Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Toscano, Aaron, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of English

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Conference Presentations
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • February 1st: Reflection on Workplace Messages
    • January 11th: More Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Audience & Purpose
    • January 23rd: Résumés and Cover Letters
      • Duty Format for Résumés
      • Peter Profit’s Cover Letter
    • January 25th: More on Résumés and Cover Letters
    • January 30th: Achieving a Readable Style
      • Euphemisms
      • Prose Practice for Next Class
      • Prose Revision Assignment
      • Revising Prose: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Good
      • Sentence Clarity
    • January 9th: Introduction to the Class
    • Major Assignments
  • ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing
    • August 21st: Introduction to the Course
      • Rhetorical Principles of Information Design
    • August 28th: Introduction to Information Design
      • Prejudice and Rhetoric
      • Robin Williams’s Principles of Design
    • Classmates Webpages (Fall 2017)
    • December 4th: Presentations
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4182/5182 (Fall 2017)
    • November 13th: More on Color
      • Designing with Color
      • Important Images
    • November 20th: Extra-Textual Elements
    • November 27th: Presentation/Portfolio Workshop
    • November 6th: In Living Color
    • October 16th: Type Fever
      • Typography
    • October 23rd: More on Type
    • October 2nd: MIDTERM FUN!!!
    • October 30th: Working with Graphics
      • Beerknurd Calendar 2018
    • September 11th: Talking about Design without Using “Thingy”
      • Theory, theory, practice
    • September 18th: The Whole Document
    • September 25th: Page Design
  • ENGL 4183/5183: Editing with Digital Technologies
    • August 24th: Introduction to the Class
    • August 31st: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Fall 2022)
      • Rhetoric of Fear
    • November 16th: Voice and Other Nebulous Writing Terms
      • Finding Dominant Rhetorical Appeals
    • November 2nd: Rhetorical Effects of Punctuation
    • November 30th: Words and Word Classes
    • November 9th: Cohesive Rhythm
    • October 12th: Choosing Adjectivals
    • October 19th: Choosing Nominals
    • October 26th: Stylistic Variations
    • October 5th: Midterm Exam
    • September 14th: Verb is the Word!
    • September 21st: Coordination and Subordination
    • September 28th: Form and Function
    • September 7th: Sentence Patterns
  • ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology
    • April 13th: Authorities in Science and Technology
    • April 15th: Articles on Violence in Video Games
    • April 20th: Presentations
    • April 6th: Technology in the home
    • April 8th: Writing Discussion
    • Assignments for ENGL 4275
    • February 10th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 12th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 17th: Technology and Gender
    • February 19th: Technology and Expediency
    • February 24th: Semester Review
    • February 3rd: Religion of Technology Part 1 of 3
    • February 5th: Religion of Technology Part 2 of 3
    • January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 15th: Technology and Democracy
    • January 22nd: The Politics of Technology
    • January 27th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • January 29th: Technology and Postmodernism
    • January 8th: Introduction to the Course
    • March 11th: Writing and Other Fun
    • March 16th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 2
    • March 18th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 2
    • March 23rd: Inception (2010)
    • March 25th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero
    • March 9th: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 12th: Knoblauch. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
    • April 19th: Jacques Derrida’s Positions
    • April 26th:  Feminisms and Rhetorics
    • April 5th: Knoblauch. Ch. 3 and More Constitutive Rhetoric
    • February 15th: Isocrates (Part 2)
    • February 1st: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Books 2 & 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • February 22nd: St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
    • February 8th: Isocrates (Part 1)-2nd Half of Class
    • January 11th: Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Plato’s Phaedrus
    • January 25th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Book 1
    • March 15th: Descartes, Rene, Discourse on Method
    • March 1st: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2
    • March 22nd: Mary Wollstonecraft
    • March 29th: Second Wave Feminist Rhetoric
    • May 3rd: Knoblauch. Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword”
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • ENGL/COMM/WRDS: The Rhetoric of Fear
    • January 10th: Introduction to the Class
    • January 17th: Scapegoats & Conspiracies
    • January 24th: The Rhetoric of Fear and Fallacies Part 1
    • January 31st: Fallacies Part 2 and American Politics Part 1
    • Major Assignments
  • LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127
    • August 21st: Introduction to Class
    • August 23rd: Humanistic Approach to Science Fiction
    • August 26th: Robots and Zombies
    • August 28th: Futurism, an Introduction
    • August 30th: R. A. Lafferty “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965)
    • December 2nd: Technological Augmentation
    • December 4th: Posthumanism
    • November 11th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2)
    • November 13th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2 con’t)
    • November 18th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 1)
      • More Questions than Answers
    • November 1st: Games Reality Plays (part II)
    • November 20th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 2)
    • November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)
    • October 14th: More Autonomous Fun
    • October 16th: Autonomous Conclusion
    • October 21st: Sci Fi in the Domestic Sphere
    • October 23rd: Social Aphasia
    • October 25th: Dust in the Wind
    • October 28th: Gender Liminality and Roles
    • October 2nd: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • October 30th: Games Reality Plays (part I)
    • October 9th: Approaching Autonomous
      • Analyzing Prose in Autonomous
    • September 11th: The Time Machine
    • September 16th: The Alien Other
    • September 18th: Post-apocalyptic Worlds
    • September 20th: Dystopian Visions
    • September 23rd: World’s Beyond
    • September 25th: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • September 30th: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • September 4th: Science Fiction and Social Breakdown
      • More on Ellison
      • More on Forster
    • September 9th: The Time Machine
  • LBST 2213-110: Science, Technology, and Society
    • August 22nd: Science and Technology from a Humanistic Perspective
    • August 24th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach
    • August 29th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 2
    • August 31st: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 3 and 4
    • December 5th: Video Games and Violence, a more nuanced view
    • November 14th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 27-end
    • November 16th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Preface-Ch. 8
    • November 21st: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Ch. 9-Ch. 16
    • November 28th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ch. 17-Ch. 24
    • November 30th: Violence in Video Games
    • November 7th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes Ch. 1-17
    • November 9th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes, Ch. 18-26
    • October 12th: Lies Economics Tells
    • October 17th: Brief Histories of Medicine, Salerno, and Galen
    • October 19th: Politicizing Science and Medicine
    • October 24th: COVID-19 Facial Covering Rhetoric
    • October 26th: Wells, H. G. Time Machine. Ch. 1-5
    • October 31st: Wells, H. G. The Time Machine Ch. 6-The End
    • October 3rd: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 12th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 19th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Prefaces and Ch. 1
    • September 26th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 2
    • September 28th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 5 and 6
    • September 7th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 5 and 6
  • New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021)
    • April 13th: Virtually ‘Real’ Environments
    • April 20th: Rhetoric/Composition Defines New Media
    • April 27th: Sub/Cultural Politics, Hegemony, and Agency
    • April 6th: Capitalist Realism
    • February 16: Misunderstanding the Internet
    • February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media
    • February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies
    • January 26th: Introduction to New Media
    • Major Assignments for New Media (Spring 2021)
    • March 16th: Identity Politics
    • March 23rd: Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality
    • March 2nd: Foundational Thinkers in Cultural Studies
    • March 30th: Hyperreality
    • March 9th: Globalization & Postmodernism
    • May 4th: Wrapping Up The Semester
      • Jodi Dean “The The Illusion of Democracy” & “Communicative Capitalism”
      • Social Construction of Sexuality
  • Science Fiction in American Culture (Summer I–2020)
    • Assignments for Science Fiction in American Culture
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • June 10th: Interstellar and Exploration themes
    • June 11th: Bicentennial Man
    • June 15th: I’m Only Human…Or am I?
    • June 16th: Wall-E and Environment
    • June 17th: Wall-E (2008) and Technology
    • June 18th: Interactivity in Video Games
    • June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth
    • June 2nd: “Johnny Mnemonic”
    • June 3rd: “New Rose Hotel”
    • June 4th: “Burning Chrome”
    • June 8th: Conformity and Monotony
    • June 9th: Cultural Constructions of Beauty
    • May 18th: Introduction to Class
    • May 19th: American Culture, an Introduction
    • May 20th: The Matrix
    • May 21st: Gender and Science Fiction
    • May 25th: Goals for I, Robot
    • May 26th: Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot
    • May 27th: Hackers and Slackers
    • May 30th: Inception
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • A Practical Editing Situation
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Fordism/Taylorism
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • Isaac Asimov’s “A Cult of Ignorance”
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)
    • Oral Presentations
    • Oratory and Argument Analysis
    • Our Public Sphere
    • Postmodernism Introduction
    • Protesting Confederate Place
    • Punctuation Refresher
    • QT, the Existential Robot
    • Religion of Technology Discussion
    • Rhetoric, an Introduction
      • Analyzing the Culture of Technical Writer Ads
      • Rhetoric of Technology
      • Visual Culture
      • Visual Perception
      • Visual Perception, Culture, and Rhetoric
      • Visual Rhetoric
      • Visuals for Technical Communication
      • World War I Propaganda
    • The Great I, Robot Discussion
      • I, Robot Short Essay Topics
    • The Rhetoric of Video Games: A Cultural Perspective
      • Civilization, an Analysis
    • The Sopranos
    • Why Science Fiction?
    • Zombies and Consumption Satire
  • Video Games & American Culture
    • April 14th: Phallocentrism
    • April 21st: Video Games and Neoliberalism
    • April 7th: Video Games and Conquest
    • Assignments for Video Games & American Culture
    • February 10th: Aesthetics and Culture
    • February 17th: Narrative and Catharsis
    • February 24th: Serious Games
    • February 3rd: More History of Video Games
    • January 13th: Introduction to the course
    • January 20th: Introduction to Video Game Studies
    • January 27th: Games & Culture
      • Marxism for Video Game Analysis
      • Postmodernism for Video Game Analysis
    • March 24th: Realism, Interpretation(s), and Meaning Making
    • March 31st: Feminist Perspectives and Politics
    • March 3rd: Risky Business?

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 255F
Email: atoscano@uncc.edu
New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021) » March 2nd: Foundational Thinkers in Cultural Studies

March 2nd: Foundational Thinkers in Cultural Studies

Next week your Critical Analysis of Culture Essay is due via Canvas. You must cite at least three of our readings.

Ch. 3: Culture, Meaning, and Knowledge

Let’s consider the main points about the figures below. Many of them were highlighted in Chapters 1 and 2. Before we get ahead of ourselves, we need the reminder that the descriptions of the works of these major figures are good summaries of arguments, but they don’t cover EVERYTHING. Of course, there are contested definitions…isn’t it ironic. Maybe a little too ironic. Yeah, I really do think.

Ferdinand de Saussure

  • p. 86: “Structuralism is concerned with how cultural meaning is produced, holding it to be structured ‘like a language’.”
  • p. 86: “…language does not reflect a pre-existent and external reality of independent objects. Instead, a sign system like language constructs meaning from within itself.”
  • sign: formed by the relationship of the signifier and the signified.
    • signifier: “…a sound, an image, the marks that form a word on the page.”
    • signified: the concept the signifier points to.
  • p. 87: “The syntagmatic axis is constituted by the linear combinations of signs that form sentences.”
  • p. 87: “Paradigmatic refers to the field of signs (i.e. synonyms) from which any given sign is selected.”
    • What do we know about the accuracy of synonyms?
  • p. 88: Signs are cultural codes

Roland Barthes

  • p. 90: “connotations have become naturalized…accepted as ‘normal’ and ‘natural’.”
  • “[Myths] may appear to be pre-given universal truths embedded in common sense.”
  • p. 92: Signs are polysemic, “carry many potential meanings.”
  • p. 94: “Meaning has no single originatory source….all meaning contains traces of other meanings from other places.”

In a couple weeks (3/23), we’ll talk extensively about Barthes’s theory on mythology.

Jacques Derrida

  • p. 95: logocentrism: “the reliance on fixed a priori transcendental meanings”
    • phonocentrism: “the priority given to sounds and speech over writing in explaining the generation of meaning”
    • “…privileging speech relies on the untenable idea that there is direct access to truth and stable meaning.”
  • p. 96: différance–difference and deferral
  • p. 97: archewriting: “Writing is always already part of the outside of texts. Texts form the outside of texts. Texts are constitutive of their outsides.”
  • p. 98: “Deconstruction seeks to expose the….unacknowledged assumptions” of texts, which “include those places where a text’s rhetorical strategies work against the logic of its own assumptions”
    • Technology example: The field of Composition, which has a long history of attempting to create a liberatory pedagogy (or pedagogy of liberation), has uncritically embraced communication technologies that force students, teachers, schools, and parents to get on the conveyor belt of planned obsolescence–we need to buy (and upgrade) these items in order to participate in education.
    • Therefore, student loan debt combines with personal debt in order to keep us “plugged in.” Apple’s Macintosh 1984 commercial (Irony here because many people go into debt chained to Apple products and other consumer goods).
  • p. 101: “…since words do not refer to essences, identity is not a fixed universal ‘thing’ but a description in language”

Michel Foucault

  • p. 101: “Foucault attempts to identify the historical conditions and determining rules of the formation of discourses or regulated ways of speaking about objects”
  • p. 102: “…discourse gives meaning to material objects and social practices”
  • p. 103: “Disciplinary technologies….produced what Foucault called ‘docile bodies’ that could be ‘subjected, used, transformed and improved”
    • “Discipline….produces subjects by categorizing and naming them in a hierarchical order through a rationality of efficiency, productivity and ‘normalizing'”
  • p. 104: “Knowledge is formed within the practice of power constitutive of the development, refinement and proliferation of new techniques of power.”
    • power/knowledge–disciplines are regulated by rules and they impose a filter on the world and subject people, concepts, nature, etc. into classifications.
  • A critique of Foucault is that “[his] notions of subject positions and docile bodies deprive the self of any form of agency’ (p. 105)

Jacques Lacan

First, a little Freud…

  • Id: the unconscious, unorganized part of one’s personality; often accessible through dreams.*
  • Ego: (overly simplified definition) the conscious part of one’s personality. From Freud: “The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions” (p. 25).
  • Super-ego: the mainly conscious conscience of one’s personality that embodies ideals, goals, and confidence; it also prohibits drives, fantasies, feelings, and actions; is an internalization of culture and cultural norms.
  • p. 111: “For Lacan…meaning is generated along a system of differences.”
  • Manque à être: (via Lacanian psychoanalytic theory) literally, “the want to be”; we’re born into the experience of lack, and our history consists of a series of attempts to figure and overcome this lack, a project doomed to failure” (Lapsley and Westlake 67).
  • Scopophilia: “taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze” (Mulvey, 1975, II. A. para. 1). Similar to voyeurism.
  • Compensation: taking up one behavior [may be embodied in an object] because one cannot accomplish another behavior [often a behavior considered normal].
  • Confabulation: in psychology it means to replace fact with fantasy unconsciously in memory.
  • Displacement: An unconscious defense mechanism, whereby the mind redirects emotion from a ‘dangerous’ object to a ‘safe’ object. In psychoanalytic theory, displacement is a defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses to a more acceptable or less threatening target; redirecting emotion (or, perhaps, action) to a safer outlet.
  • Identification: the act of seeing oneself as similar to or (rarely) identical to another person or object. Often the process of identification completes a subject as when one sees himself or herself represented in another figure (a parent, friend, celebrity, avatar, etc.).

Ludwig Wittgenstein

  • p. 113: “To see language as a tool is to suggest that we do things with language. Language is action and a guide to action”
  • p. 113: “…meanings are given a degree of stability by a social convention and practice”
  • p. 123: “‘The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of the objects'” (Wittgenstein, 1953: 6)

Jean-François Lyotard

  • p.115: “…truth and meaning are constituted by their place in specific local language-games and cannot be universal in character. Knowledge is specific to language-games”
    • “this implies the ‘incommensurability or untranslatability of languages and cultures.”
    • Let’s consider the translation of the English word “privacy” into Italian:
      privacy: 1) il suo desiderio di stare da solo; 2) vita privata

For an extended discussion on Lyotard’s Postmodern Condition, you can view this page from another class.

Richard Rorty

  • p. 116: “…the relationship between language and the rest of the material universe is one of causality rather than one of adequacy of representation or expression”
  • p. 116: “There is no God-like vantage point from which to survey the world and language separately in order to establish the relationship between them”
  • p. 117: “Truth cannot be out there–cannot exist independently of the human mind–because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.” (Rorty, 1989: 69)
  • p. 117: “…’true’ is not an epistemological term referring to the relationship between language and reality but a consensual term referring to degrees of agreement and the co-ordination of habits of action.”
  • p. 118: “Truth is the literalization (or temporary fixing through social convention) of metaphors within a language-game, into what Rorty calla a ‘final vocabulary'”
  • “truth acquired through acculturation becomes a narrow loyalty to a particular culture or way of being”
    • What would Asimov say…
  • p. 118: “…individuals grow through the acquisition of new vocabularies”

Alanis Morissette

Before getting into the irony surround Morrissette’s song “Ironic,” does anyone notice what the above figures share? What’s common to all the major figures (not including Alanis Morissette)?

Obviously, meaning isn’t concrete, but there are socially accepted, agreed-upon meanings. It’s important to remember your audience and use the meaning of a term most familiar (and/or appropriate) for that audience. I particularly like the way the authors explain the types of irony (pp. 119-120):

  • verbal or rhetorical irony “involves a stark difference between what is said and what is meant”
  • dramatic irony occurs when “[the audience] of a text knows more about what is going on than the text’s characters”
  • situational irony “involves an outcome which differs vastly from what was expected, and which often involves contradictions or stark contrasts”
    • The above is what Alanis Morrisette was describing in her song. Perhaps this type of irony could be defined as unfortunate coincidence.
  • Socratic irony “refers to the feigning of ignorance in order to prompt an interlocutor to explain a claim or idea, often in an attempt to expose the flawed or incomplete reasoning behind the received wisdom of ‘common sense’.”
  • Rortian irony: “the term ‘ironist’…describe[s] those people who acknowledge that their most central beliefs and desires are contingent, in that they do not ‘refer back to something beyond the reach of time and chance’ (1989: xv)”

I first learned irony through literature in reference to characters who want something and/or have some goal, but the actively work against it or are doomed (or just harmed) because of it.

Wait a minute! You mean to tell me that even something as obvious as irony doesn’t have a single, clear definition?

Ch. 4: Biology, the Body and Culture

This past weekend, I attended a (virtual) conference, and I was asked about “the problem of transgender women in sports.” Yes, even in 2021, there are people–academics, in fact–who regurgitate the fears of HB 2 (aka ‘Hate Bill’ 2) and the ERA. I also watched Mrs. America (on Hulu) about Phyllis Schlafly and her fight against the ERA, and Ms. Magazine, Shirley Chisholm, and other major figures of 2nd Wave Feminism and their fight to pass it. Fascinating.

Chapter 4 actually only briefly mentions the medical possibility of transgenderism and mentions feminism twice (by my count). This may appear an oversight, but I don’t think so. The authors appear to explain the science and culture of the body in non-essentialist terms. The goal is to get us thinking about what it means to perform this body; how do we embody our identities; what are the truths of biology?

And we only have two and a half hours to figure this all out.

  • p. 126: “good reductionism, which seeks to explain phenomena through causal chains without resorting to mysteries or miracles.”
  • p. 127: “Culture forms an environment for the human body and feeds into evolutionary change.”
    • Remember, evolution is both fact and theory.
  • p. 128: “Methodological holism argues that the best way to study a complex system is to treat it as a whole.”
    • Here’s the rub: can you ever study anything as a whole, an entirety? How do we best draw boundaries?
  • pp. 128-129: “science represent the achievements of agreed procedures….to produce levels of predictability…leading [scientists] to call particular statements true.”
    • What ever happened to predictability?
  • p. 133: “…surgery and drug therapy have allowed the radical transformation of sex to occur.”
  • p. 137: “Health promotion extends the processes of medicalization into cultural organization and lifestyle management.”
  • p. 137: “…discipline generates agency and agency produces discipline.”
    • I paused on this because I didn’t feel I got a good enough explanation. I think I’ve settled on the following example to illuminate this point:
    • School socializes us into “proper” behaviors and even gives us tools and strategies (“gives” is a loaded term here…) to understand the world. By conforming to the agents of social control, we’re able to perform our desires and identities…to a point.
  • p. 139: “It’s life’s problems and unexpected turns, [Michael Sandel] says, that make us compassionate and caring of each other.”
  • Comments…
  • p. 140-142: Cognitive enhancement
    • Adderall, the study drug?
    • When is something a therapy, and when does it become a performance enhancer (PE)?
  • p. 143: “The development of language, the foundation stone of culture.”
  • p. 146: “Evolutionary biology also suggests the likelihood of cultural universals….we use different languages…the specific forms of the universal are different.”
  • p. 146: “feminism rightly challenged the claim that social inequality of the sexes was wholly grounded in biology and thus unalterable.”
  • p. 149: “Emotional states have evolutionary roots that are shaped and triggered by cultural conditions.”
  • p. 149: “…feelings will be different in a brain that can classify the world linguistically and a brain that cannot do so.”
    • We name and move on…end of story, right?
  • p. 150: “emotions are constituted by the rhetorical organization of linguistic and cultural repertoires by which we construct specific accounts of ourselves that invoke ’emotion.'”
  • p. 154: “discourse constructs our experience as meaningful to us.”
  • p. 155: “identity involves an emotional attachment to the narratives of our lives.”
  • p. 156: “Cultural studies writers and sceptical that happiness can be independent from culture.”
    • It’s the good life, full of fun, seems to be the ideal…
  • p. 157: Compulsory happiness
    • Why are there unhappy people who seem to have everything?
    • What cultural conditions might affect our pursuit of happiness?
  • p. 158: “Human consciousness itself is a product of memes.”
    • I just can’t resist!

Human beings are thinking bodies. If you think aloud and no one hears you, did you think?

Next Class

Keep up with the reading. Normally, we’d have “spring Break” next week, but we had that in early February instead, so be ready to discuss Ch. 5 and 6 in Barker and Jane–you have 90 pages to read for next week (and 80 for the week after). Don’t forget that your first assignment–Critical Analysis of Culture Essay–is due next week, 3/09 on Canvas.

Finally, do your Canvas prompt before Friday at 11:00 pm. Do yourself a favor and type these in Word or Google Docs and then copy + paste the text into the Discussion window.


Works Cited

Freud, Sigmund. Freud, The Ego and the Id. 1923.

Lapsley, Robert and Westlake, Michael. Film Theory: An Introduction. 2nd Ed. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2006 (1st edition published in 1998).

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, 16.3 (1975): 6-18.

Skip to toolbar
  • Log In