Interpretation, Criticism & Psychology

Interpretation & Criticism &
Psychology

Interpretation, Criticism & Psychology
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Michel Foucault 1926 1984
Biographical Sketch Had a privileged youth Hated what his parents represented He started self-harming and
thought constantly of suicide. In university, he decorated his
room with images of torture. At 22, he tried to commit suicide. Kept his sexuality away from
society.
Foucault, Big Ideas Foucault is best known for his analysis of the relations among knowledge, power, and discourse the ways in which the language we use to describe social phenomena (madness, sexuality, punishment, art).
These things play a pervasive political role and are effectively instruments of domination.
There is no politically neutral form of expression or understanding.
How does power function in society?
Do you think that art can be used as a form of expressing / using
power?
Philosophical Inspiration On the uses and Abuses of History for Life:
Academics had poisoned our sense of how history should be read and taught.
Nietzsche: NO! There is no point in learning about the past for its own sake. We should dig out ideas from that past that can help us lead a better life in our own times.
How does power work?
We live in a society where there are power structures.
In the past, there were also societies with power structures.
In your view, how has the use of power changed ?
Madness and
Civilization
Foucault as a Philosophical Historian
We treat people with mental illness in a more humane way than past?
Foucault argues that conditions for the mad renaissance were far better.
Medicine has not become better with time.
Discipline and Punish, 1975 State punishment: the prison and punishing systems are so much more humane when people used to be hung in public squares.
Foucault: No. Problem: Power now looks kind, but is not. In the past: It wasnt kind and therefore could encourage rebellion.
Modern Punishment: barbaric and primitive.
The Order of Things
An Archaeology of the Human Sciences
The human disciplines are not academic disciplines;
they are rather an interdisciplinary space for the reflection of the man who is the subject of more
mainstream scientific knowledge.
Interested in how discourse changes throughout history.
The Order of Things
Foucault offers an analysis of what knowledge meant and how this meaning changedin Western thought from the Renaissance to the present.
He focuses on the notion of representation.
What structure (formal reality) to ideas in, say, a map, represent?
Representation
Classical Representation: We know in virtue of having ideas that represent what we know.
We have direct, introspective access to the abstract structures of our ideas.
So how do we know that an idea is a representation of an object?
Foucault Representation is only possible via human beings.
Without human beings as the subjects of our art, we will be less able to connect the ideas from the past to the present.
Not all art should depict human beings and their social lives, but some of the best art does because it is so distinctively human.
Psychology and Art
Sigmund Freud 1856 1939
What does it mean to day dream?
How is imagination connected to art?
Imaginative Writers If we could only find some activity in ourselves, or in people like ourselves, which is similar to writing imaginative works.
If we could do so, then wed have some hope of obtaining some insight into the creative powers of imaginative writers.
Artists always try to lessen distance between themselves and ordinary human beings; they assure us that every one is a poet (artist) at heart.
The Child and Play We ought to look towards the child as the first true source of imaginative activity.
The childs best loved and most absorbing activity is play.
Every child at play behaves like an imaginative writer?: They create a world of their own, or rearranges things of their world in a way that pleases them.
The opposite of play = reality?
The Writer and the Child
Like the child, the writer creates a world of fantasy that they take very seriously: They invest it with a great deal of affect, while separating it from reality.
Unreality: Many things which, in real life, produce no pleasure can actually produce pleasure in a play. You might enjoy or find it pleasurable to witness a character feel pain.
Reality vs. Play After a child grows up and stopped playing, after decades trying to grasp the realities of life, they may reach a state of mind where the contrast between reality and play is blurred.
The adult throws off the seriousness (a heavy burden in life) and obtains the great pleasure of humor.
As people grow, they cease to play. But, it is so difficult for people to give up something pleasurable that they once knew.
Creating Phantasy When we give something up, all we really do is adopt a substitute.
When someone ceases to play, they begin to create phantasy.
The adult builds castles in the air and essentially day- dreams.
The importance of recognizing that human beings do this as long as they live is underappreciated.
Is everyone an artist? What is it that differentiates an ordinary person from a brilliant
artist?
Adult vs. Child Child: does not conceal (hide) their play from others
Adult: ashamed of day dreams and conceals them from others.
Day dreaming is a continuation of play, but the motives which underlie these two activities are different.
Day Dreaming Is something the adult cherishes as their most intimate possessions and would rather confess their misdeeds than tell his day dreams.
Fundamental Flaw: The adult thinks that they are the only people who make up phantasies, without having any idea that everyone else probably does, too.
Day dreaming is the continuation of play.
Reasons for Different Behavior? The play of children is determined by their wishesor really one wish to be grow up or be grown-up.
The child is consistently pretending to be grown up.
For the adult, they know they are not expected to play any longer or to day dream, but to be concerned with the real world.
The adult is ashamed of their phantasies as being childish.
Imaginative Writer and The Day Dreamer Distinction: There are artists who take over material that already exists, and those who create their material spontaneously.
One thing they share: They all have a hero who is the center of interest, for whom the author tries to win sympathy for by any means.
The hero is always saved someway or somehow.
Freud: Day Dreams manifest in the artists creations.
Day Dreams and The Artist Experience creates a strong impression on the artist, maybe stirs up a memory of an earlier experience (probably from childhood) and this enables day dreaming.
Day Dreamer: Hides his day dreams from us, but even if he disclosed them it would give us no pleasure.
Artist: A person of refined talent presents their creations (from day dreams) and we experience great pleasure from it.
Carl Jung 1875 – 1961
Freud and Psychoanalysis Psychoanalysis: Method of treating mental disorders which emphasizes unconscious mental processes. The aim of psychoanalytic therapy is to make the unconscious conscious. 1. Extraverted (outward-looking) and Introverted
(in-ward looking) 2. Collective Unconscious
What does it mean to explain or interpret a work of art?
On Psychology We can expect that psychological research to:
Explain the formation of a work of art: We must deal with a product of complicated psychic activities but a product that is intentional and consciously shaped.
Reveal the factors that make a person artistically creative. We must deal with the psychic apparatus itself.
The Work of Art Explain the formation of a work of art: We must deal with a product of complicated psychic activities but a product that is intentional and consciously shaped.
Psychological Works Literary products (or others) of highly dubious merit are often the greatest interest to a psychologist.
Psychological Novel: Not very rewarding. Such a novel explains itself and its own psychological interpretation. The psychologist can only expand or criticize.
The most fruitful novels are those which the author has not already given a psychological interpretation. Room for analysis and interpretation.
Do we need to supply extra meaning?
In truly great works, there is nothing a psychologist can add that the poet (artist) has not already said in their own words. The second part, however, calls for interpretation.
The creative an imaginative capacities of the artist are not self-explanatory.
Artistic Creation Psychological: Deals with materials drawn from the realm of human consciousness. Lessons of life, emotional shocks, experience of passion, crises of human destiny all things that make up the conscious life of humans and their feelings of life.
This material is psychically assimilated, raised from the artists experience, and given an expression to which the observer can receive clarity of human insight.
Artistic Creation Psychological: The artists creation(s) is an interpretation and illumination of the contents of consciousness of the inescapable experiences of human life.
Countless works of art belong to this class: They take their materials from the vast realm of human consciousness.