Introduction to Cultural Anthropology †Summary Essay

How does Language affect the meanings we assign to our experience? The Ideas of Edward Sapir and gum benzoin Lee Whorf demonstrate that the vocabulary of a language may direct learning to certain features of the environment, and the grammar of a language may support certain ship kindleal of looking at the world. The selection of metaphors also has an impact on the meanings we assign to experience. By taking language from hotshot experience and applying it to a nonher, we carry the meaning of one experience to the other.Robbins then explores the ways in which symbolical action reinforces a particular proposition learn of the world. Ritual, for example, symbolically depicts a certain candidate of reality in such a way that it convinces us of the truth of that reality. Examples include the Cannibal dance of the Kwakwakawakw, which shows the values of Kwakwakawakw friendship and provides members with a way to control their lives, and the rituals of contemporary English magic and witchcraft, which convince persons of this society that mental forces can influence the material world.Walter gum benzoins Surrealism essay explains how these competing governmental aims manifest themselves at the level of aesthetic form Here due weight must be disposed(p) to the cortical potentiality that in the Traite du style, Aragons last book, required a distinction between metaphor and assure, a prosperous insight into questions of style that needs extending. Extension nowhere do these two metaphor and image clash so drastically and so irreconcilably as in politics.For to organize pessimism means nothing other than to drop off moral metaphor from politics and to discover in political action a sphere dumb one hundred percent for images. Only when in technology body and image so sink in that all basal tension becomes bodily collective innervation, and all the bodily innervations of the collective become revolutionary discharge, has reality transcended itself to the extent demanded by the Communist Manifesto. For the moment, simply the Surrealists flummox understood its founder commands.They exchange, to a man, the touch of piece features for the face of an alarm clock that in each minute rings for sixty seconds. asa dulciss analysis here provides the scattered fragments of a political-aesthetic diagnosis of surrealism which would differentiate this movement from conservative wild-eyed traditions. While such traditions trade in moral metaphor and the play of human features idealized human forms which atomic number 18 meant to serve as soothing allegories of the supposedly homogenous and unified accessible body surrealists advance what Benjamin elsewhere terms dialectical images. In his writes regarding the Cultural Industry, Adorno continues to emphasis the theories of the Frankfurt check and the concepts of Marx. The terms mass deception and social control seem to intimately accurately describe the ideas and theories that Adorno prescribe. He further suggests the notion that socially, we are conditioned to call back rationally, reasonably and through a scientific approach, which when unified to appease the larger cultural industry, functions by disallowing the potential for human individuality, and re-emphasizing the myth that such individuality could change surface exist.According to the text we are conditioned to be obedient to the great social hierarchy, thus the hazard for any social change is limited, is it not? The notion that culture is entertainment is also introduced, and that as individuals, we can only accept out work/roles knowing that enjoyment will ultimately be rewarded. 2. restate what you consider to be the relationship between the assigned readings. How do the readings speak to each other? in all three authors I believe have a relationship with expressing metaphors in their texts.A thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else, especially something abstract. Throughout each reading society, cultural, language, politics, thinking, and social change is present in all three readings and in all three these words are represented with symbolic meaning and/or have a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action. Through these metaphors I believe is the way that these texts speak to one another. Each text you can sense similar symbolic meaning and a word or phrase that is attached to an object or action. . Identify one or more releases that you feel are especially provocative, suggestive, dubious or illustrative of the authors argument. In the Richard Robbins text one theodolite especially was provocative to the authors argument in symbolic action reinforces a particular view of the world and the reality we as human beings live in. Ritual, for example, symbolically depicts a certain view of reality in such a way that it convinces us of the truth of that reality.In the Walter Benjamin Text one passage especial ly was provocative to the authors argument in explaining how competing political aims manifest themselves at the level of aesthetic form. Here due weight must be given to the insight that in the Traite du style, Aragons last book, required a distinction between metaphor and image, a happy insight into questions of style that needs extending. Extension nowhere do these two metaphor and image collide so drastically and so irreconcilably as in politics. In the Theodor Adorno text one passage especially was provocative to the authors argument in the notion that socially, we are conditioned to think rationally, reasonably and through a scientific approach, which when structured to appease the larger cultural industry, functions by disallowing the potential for human individuality, and re-emphasizing the myth that such individuality could even exist. The notion that culture is entertainment is also introduced, and that as individuals, we can only accept out work/roles knowing that pleas ure will ultimately be rewarded.Thus, must not culture and society be forced to change, as it was also interpreted that pleasure without change becomes a sort of work, and then our understanding/defining of pleasure must be ever changing in order for the mass society to maintain social obedience. 4. Briefly equate the texts you have read or some aspect of it/them, with a previous selection or selections read in this course. I reread A Berlin biography in Reflections and then read the full-length of Berlin Childhood almost 1900.I thought about how he had not been able to return, and how he had written Berlin Childhood approximately 1900 precisely as a way of dealing with the irrevocable loss of the world of his childhood and its security. Benjamin knew by 1932 that he would never be able to return to Berlin his home again. Benjamin immortalized the cities that had rejected him, writing about his memories of earlier and safer times. Benjamin is recalling a lost world. He selec ts a variety of places and spaces that contain or prompt memories of his childhood and the high bourgeois world that nourished his fantasies and predilections.By 1932 this world was gone, or at least inaccessible to Benjamin and other Jews like him. discipline this text I can compare it to Richard Robbins chapter 4 material when he writes demonstrate that the vocabulary of a language may direct perception to certain features of the environment, and the grammar of a language may encourage certain ways of looking at the world. translation this helped me understand A Berlin Chronicle and how Walter Benjamins language and vocabulary were in direct contribute of the environment he was living in and how that encouraged his view on Berlin.Also, Comparing A Berlin Chronicle to Theodor Adornos The Culture Industry I found a passage that directly bring ups to Walter Benjamin and his time in Berlin. He further suggests the notion that socially, we are conditioned to think rationally, reas onably and through a scientific approach, which when structured to appease the larger cultural industry, functions by disallowing the potential for human individuality, and re-emphasizing the myth that such individuality could even exist.According to the text we are conditioned to be obedient to the great social hierarchy, thus the opportunity for any social change is limited. After reading this passage you can relate this to the larger cultural as the Nazis as they were the ones disallowing the potential for human individuality against the Jews, while reemphasizing the myth that such Jewish individuality could even exist. 5. Offer a brief critical assessment of the texts and its ideas Do you find that it blunts up new avenues of inquiry or reveals new knowledge?What question does it raise for you? How would you evaluate them general? -Out of the three texts I found an interesting passage out of Walter Benjamins Surrealism text that opens up new avenues of inquiry and reveals new knowledge for the reader. There is always, in such movements, a moment when the real tension of the secret society must either explode in a matter of fact, blue(a) struggle for power and domination, or decay as a public demonstration and be transformed. Reading this passage and the authors use of the word illumination throughout the essay, the reader could easily open a new avenue on a secret society named the Illuminati. The author even stats And the most passionate investigation of the hashish trance will not teach us half as much about thinking, as the profane illumination of thinking about the hashish trance. The reader, the thinker, the loiterer, the flaneur, are types of illuminati but as much as the opium eater, the dreamer, and the ecstatic. And more profane. Not to mention that most terrible drug ourselves- which we take for in solitude. With so many references or should I say hidden references I can only ask if Walter Benjamin is referring to this secret society the I lluminati. Overall all three texts had their strong points but from twenty-four hour period one when I began Walter Benjamins readings he has captured me in ways other authors havent. It could be that he writes essays while intoxicated or how it seems there is always secret meaning in his writings. If not secret then definitely meaning that could be explored even further and spend a whole class just decoding this topic.