{"id":548,"date":"2009-03-31T21:05:49","date_gmt":"2009-04-01T02:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=548"},"modified":"2009-03-31T21:05:49","modified_gmt":"2009-04-01T02:05:49","slug":"faultlines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=548","title":{"rendered":"Faultlines"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently read Alan Sinfield’s “Cultural Materialism, Othello<\/em>, and the Politics of Plausibility” for English 551 and I feel that it contains several ideas that relate to Don Delillo’s Mao II<\/em>.\u00a0 Sinfield’s article deals with how literature was able to attack the dominant ideology in Shakespeare’s time, the type of attack ability that Bill Gray sees missing from current literature in the novel.<\/p>\n

Sinfield states that the elites are the ones in society that shape the dominant ideology.\u00a0 They are able to create ideology by telling stories that are “plausible” or that appeal to what would seem to be common sense.\u00a0 Sinfield also writes that dominant idologies inevitably contain “faultlines,” contradictions or instances of weakness that are susceptible to being exploited.\u00a0 Sinfield believes that literature is a means for society to examine and confront these faultlines of the dominant ideology.\u00a0 In Othello<\/em> the dominant ideology that is being attacked is that a white noblewoman would be able to willingly fall in love with a black man.\u00a0 It is not seen as plausible that Desdemona would choose to marry Othello, and the venetian nobles make up lame excuses to try and fit the marriage into their dominant ideology.\u00a0 Desdemona’s father insists that Othello must have used some sort of magic to entrance his daughter.\u00a0 Iago is able to use the dominant ideology to his benefit by telling lies that seem more “plausible” than the truth.\u00a0 Cassio believes Iago that Desdemona would be more interested in him than Othello because that is more in accordance with society’s beliefs.\u00a0 Othello begins to believe that Desdemona is unfaithful because it is hard for him to situate their marriage in the “common sense” beliefs of the time.<\/p>\n

This theory would be in accordance with Bill Gray’s belief that writers were at one time able to shape the consciousness of the masses.\u00a0 However, in the world of Mao II<\/em>, and maybe our world too, writers are no longer able to effectively challenge and exploit the faultlines in the dominant ideology in society.\u00a0 Terrorism has become the medium in which we question the common sense notions of our society.\u00a0 Sinfield points to one possible reason why Bill Gray, and Delillo for that matter, may not see literature as an effective way to shape\u00a0 consciousness or challenge the power structure of society.\u00a0 The rise of theory in the twentieth century has led to the questioning of many differnt previously held assumptions, including previously held assumptions about theory itself.\u00a0 If we accept the idea that consciousness is constructed within a language created by existing power structures, then is it even possible to conceive, let alone organize resistance to that power structure using the language it created?\u00a0 Words and language are owned by those who dominate and any attempt to subvert from within the existing power structure is bound to be futile.\u00a0 Resistance had to move outside of language, mainly towards acts, and more important the representation and reproductions of those acts in the media.<\/p>\n

One possiblity is the Delillo is not actually saying that it is hopeless for a novel to shape consciousness.\u00a0 He may just be using the novel to expose a faultline in our dominant ideology, namely that the novel is no longer able to effect change consciousness.\u00a0 Irony is pervasive in postmodernism, and it would certainly be ironic to write a novel about the ineffectual nature of literature to point out how effective literature can still be.\u00a0 It is also entirely “plausible” that I have gone off the deep end and am seeing things that are not there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently read Alan Sinfield’s “Cultural Materialism, Othello, and the Politics of Plausibility” for English 551 and I feel that it contains several ideas that relate to Don Delillo’s Mao II.\u00a0 Sinfield’s article deals with how literature was able to attack the dominant ideology in Shakespeare’s time, the type of attack ability that Bill Gray … Continue reading Faultlines<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-11-mao-ii","tag-delillo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=548"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":552,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions\/552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}