RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

School is cool. [I think.]

In light of the recent discussions as posed in class, I feel that it is the right time in the semester to transition from straight, academic prose and offer up some sort of self-reflection. While I acknowledge that this blog is meant to focus my studies of the Politics of Information, as addressed by the perimeters of the class, I would like to briefly suspend that in favor of an informal response to the question “why am I in grad school?”

Last week in class, we were transitioning from Harvey’s Rebel Cities to Aronowitz’s The Knowledge Factory and the topic quickly turned to the reasoning behind attending an institution of higher learning, especially given that higher degrees no longer (if they did at all) guarantee a job placement after school. I must confess that I did not participate in the class discussion as much as I normally do because of the topic at hand. I do not really know why I choose to undertake a Masters degree, especially one in English. My undergrad is in Creative Writing, and I had all but decided to pursue the Rhetoric and Composition option at the grad level, but now I’m unsure. This all comes down to the fact that I do not want to teach. While most my classmates and friends in the department have reservations about teaching, for the most part they understand and acknowledge that teaching in any capacity most often comes with a degree in English. I guess the problem really comes down to exactly what I want to do for a professional career, and how a Creative Writing and Rhetoric & Composition background will help me.

Aronowitz states that “education is successful when the student identifies with social and cultural authorities” (1). But I have to question if this is really what I’m undertaking by pursuing a higher degree. I choose English because I’ve always been interested in reading, literature, and writing, and I choose Rhetoric and Composition because – truthfully – I did not want to do the Creative Writing or the Literature option. Furthermore, theory both excites and intimidates me, as I said in the first post to this blog at the beginning of the semester. But now, having almost finished my first semester in grad school, I have to wonder if I’m really gaining anything from it. I confess I do not like the idea of being forced to identity with “social and cultural authorities.” I like to think that I am gaining something more than just base cultural information and a place in the social and economic structure of the world. Or rather, I hope that at the end of all of this – school, academic life, everything – that I will gain something worthwhile to me.

Online & On-Profit: At the intersection of education and capitalism

The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

- Kurt Vonnegut

In the introduction to Digital Capitalism, Dan Schiller questions the idea of the “utopian vision” of the Internet, inquiring if that the digitalization of the “express[ion of] ancient yearnings” is equivalent, or at least indicative of, “the historical detoxification through scientific knowledge: the truth—information?—will make us free” (xiii). Despite the vast amounts of information that is available free on the Internet (although that’s not to say all of it is “true” or reliable – Wikipedia being a prime example), the majority of learners in this country remain enrolled in the traditional routes of education, although it does seem that each passing year brings more and more attention for alternative modes of schooling. Anyone who has seen advertising and/or commercials promoting the entirely of the education experience being conducted online, from the comfort of the student’s own home (you don’t even have to change out of your pajamas!), seems to be enough to make any student who is tired of dealing with long commutes, absurd parking situations and lengthy, tedious lectures held in stuffy classes turn immediately to online schooling. However nice or easy that sounds, we must continue to remember that “cyberspace itself is being rapidly colonized by the familiar workings of market system” (Schiller xiv). In this way, caution is heeded in light of the education system being further commodified from the condition it is already in.

The university is a business, and it must continue to make profits in order to keep itself afloat. But what happens when education becomes (more-or-less) freely accessible, affordable and tailored to an individual’s own learning habits?

Amada Ripley raises this question in a recent article in TIME. In “College is Dead. Long Live College!” Ripley visited both “brick-and-mortar colleges and enrolled in half a dozen MOOCS,” or “massive open online courses,” in order to experience how each operates (it appears she focused primarily on classes, both traditional and online, that dealt with physics and/or science) (37). Although there still remains in academic circles a stigma of online courses (I personally know a handful of professor who are reluctant or refusing to teach their courses online) being somehow inferior to traditional courses, MOOCs like Udacity, Coursea and edX have some pretty legitimate support, ranging from a former Stanford professor to Princeton, Penn and Duke to MIT and Harvard, respectively.

Ripley’s experience seems positive for the most part, as she notes that the introductory physics class she enrolled in at Udacity was “designed according to how the brain actually learn” (37). She notes that former Stanford professor Sebastian Thrum, the CEO and co-founder of Udacity, saw that traditional Stanford students enrolled in his online course did better than those who didn’t take the Udacity course. Thrum relates on how he was able to adjust the course based on reactions from students, including how when “tens of thousands of students all got the same quiz problem wrong, he realized that the question was not clear, and he changed it” (39). Perhaps this is to the benefit of the students and the coursework, having large numbers of quantitative data that can be turned into qualitative changes. On the other hand, one of my own professors recently revealed to the class that she changed the final exam of the graduate theory course she has taught for the past ten-plus years after she saw that students were too stressed with a take-home exam. Arguably, she did not have, despite teaching for so long, the “tens of thousands” of students to give her the feedback that Thrum did. My professor couldn’t make changes on the fly, or even from semester-to-semester, as easily as Thrum could with a wider scope of participants and thoroughly electronic means.

Furthermore, Ripley calls attention to the fact that according to research, “three semester of college education have a ‘barely noticeable’ impact on critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills” (36-37). This relates to a topic of discussion this week in class, in which one of my classmates brought up the criticism leveled against mandating general education units, especially at the undergraduate level. His criticism, it seemed, stems from frustration he experienced at not really gaining anything productive or useful from the wide range of supplemental classes he had to take in topics he wasn’t really interested in. However, I offered up my viewpoint, in which I noted that I made sure to take general ed classes in topics I was interested in (for example, an astronomy course in life in the universe and the possibility of aliens). In fact, I didn’t decide on my undergraduate major until taking a general ed class – Creative Writing 1. It’s not clear if the “three semesters” that Ripley cites is primarily from the first couple of years of school (which are themselves heady, uncertain times for most students living on their own for the first time) but the issues my classmate raised perhaps find some legitimacy in Ripley’s article. However, MOOCs could arguably one day be widespread and developed enough to allow students to pick from a wider range of topics than that which his provided in a traditional university setting.  More classes like the one I took in astronomy (which was, ironically, provided at Santa Monica Community College, often cited as the destination community college for both in-state and foreign exchange students as it has an extraordinarily high transfer rate to 4-year schools like UCLA and USC). In that course, we discussed possibility of alien life in the universe. We looked at the criteria that exoplanets needed in order to provide life (within the hospitable zone to a central star, the major elements, etc), read Sagan’s Contact as a required text and studied the various probes sent out over the years, as well as looking at more traditional astronomical topics like formation of stars, planets and our solar system. I was interested in the class because of its specific focus while still retaining a lot of the more “useful” components of a science/astronomy class. I was thankful that SMCC provided general ed courses that stepped outside the normal offerings of generic science classes. However, this isn’t practical in light of severely limited funding for universities and thus online courses might be a step in the direction of offering a wider range of courses for cheaper.

There is also something to be said about Ripley’s acknowledge of the fact that a lot of MOOCs, Udacity in particular, “aim to cut out the middleman [or the transferring of credits to higher-learning institutions] and go straight to employers” (41). She does note that at this stage, most of the MOOCs and other alternative learning routes “work well for students who are self-motivated and already fairly well educated,” but this could certainly change if the prices, time commitment, and end benefit of the MOOCs could be further applicable to students’ needs, or at least more so than in traditional channels (41).

Additionally, we must consider the implications of the University of Phoenix, a for-profit school owned by the Apollo Group, closing 115 facilities around the country:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1ylZKk5IDc

(YouTube video not embeddable).

The reporter rightly notices the university heeding the changing times by looking for “a new business model to stay competitive” (1:28). Perhaps then, the closing of the brick-and-mortar facilities is their way to try to stay in line with the development of online learning tools. On the other hand, Ripley cites a quote by University of Phoenix spokesman Ryan Rauzon, who says that “[students] need a degree, and that isn’t going to change anytime soon,” and points out that a vast majority of companies still look for “traditional” degrees and it will be some time before the wide acceptance of online or MOOC provided degrees (40). The contradictions between what the University of Phoenix says and what it does seems to signal some sort of interstitial occupation between the “traditional” and “new” routes of education.

However, in the end, I have to wonder if all this talk about diversifying the education process (that is, even further than it is already divided) through online application is somehow reminiscent of “leading consumer products companies like Disney and General Motors [having]… ‘two-tier marking’ plans, polarizing products and sales pitches to reach ‘two different Americas’ – rich and poor” (Schiller 53). Obviously, there are already extensive differences between the experiences and education students have at, say, the Ivy League colleges versus the state-run universities. That is not to say, however, that I essentially believe my experienced and education at California State University, Northridge is somehow inferior to one I would have gotten if I had attended, for example, USC or Berkley, nor am I suggesting that I think I’m not getting something worthwhile out of both my B.A (Creative Writing) and M.A. (Rhetoric and Composition) at CSUN. I am simply acknowledging the fact that one school is considered “inferior” to the others listed above, and unless something extraordinary occurs, those divisions will remain in place. In my view, it seems that online schools, MOOCS, and other digital avenues of learning (YouTube videos, web series, etc.) are emerging as the middle-ground in between the “superior” and “inferior” division of traditional schools.

What Schiller seems most concerned with – and an issue I would have to agree with him on – is the fact that “during the 1970s… the long-standing distinction between education and business began to erode,” and it certainly has only escalated since then (147). Schiller sees the causes of this as relating to matters of in-house corporate training and education, changing information technologies and more adults returning to the academy. The “information technologies” aspect is most interesting to me, since he later takes issue with the “central selling point of most [online course production] software packages [being] that faculty members can ‘simply fill in the blanks, and the program produces a Web site’” (193). When I first began at CSUN two years ago, I had never heard of Moodle. Now, I use it everyday, and cannot think of a class I’ve taken during my undergraduate studies that did not use Moodle in some way. I consider this site, as helpful as it is sometimes, one of those “fill-in-the-blank” academic tools, one that disengages the student from the classroom instead of creating a worthwhile experience. This is one reason why I prefer the method I’m undertaking this very instant: the act of blogging. (Full disclosure: this is the third class I’ve taken with this particular professor, and a quick view of my profile will show the other blog sites I’ve made for other courses.)

In addition to outlining many instances of corporate education programs, Schiller also notes that the Apollo Group planned “an aggressive expansion” in Asian and European markets, turning the idea of the “mega-university” into a “broker of distance learning services on a world stage” (198). My primarily issue with this idea, one that Schiller seems to share, is that blending education and business, especially one primarily geared towards English/America education models, is only spreading capitalism and not necessarily the ideals of knowledge and truth. Ripley notices too the interest that venture capitalist have shown towards the “business model” of MOOCs (37). However, unlike Schiller, she does not spend too much time looking at this potential problem, noting only that it “seems likely that more people will eventually learn more for less money. Finally” (37). Ripley appears to remain optimistic about the future of education in light of technological and economic changes, while Schiller advocates caution in proceeding through the intersection of education and business.

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KCRATV. “University of Phoenix closing 3 facilities in our area.” YouTube. Web. 8 November 2012.

Ripley, Amanda. “College is Dead. Long Live College!” Time. 29 October 2012: 32-41. Print.

* Also available online: Time.com. 18 October 2012. Web. 8 November 2012. < http://nation.time.com/2012/10/18/college-is-dead-long-live-college/>

Schiller, Dan. Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000. Print.

Can't Get No Satisfaction; The Work of Best Buy's Buy Back Program

            It is inevitable that each time a new product is released into the market, it supplements, improves on, or (in the most extreme cases) completely replaces an existing commodity, rendering what has come before it obsolete. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the realm of technology, where advances in hardware seem to come as often as the weather changes. In light of this process, Best Buy’s Buy Back Program, in which consumers “buy it now [and Best Buy will] buy it back when the new thing comes out,” attempts to capitalize on consumers’ constantly shifting desires for new commodities. However, by focusing on the commodities themselves and the service role that the company takes in facilitating transactions, the commercial effectively ignores the ways in which modes of labor are shifting and the implications of an entirely information/service-driven economy should traditional labor be displaced by technology.

            In order to advertise the Buy Back Program, the commercial directly appeals to consumers’ feelings of frustration and distress over the constant cycle of newly-released products. The first five seconds of the advert exaggerates (perhaps rightly so) the notion of the rapid pace of technological innovation that renders “everything else… obsolete” (0:04). Additionally, the text cards proclaiming “Technology moves fast” (0:08) and “We feel your pain” (0:15) showcase a (perhaps spurious) sense of understanding and sympathy towards the consumer’s plight. It is only in the last five seconds that the commercial makes any note of the company or program itself. That is to say, almost the entirety of the traditional thirty-second commercial is focused on appealing to the viewer’s reservations about technology and consumption. The rhetoric here seems to be that it is perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, to desire the new “thing”, whatever it may be, and the Buy Back Program is a route that enables the consumer to literally “buy into” the incessant demand for novelty, and, as a result, the continuation of the consumption process essential to the capitalist system.

            The incessant cycling between the old and the new is a major factor in what Morris-Suzuki calls the “perpetual innovation economy,” one that “pour[s] increasing amounts of capital and labor into the development of better software, new techniques, different products” (18). In light of contemporary application, this statement may seem problematic as in the past fifteen years, “labor”, as a productive, human activity in the Marxist sense of the word, is being increasingly and systematically replaced by automation and robotics technology. However, Morris-Suzuki does go on to note that “many jobs – particularly jobs involving personal services – continue to be relatively unmechanized” (24). This outlook more closely fits with the shift from “productive” to “non-productive” jobs, or what Mandel sees as the division between “manual and intellectual labor” (21). A Best Buy employee fits into the category of the “non-productive” or “service” labor because he/she is not responsible directly for creating or producing the commodities, but rather acts as the middle ground between the various technological companies and the consumer(s). In this vein, the commercial for the Buy Back Program works to situate the corporation as an important component of the “perpetual innovation economy,” and vital to the continuation of the capitalist system. According to the commercial, it appears that without the Buy Back Program, consumers would be left with their obsolete, and thus ostensibly useless, technology.

            Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that the “exchange of the ability to work (that is, labor power) for wages, and wages for necessities” is actually at the core of the capitalist system (Davis, et al. 7). Without human labor to generate surplus value for the various commodities, profits decline. Hirshl argues that the vast, continuous cycles of technological innovation are “a catalyst for revolutionary change,” the sort of social change Marx called for (158). Thus, the “cyclic process… [that] increases unemployment, heightens realization crises, and thereby sets the competitive conditions encouraging another round of technological adoption” actually signals the “end” of capitalism, rather than it being an important facet to continuing the economic structure (164). With technology getting smaller, more precise, and increasingly sophisticated with each generation, as it is show in the Best Buy commercial, it is not hard to imagine fully automated production processes devoid of human labor. In a perhaps slightly less apocalyptic or revolutionary attitude than Hirshl, Jones also rejects technological advances as somehow creating a new or sustainable form of capitalism. Jones’s view takes into account the idea that “information jobs are themselves highly susceptible to labor displacement,” meaning that as technology renders productive jobs obsolete, service and information workers will be affected as well (qtd. in Hirshl 160). That is to say, as technology displaces human labor at the level of “‘local’ system dynamics [it will] generate ‘emergent’ or ‘global’ dynamics” (162). Without productive labor, regardless of the site of production (domestic or foreign), the information/service worker would be out of a job.

            In the end, Best Buy, and subsequently its Buy Back Program, can only exist if commodities are made with surplus value. Hirshl raises an important issue when he questions what sort of jobs will be available in “information capitalism” as “electronics technology replaces labor” (160). Despite Best Buy’s optimistic stance on the “perpetual innovation economy” and its role in that system, the future of the capitalist system as Marx outlined remains uncertain as technology continues to displace human labor in favor of automation. Therefore, it may not matter where the jobs will be in an “information capitalism,” as there may not be jobs (at least in the traditional, capitalist sense) to begin with.

(Word count: 927)

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Davis, Jim, Thomas Hirschl, and Michael Stack, eds. Cutting Edge. London: Verso, 1997. Print.

Hirschl, Thomas. “Structural Unemployment and the Qualitative Transformation of Capitalism.” Cutting Edge. Eds. Jim Davis, Thomas Hirschl, and Michael Stack. London: Verso, 1997. 157-174. Print. 

lordbaenre. “Best Buy ‘Buy Back’ Commercial – Technology moves fast.” YouTube. 19 May 2011. Web. 30 October 2012. 

Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. “Robots and Capitalism.” Cutting Edge. Eds. Jim Davis, Thomas Hirschl, and Michael Stack. London: Verso, 1997. 13-27. Print.

Something New? No, Rather Something Old, Something Borrowed (and Something Blue); Technology as a Tool of the Capitalist

“The perpetual motion was to produce work inexhaustibly without corresponding consumption, that is to say, out of nothing. Work, however is money.”

- Hermann von Helmhotlz

During Mostafa and I’s presentation last week on Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism and Social Revolution, edited by Jim Davis, Thomas Hirschl and Michael Stack, I posed a question to the class in hopes to eliciting a conversation about how technology fits within the capitalist structure. The full outline of our presentation can be found at eng654.blogspot.com. In the entry for “Chapter 3: Why Machines Cannot Create Value; or, Marx’s Theory of Machines” by C. George Caffentzis,  we posted a video published by RSAnimate titled the “Crises of Capitalism” which is a remediation, of sorts, of a lecture given by economist David Harvey. 

In the video, from 7:30 to 9:05, Harvey seems to suggest that it is “financial ingenuity” that has driven the course of capitalism. I presented this video in class, with specific attention given to that minute and a half, because Harvey says that the “the whole history of capitalism has been about financial innovation.” I saw this standing in a little bit of a contrast to some of the previous texts we’ve read in class, namely of such theorists like Daniel Bell and Manuel Castells, as read via the Theories of the Information Society by Frank Webster. Bell and Castells argue that the vast quantity of bits of information form together to create a new society, as compared to such previous eras like the Agricultural or Industrial Ages.  

In an attempt to blend Caffentzis and Harvey with Bell and Castells, I asked in class whether it was significant that Harvey fails to mention technological and informational shifts in society in his critique of capitalism. If we notice the gaps in his critique, then is it possible to say that for Harvey, technological innovation – such as robots, automation, etc. – is just another form of the “financial innovation” that has shaped capitalism, instead of it being a separate component? Unfortunately, I don’t think I posed the question as correctly as I could, nor did I follow up by trying to tease out the underlying reasons for my questioning. 

So I thought I’d do that here, after this neat comic I found, of course:

In my thinking, this relates to the debate between what Webster deems as those “proclaim[ing] a new sort of society that has emerged from the old” versus “writers who place emphasis on continuities” (7). It would seem to me that Harvey fails to mention how he sees technology as shaping capitalism because he does not see technology as anything that is worth standing by itself. As such, all the components of technology that Tessa Morris-Suzuki and Caffentzis see as not adding any value to the production process – specifically, robots and automation – are, in Harvey’s view, just another factor in how the capitalists have altered the economic structure(s) of the world. In the video, Harvey only takes issue specifically with how “financial innovation” has “the effect of empowering the financiers.” I see Harvey as including technological innovation as just another category or element that the capitalist employs in order to keep atop of the hierarchical relationship between him and the working masses (or as Marx saw them, the proletariats).

Additionally, I see Harvey’s line of thinking as relating to Caffentzis argument that despite the notion that “the working day would be so reduced by mechanization that our existential problem would be… how to fill our leisure time” (29), automation, robots and “mechanization has lead to an increase, not a decrease, of work” [author’s emphasis] (31). An increase in work means an increase in the exploitation of worker from the capitalist’s viewpoint, which ultimately leads to an increase in value, ostensibly in a perfect application of the process. Replacement of workers by robots does nothing to add value to commodities despite the application of automation allowing the capitalist to manufacture commodities faster, cheaper and in greater numbers. According to Marx, the real source of value lies in the exploitation of the worker’s labor-power, and because robots have no labor-power to exploit, they cannot create value. This whole argument seems to fall in line with Morris-Suzuki’s use of Ernest Mandel’s theory that “total automation of all productive activity (including services) is incompatible with capitalism. We cannot even be certain that it would be compatible with human society of any kind” (15).

Of course, this brings us back to Harvey’s idea of “financial innovation.” If the increasing use of automation and technology in the capitalist structure is not the defining feature in contemporary economic circles (like it might initially be perceived as being), does this mean that robots are just another instrument in the capitalist’s toolbox, rather than a complete and separate workspace? This would mean, of course, that every innovation, be it technological or industrial, a new machine, robotic being or way of operating, are only parts of the grand scheme of the capitalist to own and control the vast economic spheres.

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Caffentzis, C. George. “Why Machines Cannot Create Value; or Marx’s Theory of Machines.” Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism and Social Revolution. Eds. Jim Davis, Thomas Hirschl and Michael Stack. New York: Verso, 1997. 29-56. Print.

Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. “Robots and Capitalism.” Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism and Social Revolution. Eds. Jim Davis, Thomas Hirschl and Michael Stack. New York: Verso, 1997. 13-27. Print.

theRSAorg. “RSA Animate - Crises of Capitalism.” YouTube. 28 June 2010. Web. 15 October 2012. 

Webster, Frank. Introduction. Theories of the Information Age 3rd Edition. New York. Routledge, 2006. 1-7. Print. 

On Writing and Speaking

“Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow...”

- Lawrence Clark Powell

It always thrills me when what I’m studying in one class merges over to another class.

With that in mind, in her essay “Writing”, Barbara Johnson makes the case that what Derrida saw wrong with the logocentristic nature of Western philosophy – the privileging of speech over writing resulting from the hierarchical notion of binary relationships – was that “even when a text tries to privilege speech as immediacy, it cannot completely eliminate the fact that speech, like writing, is based on a differance… between signifier and signified inherent in the sign. Speakers do not beam meanings directly from one mind to another. Immediacy is an illusion” (343). I think it’s interesting that Johnson uses the word immediacy, because the first thing I thought to connect it to was Bolter and Grusin’s notion of remediation, in which immediacy and hypermediacy play against each other as old media is adapted, updated and used to create new media. If Johnson is saying that speech operates under the notion of immediacy – that it is, it is “presence, life, and identity” – then the act of writing, of creating a text, takes on ideas of hypermediacy, of “deferment, absence, death, and difference” (343). Meaning that when we read words on the page, at some conscious level we are constantly acknowledging that we are using a tangible object in order to gain insight, knowledge, entertainment, etc., but that this relationship is effectively hypermediated in that we can never see past the words on the page to see something inherently sustainable underneath. All we see are signifiers, never the truth.

Furthermore, I thought briefly to connect this to Habermas’s idea of the public sphere, in which the act of physically meeting in a place – a coffeehouse, a salon, etc. – changed how information was circulated. Habermas suggests that because of the rise in publication materials such as newspapers, magazines and journals, more of the population – that is, white, land-owning males – became involved in political and social discussions. In this way, they were influenced primarily by texts, by the written word, by physical objects. But Habermas saw the actual meeting, the physical act of coming together, as the most important facet of how the public sphere was shaped. Due to this interpretation, it seems that Habermas was, to some extent, favoring speech over writing.

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Johnson, Barbara. “Writing.” Literary Theory: an Anthology 2^nd Edition. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 340-347. Print.

Analysis #1

"Information smacks of safe neutrality; it is the simple, helpful heaping up of unassailable facts. In that innocent guise, it is the perfect starting point for a technocratic political agenda that wants as little exposure for its objectives as possible. After all, what can anyone can say against information?"

- Theodore Roszak

Originally published in 1891, the advertisement for “Dr. Pierce’s Favorite Prescription” –  alleged to remedy such feminine “maladies” as “nervous excitability, exhaustion, prostration, hysteria,” as well as imparting “strength to the uterine organs” – shows some surprisingly complex political and cultural undertones. Although it is not specifically noted where this advertisement first appeared, we can assume that an advertisement of this sort would most likely have been published in a journal or magazine marketed exclusively for women. The undercurrents of political and cultural notions arise precisely in regards to its form as a newspaper advertisement and from its content as addressed specifically to women’s interests, which in turn mark it as indoctrinating the patriarchal ideological stances of the particular era.

As Jürgen Habermas outlines in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, the shift from solely private activities to public discourse amongst a widespread sphere of influence was marked by the rise not only in public spaces such as coffee-houses but also in the proliferation of affordable printed materials such as books and newspapers. Furthermore, up until the eighteenth century, “advertisements occupied only about one-twentieth” of political or cultural journal space, as most business communication was conducted either face-to-face or by word-of-mouth (Habermas 190). However, it was around the middle of the nineteenth century that advertising agencies became solidified business models. As newspaper and journals increasingly relied on selling advertising space in order to turn a profit, the publisher’s job was shifted from “a merchant of news to… a dealer in public opinion” (Habermas 182). Indeed, we can see this manifested in the advertisement, especially since the name of the product – “Favorite Prescription” – marks it has having some sort of societal approval and necessity. By keeping in mind Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s notion in Remediation that “no medium [seems to] function independently and establish its own separate and purified space of cultural meaning,” to some extent the rhetoric of the printed advertisement seems to remediate the rhythm and persuasive techniques of the sales pitch of the door-to-door salesman, albeit in a much more “public” setting, i.e. a newspaper with a high circulation (55).

One major criticism of Habermas’s notion of the public sphere is its notable exclusion of women. Habermas seems to peg this as a result of the “nobility joining the upper bourgeois stratum [that] still possessed social functions… [of] landed and moneyed interest”, thus resulting in conversations that included “economic and political disputes” (33). Evidently, according to Habermas, women would not be interested in such intellectual pursuits, and thus were neglected in terms of participation in the public sphere. However, he does note that it was “female readers… [that] often took a more active part in the literary public sphere,” constituting a reading public that held some significant economic sway (Habermas 56). Perhaps then this is the reason that the market for women’s journals and magazines, aimed at their interests, came about well before equality for women in the political realm, including the right to vote, which happened almost thirty years after “Dr. Pierce’s” was published. Furthermore, the advertisement’s likely publication in a women’s newspaper or journal, itself a form of media which “developed into a capitalist undertaking… [fueled by] a web of interests extraneous to business,” particularly shows its primary goal of selling a product, not necessarily providing women with the tools or opportunities for rational-critical debate (Habermas 185).

It is at the intersection of form and content that we can begin to see the underlying function of such advertising as related to Althusserian notions of ideological apparatuses, as well as the inherent attitude of the dominant patriarchal society. By considering Althusser’s thesis that ideology has physical properties, then we could argue that this particular advertisement, as published in a newspaper or journal, shows what Habermas sees as the “psychological manipulation of advertising” (190). As such, the language of the advertisement is directed to women by appealing to their insecurities. Of particular notice are the phrases “Many lovers have been separated because the health of the lady in the case failed” and “No man finds attraction in a woman who is subject to [the various disorders]”. What is subverted in this particular advertising technique is the fact that the “sender of the message hides his business intentions in the role of someone interested in the public welfare,” in this case, of the individual lady who might be suffering from these thoroughly Victorian aliments (Habermas 193). Furthermore, the illustration works to continue the “psychological manipulation” by characterizing the male gaze. Much like Dürer’s woodcut, here the “desire for immediacy is evident in [the man’s] clinical gaze, which seems to want to analyze and control… its female object” (Bolter 79). The man stares at the woman seated in front of the piano, turning the page of her music notes almost like an austere school-master. He holds the position of authority, standing above her, and thus she is regulated to a position of adolescence, fragility and obedience. Bolter and Grusin later make the argument that the male gaze in linear perspective “depends on hypermediacy, which is defined as an ‘unnatural’ way of looking at the word” (84). However, Althusser would argue that the interpellation process so engulfs society in ideological viewpoints that we are unable to see things any differently. For the women of this time period, lacking political and social equality, a masculine authority admonishing them for “undesirable” traits (i.e. the “organic diseases peculiar to women”) might be enough to persuade them to immediately go out and purchase the advertised product. Habermas extrapolates this claim by noting that “ideology accommodates itself to the form of the so-called consumer culture and fulfills… its old function, exerting pressure toward conformity” (215). It is precisely that conformity to the patriarchal notions of the differences between the sexes that is played out through this particular advertisement.

(Word count: 972)

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Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” Literary Theory: an Anthology 2^nd Edition. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 691 702. Print.

Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000. Print. 

Clymer, Floyd. Scrapbook: Early Advertising Art. New York: Bonanza Books, 1955. Print. 

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