Performative Utterance Lecture Notes Nov. 12, 2014

• application, analysis theories
• we create understanding within ourselves
• Jane Austen-Theory of performativity
• Hamlet is creating a universe through thought
• Perlocutionary- an act performed by a speaker upon a listener
• creating something that becomes truer as we talk about it
• Hamlet is reinforcing his lack of uncertainty
• He goes from "this sucks" to "I suck"
• "I'm not that good guy" which makes it really personal for him
• Can words change someone's personalities?
• Do we create ourselves as we go or is it all set in stones?
• Polonius is a creature of language and words
• Claudius isn't about negotiations, which we see through the way he kills his brother
• He is a sympathetic character
• He is rotten and possesses no morals
• Shakespeare portrays that it would be unsympathetic act to kill someone on his knees praying

To be continued...
 

Hamlet Act III

•  To Be or Not To Be soliloquy
• Hamlet is openly rude and harsh to Ophelia saying that he no longer loves her and she should just go away, mentions how women turn men into monsters and corrupts them but he could be alluding to his mother's actions with Claudius
• With this encounter, Polonius convinces Claudius to set Queen Gertrude up in the hope that Hamlet will reveal his secrets to her, he does this because he doesn't want to admit that his first explanation of Hamlet's unusual behavior was wrong
• Claudius however realizes the risk that Hamlet is posing on him and wants to send him away to somewhere he will do no harm, but Polonius fears that moving Hamlet might lead the kind to question his judgement 
• Hamlet is working very hard with the actors in the play because he wants it to be shown exactly the way he envisions it
• He later asks Horatio to watch over the King and Queens reaction to the play to see if they falter at any point, later on he does confide in Horatio of his plan and of his father's murder
• During the play Claudius panics and flees the scene and then confesses his sins
• Hamlet does indeed meet with Gertrude and talks deeply about his disappointments and his feelings
• Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius and becomes extremely angry and confused 
• My question is why did Shakespeare not use the opportunity to kill Claudius when the chance had arisen?
• Why take Polonius's life by "accident"?
• What does Polonious's death serve to the plot of the story?

The Performative Utterance notes

• a play about a man who could not make real what was found in his mind ?
• Hamlet wavers is in the physical commission of this duty, in transcending the confines of his mental determination into the physical space
• unable to move that duty from the mental to the real
• Hamlet is able to speak but not to do
• philosopher of language J.L. Austin's theory of performativity How to Do Things with Words
  (1962),
• certain language does not merely describe action but acts in being spoken
• Austin divided the performative ability of language into three main forces: the locutionary force, the ability of language to deliver a message, the force of mutual intelligibility; the illocutionary force, what is done in being said, such as denying a request, giving an order, etc.; and the perlocutionary force, what is achieved by being said, the consequences of one's utterance, such as an order being followed (or refused)
• A man saying, "I order you to submit" is not merely describing his desire for the other to know he is asking for submission, but creates in the world the fact that he has ordered. The other hears it and understands (due to locutionary force), has had an order to submit put to him (due to illocutionary force), and may submit, or be offended by the order, or similar (and these are the perlocutionary effects).
•  Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
  (1998), Harold Bloom argues that Shakespeare's characters frequently develop through "self-over hearing. "Shakespeare's characters, in this argument, overhear themselves speaking and in doing so gain self-knowledge
• the process which allows characters to realize their own utterances and in doing so realize themselves
• If Hamlet is a character who engages in this self-overhearing, and he is a man who, for most of the play, demonstrates a disconnect between what he says and what he does, it then becomes useful to consider the impact of his performative language on his overhearing self
• Shakespeare was a dramatist, his creations plays meant for performance.. What was available to audiences was what could be seen and heard on a stage
• characters therefore had to present their inner selves to the audience through speeches, soliloquies and similar
• involving concepts of self-overhearing, self-creation and performativity in an analysis of a play risks positing an interior world that, in some sense, transcends what is revealed through the utterance of lines of dialogue
• This would be a mistake; there is no Hamlet, and thus no "Hamlet's mind" to be explored outside of the specific and limited consideration of what is revealed through Hamlet's speech
• One of the most important and obvious scenes in which to consider the performative utterances in
   Hamlet is the meeting between Hamlet and the ghost of his father
• meeting contains two oaths, Hamlet's, and later Horatio and Marcellus's
• They create the fact, "a promise (or oath) has been made in the world," which by convention binds someone to some behavior. And the making of an oath demonstrates how the illocutionary force can influence or compel the perlocutionary:once someone has made an utterance of the type "I swear," the illocutionary force of an oath having been made exists in the world
• If the person who has sworn fails to perform his tasked action, the perlocutionary effect may instead be that he is called a liar, or a swearer of false oaths, and any additional punishment or consequences of this failure are themselves a part of the perlocutionary force of the utterance. In this way we can see the locutionary meaning of an utterance creating the illocutionary effect of that utterance which in turn drives the perlocutionary effect, thought to language to action
• this way it is easy to see how Hamlet, having sworn revenge against Claudius, might be driven to perform such a deed
• The problem is that Hamlet does not swear to avenge his father
• Told this incredible tale about his father being brutally killed, and compelled by his father's ghost to take revenge, Hamlet swears only to remember, an entirely cognitive act and one subject to no outside verification

• Hamlet and the ghost compel Horatio and Marcellus to swear oaths of their own. But these oaths are only of secrecy, of not doing something; their duty is defined entirely negatively 
• One of the consistent motifs in Hamlet is that of drama and playacting
• Austin considers performatives that for some reason or another fail to perform. Referring to these alternatively as "unhappy" performative acts, or "infelicities," Austin colorfully describes them as the "doctrine of the things that can be and go wrong" (Words14)
• Playacting in the context of theater or drama might be said to contain the locutionary force of intelligibility of a given utterance, but not it's illocutionary force
• A character in a play who says "I thee condemn" delivers the mutually intelligible message that he is condemning someone to the audience, but without the illocutionary force of a fact of condemnation having been created in the world, because his utterance lacks the context and appropriateness requisite for such a fact being created

To Be Continued...

Big Question

Today I had a small meeting with Dr. Preston about where I should start to go with my Big Question. We talked about people he knew and he gave me a few names a said he would pass on my Big Question with those he works with. We talked a little more about what this Masterpiece was supposed to be about and how it will represent my journey through researching and evaluating my Big Question. I have also decided that I would like to explore space as a part of my Masterpiece and add that into what I learn.

Adam Sandler To Be or Not To Be

Here is Adam Sandlers video Billy Madison where he does the beginning portion of To Be or Not To Be. The video quality unfortunately is not the best.

To Be or Not To Be

 Naiomi thankfully video taped my video for me so here is a link to her blog post.

Daniel Radcliffe on Jimmy Fallon

Was shown this today, awesome, wonderful and impressive.