What the heck are we doing? And Who are we? Marco? Polo. November 13th Throughout the year, I feel I have been thinking mostly about autonomy. I have speculated about what A.O. Scott and Greenblatt think about autonomy, and I have asked many questions. What are the limitations in regards to power and autonomy when it comes to the Alien, Authority, and Self who Greenblatt writes about? Is our biggest fear the loss of self? Or, is our biggest fear the loss of control? Is loss of self the same thing as the loss of control? Is our only power, the ability to control how we respond to the circumstances we are placed in? Is art a response to the human feelings associated with autonomy? Greenblatt challenges us to look directly at autonomy, while A.O. Scott requires an understanding of it.
We began the year looking at A.O. Scott, Better Living Through Criticism. As a class, we expanded our thinking and defined words that seem undefinable. Our conclusions may have seemed broad, like our definition of art “something that moves someone,” but they were supported by textual evidence and thoroughly thought through. We found criticism to be “the subjective determination of what we know, what we feel, and what we’re talking about in response to something.” Defining these words was a crucial part of the process we took to understanding Scott’s message. Additionally, we related what we learned back to our own aesthetic experiences, and we debated why aesthetics are valuable. Inevitably, we asked ourselves, “Do we really get to decide our likes and dislikes? Or, are we products of a cultural context?” This lead to a discussion of autonomy, which ultimately, connected us to Greenblatt. Greenblatt is tricky, to say the least. As a writer, he constantly tickles our brains. He loves to talk about things which we think we understand, and then, he rewrites their story. For example, the word submission. Submission is to place oneself under the control of something. It is a seemingly gentle act, but Greenblatt tells us that the force of submission is the beginning of self fashioning. He talks about fashioning as something that is for people who are, at a minimum, middle class. These people all must submit to some sort of authority. His idea of submission is uncomfortable because he leads us to see the only true autonomy we have, and this contrasts our notion of gentle submission. He speaks of the force of submission. No matter what we choose in life, we are submitting to a force. By simply reading Greenblatt, we are in some way, submitting to him. All we can control in life is what we choose to interact with, and how we respond to the situation connected to what surrounds us. In AP Lit, we are learning to respond to Geertz, who said “There is no such thing as a human nature independent of culture.” Greenblatt asks us to question the systems which control us, and he leads us to feel there is no such thing as autonomous agency. A.O Scott, invites us to question what we consider as beautiful, so maybe we will be more cognizant humans. Both Greenblatt and Scott want us to understand that even though “There is no such thing as a human nature independent of culture,” life can still be fulfilling. We have to choose to live with eyes wide open. I look forward to our future readings and the metamorphosis of our class that will result from reading works that focus on consciousness.
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AuthorElizabeth Finley is a 12th grade AP Lit student. She enjoys theater, dance, singing, playing the piano, and watching movies. If she could only do three things before she died, she would go on a Safari, sky dive, and visit her grandparents at church and help them work in daycare. Archives
December 2019
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