34 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2016
    1. the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class that owns the means of production) and the proletariat (the working class, which is at the mercy of the capitalists).

      The bourgeoisie are the Inner and Outer Party

    2. although workers produce things for the market, market forces, not workers, control things. People are required to work for capitalists who have full control over the means of production and maintain power in the workplace. Work, he said, becomes degrading, monotonous, and suitable for machines rather than for free, creative people. In the end, people themselves become objects—robotlike mechanisms that have lost touch with human nature, that make decisions based on cold profit-and-loss considerations, with little concern for human worth and need. Marx concluded that capitalism blocks our capacity to create our own humane society.

      This relates to the quote where Winston says that as long as the proles work and produce and reproduce, the Party doesn't care what they do. They are considered almost like cattle and are only valuable for their labor power.

    1. The bourgeois reign is doomed when economic conditions are ripe and when a working class united by solidarity, aware of its common interests and energized by an appropriate system of ideas, confronts its disunited antagonists. Once workers became aware that they are alienated from the process of production, the dusk of the capitalist era has set in.

      This is why Winston says that if there is hope, it lies with the proles. This is why the Party has worked so hard to passively appease the proles through entertainment. The Party knows that if the proles become conscious then they will revolt and overthrow the Party.

    2. Yet self-conscious classes, as distinct from aggregates of people sharing a common fate, need for their emergence a number of conditions among which are a network of communication, the concentration of masses of people, a common enemy, and some form of organization. Self-conscious classes arise only if and when there exists a convergence of what Max Weber later called "ideal" and "material" interests, that is, the combination of economic and political demands with moral and ideological quests.

      Could help explain the proles' position. I could mention that the Party has conditioned complacency within the proles that they will never become a self-conscious class.

    3. "Great is the combined voice of men." Although an aggregate of people may occupy similar positions in the process of production and their lives may have objectively similar determinants, they become a class as a self-conscious and history- making body only if they become aware of the similarity of their interests through their conflicts with opposing classes.

      This relates to "if there is hope it lies with the proles". Possibly use this. Maybe edit thesis to specifically include Marxist theory (class theory and economic inequality).

    1. Possession, for Proudhon, is a natural right deriving from labour that is systematically denied to the labouring class under the capitalist mode of production. He explains: As a labourer I have a right to the possession of the products of nature and my own industry, but as a proletarian I enjoy none of them.8 This assertion of the labourer’s natural right to possession over and above the proprietor’s merely legal right of property is a key moment in nineteenth-century social thought.

      This essay seems to focus on social class, which would probably be cultural approach.

    1. The notion that propagandist lies were being accepted as truth in the 1930s, and would pass into history, made him feel as if the very ground beneath his feet were giving way. Better to shoot people, he once said, than tell lies about them. To mark his rebellion, Winston Smith decided to drink a toast. He drank not to the confusion of the Thought Police, to the death of Big Brother, to humanity or to the future -- estimable though these were -- but to the most fundamental thing of all, `to the past'.

      This sounds cultural or historical. I should find the part where Winston makes the toast that is mentioned here and analyze it with this quote.

    2. There are two further reasons why historians admire Orwell. The first is that, by depicting a nightmare world in which the past is not studied, he showed the vital necessity for research far more convincingly than any historian has ever done. Nineteen Eighty-Four shows, above all, that the past must be investigated as fully and as objectively as possible. If it is not, and if we are dependent on our feeble memories, autocrats like Big Brother will dictate history to us to justify the current party line and cement their political domination. `Who controls the past', ran the Party slogan in Oceania, `controls the future: and who controls the present controls the past'. It follows that history -- the real study of the past -- safeguards us against totalitarianism.

      This can be connected with the part of the text where Winston explains his job at The Ministry of Truth and the reason for the falsification of history. The use of the word "totalitarianism" denotes a Marxist approach, I think.

  2. Apr 2016
    1. Even those great writers whom we regard with special awe, and whom we celebrate for their refusal to parrot the clichés of their culture, tend to be particularly brilliant improvisers rather than absolute violaters or pure inventors.

      Who was it that said we need to surrender the self for writing? And that nothing is new or original and that in order to seem "original" we have to know our history?

    2. A life that fails to conform at all, that violates absolutely all the available patterns, will have to be dealt with as an emergency—hence exiled, or killed, or declared a god.

      Exiled or killed or declared a god. What a jump! Why is that?

    3. I will return to the question of extrinsic as opposed to intrinsic analysis

      Maybe create a discussion question on handout about this distinction?

    4. To recover the meaning of such texts, to make any sense of them at all, we need to reconstruct the situation in which they were produced.

      Greenblat is saying that this is why cultural analysis is important, I think.

    5. Eventually, a full cultural analysis will need to push beyond the boundaries of the text, to establish links between the text and values, institutions, and practices elsewhere in the culture

      I think this answers the question I posed in annotation before this one.

    6. Why might readers at a particular time and place find this work compelling?

      Definitely sounds like reader-response here. So where does reader-response analysis end and cultural analysis start?

    7. An awareness of culture as a complex whole can help us to recover that sense by leading us to reconstruct the boundaries upon whose existence the works were predicated.

      Thesis?

    8. The footnotes in modern editions of these works can give us the names and dates that have been lost, but they cannot in themselves enable us to recover a sense of the stakes that once gave readers pleasure and pain.

      Starting to sound like reader-response here

    9. Here we can make our first tentative move toward the use of culture for the study of literature, for Western literature over a very long period of time has been one of the great institutions for the enforcement of cultural boundaries through praise and blame

      Essay shifts from introduction to the actual "meat" of the essay. Thesis will come soon, I think.

    10. Like “ideology” (to which, as a concept, it is closely allied), “culture” is a term that is repeatedly used without meaning much of anything at all, a vague gesture toward a dimly perceived ethos: aristocratic culture, youth culture, human culture. There is nothing especially wrong with such gestures—without them we wouldn’t ordinarily be able to get through three consecutive sentences—but they are scarcely the backbone of an innovative critical practice.

      So why is Greenblat writing an entire essay on culture? We'll see, hopefully.

    11. in certain societies, such as that of the United States, they can seem quite vast—but they are not infinite, and the consequences for straying beyond them can be severe.

      He is talking about social norms which are/construct "constraint and mobility" in our actions; what is okay and what is not.

  3. Feb 2016
    1. Everybody’s Autonomy: Connective Reading and Collective Identity

      This article contains many hyperlinks that the reader may click on to read the articles that Perez mentions in her article. The presence of hyperlinks makes this article more interactive for the reader because they can gain a deeper understanding of Perez's article and argument by clicking on these links and reading the articles.

    2. While the rhetoric focused on manhood and nation, the Movement itself opened up opportunities for women to write and edit. From this grew a questioning of gender roles in the Movement.

      The fact that the "M" in movement (Perez, paragraph 4) tells the reader that this article's is geared towards the activist movement genre. The author also the term "gender roles" (Perez, paragraph 4) which leads the reader to believe that this article also belong in the feminist genre.

    3. Chicano

      The author uses the word "Chicana" throughout her article, and her uses "Chicano" (Perez, paragraph 3). In order to understand this article, the reader must understand what Chicanx means in context of this article.

    4. Yet my research on the relationships and writings produced by Chicana print cultures demonstrated that editorship and editors were and are frequently a catalyst for writing and the “making” of theory.

      This, I believe, is the author's thesis statement. She tells the reader that her purpose is to change how the reader views both editors and the editing process through the lens of "Chicana print cultures" (Perez, paragraph 1).

    5. Internet trolling than anything pedagogical.

      The phrases "Internet trolling" (Perez, paragraph 2) and "pedagogical" (Perez, paragraph 2) make me think that the author's intended audience are those who know what these words mean: academics who are up to date on common internet phrases like "internet trolling" (Perez, paragraph 2).

    6. being edited

      The phrase "editing Chicanas" also gave me a bit of anxiety because I immediately had this idea where Chicanas were being edited, instead of Chicanas being editors. Right away the author has caught my attention.

    7. About the Author

      Again, I greatly appreciate the presence of this section, especially since it has a link to her personal website and a tag where you can communicate with her via social media. Not only that, but it tells you what she is currently working on so that you could look out for her most recent works if you were interested.

    8. Hybrid Pedagogy’s Latest Comments

      I appreciate that Hybrid Pedagogy has placed a section where you can see their most recent social media comments, however I would think that these comments would be about the article that I'm currently reading, not just their random social media feed. I feel that this section would be more suited to the homepage than this article.

    9. By Annemarie Pérez

      The author's name is right above the title and it is in light grey italics, which doesn't distract the reader from the title, but its placement, color, and opacity suggest that the information is still important. I can quickly see who the author of this article is and, if I so choose, I can look her up on Google to find other articles that she has written.

    10. Textual Communities: Writing, Editing, and Generation in Chicana Feminism

      I really like this title both for its ability to quickly convey to the reader what the article is going to be discussing, and also for it's font size, type, and coloring. There's something very formal yet informal about this font. I don't feel intimidated by the size or the type face, as it is easy on my eyes. The bold catches the reader's eye right away so that they immediately know what is going to be discussed.

    11. Looking for Something?

      The search bar is very helpful and essential to any site, as it allows the user/reader to quickly and efficiently find articles that discuss a specific topic in which they are interested. It's also located in two places on this page: at the top right hand corner and here, right next to the name of the article.

    12. Related posts

      The links underneath this category also encourage exploration by giving the reader other articles that are similar to the one they just read. By placing it at the bottom of the article, it is assumed that the reader was interested enough in this article to read the whole thing, so the "Related Posts" section says to the reader "If you were interested in that, here's four more articles exploring the same ideas".

    13. Open to Chance?

      The "View Random Article" button is helpful for people who aren't necessarily looking for a specific topic on which to read. This button encourages the user/reader to explore and interact with the site and fall down numerous "rabbit holes", so to speak, as they read random articles.

    14. 15 Oct 2015

      The blue accents on a white background is reminiscent of Twitter, which makes not only this page but this entire site a lot more familiar to the reader. I don't feel like I don't know how to navigate this page; it's all very straight-forward.

    15. Chicanas

      Chicana, or Xicana, is the way some Mexican Americans choose to identify themselves