Beating Authenticity – A Fragmented (Frustrated!) Reading Response

So, I know what I want to write about – I’m just not sure how it will all come out... So, here goes. I’m noticing some trends about the relationship between visual media and verbal text – how one “form” is considered better than the other or (hopefully) equal with the other.

Claims that verbal text is better than visual imagery are based in the notion that there exists the possibility for an authentic form. Verbal text is supposed to represent this authentic form (as declared by Whitey – or so, it is being conveyed. The White male sure gets a lot of mention (credit) for being dominant…I don’t want to go there, but well, why not. I just did.)

Charles Hill emphasizes that the physical real world is given more “authentic value” versus the represented real world (i.e. in art) (113). The problem is that there is no “authentic” available considering that “…we perceive events around us very imperfectly and incompletely” (Hill 113).

Though I agree, what remains problematic is that, while we cannot grasp the authentic, (some, if not all) humans believe that there is a standard, origin(al), truth, absolute, etc. against which concepts, representations, notions, etc. are measured. Even those who strive to claim that there is no such thing as an absolute, or that we should strive to find something beyond absolutes, holds these resolves absolutely.

Moreover, Rogoff writes that the critical culture has been trying to remove the dominance of “Whitey” in representations for the purposes of re-writing culture – a culture not dominated by Whitey (383). I’m wondering what the goal is. What is this re-written culture going to look like, and will it be free from binaries?

Further, I am seeing this complaint over and over and over and over – that the White male is in control over how “we” should perceive things. It seems to me that those who continue to acknowledge such dominance only work to maintain it, to give it control, to allow it to become a self-fulfilling prophecy (in other words, we see what we want to see (or even (if not especially) what we don’t want to see) – which is another problem in terms of the “real,” … but then perception IS reality, is it not?).

I find it ironic that deconstructionists strive to break apart binaries in order to affect chaos, disharmony, unsettled feelings, etc. to enact fluidity, motion, (maybe) progress because in human psychology, it seems that when feelings of chaos are paramount, the desire to have control grows stronger – as the cyberculture seems to be enacting: this obsession with CONTROL. So, we are moving towards freedom of expression, of infinite possibilities with visuals, sounds, colors, texts, etc.; yet, all this concludes in is having control over visuals, sounds, colors, etc. AND how we want to see them. Hmm.

Rogoff claims that she prefers curiosity (preferring the curious eye to the good eye) because it is unsettling and likely because it works to defeat the binary of good/bad (386). This position makes the most sense in terms of attempting to remove power from the (assumed) powerful. It keeps one from labeling – from determining something as good or bad. Chaos finds a home in art/representation as Lanham notes “The arts are non-linear systems” (467). “Art” (defined as whatever by whomever – nevertheless, art has a definition, even if it is just as art) strives to break, push, merge boundaries. Okay, but it still acknowledges those boundaries in order to break them… How can we stop acknowledging boundaries is my ultimate question?

I think our language is too limiting to answer the question. The reason humans are “trapped” in the binary, in the assumption that we have an absolute standard to follow, is because our human language operates (for some reason) on it. (I’m talking about all language: verbal, visual, auditory, etc.) Images seem a nice way to get out of the assumed objectivity of text – they seem expansive, and I love them (being a creative person); however, what they convey is still a form of mere, human communication. I think to get outside of ourselves, we must truly be something different than the humans we are – we must be “non-humans”… if that’s possible. I can’t argue with the thought that that might truly be better…