...Humanists claims that the meaning of a thing is inherent in the thing itself, and that language simply labels what already exists. Poststructuralists, on the other hand, argue that naming is constitutive. Critically analyze these competing perspectives and the arguments that are made in support of them. Humanism is essentially a belief system that is dictated by the way in which humans themselves, react, produce, and perform things. It is “the basic value system of humans…providing the fact that humanism is a human-centered system of meaning making”(Fuery & Mansfield, 2000; 209). In reference to the proposed argument, a humanist would see an object as a production of the human, and the language associated with that object is merely for convenience sake, to reiterate what said object is. This argument is reaffirmed by the concept of the existential self. This provides us with the view that we are separate and distinguishable from other objects and other people, which in turn suggests that whilst we interact with other humans and objects we are able to distinguish what and whom we are interacting with based on our own personal human development. “Humanisms are based on creating a system of meaning with man as its centre.”( R.Baltmann, 1982. P174) This is of course ‘man’ in the most general sense, as a collective. In order for people to gain meaning from such individualistic societies generalisations need to be made. It is impossible for a society to create an easily understandable...
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...What is Critical Theory?DefinitionGenerally, Critical Theory is a broad approach to challenging and destabilizing established knowledge.In a more focused sense, Critical Theory comes out of the German 'Frankfurt School,' (who called it Critical Theory of Society or Critical Social Theory)which emphasizes that all knowledge is historical and biased, and that 'objective' knowledge is illusory.DiscussionCritical Theory starts from Marx and Freud and expands through the 20th century to cover areas such as literary criticism, linguistics, semiotics, psychology, philosophy, feminism, screen theory, and includes methods such as structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction and postmodernism.Critical Theory is such a huge area, it is almost impossible to cover it in total depth. This section is based on an extension of a study done as a part of a postgraduate university course in psychology. | What is literary criticism? Literary criticism has multiple functions. It is used as a vehicle to interpret or analyze various types of literature, including poetry, novels, and plays. There are many different types, or schools, of literary criticism that can be applied to works of literature. Critical essays are the most common form of literary criticism, and they are generally found in scholarly journals or in books of collected essays or anthologies. In effect, literary criticism explores different possible meanings that a text may have. Criticism may look at an idea in a single text or may...
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...literary study was established on a resistance between the canon and its other, mainstream culture. The theory wars of the 1970s and the 1980s and, specifically, the appearance of structuralist and post-structuralist theory, changed this relationship. With the passing of writing, the refinement amongst high and popular culture was no more extended reasonable, and the field of request moved from literary into Cultural Studies. In this work, Anthony Easthope contends this new train must locate a methodological agreement for its examination of authoritative and famous writings. Through a point by point feedback of contending speculations (British cultural studies, New Historicism, cultural materialism) he demonstrates...
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...Brock Review Volume 2 Number 1, 1993 pp. 90-106, which publication holds the copyright. The article addresses contemporary theory in its more post-structural mode, and were I to rewrite it today I would put more emphasis on the cultural studies model, on the growth of gender studies, and on New Historicism, than I do here. I believe however that what I have to say here is still relevant and describes the fundamental paradigm shift which has altered the direction and mandate of literary study. July 2001 Studies in literature in universities in the last two decades have been marked by the growing interest in and bitter division over a set of related theoretical approaches known collectively as Literary Theory. Many Departments have become divided between "theory people" and opponents who see themselves as defending the traditional values central to the culture against Theory’s perceived anti-humanism. Literary Theory is part of a wide-spread movement in the culture which has affected a number of disciplines, occasioning similar disputes in some, a movement which has explored and elucidated the complexities of meaning, textuality and interpretation. Literary Theory is not a single enterprise but a set of related concepts and practices — most importantly deconstruction, post-Althusserian ideological or 'political' criticism, post-Lacanian psychoanalytic criticism, New Historicist or 'cultural' criticism, some reader-response criticism and much feminist criticism. The aim...
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...Theory before 'theory' - liberal humanism - 11 The history of English studies - 11 Stop and think - 11 Ten tenets of liberal humanism - 16 Literary theorising from Aristotle to Leavis some key moments - 21 Liberal humanism in practice - 31 The transition to 'theory' - 32 Some recurrent ideas in critical theory - 34 Selected reading - 36 2 Structuralism - 39 Structuralist chickens and liberal humanist eggs Signs of the fathers - Saussure - 41 Stop and think - 45 The scope of structuralism - 46 What structuralist critics do - 49 Structuralist criticism: examples - 50 Stop and think - 53 Stop and think - 55 39 Stop and think - 57 Selected reading - 60 3 Post-structuralism and deconstruction - 61 Some theoretical differences between structuralism and post-structuralism - 61 Post-structuralism - life on a decentred planet - 65 Stop and think - 68 Structuralism and post-structuralism - some practical differences - 70 What post-structuralist critics do - 73 Deconstruction: an example - 73 Selected reading - 79 4 Postmodernism - 81 What is postmodernism? What was modernism? - 81 'Landmarks' in postmodernism: Habermas, Lyotard and Baudrillard - 85 Stop and think - 90 What postmodernist critics do - 91 Postmodernist criticism: an example - 91 Selected reading - 94 5 Psychoanalytic criticism - 96 Introduction - 96 How Freudian interpretation works - 98 Stop and think - 101 Freud and evidence - 102 What Freudian psychoanalytic critics do...
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...Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism Introduction A very basic way of thinking about literary theory is that these ideas act as different lenses critics use to view and talk about art, literature, and even culture. These different lenses allow critics to consider works of art based on certain assumptions within that school of theory. The different lenses also allow critics to focus on particular aspects of a work they consider important. For example, if a critic is working with certain Marxist theories, s/he might focus on how the characters in a story interact based on their economic situation. If a critic is working with post-colonial theories, s/he might consider the same story but look at how characters from colonial powers (Britain, France, and even America) treat characters from, say, Africa or the Caribbean. Hopefully, after reading through and working with the resources in this area of the OWL, literary theory will become a little easier to understand and use. Disclaimer Please note that the schools of literary criticism and their explanations included here are by no means the only ways of distinguishing these separate areas of theory. Indeed, many critics use tools from two or more schools in their work. Some would define differently or greatly expand the (very) general statements given here. Our explanations are meant only as starting places for your own investigation into literary theory. We encourage you to use the list of scholars and works provided for each...
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...The Field of Psychology We humans are a strange species and our behavior is often inconsistent. Some of us smile when we're angry, others cry when we're happy. And all of us expect other people to figure out what in the world we are thinking. Not only are we different from other species, we're radically different from each other. Thankfully, our differences can be examined more easily through the lens of psychology—the science that tells us how the mind, brain, and body work together. This lesson introduces you to the field of psychology—its origins, history, key perspectives, research methods, issues, and current trends. This lesson presents the following topics: • What is Psychology? • The History of Psychology • Modern Psychology Perspectives • Types of Psychological Professionals • The Science of Psychology • Ethics of Psychological Research What is Psychology? Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. • Behavior includes outward or obvious actions or reactions such as facial expressions or movement. These actions and reactions are sometimes referred to as body language. John wants to ask Susan for a date, and Susan wants him to ask her out. John worked up his courage, was about to ask her out when he walked by her desk, but Susan looked up with a frown on her face. Assuming that she was frowning at him, John walked quickly back to his own office. Susan, who had a horrible sinus...
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...* Psychology as a science was developed out of philosophy, biology, and other well-established disciplines. * Until 1920, psychology was a science of mental processes explored by Wundt, Titchener, James, and Freud. * From the 1920's until the 1960's, Americans John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner led the school of psychology known as behaviorism, focusing on the observation of people's behaviors. * Humanistic psychology, led by Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, countered behaviorism during this period by focusing on the personal growth and well-being of people. * In the 1960's, psychology shifted back towards a focus on how the brain approaches information. Recently, cognitive neuroscience studies how brain activity causes mental activity. * To combine the study of both the internal mental activities and observable human behaviors, psychology became the science of behavior and mental processes. TERMS * ------------------------------------------------- cognitive neuroscience An academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrates underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes. It addresses the questions of how psychological/cognitive functions are produced by the brain. Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of both psychology and neuroscience, overlapping with disciplines such as physiological psychology, cognitive psychology and neuropsychology. Cognitive neuroscience relies upon theories in...
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...-“Strauss versus Brains and Genes or the postmodern vengeful return of positivism.” This essay first started as an answer to what I deemed very problematic, i.e. the disputation which I found in bad faith (un-authentic to use a philosophical term or an existentialist term), of the mediatic, dashing Harvard cognitivist/linguist, Steven Pinker, in his article “Neglected novelists, embattled English professors, tenure-less historians, and other struggling denizens of the Humanities, Science is not your Enemy—a plea for an intellectual truce,” (The New Republic--August 19). Then the counter-arguments against Steven Pinker’s conception of the “human animal” developed into an essay arguing that the New Positivism, not science, or technology per say, was the enemy of humanism and its avatars as such. The point is not to become a postmodern anti-scientific Luddite. Genomics are changing the world in ways we barely imagine yet and will re-define what it means to be human (a becoming already imagined by science fiction writers, social critics and critical thinkers such as the feminist Donna Haraway with her “Cyborg”). The point is also not to turn “anti-brainiac.” Without a brain we would become vegetative, a vegetal…, i.e. a purely “natural body,” a “zombie.” If we make use of this “computer” allegory which is an analog but not a homologue, and which is used ad nauseam used by psycho-biologists, without a hard-drive there is no software. But is this a reason to say that the software...
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...confidentiality is not guaranteed. | | | | | | | | Grade: | 2 | | | User Responses: | c.Participants must be allowed to make an informed decision about participation. | | | Feedback: | a.Correct. Ethics of Psychological Research, p. 34 | | 2. | A ________ has a medical degree and is a medical doctor who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders. | | | a. | psychoanalyst | b. | psychiatrist | c. | psychologist | d. | psychiatric social worker | | | | | | | | Grade: | 2 | | | User Responses: | b.psychiatrist | | | Feedback: | a.Correct. Psychological Professionals and Areas of Specialization, p. 18 | | 3. | Researchers who allow their expectations about what they will see to affect the results of their observation studies are suffering from: | | | a. | controlled observation. | b. | participation observation. | c. | the observer effect. | d. | observer bias. | | | | | | | | Grade: | 2 | | | User Responses: | d.observer bias. | | | Feedback: | a.Correct. Psychology: The Scientific Methodology, p. 23 | | 4. | Researchers use ________ for reducing bias and error in the measurement of data. | | | a. | the descriptive methods | b. | the scientific method | c. | case studies | d. | naturalistic observation | | | | | | | | Grade: | 2 | | | User Responses: | b.the scientific method | | | Feedback: | a.Correct. Psychology: The Scientific...
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...further champions the creative powers of the individual to strive beyond social, cultural, and moral contexts.[3]Nietzsche's attitude towards religion and morality was marked with atheism, psychologism and historism; he considered them to be human creations loaded with the error of confusing cause and effect.[4] His radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth has been the focus of extensive commentary, and his influence remains substantial, particularly in the continental philosophical schools of existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism. His ideas of individual overcoming and transcendence beyond structure and context have had a profound impact on late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century thinkers, who have used these concepts as points of departure in the development of their philosophies.[5][6] Most recently, Nietzsche's reflections have been received in various philosophical approaches which move beyond humanism, e.g. transhumanism. Nietzsche began his career as a classical philologist—a scholar of Greek and Roman textual criticism—before turning to philosophy. In 1869, at age twenty-four, he was appointed to the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of...
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...Narrative A narrative is a sequence of events that a narrator tells in story form. A narrator is a storyteller of any kind, whether the authorial voice in a novel or a friend telling you about last night’s party. Point of View The point of view is the perspective that a narrative takes toward the events it describes. First-person narration: A narrative in which the narrator tells the story from his/her own point of view and refers to him/herself as “I.” The narrator may be an active participant in the story or just an observer. When the point of view represented is specifically the author’s, and not a fictional narrator’s, the story is autobiographical and may be nonfictional (see Common Literary Forms and Genres below). Third-person narration: The narrator remains outside the story and describes the characters in the story using proper names and the third-person pronouns “he,” “she,” “it,” and “they.” • Omniscient narration: The narrator knows all of the actions, feelings, and motivations of all of the characters. For example, the narrator of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina seems to know everything about all the characters and events in the story. • Limited omniscient narration: The narrator knows the actions, feelings, and motivations of only one or a handful of characters. For example, the narrator of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has full knowledge of only Alice. • Free indirect discourse: The narrator conveys a character’s inner thoughts...
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...Mid-Term Case Study Analysis Introduction According to Ann Cunliffe, Organization Theory “wasn’t recognized as a discipline until the 1960s” (Cunliffe, 2008, pp. 8). Currently however, Organization Theory is a common concept and has to be practiced every day by managers. For that reason, managers and administrators must be aware of the competitive advantage that derives from the thorough knowledge of organizational theories. Organizational literature offers a broad amount of tools that can help managers in their decision making processes. Even though theories are not rules, they are based on observation and data collection over the years, and are accepted among scholars (Vibert and Hurst, 2003). Consequently, learning the theories that scholars have written in the past (and in the present) help managers to create a portfolio of frameworks to solve the problems they might face in their organizations. Moreover, managers who excel the practice of organizational theories become more critical individuals; improve effectiveness within their organizations and develop the ability to predict organizational behavior. Based on the above, this paper pretends to put into practice the theories and concepts learned so far in the academic course Organization Theory. Accordingly, this script summarizes the practical analysis of the case presented in Jermier’s work “When the Sleeper Wakes”: A Short Story Extending Themes in Radical Organization Theory (Jermier, 1985). This critical analysis...
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...B.A. (HONOURS) ENGLISH (Three Year Full Time Programme) COURSE CONTENTS (Effective from the Academic Year 2011-2012 onwards) DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF DELHI DELHI - 110007 0 Course: B.A. (Hons.) English Semester I Paper 1: English Literature 4(i) Paper 2: Twentieth Century Indian Writing(i) Paper 3: Concurrent – Qualifying Language Paper 4: English Literature 4(ii) Semester II Paper 5: Twentieth Century Indian Writing(ii) Paper 6: English Literature 1(i) Paper 7: Concurrent – Credit Language Paper 8: English Literature 1(ii) Semester III Paper 9: English Literature 2(i) Paper 10: Option A: Nineteenth Century European Realism(i) Option B: Classical Literature (i) Option C: Forms of Popular Fiction (i) Paper 11: Concurrent – Interdisciplinary Semester IV Semester V Paper 12: English Literature 2(ii) Paper 13: English Literature 3(i) Paper 14: Option A: Nineteenth Century European Realism(ii) Option B: Classical Literature (ii) Option C: Forms of Popular Fiction (ii) Paper 15: Concurrent – Discipline Centered I Paper 16: English Literature 3(ii) Paper 17: English Literature 5(i) Paper 18: Contemporary Literature(i) Paper 19: Option A: Anglo-American Writing from 1930(i) Option B: Literary Theory (i) Option C: Women’s Writing of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (i) Option D: Modern European Drama (i) Paper 20: English Literature 5(ii) Semester VI Paper 21: Contemporary Literature(ii) Paper 22: Option A: Anglo-American Writing from 1930(ii) Option B:...
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...Chapter 1 What is social psychology? LEARNING OUTCOMES When you have finished studying this chapter, you should be able to: 1 Outline the main differences between experimental and critical approaches to social psychology. 2 Describe the three main ‘metaphysical battles’ between them. 3 Trace the origins of social psychology through the work of William McDougall and William James, and the contributions made by Völkerpsychologie and crowd psychology. 4 Describe the two contrasting images of ‘the person’ in social psychology. 5 Identify the roots of and describe the historical development of both experimental and critical social psychology. 6 Describe the main elements of Modernism and Postmodernism, and how these relate to contemporary social psychology. 7 Explain how these two approaches are different, and why they cannot be integrated. Introduction On a March night in 1964, Kitty Genovese was attacked by a maniac as she came home from work at 3 A.M. Thirty-eight of her Kew Gardens neighbors came to their windows when she cried out in terror – but no one came to her assistance. Even though the attack, which resulted in her death, lasted more than half an hour, no one even so much as called the police. . . . The thirty-eight witnesses to Kitty 3 4 FOUNDATIONS AND PRINCIPLES Genovese’s murder did not merely look at the scene once and then ignore it. Instead they continued to stare out, fascinated, distressed, unwilling to act but unable...
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