Wrapping it all up

Over the past three months this class has covered a lot of material. Most of the material we read I had never been exposed to in class, and some I had never even heard of. Deconstructive theory was one of the subjects that was brand new to me. I feel like this class was a good introduction to Deconstruction, however I feel like we just touched upon the subject. I found Derrida and Straus to be overwhelmingly interesting figures found in literary theory. The film Derrida helped me to understand the brilliance behind the man, however I feel like I still know very little about his teachings, some of you may disagree, but I had a very tough time wrapping my brain around the Structuralism/Post-Structuralism theories.
The two theories that I feel like I was able to apply the most were Marxist Criticism and Feminist Theory. It helped that I had learned about Karl Marx and his ideology in previous classes, and if any of you guys had Dr. M before you would have undoubtedly at least touched on feminism in her other classes. I did enjoy the readings from rice and wuagh regarding feminism because it wasn’t the classic feminist theory I have been exposed too throughout high school and college.
The two theories mentioned above also aspire to change the way people think and act, they arte not just a critique. Keeping that in mind I see them as more powerful than the others. Applying their theories to texts helped me to see how the two ideologies had a strong impact on many people. I choose to do a close reading on fight club for my final paper. My original plan was to analyze how corporate consumerism manipulates people into thinking that your identity is rooted in what you own and your image. However while researching consumerism in the late 20th century I found that there were a lot of criticisms of the men of this generation, the baby boomers. I decided to incorporate feminist theory into my paper, and analyze the post-war American man, and the identity crisis they faced in light of the women’s movement, and among other aspects as well.
When first thinking about the final paper months ago, I wanted to do a post-structuralist reading on a text, however I my confidence sputtered when I realized that 10 pages was going to be difficult to cover. I felt like while the topic interested me greatly, I would not be able to produce a comprehensive research paper on the matter. What theories did you guys use? Was it one that interested you the most? Or was it the one you were most confident with?