A Totally Approach to Literature, Social and Philosophy

Hyeong Rak, Park
Professor Jae Seong, Lee
Methodology of English Literary Researches, EL63546
13 June 2011
A Totally Approach to Literature, Social and Philosophy
Former president Muhyeon Roh’s tomb is located in Kimhae. He killed himself by jumping down Owl Rock in his hometown. He ordered his bodyguard to go to a temple. Many people were shocked. It was the first in the history of Korea. He was under investigation before his death because of PYC Gate. Plotters and ultra leftists insisted an assassination conspiracy, but it was a groundless assumption. During his administration, he had a special dream. Some said his dream was based on a book entitled European dream. He proposed relocating the administrative capital. People in Seoul suddenly hated him. They were concerned about the price of real estate, they had a regional selfishness. So many people in Seoul demonstrated on the streets and outside the city hall. Roh was prosecuted for impeachment. This rage vanished after his death. Most citizens visit his tomb now. If you go there, you can see first yellow pinwheels along the road, and yellow banners between trees which are disturbing to admire the clear sky. If you are in Owl rock, you can look at Roh’s tomb. You may get shocked. Roh’s will was written only a small tomb stone. This is, however, a small pyramid, not small. His supporters use Roh to win the elections. They recently lose to Hannara party in Kimhae. People feel a sense of incompatibility with their secret intention. Roh’s means was changed endless. And Citizen tried to line of flight in their ideology. Why citizen in Kimhae did not chose Roh’s foster sons?
Let’s look change Literature World. It is possible that we may come to understand, if we can talk about some of the contents of the book. We have to analyze continuously what he wants to say in order to understand what he means. Delueze thinks, however, differently about this. He said:
We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied . . . A book has neither object nor subject; it is made of variously formed matters, and very different dates and speeds. To attribute the book to a subject is to overlook this working of matters, and the exteriority of their relations. . . . there are lines of articulation or segmentarity, strata and
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territories; but also lines of flight, movements of deterritorialization and destratification. . . . (Deleuze and Guattari 3-4)
We always try to find, analyze and understand a writer's intention whenever we read his writings. By reading additional materials related to the book in question, we may be able to understand it even more. We delude ourselves into thinking we have mastered the contents of his book. It is actually our personal understanding of his material which is most important. Therefore, Delueze wanted us to escape into our imaginations. “To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I” (Deleuze and Guattari 3). If you see Keep Tightly Closed in a Cool Dry Place, you may feel nothing and empty in your mind. The author of this drama, Megan Terry, does not want to the empathy along this plot. The audience cannot find a criminal of three prisoners in the play. This drama avoids mentioning it. Three prisoners, Jaspers, Michaels and Gregory, in the jail just play the act. They act strange, use “improvisational transformations”, look back on the past sexuality and require to participation to the audience (Walter 209). Many people can form various conclusions from this play. It is so different. This can be interpreted in various ways that based from feminism, critic of highly mechanized civilization, imperialism and colonialism. This means that there are many views and interpretations, if the author does not have her own intention.
We can watch a different form in this drama. That is just Rhizome. Rhizome is different from our usual way of thinking. “Make a map, not tracing” (Kim 3). Western thought originally believes that a transcendent god exists at the center, of our beings, and that continuous logic rules. This is the thought pattern concept of a tree with a center. Rhizome also has 'multiplicity, but no center. “It constitutes linear multiplicities with n dimensions having neither subject nor object, which can be laid out on a plane of consistency, and from which the One is always subtracted (n-1)” (Deleuze and Guattari 21). Megan Terry wants “the actors and audience were playing together” (Walter 209). Sophocles and Bertolt Brecht’ drama also use the chorus and act the audience in his drama, but they cannot critic their open mind and be only booked for the intention of author. The participating audience will feel god’s law or capitalism problem. Keep Tightly Closed in a Cool Dry Place, however, differ from their drama. In her drama the audience just feels shock. “They teased, implored, and criticized. They embarrassed and they acknowledged embarrassment. They hid behind roles and they opened themselves completely” (Walter 209). On the Petit panthéon portative wrote by Alain Badiou, you can find impacts of
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shocks after watching the drama. From many effect, stage settings and open ending the audience thinks perplexingly for a long time after this drama.
All this, lines and measurable speeds, constitutes an assemblage. A book is an assemblage of this kind, and as such is unattributable. It is a multiplicity—but we don’t know yet what the multiple entails when it is no longer attributed, that is, after it has been elevated to the status of a substantive.
(Deleuze and Guattari 4)
A book is Assemblages. An Assemblage is composed of a line and a machine as multiplicity. If a book is part of an assemblage, many machines are interconnected and operated through coding. This coding uses an assemblage of enunciation and controls them. This enables the book to connect them. “not every trait in a rhizome is necessarily linked to a linguistic feature: semiotic chains of every nature are connected to very diverse modes of coding . . . that bring into play not only different regimes of signs but also states of things of differing status” (Deleuze and Guattari 7). This is called mechanic assemblages. People, smart phones and applications exchange connections with each other through lines, and coding. In the era of smart phones, users and machines, especially love to use SMS or Short Message Services. The old way of communicating was to become territorialisation. Many people, especially those who use too much SMS and are online often, feel that this fee is very expensive. It, however, charges for additional services. The telecom market in Korea is an oligopoly. They provide optional services for our needs. There is a multiplicity of mobile phone services and call plans however it is not for our benefit, only for the telecom companies. We, together with telecoms and mobile manufacturing companies are now developing a new market. Users-machines would be decoded applications, bios and software. We are thinking of the deterritorialisation in this market.
We feel sympathy to a monkey in Franz Kafka’s Ein Bericht für eine Akademie; A Report to an Academy because the monkey’s life is like a proletarian’s life. The monkey is an animal. He has been trained repeatedly. This training is not a study. He is the tool of a boss in the zoo; of a researcher in the lab. We live in a capitalistic world. We think quality of life can improve over time. We work and live like a human being. A stem thinks, however, we are just a branch. We are a tool for the Taylor system. We cannot pick difficult any job we want, if we study or work very hard. Human in this ideology is like how Peter he monkey was trained. This is the intention of this text. This reader is shocked after reading this text. We recognize our truth and then want
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the line of flight. Rhizome likes World Wide Web. It is no center. It is infinitely multiplicity, and constantly connection. It is a part of daily life for our. People live an education, business to the smart phone or notebook with internet. 1 Machines crash or meet the structure, stratification, during the connection. We know a demonstration in Arab. Organizations, significance, subjectivities - an existing code, territory transformed one and then have line of flight. The reader can become Peter. He is not the personal. He is an impersonal. Readers are trained repeatedly, and delude themselves the quality humane life. And then they become the committee. Readers or Audiences feel to ridicule Peter. They connect to characters gradually know their situation in the text. “. . . that is, a passage of Life that traverses both the livable and the lived” (Deleuze 1). The reader “have an amplitude, thresholds, and variations or transformations that are peculiar to them” in his mind (“Spinoza: Practical Philosophy” 125). It is to have this writer’s intention. The writer tried to critic and to cry the social phenomena, Industrialization and human alienation, of his time. His novel is almost grotesque. This trend of literature is expressionism. Kafka “as such is not a patient but rather a physician, the physician of himself and of the world” (Deleuze 3). Kafka offered to the reader a reasonable solution clearly in this social problem. Scholars at German literature argued about the limitation of expressionism power. The reader can don’t overcome it and he can do a reterritorialiation. Two opinions are very contradictory each other. One interprets the text based on the author’s intention while the other did vice versa. As Jaque Derrida, famous philosophy, said it is a death of an author. When former president Roh died, the first election held on April 24 in Kimhae. The turnout of voters was higher than other days. Tae ho Kim of Han na ra party, won this election against Bong su Lee. It was an unexpected result. Lee was expected to be strong in Kimhae. He was former president Roh’s closest aide. Voters in Kimhae were friendly from his party. In addition, the winner had a bad reputation. Clearly the citizen in Kimhae wants and hopes to change and expect their life. We can indirectly participate in voting. Mu hyeon Roh has been also very important in Kimhae after his dead. His trace remains still in his hometown. However, “For the economic character of difference in no way implies that the deferred presence can always be found again” (Derrida 20). Many people visit his tomb with the propaganda. They began to see the standardization, the pseudo-individualism in the policy. Citizens in Kimhae tried to go and had a question other territory and in flight. Han na ra party is “minor” after 2002 at least in Kimhae (Deleuze 4). We don’t know a winner the next election in Kimhae. It likes the
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rhizome. “The Rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature [sic]” (Kim 3). This event likes literature and philosophy. Some people say this is 文史哲 : literature, social and philosophy. Sometimes we find secret meaning in the text or phenomenon. Sometimes we find other meanings though death of author. It is contradiction between inside and outside or empathy or die verfremendung: alienation effect. We use, however, all ways and should find means and then go to the Utopia through deterritorialize and line of flight. We can be again and go to the reterritorialization of course. This election sets a good example.
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Works Cited
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. A THOUSAND PLATEAUS Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Vol. 2. Minneapolis: the University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 3-21. Print.
Deleuze, Gilles. Critical and Clinical. Trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco. Minneapolis: the University of Minnesota Press, 1997. 1-6. Print.
---. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Trans. Robert Hurley. N.p. : City Lights Books, 1988. 122-30. Print.
Derrida, Jacques. Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: The Univeersity of Chicago, 1986. 3-27. Print.
Kim, Seung Sook. "Minor literature : Rhizomatic writing." Pusan National University. Pusan. 2011. Reading.
Walter, Sydney S. "Directors' Note: "Keep Tightly Closed"." The Tulane Drama Review 10.4 (1966): 206-09. Print.