Nike vs. Karl Marx

"Capital does not mean anything without wage-labor, value, money, price, etc." (651). Marxism is the belief that society is divided into two classes the workers, who don’t own anything and work, and the owners, who own just about everything and don’t work. It’s this exact kind of thinking that has inspired the Nike video, which clearly presents a massively wealthy company, Nike, who “unbeknownst” had a sweatshop that exploited people from poorer countries in order to have cheap labor. This is what Marx calls “alienation” and could possibly lead to the abolishment of class division. It becomes the social interpretation of how Marxism is understood, but according the video, production is the ceasing of this social interpretation because class division does not appear to be disappearing. Oppression of a certain group is part of the subordination of social class through the means of wage-labor.

The fruitful pleasures of life, which Marx describes as “simplest legal relations of individuals” (651), are the possessions that family and communities have the right of obtaining. However, with the use of capitalism, these fruits of labor are stripped from the individuals. He goes on to say that “the division of labor inside a nation leads at first to the separation of industrial and commercial from agricultural labor” (655); this separation leads to the end of conflict of interest. To come to an end of the different kind s of developmental ownership determines individuality in terms of material, instrument and the production of labor (owner of oneself). Where does this individuality lead? Marx says it is "a definite way into these definite social and political relations" (655) and the detachment between ruling class and working class in order to be blended into one (an organized society).

Marx, Karl. "Grundrisse." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, Ma: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 650-52.

"The German Ideology." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, Ma: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 653-58.

Psychoanalytic Presentation

Our group sought to present main points on Freud’s "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" and how compulsions are a form of pleasure that relax people from some traumatic event that might have occurred in years prior. We presented daily habits that people might encounter (biting nails, lips, constant moving of the arms and legs...etc) and how they might present some form of pleasure. As a group we worked on separating the class into four groups in order to discuss the differences between our compulsions and if we felt that might arise from some kind of subconscious desire.



Though this is not the video we used, I found it vital to use Monk as the example of a person with compulsions (because he has so many of them). Monk uses his many compulsions as a treatment to help his daily routines. According to Freud, the traumatic episode which one experiences is the reason why one must act out on such urges to please the mind.

Here is a link to view Monk in the act of his OCD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7inFTve35gE

The Mirror Stage: A Baby's Discovery of the I

Jacques Lacan’s mirror stage describes the moment in which children discover themselves in the mirror. He argues that children, as opposed to animals, take longer to make the connection that their body if the same as the body that is in the mirror; it’s a sense of self discovery and exploration. Once they make that connection, Lacan says that it helps build the child’s self-identity and becomes the turning point of the mental development towards body image. Lacan also presents that in the process of discovery oneself in the mirror, the Ego is too created with the form of identification because the child is able to identify their body parts along with what they feel, and in turn the Ego is formed. Lacan also says that when the child witnesses his/her image he/she is disappointed to find out that their representation is not that of their mother’s.



The stage in which intelligence is developing the most, a child learns to mimic what he/she sees. Lacan appears to favor comparing the development of animals and that of children. He mentions that animals lose interest a lot faster than children who stress the mimicry of the newly found knowledge. However, identification is the greatest form of accomplishment a child reaches upon the discovery of the image against the mirror and then leads to the formation of desire. The ‘I’ is formed upon the creation of identification based on the mirror stage and then we are able to articulate knowledge through the use of mimesis (which, again, was learned through observation).


Lacan, Jacques. "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, Ma: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 341-37. 441-46.

Good Little Boys Throw Toys: Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Freud describes instances in which repression is the acts which children act upon in a later time. Children are the defense and growth of our society; they hold the key to success and our future outcome. In the playground there are attitudes of all sorts: happy, sad, angry, cheerful, peaceful, violent, neglected, hurt, disturbed, and confused. After years of classing children below adults, they have finally come into limelight and have been allowed to give their opinions. As a matter of fact, children have become the aim for sales and industrialization. All the commercials, or almost all, target kids and what appeals to them- at least, what adults can convince kids to like. That’s why Disney is so successful. It feeds into the already placed likes of kids and mutates them into money cows. However, without digression, there continues to be a very vigorous sense of neglect towards children who appear to be different. How? Well, as an observant and official of a public school, as well as having attended public school, kids can be just as cruel as the people they learn it from: parents. An obese kid that cannot run as fast as the others becomes the object brutal scrutiny. The dirty kid who is ignored by his parents when it comes to hygiene and cannot afford better clothes can easily be, again, the mark of children and their playful words.

These acts, though, do not arise from the ground and into a child’s mind. Hatred, or dislike, is not something placed in food; it is bred into kids and as a defense mechanism, as Freud describes, children act out the repressed desire either in the home or at school. In this case, parents play a major and vital role in how children function socially, so if the parent is the offender against the child, for whatever reason (grades, hair, flailing of the hands, or homework), what other choice does the child have than to obey the providers of food, shelter and moral standing? The child takes what is learned at home and imprints it onto others.

Working very close to children opens up the opportunity to observe how curious these minds can be and how even the smallest thing can arouse lament, like an eraser being confiscated. Attraction, specifically sexual, is not something weaved into the child, like hatred; rather, sexuality and orientation are innate essences that evolve from crushes to confusion, and later, the liberation of those essences. It is the incarceration of these desires that help build the repeated event that Freud names in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” stating that “children repeat everything that has made a great impression on them in real life” (433). A traumatic event, such as the abuse of the narrator by his father for being homosexual, is enough for him, the narrator, to build a defense. It is in that defense that causes the narrator, in secret, to act out his yearning for men, repeatedly. Nonetheless, the damage has been done, for he marries a woman and produces offspring, which only enforces his father’s heavy hand over him and clouds his ability to remain faithful to his wife and children. His wish to be the free flowing homosexual is influenced by his contained self urging the beans to spill.

We, as humans, are able to overcome trauma, and have produced skill enough to accommodate that shock in a light that is forgetting; though not all cases are successful. If memory itself can lead to a pleasurable outcome from the initial loss of pleasure, then how does one manage to relate pleasure in adult life? These defense mechanisms that our brain creates are penetrable and it becomes evident in cases of abuse (sexual, physical, and mental) that the victim will act out on the introverted emotions. When a child experiences abuse from an adult, what are the chances of sexual repression and psychological setbacks occurring? According to Karla R. Clark, there is a 4.5% chance. She argues that when a child by nature acts out on desires, there is no room for trauma; however, if an adult, perhaps, a parent, abuses their child it opens up room for an entire lifetime of effects disrupting the functionality. Clark states that the event must be “1) sudden, unexpected or non normative; 2) exceeds the individual's perceived ability to meet its demands and 3) disrupts the individual's frame of reference” (Clark 27). The consequences that are aroused through abuse prove to be detrimental to the normal child development of the victim and may cause them to repeat the event of abuse, as seen in various cases of rape and physical mistreatment.

Clark, Karla R. “Season of Light/Season of Darkness: The Effect of Burying and Remembering Traumatic Sexual Abuse on the Sense of Self.” Clinical Social Work Journal Spring 21.1 (1993): 25-42.

Freud, Sigmund. "Beyond the Pleasure Principle." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, Ma: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 341-37.