The decentralized other in The Prose of Counter-Insurgency

The texts and the approach Guha uses in his essay The Prose of Counter-Insurgency to study the different types of discourses makes it hard not to think of the chronicles written by the colonizers in the 1500s about what today is known as Latin America. A Peruvian cultural critic, Cornejo Polar, discusses the myths created to construct the history of those countries situated in the Andes. He argues about the misrepresentation of the Incas in these chronicles showing that the vision of the colonized was not presented in the stories told, in what Guha refers to as primary,secondary and tertiary discourses/proses; therefore, this misrepresentation also affected their representation in history. In Cornejo Polar's essay Escribir en el Aire (1994) the author claims that the portrayal of the moment when “the dialogue” between Atahualpa and Valverde became a confrontation, the written testimonies turned the Spaniard into the oppressor/ savor and the Inca into the subjugated/ignorant for not accepting a bible. Although there were two versions of the story, one was written and the other one remained in the the oral tradition. And it was the first one (the version of the colonizer) which became the official historical discourse, presenting the event as it was meant to be that way inviting people to accept their fate. It is through the eyes of the colonizer that the colonized knows his/her history.

Both critics, Guha and Cornejo Polar seem to agree on the power of writing. It is through writing that the central self is created and, at the same time, the decentralized other. Guha and Cornejo Polar also seem to associate the word author with the word authority, as it shows in Guha's analysis of historiography (p.46). In the following passage Guha says:

     Those narratives of this category in which their authors figure among the protagonists are of course suspect almost by definition, and the presence of the grammatical first person in these must be acknowledged as a sign of complicity. (p. 59)

The author is also an important component of the construction of the discourse, after all, we're talking about prose (p. 67). What historiography seems to do, according to Guha, is constructing a mindset toward (in this case) the insurgency which is dictating a certain way of structuring one's thought's about them, which is negative. Is a discourse premised upon exteriority, according to Said (in his essay on Orientalism). 

Some of the questions we could ask:

• Are we out of colonialism?
• What is Post- Colonial criticism?
• Some of the terms used in Guha's essay were knowledge, author and discourses. Foucault seems to be present but, literature as well. What is the role of literature? Should literature have a role?

No more authors but figures of discursivity

I found an interesting review by Christopher Bray about...well...it's interesting, so I thought I'd share it.

Enjoy!

Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy Since 1960 by Gary Gutting – review
The theories of Derrida and Foucault are revisited in this fair-minded history of French deconstructionism, and guess what?




Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/20/thinking-impossible-philosopy-gary-gutting

The idea of the Panopticon

“Technologies facilitate the objectification of the body”

First, we discussed the concept of ideology. This implied that it was all a matter of ideas (the manipulation of the mind). But, later, we saw that these ideas derived from our perspective of things. Now, perspective is based on what we see; therefore, we judge based on appearances (this reminds me a little bit about the dancing shadows in Plato's allegory of the cave). Therefore, if everything is judged by how it looks, then we can see why bodies are so important (and even why some people have written in literature about the body and portray it as a prison). Now that we have come this far, we can understand that mind and body are crucial in the process of the objectification of the subject since this allows for divisions and categorizations. Is it normal or natural to categorize things? Can human beings be categorized? Should human beings be categorized? Foucault is interested, as Paul Rabinow states in his introduction, in fighting against political violence. Power is an elements involved in this practice and in order to be able to keep such power there is a need for subjects to maintain that power. Therefore, Foucault is also interested in what is involved in the process “by which...human beings are made into subjects” leading to objectifying the subject through different practices of division (7). Social and personal identities, for example, are therefore categories to divide society and justify certain practices by normalizing some and condemning other and, of course, to turn humans into subjects.

I was especially fascinated, and frightened at the same time, by the idea of the Panopticon (a model prison by Jeremy Bentham—1748-1832) as it “offers a particularly vivid instance of how political technologies of the body function (18).The author in his study of power notes how technology becomes part of one of the most diabolical plans. “The cells become small theaters, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible...If the prisoner is never sure when he is observed he becomes his own guardian (19). Technologies are employed to discipline and weaken the body in order to be “subjected, used, transformed and improved”. This inevitably reminds me of Pavlov's experiments with dogs who used different kinds of drills and repetitions to make the dogs associate what he wanted with what he wanted (I also remember how his studies were included in teaching textbooks =/...). I found his analysis on individualization techniques and also on totalization procedures extremely interesting. Not to mention the normative rationality and technologies of normalization.

Questions:

1. Foucault is anti-Hegelian and anti-Marx for not searching for a theory of history. What is this theory of history?

2. The Panopticon: people are being observed, if they did not know that they are being observed,
a) would it be correct to say that they hold a naïve ideological consciousness?
b) If they knew that they are being watched and acted as if nothing wrong was happening, would it be correct to say that they practice a cynical ideology?

c) And last, if the prisoner knows and does not do anything but not because he does not care, in fact, he's worried, but because he is afraid, so he decides to live in denial, what would this be called?

3. Are social networks technologies of discipline and confession (21)? Are they the new Panopticon? Are people willing to be subjected to the omnipotent eye? 

Idea Framing, Metaphors, and Your Brain - George Lakoff

The Multiaccentuality of the Ideological Sign

In simple terms one could summarize Volosinov's essay by saying that this particular text is about the instability of language within the same sign community. First, Volosinov speaks about the form of the sign and how this is shaped by the forms of social interaction (279). This statement is followed by his discussion on “the content of the sign and the evaluative accentuation [(meaning)] that accompanies all content” (279). According to the author, ideological communication depends on a collective work; therefore, it must be accepted by a group of people in order to be considered an ideological accent. A group of people is capable of creating its own restricted group of items which allow them to communicate among themselves since these items “achieve sign formation and become objects in semiotic communication” (279). However, these items have to have social value to be accepted into “the world of ideology, take shape, and establish [themselves] there (279). Volosinov claims that all ideological accents have to be socially recognized (understood) in order to be considered an ideological material.

As the title of the essay announces, the study is not only about language but about language from a Marxist point of view. One could ask, what is the importance of sign formation and this social multiaccentuality (heteroglossia) according to Marxism? The author points out the following: “Existence reflected in signs is not merely reflected by refracted. How is this refraction of existence in the ideological sign determined? By an intersecting of different oriented social interests within one and the same sign community, i.e., by the class struggle” (280).

Although the language used is the same, each social class will create its own circle of items establishing an intersection of meaning with that of the dominant ideology. And here we see the eruption of new meanings. Nevertheless, the dominant ideology opts to adopt a reactionary attitude towards the ideological sign to refract and distort the latter (281).

Valosinov's essay seems to suggest that language can also be used by the non-dominant classes as another way of resistance. However, I wonder what the role of “truth” would be in this ideological phenomena. Is it possible to have an ideology and see the real state of things at the same time? Does an ideology become mystified when the individual is enable to see the Real (Lacan's Real as used in Zizek's essay)?

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility" (1939)

traditional art	art in the age of reproducibility
aura	decay of aura
unique existence ("here and now")	mass existence
"authenticity"-originality	multiplicity
distance	closeness
ritual basis	political basis
cult value	exhibition value
contemplation	distraction [Zerstreung]
art absorbs viewer	viewer absorbs art
painting	architecture, photography, film
masses react in hostility	masses react progressively
fascism	communism
aestheticizing of politics	politicizing of art

“The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility”

In Benjamin's “The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility” I (think I may have) found some contradictions that made the reading a little difficult to follow. I first got the impression that he was a Marxist, so to speak, but once he got into art, especially when he compares art with that which comes from the reproduction of art, I couldn't help thinking “why is he defending art?” Wouldn't art be part of the superstructure (like family, education, politics, etc.)? And, isn't the superstructure what maintains and legitimates the base (all the things needed to produce, which are owned by the bourgeoisie, where proletariat are exploited)? When it came down to discussing what was wrong with reproducing art, he recognizes that it decreases the value of art, therefore, it discredits art. He seems to want the type of art that is able to maintain its eternal value. Benjamin states that art has to appear authentic and reflect its here and now—its unique existence—where history plays an important role. The first ten sections (especially) seem to be dedicated to defend claiming that “authenticity eludes technological reproduction”. According to him these works do not reflect its here and now, and that authenticity “is jeopardized when the historical testimony is affected is the authority of the object, [because] the weight it derived from tradition” (22). Here I encountered another interesting word: tradition. He states that “the technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object for the sphere of tradition” (22). What is “tradition” or what does it implicate in Benjamin's discourse? He continues by saying that “by replicating the work of art many times over, it substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence. An permitting the reproduction to reach the recipient in his or her own situation, it actualizes that which is reproduced”(22). Doesn't this reproduction demystifies art? “It extracts sameness even from what is unique”(24). Isn't it a good thing? But, what is interesting is that later, after arguing that technology today turns art into products (because it increases the opportunities to be exhibited, it is capable of improvement, etc), Benjamin points out that film (created through modern technology) has a social function as it “establishes equilibrium between human beings and the apparatus” (37). In this same section, Benjamin claims that “it is through the camera that we first discover the optical unconscious”(37). Here he keeps saying that film is good and even talks about the importance of actors. There seems to be some sort of condescending attitude towards “the masses,” and at the same time, it seems as if he blamed “the masses” for the place of art in modernity. Perhaps reading other essays written by him would make it easier to figure out his position.