ENGA11H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Signify, Breastfeeding, White Privilege
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Wednesday, January 4th 2017
ENGA11H3
Lecture 1
Core theme of the class:
●Ontology (study of the beginning of things) - how they come to mean and how they
begin and epistemology
●Being wise is knowing why you know. Wisdom: What you’re able to achieve with the
information you know
●Being intelligent: Is knowing things
●One element of Post WWII: Knowledge is not inherent but is constructs which affects
reality. Can promote an action / decision which have real consequences
●Going from many gods → single god is one of the momentous change in history which
changed knowledge (what we wrote in books). It gave us some kind of vote and
freedom to believe what we want to believe, gave us hope (afterlife)
●Age of Enlightenment: Made people see the world more as a clock rather than a
creation of God
●Source: we see it as where something begins where we can’t take anything so we can
have a basis where we can take. Myth: when it can’t be explained (the unexamined
source that can be used to explain something)
●Re-Source: Can be a problem is we see a source as a resource. Ex: we see earth as a
resource. (accumulating) Earth is THE source (interdependent - rivers, trees, etc)
●Bill Dylan’s song: It’s harder to find the source for everything. Finding the connection
between one thing to another
●Returning a resource → source becomes garbage: It doesn’t serve it’s purpose
●We’re a source looking for resource. Foundation = source but it’s weird to put a
foundation on a face
●When looking at another self, we tend to look at other people as resource (vampiric)
●Depression /anxiety is a sad source (we can’t find a source)
●Write down what he says about truth*
●We are the consumer at the age of depression. Selfie: ultimate collapse where the
relationship is with you / or how other people imagine you when they see you. We don’t
need the ‘other’ anymore - we can advertise ourselves (our brand)
●Issue of importance runs through Western Culture
●Post-True: Whether the facts feels right
Wednesday, January 11th 2017
Lecture II
Soul
Self
Selfie
Morals
Calculation, ethics (based on
how we treat each other)
Sensations (something that
feels like it’s truth)
Prophecy
Advertising (?), desire
Consumption
Scriptures, sacrifice
Quest, enforce,
Brand
●
●You’re not really supposed to move out of your hierarchy because the ultimate goal is
to stay safe (does not really matter)
●In the modern world, we are not born into the world where we should be - we move
towards where we are supposed to be
●If things are the way they seem, then how do you know ever if something is what is
seems?
●Tree is a word, world = a symbol
●Signified (world, the physical tree) and signifier (word, tree, symbol)
●God = super signifier but is the only signified and signifiers without any divisions
●Waiting for Godot is a play about nothing. No signs / signifiers, the characters don’t
know why they’re there, can’t really answer the question why
Post modern re-stating of Hamlet's “To be or not to be”: First line of Waiting for Godot:
“Nothing [to be] done
We answered Hamlet's question: To be = to do (being is doing). Doing the aspect of being, but
not entirely. Doing things signifies doing. We are signifiers looking the signified
Nothing done = to be, because there is nothing to be done
Chronic desire is in a sense energizing (we do things because we want it)
Waiting is an awareness of being brought on by an absence of doing (mortality) = waste of
time
The hat represents our strengths, our culture, etc.
Lucky probably used to be a poet but is now broken because of Pozzo (businessman)
Wednesday, January 18th 2017
Lecture III
Picture on phone
Product of a pattern of belief, experiential instead of provable
Believable → perceivable: “I think, therefore I am” - left out the body. Proving he exists ignores
the body
Opening line of Godot (Estragon): “Nothing [to be] done”
●He blames the boot