Steven Greenblatt would love Genesis if he doesn’t already. It completely supports his theory! In the case of even the very first humans, there were authorities and aliens. Even in the first book of the Bible, before any mention of Satan or a pure form of evil (yes, I know that’s an oxymoron), there is an authority and an alien. The very first humans are given explicit instructions by God, someone they trust because he created them by hand. The serpent lures Eve to the tree of knowledge, and she eats from the tree, forever damning human kind. I would argue that in that moment, God is no longer the authority. The serpent takes on the role of the authority because Eve believes that the serpent is good, regardless of whether he seems that way to us.
This also supports Greenblatt’s idea that there are more than one authority and alien in existence at the same time. The serpent was the authority AND the alien, as was God. The only problem I see with Greenblatt’s structure right now is that, according to the Bible (and every Christian ever), God cannot be destroyed. There can not be a time nor can there be a place without the existence of God. He is omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent. So do we have to rule out Greenblatt’s system as completely correct? Or do we have to make an exception for God? The first few chapters of Genesis don’t explicitly say this, but I think the readers can assume that God and the serpent aren’t the only two things that influence the humans. These chapters do talk about God creating every other kind of animal, so I think it’s reasonable to assume that the behaviors of these animals have some impact on how Adam and Eve act as well. (I’m assuming that humans are able to be fashioned by animals in accordance with our conversation about Dr. Holt being fashioned by June). I’m excited to keep trying to identify the authority and alien in each creation story we talk about. I want to apply Greenblatt’s system to each one and see if his rules apply. I’d also like to keep looking for exceptions to the rule (I personally believe there are ALWAYS exceptions to the rule. Nothing is 100% correct all the time). Part of me wants to disprove Greenblatt’s system entirely, or at least try to. Even if I can’t, I think it would be a fun challenge.
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I came to the conclusion, at the end of the class period on Tuesday, that every text we have read so far in AP Lit this year has been a “self help” guide of some sort. Scott prompted us to reconsider our roles as artists and critics. Berger begged us to ask more questions and be more curious. Greenblatt handed us the key to our agency and told us to go forth in the world knowing that we could control something. But what is that something? Did Greenblatt give us agency? Does our newly found knowledge of authority and alien, of submission and power grant us something we didn’t already have? Or does Greenblatt’s writing solely give us the key to unlock something we already possessed? Either way, one thing is clear: we don’t have autonomous agency. We cannot control who or what we submit to. Submission is inherent. I submitted to Greenblatt the second I opened his book. Granted, I could submit to him as an authority and abide by everything he says, or I could view him as an alien and shred the book once I read the last page. Either way, any acknowledgement of the ideas contained within its pages is a validation of Greenblatt’s work, and by extension, a submission to it. Let’s say we submit to Greenblatt’s work as an authority. Say we take his word that we do control something in our lives. What is that something? We obviously don’t control our submission to something. Once we open that book, we’ve submitted. What we can control is our reaction to it. We have the conscious choice to agree or disagree with any and all parts of what Greenblatt has written. But we can’t control how that shapes who we turn out to be. Greenblatt often writes of a “loss of self.” This loss comes with the process of self-fashioning. It is inherent and unavoidable. Do we control what part of our selves are lost? Probably not. By choosing to open Greenblatt’s book and read it, we lose a piece of our past identity to make room for a new piece. Greenblatt lays out his book as a theory followed by a case study. We identified this structure in class one day, and I hurriedly scribbled down in my commonplace book that it was reminiscent of Scott’s book’s structure. At the beginning of the year, we talked for weeks about how Scott framed his argument. And time and time again, we came back to the concrete examples he presented, and how they parodied a case study. These authors’ formula is to present their theory, get you on the fence, and then knock you clear to one side or the other with the concrete examples they present. For Scott, those were examples of art subject to heavy criticism (positive or negative). For Greenblatt, those were six authors from the sixteenth century. I would love to go back and read Berger’s piece again and see if the same structure applies. Regardless of the physical layout of these three works, their messages, though different in content, are similar in implications. Each author is telling us to take the ideas they’ve presented to us and run with them. Use them in our day-to-day lives. I wonder what real-life lessons we’ll be able to take from Genesis. I don’t think humans have an identity problem. We might have a need to control our identity, but I think that’s a control problem, not an identity problem. Maybe humans feel the need to reinvent themselves, but that doesn’t stem from a need to project a different image into the world. (At least not in my experience.) The last time I changed something about myself, I cut my hair, and that was because I needed to change something emotionally about myself that I couldn’t. So I changed something about myself physically. I cut 10 inches off my hair because I was going through a tough emotional time and I needed to change how I felt and how I acted. When I first read Greenblatt’s piece, I understood that identity is a big part of people’s lives in 2019. With social media and celebrities who are famous solely for their looks, identity and image is a large part of our society. But Greenblatt said that even Shakespeare, who is long dead, had identity issues, as did his contemporaries.
So I get that identity matters now, but why did it matter then? Why was human identity such a big part of life? If we all die eventually, as Greenblatt says, why does identity matter in the first place? Isn’t it futile to resist what’s coming? And if we all that will remain is a legacy that will eventually fade, why does our identity matter? Human life will continue long after we die, but eventually that will be snuffed out as well. So why does who we are now matter at all? Will it matter even after we die? We can’t change it at that point. Once we die, the legacy we leave behind can’t be altered. It’s frozen in time. So why does it matter? Our legacy can’t be changed, whether it’s accurate or not. And we can’t control what people think of us. No matter the image we project, the words we speak, or the things we do, we cannot control how people interpret them. So we’re not in control of our identity in the first place. We can control our physical appearance and our actions: the color of our hair or our reaction to confrontation, but not how people perceive them. So identity is out of our control. So, I ask you again, why does it matter? I think talking about this in AP Lit the coming year might give me an identity crisis. I’m not going to know who I am or what I’m doing. As I’m writing this, I think I realized the purpose of identity. (That was quick.) It gives us something to work towards. It gives us a reason to keep moving forward, to keep innovating, to keep striving to do better things. You do those things because that’s who you are and that’s what you want to do. That’s what identity is for. So I hope we keep talking about this in Lit this year. I think it’s an interesting topic with no right answer. I’m excited to see other people’s points of view as well. I loved Warren Berger’s take on “why we stop questioning.” I think this conversation is especially important in an academic context: school is supposed to educate us, but 98% of the material we’re forced to learn, we won’t retain or use. I think a lot about the difference between Galloway and other schools that haven’t adopted the same progressive approach to learning. For example, I went to an Atlanta Public School before I came to Galloway, and I think the class that best proves Berger’s point is my fifth grade science class. That class was more rigorous than ANY course I’ve taken at Galloway, and I’m about to be a senior. I think it’s more rigorous than any high school class I could take anywhere!
Our class would start a new unit every Monday. We were assigned homework that was due Thursday. On Thursday mornings before school, there would be study halls in the library to review the information. We would correct our homework in class that day and use it to study for the test on Friday. And so, every Friday, with the exception of two weeks the entire school year, I had a 45 to 70 question test about the material we learned that week. I did well on the tests because I studied for them, but the information left my brain to make room for new information the following week. The only thing I retained from that class was the categories of living things: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. That’s it! Out of 9 months of school, I remember ONE thing I was taught. That’s why I can appreciate Berger’s writing and Galloway’s way of teaching. If I asked a question in my fifth grade science class, I was “interrupting the learning of other students” or “wasting valuable class time.” Not only was I not encouraged to ask questions, I was forbidden to. So, yes, I learned a LOT of information from that class. I’m sure if you asked me 7 years ago to recite the five kingdoms of living things, I could have. But I didn’t retain any of that information. My curiosity or interest was not piqued. Wouldn’t it be more valuable (especially for younger kids) to let them ask questions and explore ideas for themselves? Instead of taking a textbook and cramming it down their throats? I do wish my elementary school experience had been different, but I also think it gives me some perspective and makes me more grateful for the education I’m receiving at Galloway. I’m so thankful I go to a school where kids are encouraged to ask tough questions and to expand their knowledge because they want to, not because the curriculum, over-crowded classrooms, and stressed out teachers force them to. I hope this is a topic we continue to talk about during the course of AP Lit. I think this reading was the most interesting of the three because it’s something I think about and deal with on a daily basis. In "The Eye of the Beholder" by A.O. Scott, he asserts that criticism is antithetical: that every question it poses has two opposite, mutually exclusive answers. I couldn't disagree more. I think the world has more gray area than that; not everything is just so black and white. Criticism gives creators an opportunity to grow and mature, and to develop whatever it is they're working on. There aren't just two directions the artist could take with their work, for example.
Looking at the world as just black and white limits the amount of criticism you can give, as well as that you can take. Without gray area, there are just two answers to any question: one right and one wrong. That means that any work of art is just good or bad, objectively. Teachers are especially fond of saying “there is no wrong answer,” but if the world accepts Scott’s way of thinking, there is absolutely a wrong answer. That sounds like a dystopian novel: a world where all art, music, and ideas are judged solely on the premise of right and wrong. That isn’t how our world works, and it shouldn’t be. Without gray area, there would be no real criticism: there could only be an endless cycle of, “I think this is wrong!” or, “I think this is right!” That’s no way to approach art. Scott also poses the theory of "subjective universality" - the idea that what one person enjoys, everyone else must enjoy for the same reason. I believe beauty to be subjective (not universally), so no two people have to find beauty in something for the exact same reason. I don't think there's any single work of art or musical composition that is perceived the exact same way by everyone on the planet. Art, specifically, impacts everyone in different ways. The emotional impact the Mona Lisa has on someone with an art history degree is strikingly different than the effect it has on me. We are separate people with likely dissimilar life experiences, so art means something different to each of us. That's another reason I can't understand "subjective universality." Every single person on this earth has lead a completely separate life. No two people's experiences have been the exact same, even if they were raised in the same household. So, if our views of the world are independent, how can we have the exact same perception? Not to mention that the idea of "subjective universality" is antithetical in and of itself. Subjectivity, which means that everyone's perception is different, inherently doesn't work well with universality, meaning that one quality is shared between everyone. They are the antithesis of each other. I don't subscribe to "subjective universality," but I think that's a good thing. Criticism stems from opposing viewpoints. There would be no opposition without a wide range of experiences and perception. So maybe it's a good thing that I can't believe in "subjective universality." I think it makes the world a whole lot more interesting. |
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