LIT2020 Exam 2 Study Guide it s all about MONEY Marxism Karl Marx Bourgeoisies Proletariats Relations of Production There is a struggle because these two classes want different things Capitalists want the ones with the money also known as capitalists the ones without the money also known as workers when the capitalists and workers are thrown together the maximum profit with the lowest costs Workers want the highest wage for the least amount of work The capitalists compete with each other and the successful capitalists get richer and richer and the failed capitalists fall down into the working class The remaining capitalists meanwhile more and more exploit the workers and they get poorer and poorer Marx said that eventually the workers will rise up in revolution against the capitalist class and a new communist society will be created Society is made up of two parts The Base like the foundations of a building Marxists say the economy the means of The Superstructure the rest of the building which is built on the foundations it production is the base means all the other parts of society ex culture the state education The economic base determines and shapes the superstructure The ruling ideas in any time are always those of the ruling class true class position Ruling Class Ideology social control in capitalist society is achieved through this False Consciousness the working class may suffer from this not understanding their Marxism Literary Theory Focuses on the representation of class distinctions and class conflict in literature Focuses more on social and political elements than aesthetic elements of a text Questions raised by the Marxist literary lens How does the author s social and economic class show through the work Does the work support the economic and social status quo or does it advocate What roles does the class system play in the work What is the author s analysis of class relations How are characters of different social change classes represented How do characters overcome oppression What does the work say about oppression Are social conflicts ignored or blamed Does the work propose some form of utopian vision as a solution to the problems elsewhere encountered in the work How to use Expose class conflict Show how the dominant class exercises and maintains control Show how the dominant class imposes its beliefs on others Show how the working class is trapped Show how the working class is oppressed Show how the working class can end its own oppression Racism Racism is a normal part of American society and has been so throughout our history Racism is not limited to discrete acts of overt discrimination or violence against minorities but is so interwoven into the fabric of our lives as to be often unrecognizable Blatant Racism derogatory names segregation lynching slavery Subtle Racism more blacks in jail more whites gets jobs than blacks often unconscious and unrecognizable Racism must be understood in social historical context not as isolated actions but as a pattern of institutions and assumptions American society is characterized by I nstitutionalized Racism institutions set up to promote a given racial hierarchy Understanding racism requires understanding the perceptions of those who have experienced it because it is often invisible to those who benefit from it Rejecting the normativity of white experience Recognizing white privilege invisible knapsack Rejecting Objectivity openly acknowledging that perceptions reflect the mindset status and experience of the person involved Critical Race Theory Understands literary texts according to their racial contexts recognizing U S literature as emerging out of a sociological political and cultural situation marked by racial oppression and marginalization Celebrates minority writing such as the aesthetics of distinctly black culture Examines white writing in racist countries as it illuminates the nature of the oppression of minorities represented in literature Attempts to theorize and understand what race is and how it is understood and Major Figures W E B Dubois Double consciousness growing up in a majorly white place to construct white superiority at the cost of black humanity and agency Toni Morrison Africanism the image of blackness by and for white writers in order the twoness that results as being black and Postcolonialism Postcolonialism an intellectual discourse that holds together a set of philosophies political sciences literatures and films these discourses are reactions to the cultural legacy of colonialism Many colonized people especially of the British Empire attended British universities Their access to education still unavailable in the colonies created a new criticism postcolonialism The Literary Theory As a literary theory postcolonialism deals with literature produced in countries that once were colonies or countries still in colonial arrangements It also deals with literature written in colonial countries and by their citizens that has colonized people as its subject matter This criticism looks at issues of power economics politics religion and culture and how these elements work in relation to colonial hegemony focusing on how the Western colonizers controlled those they colonized Major Figures Edward Said Said s book Orientalism uses the term Orientalism to describe the discourse about the East constructed by the West He argues that European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself against the Orient which was characterized as exotic uncivilized and inferior Other Major Figures Wole Soyinka Homi Bhabha Salman Rushdie Frantz Fanon any people or ethnic population forced or induced to leave their homelands a group of nations or people ruled over by an emperor empress or other Empire Diaspora Jamaica Kincaid Gayatri Spivak Chinua Achebe powerful sovereign being dispersed throughout other parts of the world concerns culture and values at the expense of those of other cultures otherness Hybridity colonizing and colonized cultures Eurocentrism Alterity referring to the integration of cultural signs and practices from the lack of identification with some part of one s community differentness the practice conscious or otherwise of placing emphasis on European Feminist Literary Theory Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically politically socially and psychologically patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which they are kept so in every domain where patriarchy reigns woman is other she is