By using this source, Feldman shows an example of what kinds of terrible things can be achieved through the shaping and specific planned usage of media and media techniques. He explains that the nazis in Germany were socially changed by the propaganda in the media into believing and doing certain things that were part of Hitler's political agenda. The source is important to Feldman I think because it's a good illustration of his overall point in his essay. An illustration that is hard to argue with. This source drew me in because I have tried reading Adorno before and was very interested in his work, for one, but also because of how it's used here as a tool to help prove Feldman's point, and it works quite well.
Adorno was a German-born international philosopher, sociologist, musicologist, and composer. He attended the Frankfurt school where he studied musicology, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. Adorno says his publication, "Negative Dialects" is intended to "use the strength of the [epistemic] subject to break through the description [Trug] of constitutive subjectivity." The first publication date of this work was 1973. The translation is sometimes tricky to understand because the german idiom. This information doesn't really change much how I see Feldman using this source. I still think he used Adorno's comments about the holocaust as a way to show how propaganda in the media can spread ideas that grab hold of society very quickly and efficiently.
2. Junger "Photography and the Second Consciousness" (p. 222 middle bottom)
Junger I believe is used in Feldman's essay to also contribute to the idea that media can vastly change the way societies and even individual people within those societies think and if you can effect how someone thinks you can effect how they act as well. So he uses Junger to show the way that our consciousness, or way of thinking about ourself and our morals is being changed. He explains that we are moving from people of one consciousness to people of a double consciousness. The second of the two allowing us to stand kind of outside of ourselves and see ourselves more as 'things' and also to exist outside the 'sphere of pain' allowing us to be less afraid and maybe in some ways less human. This draws my interest because it is something I definitely see happening everyday and it worries me about where we are going in our society and what things are going to change for the worse in the future because of it.
Ernst Junger was a German writer who went to school in Germany between the years of 1901 and 1903. He then joined the military and began also writing articles and beginning his writing career in the 1920's. Much of his life was dedicated to the military and also much to his writing. He makes strong connections between the two in some of his works."Photography and the second consciousness" and excerpt from 'On Pain', was first published in 1934 a year after Hitler's rise to power in Nazi Germany. This book deals with a new metaphysics of the experience of pain in a totalitarian age. This information about Junger and his book 'On Pain' from which the source in Feldman's essay was taken, just enhances what I felt the importance of the quote was all the more. Knowing now that it was published a year after Hitler's rise to power and knowing his military background helps to see even clearer where he would get the idea of the new and changing consciousness of society was coming about.
3. Gertrude Himmelfarb "The Haunted House of Jeremy Bentham" (p. 9 footnotes)
Sekula uses Himmelfarb as a source and more importantly the idea of the 'Panopticon' created by Jeremy Bentham to highlight and help achieve his goal of showing how photography and media play a role in policing and the lives of criminals but not only them but also us today as well. The Panopticon being at first a structure for a prison where the inmates would be under the assumption they are always being watched so better to not do anything you wouldn't want to get in trouble for. We do the same thing today with video cameras and surveillancing public areas. I was interested in this source because it seemed like a unique source, perhaps showing a different view of the panopticon that what was already explained in the footnotes of Sekula's essay.
Gertrude Himmelfarb was an American Historian known for her studies of the victorian era particularly of social darwinism. She studied at Brooklyn College as well as the university of chicago. She is now a professor at the graduate school at the university of New York. Her work "The Haunted house of Jeremy Bentham" was part of a larger work 'Victorian Minds' and was published in 1968. The full title of the larger work is 'Victorian Minds: A Study of Intellectuals in Crisis and Ideologies in Transition' This fuller title from which the section sourced by Sekula is taken shows us that she was probably looking at Bentham's idea of the 'Panopticon' as an ideology in transition as well as Bentham himself as an 'intellectual in crisis'. She also states in this excerpt that the panopticon was "nothing less than the existential realization of Philosophical Radicalism." In addition she noted the concentration camp-like aspects of Bentham's 'panopticon' plan. I still think this source was a good choice and a useful one after reading the background information because it explains Bentham's panopticon for what it is not just what it was intended to be by Bentham, and reveals some of the major negative aspects of it and this relates to Sekula's essay because it shows a history of where some of these ideas that are still around today came from. Like that of surveillancing and certain media techniques to instill fear and promote stereotypes to achieve their own goals and agendas.
4. Alphonse Bertillon "The Bertillon System of Identification" (p. 26 footnotes)
Sekula makes use of this source because together Bertillon and Galton shaped our policing archival systems today. Both systems were monumental to the creation of that policing system we now use however both had there serious flaws. Bertillon's for example was huge, and there was so much information it could take weeks to make any sort of connections between identifying criminals even when they were fairly easy to identify. also the measurements made could be different depending on who did the measurements and how accurately they measured. He definitely uses this source because it is one of the two major people his essay is centered on. I felt that This was an interesting source because I don't know much about Bertillon and wanted to know more.
Alphonse Bertillon was a French law enforcement officer and biometrics researcher who created anthropometry, a system of identification based on physical measurements. Hid works were largely published in the 1880's. The usefulness of the source I thought did not change for me after readin the background information. It did make me respect Bertillon a little more, understanding his work as more of a masterpiece from the angle of the time period he lived and worked in.
5. Francis Galton "Analytical Photography" (p. 48 footnotes)
Similarily to Bertillon, I felt that this source was important to Sekula's essay because it is one of the two major parts of his writings. Like I said earlier both systems were monumental but both were also flawed. Galton's ideas dealt with the belief that regions of the person's face and skull could tell you certain things about a person, and through this he tried to achieve a certain 'criminal type' that would aid in police work. This was an interesting source for me because I'm considering doing my research paper on identity politics and stereotypes achieved through the mass media.
Sir Francis Galton was a cousin of Charles Darwin and was an English Victorian polymath, anthropologist, eugenist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, pyschometrician, and statistician. He was called a child prodigy because he was reading by two, by five he knew some greek, latin, and long division, and by six he was reading adult level books like Shakespeare. After first attempting medical school at the urging of his parents, he went to Cambridge where he studied mathematics. This again doesn't change my idea of the usefulness of the source in Sekula's essay, I still feel it was an equally important source for him. But after reading the background information I can see and respect his ideas a lot more like when I read more about Bertillon. Instead of his ideas sounding merely silly and backwards, I think about all that he had accomplished and how intelligent he was and I am able to see hwere he got his ideas and see them as advanced for his time period. Especially being a cousin of Charles Darwin it's easier to see why he believed as he did about the areas of the skull, the criminal type, and natural selection and so on.
After completing assignment number six I see how Feldman and Sekula have formed their essays around pertinent and extremely useful and successful sources. As the reader after delving into the backgrounds and histories of these sources, I feel like I can grasp better the whole idea behind Feldman and Sekula's essays. It gives me a more well rounded view and in all cases the sources only added to my understanding and my appreciation of what Feldman and Sekula were trying to say. I now think it is much more important and necessary to investigate the sources of books, essays, articles and the like whereas before I may have skimmed over those sources and not really noticed them.
For a research direction I'm still not positive on what I'm going to do, but I think the concept of stereotypes in the media really intrigues me. I heard someone say or maybe read the term 'Identity Politics' and that mabe a possible direction I'd like to research further. Also, after reading more about Galton, Bertillon and the 'panopticon' I got inspired and felt myself thinking of a few directions to go in. Overall I think the scholarly conversation both Sekula and Feldman make between themselves and their sources was very effective and their essays altogether were more interesting after reading about the sources as well. I would like to achieve in my researching a similar kind of scholarly conversation, that makes good use of sources and choosing sources that round out my ideas for my readers.
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