Literature - English Literature

Introduction

Critical (re-)reading of the text result in "an unrestrained metonymy" a metonymy that collapses the very dividing line we were warned against. The result is that "by abolishing the paradigmatic barriers, this abolishes the power of legal substitution on which meaning is based ... it is no longer possible to safeguard an order of equivalence" and the force of meaning, which derives from the power structures of society, can no longer hold. The ethical question is whether to heed the warning and obey its injunction or allow the unrestrained metonymy to dismiss the warning, erase the barriers and abolish its power (Jacques, 108).

Barthes' analysis, in S/Z-- XCII. The Three Points of Entry"

In his discussion of the formation of convictions (values) through the development of 'concrete thoughts' (i.e. imagistic thinking: cf p89-92) d'Avray turns to the use of song as an instrument in the Reformation and elsewhere: "Techniques similar to those used by religions - notably songs - have been employed as well by secular workers' movements. This 'technology' for the emotions is not manipulative unless those whose emotions are aroused intended no such thing. It is on the contrary quite normal for the adherents of value systems to use instrumental technologies quite deliberately to bring their feelings into line with principles."

D'Avray Rationalities in History p113-114. Ideology & discourse are thus, in some aspects, means. They are instrumental systems as much as they are orders of convictions & values. The sense in which we use them to bring ourselves into line with those messy orders of convictions and values emphasises the role of people in the social construction of society itself (Jacques, 108).

d'Avray makes a compelling case for 'instrumental rationality' - zweckrationalitat - being a universal aspect of human society that, because of the role played by 'value rationality' in its structuring, is not necessarily recognisable as such because "instrumental rationality is a chameleon that takes the colour of the values in its mental milieu" (p59). This obfuscation of 'ends-means' rationality is the result of the "combination of values and instrumental reasoning" (p59) in which the local colour of values paints over the universality of instrumentality because the local values are so amazing the everyday means go unremarked. Indeed, in order to recognise this universality "one needs to abstract instrumental rationality from its various value contexts" and realise that it cannot be mobilized to resolve conflicts of 'world-view' or 'value contexts' (p59) (Roland Barthes, 91).

Society is interaction; culture is the product(s) [both physical & conceptual] of that interaction; discourse is the frameworks of articulation all of this is placed in and which is used in that very interaction. In discourse we therefore find culture. One set of the conceptual products of social interaction (which we give names such as 'common-sense' or doxa or discursive fragment and which are concepts, phrases & ideas which have established a 'life of their own', so to speak, in the interactional repertoires of individuals) are taken up by participants and used in their ...