ENG 311-Fall.23 || with 100% Error-free Answers

New Left correct answers = Abandoned the traditional Left's base/superstructure dichotomy and its assumption that class consciousness was the only means of resistance to capitalism {The New Left shared the traditional Left's goal of greater economic equality, but it believed the superstructure (culture, politics, ideology) could also influence the base (economics); the New Left tried to promote "counter-hegemony" (the hegemony of the point of view of the oppressed) in the 1960s by harnessing freak power, Black Power, feminism, the anti-war movement and other cultural/political trends} Instrumental reason (also "instrumental rationality," "instrumental thinking") correct answers = the use of reason as a means to an end, as opposed to reason used to evaluate the quality of the end itself {technical, "how to" thinking, as opposed to critical thinking; instrumental reason asks "how do we get there?" whereas critical reason asks "why should we go there?"} Sign (Saussure) correct answers = consists of an arbitrary relationship between a "signifier" (word/image) and a "signified" (concept/idea) {Saussure brackets off the world of referents (the real-world things that signs refer to) and studies linguistic signs synchronically, i.e., without taking time and history into account} Interpellation correct answers = Althusser's term for the way ideology calls us into being as subjects who mistakenly see ourselves as free and self-determining {His famous example: when a policeman shouts "Hey, you there!" it causes us to (mis)recognize our true self as a subject of the law before we even know who he's shouting at—ideology functions this way but invisibly and without the threat of force} Problematic (noun; Althusser) correct answers = the set of concepts that structures a given system of thought {the problematic determines the questions one can ask from within that system and the answers that can be given to them; e.g., the Marxist problematic is centered by the conception of base and superstructure} "In the last instance" correct answers = for Marxist critics, elements of a society's superstructure are determined by the economic base only "in the last instance" {before that, they're determined by every other element of the superstructure as well; for Althusser, the "last instance" never actually comes, it's just a conceptual placeholder central to the Marxist problematic} Overdetermination (Althusser) correct answers = the influence of two or more causes in a single superstructural effect {In psychoanalysis a dream image is said to be "overdetermined" if it expresses two or more of the dreamer's unconscious thoughts; Althusser says cultural products and historical events are likewise overdetermined in that there's never a moment when the economy is the sole determining factor—the last instance never actually comes} Hegelian dialectic correct answers = an argument made of three parts: thesis, antithesis, synthesis {every synthesis is then liable to become a new thesis, opposed by a new antithesis, etc}