The missing ingredient in Roland Barthes’ “The Death of the Author”

In “The Death of the Author,” Roland Barthes attempts to shift the responsibility for the construction of meaning within literary works from the author to the reader herself. This should be rather clear from the title of the piece, and it’s justified by his elegant contention, “The true locus of writing is reading” (5). This is because of the reader’s need to synthesize the various cultural spaces and contexts in which the given texts are based, as well as the prerogative of the reader to unify the “multiplicity” of the given texts (6). Such an argument makes clear that the meaning of a piece comes from those who soak it in. It’s not just inherent in the piece itself, as something toward which every reader may strive; it’s in the actual reading itself.

Adherence to virtue within the bourgeoisie of “The Christmas Tree and a Wedding”

In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx makes clear a particular argument regarding the status of the bourgeoisie: “The modern bourgeois society” has further stratified social classes in the contemporary world (34), and it must continue to modernize “the instruments of production,” so as to maintain control over the rest of the world—namely, the proletariat, the working people (38). This contention places at its core the reality of modern production, and advancements in industry. However, even at its core, the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is rather simple. Whereas the proletariat creates capital, in the process of production, it is composed of wage-labourers, whom the bourgeoisie, their bosses, pay the bare minimum to survive and remain at their job (54-5). Thus, the bourgeoisie class maintains its power from the capital produced by those subservient to them (55).

On Language as a closed system and its relevance in “The Bascombe Valley Mystery”

Given my native proficiency in English, the language in which Arthur Conan Doyle originally scribed his short story, “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” it would appear that this supposed mastery of English would lend to me, as Saussure may have argued, an automatic and irrevocable access to the closed system of English. Thus, many of the sound-images—or, images-acoustiques—would be immediately transmitted, without hesitancy, from the paper to my own thinking. And yet, that same hybris ultimately betrays a reading of the story, lending false cues toward nonexistent images and turning away from ones that may, from another perspective, seem obvious. It is clear here that—much to Saussure’s dismay, in his own focus on words with single definitions—lingual ambiguity plays such a critical role.

Pizza, Priorities, and Aretaic Ethics

On a sunset stroll along the Ocean City boardwalk in the heat of summer, the same scene unfolds as always: Teenage boys and girls ride their bikes and their skateboards in packs, yelling over the crowds. Young parents scramble to keep track of their young children, who jostle one another, sprinting through small groups of friends and family in the miles-long crowd. Among the jewelry stores, mini golf courses, and tee shirt shops, Manco & Manco stands alone in its old-timey, carnivalian glare.

To locals and tourists alike, this 60-year-old pizzeria is forever legendary for serving the best slice on the South Shore. Just take a look inside the restaurant, and you’ll see an ever-present variety of patrons that surpasses generational bounds. Many gaze at the pizza as it enters and exits the oven, from dough to delicacy, before it is speedily sliced and shuttled to patrons lounging at the tables, sitting at the bar, and standing in line for take-out.

At Manco & Manco, pizza is an art.

On Arbitrarily Unjust Athletic Arbitration

For many athletes, sports are a haven for passion and resilience, an institution for unending personal growth and accomplishing goals. They inculcate leadership, while forcing players to rely on one another for success, and they allow individuals to engulf themselves in a tightly knit community, instigating powerful, lifelong friendships. But, ultimately, amid the tears of defeat and the throat-scratching screams of success, they propagate a single commandment—follow the rules, or be penalized—given that the obvious imperative for all sporting events is that they must be fair and equal for all participants. Thus, officials, without a doubt, must be impartial.

Shot-By-Shot Analysis: Silver Linings Playbook and Pulp Fiction

Part One: Chosen Scenes and Analysis Framework

For the two scenes I analyze, I present one scene from each of the two films, Silver Linings Playbook and Pulp Fiction. They both demonstrate characters participating in a similarly designed scene: two characters—Pat (Bradley Cooper) and Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), in Silver Linings Playbook, and Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer), with the waitress (Laura Lovelace), in Pulp Fiction—sitting across from each other at a diner, familiarizing themselves with the personal details of one another, as well as better understanding each other’s own personal philosophies.

On California and Climate Change Policy

If anything is eminently clear from Roger Karapin’s book, Political Opportunities for Climate Policy: California, New York and the Federal Government, it is that the government of California presents magnificent methods of rallying together its populace and industrial community around climate change, toward dramatically reducing harmful emissions into the atmosphere in both the short- and long-term. Any doubt of this can be resolved in the knowledge that targets for reductions include a “29% reduction from the business-as-usual scenario, and a 32% cut in per-capita emissions over 1990-2020” (32), an era in which emissions across the world have often increased.

At-Risk Communities and Climate Justice

Whereas it is critical to dismantle theoretical claims about long-term anthropogenic climate change damaging everyone without discrimination that discount the realities about short-term global warming, there are a number of very real and tangible avenues that communities of color, such as that of Gulfport, Mississippi, and small developing countries, including the Maldives, can pursue to effect substantial change and curb the treacherous effects of climate change in their areas. These go beyond emphasizing to other communities and national leaders the sociocultural significance of maintaining their lands—such as by detailing the religious rites and rituals that have taken place in the waters of Turkey Creek, as Derrick Evans chooses to do in many interviews and publications, and by Mohamed Nasheed’s explanations that climate change, in the business-as-usual scenario, will wipe out his nation, leaving its residents climate refugees and speakers of a soon-to-be lost language.

Joining the Tribe: Conversation and Climate Change

We live in a world in which denial of anthropogenic climate change, a phenomenon whose existence and form has been agreed upon by nearly the entirety of the scientific community, is not at all restricted to a handful of conspiracy theorists or anti-science zealots. This denial is institutionalized, and it has been for years. Such denial manifests itself in de facto bans throughout the United States’ Office of International Climate and Clean Energy on the inclusion of phrases such as "climate change," "emissions reduction," or "Paris Agreement" in written communication, since March, 2017 (Wolff). Such informal censorship is not wholly uncommon within American spheres of government. Beginning in March, 2015, officials in the Florida Department of Environmental Protection have halted use of “climate change” and “global warming,” citing directives that such controversial terminology is best avoided altogether (McCoy). However, censorship is certainly not the only institutional practice ignoring the real and contemporary ramifications of global warming: The government of North Carolina—whose populace will likely face a regional sea-level rise to the tune of 39 inches over the 21st century—since the passage into law of House Bill 819 in 2012, interdicts any usage of scientific predictions on sea-level changes in its coastal zoning policies (Harish). Legislation of this sort often yields dramatic consequences, as Don Barber makes clear: Coastal development, particularly in flood zones, can be devastating, and has been a significant cause of increased property damage over the course of the past several decades, in the wake of more frequently intense tropical storms and hurricanes. Universally and unambiguously, this willful ignorance of such a scientifically confirmed reality is deadly.

Kant, Mill, and Animal Agriculture

The ethical methodologies of Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill are typically perceived as in utter opposition to one another, on account of how they evaluate consequences. Kant’s ethics are rooted in a hypothetical consideration of an action’s successful universal applicability, without any situational considerations. In contrast, Mill’s moral judgment is based in a cost-benefit analysis of the potential situational consequences that may arise from a particular action. While this difference may often promote unique moral evaluations, their ethical methodologies likely lead to a similar conclusion about the ethical response to animal agriculture. I contend that, while Kant and Mill would evaluate animal agriculture with different considerations and calculations, they would both argue that consuming flesh is wholly unethical, given the modern empirical research about its unavoidable, disastrous consequences. In this paper, I will explain each philosopher’s ethical framework. I will then enumerate some of the direct and inevitable consequences of animal husbandry and justify their consideration in each moral system. Finally, I will conclude by arguing that sustainable eating must preclude animal consumption.

Situationalism and Consequentialism in Kant and Mill

In his introduction to Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill claims that while Immanuel Kant attempts to develop an ethical calculus that does not measure an action’s worth by its consequences, Kant is ultimately a consequentialist. Mill writes that Kant fails to identify “any contradiction, any logical (not to say physical) impossibility,” in an action’s universal adoption (8). Instead, Kant only clarifies between actions whose universal adoption “would be such as no one would choose to incur,” and ones that wouldn’t have such an effect (8). Separating acts into these two categories still requires considering their consequences, which is why Mill implicitly calls Kant a consequentialist—a title Kant would have never given himself. I believe, however, that Mill’s reading of Kant is incorrect. Situational contexts and consequences are at the core of Mill’s ethics and wholly irellevant to Kant’s. Because Mill is clearly consequentialist, I will demonstrate how Mill and Kant’s philosophies are incompatible, to refute Mill’s claim that Kant is also consequentialist. I will further demonstrate that, given Kant’s complete exclusion of situational contexts and consequences, it would be wholly inaccurate to call him a consequentialist, on account of the following justifications: Firstly, because Kant values ethical certainty, he cannot consider a given action’s consequences, since it is impossible to fully determine them. Secondly, because happiness is indeterminate, with unknown causes, an ethical calculus based in promoting happiness cannot yield moral certainty. Finally, because Kant strives for ethical calculus which precludes the situational corruption of actors, it must be determined a priori and in the abstract, for clear and precise behavioral guidance in all situations, which is impossible when considering situational contexts and consequences.

Justice, Temperance, and Unearned Income

In Aristotle’s Politics and Nicomachean Ethics, he details the roles of currency and exchange in the Greek commercial economy of his time, while exploring the virtues necessary to live a good life. He explores their intersections—how people’s financial responsibilities are rooted in virtues, and vice versa. One must keep in mind, however, that his analysis is contemporary to a commercial state with fundamentally different economic circumstances, when compared to the modern, complex, global, capitalist economy. Thus, his ideations are impacted by different constraints: Aristotle did not, for example, factor in the ethical ramifications of stock exchanges, as those just didn’t exist in the fourth century before Jesus Christ. So, the repercussions of his conclusions about wealth acquisition and usury may also be different when considering the modern economy. Thus, in today’s world, a reasonable, intensive planning of one’s own wealth acquisition may not necessarily be detestable, from an Aristotelian perspective. Indeed, saving and investing one’s excess income may lead to capital gains that would allow one more financial resources to effect positive social change. However, such behavior only works with a disciplined attempt at temperance and material satiability.

On the Democratic Value of a Supposedly Egalitarian Experience

To Daniel Boorstein, we face an era of advancement like no other, comparable only in name to the renaissance, featuring an updated epithet: Rather than the “Republic of Letters,” whose citizens shared knowledge, we wake up to creation’s next revelation, the “Republic of Technology” (3). Following from this change, he argues that such an epoch is “not only more democratic, but also more in the American mode” (3) touting universal opportunity for entrance and engagement as its most critical feature. And yet, to Boorstein, those two supposed values of early America are in absence of a third, crucial to the new Republic: a “shared experience,” the foremost enabler of total democracy (3). And yet, whereas Boorstein’s contention that the Republic of Technology will ultimately yield a wholly democratic experience for the United States—if not the whole world—based on the egalitarian nature of technological advances that often make imprints across the entire national community, he fails to acknowledge the potentially catastrophic repercussions of the social forces leveraging that very technology. In prizing universal knowledge, the real and dramatic possibility of manipulation by higher forces is left untouched. As such, while the Republic of Technology may lead to a future of similar, comparable lifestyles for people across the nation, their experiences might be trodden upon by a misuse of power on the side of the informants, who hold the value of communal democracy in their very hands.

Comparing Germany and France’s Transitions to Renewable Energy

Summary

Germany and France’s transitions to renewable energy have been vastly different over the past few decades. To understand why this has been the case, I first clarify their dramatic similarities in GDP, electricity cost and usage, and household size, to illuminate their similar needs in infrastructure and electricity. Then, I refute three possible explanations for the difference in their energy transition, regarding their access to renewable resources, nuclear energy technology, and fossil fuel imports. I conclude by arguing that such a difference in their transitions is likely external to the above variables.