Dead White Males
The following is from David Williamson's play "Dead White Males."
"My name is Dr Grant Swain. Welcome to the English and Cultural Studies Department and to my course, Literary Theory 1A.
Most of you have always assumed that there are certain eternal "truths" about "human nature" that perceptive writers reveal to us. This course will show you that there are no absolute "truths"; that there is no fixed "human nature" and what we think of as reality is always and only a manufactured reality. There are in fact as many "realities" out there as there are ideologies which construct them......
One of you wrote: 'I am skeptical of all ideologies, and try to weigh all the available evidence in order to make informed choices.'
This statement sounds as if it is a credo that warns against ideology, but in fact it is the defining statement of liberal humanism, one of the most powerful ideologies to have ever appeared in Western thought.
Liberal humanism pictures you, the individual, as rational and free. Free to make your own choices. Free to control your lives. But the fact is none of us are free, or can ever be free of ideology. All of us are conditioned by inbuilt and often unconscious mindsets to act in certain predictable ways. Our life scripts are, in fact, written for us.
By whom?
Largely by legions of well paid "experts" - economists, politicians and journalists and so on - who tell us the "truth" about "the world"; but it is not really truth we are being given. It is a series of ideological assertions. And the vast bulk of these assertions support the aims of the Western world's dominant ideology, the patriarchal corporate state. The goals of patriarchal corporate ideology are simple. Keep corporate profits high and women in their place. Liberal humanism, in naively depicting us as capable of of free and rational choice, is in fact the ideological handmaiden of the patriarchal corporate state. In encouraging us to believe we are in control of our lives, it prevents us questioning the massive injustices to which most of us are subject......
It is the aim of this course to show you how complicit "the masterpieces" of liberal humanist literature have been in the process of depriving women, people of colour and people of non-normative sexual orientation of power........
The issues we will face go to the very heart of our understanding of ourselves and of the world.......they are perhaps the most critical issues of our time !! "
David Williamson later wrote:
Despite the fact that I have made Dr Swain the villain of this social satire on a personal level I don't believe all his theory to be nonsense.
Like all ideas that have impact post-structuralism would not have flourished if it did not have some insights to offer. There is no doubt that Nietzsche, the intellectual precursor of post-structuralist thought, was on to something when he pointed out that humans find it very hard to be objective and rational. Most of us have been guilty of reconstructing our own history in a way that makes us the hero and the other party the villain and there have been many instances in which so-called historical, philosophical and scientific "truths" have turned out to be heavily distorted. Power elites in every society have used the slipperiness of language to try and foist their construction of the "truth" on to minorities, but that doesn't mean that there is no real truth nor that literature is just another source of misinformation........
While ideology can certainly be discerned in literature, it is not all that can be discerned. It is my belief that the great writers can still speak to us across the ages because they do offer us wisdom and insight about our common human nature.
"My name is Dr Grant Swain. Welcome to the English and Cultural Studies Department and to my course, Literary Theory 1A.
Most of you have always assumed that there are certain eternal "truths" about "human nature" that perceptive writers reveal to us. This course will show you that there are no absolute "truths"; that there is no fixed "human nature" and what we think of as reality is always and only a manufactured reality. There are in fact as many "realities" out there as there are ideologies which construct them......
One of you wrote: 'I am skeptical of all ideologies, and try to weigh all the available evidence in order to make informed choices.'
This statement sounds as if it is a credo that warns against ideology, but in fact it is the defining statement of liberal humanism, one of the most powerful ideologies to have ever appeared in Western thought.
Liberal humanism pictures you, the individual, as rational and free. Free to make your own choices. Free to control your lives. But the fact is none of us are free, or can ever be free of ideology. All of us are conditioned by inbuilt and often unconscious mindsets to act in certain predictable ways. Our life scripts are, in fact, written for us.
By whom?
Largely by legions of well paid "experts" - economists, politicians and journalists and so on - who tell us the "truth" about "the world"; but it is not really truth we are being given. It is a series of ideological assertions. And the vast bulk of these assertions support the aims of the Western world's dominant ideology, the patriarchal corporate state. The goals of patriarchal corporate ideology are simple. Keep corporate profits high and women in their place. Liberal humanism, in naively depicting us as capable of of free and rational choice, is in fact the ideological handmaiden of the patriarchal corporate state. In encouraging us to believe we are in control of our lives, it prevents us questioning the massive injustices to which most of us are subject......
It is the aim of this course to show you how complicit "the masterpieces" of liberal humanist literature have been in the process of depriving women, people of colour and people of non-normative sexual orientation of power........
The issues we will face go to the very heart of our understanding of ourselves and of the world.......they are perhaps the most critical issues of our time !! "
David Williamson later wrote:
Despite the fact that I have made Dr Swain the villain of this social satire on a personal level I don't believe all his theory to be nonsense.
Like all ideas that have impact post-structuralism would not have flourished if it did not have some insights to offer. There is no doubt that Nietzsche, the intellectual precursor of post-structuralist thought, was on to something when he pointed out that humans find it very hard to be objective and rational. Most of us have been guilty of reconstructing our own history in a way that makes us the hero and the other party the villain and there have been many instances in which so-called historical, philosophical and scientific "truths" have turned out to be heavily distorted. Power elites in every society have used the slipperiness of language to try and foist their construction of the "truth" on to minorities, but that doesn't mean that there is no real truth nor that literature is just another source of misinformation........
While ideology can certainly be discerned in literature, it is not all that can be discerned. It is my belief that the great writers can still speak to us across the ages because they do offer us wisdom and insight about our common human nature.
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