In Derrida’s essay “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)”, he discusses/implies the difference between the way philosophers and creative writers positions themselves when it comes to viewing the nonhuman animal. There’s an obvious split between animals and humans and philosophers essentially objectify animals because of their lack of language or thought, by human definition. The poets and creative writers on the other hand, think about animals and animality in a different way; they validate them in what they are and recognize that they are real like us, not just objects. This can be seen in the Alice in Wonderland references throughout the text, where Alice talks to the animals like the Cheshire cat. The animals are given more human-like qualities, they can speak and think and give opinions on things. He then states that it essentially comes down to what one’s idea is of responding or distinguishing between being responded to and being reacted to. They can respond but not in a way that we understand. Derrida emphasizes that not only do the animals speak and respond, they speak and respond in a way that disables the linguistic norms; it pulls apart the normal functioning of language. The hedgehogs who are playing croquet in the Alice in Wonderland reference essentially disable the game, which metaphorically disables the game of language. He talks about the gaze of the animal and how there’s a limit to which we can know what the animal can understand about us. Philosophers position the human as the viewing subject or the one that perceives. Derrida notices that humans are viewed as the perceiver but he also attempts to see himself as the perceived through the animal’s eyes. For example, Alice observes that cats talk, they purr but we don’t know whether the purr is a yes or no. Derrida is interested in this idea of irreducible capacity, which animals have. Therefore, he is unable to treat the animal as an object or an “it”. This sort of discourse out-slips the human contract, in terms of the Saussurian langue. It has to do with a scientific empirical gaze; when we look at the cat, we are able to identify it scientifically; you belong to a certain species and you’re related to the bobcat, etc. Derrida sees himself in the mirror of the animal and thinks what he looks like in the eyes of the cat. This honestly interested me, and I found it funny how he mentioned that he was unsure as to who was the hunter and who was being pursued in the moment where he felt the need to run away and cover up.

Freud makes a bold claim in the beginning of “Fetishism”. He claims that “the fetish is a substitute for the woman’s penis (817)…” He goes into this interesting discussion about how the male has repressed the fact that women don’t have penises; he then discusses the castration complex in which the male is threatened by this idea of castration which the woman has obviously had to go through; the man’s narcissism and masculinity have greatly increased when it comes to this organ as a result. Freud further mentions that this fetish of the female genitals also saves the fetishist from being homosexual.

In their early lives, men “scotomize” or create mental blind spots when it comes to what organ women have in their bottom regions; they refuse to believe, in a sense, that there’s a lack of a penis. However, Freud then makes the point that “scotomization seems to me particularly unsuitable, for it suggests that the perception is entirely wiped out, so that the result is the same as when a visual impression falls on the blind spot in the retina (817).” There’s a blind spot for this simple fact that women lack penises or have been “castrated”, but Freud prefers to call it “repression.” He then states, “Furthermore, an aversion, which is never absent in any fetishist, to the real female genitals remains a stigma indelebile of the repression that has taken place. We can now see what the fetish achieves and what it is that maintains it. It remains a token of triumph over the threat of castration and a protection against it (817).” He writes that this repression has caused a stigma regarding the female genitals that can’t be removed and the fetish that has been born as a result of this is seen as triumph and protection over the threat of castration. Women’s genitals essentially are a representation of castration, which is why men are so narcissistic when it comes to their penis. Freud expands on this by claiming that the fetish prevents the fetishist from being homosexual, “It also saves the fetishist from becoming a homosexual, by endowing women with the characteristic which makes them tolerable as sexual objects […] Probably no male human being is spared the fright of castration at the sight of a female genital. Why some people become homosexual as a conse­quence of that impression, while others fend it off by creating a fetish, and the great majority surmount it, we are frankly not able to explain (817-8).” There’s no way to explain why some men take the route they do (becoming homosexual, fetishizing female genitals, etc.) when it comes to the female genital organs.

In Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, she essentially discusses how the oppressed have been forced to accept and believe what the oppressors shove down their throats; whether it be different literature/studies or social structure, etc. Spivak states that there was a “codification of Hindu Law (2002).” She expands on this, stating that there’s an unsettling division between the local, now-alternative tradition of Sanskrit “high culture” and the disciplinary formation in Sanskrit studies resulted from the establishment of a variant of the British system; as aforementioned, the legal project’s epistemic violence was matched by the cultural answers produced by reputable intellectuals in the former (2003).

Spivak also makes a point to discuss the “episteme” and how historiography always aligns with the oppressor (“winner”) rather than showcasing the perspective of those that are oppressed and their insurgencies; Spivak furthers this argument by expanding on the “Subaltern Studies group”. The Subaltern Studies group focuses rethinks “Indian colonial historiography from the perspective of the discontinuous chain of peasant insurgencies during the colonial occupation (2004).”

Furthermore, the Subaltern Studies group, as aforementioned, attempts to “rethink Indian colonial historiography from the perspective of the discontinuous chain of peasant insurgencies during the colonial occupation (2004).” Essentially, they address how “the phased development of the sub­altern is complicated by the imperialist project (2004).” The perspective from the peasant insurgencies has such limited media, since it isn’t ever a prominent or a “significant side” to cover. Nobody wants to know about the “dirt”, history is all about who won what and more often than not, the oppressors are the “winners”. I found it interesting that there’s a group dedicated to the study of rethinking historiography from the peasant insurgency perspective. Moreover, “It is, rather, to continue the account of how one explanation and narrative of reality was established as the normative one. A comparable account in the case(s) of Cen­tral and Eastern Europe is soon to be launched (2002).” Spivak notes that there is essentially one narrative that is established and it’s the one that everyone knows. It becomes standard knowledge when it comes to that event and any other narratives are pushed into its shadow. I was very excited to see the mention of “Silencing Sycorax: On African Colonial Discourse”, as I dissected it in one of my previous classes, and it led to me seeing Spivak’s work in a different light as well. (I’d be super interested in any recommendations for similar works such as “Silencing Sycorax” if you know of any!)

Hegemony is defined as “political rule or domination, especially in relations between states”. Marxism elaborates on this definition and extends it to social class relations (more specifically, a ruling class). Marxist Antonio Gramsci delves deeper into the relationship between domination, hegemony, and “the ideology”. He claims that society lives off of “an ideology” that is more or less applied to both the subordinated and dominant classes; however, hegemony rejects this “ideology”, as it is one in itself. “The concept of hegemony often, in practice, resembles these definitions, but it is distinct in its refusal to equate consciousness with the articulate formal system which can be and ordinarily is abstracted as ‘ideology’ (109).” This “ideology” that Gramsci mentions is essentially just the idea that the consciousnesses of the subordinated and dominant classes directly fall under the formal societal system that has been constructed. Or rather, the societal system has been applied to the consciousnesses. This is explained briefly, “More generally, this sense of ‘an ideology’ is applied in abstract ways to the actual consciousness of both dominant and subordinated classes. A dominant class ‘has’ this ideology in relatively pure and simple forms. A subordinate class has, in one version, nothing but this ideology as its consciousness (since the production of all ideas is, by axiomatic definition, in the hands of those who control the primary means of production) […] (109).” Essentially, the dominant class “has” this ideology or state of mind. It has enveloped their consciousness; the subordinate class has nothing but this ideology because the production of ideas is in the hands of those who control it, which would be the dominant class. The story here is quite circular, production leads to consumption and application. “It is the fully articulate and systematic forms which are recognizable as ideology (109).” These forms or systems are well thought out because they equate to the culture of the classes.

The way hegemony differs from this is that it’s not a socially constructed system or structure; it is just “a realized complex of experiences, relationships, and activities, with specific and changing pressures and limits (112).” It’s very complex and unlike a socially constructed system, it “does not just passively exist as a form of dominance. It has continually to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified. It is also continually resisted, limited, altered, challenged by pressures not all its own (112).” Dominance, when it comes to hegemony, needs to be renewed consistently and molded around the expanding experiences of the consciousnesses of the subordinated and dominant classes.

In Ian Bogost’s The Rhetoric of Video Games, he mentions the word “play”. Bogost believes that “play”, although almost always used in the context of a leisurely break or, “playtime”, is actually an opportunity to learn and is misunderstood as a word and concept. Rather than just being a term to describe a child’s leisurely frolicking or an adult’s unproductive gaming with which they spend their free time, “play” gives “possibility space”. In a sense, it allows for an individual to expand their knowledge by creating something new.

He starts off by stating that most parents think that playing video games is a waste of time and that they’d rather their children do their homework or do something that falls under the “learning” category, whether that be developing social skills or doing something that has been stereotypically labeled as “productive”.  He states, “Video game play is considered an unproductive expenditure of time, time that fills the breaks between work. This goes for children playing games at home after school as well as adults playing games after work. Parents might worry about their children playing video games after school instead of doing their homework or playing outside. Video games are perceived to interrupt learning and social life, acting as a leech on normal childhood development (2656).” Bogost then turns to the idea that “play”, is simply misunderstood. Specifically, the “nature of play is misunderstood (2656).”

He quotes Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman’s definition of that term, “play is the free space of movement within a more rigid structure.” The “rigid structure” is society’s standard practice(s) that everyone partakes in. The free space of movement is an opportunity for one to stray from those standard practices and create something new. It’s about using your environment to shape the constraints of your created practice. Bogost uses children’s play at a playground as an example, “On a playground, the possibility space refers to the physical properties of the play space, as well as the equipment, time allotted, and number and type of children. Kids are particularly adept at inventing new games based on the constraints of their environment; if one listens closely to children at play, one of the most common things to overhear is the establishment of new rules (“Now you be the monster.” “This square is safe!”). When children play, they constantly renegotiate their relationship with a possibility space (2657).” Play is so much more than just “leisurely breaks”, it serves as a learning opportunity, whether it be playing a video game or playing outside with friends.

In Nietzsche’s philosophical essay, “On Truth and Lying,” he argues that the entirety of language is simply a lie. Nietzsche claims that language takes things and forces them into a mold of sameness. This also has to do entirely with how humans perceive things and categorize them rather than simply observing the details of everything individually. He states, “Every concept comes into being by making equivalent that which is non-equivalent. Just as it is certain that no leaf is ever exactly the same as any other leaf, it is equally certain that the concept ‘leaf’ is formed by dropping these individual differences arbitrarily, by forgetting those features which differentiate one thing from another, so that the concept then gives rise to the notion that something other than leaves exists in nature…” (p. 755) The entire world that we, as humans, project through our language has nothing to do with what actually is and exists in the world. We categorize things and look at the bigger picture rather than paying attention to the details. “…Something other than leaves exists in nature, something which would be ‘leaf’, a primal form, say, from which all leaves were woven, drawn, delineated, dyed, curled, painted—but by a clumsy pair of hands, so that no single example turned out to be a faithful, correct, and reliable copy of the primal form” (p. 755). This brief mentioning of the “primal form” is quite interesting; Nietzsche is emphasizing the immateriality of human concepts. The language that humans have has nothing to do with the real world. When we refer to certain objects, such as a desk, or a living being, as small and “irrelevant” as a midge, we don’t realize that there is no way that we can know for certain that what one calls a desk is what another calls a desk. The analysis that interested me was the point that we have no idea if something as small as a midge is at the center of its world in its own eyes. We have no idea if the midge has its own language and has a different name for itself or for everything around it. So essentially, there is no way that language is the truth because there are so many different ways that language could be interpreted and the words that we have assigned to everything in the world aren’t for certain. Therefore, because our language isn’t the truth, it must be a lie.