Althusser and Lacan.
Good lord. Where to begin?
Lacan is so dense with reference to other writings that I don't have any idea what he's talking about 90% of the time in spite of the fact that some of the concepts he's discussing are actually very interesting to me. My next project (the first for my graduate program) deals with identity and memory and the way they interact with technology. So his discussion of mirrors and self awareness connects to these topics in interesting ways. However his paragraph-long sentences filled with jargon and reference aren't leaving me with much insight beyond the simplest understandings of his text (e.g. the pigeon changes only in the presence of an other, which is a very exciting concept to examine while working on a script about people whose identities are fractured by a technology they don't understand.)
I'm also struggling to connect the two readings.
Althusser's discussion of ideology is perhaps more interesting to me in it's practicality. As a filmmaker, his delineation of cultural products as an Ideological State Apparatus is well received. I chose video as a medium because it is (as described by many) the central cultural delivery system of our times. We (defined in a broad sense as American society) consume more hours of television, films, music videos, how-to-videos, pornographic videos, sports programs, etc. than most of us would be comfortable admitting. Older statistics had the average American consuming 8 hours of video products a day.
I studied film because I loved it, but I always wondered how much of a role it might play in our value systems so Althusser's categorization suits me quite well. His nod to teachers who fight to provide students paths to critique of the ISAs is also very welcome as my mother was a teacher throughout her working life and I fancy myself as a teacher who prioritizes critical thinking and deep examination of one's own values and motivations (being that I teach film studies/filmmaking my efforts are specific to media literacy and examining the socio-political motivations and effects of the students' films).
Lacan is famous (or, rather, infamous) for being almost completely incomprehensible and for making extensive use of double meanings and ambiguities. I wonder if that's a method for approaching psychoanalysis in general--as intrinsically ambiguous.
ReplyDeleteI'm interested in the ubiquity of video and film that you point to and the fact that we see it everywhere. I'm not a film maker so I wonder how you, as a film maker, approach that. I guess all the uses to which video and film have been put provide a pre-existing language that you can then appropriate and/or subvert, which sounds exciting to me.