Terry Eagleton - After Theory

     Eagleton is quick to admit the changes that have taken place in life and in theory. He draws what I would consider a bit of an extreme picture “the politics of masturbation exert far more fascination the the politics of the Middle East” and “middle-class students huddle diligently in libraries, at work on sensationalist subjects like vampirism and eye gouging, cyborgs and porno movies”. Although I think he is trying to emphasise the change that has taken place in the world. We see millions of images everyday and you can now openly explore any image you choose.

     He embraces the changes, “one of the towering achievements of cultural theory has been to establish gender and sexuality as legitimate study as well as political importance”. Theory is changing as a result of freedom of expression. There was a time that a bikini on the beach would have been indecent exposure. “Cultural theory is a at present behaving rather like a celibate middle-aged professor who has stumbled absent minded upon sex and is frequently making up for lost time”. This is down to the fact that sex sells. Women, with slim and curvy bodies and men with toned bodies excite everyone. It gets ur impulses going and we feel good about it. In an age tha ta girl that can barley sing but looks hot can have a number one single there is no other answer. I don't think its that we are “making up for lost time”, I think we know what we like. We probably always have, but now it is freely admitable. Albeit with a barrier of sexual harassment, but you have to stop somewhere.

     I like Eagleton's talk of the death of the puritan. A person that is strict in moral or religious matters. “Pleasure falls outside the realm of knowledge and thus is dangerously anarchic.. traditionally it is known as moral discourse. But political discourse would do just as well”. I could relate some studio tutors as puritans. In the way that you try to think outside the box, but what ever you do, you have to be a slave to their views of Architecture. Who made them the governors of architecture? University architecture is an expression of thought away from the working world but I have to tow the line of the tutor. We have broken free from the puritan but we will never break free from ignorance.

Henrie Lefebvre - The Production of Space – Social Space

    Production is everything. Everything we do, everything we say. We are products of our parents, society, and even our own minds. “production has a cardinal role: first the idea produces the world; next, nature produces human beings; and the human being in turn, by dint of struggle and labour, produces at once history, knowledge and self consciousness”. I agree but taking this back to the beginning what produced the idea. If you believe in God, who produced him? If you believe in the big bang, what was the precise conditions that produced that? And what about that which produced the big bang?

One could say we did. These are simply man made ideas that have produced the world. Who knows what is true, they are in a sense theories that man made reality because millions of people followed the idea. Global warming could be put in the same respect. Yes polar ice caps are melting but thousands of years ago many deserts had rivers and we aren't trying to get those back. So once again the idea is planted and naturally the human is produced from the idea. Human beings “produce their own life, their own consciousness, their own world”.

     Production being labour in some respects. “The more restricted the notion becomes the less it connotes creativity, inventiveness or imagination; rather it tends to refer to labour”. As a matter of wealth a human creates the idea. The idea is then organised into production and labour produces it. This is interesting because is production the same as creation? “a product can be reproduced exactly and is in fact the result of repetitive acts and gestures. Nature creates and does not produce”. I would argue that nature is a type of production. Though you could say my mother created me and then produced the man I am today. So maybe creation has to come before production. Perhaps creation is the idea. Then the idea is put into production from that.

Howl and other poems - Allen Gainsberg

     As well as being a rant from the pit of Gainsberg's brain, Howl is also an admission that these problems and people do exist. That not everyone has the 4 bedroom house with white picket fence, if anybody does at all. He incites his own ignorance and prejudice whilst exposing others. He admits the culture of these different people from drugs to sex to deprivation.

     The start of the poem is clearly about drug and mental issues, “minds destroyed” and “angry fix”. Was he talking of the person he dedicated the poem to. Carl Soloman. One thing I have noticed from Gainsberg's poems is that he starts his poems with what's on his mind and then elaborates form there. Its because of this that I feel the start of the poem is about Carl and other friends of his. This is clear further to the end of the poem when he writes “ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of time “. The poem shows his frustration of the destruction of his generation that's being suppressed by conforming America and, taking from the title howl, making him and others go crazy. One of the people Gainsberg is talking about could be heard howling at the moon when it is full or at least that's how the “normal” American would think of them. Howl is a view of lives of Gainsberg, his friends and acquaintances. Those that are close to him and those that are in the same dark jazz bars for different reasons. So why were these people the “best minds of my generation”? Well I think it was because they were able to do what they wanted. They could think outside the conformist American box and see an open world that has no boundaries. Something that Gainsberg strived to do, he respected them highly and even looked up to them.

Air Guitar by Dave Hickey - A home in neon

    “Home” Dave Hickey considers Las Vegas this because he feels he can live his life the way he chooses with “a source of comforts and reassurances that are unavailable elsewhere”. I have not been to Vegas but imagine it to be a place of bright lights and showbiz that anyone that has a bit of money and a thirst for the bright lights can enjoy. Cast, colour or creed bare no importance, its there for all to enjoy. So Hickey is saying only there he can get away from the ignorance of the rest of America, even the world, and live an open life. He believes that in Vegas those that wouldn't do well in other parts of America can live a good life and have the 2.5 children. Possibly in American “the land of opportunity”, Hickey has found Vegas to be the only part where this is true.”A town where outsiders can still get works... a town that can settle as the heart destination”. He empahsises this point by talking about a waitress that was transferred out of some hick town to Vegas and was very happy, as she felt she now had a chance to move “up to cocktails, where the tips were better”. Vegas had opened a new door for her as it had done for many other people across America.

     I welcome the statement “Vegas presents a flat line hierarchy”. “Membership in the university club will not get you comped at Caesars”. I have always found social hierarchy to be bullshit. It is kept alive by the grouping of people that believe they have status. This status is just sugar coated ignorance that they have built collectively. Though when out out of this comfort zone they feel threatened as their tweed jackets have no importance in the newly shaping modern world. Vegas possibly being advanced in this way does threaten them as their ignorant minds cannot accept that they are not an elite anymore. This is comparable to the modern architecture student and the old architect. The modern day architecture student has grown up in the open world of computers, T.V. and internet, whilst the old architect has grown up in the world of drawing boards and calligraphy. Although the latter is still important the modern day student can do both and more whilst the old architect chooses to ignore anything new.

     In the next 10 – 20 years some people will struggle for work as they find themselves under skilled and overpaid. The world is changing massively, as it is I'm writing a 4000 word essay as a blog for the internet. Culture is changing, and whilst some people would not agree with it or hide I welcome it. There is an opening in this new world that is there for the taking, you just have to make the effort to take it.