Michael Renov's "The Subject in History: The New Autobiography in Film and Video"

Renov states that he privileges "a writing practice that couples a documentary impulse - an outward gaze upon the world - with an equally forceful reflex of self-interrogation. This double or reciprocal focus effects an unceasing, even obsessive, exploration of subjectivity that situates itself within a matrix that is irreducibly material and of necessity historical" (105). What is interesting is this idea of the documentary impulse and the obsessive nature. This reminds me of Reeves' video "Obsessive Becoming." He seems to be obsessed with his past and bringing certain truths to light. However, what is fiction and what is nonfiction? Renov introduces the idea of a "new autobiography." How does this relate to the essayistic (a la Barthes) and the autobiographical? Derrida suggests that these two are related - meaning is mobilized along a dynamic borderline between the "work" and the "life," the system and the subject of the system 105). With the essay, Barthes states that "one cannot get to the heart of a refrain, you can only substitute another one for it" (106). It seems he is talking about nomination here. Substitution. How about the autobiographical? Is this nomination? In Reeves' video, he uses images and text that enthrall him, and some images that perhaps substitute words that describe how he feels towards himself or towards Milton (such as the boxing imagery). In Barthes' autobiography, he uses photos that are interesting to him (they have punctums for the author). His text also mentions things that are "called out" to him. Are these aspects part of Renov's "new autobiography"? We as viewers or readers are not as fully involved as we are when the autobiography is a traditional chronological retrospective narrative, or are we involved on a different level? Are there people who are more willing to involve themselves with this "new autobiography" and people who do not recognize the autobiographical in this "new autobiogrpahy"?

Daniel Reeves' "Obsessive Becoming"

We have been debating the idea of the autobiography in writing, in film, in video, in art, and in various other media in class discussions. How is Reeves' video "Obsessive Becoming" autobiographical? How does the medium - video - inform the autobiographical? How does this video relate to our Roland Barthes' reading and his way of setting up the autobiography? I think what is interesting is that while there is somewhat of a narrative of the autobiographical, it is told in bits and snippets. Is this the life of Daniel Reeves that is described? It seems that Reeves has this obsessive impulse to describe his background - his parents, his "fathers," and the circumstances that surrounded his childhood. People who were interviewed, such as Milton's sister, told their stories; however, it was not a chronological telling of stories. There was no clear narrative, just like in Barthes' own autobiography. There were snippets, images, and words that juxtaposed the brief narratives. In my own memory of the film, I am left puzzled by several aspects of the video. There is a twirling person in a white robe, and I am not sure what that has to do with the video. Reeves (I think it is him) appears in the video throwing a gun into the middle of the lake, stating that Milton will no longer need the gun where he is now. Lastly, the morphing of photographs from one person to another: I understand that these people were related, but it go almost nauseating after a while. The video media allows Reeves to create an autobiographical account, that shows images that "enthrall" him (like Barthes) but we as viewers may be left wondering what the significance of the image is to Reeves and to us. Who is this video for? Is it therapeutic for Reeves?

First Warhol Blog Post

Reading Warhol's Diaries is quite overwhelming in some ways, especially if you had it in your mind that you were going to read the entirety from beginning to end. However, I do not believe that Warhol's diaries are not meant to be read this way. While the diaries are set up in a chronological manner, you do not necessarily need to read them in order to get an idea about what Warhol is talking about. There are events and people that are ongoing throughout the diaries. Perhaps Warhol's entries seem superficial - he describes parties he attends, things he buys and how much he pays for them, and people he has seen and what he thinks of their appearance. Yet, there are moments when he mentions going to church or supporting his nephew to become a priest that one gets an idea that perhaps there is more to Warhol than just the superficial persona he often allowed the public to see.

What I am interested in discovering from reading Warhol's autobiographical text and his art is where is Warhol's imprint found? I am particularly interested in Warhol's Last Supper series (below I have included a piece entitled "Dove Last Supper," 1987 to give you a visual). What is it about these pieces that makes them Warhol's without looking at the actual signature? Is it his use of symbols from popular culture? What is he doing with these symbols?

What makes this a Warhol? What does the artist do differently to make it his work? I think it is fascinating that he has included the feet of Jesus (Leonardo da Vinci did not as his piece was placed over a doorway). What is the significance of feet to this piece? To Warhol? Not only has Warhol cut up popular symbols and put them into the pieces, but he actually cuts up the composition and reassembles it in a different way (see the Red Last Supper or the Pink Last Supper, both 1987). Why does Warhol do this? What is he trying to say? How do we see Warhol's imprint in these works and in his diary entries? Derrida has a few ideas about the signature, the graft, the graph, and the citation that I will also be looking at in relation to Warhol and his Last Supper series.

Olive Riley, The Oldest Living Blogger

I hate to admit that when I heard the news that the oldest living blogger turned 108 in last Thursday's class I automatically imagined an old man from the the USA. What is that saying about me and my own assumptions? I was rather delighted to find that this blogger is actually a 108 year-old Australian woman named Olive Riley. The small 17 second segment aired on ABC News definitely does not give justice to Olive Riley and her blog. However, the fact that her story was briefly mentioned on the news is significant. What does this mean about autobiography and the autobiographical impulse? I think it means that blogging is becoming more and more popular as a way for people to tell their stories. If a 108 year-old woman is able to keep a blog online (perhaps with assistance), who could not? Some of her stories and "blogging" is available through YouTube in addition to her blog. You can even access some of them through her blog. She posts conversations and different experiences she has. Are these people blogging and constantly updating their blogs leaving imprints of themselves on a website? Are they constantly trying to create meaning of their lives (a la Derrida)? Is it that this method of autobiographical practice is more accessible to others? People are now able to view aspects of Olive's life through reading her blog or watching her on YouTube...but we still cannot see everything. This would be impossible! This is the same situation as a book autobiography - the author ultimately chooses what is included and what is excluded. However, the blogging allows for more authors and a larger audience.

More Roland Barthes

If you were interested in reading an essay by Barthes, please go here:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Death+of+the+Author+by+Roland+Barthes&hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&oi=scholart

And click on "The Death of the Author" link. It is really quite fascinating!

The death of the author is the birth of the critic. We can use this idea also in discussing art and the responsibility of the critic to the artist and the his or her work (especially after the artist has died).

"Roland Barthes" by Roland Barthes

Barthes tends to define himself over and over again in relation to his work, sometimes in subtle ways and sometimes in more overt ways. From the pictures in the beginning, he often remarks about who had a grasp of language and who did not and he is aware of his reading and what was going on in the literary world when he was growing up. Barthes is also very aware of the ideas of Freud and Lacan - the id, the mirror stage, etc. Then he writes, "Where is your authentic body? You are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image; you never see your eyes unless they are dulled by the gaze they rest upon the mirror or the lens." Barthes then comes back to the idea of the body, images, and defining oneself, perhaps finding one's imprint. He tends to see himself in relation to his work.

On the page with the three images of Barthes in his office, he states, "My body is free of its image-repertoire only when it establishes its work space." We get the idea that Barthes feels comfortable in his study. Later, Barthes describes the Ship Argo and introduces the ideas of substitution (replacing one part at a time) and nomination (name that is not linked to the stability of parts). He calls his two work spaces - one in Paris and one in the country - his Argo. The offices are identical in structure and this is what constitutes the identity of the area.

Towards the end of the passage we read (page 60-61), Barthes introduces the idea of the plural body. He states that he has a plural bodies, some public bodies (literary, written), he has two local bodies: a Parisian body and a country body. I think this is interesting that he mentions specifically these two bodies. They are like his work spaces - structurally they are the same. However, he feels differently in Paris (alert, tired) than he does in the country (rested, heavy). Is he defining himself in relation to the work he accomplishes in each place? Does each place leave a different sort of imprint on him? And consequently does this affect his identity?

Foucault's "Panopticism"

Foucault talks about the Panopticon as a machine for seeing/being seen. This is a machine that works on the basis that one party is able to see the other party at all times while the other whose "seeing" is a type of trap is able to be seen at all times. Foucault mentions that "it is a way of making power relations function in a function, and of making a function function through these power relations" (207). This is a type of self-enclosed mechanism based on the ability to see versus being seen. Foucault mentions that this Panopticon idea relates to other social structures such as hospitals and schools, not just prisons. So, how does this relate to the autobiographical impulse? When describing oneself in an autobiography or autobiographically, is not that person functioning as the one who sees (himself/herself)? Also, as we have discussed in class, when writing about oneself, there is the intention of an audience. Therefore, the autobiographical self is also the one who is seen. On another level, the idea of being seen and exposed might lead one to conform to societal pressures. This influences the way in which one communicates about oneself - not just the way one chooses to describe the self, but also what one chooses to cut or add in or elaborate on about the self.

Michel Foucault's "The History of Sexuality"

Foucault again focuses on the idea of confession, and in this essay, in relation to the history of sexuality. He states that "the evolution of the word avowal and of the legal function it designated is itself emblematic of this development: from being a guarantee of the status, identity, and value granted to one person by another, it came to signify someone's acknowledgment of his own actions and thoughts" (58). Foucault goes on to state that we have become a singularly confessing society. According to Foucault, confession began as Christian penance - sex was a privileged theme of confession. This confession compels people to speak of their sexual peculiarity. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the Reformation and the introduction of medicine, confession expanded beyond the Christian understanding. People confessed to family members, friends, doctors, etc.

With the developments in medicine, sex became more of a concern. There suddenly became a need for people to be biologically responsible. People needed to be responsible about who they were having sex with as there was the spread of venereal diseases, people could have genetically problematic children, and many other problems. First sexual consciousness began with the bourgeois families and it was not until later that this became more of a concern with the working class. This happened as working class families were given access to birth control, they became organized conventional families, and the development of the juridical and medical control of perversions in order to protect society. Psychoanalysis became a way to alleviate the effects of repression of sexual perversion - it allowed people to confess perversions within a discourse.

What does this mean in relation to the self? Foucault is talking about confession as a way to speak truth about oneself, and in particular, a way to talk about one's sexuality. Medicine has a role here - one must confess to the doctor in order to get a proper diagnosis. We often confide in others who are close to us about our sexuality; however, it usually remains something hidden inside. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (even today) was the confession forced in the confessional? Is the confession nowadays less forced? Do we speak more freely now? How does this help us construct ourselves? Or is this type of confession destructive? Does it relate to freedom and power?

Alan Berliner's "Nobody's Business"

Alan Berliner's film "Nobody's Business" is about his father's life as well as his own life. It is difficult to separate Oscar's autobiography from Alan's autobiography at times. Where can one locate their separate autobiographical imprints? It was difficult for Alan to get his father to talk about his background, where he came from, and why he had become such a loner. He kept telling his son that he was not interested in the past, and could not imagine why Alan would be so interested in the past to make a film out of it. Alan seemed to want to discover something deeper about his family and about himself. There were a lot of issues of which he was unaware - he did not even really understand his own parents' divorce. Attempting to piece his background together, Alan used archival materials, he asked various relatives questions, he viewed old 8 mm home films, and he asked his father many personal questions. He stretched Oscar's patience. Did Alan end up with a better picture of who he was through the process of making the film? Was his aim to get his father interested in his own background? For whom is this film intended? Is this a film for Alan? For Oscar? Who is Alan's intended audience?

Michel Foucault's "About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self"

Michel Foucault discusses the hermeneutics of the self and what this meant from a pagan philosophical viewpoint and how it changed with the introduction of Christianity. Foucault is interested in how people verbalize confessions and how this leads to a definition of self. How do people define themselves? There are three major types of techniques in human societies: production, signification, and domination. While Foucault mentions that techniques of domination were important when concerned with the knowledge of the subject (or self), he believes that perhaps there needed to be a new techniques for the technology of self.

The two most important techniques for the discovery of the truth of the self are the examination of one’s conscience and confession. These two techniques transformed from the pagan era to the Christian era. Before Christianity, and especially with the Stoics, it was important for people to examine their thoughts and actions of the day in order to “know yourself.” In philosophical schools, the relationship between the master and student was important for verbalization about the truth of oneself. Seneca describes himself examining his thoughts and actions of the day – he had a system of knowing when his actions fell short and when his actions were wrong. He played administrator for himself – he was both judging his actions and being judged. With the introduction of Christianity, the focus of the confession shifted from examining one’s actions to examining one’s thoughts. How did they line up in accordance with God? The focus was on confessing one’s thoughts to a spiritual leader. With this transformation is when hermeneutics of the self begins.

What is transformed during the shift from pagan to Christian confession? In pagan philosophical confessions, the aim is truth. Truth is obtained by rhetorical explanation. The desire is to create a self where the will and knowledge are united. With Christianity, the desire is to discover the self by examining what is hidden inside the self. This is the difference. Foucault believes that modern hermeneutics of the self is rooted in Christian techniques more than the Classical (pagan) techniques. Just the very fact that he uses this term “hermeneutics” implies this in a way. Christians making confession is not an act but as a life-long affair. Self-revelation occurs at the moment of exomologesis (at the moment of reconciliation). Exomologesis is a representation of certain kind of death. It is the will attempting to free itself from the body. At the moment of the verbalization or confession, there is a renouncing of self that occurs. The question of the self becomes paradoxical: “we have to sacrifice the self in order to discover the truth about ourself, and we have to discover the truth about ourself in order to sacrifice ourself” (221). With the sacrifice of the self, a loss of self, how is autobiography possible? How is the autobiographical possible if there is ultimately a loss of the self?

Rene Descartes' "Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry, and Meterology"

Descartes begins his discourse by actually giving it the title "Discourse on the Method for Rightly Directing One's Reason and Searching for Truth in the Sciences." Descartes is really laying out his purpose here in the lengthy title. Then, further, he describes what he is going to do in six parts. If we, as readers were to be convinced that Descartes was going to give us the method to follow in order to "rightly" direct our reason and search for truth, we would be disappointed. For, Descartes then states that his intention, "is not to teach here the method which everyone must follow in order to direct his reason correctly, but only to show the manner in which I have tried to direct mine" (5). So, is Descartes claiming that his method is the method that one should use? It seems that this first part reads more like an autobiographical story of his search for truth.

Descartes describes his journey - he first began by reading books, because "the reading of good books is like a conversation with the greatest gentlemen of past ages" (6). He read poetry, mathematics, theology, philosophy, and etcetera. Then, he gave up reading to go traveling. Everywhere he would reflect upon the things that occurred to him so that he might find truth in each man's reasoning. He wanted to distinguish the true from the false. He then took all this information to study within himself, and was most successful. Descartes sets up his own journey in order to give some foundation to his findings.

In the fourth part of Descartes' discourse is when he really struggles with his search for truth. His truth is his most famous phrase: "I think, therefore I am" (27-28). His soul - the "me" is separate from the body. Descartes really struggles to define himself in relation to God and truth and reason. Would I use the same "method" that Descartes used to discover truth? Most definitely not. While he claims that not everyone must use this method, I think he believes most differently. Otherwise, he would have titled his essay, "Discourse on the Method for How I Rightly Directed My Reason and Searched for Truth in the Sciences." There are quite a few traces of Descartes' self in his writing for it to be so generalized.

Michelle Citron's "What's Wrong with This Picture?"

After reading this chapter by Citron, I admit I understand how Daughter Rite fits into our course and discussions of autobiography. The chapter is written in two parts that run next to each other and are related to one another but they are completely different writings in themselves. Daughter Rite similarly portrays two different videos going on - one with the narration and manipulated home videos, and the other being the story of the two sisters visiting their mother and recalling stories from their childhood and adolescence. Citron explains that the film communicates the universal idea of girls getting frustrated and upset with their mothers. The stories are not always her stories. Where do we locate the autobiographical aspect in this film? Is it merely in the manipulated home videos? What is interesting to me is how Citron uses Daughter Rite not only to describe her own frustrations about her mother, but she also uses the video (the home video bits) as a sort of therapy for herself and her mother. Hershman uses her diaries as a sort of "talk cure" where she talks out her problems. Retrospectively, Citron finds a clip from a home video where she somewhat inappropriately manhandles her sister (who feels uncomfortable about it), and this is where she locates her dealing with the incest she experienced. Her mother was able to talk to Citron about her own experiences with incest after viewing Daughter Rite, and instead of getting frustrated with her mother, they form a closer relationship. It reminds me of Benjamin's claim (I know, back to Benjamin) that the camera can act as a way to see more deeply - the idea of a psychoanalytic lens. Citron was able to see through the surface of what seemed to be two happy sisters interacting to better understand what was going on beneath the surface.

Lynn Hershman's "First Person Plural"

While we only watched about half of the film First Person Plural (1996) by Hershman, I was able to understand (mostly) what she was trying to communicate. Reading the David E. James article "Lynn Hershman: The Subject of Autobiography" also aided in my understanding of Hershman's work. Hershman used a confessional style of autobiography to deal with her weight gain and her issues of abuse and violence. Unlike many of the other autobiographical films and videos we have viewed thus far in the semester, Hershman was unafraid to confront the camera lens. She said that no one was taping her, and that alone she felt she could talk about herself in a way that she would not be able to if someone else were present. We as viewers cannot help but make eye contact with Hershman's image in the film. We cannot escape her. We must listen to her story. James mentions the idea of the "talking cure" (127) that Hershman talking through her issues of weight and abuse is the only way to heal herself, and then ultimately to find herself. What is it about the medium that allows Hershman to feel comfortable about revealing her autobiographical story? She uses manipulations of her own image and she uses other images (Dracula, Hitler, old photographs of herself) to enhance her story, or perhaps to communicate to the viewer what she thinks about herself - or is she doing this to evoke certain feelings or understandings in us in relation to her? I would be interested in finding out how the film ends. How is Hershman cured? What does she find out about herself?

Leigh Gilmore's "Self-Representation: Instabilities in Gender, Genre, and Identity"

Gilmore mentions towards the beginning of her chapter that most narratives or autobiographies portray the "hero" as Western, white, and male, and he identifies his perspective with "a God's-eye view and, from that divine height, sums up his life" (17). This certainly has been true from the readings we had for last week. St. Augustine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Benjamin Franklin: three men telling their stories from a rather lofty position.

Gilmore uses Audre Lorde's Zami: A New Spelling of My Name to identify the multiple difficulties in defining autobiography. Lorde does not claim to write an autobiography but a biomythology. She changes the name of the genre, and this parallels the change in her own name. Other problems include her race and her sexual orientation in addition to her gender. We have been attempting to define autobiography, and this is problematic. It was mentioned in the chapter that we know what autobiography is, but it is hard to define. We have guidelines, especially involving the definition of the "I" and the author-narrator-protagonist relationship. But, is this a genre that can be clearly and easily defined?

Towards the end of the chapter, Gilmore uses four examples of what happens when there is an interruption in the autobiography - whether it is "edited" by another (Bolton), censured by the public (Tillich), written from a different viewpoint ("Dora"), or taken for another's work (Cavendish) all examples involve women. This reminds me of a canonical article by Linda Nochlin entitled "Why Have There Been No Great Female Artists?" Basically, women have not had the same opportunities as men, and they have had greater domestic responsibilities. This is in addition to social and cultural pressures on women who have attempted to become artists. They were not allowed to become artists. My mind turns to Angelica Kauffman who was one of the most successful female artists of the Eighteenth Century. She was trained by her father (much like Annibale Carracchi) and since her first marriage was scandalous, she did not have the traditional domestic responsibilities of other women. She was encouraged to become a great artist. Similarly in autobiography, perhaps women were not allowed to tell their stories. This seems to be the case from the four examples of Bolton, Tillich, Dora, and Cavendish.