Gwatter06, 11/22

This week in class we went over two very different theorists covering some pretty compelling topics and concepts that, in some cases, felt quite familiar and in other cases, were quite different from what we’ve been going over in class. Bourdieu was a fairly short read and I found that he was a bit more comprehendible than Derrida. I have to admit it was quite the same going over the theorist without Dr. Rog, I’m not saying that Professor Cummings didn’t do a good job on covering for Dr. Rog, but it just didn’t feel the same and the approach was a little different. I think that is why some of us were a bit shell shocked in the beginning of class when we were somewhat bombarded with questions and we were as responsive as we usually are. Either way, from the two theorists, I think we came away with more from Derrida, especially after going over the theorist in class. Going over Derrida had a feeling of Lyotard, Barthes and especially de Sausser with some of the concepts that Derrida covered. One of these concepts that related to both Barthes and to Lyotard was the concept of “trace” in which Derrida explains is the experience of filling something in based upon previous experience. This directly relates to Barthes concept of tmesis/gap and also Lyotards concept of rupture, both of which we have previously covered in the course. Believe this concept of “trace” is inevitable when thinking of obtaining knowledge of anything. I think a lot of things in society relies on this concept, just as de Sausser explained that language is understood and created through both text that exist and text that is missing. Are ability to understand something, like how Dr. Rog put up letters on the board in a sequence with no meaning but we were able to fill in the blank and understand what the letters were trying to create is quite remarkable.