(The) Writer's Mind: Culler
"Story and Discourse"
The purpose of reading this chapter from Culler's book, The Pursuit of Signs, was to deepen the distinction we've been working on in the course between the following pairs of terms:
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In addition, the purpose of reading Culler's piece is to empower you to approach the "creative" aspect of this assignment: using the structure
to locate and/or create, to re-member the scenes, which when written out allow for meanings beyond your initial expectations (depending on your receptivity).
This "structure of signification" (the discourse) is in fact the "topic" we have been working on since the beginning of the semester, namely, "controlling value." The "purpose" of a controlling value is the overriding preconception that we use to read any given situation, which purpose we apply with integrity, projecting what we see as "similar" into any given situation. In contrast, if we bring receptivity to the "context" of a controlling value, we may begin to see what is truly "different," perhaps finding a way to honor the opposing controlling value that we ordinarily seek to downgrade and make wrong.
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