mid term exam

mid term exam
cultural theory
emily carr institution
teacher: p c
student: r b a
#0018922
01/03/06

1 Define Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) and Repressive State Apparatus (RSA)

The RSA is the system of force which ensures people co-operate with the state. This system includes the police, the army, jailers, others in the justice system, other security personal primarily as obvious wielders of force. Aside from that one might include other forms of physical coercion such as food control, land control, movement control. The welfare office that limits food subsidy based on agreement with whatever requirements the state has in place, such as demonstrated need or citizenship. The border guards and passport offices, immigration officers. Banks too may perhaps be considered, given their subordinate role with the state [even if they are private] at limiting who can have money and how. Also, the threat of force is really more important than its use.

The ISA is an even more open ended creature and could in some ways apply to all producers of culture that that tacitly support the state, maybe even aboriginal artists who accept money from the state and allow their ideas to give ideological merit to the state. Althusser's list is quite long, including institutions of religion, education, legal, family, political and policy, trade union, communications media, and finally arts and culture. These groups form ideologies which make people believe that whatever laws or repressive measures the state employs are necessary for whatever reason. They make people believe they have no choice, or in a consumer society, that their field of choice does not include changing important foundations of state power or class.

Who introduced these ideas?

Althusser talked about ISA and RSA specifically and defined ISA in that essay in 1968. Gramsci was very influential in emphasising Ideology as coercive. Marx and Engels introduced the ideas of ideology as superstructure to the academic discourse. Certainly they were floating around since the beginning of civilisation when the oppressed noticed that the army and the church were very powerful when they walked hand in hand. Of course, if you want to be sticky about giving the famous men the credit, previous criticisms of the church before the enlightenment were fundamentally different because the nation state as it now exists had yet to come into being.

Differentiate:

The difference between ISA and RSA comes down to method and purpose, though both are intertwined. The RSA is focused on using force, though it may also play a deterrent role it is kind of the backup, reaction to disobedience. The ISA is about negotiating to make the subject see that they are better off co-operating. The ISA is more important and effective because Repression is seen to be unsustainable. But, if people believe in co-operation with the state then small amounts of repression to correct the errant few can be sustained.

You can fool all of the people some of the time and you can fool some of the people all of the time.

Significance:

The significance of the ISA and RSA is an articulation of the position that opposes the state fundamentally, as being coercive. It is also a good excuse for why simple revolutions of the past have not been successful, why 'the people' do not just rise up when it would seem apparent that they should and could. The ISA is the significant part of the understanding because it is more complex and less understood.

The problem with such outlooks as the ISA is that they tend to oversimplify in black and white terms, allowing for an ironically very totalitarian individualistic outlook, rather than social co-operation. In a plural society people must have incongruent ideas, but it is easy to label education and behaviour that is not in agreement with the subject as ideological, whereas the subject of the author is necessarily objective. The ISA gives agency to the state where there had been none articulated. This has been useful ironically not in revolutionary movements so much as revolutionary reform movements such as anti-racism movements in the USA, where the state was forced to take responsibility for the treatment of 'the other' in schools and public spaces which may have been previously seen by liberals as a laissez-faire realm of social interaction.

It is damaging however to over assign to the state responsibility for all ideology and thought. While of course the state may benefit from an episteme, it is not always the author. Patriarchy for example may be bigger than the state. Smaller scale useful actions of community building are often left out of all this high minded empires and revolutions talk. These local realities are very often infinitely more important and the only real strategy for addressing the macro scale after all. The simplification of us-and-them that ironically is articulated in the ISA concept may splinter local communities and not allow for the important resistance that happens there.

2 Strengths and Weakness' of Barthes Myth Today semiology concept:

Barthes concept of semiology is that myths are understandable by dividing them into the underlying structure of the language or texts [which can be in any medium, such as image] that make them up. The sign and the signifier combine to make the signified. Myths are kind of like signs in French. His idea of myth is, as in English, a story. Rather, certain singular objects, the sign, contain reference to a cultural story, that may be hidden and assumed. This is about exposing ideology in everyday discourse.

His semiological system was an attempt at finding a standardised methodology for analysing cultural phenomena. However, since then, semiology has proved to be subjective and not an objective science. This despite Barthes desire to found a science. It is a social science, or maybe not even that objective, as the methodology is subjective dialogue, not repeatable experiment.
The strengths of the concept is that it devises a language for talking about these things in a more standardised way. By isolating the essence of various concept, the function of the signifier can be articulated somewhat more universally in a sign. I would not have understood the thing about the black soldier on the cover of this French magazine but Barthes goes into it in a way which is quite didactic and less controversial since you can point to specific assumptions he makes in the formula and argue the point but overall there is a sort of way to share the culturally subjective discourse.

The weakness is that the 3 terms are totally confusing and sound like the same word. Perhaps they make more sense in French. This contradicts his purpose of using this system to compare myths across language, given that semiology resonates with a French audience more than an English one. The weakness is also that the method is too open to subjectivity so that many will dismiss the entire method before engaging the differentiated components. So, it fails to be more objective, just a kind of removed academic language.

Lastly, as others have pointed out, signs and myths cannot be reduced to singular ideas. While he does acknowledge layers of signification and the duality of a sign also being a signifier, he builds this into a hierarchy. In truth, many signification contradict, overlap, or just don't conform to the structure of hierarchy. Signs may have entirely different meanings in the same context, based on individual complexity. Complexity and plurality are inescapable aspects of our culture. So an atomistic look at relationships is too limiting.

3 What is the Mirror Stage

The mirror stage is when a child develops and is maybe 6 months old, but that doesn't matter too much since it is a metaphor in an inevitable stage of development. The idea is that the child sees herself in the mirror and gets his understanding of his/her self versus others by this. The self is alienated by the by the symmetrical inhuman mirror and later alienated by our oppressive society. This fragments the self so that dreams will reveal our true unconscious repressed desires.

Some interesting animal psychology leads us to believe that the mirror can substitute for the vision of the other that is necessary for sexual development.

Who is responsible for this term

Lacan is responsible for this term. I somehow doubt he worked with children all that much. He bases a lot on Freud.

Is this, and how is it, relevant to your own understanding of self

The thing about Freud and Lacan, is that they are totally nuts themselves. But, through intuition, observation and luck, a lot of what they say has a certain resonant truth. Many of the ideas are absurd and bad prescriptions: like Oedipus, overemphasis on dreams and mirrors. But, they do illuminate certain unreasonable behaviours that are typical, and provide advice as to approach that is sometimes useful, sometimes off putting, always entertaining [if it doesn't go on too long]. Vagina Dentata is a great image, even if it hasn't anything scientific about it.

I was a bit of a lonely kid at times and stared in the mirror or played games with myself and the mirror. This maybe has contributed to how I am shy and gaze without interacting. Maybe there is some utility in the idea of mirrors. Certainly, by interacting with inhuman curiosities like mirrors, TV or computers, healthy social skills are not developed. On the other hand, spending energy worrying about mirrors is not likely to help you spend time realising your full psychic potential.

4 How do Foucault's concepts of authorship challenge convention? apply to ECI.

Foucault undermines the idea that authorship matters supremely. He wants to get away from questions authenticity and fame in writing and more to the substance of the text. He talks about how authorship changes when somebody dies, how we often look at a text to try and find the intent of the author rather than its effect on us. Also, how we suffer for our art is supposed to lend more authenticity to its creation and this implies moral ideologies of suffering that are somewhat religious.

Foucault tries to deconstruct authorship. I think this is a commendable exercise. However, I think by being so relativistic about it he overlooks some of the more concrete reasoning to challenge the notion of author. he goes on and on about how names are important or not important, how fame can effect things and such. However, he doesn't get into the reality of ideas being copied as natural and inevitable, as much as he could. For example the term ISA. Who is the author? It depends on how complete the idea is expected to be before you cut-off the concept and say: "It was him."

Foucault was not very effective at dismantling the idea of author because most people read his stuff about authorship more because it is him who said it, not because it is instructive. So that's ironic.

As a creative person who is told that what I do is original and unique, I have often doubted the nature of authorship. Putting two things together that you got from others can be the stroke of genius, even if the two parts by themselves required a lot more authoring than did the haphazard combination which may be luck. Sometimes I doubt the possibility of original thought, given our shared perspective and creation of meaning. My own perspective is different sure, but it is fundamentally the same to 6 billion others. I doubt I am all that unique. The concrete idea of property and copyright and patents is not explored very thoroughly but as a semi-Marxist, ought to be a more underlying perspective.

I think it would be a lot more challenging and interesting to look at authorship in more real terms and less general. I find Foucaults philosophical approach ironically less philosophically deep than when I look at this concept on my own and discover real history of this stuff. It exposes whatever Foucault said but a lot more too. When we look at pre-contact aboriginal societies, the NDNs [here in BC] tell us that they didn't have private land but did have private spiritual name songs. The issues of private property and public being paramount, I would rather look at history than 1960s grandiose theoreticians. The truth is stranger than fiction, after all. He does focus on discourse, so he does point at what will be more useful than just staying within his own framework.

Here at ECI, the implications of authorship are quite important though they are often overlooked, despite Foucault being part of the mandatory curriculum. It seems that the paradigm of the modern artist taught at this school, especially when one looks at cutting edge conceptual art, practically is branding and marketing. Artists are individuals who are 'content-producers.' In a digital age, we may not actually produce the content, merely design it and then subcontract or press 'GO' on the computer. We become the vanguard of copyright and patent private property extension and enclosure. That guy who trademarked a certain colour of blue may have been trying to be ironic, but he paved the way for Pepsi to follow suit.
There are also many artists who realise the danger of totally and completely turning art and all its ideas into a commodity. The alternatives are yet to be explored. There is the past, which provides many alternatives. However, the teaching and futurists all point to expansion of intellectual private property in law and business.

I think that Foucaults ideas are very relevant to ECI but more sensible modern interpretations of this rapidly changing field are more relevant than his particular diatribe.

As they said in the very old days: "You can't write a song that's never been sung."

• Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatus," 1970
• Barthes, Roland. "Myth Today," Mythologies, 1972
• Lacan, Jacques. "The Mirror Stage," Écrits: A Selection, 1977
• Foucault, Michel. "What is an Author?" (1969), Art in Theory, 1992