Nietzsche & Lehrer Readings

After reading Nietzsche and Lehrer, I couldn't resist putting a clip of The Matrix in here. I feel like the best way to describe these two readings is with the help of this particular movie. I used this particular clip because Nietzsche posed a similar question in his article titled On Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Sense when he said, "What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding." (4).

Another quote from Nietzsche that really struck me was when he said, "The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real." So to compare it to the clip, the matrix itself, also known as the liar, uses its very essence as a computer program in feeding electrical signals, also known as valid designations or words, to people's brains in order to make what is unreal appear real, thereby providing these people with the illusion of truth. So if we were to go off of what both Nietzsche and The Matrix are displaying for us, how do we determine truth from illusion?

Nietzsche answers this question in saying that "nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us" (4). In other words, nature is truth in perfect form. However, I would like to point out that while nature may be truth, how we perceive it is illusion, as our perceptions of the things around us dilute the essence of something pure. Nietzsche touches on this when he continues in saying, "Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions" (4). These illusions include the words we use to describe the world around us. Which brings me to Lehrer's reading.

Throughout his article The Truth Wears Off, Lehrer writes to persuade his readers that what may be actual truth at first eventually gets disproved as illusion. As a scientist, Lehrer mentioned that any and all case studies carried out after the initial study has been completed will end up with similar results, but with sharply declining numbers. So the "truth" that one scientist may have found could have been nothing more than a perceived truth or illusion that another scientist doing the same case study brings to attention.

The best example of this decline effect can be found in test studies on the latest medications out there said to help fight off some of the devastating diseases our elderly face today. What drugs seemed to initially work now seem to be showing fewer positive results. Could this be because the drugs never were the true answer to treating certain ailments? Or could this be because the test subjects were building up a resistance to the drugs being given to them? Where else besides the scientific world do we see this decline effect?

Foucault Reading

In this particular reading, Foucault discusses the concept of "self" and how the notion has evolved over time. From what I have gleaned from the text, the concept of the "self" derived from the concept of "taking care of yourself" and has evolved to the well-known phrases "know thyself."

Let us first discuss this notion of "taking care of oneself." Within this original concept, there seems to be at least three different variations of this saying. The first variation comes from the ancient Greeks and Romans, who follow the credence "take care of yourself by taking care of your city." In taking care of one's city, each citizen was looking out for the other, thus leading to a community built on loyalty to one another. The second variation followed eight centuries later with Gregory of Nyssa's credence of "take care of yourself and search your soul to regain immortality" - a precursor to the third variation of the concept practiced by Christians. This particular way of taking care of yourself led to the betterment of the individual on a spiritual level, thus shifting the focus from the community to the self (a strain of "know thyself" coming through). The third variation of this concept was "take care of yourself and better your soul to help every member of the group with the mutual work of salvation." This particular way of taking care of yourself led to the betterment of your spiritual self and the spiritual nature of others. So while slightly shifting focus to be more on the individual, there is still attention on the community as a whole. This third concept of "take care of yourself" also has a moral strain to it, in that denying yourself things is the key to earning salvation. Also, there is the idea that you come to know yourself based on the sacrifices you make and how you handle said sacrifices.

Fast forward to present-day, the concept of "know thyself" is much more relatable based on our sense of community. The "take care of yourself" mentality goes against the blend of Christian morals, doing things for others which is considered good in the eyes of God and leads to a one way trip up to Heaven and a secular form of rules that dictate how we behave and interact with others. In other words, we follow the "take care of yourself" credence to a point, but mostly take care of others first with the mentality of doing things for others and doing things based on what others do for you.

From the ancient Greeks and Romans to present-day, there is an inverse relationship on the concept of self. Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that by taking care of yourself plus whatever else, you end up knowing yourself, whereas today by knowing yourself, you end up taking care of yourself. So my question to fellow bloggers out there is this: Based on the concepts we broke down earlier, which mentality would work best in today's world if people were given the choice?

Cixous Reading

For some reason, I had this scene and then Iron-Jawed Angels running through my head as I read the Cixous reading, but I thought this clip would be more fun in getting the topic started.

Throughout Cixous' reading, she writes about woman's time to write, taking initiative, and being our own voice rather than letting our male suppressors be the overpowering voice for us. Moreover, she writes about the empowerment of women through their writing publicly. There were a handful of quotes throughout this article that speak true to some of these mentioned themes.

• "And why don't you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it" (876).
• "Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you: not man; not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs; and not yourself" (877).
• "Let me insert here a parenthetical remark. I mean it when I speak of male writing. I maintain unequivocally that there is such a thing as marked writing; that, until now, far more extensively and repressively than is ever suspected or admitted, writing has been run by a libidinal and cultural-hence political, typically masculine-economy; that this is a locus where the repression of women has been perpetuated, over and over, more or less consciously, and in a manner that's frightening since it's often hidden or adorned with the mystifying charms of fiction" (879).

This particular quote was interesting to think about. Do men and women each have a distinct writing method that could be easily identified by an unknowing reader? What cues could the reader pick up on that would lead the reader to believe it was a writer of a specific gender writing? And what determines a person's writing to be masculine or feminine?

In thinking more in depth about this article, I believe the reason I chose the above clip was because it mirrored the themes present throughout this reading: women taking a stand for what's rightfully theirs (both votes and their own voices in writing or public speaking). I would, however, like to pose this question to other bloggers out there: Can the themes of "writing is for you" in order to find your voice and taking a stand for what you believe in be applied to all people in general, regardless of their gender or their cause?

Reddick Reading

What a fitting way to end the semester! In reading Reddick's article on English Expository Discourse, I couldn't help but think back to the first day of class when Dr. Brown posed the question "What is expository theory?" As a class, we attempted to find our own definition, and have continued to find a working definition while reading and discussing various theorists.

The Reddick reading does a good job in wrapping up the semester in a neat package by summarizing what expository discussion is through negating other theorists' definitions and conveying to readers what it isn't. By the end of the reading, we are left with Reddick's conclusion that expository discourse cannot be defined because of varying factors, three of which I thought were emphasized most throughout the article. The first main point I found was that the theorists writing about expository discourse take the knowledge of their chosen field for granted, and thus write with the preconceived notion that their readers already know what it's all about - leaving "lay readers" like you and me in the dust with a head full of spinning logic. The second point of emphasis is that because of this preconceived notion, expository theorists then hold to subcategorizing that which has already been written by further trying to explain what expository discourse is - giving the lay reader more pause and theory to ponder. The third (and in my opinion, most important) main point piggybacks off of the first two in that the concept of perception seems to throw a wrench into the inner workings of texts about expository discourse, disproving that supposedly clear, categorized texts on this particular topic can only be perceived or interpreted the way the theorists intend their readers to perceive or interpret them.

There were a few quotes that stood out to me regarding this concept of perception:

• "It is not reality that we can foreground but our perception of it" (214).

This quote reminds me of the Nietzsche and Lehrer reading we did previously in that in reflects the concept that reality itself is nothing but a perception to each of us.

• "Since interpretation is necessarily interactive, since it depends crucially upon what the interpreter brings to the text, whether or not any particular text will actually promote or enhance understanding for any particular lay reader will depend upon whether or not that reader interprets it in a particular way, and that, in turn, will depend upon what that lay reader brings to it" (217).
• "To borrow from Wordsworth, expository discourse, like all the mighty world, is half perceived and half created by its interpreter" (222).

Based on the quotes above, would you say that we as individuals interprete or perceive readings about expository discourse differently? Or do we hold the same set of ideas about expository discourse as other fellow students learning about the field? If we do have different perceptions, are these the only kinds of texts where we may interpret something differently from our peers?

Welcome!

Welcome to the final project for my Theory of Exposition class! On this blog, I will be discussing all the ways in which my current Theory of Exposition graduate level class applies to everyday situations that any average Joe or Jane may come across. In other words, this is a forum for lots of rhetorical questions about anything and everything that somehow relate to what is discussed in this class. It's my goal to make this a blog where people have the opportunity to respond with their thoughts on any ideas or questions mentioned here. Questions about ancient Greek philosophers and their theories, contemporary philosophers and their theories, the entertainment industry, social media, advancing technology, or about any given day's reflections, any and all topics will be welcome. So happy reading and writing, and I look forward to reading your responses!