zkouška - otázky

to profound serenity. Modern orientalists – indistinguishable from other “experts” and “advisers” in the policy sciences, sociologists remind us that Arabs are addicted to “oral functions” .
Issues involving nuclear destruction, scare sources, human demands for equality, justice….popular caricatures of the Orient are exploited by politicians. Perfidious Chinese, half-naked Indians and passive Muslims = vultures for “our” largesse and are damned when “we lose them” to communism or ungenerate Oriental instincts
Arabs= camel-riding, terroristic, hook-nosed, venal lechers whose undeserved wealth is an
Affront to real civilization
Western consumer unlike the Oriental is a true human being. All this Abdul Malek calls “hegemonism of possessing minorities”
Limitations of Orientalism are – disregarding, essentializing, demanding the humanity of another culture, people or geographical region. Orientalism has taken a further step – views Orient as something whose existence is not only displayed but has remained fixed in time and place for the west - the West is the actor, the Orient a passive reactor.
The new (Oriental) leaders learned many lessons from predecessors – they are much more confident and perhaps slightly aggressive – their dialogue is not with the West, it is with their fellow – citizens
none of the innumerable Orientalist texts on Islam can prepare their reader for what has taken place since 1948 in Egypt, Palestine, Iraq…
Present crisis dramatizes the disparity between text and reality.
The contemporary intellectual can learn from Orientalism how either to limit or to enlarge realistically the scope of his discipline’s claims and to see the human ground in which texts, visions, methods – begin, grow, thrive and degenerate. To investigate Orientalism is to propose intellectual ways for handling the methods logical problems that history has brought forward in its subject matter, the Orient. Before that we must see the humanistic values that Orientalism experiences, and structures, has all but eliminated.

3. Eco´s criticism of Russian Formalists in Casablanca
4.Cult movie
Some elements – in a movie – can be separated from the whole and adored for themselves. Eco used some important semiotic categories such as theme and motif. It was very difficult to find what the various Russian Formalists meant by the motif. (motif is the simplest narrative unit ). There appear dynamic and static motifs but also the frame – common frame : represents stereotyped situations such as dining in a restaurant or going to the railway station – a sequence of actions that are coded by our normal experience. The other one is intertextual frame – the stereotyped situations derived from preceding textual tradition – such as the standard duel btw. the sheriff and the bad guy etc.
Those frames are not only recognizable by the audience but also display a particular fascination. Eco also uses the term or idea of magic frame: those frames that appear in a movie and can be separated from the whole – they transform a movie into a cult object.
Cult movie: the work must be loved, fans can quote characters and epizodes and they have some archetypical appeal. It must have some quality and textuality is very important. In Casablanca the authors mixed a little of everything that had stood the test of time. Casablanca is a cult movie because all the archetypes are there and because each actor repeats a part played on other occasions. It is not a cult movie because it is not one movie. It is movies.

5/ Political and ideological connotation of modernists x postmodernists
- Fredric Jameson

Essay: The politics of theory: Ideological positions in the postmodernism debate

range of his analysis takes in everything from architecture to science fiction, from 19.ct novel to cinema, from philosophy to experimental and avandgard art

Modernism:
was founded upon its reaction to the institutionalization of art within the museum, university, and art gallery
modernism´s push to escape the commodity form, its desire for art to be produced that would defies (vzdorovat) any instrumentalization and therefore create styles that deny commodity satisfactioneruption of anti-art (modern art) ( many familiar forms: destruction of syntax, fragmentation of words and sentences, explosive use of ordinary lang., compositions without score. And yet, this entire de-formation is Form: anti-art has remained art.
modernism failed through the creation of many personal styles modern art became institutionalized and canonized through an ever increasing process of this reification (zhmotnění, konkr. podoba).
there is a loss of 'depth' within postmodernity X modernity expressed the art object as something mysterious within which there was a secret to be uncovered, a truth to reveal, or a history to uncover.
politically, modernity can be seen as embodying socialism and liberal democracy as the two competing systems of state control
culturally, modernity stressed "the purity of each art and the autonomy of culture as a whole." Modern theory then, relies upon a centred and unified subject, objectivity and inherent rationalism.

Postmodernism:
is inherently paradoxical and playful. The more one tries to define what is characteristically postmodern the less characteristic it turns out to be. Postmodernism, by definition resists definition.
the problem of postmodernism is both an aesthetic and a political one
used to describe the logic of contemporary culture and literature
Jameson identifies four fundamental antinomies of postmodernism: time and space, subject and object, nature and human nature, and finally the concept of Utopia.
postmodernism or postmodernity have emerged in the 1980s: firstly, as a cultural category, deriving mainly from debates in architecture but also applicable to the other arts and literature
economically, the postmodern is marked by hitherto unknown expansion and advancement within capitalism and technology
politically, there is an increase in the diversified needs and struggles representing the expanded desires of postmodern society ( social movements dominate
Jameson´s summary of the postmodern (přednášky):
a co-existence of aesthetics and political logics
the erosion of the cathegories of high art and low pop culture and the eruption of the kitsch into all levels of artistic production
a fragmentation or eclectic schizophrenia instead of the modernist unifying paranoia (modernism is unified, although under the influence of war it became slightly fragmentated x postmodernism is no more unified)
pastisch (napodobenina, parafráze) instead of parody (typical for modernism), blank quotation and the inhabiting of styles
pastisch – a way of writing intentionally as another artist writes or putting pieces of different styles/texts together
inhabiting of styles – mísení stylů
blank quotation – citace, kt. nejsou uvedeny
a new depthlessness (ztráta hloubky) = afflatening (zploštění), that includes e.g. the waning of the affect (vyhasínání emocí)
the loss of any consciousness of history
6. Relation of writing, death, sacrifice and disappearance of the author
- fundamental ethical principles of contemporary writing:
1) Today´s writing has freed itself from the dimension of expression. Writing is identified with its own unfolded experiority → it is an interplay of signs arranged less according to its signified content.
2) Our culture has metamorphosed this idea of narrative, or writing, as something designed to ward off death. Writing has become linked to sacrifice. The work now possesses the right to kill, to be author´s murderer. As a result, the mark of the writer is reduced to nothing more than the singularity of his absence; he must assume the role of the dead in the game of writing.

It is not enough to repeat the empty affirmation that the author has disappeared: Instead, we must locate the space left empty by the author´s disappearance.
Need to clarify briefly the problems arising from the use of the author´s name. What is an author´s name?
Author´s name serves to characterize a certain mode of being of discourse, the fact that the discourse has an author´s name shows that this discourse is not ordinary everyday speech. On the contrary, it is a speech that must be received in a certain mode and that, in a given culture, must receive a certain status.

"Author-function"
- discourse was not originally a product, it was essentially an act.
The author-function does not affect all discourses in a universal and constant way.
The author-function today plays an important role in our view of literary works. Author-function does not develop spontaneously as the attribution of a discourse to an individual. It is the result of a complex operation which constructs a certain rational being that we call "author".
The manner in which literary criticism once defined the author is directly derived from the manner in which Christian tradition authenticated the texts at its disposal.
The name as an individual trademark is not enough when one works within a textual tradition.
The author is therefore:
1) defined as a constant level of value
2) defined as a field of conceptual or theoretical coherence
3) conceived as a stylistic unity
4) seen as a historical figure
The author provides the basis for explaining not only the presence of certain events in a work, but also their transformations, and diverse modifications.
The text always contains a certain number of signs referring to the author. These signs are personal pronouns, adverbs of time and place, and verb conjugation.

Founders of discursivity - they are not just the authors of their own works. They have produced the possibilities and the rules for the formation of other texts.
E.g. Freud made possible a certain number of divergences that all arise from the psychoanalytical discourse itself.
The founding act of a science can always be reintroduced within the machinery of those transformtions that derive from it. In contrast, the initiation of a discoursive practice is heterogeneous to its subsequent transformations.
The author is the genial creator of a work in which he deposits an inexhaustible world of significations.
The author is therefore the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning.


Summary:
Foucault accepts that the author is dead and the text begins to appear more as a "game" of language. The author may be held as a standard of quality and considered an actual, historical person. Foucault designates the author as a function of discourse itself.

7. Aspects of the detective genre and respective types – Todorov

Todorov „The typology of detective genre“
detective fiction contains two stories:
story of the crime – tells „what really happened“, what happened in life, the reality evoked (fable = story – Russian Formalists)
story of the investigation – explains „how the reader (or the narrator) has come to know about what happened“, the narrative, the literary devices (subject = plot)
these are two aspects of one and the same work (every literary work) X detective fiction manages to put them side by side
style must be perfectly transparent, imperceptible, clear, direct, simple
WHODUNNIT
a book about a murder, in which we do not know who the murderer is until the end
the detective untouchable, never in danger of his life
two stories:
one is real but absent – the narrator cannot transmit directly the conversations of the characters
temporal inversions, individual points of view – no observation exists without an observer, the author is not omnipresent as in classical novel
second story is present but insignificant – explanation, justification of the first story

THRILLER
created in the U.S. before+after the WWII, in France „série noire“
fuses the 2 stories of detective fiction X suppresses the first and vitalizes teh second
the narrative (explanation) coincidences with the action
no point is reached where the narrator comprehends all past events
the detective in danger of his life, risks his life
there is NO story to be guessed as in whodunnit
2 entirely different focuses of interest exist:
curiosity – starts from a certain effect (a corpse + several clues), we must find the cause
suspense – from cause to effect – interest is sustained by the expectation of what will happen
the contemporary thriller is constituted around specific characters and behaviour: violence, beating, killing, immorality, hatred, sordid crime, the amorality

THE SUSPENSE NOVEL
combines the properties of thriller and whodunnit
keeps the mystery, 2 stories (past, present) X refuses to reduce the second story to a simple investigation of truth
the readers wonder about the past and the future!! (the curiosity + the suspense united)
2 subtypes:
the story of the vulnerable detective – detective risks his life, intergrated into the universe of the other characters
the story of the suspect-as-detective – a crime is committed in the 1st pages, evidence in the hands of the police points to a certain person (main character) – this person must find the real culprit (viník) risking constantly his life
this person is a detective + culprit (in the eyes of police) and potentional victim (of real murderers)

8. – parody – travesty – Mikhail Bakhtin

Parody = one of the most ancient and widespread forms for representing the direct word of another
parodies on genres ridicule the straightforward serious word

ancient period
The satyr play (the fourth drama) = counterpart to the myth - favourite characters – comic Odesseus and comic Hercules
- the high genres are monotonic, while the fourth drama and similar genres retain the ancient binary tone of the word
- ancient parody didn´t parodied the heroes but its epic heroization

The Romans
Parodying forms : Atellan literary farces
consular diptychs (comic scenes in grotesque masks)
performances of phallophors and deikelists (mimes and Saturnalias)
liberation of the object from the power of language in which it had become stuck
destruction of the homogenizing power of myth over language

middle ages
texts were constructed like mosaics out of the texts of others
primarily was parodied Bible, the Gospel, the Apostles and the fathers and doctors of church
parodia sacra – parody on sacred texts and rituals
pileata Biblia – the sacred Wit transformed into Saturnalia
latin parody – gramatica pileata = grammatical Saturnalia (Latin parody = intentional bilingual hybrid)
lingua sacra pileata = European linguistis Saturnalia – language drama played as if it were a gay farce
macaronic parody – a fully developed intentionally dialogized bi- or trilingual hybrid

the Renaissance
the parody-travestying word broke into all strict and closed straightforward genres
new genres – the sotie
the interanimation of languages (medieval Latin, purified and rigorous Latin of the humanists, the national vulgar language) reached its highest point

9.)LACAN´S REPROACH TO THE THEORY OF SAUSSURE
All sciences are constituted on a formula,which is their foundation, this formula is:
S
___
s  the signifier(označující) over the signified)označované),over means the line separating the two levels
This sign is atributed to Ferdinand de Saussure by which the beginning of modern linguistics can be recognized.

((The signifier can be articulated(phonemes) and it can be comined according to the laws of a closed order.
The linearity between signifier and signified makes a chain of discourse.))


BUT take a word „tree“ not as an isolated noun, it crosses the line of Saussurian formula, because this doesn´t work totally. Lacan questions what is problematic context between signifier and signifiant.
There are more illustrations of tree,not just one image.Lacan disagrees about unproblematic context with structuralists(Saussure).

Questions of arbitrariness of the sign.
WC-Ladies and Gentleman – two signifiers signifie the same reality. But the reality changes – one signifier for two signifieds and otherwise.

Language is a chain of signifiers which has a life of its own and which cannot be fixed in the real life.


10.)WRITE TWO PRINCIPLES OF LACAN´S WORK

He blends Freudian psychoanalysis and structuralism with language.

He developes further Freudian psychoanalysis – to reveal, name and push out the neurosis which is born in unconsciousness. Psychoanalysis tries to understand and possibly cure the psychoanalytical neuroses. It is difficult because unconsciousness is chaotic and pre-verbal, in consciousness we formulate our experinces (we form them by words) – the beginning of the therapy(we realise our problem).
Lacan doesn´t agrese that unconsciousness is not structured as language. According to Lacan.
IT IS STRUCTURED

Method of structuralizing the language – formal aspects of language.
Psychoanalyisis must borrow the concept of modern linguistics(see n.9 - Saussure)
Lacan wants to accept structuralistic analysis and applicate it on the unconsciousness.


11.
Derrida says that in deconstruction everything is provisional, you can´t make positive or definitive statements.
Deconstructive criticism aims to show that any text inevitably undermines its own claim to have a determinate meaning and licences the reader to produce his own meanings out off it by an activity of semantic „freeplay“.

Structuralism pointed out that language is a structure – Derrida says that all structures have some sort of center. There is something that all elements in the structure refer to, connect to sth. that makes the structure hold its shape, keeps all the parts together. The movement of elements in this structure is a „play“. Lack of any center = the unthinkable itself, because the center is what gives the structure meaning.
Center is useful because it limits this play.
When a system lacks center, play becomes infinite, when a system has a center, play is limited. Stability – fixity caused by center is what Derrida calls „presence“ Play is the disruption of presence = this is the loss of fixity of a meaning.


12 - Lewis´ devision of periods in the Western Society

First period: between Antiquity and Dark Ages
a. loss of ancient learning
b. poetry – barbarian poetry was a return to the spirit of the earliest classical poetry
c. christening

Second period: between Dark and Middle Ages
Dark Ages consisted mainly in losses: worse houses, drains, roads, fewer baths, less security
Middle Ages – improvement: texts of Aristotle recovered, Thomas Aquinas – new world of thought, literature- alliterative and assonantal verse → rhymed, syllabic verse
Third period: begins approximately with the age of Jane Austen and Walter Scott (dating is hazy and indefinite, the period has probably not yet reached its peak
in political order: then – intention of rulers was to keep the people quiet
now – the leaders want to organize our excitement – „appeals, drives, campaigns
in art: then- the poetry was intelligible, it had a concrete message
now – everyone can have a different meaning about the modern poetry
in religion: unchristening. In the age of Jane Austen to be christian was a kind of norm, now it is almost an exception
birth of machines – it alters Man´s place in Nature
13) Un-christening- Lewis- explain

Un-christening- a great religious change in the history
in the previous ages the religious belief was stronger than now=>some people say that we are becoming pagans (pohani) in this time
Lewis says that the kind and degree of religious belief is now only the exception
He says that a post-Christian is not a Pagan, he is only cut off from the Christian past and therefore from the Pagan past



14) Raymond Williams: REALISM IN THE CONTEXT OF CONTEMPORARY NOVEL
variations in ‘realism’ as a descriptive term – to describe the precision /přesnost/ and vividness /jasnost/
the most ordinary definition: ordinary, contemporary, everyday reality, as opposed to traditionally heroic, romantic or legendary subjects since the Rennaissance realistic=domestic, burgeois, 18th cent.-startling /překvapující/, realism passed over to the prograssive and revolutionary movements, 20th cent.-curious development - West ( Soviet Union
much western popular literature = ´burgeois realism´ ( ( ´socialist realism´
the ordinary criteria of realism still holds – there is still concentration on contemporary themes, elements of everyday experience are more evident through the dissapearance of certain taboos
most description is still realistic
the realistic novel has been replaced by the ´psychological novel´
Now the novel is not so much a literary form as a whole literature in itself. Within its wide boundaries there is room for almost every kind of contemporary writing
´the novel´ = any kind of prose work
since 1900 important polarization – the division of the realist novel into 2 separate traditions:
the ‘social’ novel ( exact observation and description of the general life, the aggregation /nahromadění/
the ´personal´novel ( exact observation and description of persons, the units
( each lacks a dimension – life is neither aggregation nor unit, but a whole indivisible process
( there are 2 main kinds of social novel:
descriptive social novel – the social documentary (characters are aspects of society)
gives a general way of life, a particular social or working community – characters are miners, soldiers,…, persons are seen as parts of whole way of living
formula novels – social formula (social fiction)
a particular pattern is abstracte