Structuralism

Culturalism takes meaning to be its central category and casts it as the product of active human agents. By contrast, structuralism speaks of signifying practices that generate meaning as an outcome of structures or predictable regularities that lie outside of any given person. Structuralism searches for the constraining patterns of culture and social life which lie outside of any given person. Individual acts are explained as the product of social structures. As such, structuralism is anti-humanist in its decentring of human agents from the heart of enquiry. Instead it favours a form of analysis in which phenomena have meaning only in relation to other phenomena within a systematic structure of which no particular person is the source. A structuralist understanding of culture is concerned with the 'systems of relations' of an underlying structure (usually language) and the grammar that makes meaning possible.

An Introduction to Cultural Studies, 3rd Ed, Chris Baker, SAGE Publications Ltd.,  Pg 15.

Notes from the Underground

I was a coward and a slave. I say this without the slightest embarrassment.  Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a slave.This is his normal condition. Of that I am firmly persuaded. He is made and constructed to that very end. And not only at the present time owing to some casual circumstances, but always, at all times, a decent man is bound to be a coward and a slave. It is the law of nature for all decent people all over the earth, If any one of them happens to be valiant about something, he need not be comforted nor carried away by that; he would cower just the same before something else. That is how it invariably and inevitably ends


Notes from the Underground, Part II, Chapter 1.  Dostoevsky.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

From Chapter 35. After Tess told Angel her part.

Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall hate;
Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate.
For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain;
And the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown shall be pain.

Review of "All My Sons"

I was at the opening performance of "All My Son" at DBS Art Centre. This is a play written by Arthu Miller, and the play is produced by Open Stage.

The synopsis at the SISTIC ticketing website says, "Where denial ends the truth begins". Everyone in the Keller family has, at the back of their mind, a suspicion that Joe is responsible for Larry's death, but they clinged on to the belief, "No, that couldn't be". After all, Larry Keller didn't ride in the kind of war plane that Joe manufactured in his factory. Mrs Keller was obsessed with the miracle that her elder son, Larry, would walk in through the door one day. "God wouldn't have let a father kill his son." Her obsession became an obstacle to her younger son, Chris, who wished to marry Annie, who was engaged to Larry. Chris and Annie both believed that Larry was dead. It had been three years since the body was reported missing. Mrs Keller was open in her view that their being together was a betrayal to Larry and herself.

Annie's brother, George, turned up at the Keller's family, to stop Annie's engagement to Chris. George told Annie that he had visited his own father, who supervised the war plane production at Joe Keller's factory. George's father was in jail for letting faulty airplanes be delivered to the military. The planes had crashed, killing 21 pilots. George's father claimed that Keller had given him the order, but Keller had denied it. Both Annie and George had ignored their father in the past three years, ashamed of his "crime", but George finally believed his father after visiting him in prison.

George sought the truth from Keller, who continued to deny it. Annie, despite her doubt, decided to leave with Chris. Annie produced the letter written by Larry before his disappearance and let Mrs Keller read it. It was clear from the letter that Larry committed suicide because he believed that his father had let the defective planes to be flown in the air. All the Kellers were devastated at the revelation.

Too late, Chris realized that it may be better for the truth to be hidden. The deep love the family member has for one another deepens the despair when they lost the respect for each other. Joe Keller's life is his family, but all that he had done for his family had not been appreciated by Chris. Chris believes that there is a world out there that everyone has to be responsible to, and he is disillusioned that all the sufferings and sacrifices in the war were easily forgotten as people went on with life making money and taking care of the bread and butter business only. No one's value and priority in life are wrong, but when one's loved one does not understand the same value, conflict arises, and in this drama, leading to broken life.

Gossip takes over

In Scene VI of Doubt, a play written by John Patrick Shanley, Father Brendan Flynn told this story: A woman was gossiping with her friend about a man they hardly knew - I know none of you have ever done this - and that night, she had a dream. A great hand appeared over her, and pointed down at her. She was immediately seized with an overwhelming sense of guilt. The next day, she went to confession. She got the old parish priest, Father O'Rourke, and she told him the whole thing. "Is gossiping a sin?" she asked the old man. "Was that the Hand of God Almighty pointing a finger at me? Should I be asking your absolution? Father, tell me, have I done something wrong?" "Yes!" Father O'Rourke answered her. "Yes, you ignorant, badly brought-up female! You have borne false witness against your neighbor, you have played fast and loose with his reputation, and you should be heartily ashamed!" So the woman said she was sorry and asked for forgiveness. "Not so fast!" says O'Rourke. "I want you to go home, take a pillow up on your roof, cut it open with a knife, and return here to me!" So she went home, took the pillow off her bed, a knife from the drawer, went up the fire escape to the roof, and stabbed the pillow. Then she went back to the old priest as instructed. "Did you cut the pillow with the knife?" he says. "Yes, Father." "And what was the result?" "Feathers," she said. "Feathers?" he repeated. "Feathers, everywhere, Father!" "Now I want you to go back and gather up every last feather the flew out on the wind!" "Well," she says, "it can't be done. I don't know where they went. The wind took them all over." "And that," said Father O'Rourke, "is gossip!" In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.

Blood ties

The child comes home and the parent puts the hooks in him. The old man, or the woman, as the case may be, hasn't got anything to say to the child. All he wants is to have that child sit in a chair for a couple of hours and then go off to bed under the same roof. It's not love. I am not saying that there is not such a thing as love. I am merely pointing to something which is different from love but which sometimes go by the name of love. It may well be that without this thing which I am talking about there would not be any love. But this thing in itself is not love. It is just something in the blood. It is a kind of blood greed, and it is the fate of a man. It is the thing which man has which distinguishes him from the happy brute creation. When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a hame trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can. And the good old family reunion, with picnic dinner under the maples, is very much like diving into the octopus tank at the aquarium.
-- Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

Sudoku

I like Sudoku. I will try the Sudoku puzzles from the daily newspaper about twice or thrice a week. I am not excellent at it. I could take 30 minutes to an hour for a three- or four-star puzzle, and I still have little confidence in solving the most difficult "5-star" puzzles so I seldom try them. The one-star puzzles easy and I could do them fairly quickly.

I don't know of anyone who likes Sudoku. However, I haven't been asking everyone I meet whether they like Sudoku, or if they know what Sudoku is.

When I am doubtful which one of two or three numbers is the answer for a certain cell, I write them all along the upper edge of the cell, usually with a pencil, so I could erase each number when I eliminate it as a possible answer later. At times, I am lazy to reach for a pencil and I'll write them with a pen, and then strike each out with a pen too, so the puzzle looks extremely messy and untidy when it is close to finishing, with what looks like irregularly-shaped spots hanging above the numbers.

As I write confidently a number that is the answer, I write it big and bold, and I feel clever. My eyes then busily scan all rows and columns taking in whether the latest entry could eliminate some possibilities from other cells so I could fill in one more cell with the correct number, and the next cell, and another cell, until the whole horizontal row or vertical column or a 3X3 square region is completed. I get engrossed in the process. I could drive away fatigue and sleepiness by focusing on the puzzle. When all 81 squares are filled, I feel satisfied, I think I possess a logical mind, and I am a little proud of myself.

Sudoku is a solitary "game". The Chinese translation for Sudoku is "counting alone". You are lost in a world of numbers. You are all by yourself, engrossed in your reasoning on which numbers are available and what numbers get eliminated. You don't speak to anyone, and any noise could interrupt your train of thoughts. This puzzle is not for someone who likes company and interaction.

I try variations of the standard Sudoku, which typically imposes additional rules by having more sub-regions in its 9X9 square. The puzzle could sometimes be easier when there are more constraints. In real life, we waste too much time choosing. We weigh pros and cons, cost and benefits, in trying to get the best deal. When there are less options to study, the decision gets made more quickly.