Philosophical Underpinnings: Literature And Society

“It’s society’s fault!” many say as they encounter various issues in the world, whether it is talking about moral development, crime, or the influence of famous characters on people’s life. This, presumably, is a reflection of the worry people have for society’s evolution, and their interpretation of their own experiences and knowledge. Therefore, it could be argued that each individual would have completely different perspectives of the matters that oppress society, but it would unrealistic to draw this conclusion because it would deny the existence of a convergence point between cultures. Consequently, this convergence point would be reflected in works of art of different sorts, such as poetry, paintings, novels, and others where daily occurrences

According to Raymond Williams, “In a class society, all beliefs are founded on class position, and the systems of belief of all classes …” (Rice and Waugh 122). His work titled, Marxism and Literature expounded on the conflict between social classes to bridge the political ideals of Marxism with the implicit comments rendered through the text of a novel. “For the practical links,” he states “between ‘ideas’ and ‘theories’ and the ‘production of real life’ are all in this material social process of signification itself” (133). Williams asserts that a Marxist approach to literature introduces a cross-cultural universality, ensuingly adding a timeless value to text by connecting creative and artistic processes with the material products that

For the Marxist critic, literature is in of itself a social institution, with a particular ideological function based on the experience and beliefs of the author, and a material product to be comprehended in broadly historical terms, emphasizing class and ideology as they are illustrated, distribute, and contest the social order of the period in which it was written. Terry Eagleton, in his book Marxism and Literary Criticism, describes Marxist application to literature

There are many ways to interpret a book, one can read it as a character’s adventure, a conflict of ideas or emotions, or a story. For myself, I read the books, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville, in an ironic sense; and while doing this, I noticed that both books showed an intuitive sense of sociology. Furthermore, what mattered most by reading the books ironically is that it is easy to see the outcome of a situation which is pleasing to be conscious of. It is easy to see the outcome of a situation because when one is paying attention to a character, one’s attention is toward a character, except when one’s attention is on an entire situation, one’s attention is on the flow of events and then the

Usually, those ‘power structures amongst men’ are conveyed through the racial and class vocabularies, but the article criticizes the limitation of such approach. Yes, I understand that why there should be a ‘common masculinity’ interpretation; however, this approach fosters the additive approach which sees race, ethnicity, sexuality and class as separate entities which exist on top of masculinity. The first and second wave feminism was criticized severely for such analyses by the third wave feminists, and as a third wave feminist, I also want to do the

In this essay I will be answering the question throughout time, literature has been used as an instrument to revolt against social and political issues. How is this reflected in the texts you have studied this term? In this term will have learned a lot different texts about a dystopian society, which talks about lack of freedom in a totalitarian government. We were introduced to The Giver, V for Vendetta and 1984. The texts that I will be analyzing are V’s speech and V for Vendetta, 1984, mise-en-scene, and the Giver.

In Tim Parks’ Why Readers Disagree, the author suggests that people take the position developed within the family or community into a larger world, and when a reader’s position does not match with the writer’s, the reader would not favor the writer’s books. First, Parks displays his views on people’s position in the society as ‘system theorists see people as constantly taking the position developed within the family out into the larger world’. This highlights Parks’ theory of people takes position within the family or community into a larger world. Parks used the example of Chekhov’s story about people unhappily trapped in relationships or totally excluded from their peer groups, and how not all readers will necessarily connect to this position

Kruger is one of many postmodernists whose ideas are induced by Marxist mediums; Michel Foucault develops a theory that forms the foundations for most of Kruger's ideas about power in The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction. Foucault determines that "Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere” (Foucalt, 2011:93). In Foucault's theory, it is considered that power is to be the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society instead of being a quantifiable or containable notion. Power essentially flows repeatedly, and we are endlessly in the process, or possibly at risk of becoming complex in the process, proceeding from powerful to powerless and

In “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power,” Sandra Bartky utilizes Michel Foucault’s concepts about power to help explain femininity. Throughout the article, she details how society forces women to fit within the confines of this construct and how it affects them.

In this essay I shall compare James Scott’s theory of power and resistance with Michel Foucault’s, as in what similarities do they share in their structure of theories; and contrast the difference as in their understanding of power, position they take to look for/into power, exercise of power and resistance in response. By contrasting the two approaches on the subject of power and resistance, I shall argue, if one wish to look for the powerful and the weak, Scott’s approach is the go to. But for now, I find Foucault’s idea more plausible that we are surrounded by or inescapable from power, and that by any means, are not necessarily forced to submission; rather as freedom the same time.

Literature is an imitation of societal values and is thus a reflection of the human experience of a time period. Written works emphasize the elements of culture, by means of characters, particular events, setting and theme, specific to the time period in which it was composed. Furthermore, literature mirrors the troubles or hardships of society and projects the core values that define said society. Thus, as culture has changed over time, literature has remained a critical facet in representing time periods of the past. Essentially, the culture of a time period is manifested through writing in the projection of society’s values, symbolism of the center of community and literature itself.

Elisabeth says then there will never be any solution to the problem of novel in Africa if the Africans wanted a ‘living voice’. The main problem faced by them was because the African writers unlike the French and the English were not acting as writers but were actually behaving like interpreters of their exotic cultures and that the root of their problem was ‘ Having to perform your Africanness at the same time as you write.’

            While Marxist critics must admit that they themselves are helpless to avoid the effects of hegemony, the critical project of Marxist literary criticism remains steadfastly committed to the attempt to identify and understand the mediating contexts in which the forces of hegemony exert pressure on a text, its author, and its audience. These contexts manifest themselves within specific historical, economic, political, cultural, etc... conditions. In order to discover such contexts, a work of art cannot be uprooted from the specific temporal circumstances in which it is read or created and regarded as an isolated purely original entity. Literature, for better or worse, is mired in history.

This approach is concerned about the social content of the literary work, consequently, the idea is to analyze literature from the implications and the consequences that a capitalist system has on a specific society. As cliffsnotes.com, (n.d) indicates: “this theoretical approach asks us to consider how a literary work reflects the socioeconomic conditions of the time in which it was written”.

This socio-historical commentary is valid however; it disregards the fact that the novels are not accurate portrayals of society. Important facts: first the philanthropic attitude in the novels is simply not a reflection of the literal changes in society, the novels cannot be classified an expression of