readings that we have done thus this semester? If so, with whom and why? If not, how is Woolf different?
3. What social role does Woolf place in the clothing of men and women ? How important do you feel this role is in her discussion and compare with atmosphere in current times?
4. For Woolf, how does education of the private house limit the influence of women? Do women have any influence through this type of education?
5. How does Woolf see the education of women outside the home as a way of preventing war? How can not educating women be viewed as in favor of war?
6. When the discussion of the salaries of women are brought up, what are a few of the injustices listed? Have you seen similar occurrences more modern history?
7. What does Woolf mean by "freedom from unreal loyalties" (78)? Describe how women in the professions can maintain this and the other related teachers of women, unlike professional men.
8. In Three Guineas , Woolf presents the scenario of "some daughter of an educated man who has enough to live upon and can read and write for her own pleasure", making it a crucial point to "take in three dailies" (newspapers) to "know the facts" (95). For Woolf, why is the examination of 3 sources necessary, and how is this belief reverberated throughout the text itself.
9. Why is Woolf so offended at the idea of protecting cultural and intellectual liberty? How does this affect her views on scholarships being awarded to women? What methods does she use to get this point across to the reader?
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Maps & Metaphors of the Collective: What Are "WE"?
The fate of nations is intimately bound up with their powers of reproduction. All nations and all empires first felt decadence gnawing at them when their birth rate fell off. - Benito Mussolini
In reading many different political thinkers from Mill to Mussolini we see that the metaphors that people use to describe their communities ultimately influence how they think about those communities. Nations and societies are often considered as material constructions (We are building our society. The fabric of our nation is fraying). Likewise they are imagined to be organic bodies or collective lifeforms or giant bodies (Our society is sick. We must strengthen our community.)
Watch these images of the process of organic development and decay. Is it any wonder that we get lost in our metaphors? A nation, a society, a community is intangible as a whole. How else are we to speak about it without employing the images drawn from our experience of more delineated "things"? But there is danger here- for a society is NOT a fabric, nor a body nor a building... and yet we speak as if it was and forget that the map is NOT the territory.
The images of groups in synchronized movement (be they Nazi Germans,contemporary American soldiers or Chinese performers at the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics) resemble collective bodies. Each person is, to a certain degree, sublimating his or her individual will to the will of the many- becoming one as a cell becomes part of a colony, a body. Similarly, maps remind us that the boundaries of nations, empires and states are forever in flux... like puddles forming and drying up. Perhaps it is impossible to speak of such things without metaphor.
In reading many different political thinkers from Mill to Mussolini we see that the metaphors that people use to describe their communities ultimately influence how they think about those communities. Nations and societies are often considered as material constructions (We are building our society. The fabric of our nation is fraying). Likewise they are imagined to be organic bodies or collective lifeforms or giant bodies (Our society is sick. We must strengthen our community.)
Watch these images of the process of organic development and decay. Is it any wonder that we get lost in our metaphors? A nation, a society, a community is intangible as a whole. How else are we to speak about it without employing the images drawn from our experience of more delineated "things"? But there is danger here- for a society is NOT a fabric, nor a body nor a building... and yet we speak as if it was and forget that the map is NOT the territory.
The images of groups in synchronized movement (be they Nazi Germans,contemporary American soldiers or Chinese performers at the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics) resemble collective bodies. Each person is, to a certain degree, sublimating his or her individual will to the will of the many- becoming one as a cell becomes part of a colony, a body. Similarly, maps remind us that the boundaries of nations, empires and states are forever in flux... like puddles forming and drying up. Perhaps it is impossible to speak of such things without metaphor.
Declensions of Decline or Where are we going and why are we in this hand-basket?
Below is a selection of books that do one of two things: they either employ the ideas of decline, decadence and fall in their attempt to understand "Western civilization" or they trace the history of this idea over time in the Western intellectual-cultural tradition. Click on the covers to be taken to that particular book at Googlebooks or Amazon.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
In the Eyes of Dix and Grosz: War and Weimar
The German artists Otto Dix (1891-1969) and George Grosz (1893-1959) captured the horrors of World War I and the spiraling euphoria and eventual collapse of the Weimar Republic
The Salon, oil on canvas, 1921
Beauty, oil on canvas, 1922
Machine-gun Squad Advances (Somme, November 1916), drawing,
from the 1924 series The War (Der Krieg).
Take a look here for more than 100 artworks created in response to World War I.
Lustmurder, watercolor, 1922(?)
GEORGE GROSZ
Suicide, oil on canvas, 1916
A Winter's Tale, oil on canvas, 1917
A Writer is He?, pen and ink, 1934
Eclipse of the Sun, oil on canvas, 1926
The Survivor, oil on canvas, 1944
OTTO DIX
The Salon, oil on canvas, 1921
Beauty, oil on canvas, 1922Machine-gun Squad Advances (Somme, November 1916), drawing,from the 1924 series The War (Der Krieg).
Take a look here for more than 100 artworks created in response to World War I.
Lustmurder, watercolor, 1922(?)GEORGE GROSZ
Suicide, oil on canvas, 1916
A Winter's Tale, oil on canvas, 1917
A Writer is He?, pen and ink, 1934
Eclipse of the Sun, oil on canvas, 1926
The Survivor, oil on canvas, 1944Monday, April 5, 2010
Reading Questions, 8 (Post-WWI Crisis, Freud to Mussolini)
Here are questions from me; below, some from the good people of Group 7.
1. What, according to Freud, has been the effect of WWI on European society? What seems to have been the effect on Freud's ideas?
2. If Freud is right here, what is the status of the moral world of nineteenth-century bourgeois Europe? Why was it able to be shaken so easily?
3. In light of your own experience, do you think the Western attitude to death has changed so much since 1915? Have we (as a society) responded to Freud's suggestions in the second essay?
4. "To tolerate life remains," Freud writes, "the first duty of all living beings" (299). Do his conclusion help us tolerate life, or are they intolerable?
5. Identify and discuss one or two broad themes that you think link the texts from Germany's Weimar Republic (1918-1933).
6. One gets the impression from these Weimar-era texts that the war itself destroyed everything. Do any of these texts suggest why the conflict was able to be so disruptive to cultural and intellectual life? Do you have a theory of why that was the case?
7. Mussolini's essay on the Doctrine of Fascism, co-written with neo-Hegelian philosopher Giovanni Gentile, is from 1932, a full decade since Mussolini had come to power. How does Mussolini explain that fact? What does that fact suggest to you?
8. What is the Fascist definition of the ("ethical"?) State, and how does that relate to concepts we've dealt with so far, like (pick one): liberty, equality, democracy, nation, individual, nature, etc.?
9. What is Fascism's position in history, and what philosophy of history is it based on? What seem to be the main intellectual influences here?
.......
1) How does Marinetti's idea of art differ from what Hesse's thoughts on what the art of his time has become?
2) What does Spengler think about Imperialism ?
3) According to Hesse, what is becoming of religion? (could be a separate question) What is the purpose of a culture in his time?
4) What is the difference of thought between the young and the old of the present time?
5) How does Fascism differ from Classical Liberalism and/or Democracy according to Mussolini?
6) Describe Fascism's relationship with Positivism (or materialism) in Mussolini's text?
7) What does Freud say are the consequences of the "tightening of the moral standard" (pg. 284)?
8) What events and ideas led the primeval man to begin assuming other forms of existence and life after death (292-294)?
9) Are there themes in Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals that emerge in either of the two Freud texts? How are they similar? Different?
1. What, according to Freud, has been the effect of WWI on European society? What seems to have been the effect on Freud's ideas?
2. If Freud is right here, what is the status of the moral world of nineteenth-century bourgeois Europe? Why was it able to be shaken so easily?
3. In light of your own experience, do you think the Western attitude to death has changed so much since 1915? Have we (as a society) responded to Freud's suggestions in the second essay?
4. "To tolerate life remains," Freud writes, "the first duty of all living beings" (299). Do his conclusion help us tolerate life, or are they intolerable?
5. Identify and discuss one or two broad themes that you think link the texts from Germany's Weimar Republic (1918-1933).
6. One gets the impression from these Weimar-era texts that the war itself destroyed everything. Do any of these texts suggest why the conflict was able to be so disruptive to cultural and intellectual life? Do you have a theory of why that was the case?
7. Mussolini's essay on the Doctrine of Fascism, co-written with neo-Hegelian philosopher Giovanni Gentile, is from 1932, a full decade since Mussolini had come to power. How does Mussolini explain that fact? What does that fact suggest to you?
8. What is the Fascist definition of the ("ethical"?) State, and how does that relate to concepts we've dealt with so far, like (pick one): liberty, equality, democracy, nation, individual, nature, etc.?
9. What is Fascism's position in history, and what philosophy of history is it based on? What seem to be the main intellectual influences here?
.......
1) How does Marinetti's idea of art differ from what Hesse's thoughts on what the art of his time has become?
2) What does Spengler think about Imperialism ?
3) According to Hesse, what is becoming of religion? (could be a separate question) What is the purpose of a culture in his time?
4) What is the difference of thought between the young and the old of the present time?
5) How does Fascism differ from Classical Liberalism and/or Democracy according to Mussolini?
6) Describe Fascism's relationship with Positivism (or materialism) in Mussolini's text?
7) What does Freud say are the consequences of the "tightening of the moral standard" (pg. 284)?
8) What events and ideas led the primeval man to begin assuming other forms of existence and life after death (292-294)?
9) Are there themes in Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals that emerge in either of the two Freud texts? How are they similar? Different?
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