Final Thoughts

After thinking back on the blog posts I’ve made and the texts we have read, a few things stand clear to me. It appears that history is a key component to our identities. It’s the main theme in Winterson’s Stone Gods, as a re-imagining of history, as greentealea phrased it in her blog. It’s the main argument between Bloom and Zappa’s disagreement – Bloom wanted to stick to a rigid, closed-minded history while Zappa wanted to create his own. History was forever changed in Ancient Rome because Socrates dared to believe differently and to believe in something grander and more spiritual than his peers believed. 

Texts, literature, art, music, architecture, archeological evidence – these are all pieces of history. Our history, the history of humanity. Do we agree with everything that ever happened? No, of course not but we don’t need to believe everything either. We need to believe only the things that make us stronger, more aware personally, as an inward focus. Do we have answers to all the questions? No, but we don’t need answers to everything so long as we keep asking questions. 

Has humanity always been the same, throughout the course of the human history? Not a chance. Through art and literature, societies have been able to read and absorb information about what occurred ten, one hundred, one thousand years ago and take that information as part of a piece of their own personal history. When we each have different, unique, personal histories, our humanity will evolve and flourish. We need to keep compassion alive, keep curiosity alive, keep history alive to keep ourselves alive. 

Jeannette Winterson Reflections

After watching the interview “An Evening with Jeannette Winterson,” I felt enlightened, more knowledgeable of the real meaning of life. Winterson uses self-experience and humor to discuss what she believes to be real humanity, and it resonates. It’s captivating. So, what does it mean to be human? According to Winterson, “all of it is about connection, we live in a web, one with another.” She expresses the necessity of self-acceptance as a part of successfully integrating ourselves with society and we need to be supportive of each other. 

She goes on to say that “our inner lives don’t work according to the clock, or the calendar or to any received chronology. That’s not how it is. Our psychic processes are indifferent to time. When we remember things we don’t remember them in sequence, we remember according to the emotional significance of the memory and that can be random and it can change and shift over time too….[memories] force you to reconsider the whole picture which is perhaps what we’re meant to do.” Is Winterson correct? Is self-reflection and self-acceptance a key to our humanity? 

Furthermore, Winterson discussed the importance of literature and keeping language and text alive in our society. She asks, “where has the sacred gone? We can’t find language for that anymore…The place that we know exists, we find it in our dreams, our imaginations, within ourselves.” Since we can’t find language for that anymore, Winterson tells us that we can find that in other people’s writing, texts that other people have written because “we need to reclaim those things back for ourselves.” Those things she was referring to is the soul, the spirit, things incredibly crucial to our own humanity as it will reflect how we relate to the humanity of others. Yes, it’s very difficult being honest with ourselves and with other people but we absolutely have to be honest. Winterson explains:

“Truth for anybody is a very complex thing. What lies beyond the margin of the text? There are so many things we can’t say because they are too painful and we hope that the things that we can say will soothe the rest. Or appease it in some way. Stories are compensatory. The world is unfair, unjust, unknowable, out of control. When we tell a story we exercise control but in such a way as to leave a gap, an opening. It’s a version but never the final one. We hope the silences will be heard by someone else and the story will continue and will be retold. Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.”

It all goes back to Jeannette’s closing words: “all of it is about connection, we live in a web, one with another.”

 

What is history?

Professor Bailyn claims that history has two definitions. “One is simply what happened, the events, developments, circumstances, and thoughts of the past as they actually occurred and history as knowledge of what happened, the record or expression of what occurred” (pg.7). These two definitions of history reveal a very good point: we don’t really know exactly what happened. Sure, “things happened” and sometimes, someone, either reliably or unreliably wrote down (in their own words, with their own prejudices and bias) what had happened. Can we ever really trust these sources, can we trust what “happened”? This being said, I think the past is constructed and reconstructed constantly and introduces the very intriguing question of “Whose history is it?”

I think History, as it is recorded, or the second definition of Bailyn’s, belongs to whomever wrote it because it is their personal experience and reaction to what happened. We can take all of the recorded history of the United States and call it “ours” because we are Americans, and in turn this is partly true, but can we really belong to that history since we did not experience it first hand? Saying this just makes me think of what our actual history will be, what our recorded experiences (in our minds, blogs, etc.) will be. How will we feel about our “history?” Are we all historians in this age of perpetual picture posting and sharing of every thought and feeling?

Which brings me to what a historian is, as defined by Professor Bailyn. He claims that a historian is “someone who develops, in one way or another,  “artificial extension of social memory” by recovering through the evidences of the past, aspects of what happened”(pg. 8). He  goes on to say that historians are not just one type of person. A historian could be a professor like himself teaching in college or universities, or a lover of history hired by a corporation to write histories or arrange archives and what he calls “non-academic historians” working in museums and local historical societies. With his definition of what a historian is and can be, can we accept the history they give us as our own? Can we take their interpretations of history and absorb them as our own?

When thinking about history, what it is, who it belongs to, who historians are, it has made me realize that the history that we know and have come to learn and in some cases memorize, were all at one point someone’s reaction to a significant event in their life. So maybe our constant online sharing is our way of sharing our “history” – or what will be our history (in the future).

 

 

Zappa and Bloom: Disagreed.

What is Frank Zappa’s critique of Allan Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind?” Accurate. Truthful. More in touch with Americans than Bloom. People assume Zappa is an uneducated man because of his lifestyle and the music that he creates. I believe that Bloom would be one of these people, assuming that Zappa is “primitive and primary” because Rock’n Roll music has a “barbaric appeal.” And yet, this is so far from the truth as evidenced in “Junk Food for the Soul.” Zappa is articulate, knowledgable and relevant (even 27 years later, after the interview took place). That doesn’t sound like the “dark, chaotic, premonitory forces in the soul” that Bloom mentioned but rather someone in touch with his humanity.

In “Junk Food for the Soul” Zappa said, “…the content of what they wrote was to a degree determined by the musical predilections of the guy who was paying the bill.” Although he was specifically talking about Classical and Rock’n’Roll music, Zappa felt similarly about American culture in general. He recognized that what we as a society place in high value is what big business wants us as consumers to buy. He called it “unrefined commerce” or, putting our value where our wallet is.

One of Bloom’s opinions in his book, “The Closing of the American Mind” is that “survival itself depended on a better education for the best people” (pg.49). Is he choosing the “best people” or is, as Zappa might suggest, a wealthy person in the college systems choose in the best?

These two excerpts differ greatly. Zappa knows there are beautiful art pieces (literature, music, etc) that exist that aren’t necessarily mainstream. Bloom thinks all great books are essentially those of highly educated people, books that have been in wide circulation spanning the past few hundred years from philosophers such as Nietzsche.

I think also Zappa’s critique gets somewhat annoyed at Bloom, who keeps a very limited and narrow view on the American people, its art and music and its education. “Again, Bloom is not looking at what is really going on here.  The ugliness in this society is not a product of unrefined art, but of unrefined commerce, wild superstition and religious fanaticism.” However, they did seem to agree on the irrelevancy of classical music with younger students, something Zappa suggest be put back into schools. “On this point, Bloom and I can agree, but how can a child be blamed for consuming only that which is presented to him?  Most kids have never been in contact with anything other than this highly merchandised stuff…I argued (in court) that the money for music appreciation courses, in terms of social good and other benefits such as improved behavior or uplifting the spirit..” 

Personally, I feel like Zappa wants what’s best for children as well as everyone else because he wants us all to be exposed to a variety of things not a narrow path that Bloom followed. 

Literature’s Legacy

Literary criticism is “the art or practice of judging and commenting on the qualities and character of literary works” (according to Google.com), but who is in charge of literary criticism? Who gets to say what we read and what we shouldn’t read? Our parents, family and friends? Our teachers? Worldly scholars of past and present? Personally, I think it’s a mixture of all of the above plus celebrities and social media (i.e Oprah’s Book Club). Okay, now that we know who is telling us what to read, we need to ask ourselves why we are reading what we are reading. How has value been assigned to literature? This is where the literary canon comes into play. 

The “they” that have assigned any type of value to texts and literature were either willingly or unwillingly adding these titles to the literary canon. Shakespeare, for instance, is undoubtedly part of this grouping of literature that everyone must read in their (educational) lives. Allan Bloom, author of “The Closing of the American Mind” agrees but insists that Shakespeare has remained a constant in the canon because “as he [Shakespeare] has been read for most of this century, does not constitute a threat to egalitarian right thinking”(pg 65). Bloom is claiming that certain literature holds value over others because it is not threatening to the way of life of that culture. With this sentiment, texts cannot be universal because every society has a completely different set of morals and values regarding people’s lives and art and nothing would be agreed upon as “something everyone should read.” Also, does everyone read? Can everyone read? 

Why do we read the things we do? Bloom says of cultures long passed that they valued literature because it “belonged to them, that told their story, and embodied so to speak, their instinct” (pg. 54), suggesting that Greek cultures for instance valued their literature more than any other because it described them and their livelihoods and their legacy. They could relate to their literature just like we can relate to ours. 

Why does every English major need to read Shakespeare? As Bloom said, Shakespeare wasn’t threatening in his work and that alone is what helped it to endure and survive. But is it still surviving? Bloom suggests that although it’s required reading (because of the canon and collegiate syllabi) teachers aren’t teaching the Bard’s great works anymore: “The old teachers who loved Shakespeare or Austen or Donne, and whose only reward for teaching was the perpetuation of their taste, have all but disappeared(pg. 65).” This cannot be helping the English majors of the world. If there aren’t any professors out their teaching Shakespeare, it means that somewhere along the line, students stopped caring about it. So how do we get students to care about Shakespeare and other great literature again? How do we keep literature alive, our legacy, our instinct? 

 

 

 

Philosophy and Socrates

The Socratic method was a way to teach students by means of questions and answers, if you can call them answers. Socrates’ point was to show his students and contemporaries that what they thought they knew, they didn’t truly know. He could take a simple sentence such as: “The dog is brown” and then turn it around and ask, “Well, what is a dog? What is brown? Is it a dog because it is brown or if something is brown does that make it a dog?” Citizens were frustrated with him because he “talked in circles.” In fact, he did this as were read in Plato’s Euthyphro, by means of questioning what Euthyphro believed to be pious versus impious, just versus unjust. Socrates said to Euthyphro: “Yes, my friend, that’s because I really desire your wisdom and apply my mind to it so that what you say won’t fall on barren ground (pg. 23 14d line 2-3). He pretended to be in want of Euthyphro’s wisdom, but really was trying to get Euthyphro to question what he held to be truth. 

The Socratic Method of learning is essential to philosophy. Philosophy is questioning existential thoughts and ideas. Simple questions like, “Why are here? Where are we? What are we?” are questions philosophers have tried to answer, but we realize these cannot be answered. I wonder if Socrates had answers for these questions? He must have had some dialogues with himself or other townsmen about these existential ideas, he had an answer for everything and was especially fond of “absolute truths.” 

Personally, I have always applauded Socrates for persistently questioning the status quo and refusing to accept everything at face value. Then again, I can see why other men got fed up with him. No one likes a know-it-all. 

 

“True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.” – Socrates

What are the humanities?

In the introduction to his book English After the Fall, Scholes explains that English as a disciplinary department in university isn’t so much “useless” as having “been reluctant to define themselves in terms of use.” Which, frankly, is almost saying the same thing. But I understand what Scholes is getting at and this is why he has learned to adapt to the change and needs of his students. This is where he introduces his ideas of “textuality.” He states that English and Literature should not only be the study of books and poetry, but also film and digital media. To broaden the studies in an English discipline is to give it more meaning and “usefulness.” This is the state of the Humanities (including English) are in today: constant change and expansion to mirror an ever changing and fast-paced world in and out of University. 

Which leads me to my next though. The writers at the Huffington Post explain their positions as bloggers. Personally, I’ve never had a blog or read many blogs. But their argument, if you could call it that since there are over one million blogs today, is sound. In this hectic world, the attention span of the writer’s audience is minimal and fickle. Like a tweet on Twitter needs to be 140 characters or less, a blog needs to be informative yet interesting, detailed but not lengthy and most important, it needs to be relevant and even slightly ahead of the curve. Blogs are a way for any person to quickly publish their viewpoints on literally everything and anything. Arianna Huffington, the founder of one of the biggest blog sites says, “Anytime you get lots of eyeballs in one place, there is money to be made”(pg.18). Huffington was referring to the advertisement of blogging and other media such as news print and televisions news broadcasts. 

However that led me to another thought. Nussbaum claims that Humanities are taking the fall and financial cuts because students are being pressured to study other fields such as mathematics, engineering and technology at University because these are the courses and degrees that will lead to a higher profit for the U.S. in the global market. I’m not sure about you, but I’m not surprised by this sentiment. She says that the humanities, if studied, offer a more compassionate, open-minded and well rounded person integral to a successful democracy a thriving country. “Students of art and literature also learn to imagine the situations of others, a capacity that is essential for a successful democracy, a necessary cultivation of our “inner eyes.” 

Being a lover of language, culture and literary studies, I could not agree more with this statement of Nussbaum: The worldwide crisis in education is that students are made to be “useful machines rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves.” She wishes to “cultivate compassion” and “strengthen solidarity”(pg. 21). Students of the Humanities are not well oiled machines ready to work hard for the monetary profit of the country. Students of the humanities have read, studied, traveled, seen and experienced culture therefore have a broadened mind of the success of not only country, but of man and inner self.