What I get for Thinking...

Time for an analysis eh? Onward!

I have decided to use the feminist text as a lens for this book, as I have less experience with feminist criticism and thought than I feel I should.  Regarding feminism, I suppose the most obvious way to analyze Things Fall Apart is through an examination of the native culture and the role of women in said society. Obviously, their station is not one of a matriarchy; the entire society appears to have strong patriarchic roots and structure. 

As far as the novel shows, the women’s role appears to be primarily consisting of supporting their husband with food preparation and giving birth to children.  They have little to no power, and indeed are often subjugated (or at least it may be assumed from the cases found within the novel) to abuse and mistreatment at the hands of their husbands, and if they attempt to flee they are summarily returned as decreed by the village spirits (the village’s leading men in masks). 

Another important point can be drawn from the way women are valued in the tribal society.  It appears they are viewed almost as a symbol of status and wealth.  Marriage is an honored tradition that involves bartering for the “purchase” of a wife, and the society is polygamist, therefore they represent wealth to some degree, but they are still attributed very little. 

                                                                                                         

I feel feminists would have plenty of issues with the text in question.  The idea of “phallocentrism, the belief that identifies the phallus the source of power in culture and literature”, as the lens work describes it is certainly identifiable and could easily be brought up and contested.  It should be noted that the author does include notes on women as a means of defining the culture in a historical context, but whether the story is text is based upon fact is not known, and is indeed unlikely to be true in its entirety.  Therefore, it may be suggested that the author and the point can thus be argued that “century after century, male voices continue to articulate and determine the social role and cultural and personal significance of women”, a point that could be supported if indeed women are devalued in a fictional setting created by a man. 

Quite a bit of material to work with here, and I think I should have a fair shot at making something coherent.  Perhaps I’ll aim to make a bit of a simpler work this time rather than attempting something strange and unusual in its conventions.  Who know, I certainly don’t.  Away!!!

I Added Paragraphs!

            It seems every subject has its shot at becoming a cultural meta-narrative at some point.  In this instance it appears that the idea of a technopoly, as defined by Neil Postman in his book Technopoly, is vying for a shot.  Postman defines a technopoly to be “the submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology”; essentially the point at which mechanical efficiency becomes the basis of human culture.  Postman claims that this has become a social trend mainly within America, while the rest of the world still resides in the phase of technocracy, the point at which progress is no longer questioned with moral reasoning, “a society only loosely controlled by social custom and religious tradition and driven by the impulse to invent” to quote Postman once again.  While the text is a bit dated in regards to the progress of other countries (it was published in 1992), the general idea of the technopoly still applies in the modern day and age, perhaps even more so now that time has given rise to more technological progress than before the book’s time. 

            In any case, the idea of a culture based around exceedingly efficient production ties in quite nicely with the central theme of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  The society within said book has essentially reformed itself around the teachings of Henry Ford, the production line, and Frederick Winslow Taylor, maximizing human efficiency.  In fact, society has literally embraced these two concepts.  All of society is designed, starting even pre-embryo, to exceptionally fit into one very specific job and do it at an optimal rate.  This teaching is even expanded through copying individuals before embryonic mitosis begins so that, in effect, the individual is not an individual but essentially a replaceable part.  This leads directly into the centering on Ford’s assembly line.  Society, in Brave New World, has become a literal assembly line.  Everything has been reduced to a series of hyper-efficient production and consumption, where even the citizens have become nothing more than cogs in the machine.  Essentially, this society has become the epitome of a technopoly, as society has embraced the way of the machine as what drives, controls, and regulates it processes.  What I find to be interesting is the differentiation between Huxley’s reasoning for society’s shift and that of Postman’s.  Huxley believed that the world shifted solely because power was desired, and this was simply an efficient means to an end.  Postman, however believes it to be a natural progression based on evolutions in technology that led to there only being “one sure thing to believe in – technology” (Postman 8). 

            Simply put, Brave New World is the embodiment of a technopoly, a place where technology now reigns as the supreme standard of measurement.  No longer do traditional values exist, and even humans are expected to operate with machine-like precision.  Technology has become the meta-narrative, not the pursuit of, but technology itself. 

We Alone Cannot Comprehend

Singularity; generally used to refer to everything within a single point.  In this instance however, we are not talking about a singularity, rather the Singularity, the point at which human creation surpasses human intelligence (more specifically the Time Magazine article found here, “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal”).  While not the most incredulous idea, it is certainly a possible path for the future; a path most certain to be viewed as a dystopia.  While it is quite possible that human’s will continue to exist “humanity – our bodies, our minds, our civilizations – will be completely and irrevocably transformed” (Grossman 1).  This definition here is what makes a dystopia, not the tragic nature of its construction or foundation, but the changes that will inevitably be brought to our current definition of humanity.  Take for example the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, a world in which everyone (for the most part) is happy.  This idea would certainly be welcome by most, until they learn about the changes humanity has undergone.  Sure society is happy, but that is only because it has been perfected to the point that humans are genetically engineered and subconsciously trained to be happy, to function as an assembly line, and to give up some of the most fundamental teachings our current definition of humanity is built upon.  Does being always happy outweigh living in a society built upon the idea of “[carrying] at least half your mortality in a bottle” (Huxley 238)?  Even more simply put: do the giants outweigh the losses?  In most cases it depends on the person you talk to, but nonetheless, the point stands relevant.  The same question can be asked of the coming Singularity.  Do the gains outweigh the losses?  Well let’s take a look at some of the proffered gains.  The most obvious is, of course, vast, even near infinite, knowledge and understanding given to the human race thanks to the exponential growth from super-intelligent computers.  The most controversial however, is the idea of everlasting life.  The ability to life forever, whether granted by pill, by becoming a cyborg, both, or even any other conceivable idea would certainly become available to humanity if knowledge reaches a point of nigh-infinite expansion.  The loss however is something that cannot and will not be wholly answered until that day is reached, as until then, ironically enough, we will not possess a clear enough picture to solve the question ourselves.  Perhaps Grossman himself expresses the concern the best, “By beating death, will we have lost our essential humanity?”  Humanity: that which defines us as human; that which makes us what we are; that which we cannot hope to comprehend alone.