Assignment #9: Summary and Response "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" by Rebecca Solnit (First Half)

Sarah Zuckerman

October 12, 2013

Research Methodologies AVT 600

Assignment #9

Summary and Response: "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" by Rebecca Solnit

In the novel, A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit, the reader encounters an array of histories, natural history, lore, and art criticism all mixed through a string of personal narratives. The imagery described in hyper detail, and the use of repetition brings home the ideas at hand. Descriptions of blue skies, horizon lines and their relation to memory, the intangible, and longing bring to light emotions that are associated with the blue of distance. Her poetic prose engages the reader and provokes thought about getting lost. She nearly implores with the reader about that necessity, the absolute need to lose what you are, what you know, where you are, in order to gain a better understanding of ones self. 

Her personal narratives describe her history, something that seems ever changing based on her memory, and the stories and memories of others in her family. She concentrates most upon her grandmother whom had a changing history in her mind, based on where she was in her life and the stories being told to her. She writes about the idea of captivity in the 1800's, about invaders of North America, and the seemingly unlikely families formed through conditions of being lost.

This novel has really been something I have found myself able to relate to; the shifting of memory, the ideas of loss and longing, displacement, and family. I really find myself drawn to the statement: "... the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.' But the butterfly is so fit an emblem of the human soul that its name in Greek is psyche, the word for soul" (81 Solnit). To think that a process of becoming, transforming, changing relates to the decay of something that once was is an important aspect in what I am currently doing now. Exploring memories in search of what was to help find out, possibly, what is, possibly, in terms of soul.

Assignment #8: Summary and Response: Ideology and the State by Louis Althusser

Sarah Zuckerman

October 12, 2013

Research Methodologies AVT 600

Assignment #8

In "Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses" Louis Althusser notes the way in which  people act is the construct of ideology and the apparatuses used to force this idea on to people without them knowing it. He views this action as a kind of reproduction of production and find the the conditions have to remain the same for the outcome of the the production to be the same. The way that this happens is that there are organizations in play that repress people through physical intimidation like police and prisons but also there are ISAs (Ideological State Apparatuses) which perpetuate the ideas of the ideology and make it so that people think these things of their "own free will". ISAs are things like churches, schools, and families - they teach you to think to act a certain way, or that it is the social norm, and to act outside of that is not what you should do. In this way ideology controls everyone, but they don't know that it does. People don't question what they have been taught and we are all subjects of this ideology, even the writer (who seems to be acutely aware of the matter) as well as the reader (taking in this reading in an educational system, yet another ISA). Also there are people who are considered ideology pushers, like priests and teachers. What I found really interesting was the idea of teachers as these professional ideologists, that they have this ability, each day, to teach children (when a person is most easily influenced is childhood, perhaps) and tells them whats right and whats wrong and then we carry that for our whole lives. We think everything is free will but really its the push of ideology on us, just in a way that we don't know it. It all kind of seems to make sense. But overall I would rather not think that I don't have free will and am just the construct of ideology within my culture, but even by ignoring or trying to work around this, there seems to be no escape from it.