Fruits in the Media

Today’s discussion got me thinking a lot about fruit in the media. Of course, as a classics minor and lover of Percy Jackson, I immediately thought of the examples we mentioned in Greek mythology, the Golden Apple I mentioned and the Persephone’s pomegranate seeds. We talked about how in those myths and how they involve women, but I was reminded of how in Rick Riordan’s Heroes of Olympus book, The Mark of Athena, a character who is the demigod child of Hades uses the fruit of the underworld, the pomegranate seeds to put himseld into a “death trance” that allows him to live with very little air. These seeds that are generally viewed negatively, as they are what tethered Persephone to the underworld, are the only reason Nico survived until his rescue. This leads me to question a reversal of this “forbidden fruit” idea. I don’t know much about the bible or the story of the forbidden fruit, but it makes me wonder about how the devil/snake convinced eve to eat the fruit and if maybe the coming of the messiah was like the arrival of Nico’s savior and more or less put an end to the punishment, the death trance, so to speak. Or something to that effect anyway.

I also included a few fruit on my personal list that we didn’t have on the board. Maybe it was spending the last couple days thinking about Barthes’ bliss, but my mind went to a different place. The grapefruit, papaya, honeydew, cantaloupe, and peach are all associated with the female anatomy. Surely the orange can be as well, as we saw in the passage about the garden on the Euphrates. Thinking about this in regard to the question of what the title is referring to, it might be a stretch, but I think an argument could be made that because not all vaginas are the same, oranges are not the only fruit.

Drifting into Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

I tend to forget that I’m reading when I’m reading Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. Not only do find the protagonist/narrator incredibly likable and identifiable (I also grew up in an almost comically Christian family), but the narration style is easy and welcoming.

In The Pleasure of the Text, Barthes describes “drifting” on page 18. “Drifting occurs whenever I do not respect the whole, and whenever, by dint of seeming driven about by language’s illusions, seductions, and intimidations, like a cork on the waves, I remain motionless, pivoting on the intractable bliss that binds me to the text (to the world).”

I seem to drift into this text. I lose track, I stop thinking critically and English major-y about it. I enjoy the language, laugh at the jokes, and identify so much with the protagonist I seem to lose myself into the story. It’s a very Barthes way of taking pleasure in a story.

Some (vague-ish) thoughts connecting Johnson’s piece back: to Saussure, and Barthes

This essay by Barbara Johnson is placed in a section in our anthology labeled “Post-structuralism, Deconstruction, Post-modernism,” so some of what stuck out to me were the ways in which this piece engaged with and connected to the earlier theorists we’ve read (certainly it provided a nice overview, leading up to the midterm)—“structuralists” such as Saussure or Jakobson—and how the theories she outlines ultimately push beyond those earlier works, into the “post-“ period. One particular part that stood out was the distinction drawn between work and text. The work is described as “a closed, finished, reliable object,”: while the text is “an open, infinite process that is both meaning-generating and meaning subverting” (341). This mostly reminded me of the difference between Saussure’s langue (language, a structure; synchronic), and parole (speaking; diachronic). As a structuralist, Saussure is most interested in langue, which in its existence prior to a subject’s entry into it, reminds me of the closed, reliable nature by which the “work” is described. The “post-structuralist” quality of this split proposed seems to lie in the turn toward a greater interest in the open “text,” closer, I think, to parole. I’m not sure if they necessarily match up completely, or if maybe I’m making too generalized a connection; but I have been noticing that a lot of different concepts are mapping onto either the diachronic/synchronic split (parole/langue, metonymy/metaphor) or that of the signifier/signified (conscious/unconscious, or now, as Johnson outlines, materialism/idealism), so, here’s my attempt to keep matching up concepts…

I was also pretty interested to see that this work/text distinction was initially proposed by Barthes, and, this combined with much of Johnson’s later discussion of the relation between writing and speech led me to make another jump back to reading from earlier in the semester: The Pleasure of the Text. This wasn’t only because of the use of the term “text” (rather than, say, The Pleasure of the Work) in his title, but his comment at the very end that “if it were possible to imagine an aesthetic of textual pleasure, it would have to include: writing aloud” (Barthes 66). Johnson states that “manifestations of writing” such as the “rebus, the anagram, and the letter” are “something more than mere transcriptions of the spoken word” (343)—similar to Barthes’s claim that this “vocal writing” is “nothing like speech” (66). For Barthes this “something more” spoken of by Johnson available in this writing aloud, this breakdown of the binary opposition between speech and writing, relates to an “articulation of the body”—expressing through the “grain of the voice,” the “voluptuousness of vowels,” etc., etc. And, even though he says that this “nothing like speech,” it still seems, to me, as if it is an attempt to structure writing as speech, insofar as it’s attempting to “capture the sound of speech” in writing. Derrida’s approach to the “something else” is, inversely, defined as seeing “’speech’ as being ultimately structured like ‘writing’” (Johnson 344). Instead of trying to bring the “presence of the muzzle” into writing (Barthes 66)—which still gives immediacy to speech?—Derrida works to show that “speech, like writing, is based on a differance,” not necessarily any more immediate or present than writing.

(Finally, though, I’m still not really sure that Barthes’s idea of writing aloud—despite still seeming to focus on the importance of speech’s presence—is necessarily wholly opposed to Derrida’s project, as it too brings to light, with its emphasis on the “body,” a “materiality” in writing. To be entirely honest, I’m not necessarily sure what to make of a comparison between these two, on this particular point; I just can sort of feel some sort of connection (definitely need some more time to fully work through it, probably after I understand Derrida/deconstructuion/differance a bit more after class tomorrow). In the meantime…anyone else think back to The Pleasure of the Text when reading this, and have any thoughts on connections between theories of speech and writing?)

Jakobson Brings Me Back to Barthes & Beards

Though initially confused by the difference between what Jakobson labels similarity and contiguity in language, I now see the related yet differing nature between the two concepts. While similarity demonstrates substitution, such as metaphoric works like poetry, contiguity demonstrates closeness, such as metonymic works like prose. The relationship Jakobson investigates between two words or concepts that seemingly bear the same meaning reminded me of my initial thoughts when we read Barthes. In the English language itself, words easily meld and mush together in general meaning yet in specific detail differ slightly, such as the difference between pleasure and bliss or similarity and contiguity. Though these differing forms share the root of their meaning, both Jakobson and Barthes create a clear distinction between the diverting streams of their thoughts on the development of discourse. This in itself is an interesting point on how the signifier is given the meaning or signified that we grant it, such as the beards we discussed in class on Monday. Two similarly groomed beards may appear the same (same signifier), yet they demonstrate different meaning or social stigma depending on the person to whom they belong (different signified).

Yet unlike Barthes, Jakobson does not stress preference of one form over another. While Barthes emphasizes the necessity of bliss in imbibing literature, Jakobson does not indicate whether he prefers poetic literature to metonymic prose. Jakobson admits the “preponderance of metaphor over metonymy in scholarship”, yet does not demonstrate his own preference (79). I would agree with Jakobson there, in that I struggled to discover the difference between similarity and contiguity due to the lack of critical exposure I had received on metonymic works.

An Accidental Return to Barthes

While reading “The Formal Method” essay by Boris Eichenbaum at the beginning of our R&R book, I realized two things.

 

1. That this essay was not, in fact, our assigned reading for Monday (oops).
2. That Eichenbaum and Barthes have very similar arguments regarding literature.

 

Eichenbaum’s explanation of the Russian Formalist concept that   “the object of literary science is not literature but “literariness,” that is, what makes a given work a literary work” (7) reminded me of Barthes’ idea of ‘texts of bliss’. The point of studying them is not to try to understand them or get pleasure from their meaning, but rather to appreciate the texts for being “literary” and making us think, question, become frustrated/confused/homicidal etcetera.

 

Eichenbaum also offers a good argument to why Barthes ‘texts of bliss’ even exist. He makes the point that:

 

We do not experience the familiar, we do not see it, we recognize it. We do not see the walls of our rooms. We find it very difficult to catch mistakes when reading proof (especially if it is in a language we are very used to), the reason being that we cannot force ourselves to see, to read, and not just “recognize,” a familiar word. If it is a definition of “poetic” perception or of “artistic” perception in general we are after, then we must surely hit upon this definition: “artistic perception is a perception that entails awareness of form (perhaps not only form, but invariably form) (9).

 

If we combine Eichenbaum and Barthes’ ideas, we can see that perhaps texts of bliss exist so that we can continue to appreciate literature as an art. While reading a text of pleasure, it is easy to get caught up in the story and your own enjoyment. You miss the nuances of the writer’s sentence structure or their carefully crafted metaphors. But in a text of bliss, you are forced to pay attention to the “art” of literature… mostly because you may not have any idea of the being behind the writer’s “artistic” text (i.e. Gertrude Stein).

 

So, even though I spent thirty minutes reading the completely wrong assignment for class tomorrow, I am not considering it time wasted. I was able to link what I was reading back to one of our first authors/theories and to get a better understanding as to why anyone would want to read a text of bliss in the first place.

 

Now onto the actual reading assignment…

Distinction via Opposition: Texts of Bliss. Texts of Pleasure.

“Within the same language, all words used to express related ideas limit each other reciprocally…[and] have value only through their opposition,” (67 de Saussure).

This idea interested me greatly when thinking about language, specifically about the conception behind words. I thought this related to the respective conception behind “texts of pleasure” and “texts of bliss” fairly well. Like the French synonyms redouter “dread” and craindre “fear,” as de Saussure points out, the phrase “text of pleasure” would not exist without the phrase “texts of bliss.” One comes to identify a text of pleasure as being negligent of bliss, and vice versa. One wouldn’t have a conception of “texts of bliss” if one did not have another kind of text to compare it to. If all texts were seen as “blissful” then why would they be called blissful? Without the conception of “bliss” and “pleasure” as being opposite attributes of text, we would form other attributes to compare.

Of course, we already do that. When one walks into a books store, they search for new books by going to the genre they like. Not everyone is thinking about pleasure and bliss when they read Lord of the Rings, and they probably don’t categorize it as a blissful or pleasurable read after they are done. It is only when the categories are presented before us that we actually think about the distinction.

However, even in this instance the ideas of de Saussure still apply. If all novels were fiction, for instance, we wouldn’t need a classification for “fiction.” The same goes for the genre of fantasy. Readers, and by readers I mean consumers, wish to know what they are getting into when they go to buy a book. If someone doesn’t want to read a horror novel they want something that isn’t horror. They would probably search within any other category. If they saw comedy, they would pick up a book and expect it to be void of horror. Likewise, a reader of fantasy would pick up a book expecting a certain opposition of realism while a reader of realism would want to read something in opposition of fantasy. Expectations are about what the genre is and what the genre isn’t.

-Donavan Neese

Communication, Expression, and The Art of Recklessness

At the beginning of this semester, I was coincidentally reading Dean Young’s poetics statement, The Art of Recklessness. He references Barthes quite a bit in an attempt to define poetry and what makes it pleasurable. The other day, Prof. Ingham was talking about language as communication (referring to Stein’s poetry) and it reminded me of a section in Young’s book. (I have to paraphrase, because I no longer have the book – it’s at the Monroe County Library if you are intrigued!) Young says that language is used for two purposes: communication and expression; it is the poet’s job to work between these two purposes.
For me, Stein’s “Tender Buttons” comes across as more expressive than communicative. But what exactly does it mean? It’s hard to really say. Coltrane wailing on the saxophone is really expressive – but what does it mean? Same goes for Jimi Hendrix bashing his guitar against the amplifier before setting it on fire – it’s all very expressive. I’m not saying these things are void of meaning – perhaps the opposite – they are full of meaning! But it is hard to put into words. It goes well with Barthes – “pleasure can be expressed in words, bliss cannot” (21).

So does that mean that pleasurable writing is more communicative than it is expressive – and that blissful writing is more expressive than it is communicative? I think adding “expression” and “communication” to our terminology in our discussions can help us better understand Barthes’s ideas. Or maybe it makes everything that much more confusing – and if so – you are welcome for the added bliss!

Bliss and the Sound of the Human Voice

In the later portion of his essay Barthe advocates for another aesthetic of textual pleasure which he refers to paradoxically as writing aloud. In some sort of introduction Barthe states that “this vocal writing (which is nothing like speech) is not practiced, but is doubtless what Arataud recommended and what Sollers is demanding. Let us talk about it as though it existed” (66).

This introduction however is only the beginning of a paragraph that routinely defeats interpretation. Right away Barthe defends his definition of Writing Aloud as neither belonging to everyday speech, nor belonging to the shapes of the letters themselves which Barthe calls the pheno text. Instead Barthe states cryptically that writing aloud is located in “the grain of the voice, which is an erotic mixture of timbre and language… it is not phonological but phonetic” (66). Barthe goes on to say that the writing aloud is a “language lined with flesh, a text where we can hear the grain of the throat, the patina of consonants, the voluptuousness of vowels” (66). In my interpretation the bliss of writing aloud is something that is in-between the spoken and written language, in which we ascribe or imagine the pleasurable or even blissful sounds of the human voice to written language.

When I was reading this passage by Barthe I couldn’t help but thinking of the scientific phenomenon called Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response or ASMR. Essentially ASMR is a series of pleasurable head orgasms that slowly spread down through the body. This sensation is commonly triggered by sounds of muted human conversation. It is possible but not certain that Barthe is familiar with this specific bliss but lacks a single word to describe this sensation. It is an acute mental, not carnal, but entirely physical pleasure that can be brought forth from the sound of the human voice. It is distinct from an orgasm but also very similar. Link

On the following page of the essay Barthe says that cinema as an art form best captures “The sound of speech close up…” and “allows us to hear their (the sounds) materiality, their sensuality, the breath, the gutturals, the fleshiness of the lips….” On this point I differ in opinion with Barthe. I believe that these sounds, the bliss of speech, can be found in a variety of mediums.

Afterall if bliss is located in speech as seen in ASMR is it not found in all manifestations of the spoken word? In responding to this post I am interested in your experiences with ASMR in relation to the spoken word or other noises. Where is the bliss located? Have you had an experience with ASMR? Do you believe that ASMR is what Barthe is referring to in this passage?

First run – Barthes

This post may make absolutely no sense. Recently, a friend of mine told me about the concept of interpellation. I am no expert on this topic, but from what I understand, this is a kind of speech that presses identity on the person receiving it. For example, if someone calls me a bitch and I turn around, I am therefore receiving the identity of being a bitch. I wonder if this can be at all applied to Barthes when he asks “how can the text ‘get itself out of’ the war of fictions, of sociolects?” (30) Interpellation seems to imply that we have no choice but to receive the words and labels that other use to define us—that if I dare to respond to a person calling me anything, then I am that word. Does this apply to the text? And if so, would that mean that the text cannot ever really expand past the label that we have societally placed on it? Barthes claims that “the text destroys utterly, to the point of contradiction, its own discursive category”(30). Would these two ideas even be able to cross? Does the ability to deconstruct and reject the labels placed by society only exist for text and not for actions of speech?

Again, I’m not completely educated on the ins and outs of the concept of interpellation, but from what had been discussed, it seemed that this was an unavoidable act. That we as individuals don’t have the ability or freedom to reject and deconstruct these “genres” we might be placed into. Yet, the text can? Barthes himself states that “as soon as I name, I am named: caught in the rivalry of names” (30). So, the text must fight to dispose of the limitations that we, as a society, may place on it by rejecting traditional language and fighting against being assigned to one genre. But does it really have that ability? Once I define it as something, does it become what I define it as?

Barthes on Fear (and its relation to bliss)

Towards the end of The Pleasure of the Text, Barthes takes a moment to compare bliss to fear. Barthes claims that bliss and fear are close in proximity, and in his claim, he explains that fear is not “a very worthy feeling; fear is the misfit of every philosophy” (48). More importantly, Barthes states that “it is a denial of transgression, a madness which you leave off in full consciousness” (48). I take this to mean that, according to Barthes, fear is not something one admits to feeling. Fear is something felt in the subconscious, and once it becomes conscious, it is pushed away. If fear is a denial of transgression, then in consciousness, there is a refusal to acknowledge fear’s presence.

This is precisely the reason why it is similar to bliss, according to Barthes. Bliss, like fear, is not present in the conscious. Barthes states, “Fear is absolutely clandestinity, not because it is ‘unavowable’ … but because, splitting the subject while leaving him intact, it can wield only conforming signifiers: the language of madness is not available to a man listening to fear rising within himself” (48). Both fear and bliss are unacknowledged, and, unlike pleasure, to acknowledge them is to remove their presence. As Barthes argued earlier, to acknowledge bliss is to fall out of it and into pleasure. Also, bliss itself is a disruption or loss of emotion, as we pointed out in discussion. I believe Barthes here is making the same argument for fear.

However, Barthes comparison begs the question: why compare bliss to fear? He is right, I think, to argue that bliss and fear share similarities. But what place does fear have in Barthes argument overall? Is there fear that arises along with bliss when reading a certain text?

Furthermore, at the end of this section, Barthes points out, “Fear does not pursue, nor does it constrain, nor does it accomplish writing: by the stubbornest of contradictions, both coexist – separated. (Not to mention the case in which to write makes one afraid.)” (49) What does Barthes mean when he ends on this note? And under what circumstances would writing make one afraid? How does this relate to the feelings of bliss and pleasure about which Barthes is arguing?