Room change for this week

We will be meeting in Room 6191 Helen C. White Hall this week for movie watching comfortableness!

Rough draft due tomorrow!

Finish talking about V for Vendetta tomorrow!

see you tomorrow
Cindy

Class Cancelled, Monday Jan 31

I have an emergency this morning and won't be able to make it to class, sorry about the late notice! Please be prepared to discuss V for Vendetta Bk I and II on Wednesday, and I'll collect your papers then,

Cindy

V for Vendetta, Bk I questions

For your answering pleasure,

Q1. What do we know about V? Can you determine anything about him objectively--age, gender, race? Can you make any qualified guesses based on the information provided?

Q2. Take a close look at the two "love" scenes in Ch 5 ("Version" p.37-41). Who are the key players in these two "relationships" and why/how are they being used in the story?

Q3. Prothero, Almond, Dascombe, Finch--who are all these people? and don't you think it's a bit hard to tell them apart?

Q4. Is there a moral balance in V for Vendetta? How do you judge acts of violence within this world? is it relativistic? in other words, who is good and who is bad? or is everyone simply a victim?

Q5. anarchy (V) or fascism (the leader). who would you rather take to the prom?


see you tomorrow,
Cindy

Welcome Spring 201

This is the blog for english 201, please view regularly to see what your classmates are posting. Most of you have already signed up for leading discussion. This is where you will post your questions for discussion. If you would like to see what that might look like, please browse the page to see how last semester's 201 formatted their questions/comments. Essentially, you will generate about 3-5 questions, some broad, some specific, concerning the material you are responsible for. For those who are not discussion leaders for that particular day, you are responsible for reading the questions before you come to class, and having ideas ready to respond to the discussion leader. Each of you is required to comment 3 times (using the comments feature) throughout the semester to a posting (3 different postings).

Questions should be posted by no later than 5pm the day before you're due to lead discussion. Responses can be posted anytime up until class meets for a particular discussion.

I think that's everything, enjoy!

Cindy

After Auschwitz

It seems to me that Adorno is quite confused; however, there is a bit more than that to it.
[Before I begin, please don't accept my opinions as fact, this is only what I got from the reading]
From what I know, before WWII philosophy was beginning to focus on the betterment of society as a whole instead of finding truth. The idea of finding happiness via truth had degredaded into finding happiness, and then finally for everyone to be a happy as possible within a society. This last, utilitarian point, was at a hight of acceptance and analization before WWII, and was a favorite of Hilter in the form of Nietzsche, of course all of this is extreme over simplication.
Anyway, after WWII occured and so much unhappiness ensued, the ideas of existentialism and logotherapy took hold very quickly.
It seems as if Adorno is taking issue with the idea of existentialism vs. a more thought based philosophy because he sees neither as providing real meaning to anyones life after WWII. On the one hand he seems to claim that philosophy is just a means of escape and yet on the other hand looking at things as they really are provides a person with no explanations whatsoever.
I say Adorno seems confused because he provides no real epistomology of his own, much like Descartes in his first discourse in which he concludes that one can only know that one exists and nothing more.
Adorno is reaching for a way for people to escape from guilt without really escaping it, yet he cannot conclude that one can look at the facts as they are and conclude that everything works out logically.
Where do you suppose Adorno is going with this, would he accept any form of philosophy or not?
Should philosophy be used as a form of absolving oneself, as is logotherapy?
Can truth be found by facts, what does Adorno think?
Can evil mass murder be reconciled with the guilt of some victims who survived?

Foucoult Article

Some more questions:
1. What advancements in thought led to the evolution in punishment "from being an art of unbearable sensations" to "an economy of suspended rights?" (11). In other words, what ideologies must change in order to alter the way one thinks about the administration of effective punishment?

2. Do you agree with Foucoult's statement, "power produces knowledge," as opposed to the idea that knowledge can only be achieved above the confines of the power system? Assuming that he is correct, what sort of implications for the current and future state of the different classes of society does this statement reveal?

3. Which, in your opinion, is more harmful to a human: the simple, physical invasion of the body that characterizes the methods of punismhments of 200 years ago, or the more indirect attacks upon the liberties of the soul that characterize modern day penal systems?

Questions regarding Foucault

Some questions to consider for discussion on Tuesday night:

1. Foucault is highly invested in the concept of "genealogy," that is, tracing a political and historical trajectory of a particular idea, in this case, punishment and its connections to power relations. That being said, what do you see as useful in the concept of a genealogy? We tend to associate genealogy with tracing familial relations. Is there a way to transfer the notion of interrelatedness into other realms of thought? And to what end? In other words, why is it necessary to analyze the concept of power structures through the history of punishment?

2. Foucault argues late in his essay, "But let there be no misunderstanding: it is not that a real man, the object of knowledge, philosophical reflection or technical intervention, has been substituted for the soul, the illusion of the theologians. The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him into existence, which is itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body. The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body" (30). According to this statement, what is the soul? And what is its relationship to the body? How does this effect the ways in which we are to begin analysing the uses and transformation of different forms of punishment?

3. Is there something perversely compelling about torture? What I mean is, what exactly makes torture and public punishment the "spectacle" that Foucault desribes? What is the role of the audience in producing this spectacle?

4. As Foucault asks on p. 16, "what would a non-corporal punishment be?"

5. How does the contemporary call for prison reform (by 49% of the American population) work into the Foucault's genealogy? Why the cry for reform and humanism, rehabilitation instead of punishment?

that's all.
See you tomorrow,
Cindy