Exercise 2.4 - the 8 Questions

Hey. These are the 8 questions from the exercise 2.4. I hope this helps!! =D

1. The sidewalk is disappearing as a feature of the American residential landscape. New housing developments have them only if a township requires them of the developer.

2. New house designs are tending increasingly toward open plans in which the kitchen is not separated from the rest of the house. New house designs continue to have a room called the living room, usually a space at the front of the house near the front door, but many (not all) also have a separate space called the family room, which is usually in some part of the house farther removed from the front door and closer to the kitchen.

3. “Good fences make good neighbors.” – Robert Frost

4. In the female brain, there are more connection between the right hemisphere (emotions, spatial reasoning) and the left hemisphere (verbal facility). In the male brain, these two hemispheres remain more separate.

5. An increasing number of juveniles – people under the age of eighteen – are being tried and convicted as adults, rather than as minors, in America, with the result that more minors are serving adult sentences for crimes they committed while still in their teens.

6. Neuroscientists tell us that the frontal cortex of the brain, the part that is responsible for judgment and especially for impulse control, is not fully developed in humans until roughly the age of twenty-one. What are the implications of this observation relative to observation 5?

7. Linguists have long commented on the tendency of women’s speech to use rising inflections at the end of statements as if the statements were questions. An actual command form – Be home by midnight! – thus becomes a question instead. What are we to make of the fact that in recent years younger men (under 30) have begun to end declarative statements and command forms with rising inflections?

8. Shopping malls and grocery stores rarely have clocks.

Have fun!!!

Sivapratha Nagappan C.

Can anyone please...

Type up the 8 questions that we need to get our 3 implications from? I don't have the 4th edition yet. Thanks a bunch.

-Alex Iwanicki

Dream impression

Hello,

I'm making my debut on this blog.

So I was reading back a bit, and Freud says on page 35 that every dream without exception goes back to an impression of the past few days, or probably within the last day. He says later in the paragraph, if a connection is found in the dream content with any impression of the previous day (Why did he say "if"? Didn't he just say that they all have to be?), that impression is so trivial, insignificant, and unmemorable.

Does this mean that every dream content is connected to an unimportant, recent impression?

Jeff Joh

Essay questions

Hey all,

As promised, here are the essay questions for the first essay, due next Tuesday, September 30. Choose one of them. The essays should be a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 5 pages long.

Good luck!

1. In his “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” Nietzsche famously announces truth to be “a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms.” As we have seen, with this move Nietzsche doesn’t so much dispense with the idea of truth as recontextualize it, giving “truth” not an absolute, timeless essence but instead linking it to power, language, history, figure and function. Freud too invokes the figural in his analysis of dreams and their relation to our inner-most selves, as for Freud the desires that most constitute us as individuals appear to us only in the guise of metaphorical, metonymical and intermediary dream content whose link to our desires is rarely if ever explicit.

First, describe simply and in your own words what you take to be the thrust of Nietzsche’s argument. This description may (but need not necessarily) take the form of a close reading of a shorter passage in Nietzsche that encapsulates some of his more general ideas. Second, assess the degree to which you see Freud as fitting into, complicating or rejecting the Nietzschean paradigm you have identified. This assessment can proceed along any number of lines - might Freud find Nietzsche’s celebration of self-creation a bit naïve, as to Freud any conscious control we might wish to have over our own psychical constitution is illusory at best? Conversely, might Freud’s theory be relying on a scientificism that Nietzsche would find problematic? Nietzsche clearly identifies the process of metaphor-creation as one of forgetting; what role does memory play in Freud’s description of dream-work and what are its implications?

This paper should not be a simple compare and contrast, but should rather attempt to inaugurate a dialogue of sorts between the two thinkers. Your goal is to take one small line of comparison and work it through completely. Be sure to provide specific textual evidence to bolster your readings.


2. In “The Plain Sense of Things,” Wallace Stevens describes what seems to be the inability of human experience to escape from the imagining mind: “the absence of the imagination had,” he writes, “/ itself to be imagined.” The result is a world in which stable things take on new meanings and new descriptions: human artifacts remake natural landscapes, linguistic description shapes future experiences of physical objects, and poetic language can evoke realities forgotten by those living a type of death in life.

Using two or three of Stevens’ poems and either the Nietzsche or the Freud, investigate the way notions of time, change and transformation play out in Stevens’ poetics. What claims, explicitly or (perhaps more potently) implicitly, is Stevens making about the role time, change and transformation play in human linguistic description? How does he make those claims (i.e. do his poems merely describe the way of thinking you’re identifying, or do they actually perform it)? How do these ideas either square with or complicate those of either Freud or Nietzsche? Some suggestions (though you’re certainly welcome, even encouraged, to not use these and move in your own directions): If using Nietzsche, you might want to focus on the performative dimensions of Nietzsche’s text – the fable at the beginning, for example, or his use of metaphor vs. logic to make his argument. If using Freud, you might want to explore his explanation of the way solitary experiences work to seed an almost infinitely possible number of dreams. Either way, one recommendation (again, not required) would be to start with Stevens’ quote from “The Poems of our Climate” that “the imperfect is our paradise,” figuring out what you take that phrase to mean and going from there.


3. Perform a close reading of one of the poems we read for class (whether we discussed it in class or not) with an eye towards the way the poem complements, complicates, contradicts or can otherwise be read in conjunction with either the Nietzsche or the Freud. As a good close reading, your analysis of the poem should attend to one or more of the poem’s formal elements - syntax (word order), diction (choice of words), rhythm, meter, enjambment (line breaks), structure, punctuation, among others - and should show how the elements you’ve selected help us understand both what the poem is trying to say and how your reading links up with either the Nietzsche or the Freud.

Poems for Tuesday

Hey all,

Here's a link to a page with the poems (all by Wallace Stevens) that we'll be discussing next Tuesday (the 23rd). Print them out and mark them up! I should hopefully have the essay questions up here by the end of the weekend.

Stevens Poems

Have a good weekend!

Hitherto

Since Ben talked about looking up definitions to unfamiliar words, I thought I'd post the definition of "hitherto." It is an adverb that means "until this time" or "up to now."

Examples from Freud's On Dreams:

"...logical links which have hitherto held physical material together..." (p41)
"Hitherto philosophers have had no occasion to concern themselves..." (p62)
"...make a first approach to this hitherto unknown topic..." (p62)

See, Ben and Claudia? We do look up words! Haha
See you guys tomorrow!

On Dreams

So I haven't finished the reading that was assigned for Tuesday, but I'm a little confused on one sentence. "We may put it in this way: in the course of the dream work the psychical intensity passes over from the thoughts and ideas to which it properly belongs on to others which in out judgment have no claim to any such emphasis." page 34 at the top.

Freud goes on to say dream displacement is what causes us to not fully understand dreams. Seems to me like he is saying dream displacement is essentially the symbolism in dreams. Something like substituting what we see in a dream for a possibly hidden meaning?

I'm not sure if I'm totally right on this, and still not really sure exactly what he means by that sentence, but he goes on to say that it is what makes dreams hard to figure out, so it seems important.

-Kyle Meshna

Anyone want to make some money?

Hey everyone,

I was recently notified that the Disabled Students' Program is looking for someone to take notes in our class. Here's their official announcement:

"The Disabled Students' Program (DSP) is looking for a note-taker! If you take clear, well-organized notes, this is a good opportunity for you to assist a fellow student and receive pay. Please come to the Disabled Students' Program Office and fill out an application. We are located in 260 Cesar Chavez right beside The Golden Bear Cafe. The application is also available online at dsp.berkeley.edu on the 'Note Takers Needed This Semester' link. If you have any questions, please send an email to dspnotes@berkeley.edu."

Might be a nice way for someone to make some extra cash, since you'll presumably be taking notes anyway. If interested, contact them.

-Ben

Style 9th Edition - Exercise 3.6

Late night procrastinating. I hope Claudia and Ben are sleeping :)

1. Lincoln hoped to preserve the Union without war but when the South attacked Fort Sumter, war became inevitable.
2. The president’s aides attempted to immunize him from Congress’ subpoena.
3. Business executives predicted that the economy would quickly revive.
4. How you analyzed my report omits any data that supported how you criticized what I found.
5. The health care industry is unable to exert control on the costs, which could lead to the public deciding that Congress needs to act.
6. The pope appealed to the world’s rich nations for assistance to those facing the threat of starving in Africa.
7. Several candidates attempted to explain why voters participated more in this year’s elections.
8. The class agreed that the reading list was based on the assumption that there would be tests on only certain selections.
9. The business sector did not independently study the cause of the sudden increase in the trade surplus.
10. The fraternities recognized an understanding as to the need for controls over drinking on campus.
11. The CIA is uncertain whether the North Koreans intend to cease their missile testing.
12. The coaching staff is responsible for the team’s physical condition.
13. If the data contradicts, you are required to explain why.
14. While the Dean rejecting our proposal was disappointing, it was not surprising because it was expected that this had been decided.
15. They performed the play enthusiastically, but they did not stage it intelligently.

ALICE CHUNG

Exercise 3.6

Exercise 3.6

1. Lincoln hoped to preserve the Union without war, but after the South attacked Fort Sumter, war was inevitable.

2. The president’s aides attempted to assert that he was immune from Congress’s subpoena.

3. Business executives predicted that the economy would quickly revive.

4. You analyzed my report, but did not support the work you criticized with any data.

5. The public could decide that Congress needs to act because the health care industry is unable to control costs.

6. The pope appealed to the world’s rich nations to assist those facing Africa’s starvation threat.

7. Several candidates attempted to explain the increase in voters that participated in this year’s elections.

8. The class agreed on the reading list based on the assumption that there would be tests on only certain selections.

9. The business-sector did not independently study why the trade surplus suddenly increased.

10. Fraternities understood the need for controls over drinking on campus.

11. The CIA is uncertain if North Korea intends to cease missile testing.

12. The coaching staff is responsible for the team physically conditioning.

13. You must explain any data that contradicts itself.

14. When the Dean rejected our proposal we were disappointed, but not surprised because we expected what he decided.

15. They performed the play enthusiastically, but did not stage it intelligently.

Elizabeth Bojorquez