McGraw Hill publishing Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

McGraw Hill publishing - Research Paper Example In the year 1902, John Hill founded the Hill Publishing company. The two men formed an alliance in the year 1909 and formed an alliance to create the McGraw Hill book publishing company. (McGraw Hill-a â€Å"brief history†) The company has three divisions namely, McGraw Hill Education, Financial Services and Information and media. The McGraw hill education division publishes books for primary, secondary, post secondary and professional education. The information and media business provides industry intelligence, analytics and business solutions for better decision making. The group has the following divisions namely Aviation week, Broadcasting, Business week group, JD Power associates, McGraw Hill construction and Platts group. McGraw Hill companies reported a second quarter Earnings per share of $0.52. The revenue of the company has decreased by about 12.4% to $164.1 million dollars, as compared to last year. The revenue in the education segment has decreased by about 17.2% to $555.2 million dollars in the second quarter. The total operating profit declined by about 70.1% amounting to an amount of $21 million dollars. The foreign exchange rates reduced the net revenue by about $10.1 million in this year. The revenue for the Information and Media segment has dropped by about 11.5% to $ 236.2 million in the second quarter. The foreign exchange rates did not have a great impact on the revenues but it led to a decline of $ 2.5 million in the operating profits. The company declared that due to the current economic slowdown the revenue expectations of the company has been reduced by about one percentage and the company expects the revenues to further decrease. The new guidance for earnings per diluted share has been modified and the new forecast for guidance has now been fixed at $2.2 to $2.25. (McGraw Hill-c â€Å"Investor Relations†). The company is headquartered in New York, USA. It also has

Unity of Virtues Essay Example for Free

Unity of Virtues Essay Virtue in its broad meaning is replicating God which is a perfect being but for a moral being it means the habit of being righteous. This also means that virtue is a collection of traits for a being to be morally good. When we consider all the virtues, we can consider how each virtue is related to other virtues. For example, being honest also have an impact on being truthful, trustworthy and other virtues. In this point of view, we can see that virtues are dependent of each other. . Circular unity of virtues is the relation of each virtue to one another and the union of a group of virtue for a human being to be considered good. If one virtue is done, another virtue is also affected. However, this is not applicable to all virtues. It is true that one virtue affects other virtues but not totally all because not all virtues have the same essence and limitations. A good example is that you may be honest but you can also lack generosity at the same time. There are other examples showing that virtues are grouped according to their essence, but cannot be grouped as a whole based on their essence. Circularity of virtues according to Aristotle is having virtues through our own experiences but all normal men tends to the basics of being good. He also stated that being good is dependent on the opinion of each person. Therefore the action of man also states his virtues. This just means that there is no true unity of virtues. We can have a particular virtue but for sure but we cannot have it all because we are just humans and humans are not perfect. We are enclosed to different reasons that unconsciously causes us not to do other virtues. These variables are culture, principle, and experiences. If the standard of being good is having all the virtues then no man is good because we are bounded by our different cultures, principles and experiences which is sometimes a hindrance to other virtues. It is true that there is no unity of virtues but having virtues connected to one another is already a standard to being good. Virtues tends to rely to one another. This just means that being helpful also connects to goodness, generosity and friendliness. You can easily see the relation of each virtue to one another because if you do one virtue it also part of the limitation of the other virtues. Circularity tells us that the virtues we have because of actions we do must not be judged because we all do with our own principles, instinct and knowledge. Virtues we acquire are just part of what we do. In that case to avoid circularity one must only judge in a way that it is meaningful. This also rises the need for moral responsibility which will give rise to molding of your character. Bibliography â€Å"The Ends of Thought. , 2009: Journeys to Philosophys Third Kingdom. † http://endsofthought. blogspot. com/2009/02/aristotle-on-virtue-question-about. html Blackwell Refrence Online. â€Å"The Unity of the Virtues, 2006. † http://www. blackwellreference. com/public/tocnode? id=g9781405115216_chunk_g978140511521625

Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Effectiveness

Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Effectiveness Contemporary organizations are faced with demands and pressures of ever expanding magnitude that the quest for effective leadership continues to intrigue educators, researchers, and practitioners. In this context, the present paper focuses on the importance of emotional intelligence (EI) in relation to leadership effectiveness. A significant amount of research and attention has been given to identifying relationships between emotional and social intelligence regarding, life satisfaction, personality, social relationships, team performance, education and leadership. Today, in light of the increasingly complex and changing world, researchers have highlighted the need for a new leadership approach. Through research in the area of personal-best experiences, Kouzes and Posners five identified leadership practices, which were identified through studies associated with the stories of leaders who were able to get extraordinary things done in their organizations Underlying Kouzes and Posners Model is the leaders ability to generate, encourage, and promote healthy, reciprocal, and collaborative relationships. This interpersonal or relational aspect of leadership has recently been connected to the emotional intelligence constructs that have gained popularity in recent decades. Emotional intelligence skills provide developing leaders with an increased understanding of the impacts of emotions within a team or organization. Caruso and Salovey demonstrated the advantages EI has with respect to six common challenges in leadership: (a) building effective teams, (b) planning and deciding effectively, (c) motivating people, (d) communicating a vision, (e) promoting change, and (f) creating effective interpersonal relationships. This paper ends by highlighting the impact of Emotional Intelligence in the leadership style of resonant and dissonant leaders. Introduction Contemporary organizations are faced with demands and pressures of ever expanding magnitude that the quest for effective leadership continues to intrigue educators, researchers, and practitioners. Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee (2002) explained that, leaders everywhere confront a set of irrevocable imperatives, changing realities driven by profound social, political, economic, and technological changes. During these changing times, it is most important for organizational leaders to stay attuned to their own emotional reactions to pressures, as well as how those environmental pressures affect their constituents. Hence todays organizations need a transformational change, calling for new leadership. In this context, the present paper focuses on the importance of emotional intelligence (EI) in relation to leadership effectiveness. EI Research The concept of emotional intelligence has gained popularity in recent decades; however, the characteristics and concepts associated with EI are rooted in research conducted throughout the twentieth century. Earlier works identified competencies, other than general intelligence, that contributed to life success. Thorndike (1937) reported the concept of social intelligence. Wechsler (1940) fought for the addition of non-intellective aspects as a measure of general intelligence. Likewise, Leeper (1948) purported that emotional thought should be considered when reviewing the concept of logical thought. However, it was not until the 1980s that the current concepts related to emotional intelligence started to emerge. Gardner (1983) shared a theory of multiple intelligences that encouraged researchers to step outside the notion that human beings are confined to a singular or plural view of intelligence. Gardner purported that there were five more intelligences that were equally important to collective human intelligence: musical intelligence, spatial intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and intrapersonal intelligence. Within these multiple levels of human development or intelligences, a movement evolved that expanded two particular areas of Gardners approach (i.e., interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences). According to Bar-On (2002), several researchers expanded Gardners interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences into six primary components of emotional intelligence: emotional self-awareness, assertiveness, empathy, interpersonal relationship, stress tolerance, and impulse control. Researchers generally agree that EI addresses ones ability to identify, interpret, and control his or her own emotions, as well as stay in tune with, understand, and relate to the emotions of groups and individuals (Goleman et al., 2002; Bar-On, 2002; Mayer Salovey, 1993). Additionally, EI stems from ones ability to utilize emotional information to appropriately solve problems and make environmentally savvy decisions. In the last two decades of the 20th century and more recently in the 21st century, a significant amount of research and attention has been given to identifying relationships between emotional and social intelligence regarding, life satisfaction (Palmer, Donaldson, Stough, 2002), personality (Higgs Rowland, 2001; Schulte, Ree, Carretta, 2004), social relationships (Lopes, Salovey, Straus, 2003; Massey, 2002), team performance (Rapisarda, 2002), education (Jaeger, 2003; Zeidner, Roberts, Matthews, 2002), outdoor leadership training (Thompson, 2004) and leadership (Goleman, 1998, 2001; Dulewicz Higgs, 2003; Cherniss Goleman, 2001). Leadership Theory Historically, social changes have been charted, coordinated, and led by a few leaders who had the ability to energize and motivate constituents or community members to stand tall, shed fears, and push forward the need for change. Today, in light of the increasingly complex and changing world, researchers have highlighted the need for a new leadership approach (Yukl Lepsinger, 2004; Kouzes Posner, 2002; Goleman, Boyatzis, McKee, 2002). Though researchers have been studying leadership and leadership development since the days of Aristotle and Plato (Leonard, 2003), the study of leadership has been plagued with an overabundance of theories with little common direction (Chemers, 1993; Northhouse, 1997; Day, 2001). Chemers (2000) conducted a historical overview and analysis of leadership theories and concluded that common findings in leadership studies have led to the following three tasks that leaders must achieve to be effective: (a) establish the legitimacy of their authority, (b) coach, guide, and support their constituents in ways that allow for both group and individual goal attainment, and (c) identify and employ the strengths and abilities found in themselves, as well as their constituents, to accomplish the organizational mission. Astin and Astin (2000) called for a leader who can be adaptive and promote creative solutions to modern societal problems. They further explained that to cope effectively and creatively with these emerging national and world trends, future leaders will not only need to possess new knowledge and skills, but will also be called upon to display a high level of emotional and spiritual wisdom and maturity. Hence, there is little doubt that our turbulent world requires a new perspective on leadership (Komives, Lucas, McMahon, 1998). Through research in the area of personal-best experiences, Kouzes and Posners five identified leadership practices, which were identified through studies associated with the stories of leaders who were able to get extraordinary things done in their organizations (Kouzes Posner, 2002). These leadership practices include Modeling the Way, Inspiring a Shared Vision, Challenging the Process, Enabling Others to Act, and Encouraging the Heart. Relational Leadership: Five Practices of Exemplary Leaders Effective leadership is about creating reciprocal relationships between the leader and followers, subordinates, or constituents that in turn creates the foundation for organizational and group success (Bass, 1985; Chemers, 1993; Komives, Lucas, McMahon, 1998; Kouzes Posner, 2003; Potter, Rosenbach Pittman, 2001). The Kouzes and Posners Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership Model has been noted for its contributions to the Relational Leadership paradigm (Komives, Lucas, McMahon, 1998; Endress, 2000; Berg, 2003). Kouzes and Posner (1987) conducted research in the area of personal best leadership experiences. They developed a Personal-Best Leadership Experience questionnaire, asked thousands of managers to complete the questionnaire, and conducted many follow-up interviews to gather additional information. The personal-best questionnaire asked managers to pick a project, program, or event that they characterized as their personal-best leadership experience. After analyzing the data collected from questionnaires and interviews, Kouzes and Posner found that despite the variety in situations and types of leadership experiences, similar patterns were identified related to actions taken by the leaders during the experience. Through the analysis process they identified Five Practices of Exemplary Le adership that contributed to getting extraordinary things done in organizations: Modeling the Way Inspiring a Shared Vision Challenging the Process Enabling Others to Act and (e) Encouraging the Heart. The first practice is Modeling the Way, in which leaders role model the behaviors they want the see in their constituents. Through action and involvement, leaders earn the right to lead and the respect of their followers. The second leadership practice is Inspiring a Shared Vision. This is when the leader imagines what the organization could be and then creates a vision that is attainable and attractive. The leader connects this new vision to the hopes and dreams of his or her constituents to generate passion and enthusiasm for realizing the vision. The third leadership practice is Challenging the Process. Exemplary leaders are pioneers who know that innovation and change involves experimentation, risk, and failure. A leader understands that change can feel uncomfortable and then builds constituent confidence by pursuing change incrementally and by accomplishing small victories. The fourth leadership practice involves Enabling Others to Act. Successful leaders understand that leadership is a team effort and are not afraid to share the leadership process. Leaders foster collaboration and build trust by supporting and encouraging their constituents to do good work. Leaders who are able to build trusting and collaborative relationships find that their constituents are higher performers and even exceed their own personal expectations. Finally, exemplary leaders Encourage the Hearts of their constituents to help them carry on in the face of challenge, frustration, and discouragement. Leaders know that celebrations and rituals, when done with authenticity and from the heart, build a strong sense of collective identity and community spirit that can carry a group through extraordinarily tough times. Relational Leadership and EI Underlying Kouzes and Posners Model of Exemplary Leadership Practices is the leaders ability to generate, encourage, and promote healthy, reciprocal, and collaborative relationships. This interpersonal or relational aspect of leadership has recently been connected to the emotional intelligence constructs that have gained popularity in recent decades (Mayer Salovey, 1997; Bar-On, 2002; Goleman, 1995). Researchers agree that there is considerable overlap between relational leadership and EI competencies in both content analysis and empirical evidence (Higgs, 2002; Dulewicz Higgs, 2003). Goleman (1998) made connections between emotional intelligence and leadership practices in which he boldly claimed that highly emotionally intelligent leaders and work teams contribute significantly to the overall success and bottom line of the organization. Goleman, et al. (2002), when talking about building a culture of change in an organization, assert the following: Emotionally intelligent leaders know how to manage their disruptive emotions so that they can keep their focus, thinking clearly under pressure. They do not wait for crisis to catalyze a need for change; they stay flexible, adapting to new realities ahead of the pack rather than just reacting to the crisis of the day. Even in the midst of vast change, they can see their way to a brighter future, communicate a vision with resonance, and lead the way. Positive emotional leadership is a necessity in times of chaos and change because constituents closely examine and then emulate or mirror their leaders behaviors and actions (Goleman, Boyatzis, McKee, 2002). In other words, constituents, either consciously or unconsciously, react to a leaders verbal and non-verbal responses to a specific crisis or challenge (Caruso Salovey, 2004). Dulewicz and Higgs (2003), identified common EI elements that have been linked to effective leadership characteristics: (a) self-awareness, (b) emotional resilience, (c) motivation, (d) interpersonal sensitivity, (e) influence, (f) intuitiveness, and (g) conscientiousness and integrity. Ultimately, leadership is a social and emotional process, and effective leaders are able to harness those social and emotional ties to successfully pilot organizations through chaos and rapid change. EI and Leadership Challenges Emotional intelligence skills provide developing leaders with an increased understanding of the impacts of emotions within a team or organization. Caruso and Salovey (2004) demonstrated the advantages EI has with respect to six common challenges in leadership: (a) building effective teams, (b) planning and deciding effectively, (c) motivating people, (d) communicating a vision, (e) promoting change, and (f) creating effective interpersonal relationships. Throughout Caruso and Saloveys descriptions of the six challenges, they cited a connection with Kouzes and Posners Effective Leadership Practices Model. 1. Building effective teams The first challenge was building an effective team. Caruso and Salovey discussed the need for clarifying personal values before attempting to formulate team values. Like Kouzes and Posners model, Caruso and Salovey explained that leaders must identify their own values before clarifying team values. A significant level of trust is important for leading teams, and a leader must generate positive opportunities for meaningful team communication and interaction. Additionally, a leader must have significant self-confidence to give team members credit for accomplishments and not blame them when shortfalls occur. 2. Planning and deciding effectively Caruso and Salovey went on to explain that even though planning and decision-making can seem cognitive and practical, emotions contribute significantly to these activities. Emotionally intelligent leaders possess the ability to remain flexible and open to other alternatives. Additionally, EI leaders take into account how their team members may react to a decision, and then attempt to make decisions that will fit in with the shared values of the team. In the end, this type of flexible decision-making will contribute to the successful implementation of the decision. 3. Motivating people Every leader at one point or another is faced with the question of how to motivate a team. Caruso and Salovey cited Kouzes and Posners (2002) encouraging the heart model as a significant contribution to motivating a team. When a leader expresses appreciation for the accomplishments of team members, they are in many ways providing that added incentive for future successes. Caruso and Salovey also explained that it is important for a leader to celebrate team member successes without promoting or encouraging envy throughout the team. 4. Communicating a vision Furthermore, communication is among the most difficult challenges to leadership. EI leaders base their communication efforts on delivering a message [they] want to deliver and delivering it in such a way that is heard and understood by others. Communication also entails a leaders vision for the future. Caruso and Salovey emphasized that because an EI leader has the ability to understand and empathize with group feelings, he or she will be successful in encouraging team members to buy into their vision of the future. 5. Promoting change In light of rapid worldly changes, a leaders ability to facilitate and encourage change has been a hot topic recently (e.g., Kotter, 1995; Higgs Rowland, 2001). Caruso and Salovey (2004) explained that EI leaders challenge the status quo through innovation, experimentation, and risk-taking. They further explained that most people are resistant to change; however, EI leaders identify, empathize with, and acknowledge resistance and then communicate the need for change and clarify a road map toward successful implementation. 6. Creating effective interpersonal relationships Building effective interpersonal relationships is the foundation of the emotionally intelligent leader. Caruso and Salovey (2004) explained that effective interpersonal relationships include both positive feedback and sincere criticism (p. 209). EI leaders are able to generate relationships that are healthy and mature enough for members to express honest and tactful reactions with other members. Caruso and Salovey explained that emotions contain data and [those] data are primarily communicating information about people and relationships. Being accurately aware of emotions and their meaning provides the emotional intelligent manager with a solid base of understanding of themselves and of others. Along with understanding and interpreting emotions, it is equally important for leaders to understand the impact of emotions on individual and organizational performance. EI and Resonant / Dissonant leaders Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee (2002) shared two leadership styles that relate both positively and negatively to emotional intelligence and contribute significantly to productivity and work satisfaction: dissonance and resonance. Goleman, et al. explained that a dissonant leadership style demonstrated characteristics that are not emotionally effective or supportive within an organization. A dissonant leader is one who offends constituents and creates an unhealthy and unproductive emotional environment within the organization. They described dissonant leaders as leaders who are so out of touch with the feelings of their constituents that they create a negative environment, which in turn moves the organizations attitude toward that leader on a downward spiral from frustration to resentment, rancor to rage. Dissonant leaders were also described as authoritarian, untrustworthy, uncooperative with constituents, unharmonious with the group, abusive, and humiliating. Resonant leaders, on the other hand, project an emotional atmosphere that is comfortable, cooperative, supportive, and enthusiastic. They inspire shared values and rally people around a worthy goal. Goleman, et al. described four leadership styles that build resonance within the organization: (a) visionary moves people towards a shared dream, (b) coaching connects personal desires with organizational goals, (c) affiliative creates harmony by connecting people to each other, and (d) democratic values input and builds commitment through participation. As mentioned earlier within the area of modeling, the concept of mirroring in relationship to resonance and dissonance within the organization is very important when a leader reacts to both positive and negative situations. When a leader reacts to a negative situation in a concerned but positive fashion, his or her behavior becomes a model which the rest of the organization can follow. Goleman, et al. explained that leaders within organizations are observed for acceptance or rejection to thoughts, projects, or ideas. If a leader shows any nonverbal or verbal gestures, constituents quickly notice and react to those gestures. Emotionally intelligent leaders realize and understand how their emotional reaction can guide and steer the emotions of the entire organization. This concept of resonant and dissonant leadership styles is one example of the power of the emotional climate within an organization. Emotional intelligence has been linked to a number of additional factors associated wit h effective leadership (Goleman, 1998; Kouzes Posner, 2002; Dulewicz Higgs, 2003). Conclusion With the identified benefits of emotional intelligence related to creating and developing positive relationships, combined with the understanding that positive relationships are the core of effective leadership, the idea of emotional intelligence and effective leadership is one that has been well established in the literature. Researchers have started to develop and assess developmental programs for emotional intelligence that coincide with leadership development programs and initiatives. The question most pertinent to those involved research and practice in the area of leadership development is the process by which leaders learn about emotions and the power of emotion on leadership success.

Databases and Y2K :: Computers

Databases and Y2K Introduction: Tremendous problems loom just around the corner for organizations that use two-digit years (i.e. 1-9-97). How tough could it be to change the year from 1999 to 2000? The "Year 2000 Problem" cannot be fixed by simply resetting a computer's internal clock on January 1, 2000. Computers may be smart, but their programmers weren't very farsighted. In the '60s and '70s, many businesses were looking to cut costs and because computer storage space was expensive at the time, programmers decided to cut year dates to two digits (i.e., 1969 became 69). It doesn't sound like a major error, but computers are extremely date-sensitive. Computers routinely add and subtract digits in a date to make a variety of logical calculations, ranging from travel reservations to how much interest one has accrued on a savings account. The problem lies in the fact that many computers designate century data using only two digits, 00, and will read 2000 as 1900. And the bug affects more than just computer systems. Many manufacturers have built products with software instructions embedded onto chips; equipment ranging from fax machines to auto assembly lines could all be affected by the bug. What's the Problem? For many organizations, the Year 2000 Problem has become the most complex project management exercise ever undertaken. The reasons for this are multi-factored. For starters, we are less than 13 months away from Year 2000 yet many organizations are just now paying attention to it.1 There is no way to avoid the fact that our information systems are based on a faulty standard that will cost the worldwide computer community billions of dollars in programming effort. This 'bug' touches on all areas of an organization, and the complexity of analyzing and quantifying the scope of the problem, repairing and replacing infected items, conducting adequate testing activities and finally, implementing multiple interrelated hardware, systems and software can be overwhelming. Compounding the difficulty is the lack of awareness in general regarding the potential risks, and the fact that the project is driven by a series of hard dates. In addition, many organizations have further complicated the process by beginning their e Databases and Y2K How might Y2K affect databases that, in turn, affect our everyday lives? Let's take your bank account. As the 1999 turns over to 2000, your bank's computer may calculate that your account deserves an additional 100 year's interest. Of course, it's also possible you may be penalized for being 100 years overdue on your loan payment! Or suppose you have some data records and want to sort them by

Basketball †Observation Essay

Honorable guest of honors, ministers, parents, friends, and students, l would like to welcome you to Borrowdale Brooke Academy Sports day. School sports day is a red letter day on the calendar. It is a day when students are freed from their classrooms to jump and run around, freed from the fetters of learning. It is a day for mothers to wear their summary best and fathers to cheer on their sons. It’s a day when children who may struggle with academic subjects show that they can race faster or jump further than anyone else. It’s a day for red faces and perspiration where t-shirts and shorts are the order of the day. It’s a day for starter guns or teachers with whistles. School sports day is a day for cameras and videos and smiling faces. It’s a day for triumph and disasters, for successes and failures. Speeches are given and medals are presented and, overall, it’s a day for sportsmanship and making memories. This year, I am pleased to see, many are competing encompassing over 50 staff and family members in a wide variety of events. Not least of which is the tug-of-war which I am told will be vigorously contested. As I look around here today I am reminded once again of just how passionate teachers are about sport and what great competitors you all are. One of the consistencies I see when I watch students play at school is the love BBA Students have for sport. And what a great thing sport is on so many levels. Beyond the obvious health and activity benefits, sport can teach us much about life. It teaches us about teamwork, it teaches us how to get along with others, and it teaches us to work together to achieve a common goal. It’s also about trust and responsibility and about dealing with success and failure. Sport also helps us learn about coping with pressure and the need to stick with training in order to improve. As well as the benefits to individuals, sports and physical activity also bring great benefits to communities through such things as improved health and education, rehabilitation, crime prevention, and gender equality. Another important aspect of sports is its ability to make people feel they are part of something. In a survey done on our last sports day, everybody interviewed said that â€Å"the event made them feel a part of Borrowdale Brooke Academy. Borrowdale Brooke Academy recognizes the value of using sport as vehicle for development But while the challenges are great, so is the commitment to find solutions. I want to acknowledge all the good work done by Teachers and also parents. Everybody has a responsibility to work towards making communities safer. To achieve that goal parents and teachers need to work closely together. This sports day is an excellent way to bring people together in a relaxed environment that will build lasting networks and friendships across the sector. I congratulate the organizers and particularly the director of studies Mrs. Henney, the principal Mrs. Rutsito and his deputy Mr. Muridzi, the technical coordinators Mr. Maviki, and other members of the organizing team who have done a great job in putting together today’s program. And now it only leaves me to wish all competitors good luck and to declare the First annual Borrowdale Brooke Academy Sports Day open. Thank you.

Deconstruction/ Krapp’s Last Tape

General overview The auther of this essay is interested in finding the meaning of absurdity, Beckett is master of absurd theater, and Krapp’s last tape is one of the most influencial plays in absured theater which is deconstructed by nature. Not just the work and auther but the approach itself help the auther of this essay to find the true meaning of absurdity which itself leads human, after passing a chaos, to absolute peace. In the following paragraphs, first there is a biography of Samual Beckett the auther of Krapp’s last tape.Then the discussion goes through deconstruction which is not actually an approach but a reading stategy and short part is devoted to introsucing Lacan’s model of human psyche. Afterward the application of deconstruction and some other points on Krapp’s last tape is placed. At the end there is a conclusion of all what the auther of this essay trying to say. A Biography of Samual Beckett â€Å"Samuel Barclay Beckett (April 13, 190 6 – December 22, 1989) was an Irish avant-garde and absurdist playwright, novelist, poet and theatre director.His writings, both in English and French, provide bleak, and darkly comedic, ruminations on the human condition. He is simultaneously considered as one of the last modernists and one of the first postmodernists. He was a main writer in what the critic, Martin Esslin, termed the â€Å"Theatre of the Absurd. † The works associated with this movement share the belief that human existence has neither meaning nor purpose, and ultimately communication breaks down, often in a black comedy manner.Beckett studied French, Italian and English at Trinity College Dublin from 1923-1927, whereupon graduating he took up a teaching post in Paris. While in Paris, he met the Irish novelist James Joyce, who became an inspiration and mentor to the young Beckett. He published his first work, a critical essay endorsing Joyce’s work entitled â€Å"Dante†¦Bruno. Vico†¦Joyce† in 1929. Throughout the 1930s he continued to write and publish many essays and reviews, eventually beginning work on novels.During World War II, Beckett joined the French Resistance as a courier after the Germans began their occupation in 1940. Beckett’s unit was betrayed in August of 1942, and he and Suzanne fled on foot to the small village of Roussillon in the south of France. They continued to aid the Resistance by storing arms in his backyard. He was awarded both the Croix de Guerre and Medaille de la Resistance by the French government for his wartime efforts. Beckett was reticent to speak about this era of his life.Beckett continued writing novels throughout the 1940s, and had the first part of his story â€Å"The End† published in Jean-Paul Sartre’s magazine Les Temps Modernes, the second part of which was never published in the magazine. Beckett began writing his most famous play, Waiting for Godot, in October 1948 and completed it in Jan uary 1949. He originally wrote this piece, like most of his subsequent works, in French first and then translated it to English. It was published in 1952 and premiered in 1953, garnering positive and controversial reactions in Paris.The English version did not appear until two years later, first premiered in London in 1955 to mixed reviews and had a successful run in New York City after being a flop in Miami. The critical and commercial success of Waiting for Godot opened the door to a playwriting career for Beckett. He wrote many other well-known plays, including Endgame (1957), Krapp’s Last Tape (1958, and surprisingly written in English), Happy Days (1961, also in English) and Play (1963). He was awarded the 1961 International Publishers’ Formentor Prize along with Jorge Luis Borges.In that same year, Beckett married Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil in a civil ceremony, though the two had been together since 1938. He also began a relationship with BBC script editor Barbar a Bray, which lasted, concurrently to his marriage to Suzanne, until his death, in 1989. Beckett is regarded as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. He was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature. He died on December 22, 1989, of complications from emphysema and possibly Parkinson’s disease five months after his wife, Suzanne.The two are interred together in Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. †(1) Methodology and Approach â€Å"Deconstruction, as applied in the criticism of literature, designates a theory and practice of reading which questions and claims to â€Å"subvert† or â€Å"undermine† the assumption that the system of language provides grounds thatare adequate to establish the boundaries, the coherence or unity, and the determinatemeanings of a literary text. Typically, a deconstructive reading setsout to show that conflicting forces within the text itself serve to dissipate theseeming definiteness of its tructure and mean ings into an indefinite array ofincompatible and undecidable possibilities. The originator and namer of deconstruction is the French thinker Jacques Derrida, among whose precursors were Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) andMartin Heidegger (1889- 1976)—German philosophers who put to radical question fundamental philosophical concepts such as â€Å"knowledge,† â€Å"truth,† and â€Å"identity†Ã¢â‚¬â€as well as Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), whose psychoanalysis violated traditional concepts of a coherent individual consciousness and a unitary self.Derrida presented his basic views in three books, all published in 1967, entitled Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Speech and Phenomena; since then he has reiterated, expanded, and applied those views in a rapid sequence of publications. Derrida's writings are complex and elusive, and the summary here can only indicate some of their main tendencies.His point of vantage is what, in Of Grammatology, he calls â€Å"the axial proposition that there is no outside-thetext† (â€Å"il n'y a rien hors du texte,† or alternatively â€Å"il n'y a pas de hors-texte†). Like all Derrida's key terms and statements, this has multiple significations, but a primary one is that a reader cannot get beyond verbal signs to any things-in-themselves which, because they are independent of the system of language, might serve to anchor a determinable meaning.Derrida's reiterated claim is that not only all Western philosophies and theories of language, but all Western uses of language, hence all Western culture, are logocentric; that is, they are centered or grounded on a â€Å"logos† (which in Greek signified both â€Å"word† and â€Å"rationality†) or, as stated in a phrase he adopts from Heidegger, they rely on â€Å"the metaphysics of presence. † They are logocentric, according to Derrida, in part because they are phonocentric; that is, they grant, implicitly or explicitly, logical â€Å"priority,† or â€Å"privilege,† to speech over writing as the model for analyzing all discourse.By logos, or presence, Derrida signifies what he also calls an â€Å"ultimate referent†Ã¢â‚¬â€a self-certifying and self-sufficient ground, or foundation, available to us totally outside the play of language itself, that is directly present to our awareness and serves to â€Å"center† (that is, to anchor, organize, and guarantee) the structure of the linguistic system, and as a result suffices to fix the bounds, coherence, and determinate meanings of any spoken or written utterance within that system. (On Derrida's â€Å"decentering† of structuralism, see poststructuralism. Historical instances of claimed foundations for language are God as the guarantor of its validity, or a Platonic form of the true reference of a general term, or a Hegelian â€Å"telos† or goal toward which all process strives, or an intention to s ignify something determinate that is directly present to the awareness of the person who initiates an utterance. Derrida undertakes to show that these and all other attempts by Western philosophy to establish an absolute ground in presence, and all implicit reliance on such a ground in using language, are bound to fail.Especially, he directs his skeptical exposition against the phonocentric assumption—which he regards as central in Western theories of language— that at the instant of speaking, the â€Å"intention† of a speaker to mean something determinate by an utterance is immediately and fully present in the speaker's consciousness, and is also communicable to an auditor. (See intention, under interpretation and hermeneutics. ) In Derrida's view, we must always say more, and other, than we intend to say.Derrida expresses his alternative conception that the play of linguistic meanings is â€Å"undecidable† in terms derived from Saussure's view that in a signsystem, both the signifiers (the material elements of a language, whether spoken or written) and the signifieds (their conceptual meanings) owe their seeming identities, not to their own â€Å"positive† or inherent features, but to their â€Å"differences† from other speech-sounds, written marks, or conceptual significations. See Saussure, in linguistics in modern criticism and in semiotics. ) From this view Derrida evolves his radical claim that the features that, in any particular utterance, would serve to establish the signified meaning of a word, are never â€Å"present† to us in their own positive identity, since both these features and their significations are nothing other than a network of differences.On the other hand, neither can these identifying features be said to be strictly â€Å"absent†; instead, in any spoken or written utterance, the seeming meaning is the result only of a â€Å"self-effacing† trace—self-effacing in th at one is not aware of it— which consists of all the nonpresent differences from other elements in the language system that invest the utterance with its â€Å"effect† of having a meaning in its own right. The consequence, in Derrida's view, is that we can never, in any instance of speech or writing, have a demonstrably fixed and decidable present meaning.He says that the differential play (jeu) of language may produce the â€Å"effects† of decidable meanings in an utterance or text, but asserts that these are merely effects and lack a ground that would justify certainty in interpretation. In a characteristic move, Derrida coins the portmanteau term differance, in which, he says, he uses the spelling â€Å"-ance† instead of â€Å"-enee† to indicate a fusion of two senses of the French verb â€Å"differer†: to be different, and to defer.This double sense points to the phenomenon that, on the one hand, a text proffers the â€Å"effect† of having a significance that is the product of its difference, but that on the other hand, since this proffered significance can never come to rest in an actual â€Å"presence†Ã¢â‚¬â€or in a language-independent reality Derrida calls a transcendental signified—its determinate specification is deferred from one linguistic interpretation to another in a movement or â€Å"play,†as Derrida puts it, en abime—that is, in an endless regress.To Derrida's view,then, it is difference that makes possible the meaning whose possibility (as adecidable meaning) it necessarily baffles. As Derrida says in another of his coinages, the meaning of any spoken or written utterance, by the action of opposing internal linguistic forces, is ineluctably disseminated—a term which includes, among its deliberately contradictory significations, that of having an effect of meaning (a â€Å"semantic† effect), of dispersing meanings among innumerable alternatives, and of negating any specific meaning.There is thus no ground, in the incessant play of difference that constitutes any language, for attributing a decidable meaning, or even a finite set of determinately multiple meanings (which he calls â€Å"polysemism†), to any utterance that we speak or write. (What Derrida calls â€Å"polysemism† is what William Empson called â€Å"ambiguity†; see ambiguity. As Derrida puts it in Writing and Difference: â€Å"The absence of a transcendental signified extends the domain and the play of signification infinitely† (p. 280) Several of Derrida's skeptical procedures have been especially influentialin deconstructive literary criticism. One is to subvert the innumerable binary oppositions—such as speech/writing, nature/culture, truth/error, male/female— which are essential structural elements in logocentric language.Derrida shows that such oppositions constitute a tacit hierarchy, in which the first term functions as privileged and superior and the second term as derivative and inferior. Derrida's procedure is to invert the hierarchy, by showing that the secondary term can be made out to be derivative from, or a special case of, the primary term; but instead of stopping at this reversal, he goes on to destabilize both hierarchies, leaving them in a condition of undecidability. Among deconstructive literary critics, one such demonstration is to take the standard hierarchical opposition of literature/criticism, to invert it so as to make criticism primary and literature secondary, and then to represent, as an undecidable set of oppositions, the assertions that criticism is a species of literature and that literature is a species of criticism. A second operation influential in literary criticism is Derrida's deconstruction of any attempt to establish a securely determinate bound, or limit, or margin, to a textual work so as to differentiate what is â€Å"inside† from what is â€Å"outsideâ €  the work. A third operation is his analysis of the inherent nonlogicality, or â€Å"rhetoricity†Ã¢â‚¬â€that is, the inescapable reliance on rhetorical figures and figurative language—in all uses of language, including in what philosophers have traditionally claimed to be the strictly literal and logical arguments of philosophy.Derrida, for example, emphasizes the indispensable reliance in all modes of discourse on metaphors that are assumed to be merely convenient substitutes for literal, or â€Å"proper† meanings; then he undertakes to show, on the one hand, that metaphors cannot be reduced to literal meanings but, on the other hand, that supposedly literal terms are themselves metaphors whose metaphoric nature has been forgotten.Derrida's characteristic way of proceeding is not to lay out his deconstructive concepts and operations in a systematic exposition, but to allow them to emerge in a sequence of exemplary close readings of passages from writings that range from Plato through Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the present era—writings that, by standard classification, are mainly philosophical, although occasionally literary. He describes his procedure as a â€Å"double reading. † Initially, that is, he interprets a text as, in the standard fashion, â€Å"lisible† (readable or intelligible), since it engenders â€Å"effects† of having eterminate meanings. But this reading, Derrida says, is only â€Å"provisional,† as a stage toward a second, or deconstructive â€Å"critical reading,† which disseminates the provisional meaning into an indefinite range of significations that, he claims, always involve (in a term taken from logic) an aporia—an insuperable deadlock, or â€Å"double bind,† of incompatible or contradictory meanings which are â€Å"undecidable,† in that we lack any sufficient ground for choosing among them.The result, in Derrida's rendering, is that each text deco nstructs itself, by undermining its own supposed grounds and dispersing itself into incoherent meanings in a way, he claims, that the deconstructive reader neither initiates nor produces; deconstruction is something that simply â€Å"happens† in a critical reading. Derrida asserts, furthermore, that he has no option except toattempt to communicate his deconstructive readings in the prevailing logocentric language, hence that his own interpretive texts deconstruct themselves in the very act of deconstructing the texts to which they are applied.He insists, however, that â€Å"deconstruction has nothing to do with destruction,† and that all the standard uses of language will inevitably go on; what he undertakes, he says, is merely to â€Å"situate† or â€Å"reinscribe† any text in a system of difference which shows the instability of the effects to which the text owes its seeming intelligibility. Derrida did not propose deconstruction as a mode of literary c riticism, but as a way of reading all kinds of texts so as to reveal and subvert the tacit metaphysical presuppositions of Western thought.His views and procedures, however, have been taken up by literary critics, especially in America, who have adapted Derrida's â€Å"critical reading† to the kind of close reading of particular literary texts which had earlier been the familiar procedure of the New Criticism; they do so, however, Paul de Man has said, in a way which reveals that new-critical close readings â€Å"were not nearly close enough. † The end results of the two kinds of close reading are utterly diverse.New Critical explications of texts had undertaken to show that a great literary work, in the tight internal relations of its figurative and paradoxical meanings, constitutes a freestanding, bounded, and organic entity of multiplex yet determinate meanings. On the contrary, a radically deconstructive close reading undertakes to show that a literary text lacks a â€Å"totalized† boundary that makes it an entity, much less an organic unity; also that the text, by a play of internal counter-forces, disseminates into an indefinite range of self-conflicting significations.The claim is made by some deconstructive critics that a literary text is superior to nonliterary texts, but only because, by its self-reference, it shows itself to be more aware of features that all texts inescapably share: its fictionality, its lack of a genuine ground, and especially its patent â€Å"rhetoricity,† or use of figurative procedures—features that make any â€Å"right reading† or â€Å"correct reading† of a text impossible. Paul de Man was the most innovative and influential of the critics whoapplied deconstruction to the reading of literary texts.In de Man's later writings,he represented the basic conflicting forces within a text under the headingsof â€Å"grammar† (the code or rules of language) and â€Å"rhetoricâ₠¬  (the unruly play of figures and tropes), and aligned these with other opposed forces, such as the â€Å"constative† and â€Å"performative† linguistic functions that had been distinguished by John Austin (see speech-act theory). In its grammatical aspect, language persistently aspires to determinate, referential, and logically ordered assertions, which are persistently dispersed by its rhetorical aspect into an open set of non-referential and illogical possibilities.A literary text, then, of inner necessity says one thing and performs another, or as de Man alternatively puts the matter, a text â€Å"simultaneously asserts and denies the authority of its own rhetorical mode† (Allegories of Reading, 1979, p. 17). The inevitable result, for a critical reading, is an aporia of â€Å"vertiginous possibilities. † Barbara Johnson, once a student of de Man's, has applied deconstructive readings not only to literary texts, but to the writings of other critics, includingDerrida himself.Her succinct statement of the aim and methods of a deconstructive reading is often cited: Deconstruction is not synonymous with destruction The de-construction of a text does not proceed by random doubt or arbitrary subversion, but by the careful teasing out of warring forces of signification within the text itself. If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is not the text, but the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifyingover another. (The Critical Difference, 1980, p. 5) J.Hillis Miller, once the leading American representative of the Geneva School of consciousness-criticism, is now one of the most prominent of deconstructors, known especially for his application of this type of critical reading to prose fiction. Miller's statement of his critical practice indicates how drastic the result may be of applying to works of literature the concepts and procedures that Derrida had developed for deconstructing the foundations of Wes tern metaphysics: Deconstruction as a mode of interpretation works by a careful and circumspect entering of each textual labyrinth†¦.The deconstructive critic seeks to find, by this process of retracing, the element in the system studied which is alogical, the thread in the text in question which will unravel it all, or the loose stone which will pull down the whole building. The deconstruction, rather, annihilates the ground on which the building stands by showing that the text has already annihilated the ground, knowingly or unknowingly. Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself.Miller's conclusion is that any literary text, as a ceaseless play of â€Å"irreconcilable† and â€Å"contradictory† meanings, is â€Å"indeterminable† and â€Å"undecidable†; hence, that â€Å"all reading is necessarily misreading. † (â€Å"Stevens' Rock and Criticism as Cure, II,† in Miller's Theory Then and Now [1991], p. 126, and â€Å"Walter Pater: A Partial Portrait,† Daedalus, Vol. 105, 1976. ) For other aspects of Derrida's views see poststructuralism and refer to Geoffrey Bennington, Jacques Derrida (1993).Some of the central books by Jacques Derrida available in English, with the dates of translation into English, are Of Grammatology, translated and introduced by Gayatri C. Spivak, 1976; Writing and Difference (1978); dina Dissemination (1981). A useful anthology of selections from Derrida is A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds, ed. Peggy Kamuf (1991). Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge (1992), is a selection of Derrida's discussions of literary texts.An accessible introduction to Derrida's views is the edition by Gerald Graff of Derrida's noted dispute with John R. Searle about the speech-act theory of John Austin, entitled Limited Inc. (1988); on this dispute see also Jonathan Culler, â€Å"Meaning and Iterability,† in On Deconst ruction (1982). Books exemplifying types of deconstructive literary criticism: Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight (1971), and Allegories of Reading (1979); Barbara Johnson, The Critical Difference: Essays in the ContemporaryRhetoric of Reading (1980), and A World of Difference (1987); J.Hillis Miller, Fiction and Repetition: Seven English Novels (1982), The Linguistic Moment: From Wordsworth to Stevens (1985), and Theory Then and Now (1991); Cynthia Chase, Decomposing Figures: Rhetorical Readings in the Romantic Tradition (1986). Expositions of Derrida's deconstruction and of its applications to literary criticism: Geoffrey Hartman, Saving the Text (1981); Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction (1982); Richard Rorty, â€Å"Philosophy as a Kind of Writing,† in Consequences of Pragmatism (1982); Michael Ryan, Marxism and Deconstruction (1982); Mark C. Taylor, ed. Deconstruction in Context (1986); Christopher Norris, Paul de Man (1988). Among the many critiques of Derrida and of var ious practitioners of deconstructive literary criticism are Terry Eagleton, The Function of Criticism (1984); M. H. Abrams, â€Å"The Deconstructive Angel,† â€Å"How to Do Things with Texts,† and â€Å"Construing and Deconstructing,† in Doing Things with Texts (1989); John M. Ellis, Against Deconstruction (1989); Wendell V. Harris, ed. , Beyond Poststructuralism (1996). (2) Lacan’s Model of the Human psyche â€Å"THE PSYCHE CAN BE DIVIDED into three major structures that control our lives and our desires.Most of Lacan's many terms for the full complexity of the psyche's workings can be related to these three major concepts, which correlate roughly to the three main moments in the individual's development, as outlined in the Lacan module on psychosexual development: 1) The Real. This concept marks the state of nature from which we have been forever severed by our entrance into language. Only as neo-natal children were we close to this state of nature, a state in which there is nothing but need. A baby needs and seeks to satisfy those needs with no sense for any separation between itself and the external world or the world of others.For this reason, Lacan sometimes represents this state of nature as a time of fullness or completeness that is subsequently lost through the entrance into language. The primordial animal need for copulation (for example, when animals are in heat) similarly corresponds to this state of nature. There is a need followed by a search for satisfaction. As far as humans are concerned, however, â€Å"the real is impossible,† as Lacan was fond of saying. It is impossible in so far as we cannot express it in language because the very entrance into language marks our irrevocable separation from the real.Still, the real continues to exert its influence throughout our adult lives since it is the rock against which all our fantasies and linguistic structures ultimately fail. The real for example continues to er upt whenever we are made to acknowledge the materiality of our existence, an acknowledgement that is usually perceived as traumatic (since it threatens our very â€Å"reality†), although it also drives Lacan's sense of jouissance. 2) The Imaginary Order. This concept corresponds to the mirror stage (see the Lacan module on psychosexual development) and marks the movement of the subject from primal need to what Lacan terms â€Å"demand. As the connection to the mirror stage suggests, the â€Å"imaginary† is primarily narcissistic even though it sets the stage for the fantasies of desire. (For Lacan's understanding of desire, see the next module. ) Whereas needs can be fulfilled, demands are, by definition, unsatisfiable; in other words, we are already making the movement into the sort of lack that, for Lacan, defines the human subject. Once a child begins to recognize that its body is separate from the world and its mother, it begins to feel anxiety, which is caused by a sense of something lost.The demand of the child, then, is to make the other a part of itself, as it seemed to be in the child's now lost state of nature (the neo-natal months). The child's demand is, therefore, impossible to realize and functions, ultimately, as a reminder of loss and lack. (The difference between â€Å"demand† and â€Å"desire,† which is the function of the symbolic order, is simply the acknowledgement of language, law, and community in the latter; the demand of the imaginary does not proceed beyond a dyadic relation between the self and the object one wants to make a part of oneself. The mirror stage corresponds to this demand in so far as the child misrecognizes in its mirror image a stable, coherent, whole self, which, however, does not correspond to the real child (and is, therefore, impossible to realize). The image is a fantasy, one that the child sets up in order to compensate for its sense of lack or loss, what Lacan terms an â€Å"Ideal-I † or â€Å"ideal ego. † That fantasy image of oneself can be filled in by others who we may want to emulate in our adult lives role models, et cetera), anyone that we set up as a mirror for ourselves in what is, ultimately, a narcissistic relationship. What must be remembered is that for Lacan this imaginary realm continues to exert its influence throughout the life of the adult and is not merely superceded in the child's movement into the symbolic (despite my suggestion of a straightforward chronology in the last module).Indeed, the imaginary and the symbolic are, according to Lacan, inextricably intertwined and work in tension with the Real. 3) The Symbolic Order (or the â€Å"big Other†). Whereas the imaginary is all about equations and identifications, the symbolic is about language and narrative. Once a child enters into language and accepts the rules and dictates of society, it is able to deal with others. The acceptance of language's rules is aligned with the Oedipus complex, according to Lacan.The symbolic is made possible because of your acceptance of the Name-of-the-Father, those laws and restrictions that control both your desire and the rules of communication: â€Å"It is in the name of the father that we must recognize the support of the symbolic function which, from the dawn of history, has identified his person with the figure of the law† (Ecrits 67). Through recognition of the Name-of-the-Father, you are able to enter into a community of others. The symbolic, through language, is â€Å"the pact which links†¦ subjects together in one action.The human action par excellence is originally founded on the existence of the world of the symbol, namely on laws and contracts† (Freud's Papers 230). Whereas the Real concerns need and the Imaginary concerns demand, the symbolic is all about desire, according to Lacan. (For more on desire, see the next module. ) Once we enter into language, our desire is forever afterwa rds bound up with the play of language. We should keep in mind, however, that the Real and the Imaginary continue to play a part in the evolution of human desire within the symbolic order.The fact that our fantasies always fail before the Real, for example, ensures that we continue to desire; desire in the symbolic order could, in fact, be said to be our way to avoid coming into full contact with the Real, so that desire is ultimately most interested not in obtaining the object of desire but, rather, in reproducing itself. The narcissism of the Imaginary is also crucial for the establishment of desire, according to Lacan: â€Å"The primary imaginary relation provides the fundamental framework for all possible erotism. It is a condition to which the object of Eros as such must be submitted.The object relation must always submit to the narcissistic framework and be inscribed in it† (Freud's Papers 174). For Lacan, love begins here; however, to make that love â€Å"functionally realisable† (to make it move beyond scopophilic narcissism), the subject must reinscribe that narcissistic imaginary relation into the laws and contracts of the symbolic order: â€Å"A creature needs some reference to the beyond of language, to a pact, to a commitment which constitutes him, strictly speaking, as an other, a reference included in the general or, to be more exact, universal system of interhuman symbols.No love can be functionally realisable in the human community, save by means of a specific pact, which, whatever the form it takes, always tends to become isolated off into a specific function, at one and the same time within language and outside of it† (Freud's Papers 174). The Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic thus work together to create the tensions of our psychodynamic selves. (3) â€Å"Jacques Lacan has proven to be an important influence on contemporary critical theory, influencing such disparate approaches as feminism (through, for example, Ju dith Butler and Shoshana Felman), film theory (Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, and the various film scholars associated with â€Å"screen theory†), poststructuralism (Cynthia Chase, Juliet Flower MacCannell, etc. ), and Marxism (Louis Althusser, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Fredric Jameson, Slavoj Zizek, etc. ).Lacan is also exemplary of what we can understand as the postmodern break with Sigmund Freud. Whereas Freud could still be said to work within an empirical, humanist tradition that still believes in a stable self's ability to access the â€Å"truth,† Lacan is properly post-structuralist, which is to say that Lacan questions any simple notion of either â€Å"self† or â€Å"truth,† exploring instead how knowledge is constructed by way of linguistic and ideological structures that organize not only our conscious but also our unconscious lives.Whereas Freud continued to be tempted by organic models and with a desire to find the neurological and, thus, â€Å"natural† causes for sexual development, Lacan offered a more properly linguistic model for understanding the human subject's entrance into the social order. The emphasis was thus less on the bodily causes of behavior (cathexis, libido, instinct, etc. ) than it was on the ideological structures that, especially through language, make the human subject come to understand his or her relationship to himself and to others.Indeed, according to Lacan, the entrance into language necessarily entails a radical break from any sense of materiality in and of itself. According to Lacan, one must always distinguish between reality (the fantasy world we convince ourselves is the world around us) and the real (a materiality of existence beyond language and thus beyond expressibility). The development of the subject, in other words, is made possible by an endless misrecognition of the real because of our need to construct our sense of â€Å"reality† in and through language.So muc h are we reliant on our linguistic and social version of â€Å"reality† that the eruption of pure materiality (of the real) into our lives is radically disruptive. And yet, the real is the rock against which all of our artificial linguistic and social structures necessarily fail. It is this tension between the real and our social laws, meanings, conventions, desires, etc. that determines our psychosexual lives. Not even our unconscious escapes the effects of language, which is why Lacan argues th t â€Å"the unconscious is structured like a language† (Four Fundamental 203). Lacan's version of psychosexual development is, therefore, organized around the subject's ability to recognize, first, iconic signs and, then, eventually, language. This entrance into language follows a particular developmental model, according to Lacan, one that is quite distinct from Freud's version of the same (even though Lacan continued to argue—some would say â€Å"perversely†Ã¢â ‚¬â€that he was, in fact, a strict Freudian).Here, then, is your story, as told by Lacan, with the ages provided as very rough approximations since Lacan, like Freud, acknowledged that development varied between individuals and that stages could even exist simultaneously within a given individual: 0-6 months of age. In the earliest stage of development, you were dominated by a chaotic mix of perceptions, feelings, and needs. You did not distinguish your own self from that of your parents or even the world around you.Rather, you spent your time taking into yourself everything that you experienced as pleasurable without any acknowledgment of boundaries. This is the stage, then, when you were closest to the pure materiality of existence, or what Lacan terms â€Å"the Real. † Still, even at this early stage, your body began to be fragmented into specific erogenous zones (mouth, anus, penis, vagina), aided y the fact that your mother tended to pay special attention to these body parts. This â€Å"territorialization† of the body could already be seen as a falling off, an imposition of boundaries and, thus, the neo-natal beginning of socialization (a first step away from the Real). Indeed, this fragmentation was accompanied by an identification with those things perceived as fulfilling your lack at this early stage: the mother's breast, her voice, her gaze.Since these privileged external objects could not be perfectly assimilated and could not, therefore, ultimately fulfill your lack, you already began to establish the psychic dynamic (fantasy vs. lack) that would control the rest of your life. 6-18 months of age. This stage, which Lacan terms the â€Å"mirror stage,† was a central moment in your development. The â€Å"mirror stage† entails a â€Å"libidinal dynamism† (Ecrits 2) caused by the young child's identification with his own image (what Lacan terms the â€Å"Ideal-I† or â€Å"ideal ego†).For Lacan, this act m arks the primordial recognition of one's self as â€Å"I,† although at a point â€Å"before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject† (Ecrits 2). In other words, this recognition of the self's image precedes the entrance into language, after which the subject can understand the place of that image of the self within a larger social order, in which the subject must negotiate his or her relationship with others.Still, the mirror stage is necessary for the next stage, since to recognize yourself as â€Å"I† is like recognizing yourself as other (â€Å"yes, that person over there is me†); this act is thus fundamentally self-alienating. Indeed, for this reason your feelings towards the image were mixed, caught between hatred (â€Å"I hate that version of myself because it is so much better than me†) and love (â€Å"I want to be like that image†).Note This â€Å"Ideal-I† is important precisely because it represents to the subject a simplified, bounded form of the self, as opposed to the turbulent chaotic perceptions, feelings, and needs felt by the infant. This â€Å"primordial Discord† (Ecrits 4) is particularly formative for the subject, that is, the discord between, on the one hand, the idealizing image in the mirror and, on the other hand, the reality of one's body between 6-18 months (â€Å"the signs of uneasiness and motor unco-ordination of the eo-natal months† [Ecrits 4]): â€Å"The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation—and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality that I shall call orthopaedic—and, lastly, to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark w ith its rigid structure the subject's entire mental development† (Ecrits 4).This misrecognition or meconnaissance (seeing an ideal-I where there is a fragmented, chaotic body) subsequently â€Å"characterizes the ego in all its structures† (Ecrits 6). In particular, this creation of an ideal version of the self gives pre-verbal impetus to the creation of narcissistic phantasies in the fully developed subject. It establishes what Lacan terms the â€Å"imaginary order† and, through the imaginary, continues to assert its influence on the subject even after the subject enters the next stage of development. 8 months to 4 years of age. The acquisition of language during this next stage of development further separated you from a connection to the Real (from the actual materiality of things). Lacan builds on such semiotic critics as Ferdinand de Saussure to show how language is a system that makes sense only within its own internal logic of differences: the word,  "father,† only makes sense in terms of those other terms it is defined with or against (mother, â€Å"me,† law, the social, etc. . As Kaja Silverman puts it, â€Å"the signifier ‘father' has no relation whatever to the physical fact of any individual father. Instead, that signifier finds its support in a network of other signifiers, including ‘phallus,' ‘law,' ‘adequacy,' and ‘mother,' all of which are equally indifferent to the category of the real† (164).Once you entered into the differential system of language, it forever afterwards determined your perception of the world around you, so that the intrusion of the Real's materiality becomes a traumatic event, albeit one that is quite common since our version of â€Å"reality† is built over the chaos of the Real (both the materiality outside you and the chaotic impulses inside you). By acquiring language, you entered into what Lacan terms the â€Å"symbolic order†; you were reduced into an empty signifier (â€Å"I†) within the field of the Other, which is to say, within a field of language and culture (which is always determined by those thers that came before you). That linguistic position, according to Lacan, is particularly marked by gender differences, so that all your actions were subsequently determined by your sexual position (which, for Lacan, does not have much to do with your â€Å"real† sexual urges or even your sexual markers but by a linguistic system in which â€Å"male† and â€Å"female† can only be understood in relation to each other in a system of language).The Oedipus complex is just as important for Lacan as it is for Freud, if not more so. The difference is that Lacan maps that complex onto the acquisition of language, which he sees as analogous. The process of moving through the Oedipus complex (of being made to recognize that we cannot sleep with or even fully â€Å"have† our mother) is our way of recognizing the need to obey social strictures and to follow a closed differential system of language in which we understand â€Å"self† in relation to â€Å"others. In this linguistic rather than biological system, the â€Å"phallus† (which must always be understood not to mean â€Å"penis†) comes to stand in the place of everything the subject loses through his entrance into language (a sense of perfect and ultimate meaning or plenitude, which is, of course, impossible) and all the power associated with what Lacan terms the â€Å"symbolic father† and the â€Å"Name-of-the-Father† (laws, control, knowledge).Like the phallus' relation to the penis, the â€Å"Name-of-the-Father† is much more than any actual father; in fact, it is ultimately more analogous to those social structures that control our lives and that interdict many of our actions (law, religion, medicine, education). Note After one passes through the Oedipus complex, the position of the phallus (a position within that differential system) can be assumed by most anyone (teachers, leaders, even the mother) and, so, to repeat, is not synonymous with either the biological father or the biological penis.Nonetheless, the anatomical differences between boys and girls do lead to a different trajectory for men and women in Lacan's system. Men achieve access to the privileges of the phallus, according to Lacan, by denying their last link to the Real of their own sexuality (their actual penis); for this reason, the castration complex continues to function as a central aspect of the boy's psychosexual development for Lacan. In accepting the dictates of the Name-of-the-Father, who is associated with the symbolic phallus, the male subject denies his exual needs and, forever after, understands his relation to others in terms of his position within a larger system of rules, gender differences, and desire. (On Lacan's understanding of desire, see the third module. ) Since women do not experience the castration complex in the same way (they do not have an actual penis that must be denied in their access to the symbolic order), Lacan argues that women are not socialized in the same way, that they remain more closely tied to what Lacan terms â€Å"jouissance,† the lost plenitude of one's material bodily drives given up by the male subject in order to access the symbolic power of the phallus.Women are thus at once more lacking (never accessing the phallus as fully) and more full (having not experienced the loss of the penis as fully). Note Regardless, what defines the position of both the man and the women in this schema is above all lack, even if that lack is articulated differently for men and women. †(4) In this essay the Writter trys to find binary opposition in the play and explain who they work in an opposite position. How Krapp’s last tape is elaborating Deconstruction would be explain at the same time.Lacanian stages i n the play is also found and is explained. Notes 1. Abrams, M. H. A Glossary Of Litterary Terms, Thomson Learning:United tastes of America, 1999, 7th Edition, p. 55-61. 2. Friedman, Marissa L. â€Å"KRAPP'S LAST TAPE: Samuel Beckett Biography. † KRAPP'S LAST TAPE: Samuel Beckett Biography. N. p. , n. d. Web. 8 June 2012.. 3. Felluga, Dino. â€Å"Modules on Lacan: On the Structure of the Psyche. † Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. Purdue U. 8 June 2012. . 4. Felluga, Dino. â€Å"Modules on Lacan: On Psychosexual Development. Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. Purdue U. 8 June 2012. < http://www. cla. purdue. edu/english/theory/psychoa nalysis/lacandevelop. html>. 5. Beckett, Samuel. â€Å"Krapp’s Last tape†, 7 November 2011, Marl Sullivan,https://www. msu. edu/~sullivan/BeckettKrapp. html 6. Beckett, Samuel. â€Å"Krapp’s Last tape†, 7 November 2011, Marl Sullivan,https://www. msu. edu/~sullivan/BeckettKrapp. html 7. Beckett, Samuel . â€Å"Krapp’s Last tape†, 7 November 2011, Marl Sullivan,https://www. msu. edu/~sullivan/BeckettKrapp. html 8.Beckett, Samuel. â€Å"Krapp’s Last tape†, 7 November 2011, Marl Sullivan,https://www. msu. edu/~sullivan/BeckettKrapp. html 9. Beckett, Samuel. â€Å"Krapp’s Last tape†, 7 November 2011, Marl Sullivan,https://www. msu. edu/~sullivan/BeckettKrapp. html 10. Birkett, Jennifer & Kate Ince. Samuel Beckett :Criticism and interpretation, Longman: Londen, 1999, p. 122. 11. Beckett, Samuel. â€Å"Krapp’s Last tape†, 7 November 2011, Marl Sullivan, 12. Beckett, Samuel. â€Å"Krapp’s Last tape†, 7 November 2011, Marl Sullivan, 13. Beckett, Samuel. Krapp’s Last tape†, 7 November 2011, Marl Sullivan,https://www. msu. edu/~sullivan/BeckettKrapp. html 14. Wikipedia’s Editor. â€Å"The Myth of Sisyphus†. 22 May 2012. 12 June 2012, Work Cited Bibliography 1. Abrams, M. H. A Glossary Of Littera ry Terms, United tastes of America: Thomson Learning, 1999, 7th Edition, p. 55-61. 2. Conner, Steven. â€Å"Voice and Mechanical Reproduction: Krapp’s Last Tape, Ohio Impromptu, Rockaby, That Time†. Samuel Beckett :Criticism and interpretation. Ed. Birkett, Jennifer & Kate Ince, Longman: Londen. 1999. 119- 133 3.Howard, Anne†. †Part IV: Contemporary Culture Stain upon the Silence Samuel Beckett's Deconstructive Inventions†. â€Å"Drama as Rhetoric/Rhetoric as Drama: An Exploration of Dramatic and Rhetorical Criticism†Ã¢â‚¬ . Ed. Hart, Steven. , and Stanley Vincent Longman. University of Alabama Press, 1997. THEATRE SYMPOSIUM A PUBLICATION OF THE SOUTHEASTERN THEATRE CONFERENCE Drama as Rhetoric/Rhetoric as Drama An Exploration of Dramatic and Rhetorical Criticism 4. Weller, Shane. Beckett, Literature, and the Ethics of Alterity. Houndmills,: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 70-180 Website 1. Beckett, Samuel. â€Å"Krapp’s Last tape†, 7 November 2011, Marl Sullivan, 2. Friedman, Marissa L. â€Å"KRAPP'S LAST TAPE: Samuel Beckett Biography. † KRAPP'S LAST TAPE: Samuel Beckett Biography. N. p. , n. d. Web. 8 June 2012. 3. Felluga, Dino. â€Å"Modules on Lacan: On the Structure of the Psyche. † Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. Purdue U. 8 June 2012. . 4. Felluga, Dino. â€Å"Modules on Lacan: On Psychosexual Development. † Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. Purdue U. 8 June 2012. ; http://www. cla. purdue. edu/english/theory/psychoa