Playing with Binary Oppositions

Hello, all...
Wow, I can almost hear my voice echoing around my deserted Blog.. If I had any sort of readership to begin with, I'm sure I have, at least temporarily, lost it. I have neglected my Blogging duties shamefully, and last week's scolding from Scott Pound was well deserved on my part. I will try not to deserve such a "scolding" again.
So, here I am, oiling the rusted hinges of my laptop, and dusting off my neglected keyboard, just so I can "talk" to you (if there is anyone here to hear me) about Binary Opposition. More specifically, I'm going to attempt to sum up my, hopefully not completely wrong, understanding of this type of identification.
To begin, Binary Os are a way to identify something through a relationship of difference, a way of understanding something (good), by the absence of its opposite (evil). A couple more of these lovely BOs are: God v. man (or woman), and reason v. madness. God is not human and humans are not God. I have always loved the complete insufficiency of this definition; madness is the absence of reason. If the last is really true, then, no doubt, a lot of people would find me "mad" more often than is strictly comfortable. And, yes, I am just going to let that one hang without evidential support. Anyway, if I understand Binary Os, Structuralists love them. In Structuralism, it is pure opposition that determines meaning. Thus, for these guys, meaning is never found through similarity.
Enter Derrida. This fellow suggests that, "within such structure based on binary pairs, one part of the pair is always given higher cultural value than the other,"or in short, "good is preferable to evil" (Klages 54 - from Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed). Here, Binary Os are being "play"ed with, they are no longer considered pure opposition. This suggests that, basically, any happy notion that we might have of any system (or world view) being totally secure is shattered.
Not only are Binary Os no longer pure opposition, one of the pair has greater importance. An it goes further. The greater, or privileged , term is actually the Center of the system (or world view). Therefore, in God v. man (...or woman) and Mind v. body, God and Mind are the center of their respective structures. The Center's role is to hold all parts of the system in place. The Center is the most important part of any system, and nothing can take its place, or be substituted. And The C's main job is to limit play within a system. This is not to say that it is the center's job to make sure that no one within a given system is allowed to have any fun. Haha. Rather, the C must limit, but not eliminate, movement within a system.
Finally, the C, or the privileged half in any pair of Binary Os has a (if things weren't complicated enough already) paradoxical function. The C exists both within and outside of the system it governs. Thus, the C is not subject to the systems rules. The center limits play, but can "play" all it likes, if you will.
Alright, time to untangle my mind again, and give it a short rest before all the deconstructive fun starts up again in Tuesday's class. This has been my understanding of Binary Oppositions, as discussed in last weeks class. Hopefully I have have not ventured too far off the mark.
So, until my next theory on theory, this is me signing off.

Round Two: Better Late than Never

Hi all.
So, this post is coming about a week later than I intended it. My reasons run the gamut from being sick and relatives staying at my apartment all weekend to plain old procrastination. But, I'm here now, and I have a thing or two to say about Terry Eagleton's "What is Literature?".
As I was reading our first assigned text for the class, I was pleasantly surprised by how clear, and not deathly dull, I found his writing. After about four years of slogging through secondary literary texts and scholarly journal articles (or "Journicals" as I've c ome to think of them after years of hearing the latter two words accidentally slurred together countless times) , I have read my share of mindnumbing writing. Eagleton managed to explain the concept of Formalism to me, with its emphasis on literature as writing that deviates from, or twists the norm.
I particularly liked his use of signs, like "All dogs must be carried on the escalator," as examples of how differently people might misread, or or just find different meaning in a piece of writing. I was reading this article fairly late at night, and i was pretty tired, but I actually laughed at a few of Eagleton's suggestions as to how the sign might be interpreted. And being able to find amusement in scholarly writing is definitely worth something.
Finally, I completely agree with Eagletopn's idea that all writing is rewritten by the reader, or the group of people reading it. I have spent countless hours ranting about how many different meanings we read into a given work that were probably never-consciously-meant to be there in the first place. But, looking back we, as early twenty first century readers, find all sorts of dire and sexist undercurrents in works like "Little Red Riding Hood."
Anyway, that's all the thoughts I have for you today. I plan to share some more with you soon, hopefully before more illness and relatives can descend on me.
Take care, and play safe out there.

Hey, it's my first time!

Hello all who venture to my page (hopefully there will be some of you).

My first entry here, has no literary merit whatsoever. This first blog is just to see if I know what I'm doing. I've always disliked the word "blog", by the way, it just doesn't sound very appealing to me. It has a somehow muddy, or nausaus feel to it. But, I suppose that it's a lot shorter than "My Open Diary to the World, About Me and my Thoughts", so I guess I'll just have to live with it.

Well, I've definitely spun my wheels here for long enough, so until next time (when I plan to have something marginally more relavent to say), I'm bidding everyone to take care and play safe.

(I'm also apologizing in advance for the spelling mistakes that are sure to make an appearance in my posts.)