Louis Marin (22 May 1931 – 29 October 1992) was a French philosopher, historian, semiotician and art critic.He was born in La Tronche. He is usually referred to as a French Post-Structuralism thinker. He attended the University of Paris, Sorbonne and graduated with a Licence in Philosophy in 1952. His degree was followed in 1953 with an Agrégé in Philosophy and with a Docteur d'Etat in 1973. Marin taught at the University of Nanterre, Paris from 1967 to 1970, the University of California, San Diego from 1970 to 1974, Johns Hopkins University from 1974 to 1977, and finally at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris from 1977 to 1992. He was also an Associate of the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University from 1985 until his death in 1992 in Paris. Marin was widely known for his work in a variety of areas: linguistics, semiotics, theology, philosophy, anthropology,rhetoric, art and institutional history and literary theory. Throughout his career, Marin's main intellectual focus was seventeenth-century French literature, particularly the works of Blaise Pascal, Perrault, Nicolas Poussin and Philippe de Champaigne. In addition, he published numerous articles on the visual arts and religious texts. (wikipedia).
Disneyland: A Degenerate Utopia
Author of a wide range of studies on Christianity, the French monarchy, Italian Renaissance painting, semiotics, and the human body in art and literature.
He looked at utiopia from the meaing suggested by it etymology: Greek ou, "no" + Greek topos "place". The opposite of contemporary history is transcendental fantasy, or Disneyland. In this writing he shares the "metadiscourse," the ability to call attention to something by representing its opposite; a form of critique that substitutes a practical activity (reading a map of Disneyland) for an ideological one (Indulging the Disney fantasy). The second point in his article is to show how utopias undermine historical awareness.
Signifier Ou-topia in which "something" was inscribed by Thomas More on a geographical shart: a name given by him at the begining of the sixteenth century to a blessed island between England and America. Old and New World. It was written as a geographical referent.
On the one hand, utopia, expresses what is absolutlen new, the "possible as such," what is unthinkable in the common categories of thought used by the peoples of a given time in its history. On the other hand, utopia cannot transcent the common and ordinary language of a period and of a place.
The second aim of our analysis is to show how a utopian structure and utopian functions degenerate, how the utopian respreantation can be entirely caught in a dominant system of ideas and values and, thus, be changed into a myth or a collective fantasy. Disneyland is the represenation realized in a geographical space of the imaginary relationship which the dominant group of American society maintain with their real conditions of existence, or more precisely with the real history of the United States and with the space outside of its borders. Disneyland is a fantasmic projection of the history of the American nation, of the way in which its history was conceived with regard to other peoples and to the natural world. Disneyland is an immense and displaced metaphor of the stystem of representations and values unique ot amrican society?
Disneyland money is less a money than a language; with his real money the visitor buys the signs of the Disneyland vocabulary thanks to which he can perform his part, utter his "speech" or his individual narrative, take his tour in Disneyland.
imaginaire - a fixed, stereotyped, powerful fantasy.
Main street USA is a universal operator and builds three functions (1) phatic: is allows all the possible stories to be narrated; (2) referential: thourgh it, reality becomes a fantasy and an image, a reality; (3) integrative: it is the space which divides Disneyland into two parts, left and right, and which relates these two parts to each other.
Locus of society: truth consumption - underlying message as a text.
It is the locus of the social truth - consumption - which is the truth for all of Disneyland.
Main Street USA, the past and the present, that is, and ideal past and a real present.
parole - the visitors tour
parcours in time- a narrative
Narrative tours constitute a total system and that the map is the structure of this total system
Disneyland is an example of a langue reduced to a a univoal code, without parole, even though its visitors ahve the feeling of living a ppersonal and unique adventure on their tour.
Disneyland is an extra-ordinary distopia.
The realm of the Machine as a erduced model is the cultural truth of the American way of life, here and now, looking at itself as a universal way of living.
An ideology is a system of resprensations of the imaginary relationships which individuals have with their real living condition.
Utopia is an ideological locus: it belongs to the ideoligical discourse.
Utopia is an ideological locuse where ideology is put into play and called into qustion. Utopia is the stage where an ideology is performed or represented.
A myth is a narration which fantastically "resolves" a fundamental contradiction in a given society.
Theorem: A degenerate utopia is a frgment of the ideoligcial discourse realize din the from of a myth or a collective fantasy.
DR. SPRINGER'S NOTES:
Post Structuralism
The phenomenon of historical amnesia or rejection of history.
Structuralists didn't study history.
Frederick Jamison did landmark study on rejction of history in 20th century culture.
Good example: Structuralists expanded the notion of the text and in so donig it brought about films, adverising, amusement parks, comic strips, etc.
Pecise spatial patterns
Draw on variety of cultural aspects: Disneyland takes from folk lore and fairy tales.
Ideology of technicoligial ptimism.
Consuemr conomy is like late capitalism. History - 6 Flags Over Teas - countries that were over Txas - Frontier City - old west
Entertainment being aimed at youthful audience.
Drwaing on cultural signifiers.
Not an accurate dpection, But rather a fantasy version. Nostalgia, fun.
Notion of utopia means no perfect place. Lacan (eliminated)
Imaginary - a set of images that possess imaginary a convising rhetorial qualities or ethical virtues.
Images tell the truth; language tells lies(?)
Marin is trying to ghet at visual images that trick us taht they have at Disneyland
Bartyhes, Foucault Marin Lacan was major figure
Rhetorical effect meaing is created with the text. The text is the park itself. "View as text"
he's trying to reintegrate history and thus falls int he post structuralism.
Utopian writing - aims to solve certain problems in the world.
How they will be addressed.
Trying to express new, but forced to use what is familiar to us.
Disneyland a metaphor
Where does the text take us and the world leave off?
Liminal - experiemnces whereby organisms are transformed. Any place or experience that changes you - Example - graduation.
Structure - spacial arranghemetn of objects.
Disneyland is carefully designed. The experience is much like reading a novel. When you go to Disneyland you're forced to make choices. Overwhelmed by choise. It is designed like that on purpose. Feel as if we are in charge of our choices, but we're not we are controlled by the designer of the park. Literatue of prose is the same.
Parking lot is significant, because that's where we leave our cars and the real world. Disneyland is a centered space.
Structuralism languague is a center and the limit center is source of meaning the core of the text the boundary of the text. Cinderallas castle is in center of Disneyland. Doesn't show povery, evel happenings, bad and ugly. Your trip to the park should be like a story.
In order to turn it into a parole we would have to be able to take control of the park.
Filtered through the poltical prejudices of the parks' designers.
Mediated look at history - someb ody's version.
History is evoked, b ut almost neuterized. Processed
Tomorrowland - fantasized vision of the future.
TRechnilogocal optimism.
Technology will make the owrld a better place.
EPCOT was originally uintended to be an amusement park, but rather a technical futurisitc workshop where his employees could live. Fantasylnad Marin the return of reality. Axioms is a not to structuralism. NoClaude Levi-Strauss imaginary solutions to real problems structuralism becomes post structuralism where more ideolgical pespectives are considered.
Disneyficatio of culture - Creating homogynized optimistic view. rhetoric vandalize the visitor.