End of Galatea and Lit
November 2, 2007
I left class yesterday a bit confused. We either believe that books mean something or they are tools to which we can see how we’ve tried to mean things? They don’t mean anything and for that matter we must look at them objectively. They exist for us to dissect them.
Galatea- if the novel were to mean something, an extended metaphor or however you want to classify what is taken from it- would it be that if we don’t become postmodernists then we become machines. We become technology. Literature or media in general can be seen as a derivative of technology. If there is no line kept between what and how we create then we become what we create. So, if we then decide to take the objective route we become scientists. We dissect what we consume to better understand its function. Does that take away from the human experience? Does that make us more like connectionists rather than humanists? Through being objective we decrease our ability to sense emotion.
What I have to believe is that that emotion is preprogrammed. The true function of being objective is not to take away our sense of humanity, but to give it back to us… Realizing that love or masculinity or coexistence cannot be simply written down allows us only to gesture towards its existence.
So if I believe that books mean something I think that that would mean I am more of a modernist. I think that I am more inclined to accept the latter argument- mostly because I don’t want to get burnt like he did by A. And I think I am leaning towards that type of objective acceptance. I have a problem with the Bible. I don’t think that there can be a blend in how one interprets literature in this argument. This is so heavy.
The fact that Helen can be so believable that one refutes all known logic to give her meaning is scary. To Powers Helen is almost like a religion; the Bible and Christianity. He is unwilling to accept that he knows she is made up of wires and information he has personally fed her. He has given life to something he knows to be something very unreal. Helen’s reality is impossible, but he has fooled himself. She has become an answer. The Bible is an answer for many people. Whether or not you believe if the Bible was handed down by God to man is another question. How good is man at inscribing the word of God?
I agree with your idea on Helen but Powers does not become machine because Helen shuts herself off and Powers in return can write again.
“We become technology.” I think this is exactly the argument Kim was making in class. Are English majors needed? Can’t we just as easily be replaced by machines? I think the book was making the argument that for each person meaning is the result of weighted switches. We come across something and we weight it for one thing or another that sets off another set of similar chain reactions until we reach output–or meaning. Since individuals are all different, we all will reach a different output or meaning. This is where the question of meaning comes in: does it exist? I still am not sure where I stand on it. I only hope that my last 4.5 years hasn’t been a complete waste.
As you say:
Please pardon my mental diarrhea here… My head is spinning in a million different directions too. I have read and re-read your post several times, making more and more meaning from the words. Then again, I think you mean one thing at first glance, and then I read again to find that perhaps I could interpret what you’ve said another way. This act, in itself, proves that reader interpretation plays an extensive role in consumption of literature, moving far beyond the realm of what the author meant in writing it.
Is it possible that my weighted switches create entirely new meaning from what you’ve said here? Have I interpreted your argument to be about whether the couch should be under the window or against the wall? I think not. In the name of science we may need to further discuss the origin of your thought and my interpretation to be sure transmission was successful, but on average we can probably agree that the bulk of what you meant was probably interpreted correctly. This suggests that meaning also resides within the author’s intent.
In addition to reader interpretation and author intent, temporal influence is one more factor in this game of making meaning. Powers alludes to this via the ways in which he represents the traditional literary canon while A’s generation has moved beyond. Her new process can be seen as expansion upon original thought or a new way to digest information as relevant to her contemporary cultural position. Time changes everything, including our ability/inability to access historical events and the improved understanding of the tools at our disposal to interpret such “historical” representation.
As I work out the intricacies here on this scratch piece of bandwidth, I believe, like you, that books DO have inherent meaning prior to reader interpretation, although stacked in isolation on shelves with covers closed is not the purpose of their existence. They are written to be read in order to engage the reader, instill emotional investment and ask for interpretation.
I also believe that textual meaning is just one aspect of the process. The next logical step, one that has already been taken, is postmodern examination. Postmodernism is not meaningless, nor does it say that meaning does not lie within the text. Instead, it demonstrates the limitations of the text as an additional step to the original idea of meaning a inherent within. Our culture, through time, has learned by degree. Each succeeding generation has built upon the knowledge of its prior implementation.
We ARE the PoMo generation.
What does this say of the future? I suspect that we will eventually be replaced by the next intellectual implementation interested in examining the ways in which “postmodern examination” empowers and limits understanding – similar to the ways in which we have examined the power and limitations of understanding of the original text. Our descendants’ heads are going to spin like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist, and Jameson will forever spin like a slab of decaying beef in the rotisserie of his own grave. I don’t mean to use horrific terms to indicate my displeasure with the idea. I simply think it’ll surely be a psychological, meaning making thriller!
PS: To respond to your worries about the worth of Englsih Lit majors, rest assured. Human nature has always dictated the necessity for making meaning and understanding, and it always will. If literature is supposedly the task’s “dying medium,,” then why are we addicted to an internet where words still dominate the white space? Why are self publishing companies crawling out of the woodwork in a culture where corporate publication’s window of acceptance is narrow? Who writes the scripts for movies and poetry for musical lyrics in two dominant cultural businesses? The popular form of expression may change, but the dependence upon literature will always remain. I predict that our major is safe… for our lifetime and beyond.