Terms for Unit One
Barthes
Mythical or mythology: Deceptive meaning hiding the actual function of the object in culture. Myth is intention that is made absent 124
Object – use – cover – how covering works:
What Barthes calls alibi. (Toys essay)
Blue Guide … opposite of what it advertises, blindness
Ornamental cookery … glaze
New Citroen … smooth (streamline, seamless, lightness toward spiritual)
Glass, comfort-ease of dash indicators vs. relish of
motor-machine speed.
Myth is Second Order Semiological System 114-115
Move from language-object to a Metalanguage
signifier signified
sign/Signifier Signified
Sign
Concept
Meaning
Form Signification
*Myth impoverishes sign of its meaning & makes it
signifier (form) for new concept (signified). 117-118
Naturalizes 129
Foucault
What is a docile Body? 182
What is Normalizing? 5 steps 195.
1. refers individual action to a whole that is a field of comparison
2. differentiates individuals from one another in terms of a rule: a minimal threshold of averageness
3. measures in quantitative terms and hierarchiezes in terms of value the abilities, the level, the ‘nature’ of individuals
4. introduces a value-giving measure as constraint
5. traces limit that defines differences and abnormal
-“disciplines are techniques for assuring the ordering of human multiplicities” 207
-efficiency, maximum intensity, increase docility & utility
1. Discipline fixes, arrests movement, clears up confusion 208
2. vertical partitioning
3. utility
4. power relations not above but inside the multiplicity
Power: “power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth.” 205
Knowledge = Power
Role of examination & case study
Panopticism
Latour
Immutable mobile: Mastery through 2D, superposable, combinable inscription 29
Refer = “to bring back” “Is the referent what I point to with my finger outside of discourse, or is it what I bring back inside discourse? 32
Illustration 2.21 Matter/Form incremental increase & gaps
Illustration 2.22 Successive Amplification & Reduction
*Pedocompactor as Thing & Sign 47-48
+ rt hand & lft hand 49
E. P. Thompson
What is to be learned from his approach?
Economy and bodies . . . Thompson & Foucault work well together
Kittler
What is to be learned from Kittler?
“Our writing tools are also working on our thoughts” 200
Mechanization is a revaluation of values 187
Might Kittler and Latour work well together? Focault too.