SM2706 Critical Theory & Socially Engaged Practices Weekly Journal

<Week 1>
Critical thinking and socially engaged practice

<Week 2>
No Class

<Week 3>
Participation: forum theatre
<Week 4>
Space & Critique
<Week 5>
Fetishism
Capitalism is a system of social relations of power between people for the purpose of making money
by producing and exchange commodities. Not every object can be defined as commodity. It must have
a use -value, which satisfies some need or desires, and also an exchange - value. According to Karl
Max, Commodity Fetishism is a perception of the social relationships involved in production, not as
relationship among people, but just as economic relationships among the money and commodities
exchanged in market. It is the rule of dead things over living people and an illusion.
The fruit of labour, which is the product, goes to the market and labourer is being under control of the
price of the product that was determined by the external factors. This weeks topic made me think
about our ordinary examples. The Marriage bureau could be one of the examples of commodity
fetishism. The member of the company desires opponents wealth and according to the market law,
doctors and lawyers who normally earn higher wages in this society are more likely to be requested
and chosen. Apply this instance to exchange of equivalent that we trade objects that have similar
values, the marriage bureau match similar people or class that have resembling values. Humans could
also be treated like a commodity, which becomes an abstract exchange.

<Week 6>
Means & Relations of Production
<Week 7>
Autonomy of Art Vs its negation
Pedagogic art is an art that aims to educate and to form a relationship between artist and the audiences
who will be participating. Artist creates a certain lecture and both the artist and the participants teach
and learn to encourage the social change and furthermore for critical thinking.
Autonomy of art is that art should be independent from every other factor like government functions,
economic etc, focus on art itself. Could art be autonomous? Some might say the elements in the
artwork such as line, shape, and colours, material, technique is differing from artists to artists and they
build their own structure and style therefore, art can be autonomous. On the other hand, some might
say art borrows factors from society and it will not be completed or even exist until then.
If we only judge art by practical purpose and against the possibility of containing original value of art,
could art be art? It is true that art has own elements and distinctive characteristics and that could be
independent. However, the process of making the artwork, coming up with an idea will be influenced
by the society because artist is human and artists live in a society and get affected by the environment
around.

<Week 8>
Structuralism
Structure is a system of elements where the value if each element is defined in relation to the value of
every other element. The individual element is less important than the total system of relations.
Structuralism emphasised relational systems where the value of each element depends on its
difference from other elements. Lets dig a little more in to structural analysis. It chose the corpse as a
film; contrasting pairs, which are male vs. female and work vs. home, tend to be correlated. Also
mentioned a analysis that man is who usually looking and woman is usually looked at and the camera
and the movie industry dominantly takes a male point of view. We cannot conclude that the entire
movie is viewed in males perspective but it was fascinating to find the analysis and made me rethink
and take a careful look at the act of looking in the movies, which is a fresh new direction for me.
Likewise, structuralism can be used to analyse everyday culture and the aim is to develop a system of
relations between contrasting terms. This can help us to understand how power works in society and
critically think about the situation that most of the time we have not chosen but born with. Sadly, even
though we try to make a difference of those structures by practical actions, it will not be easy to shake
things up.
Deconstruction is a movement in philosophy and literally theory and developed partly in response to
structuralism. We can reverse a binary opposition by making the subordinate term into the higher one
like woman in a dominant position. The main difference between deconstruction and structuralism is
that deconstruction emphasise the possibility of overturning those structures and structuralism mainly
aims to identify and describe structures. Deconstruction identifies a particular structure and then
introduces ambiguity and playfulness within that structure.

<Week 9>
Feminism: other histories
Feminism concerns equality, difference and construction of meaning a power relation. In this week, I
have learned that theory is important to feminism and past feminist work with theories. Analysing the
workings of patriarchy for instance, the Guerrilla Girls, billboard proposal for the Public Art Fund in
New York demonstrating the reality by stating a statistical data of how little woman takes place in the
modern art section but most of the nudes are female. It came to my mind that I was not realizing the
matter, which I will discuss below up until the incident that took place in Seoul last year. That was
when I felt or even aware of the misogyny around our society especially in Korea. Misogyny is
defined as dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women according to Oxford
Dictionary. The awareness of misogyny is raised due to a terrible incident of murder without motive
at the public toilet in Gang Nam, Seoul last year. The murderer was a guy and killed a random girl
because he stated that women ignored him. Due to the incident, women in Korea started to realize
their status/position in the society and tried to speak their voice up more and more.
Learning more about feminism and the artworks related to it inspires me to rethink about the culture,
the origin regarding how this happened and even critically thinking whether feminism is what I think
it is.

<Week 10>
Psychoanalytic narratives: repression & unconscious
We cannot debate psychology without Sigmund Freud's theory that pays strong attention to the role of
desire. It was new for me to know that Freud influenced structuralism and his ideas are generally
influential on critical theory. The three elements of structural model of minds are ID, EGO and
SUPEREGO. The ID is completely unconscious and consists of instinctive response. It does not
follow any rules of logical thinking and aims for the immediate satisfaction of desires. The EGO
develops from the ID. It is more realistic and considers what is possible and socially acceptable. It
often delays satisfaction and stops impulse decisions. The EGO commands the ID to adapt to the
requirements of reality. Lastly, the SUPEREGO develops at last around at the age of 5 and considered
a specialized part of the ego. It consists of our ideals and moral standards and includes out sense of
how we like to be and what we ought to be. It is acquired from outside and the family plays an
important role.
Psychoanalysis is a theory that mainly to analysis dreams. Dream can be considered as people's
reactions or hidden desire to somethings, or even about people predicting the future. The surrealist
artist, Salvador Dali is the well known person who have highly influenced by Freud. Dali extends the
method of associations that was originally used by Freud to analyse dream. He illustrated how artists
express their dreams into inspiring artworks to impress and surprise people.

<Week 11>
Discipline & Control
<Week 12/13>