six

In class, we discussed the idea of the author and Roland Barthes explains that text does not come from the author, but that the author is dead. The author is really the scriptor who transcribes culture. I agree with this notion that culture kind of just flows through the author and into a text. But does this text have a meaning? And if it does, is it truth? I find it difficult to follow the idea that humans are not essentially individuals. I think that authors impose their ideas and beliefs on the text that they are creating even these thoughts are skewed by culture.
Foucault then said "The function of an author is to characterize the existance, circulation and operation of certain discourses within a society." He is saying that certain things have writers, but not necessisarily an author. The "real" person does not shine through the texts, whether or not a this "real" person exists or not.

Authorship!?
In this blog, the "author" discusses the ideas of blogging and plagerism, not excactly authorship and pseudonimity, but another point that I think should be addressed when it comes to authorship. The idea of having ownership over ideas seems strange when the author is just the scriptor of culture. So does the author then own the language that is describing culture? Does the author own culture? It doesn't seem likely.

five

In the film, Derrida, he states that love is the most important thing in personal lives. But that raises the questions about what exactly love is. Is it the who or the what? Psychoanalytic criticism is "a form of therapy which aims to cure mental disorders 'by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind'", specifically how the mind, the instincts and sexuality work.

Derrida's ideas and the ideas of psychoanalytic criticism merge at the idea of sexuality. When Derrida says that this is the most important thing, to define a person, to really get to know a person is through their love and sexuality, it relates with psychoanalytic perspective in that sexuality is innate and it is what drives humans through the libido. Freud also agrees with this saying that this innate sexuality is repressed in humans and that it comes out through the Oedipus Complex, projection and dream work.

Through each of these, the repressed desires shine through to show the unconscious of the person and their true feelings.

four

This week, Saussure told us that "in language there are only differences without positive terms". This explain that whether we have the signifier or the signified, neither exist outside of one another. We need black and white, boy and girl, yes and no. One can only be defined with its negative, but how the meaning has come to be over time is altered by reality. For example, in class we discussed AIDS and how a few decades ago, the disease was perceived as only contracted between homosexual males, and today people think and know how anyone anyone can get it.

Post-structuralism is a bit different in that these opposites do not give the full meaning of the signified and signifier. The meaning of words keep being deferred, and the true meaning is unknown.

Take money for example. Is the idea of money, or having money actually having the bills and coins, or is it now represented based on appearance of material items? I think the idea of money comes in so many different forms today from not having any, to having it, to showing it off, to watching the stock market plummet.