Anyone still following this Blog please note this lnk to a very relevant curent FREE exhibition at the Wellcome Institute
http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/identity.aspx
best,
Paul
Sunday 6 December 2009
Tuesday 24 November 2009
Last Night's Closing Session
The attendance wasn't bad for the final session. Thanks to all those who came and to anyone who didn't the Blog is still available of course. Combined with the photocopies that you should have I think the Blog provides a rich source of pointers and leads for writing your essays or continued interest in 'The Subject'. Don't forget that at the foot of every Blog window you must follow 'Older Posts' to reach the earlier Blog posts.
I forgot to mention that I had a second pass at glossing the Lacan/Rose text and you may find some improvements there. I am convinced that Lacan wanted us to maintain speculation by making us face the most profound and rigorous questions (as do all the best thinkers) and in this respect, it is OK to tussle with his ideas trying to give them a personal understanding. I think he would prefer that than for anyone to KNOW and fix them solidly.
Lacan was adamant about challenging an American-isation of Freud's thought which made it pragmatic for use by capitalists and so, I am suspicious of anyone (including Slavoj Zizek who seems to use Lacan a bit too knowingly. I prefer the constant disruption and disturbance Lacan provides and I don't believe that he intended to spawn a generation of ambitious, arty professionals with little sense of conscience and a disdain for sex (which is how I believe I have seen him interpreted by Zizek and his followers).
Anyway, it was good to hear more from you and about your essays last night, and to look at a few more ways to use the Booklist. There was much reference to memory, memoir, history and biography. On reflection -we should have considered On Kawara at this point. I hope that it is clear that to air each other's projects in a public forum is always an effective way of learning from each other. BTW David Hume's dates are 1711-1776.
Everyone should have essay guidelines now, including rules for the Harvard system of reference, and everyone should know what they have to do before handing in the essay to room G12 (ground floor of the old building) by the deadlne of 4pm on December 1st.
I wish you luck and hope you write something that is really satisfying to yourself and interesting for me. It's only by taking care and more care to form, and form and form your writing into something that is a clear communication and contribution to others, that you can begin to feel the satisfaction and effectivenes that writing can provide.
So work hard, in bursts, and rest, and return with fresh eyes until there is nothing more you can improve before handing in. When you've handed in give yourself a reward and go and see http://www.ica.org.uk/Examined%20Life+22238.twl at ICA -it could be good!
Best wishes, and thanks for all your contribution. In the perfect art school there will of course be a constant stream of 'Subject Studies' to tap into see http://al-blues.blogspot.com/
Paul O'Kane
I forgot to mention that I had a second pass at glossing the Lacan/Rose text and you may find some improvements there. I am convinced that Lacan wanted us to maintain speculation by making us face the most profound and rigorous questions (as do all the best thinkers) and in this respect, it is OK to tussle with his ideas trying to give them a personal understanding. I think he would prefer that than for anyone to KNOW and fix them solidly.
Lacan was adamant about challenging an American-isation of Freud's thought which made it pragmatic for use by capitalists and so, I am suspicious of anyone (including Slavoj Zizek who seems to use Lacan a bit too knowingly. I prefer the constant disruption and disturbance Lacan provides and I don't believe that he intended to spawn a generation of ambitious, arty professionals with little sense of conscience and a disdain for sex (which is how I believe I have seen him interpreted by Zizek and his followers).
Anyway, it was good to hear more from you and about your essays last night, and to look at a few more ways to use the Booklist. There was much reference to memory, memoir, history and biography. On reflection -we should have considered On Kawara at this point. I hope that it is clear that to air each other's projects in a public forum is always an effective way of learning from each other. BTW David Hume's dates are 1711-1776.
Everyone should have essay guidelines now, including rules for the Harvard system of reference, and everyone should know what they have to do before handing in the essay to room G12 (ground floor of the old building) by the deadlne of 4pm on December 1st.
I wish you luck and hope you write something that is really satisfying to yourself and interesting for me. It's only by taking care and more care to form, and form and form your writing into something that is a clear communication and contribution to others, that you can begin to feel the satisfaction and effectivenes that writing can provide.
So work hard, in bursts, and rest, and return with fresh eyes until there is nothing more you can improve before handing in. When you've handed in give yourself a reward and go and see http://www.ica.org.uk/Examined%20Life+22238.twl at ICA -it could be good!
Best wishes, and thanks for all your contribution. In the perfect art school there will of course be a constant stream of 'Subject Studies' to tap into see http://al-blues.blogspot.com/
Paul O'Kane
Monday 23 November 2009
FINAL SESSION -TOMORROW NIGHT
Hi, thanks for your attendance and interest at this year's 'Exploring The Subject' seminar. I hope it has been worthwhile and particular thanks to those who have attended most consistently and done the reading.
Tomorrow night I want to hear all about your essays, and officially the session is dedicated to 'Presentations'. To save time I have done my best to briefly gloss the Jacqueline Rose handout that I gave last week (see 3 short posts below this one and please note reverse order of Parts 1,2,& 3 due to blog design).
It is rather a dense piece so I hope my comments are helpful. Lacan IS difficult to get into I know but I think you will agree that he is VERY intriguing and inviteds further, patient study because, I think, he sets up the most imaginative and radical map of our dialgue with the world and eachother.
I do not have time to gloss the Judith Butler text here but I will say a few words about her ontribution to 'subject' studies.
As a final handout I will give you copies of a review of a new book called Selves, it is so full of useful quoes that it is beter to photocopy it all than to select a few. Anyone who has been ineterested in this course should find it interesting and useful.
See you tomorrow, DON'T BE AFRAID top be prepared to present your idea, everyone is here to support eachother and share ideas of how to make eah essay a rewarding and succesful exercise. IF you have any more questions about the form and process of essays I will be happy to answer those too.
Tomorrow night I want to hear all about your essays, and officially the session is dedicated to 'Presentations'. To save time I have done my best to briefly gloss the Jacqueline Rose handout that I gave last week (see 3 short posts below this one and please note reverse order of Parts 1,2,& 3 due to blog design).
It is rather a dense piece so I hope my comments are helpful. Lacan IS difficult to get into I know but I think you will agree that he is VERY intriguing and inviteds further, patient study because, I think, he sets up the most imaginative and radical map of our dialgue with the world and eachother.
I do not have time to gloss the Judith Butler text here but I will say a few words about her ontribution to 'subject' studies.
As a final handout I will give you copies of a review of a new book called Selves, it is so full of useful quoes that it is beter to photocopy it all than to select a few. Anyone who has been ineterested in this course should find it interesting and useful.
See you tomorrow, DON'T BE AFRAID top be prepared to present your idea, everyone is here to support eachother and share ideas of how to make eah essay a rewarding and succesful exercise. IF you have any more questions about the form and process of essays I will be happy to answer those too.
Glossing Jacqueline Rose and 'Feminine Sexuality' PART 3.
Through the 'opposite sex' I may hope to unite my own division, however, the idea of another sex only creates my division.
Meanwhile, the Other is as divided as myself, we are all equally divided at The Mirror Stage and by being brought into language where language is other to us and language operates only by differences.
For men women can become fantastic promises of lost wholeness, a dream of replacing the lost object - which is in fact an inevitable and necessary part of being introduced to the self and to language.
But whether this is right or wrong is not important -Lacan would maintain- what is more important is the fact that the Symbolic Order prioritises the male principle of the Phallus while we recognise that the Phallus is a fantom, only falsely promising meaning and consistency.
Lacan then comes to say things like 'woman is not' or crosses through the word 'THE' when it is placed before the word 'WOMAN'. But this refers to woman not as she is but as she is in the Symbolic Order. It is not a further subjugation, annihilation or denial of women (Lacan and Rose might argue) but a sign of her potential to rule or undermine the Order by inhabiting the Order's inherent negative forms (see 'lack', 'absence', 'castration', 'loss', 'missing' etc..
Can woman break out of the Order, perhaps by returning to a point before Language and Order imposed themselves?
Is there any return, rescue, redemption or refuge?
Is the body after all the answer to Lacan's Symbolic schema?
Rose concludes that despite feminist hostilities to Lacan he is of significant use to Feminism. She sees Lacan's Symbolic Order as convincing, due to the radicalism of his considerations and particularly the imaginative and difficult inversion of Freudian / modern positivism, so that everywhere in his system negative terms do the work of maintaining us in our order.
But the feminine always stands for a potential refusal of that order in a way that the masculine cannot, if only because the masculine term -as positive and no mater how fantasmatic- necessarily orients and grounds the Order.
Meanwhile, the Other is as divided as myself, we are all equally divided at The Mirror Stage and by being brought into language where language is other to us and language operates only by differences.
For men women can become fantastic promises of lost wholeness, a dream of replacing the lost object - which is in fact an inevitable and necessary part of being introduced to the self and to language.
But whether this is right or wrong is not important -Lacan would maintain- what is more important is the fact that the Symbolic Order prioritises the male principle of the Phallus while we recognise that the Phallus is a fantom, only falsely promising meaning and consistency.
Lacan then comes to say things like 'woman is not' or crosses through the word 'THE' when it is placed before the word 'WOMAN'. But this refers to woman not as she is but as she is in the Symbolic Order. It is not a further subjugation, annihilation or denial of women (Lacan and Rose might argue) but a sign of her potential to rule or undermine the Order by inhabiting the Order's inherent negative forms (see 'lack', 'absence', 'castration', 'loss', 'missing' etc..
Can woman break out of the Order, perhaps by returning to a point before Language and Order imposed themselves?
Is there any return, rescue, redemption or refuge?
Is the body after all the answer to Lacan's Symbolic schema?
Rose concludes that despite feminist hostilities to Lacan he is of significant use to Feminism. She sees Lacan's Symbolic Order as convincing, due to the radicalism of his considerations and particularly the imaginative and difficult inversion of Freudian / modern positivism, so that everywhere in his system negative terms do the work of maintaining us in our order.
But the feminine always stands for a potential refusal of that order in a way that the masculine cannot, if only because the masculine term -as positive and no mater how fantasmatic- necessarily orients and grounds the Order.
Glossing Jacqueline Rose and 'Feminine Sexuality' PART 2.
Whereas Freud instates The Oedipal and Incest as governing forces in our relations with our parents and which produce us as Subjects, Lacan rather sees there The Symbolic and The Imaginary.
Whereas Freud may have insisted our identities are determined by a traumatic past, Lacan sees them rather determined by the present Order which is always under negotiation (by e.g. more or less liberal regimes.)
It is a classic Structuralist turn to say that: 'The concept of the Symbolic states that the woman's sexuality is inseparable from the representations through which it is produced'.
Rose says that Lacan says sexuality appears to offer satisfaction but in fact it only offers desire. Just as language has no positive terms and the Subject is determined by lack, loss and castration, so desire can never be completed of fulfilled.
The Other -in terms of the other of a divided pair of sexes (Male-Female) is mistakenly perceived as offering the possibility of satisfaction -the fantasy of completion by another.
The Other wields law or power over us as the promised answer to our inherent incompletion and desire.
Thus Desire and drive must be recognised only for their process - it is a folly to hold out for or live a life according to what they may or may not achieve.
In terms of sexual difference it may seem hard to escape from anatomical, biological differences between male and female, but Rose insists that Lacan insists this is NOT the primary site of difference. In fact Lacan states that the importance of the Phallus (as symbolic) is that its status in determining human sexuality CANNOT BE ACCOUNTED FOR BY NATURE.
If we argue that the Phallus-as-seen-to-be-missing in the female is what gives the phallus power and priority Lacan reminds us that the problem is rather the idea of 'missing'. i.e. it is not the Phallus itself which has power but the false construction that determines this 'missing'. It is already positivised and prioritised in order for it to be considered as 'missing'.
The woman's 'lack' of phallus seems to suppress and subjugate her in the Symbolic Order, but Rose feels that Lacan is working at a sophisticated level to reveal woman's special position within the Symbolic Order which is in fact most powerful if it can only be seen to be so.
Because sexual difference is NOT primarily anatomical we can cross over from one side to the other, but what mostly keeps us in our places is the fear of the Law of the Symbolic Order - the codes which force us to line up in front of one term or another (Male - Female). It is the divide itself which has the authority, the difference, the lack, the absence and not either of the terms.
A clue to this is the way in which our sexual drives can be sublimated (diverted into different pursuits, expressions, occupations). i.e. as sexuality itself can be diverted so can sexual difference be negotiated or become nomadic if we are wiling to break the Law and re-negotiate the codes.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Whereas Freud may have insisted our identities are determined by a traumatic past, Lacan sees them rather determined by the present Order which is always under negotiation (by e.g. more or less liberal regimes.)
It is a classic Structuralist turn to say that: 'The concept of the Symbolic states that the woman's sexuality is inseparable from the representations through which it is produced'.
Rose says that Lacan says sexuality appears to offer satisfaction but in fact it only offers desire. Just as language has no positive terms and the Subject is determined by lack, loss and castration, so desire can never be completed of fulfilled.
The Other -in terms of the other of a divided pair of sexes (Male-Female) is mistakenly perceived as offering the possibility of satisfaction -the fantasy of completion by another.
The Other wields law or power over us as the promised answer to our inherent incompletion and desire.
Thus Desire and drive must be recognised only for their process - it is a folly to hold out for or live a life according to what they may or may not achieve.
In terms of sexual difference it may seem hard to escape from anatomical, biological differences between male and female, but Rose insists that Lacan insists this is NOT the primary site of difference. In fact Lacan states that the importance of the Phallus (as symbolic) is that its status in determining human sexuality CANNOT BE ACCOUNTED FOR BY NATURE.
If we argue that the Phallus-as-seen-to-be-missing in the female is what gives the phallus power and priority Lacan reminds us that the problem is rather the idea of 'missing'. i.e. it is not the Phallus itself which has power but the false construction that determines this 'missing'. It is already positivised and prioritised in order for it to be considered as 'missing'.
The woman's 'lack' of phallus seems to suppress and subjugate her in the Symbolic Order, but Rose feels that Lacan is working at a sophisticated level to reveal woman's special position within the Symbolic Order which is in fact most powerful if it can only be seen to be so.
Because sexual difference is NOT primarily anatomical we can cross over from one side to the other, but what mostly keeps us in our places is the fear of the Law of the Symbolic Order - the codes which force us to line up in front of one term or another (Male - Female). It is the divide itself which has the authority, the difference, the lack, the absence and not either of the terms.
A clue to this is the way in which our sexual drives can be sublimated (diverted into different pursuits, expressions, occupations). i.e. as sexuality itself can be diverted so can sexual difference be negotiated or become nomadic if we are wiling to break the Law and re-negotiate the codes.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Sunday 22 November 2009
Glossing Jacqueline Rose and 'Feminine Sexuality' PART 1.
When we looked at Kaja Silverman and Hitchcock we came across Structuralism, Saussure, linguistics and Lacan.
Here we encounter this again but in a more intense fashion.
Mainly I think what Rose is doing here is defending the sophistications of Lacan from certain hostile feminist mis-interpretations of his theorisation of the way feminine sexuality operates within a structuralist paradigm.
We know that for structuralism the world and its relations operate as a language and that language operates only by differences without any positive terms.
i.e. it is through the DIFFERENCES between words that we produce meaning, NOT by any real or intrinsic relationship between the words and what they refer to (signifiers to signifieds).
The whole is a convention, a code, one that works (and we work within it) but which is ultimately arbitrary.
This 'arbitrariness' and lack of positivity is the first of the uncertain, shifting, and in a way mysterious aspects of Lacan's view.
Rose starts out by reminding us of Lacan's theory of 'The Mirror Stage'. This is a turning point in child development when the child sees its image reflected in the world as something whole and fixed, but in the same moment notes the difference between that image and the shifting and unknowable reality of the internal subject.
It is a moment which produces the Subject as a split and as a difference akin to the difference that rules language. Just as the image promises to complete and contain me it makes me aware that I am not there where the image is.
Similarly, to Name something is to acknowledge that it is not owned or present, the name itself necessarily sets it apart from us and makes it absent, if only at the distance of its name.
A famous example from Freud - 'The Fort-Da Game' (in which a toy is repeatedly thrown from a playpen or cot and pulled back again or called for by the child) is used by Lacan as an example of how the child comes to understand the world, the self, and language, through ideas of absence and lack, of 'here' and of 'gone'.
Lacan thus builds on Freud, rescuing him from a certain American appropriation of his ideas, and reinstating Freud's contribution of the divided consciousness as something which increases uncertainty (making us proceed more carefully, thoughtfully and imaginatively perhaps) rather than as a call to build-up the ego (as in the American model).
Lacan's system can therefore be seen as an imaginative sophistication of a basic but relatively crude Freudian apparatus.
The Real -which is perhaps what the child acknowledges as un-representable at the mirror stage- is compensated for by both The Symbolic Order (authority of linguistic system) and The Imaginary (the everyday, pragmatic denial of the complexities and uncerainties of our 'Real existence).
Here we see an underlining of our lacks and uncertainties as a subject, but also a map of how we manage this.
The terms Phallus and Castration are crucial. They again build on parts of Freud's system, referring to Incest Taboo and Oedipal conflict as formative of the subject, but Lacan takes them away from the literal and specific into his preferred realm of the Symbolic i.e. they operate less as personal traumas and more as formative but unwritten laws.
The Phallus ot present but a wish, and symbolic of that missing positive term that we sense we are deprived of in language or are deprived of at the Mirror stage. We compensate for such an absence in our Imaginary pragmatism but this is constantly unnerved by the fear of Castration -the underl;ying sense that the Phallus or positive term is an unattainable fantasy. (Here Lacan builds on Freud's essay 'Fetishism' which can be found in the accessible Penguin collection 'On Sexuality').
Nevertheless, the Phallus operates as a primary or superior term. yet symbolic of the male, and central to the system, even as its existence is intrinsically fantasmatic. It provides the 'Order' in the Symbolic Order and remains the Law of the Father despite its mythic or purely Symbolic value.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Here we encounter this again but in a more intense fashion.
Mainly I think what Rose is doing here is defending the sophistications of Lacan from certain hostile feminist mis-interpretations of his theorisation of the way feminine sexuality operates within a structuralist paradigm.
We know that for structuralism the world and its relations operate as a language and that language operates only by differences without any positive terms.
i.e. it is through the DIFFERENCES between words that we produce meaning, NOT by any real or intrinsic relationship between the words and what they refer to (signifiers to signifieds).
The whole is a convention, a code, one that works (and we work within it) but which is ultimately arbitrary.
This 'arbitrariness' and lack of positivity is the first of the uncertain, shifting, and in a way mysterious aspects of Lacan's view.
Rose starts out by reminding us of Lacan's theory of 'The Mirror Stage'. This is a turning point in child development when the child sees its image reflected in the world as something whole and fixed, but in the same moment notes the difference between that image and the shifting and unknowable reality of the internal subject.
It is a moment which produces the Subject as a split and as a difference akin to the difference that rules language. Just as the image promises to complete and contain me it makes me aware that I am not there where the image is.
Similarly, to Name something is to acknowledge that it is not owned or present, the name itself necessarily sets it apart from us and makes it absent, if only at the distance of its name.
A famous example from Freud - 'The Fort-Da Game' (in which a toy is repeatedly thrown from a playpen or cot and pulled back again or called for by the child) is used by Lacan as an example of how the child comes to understand the world, the self, and language, through ideas of absence and lack, of 'here' and of 'gone'.
Lacan thus builds on Freud, rescuing him from a certain American appropriation of his ideas, and reinstating Freud's contribution of the divided consciousness as something which increases uncertainty (making us proceed more carefully, thoughtfully and imaginatively perhaps) rather than as a call to build-up the ego (as in the American model).
Lacan's system can therefore be seen as an imaginative sophistication of a basic but relatively crude Freudian apparatus.
The Real -which is perhaps what the child acknowledges as un-representable at the mirror stage- is compensated for by both The Symbolic Order (authority of linguistic system) and The Imaginary (the everyday, pragmatic denial of the complexities and uncerainties of our 'Real existence).
Here we see an underlining of our lacks and uncertainties as a subject, but also a map of how we manage this.
The terms Phallus and Castration are crucial. They again build on parts of Freud's system, referring to Incest Taboo and Oedipal conflict as formative of the subject, but Lacan takes them away from the literal and specific into his preferred realm of the Symbolic i.e. they operate less as personal traumas and more as formative but unwritten laws.
The Phallus ot present but a wish, and symbolic of that missing positive term that we sense we are deprived of in language or are deprived of at the Mirror stage. We compensate for such an absence in our Imaginary pragmatism but this is constantly unnerved by the fear of Castration -the underl;ying sense that the Phallus or positive term is an unattainable fantasy. (Here Lacan builds on Freud's essay 'Fetishism' which can be found in the accessible Penguin collection 'On Sexuality').
Nevertheless, the Phallus operates as a primary or superior term. yet symbolic of the male, and central to the system, even as its existence is intrinsically fantasmatic. It provides the 'Order' in the Symbolic Order and remains the Law of the Father despite its mythic or purely Symbolic value.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Saturday 21 November 2009
Snowball
Getting a bit behind with my duties now, as the term nears its end and the several courses I am running all start to build up and snowball together.
Last year, 'Exploring the Subject' was well reviewed by students but the essays were not as strong as the attention had been in the classroom, therefore this year I have been emphasising the essays more and briefing about them often, trying to show that they are integral, not a chore 'bolted on' to the course or to be only considered at the deadline.
Another problem last year was the amount of students who actually read the set texts and were prepared to respond to them were few, and though this is improved this year it still means I default to Lecture-mode rather than really conducting a 'Seminar'.
Nevertheless I also see that I should tailor the texts more carefully mixing more introductory material with challenging texts- if I get the chance next year to run this course again. I certainly think it's a useful component for any undergraduate art and design degree to make serious and inventive considerations about the History and Theory of 'The Subject' in a group and write a short essay on the theme.
I also think a course like this could be a bit longer as there is so many rich ideas to consider and this would allow for more group activities and student input.
It's another weekend packed with teaching responsibilities but I will try to post a Blog that glosses the Jacqueline rose text (on Lacan and Feminine Sexuality) before the Tuesday session, but hope to spend most ogf this final session together talking about your essays.
Last year, 'Exploring the Subject' was well reviewed by students but the essays were not as strong as the attention had been in the classroom, therefore this year I have been emphasising the essays more and briefing about them often, trying to show that they are integral, not a chore 'bolted on' to the course or to be only considered at the deadline.
Another problem last year was the amount of students who actually read the set texts and were prepared to respond to them were few, and though this is improved this year it still means I default to Lecture-mode rather than really conducting a 'Seminar'.
Nevertheless I also see that I should tailor the texts more carefully mixing more introductory material with challenging texts- if I get the chance next year to run this course again. I certainly think it's a useful component for any undergraduate art and design degree to make serious and inventive considerations about the History and Theory of 'The Subject' in a group and write a short essay on the theme.
I also think a course like this could be a bit longer as there is so many rich ideas to consider and this would allow for more group activities and student input.
It's another weekend packed with teaching responsibilities but I will try to post a Blog that glosses the Jacqueline rose text (on Lacan and Feminine Sexuality) before the Tuesday session, but hope to spend most ogf this final session together talking about your essays.
Wednesday 18 November 2009
Flat People
Following our last session I came away with an interesting set f connections concerning the contemporary subject. i.e. you can trace through the idea of the 'Clone' in Ishiguro's 'Never Let Me Go' who seems to have a diminished relationship with life and passions, and then see a connection with the quotes from Maupassant and Flaubert used by Julian Barnes (below) in his LRB review, then add to that, not only Dennis Potter's 'Karaoke' character -for whom identity has become something already made (we just sing a little line of difference on top) but also, going all the way back to our VERY FIRST quote from Charles Taylor's 'Sources Of The Self' which I will quote again here as a way of taking the Blog and the course full circle, from beginning to end.
" It has frequently been remarked by psychoanalysts that the period in which hysterics and patients with phobias and fixations formed the bulk of their clientele, starting in the classical period with Freud, has recently given way to a time when the main complaints centre around “ego loss”, or a sense of emptiness, flatness, futility, lack of purpose, or loss of self-esteem." (Taylor, Charles. 1989 Sources of the Self p.19)
I suppose this line of thoughts might be best used to answer the question on the 'enduring possibility of the Subject' or the one about the Subject in the age of 'Yahoo, facebook etc. (read 'consumerism and technology').
Oh!, and here's yet one more connection, just noticed in Nicolas Bourriaud's Altermodern catalogue essay:
"In the view of Bernard Stiegler [...] capitalism functions through the channeling of desires; yet, he adds, 'desire underwent a downward tendency', forcing the system to 'exploit instinctive impulses', all real passions having disappeared among alienated individuals who had lost control of their own lives."
" It has frequently been remarked by psychoanalysts that the period in which hysterics and patients with phobias and fixations formed the bulk of their clientele, starting in the classical period with Freud, has recently given way to a time when the main complaints centre around “ego loss”, or a sense of emptiness, flatness, futility, lack of purpose, or loss of self-esteem." (Taylor, Charles. 1989 Sources of the Self p.19)
I suppose this line of thoughts might be best used to answer the question on the 'enduring possibility of the Subject' or the one about the Subject in the age of 'Yahoo, facebook etc. (read 'consumerism and technology').
Oh!, and here's yet one more connection, just noticed in Nicolas Bourriaud's Altermodern catalogue essay:
"In the view of Bernard Stiegler [...] capitalism functions through the channeling of desires; yet, he adds, 'desire underwent a downward tendency', forcing the system to 'exploit instinctive impulses', all real passions having disappeared among alienated individuals who had lost control of their own lives."
Tuesday 17 November 2009
Barthes tonight, Next week and how to end the course...
Hi, thanks for much improved attendance this week. Next week is the last week of the seminar course and I'm afraid we have got behind with our readings.
I also regret that we have not spent enough time hearing your ideas and responses. I blame myself partly for being worried that the session will not achieve its potential if I don't fill it with 'delivery', but I also think that either smaller class sizes or a longer course would give us what the English call 'elbow room' to get to know everyone better and develop the important speculative conversation that SHOULD arise from anything titled 'seminar'.
At least I hope that the sessions you have attended, the handouts, the nblogs and exchanges with your peers will give you the grounds for making essays which are genuinely informed and engaged with the theme of The Subject and that you can take care to compose your essays so that they produce something of lasting value to you and to the debate.
Tonight's Barthes text proves to be still rich in its assertions, even if it can now be perhaps historicised as a 'classic' postmodern text. It's a wonderful investigation of writing by a writer, but its aims are much wider as it aims to deconstruct the 'Author' function in the broadest sense and as it applies to every artifact valued as of cultural significance. It would be wonderful to put all our mythological assumptions about e.g. the paintings of Van Gogh through this essay -as a kind of grinder - and see how or view of Van Gogh might be changed as a result!
We also managed to mention at least a few other important literary works not referred to by Barthes, including: Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, W.G Sebald's Austerlitz, and Dennis Potter's TV drama Karaoke.
Next week there are two texts we can try to look at (though time is certainly short. I'm ashamed to ay they are on 'Female Sexuality' (Jacqueline Rose) and the 'Queer' Subject (Judith Butler). ashamed because it seems I left these themes til last and almost left them out, but I believe I proceeded through the choice of texts in way that was meant to build a dynamic and historical line of thought which would culminate in these two texts.
Obviously we will be able to use them to discuss Gender, and Sexuality (referred to in the Silverman essay too), but they can also expand Barthes' notion of the Performative (not to be confused with 'Performance') Subject as well as introduce us to ideas of 'the body' that have been on the edge of the seminar but not yet really confronted. I will do my best to write a short gloss of each of the outstanding texts here on this blog and refer to them at least at the start of next week's session.
Just for interest's sake here is a little coincidental quote about the Subject as a body drawn from Hilary Mantel's review of a new book on hypochondria:
"Some of us, mostly men, regard our bodies as machines, and service them when they begin to grate and creak, or when they spluter to a halt by the roadside. Some treat their bodies like lovers, to be flattered and indulged, second-guessed and placated in the hope that they will thrive. All of us treat them as other; they are not our essential selves, they are what we drag around with us, a suitcase or steamer trunk with dubious, ever-shifting contents, a piece of luggage we didn't pack ourselves."
We must really hear from you and your essay ideas next week THE FINAL WEEK OF 'EXPLORING THE SUBJECT' 2009. Please bring a sketch, bullet points or outline and maybe a few images to illustrate if possible. DON'T BE AFRAID. Last year I had a terribly empty session after all these weeks of hard work because students simply felt intimidated enough by the fear of presentation to make them stay away -a great waste of a valuable opportunity.
We are all at the seminar to support each other and exchange ideas and time is so short that the spotlight won't be on you and your ideas for very long and you will certainly gain form the experience. It really doesn't matter how developed or undeveloped your essay project is, I guarantee it will be worth airing it next week, and once others know what you are interested in they will have a chance to discuss it wth you, if not in the seminar itself them informally afterwards.
Going through the ideas is also a nice way of reviewing the course, gong back to the essay questions, booklist etc. so please attend, encourage others to attend, and prepare a little to share with the group. Then we can celebrate that the end of the course is nigh and go off to complete our essays as a response to these weeks of rich content and concentration.
I also regret that we have not spent enough time hearing your ideas and responses. I blame myself partly for being worried that the session will not achieve its potential if I don't fill it with 'delivery', but I also think that either smaller class sizes or a longer course would give us what the English call 'elbow room' to get to know everyone better and develop the important speculative conversation that SHOULD arise from anything titled 'seminar'.
At least I hope that the sessions you have attended, the handouts, the nblogs and exchanges with your peers will give you the grounds for making essays which are genuinely informed and engaged with the theme of The Subject and that you can take care to compose your essays so that they produce something of lasting value to you and to the debate.
Tonight's Barthes text proves to be still rich in its assertions, even if it can now be perhaps historicised as a 'classic' postmodern text. It's a wonderful investigation of writing by a writer, but its aims are much wider as it aims to deconstruct the 'Author' function in the broadest sense and as it applies to every artifact valued as of cultural significance. It would be wonderful to put all our mythological assumptions about e.g. the paintings of Van Gogh through this essay -as a kind of grinder - and see how or view of Van Gogh might be changed as a result!
We also managed to mention at least a few other important literary works not referred to by Barthes, including: Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, W.G Sebald's Austerlitz, and Dennis Potter's TV drama Karaoke.
Next week there are two texts we can try to look at (though time is certainly short. I'm ashamed to ay they are on 'Female Sexuality' (Jacqueline Rose) and the 'Queer' Subject (Judith Butler). ashamed because it seems I left these themes til last and almost left them out, but I believe I proceeded through the choice of texts in way that was meant to build a dynamic and historical line of thought which would culminate in these two texts.
Obviously we will be able to use them to discuss Gender, and Sexuality (referred to in the Silverman essay too), but they can also expand Barthes' notion of the Performative (not to be confused with 'Performance') Subject as well as introduce us to ideas of 'the body' that have been on the edge of the seminar but not yet really confronted. I will do my best to write a short gloss of each of the outstanding texts here on this blog and refer to them at least at the start of next week's session.
Just for interest's sake here is a little coincidental quote about the Subject as a body drawn from Hilary Mantel's review of a new book on hypochondria:
"Some of us, mostly men, regard our bodies as machines, and service them when they begin to grate and creak, or when they spluter to a halt by the roadside. Some treat their bodies like lovers, to be flattered and indulged, second-guessed and placated in the hope that they will thrive. All of us treat them as other; they are not our essential selves, they are what we drag around with us, a suitcase or steamer trunk with dubious, ever-shifting contents, a piece of luggage we didn't pack ourselves."
We must really hear from you and your essay ideas next week THE FINAL WEEK OF 'EXPLORING THE SUBJECT' 2009. Please bring a sketch, bullet points or outline and maybe a few images to illustrate if possible. DON'T BE AFRAID. Last year I had a terribly empty session after all these weeks of hard work because students simply felt intimidated enough by the fear of presentation to make them stay away -a great waste of a valuable opportunity.
We are all at the seminar to support each other and exchange ideas and time is so short that the spotlight won't be on you and your ideas for very long and you will certainly gain form the experience. It really doesn't matter how developed or undeveloped your essay project is, I guarantee it will be worth airing it next week, and once others know what you are interested in they will have a chance to discuss it wth you, if not in the seminar itself them informally afterwards.
Going through the ideas is also a nice way of reviewing the course, gong back to the essay questions, booklist etc. so please attend, encourage others to attend, and prepare a little to share with the group. Then we can celebrate that the end of the course is nigh and go off to complete our essays as a response to these weeks of rich content and concentration.
Monday 16 November 2009
Barthes, Writing, and The Subject.
Hi,
for those who attended last week they would have colected the reading Roland Barthes 'The Death of the Author from his book 'Image, Music, Text'.
If you weren't there it's such a classic text it should be easy to get hold of in the library or online (it's also found in anthologies.)
It's also a short text and relatively easy to digest. This evening I want to use it, firstly to continue our investigation of ideas of the Subject (this time through writing and language -though we have experienced similar Structuralist approaches to the Subject already).
Secondly, we can use this text to perhaps loosen-up our own concerns about our essay writing.
I come back repeatedly to the essay because I want to stress the essay is not an external or add-on component of our seminar but always integral, always on our mind as the outcome of our conversations.
Last week we heard from a few students, their initial thoughts, and I believe that airing ideas in this way -however undeveloped, helps build confidence in them and invites helpful comments from myself and your peers.
But to quickly turn to the Barthes essay, it is such a classic that you may be familiar with it, nevertheless, as I say, it does refer specifically to recent considerations of the Subject. It also posits the way in which literature and its writing have come to influence our idea of the subject (perhaps particularly in the references to Proust and to Greek theatre).
Our relationship with God is even called into question by our approach to writing which Barthes calls an 'anti-theological activity', and he also refers to 'Performativity' (which we will also see in Judith butler) and the speed, moment or 'event' of writing - and of reading.
As it is a short but very rich text we can work through it together in the class.
We will also use the session to review our progress, discuss essays and essay writing, and consider literature in general as an influence on the subject.
I conclude this post with a relevant quote, Julian Barnes writing in from the current issue of 'The London Review of Books' (volume 31, number 21, p.28)
"What Mariolle discovers is that the modern woman is not able to love as deeply as her predecessor: she is able to attract, entrap and seduce, but even in intimacy there is a final witholding of heart and body - which, of course, becomes a source of further power. And this change in women, Mariolle decides, is the fault of literature. As he puts it to Lamarthe
In the days when poets and novelists exalted women and made them dream ... they sought and believed they found in their lives the same things that their hearts responded to in books. today you eliminate all the poetic trappings in order to reveal nothing but disillusioning realities. And when there's no love left in books, my dear fellow, there's no love in life.
This complaint against literature from within literature is very French; it also directs us back to an earlier and more famous such complaint, that in Madame Bovary, Emma is the typical reader of those romantic books which make women dream and give their hearts expectation -though look where it got her. Indeed, Flaubert's novel deals in precisely the sort of disillusioning realities' Mariolle is now complaining about."
These thoughts relate to one of the original quotes I placed on the first Blog posts concerning the literary 'type' Oblomov (see 'Older Posts' below) " Oblomov hmself is not sure he is a person. He thinks he may be a type, and that is what he is usually taken to be. Early in the novel he looks at his fabulously slovenly servant and thinks 'well, brother, you're more of an Oblomov than I am' - as if he has read the book and recognised himself. "(Michael Wood's review of ‘Oblomov’ by Goncharov LRB August 2009 p. 8.).
But we could also use it to pick up our promised discussion of Ishiguro's novel 'Never Let Me go' in which the literary clone characters seem to have lost much 'human' feeling.
for those who attended last week they would have colected the reading Roland Barthes 'The Death of the Author from his book 'Image, Music, Text'.
If you weren't there it's such a classic text it should be easy to get hold of in the library or online (it's also found in anthologies.)
It's also a short text and relatively easy to digest. This evening I want to use it, firstly to continue our investigation of ideas of the Subject (this time through writing and language -though we have experienced similar Structuralist approaches to the Subject already).
Secondly, we can use this text to perhaps loosen-up our own concerns about our essay writing.
I come back repeatedly to the essay because I want to stress the essay is not an external or add-on component of our seminar but always integral, always on our mind as the outcome of our conversations.
Last week we heard from a few students, their initial thoughts, and I believe that airing ideas in this way -however undeveloped, helps build confidence in them and invites helpful comments from myself and your peers.
But to quickly turn to the Barthes essay, it is such a classic that you may be familiar with it, nevertheless, as I say, it does refer specifically to recent considerations of the Subject. It also posits the way in which literature and its writing have come to influence our idea of the subject (perhaps particularly in the references to Proust and to Greek theatre).
Our relationship with God is even called into question by our approach to writing which Barthes calls an 'anti-theological activity', and he also refers to 'Performativity' (which we will also see in Judith butler) and the speed, moment or 'event' of writing - and of reading.
As it is a short but very rich text we can work through it together in the class.
We will also use the session to review our progress, discuss essays and essay writing, and consider literature in general as an influence on the subject.
I conclude this post with a relevant quote, Julian Barnes writing in from the current issue of 'The London Review of Books' (volume 31, number 21, p.28)
"What Mariolle discovers is that the modern woman is not able to love as deeply as her predecessor: she is able to attract, entrap and seduce, but even in intimacy there is a final witholding of heart and body - which, of course, becomes a source of further power. And this change in women, Mariolle decides, is the fault of literature. As he puts it to Lamarthe
In the days when poets and novelists exalted women and made them dream ... they sought and believed they found in their lives the same things that their hearts responded to in books. today you eliminate all the poetic trappings in order to reveal nothing but disillusioning realities. And when there's no love left in books, my dear fellow, there's no love in life.
This complaint against literature from within literature is very French; it also directs us back to an earlier and more famous such complaint, that in Madame Bovary, Emma is the typical reader of those romantic books which make women dream and give their hearts expectation -though look where it got her. Indeed, Flaubert's novel deals in precisely the sort of disillusioning realities' Mariolle is now complaining about."
These thoughts relate to one of the original quotes I placed on the first Blog posts concerning the literary 'type' Oblomov (see 'Older Posts' below) " Oblomov hmself is not sure he is a person. He thinks he may be a type, and that is what he is usually taken to be. Early in the novel he looks at his fabulously slovenly servant and thinks 'well, brother, you're more of an Oblomov than I am' - as if he has read the book and recognised himself. "(Michael Wood's review of ‘Oblomov’ by Goncharov LRB August 2009 p. 8.).
But we could also use it to pick up our promised discussion of Ishiguro's novel 'Never Let Me go' in which the literary clone characters seem to have lost much 'human' feeling.
Wednesday 11 November 2009
ATTENDANCE? -Last night. Essays, and towards the end of the seminar.
Last night attendance was poor, which surprised me as the previous week I felt we ended on a high note and felt we may have deepened the commitment to the seminar.
Perhaps there was some other important event taking place? Hopefully students will return next week and stay on-board for the last few sessions.
We are turning towards the close of the seminar now and so talking and thinking about our essays. some students seem to run a mile from this issue but it is really just an opportunity to form a response to what is taught rather than passively accept it.
Each new generation of students builds their responses to these materials and through their responses goes on to become the next generation of artists, teachers and experts. For this reason, undergraduate essays are crucial in beginning to assert your own opinions and positions and find your own voice.
Furthermore, if we start sketching and discussing the essay early enough it becomes less a mountainous chore (it's only 2,000 words) and more of a slowly accumulating project (if we give our tasks plenty of time in which to emerge, then time does some of the work for us I find).
The programme is supposed to be a seminar not a lecture series, and so, every opportunity to hear students' responses is welcome. Last night, partly aided by reduced numbers I must say, we did manage to start hearing about students' choice of questions and way to possibly answer them.
Ideally we will hear from everyone and ideally all students should be able to contribute ideas to each other's project in a seminar atmosphere of mutual support and interest.
The other thing we did last night was to briefly gloss the texts by Equiano and Fanon. Really these chats can only open a few more windows into the texts, and, as I have said before, I highly recommend going back to the texts following such a discussion as doing so produces a surprisingly fruitful new encounter with the text and develops understanding and confidence about just what reading really means and how you can use it (CRUCIAL!!)
At the end of the session I gave out a handout on Saussure (re last week's discussion of Structuralism) and a handout of the famous Barthes text 'The Death of the Author' to help us discuss Writing and the Subject next week.
Next week I think we will start with a thorough REVIEW of the course (so please look down through the whole blog, including clicking on 'OLDER POSTS' at the very bottom of the Blog below). We can hear a little more about students' essay progress etc. and discuss the Subject Writing as raised by Barthes.
Perhaps there was some other important event taking place? Hopefully students will return next week and stay on-board for the last few sessions.
We are turning towards the close of the seminar now and so talking and thinking about our essays. some students seem to run a mile from this issue but it is really just an opportunity to form a response to what is taught rather than passively accept it.
Each new generation of students builds their responses to these materials and through their responses goes on to become the next generation of artists, teachers and experts. For this reason, undergraduate essays are crucial in beginning to assert your own opinions and positions and find your own voice.
Furthermore, if we start sketching and discussing the essay early enough it becomes less a mountainous chore (it's only 2,000 words) and more of a slowly accumulating project (if we give our tasks plenty of time in which to emerge, then time does some of the work for us I find).
The programme is supposed to be a seminar not a lecture series, and so, every opportunity to hear students' responses is welcome. Last night, partly aided by reduced numbers I must say, we did manage to start hearing about students' choice of questions and way to possibly answer them.
Ideally we will hear from everyone and ideally all students should be able to contribute ideas to each other's project in a seminar atmosphere of mutual support and interest.
The other thing we did last night was to briefly gloss the texts by Equiano and Fanon. Really these chats can only open a few more windows into the texts, and, as I have said before, I highly recommend going back to the texts following such a discussion as doing so produces a surprisingly fruitful new encounter with the text and develops understanding and confidence about just what reading really means and how you can use it (CRUCIAL!!)
At the end of the session I gave out a handout on Saussure (re last week's discussion of Structuralism) and a handout of the famous Barthes text 'The Death of the Author' to help us discuss Writing and the Subject next week.
Next week I think we will start with a thorough REVIEW of the course (so please look down through the whole blog, including clicking on 'OLDER POSTS' at the very bottom of the Blog below). We can hear a little more about students' essay progress etc. and discuss the Subject Writing as raised by Barthes.
Sunday 8 November 2009
Fanonism
It would be wonderful to have time to view 'The Battle of Algiers' and 'Hidden (Cache')' as complements to drawing attention to the work of Frantz Fanon.
The short time of the seminar however will only allow us to rapidly gloss this text and I must leave students to follow these possibilities up in their own time if they are sufficiently interested.
However, I can assure you that should you do so it will be a very rewarding journey into the rich archive available to us today in terms of cultural history and the overlap between contemporary art and contemporary politics.
The Fanon text seems in a way dated because of some its terminology and because of the way its positions seem so graphically expressed in terms of a polarised racial milieu.
What is really rewarding however is to hear how this brilliant young man manages to think racial tensions in terms of cultural and psychological influences rather than any 'essential' or 'biological' argument.
In his intelligent analysis of extremely sensitive and volatile political tensions Fanon explains and explicates the complexities of the black subject in a postcolonial era, i.e. as someone now inhabiting both 'white' and black' fields of experience and attempting to negotiate this while avoiding neuroses.
Part of Fanon's technique is an ironic tone which sometimes make his scathing examples sound like his own opinions when in fact he is expressing commonly held position which he is trying to break down by asking it to face up to its underlying delusions and fears which propagate misguided images of The Other. and in many respects his essay is aimed at the 'negrophobic' white audience, asking it to rationalise its own fears and images of racial difference.
As a 20th century thinker it is significant that much of Fanon's argument is aimed at technologised media (e.g. children's comics) as a significant cultural influence on the development of the subject.
His application of Freudian psychoanalysis is innovative and creative (as was Lacan's last week) and, in carving his own method from Freud's principles he artfully appropriates psychoanalysis for non-European aims. In the process he simultaneously negates and effectively disgraces Jung as a Euro-centric racist.
We will do our best to gloss the text and illustrate these points in the time available. I realise it is a long and difficult text but the many points it raises profound and useful to compare with today's continuing debates and tensions regarding multi-culture, nation-ality, and the postcolonial Subject.
We can also at least introduce the themes in the films referred to above and see if it is effective to compare Fanon's text with that of Olaudah Equiano (see below)
Regarding Equiano -plus considerations of the course content and timetable etc.
The several courses I am running simultaneously across the University begin to 'snowball' at this point making 'part-time' teaching very much a 7-day-week. It is only this (Sunday) morning that I could get back to considerations of 'Exploring The subject' (though of course, by definition, it is never far from my mind).
Though last week's session again turned into a bit of a lecture it nevertheless seemed to work in producing interest in commitment in our theme and in learning in general.
If nothing else the tutor's role can be to ensure greater interest and energy in exploring the archive (research) and forming responses (writing, discussion, practices etc.) -whatever the content of a particular seminar or lecture might be.
'Snowballing' is an effect of any enthusiastic pursuit and it's true that the amount of content set out for this seminar quickly dobkes and re-doubles itself as one text and one conversation throws up further content and references. For this coming Tuesday's session I handed out reflections on Lacan and Hitchcok and also readings of Frantz Fanon and Olaudah Equiano.
I also highly recomended viewing of 'Hidden (Cache') by Michal Haneke (showing this morning at the Renoir cinema followd by a discussion) and 'The Battle of Algiers ') both related to 'Hidden' and to my set texts in very interesting ways.
The underlying theme of the seminar for this wek appears to be the 'racial' or 'racialised' Subject, colonialism and postocolonialism and their affect on the subject and the idea of the Subject. I have had time to re-view the wonderful text of Equiano, an 18th Century slave who became progressively liberated and educated to the point where he was able to mix with the high levels of english society and write and publish this eloquent memoir.
In re-reading the text I quickly realised that it is equally useful to us in considering how reflection, memoir, writing, language, narative, as well as liberty, human rights, 'wonder', science, magic, religion, technology and knowledge all play their part in our history of the Subject.
I wil go on to prepare a response to the Fanon text and Blog about this again before Tuesday's session. However, I can predict that there is already enough material in the Equiano text to create a generous and rewarding discussion and help answer some of our essay questions.
Incidentally, for those who wondered WHEN they should look at the BLog, I believe that by becoming a 'Follower' of the blog you can receive automatic announcements that a new post has been posted.
For now, please see the films suggested if possible (this, as well as the readings, can be conducted very productively in groups) and I hope you enjoy readng the tragic, painful but immensely read-able dynamic narrative of Equiano, and prepare some responses (I seem to have overlooked the allocation of this text to a particular reading group this week).
As I say, I wil Blog again about the Fanon text (which is far more 'knotty', difficult and less ingratiating but nevertheless an important sourrce for these debates).
We should also insist that this week we set aside a good part of the session to hear more from you about your practices, and essays and any other good or bad things you have to share about the seminar.
Though last week's session again turned into a bit of a lecture it nevertheless seemed to work in producing interest in commitment in our theme and in learning in general.
If nothing else the tutor's role can be to ensure greater interest and energy in exploring the archive (research) and forming responses (writing, discussion, practices etc.) -whatever the content of a particular seminar or lecture might be.
'Snowballing' is an effect of any enthusiastic pursuit and it's true that the amount of content set out for this seminar quickly dobkes and re-doubles itself as one text and one conversation throws up further content and references. For this coming Tuesday's session I handed out reflections on Lacan and Hitchcok and also readings of Frantz Fanon and Olaudah Equiano.
I also highly recomended viewing of 'Hidden (Cache') by Michal Haneke (showing this morning at the Renoir cinema followd by a discussion) and 'The Battle of Algiers ') both related to 'Hidden' and to my set texts in very interesting ways.
The underlying theme of the seminar for this wek appears to be the 'racial' or 'racialised' Subject, colonialism and postocolonialism and their affect on the subject and the idea of the Subject. I have had time to re-view the wonderful text of Equiano, an 18th Century slave who became progressively liberated and educated to the point where he was able to mix with the high levels of english society and write and publish this eloquent memoir.
In re-reading the text I quickly realised that it is equally useful to us in considering how reflection, memoir, writing, language, narative, as well as liberty, human rights, 'wonder', science, magic, religion, technology and knowledge all play their part in our history of the Subject.
I wil go on to prepare a response to the Fanon text and Blog about this again before Tuesday's session. However, I can predict that there is already enough material in the Equiano text to create a generous and rewarding discussion and help answer some of our essay questions.
Incidentally, for those who wondered WHEN they should look at the BLog, I believe that by becoming a 'Follower' of the blog you can receive automatic announcements that a new post has been posted.
For now, please see the films suggested if possible (this, as well as the readings, can be conducted very productively in groups) and I hope you enjoy readng the tragic, painful but immensely read-able dynamic narrative of Equiano, and prepare some responses (I seem to have overlooked the allocation of this text to a particular reading group this week).
As I say, I wil Blog again about the Fanon text (which is far more 'knotty', difficult and less ingratiating but nevertheless an important sourrce for these debates).
We should also insist that this week we set aside a good part of the session to hear more from you about your practices, and essays and any other good or bad things you have to share about the seminar.
Tuesday 3 November 2009
Lacan & Hitchcock etc.
Tonight.
In a way it was inadequate in explaining all the rich links between Freud, Saussure, Lacan and Hitchcock raised by Kaja Silvermans' rich 'Suture' essay. It was great to get to a real work of art and watch some masterful film-making of course. Despite not quite meeting the challenge of sharing such rich information with you I hope it at least opened the ground in which to research and learn (about Lacan, Structuralism, Hitchcock etc.) and of course using, sharing, working with the handouts is the best way to underline and expand what was raised in the class.
I hope you can negotiate time to re-read the texts and the movie in terms of the session. It sounds a lot to ask but to read a text before a seminar, then experience the seminar, then re-read the text, can, I promise you, be the kind of learning experience we are really looking for when we come to undergrad school.
I'd like to repeat my suggestion that students meet up (perhaps in yor reading groups which are listed on an earlier blog post below) to read together, and, as I've said, students for whom English is a second language may be greatly assisted by this exercise.
The Course: I increasingly feel there is not enough time in the course to deal with what are really key issues (such as: language, race, sexuality, history, philosophy of the Subject), and what also gets left out is all the rich conversations we should be having about your responses, your problems, your practices and pending essays.
One student raised the suggestion that we get further behind with the curriculum of set texts in order to give a whole or half session over to open discussion -in the round . Maybe we should start like that next week and see how far we get.
NEXT WEEK: I think it is a good idea to hear about your essay progress next week as we are passing the half-way point of the course now, so choose your question and write 500 words of content, working title, ideas for 2-3 sections, including at least 2 quotes and an image. Bring that along and it will serve you well as a foundation for a considered and truly useful essay.
HANDOUTS: Tonight I gave out a Lacan introduction to help clarify tonight's material and two new handouts for next week. Anyone who has looked at the Fanon essay may be a bit put off by the intellect and the anger therein, but it's worth going over and seeing what you can find there. Hopefully, as the course develops, you can find more reference points by relating what you read to previous texts and seminars.
For light relief you can turn from Fanon to the autobiographical writing of Olaudah Equiano. This text allows us to start considering autobiography as a way of structuring a subject, plus it also relates to History, the post-colonial subject, the writing subject, the enslaved and liberated subject, the racial subject etc. etc. plus, it is a great read!
MORE FILMS: There are a couple of films that I associate with next week's session, but we won't have time to view them, so, you have a great opportunity to get together and see 'The Battle of Algiers' and Cache' (Hidden) -see screening this Sunday in Bloomsbury -details and link below.
Will try to blog again before the next class and try to help with Fanon if possible. ANYONE WHO CAME LATE PLEASE LET ME KNOW NEXT WEEK SO THAT I CAN CORRECT THE REGISTER. The attendance was very good again this week and if you know anyone missing please tell them about tonight's seminar, share your essays with them and encourage them to come next week.
best, Paul O'Kane
In a way it was inadequate in explaining all the rich links between Freud, Saussure, Lacan and Hitchcock raised by Kaja Silvermans' rich 'Suture' essay. It was great to get to a real work of art and watch some masterful film-making of course. Despite not quite meeting the challenge of sharing such rich information with you I hope it at least opened the ground in which to research and learn (about Lacan, Structuralism, Hitchcock etc.) and of course using, sharing, working with the handouts is the best way to underline and expand what was raised in the class.
I hope you can negotiate time to re-read the texts and the movie in terms of the session. It sounds a lot to ask but to read a text before a seminar, then experience the seminar, then re-read the text, can, I promise you, be the kind of learning experience we are really looking for when we come to undergrad school.
I'd like to repeat my suggestion that students meet up (perhaps in yor reading groups which are listed on an earlier blog post below) to read together, and, as I've said, students for whom English is a second language may be greatly assisted by this exercise.
The Course: I increasingly feel there is not enough time in the course to deal with what are really key issues (such as: language, race, sexuality, history, philosophy of the Subject), and what also gets left out is all the rich conversations we should be having about your responses, your problems, your practices and pending essays.
One student raised the suggestion that we get further behind with the curriculum of set texts in order to give a whole or half session over to open discussion -in the round . Maybe we should start like that next week and see how far we get.
NEXT WEEK: I think it is a good idea to hear about your essay progress next week as we are passing the half-way point of the course now, so choose your question and write 500 words of content, working title, ideas for 2-3 sections, including at least 2 quotes and an image. Bring that along and it will serve you well as a foundation for a considered and truly useful essay.
HANDOUTS: Tonight I gave out a Lacan introduction to help clarify tonight's material and two new handouts for next week. Anyone who has looked at the Fanon essay may be a bit put off by the intellect and the anger therein, but it's worth going over and seeing what you can find there. Hopefully, as the course develops, you can find more reference points by relating what you read to previous texts and seminars.
For light relief you can turn from Fanon to the autobiographical writing of Olaudah Equiano. This text allows us to start considering autobiography as a way of structuring a subject, plus it also relates to History, the post-colonial subject, the writing subject, the enslaved and liberated subject, the racial subject etc. etc. plus, it is a great read!
MORE FILMS: There are a couple of films that I associate with next week's session, but we won't have time to view them, so, you have a great opportunity to get together and see 'The Battle of Algiers' and Cache' (Hidden) -see screening this Sunday in Bloomsbury -details and link below.
Will try to blog again before the next class and try to help with Fanon if possible. ANYONE WHO CAME LATE PLEASE LET ME KNOW NEXT WEEK SO THAT I CAN CORRECT THE REGISTER. The attendance was very good again this week and if you know anyone missing please tell them about tonight's seminar, share your essays with them and encourage them to come next week.
best, Paul O'Kane
Monday 2 November 2009
Last Week, This week and more ...
Hi,
LAST WEEK:
Reflecting on last week's dense reading of Mauss's text it seemed useful to note a certain 'class' distinction among those Romans who were subjects because they had access to accumulated family 'persons' or masks (as cultural property). Here the subject is an inherited privilege it seems.
The notion of 'ancestors' suddenly jumped off the page -as something I hadn't expected to discuss- and seems exciting, particularly according to our multicultural seminar group who may all have different cultural responses to this idea.
I also wanted to note interesting suggestions last week re DNA (that I've overlooked in my 'subject' interpretations and essay questions so far) and also encourage you to see Grayson' Perry's amazing 'brandscape' piece currently installled at Victoria Miro (well worth a look) showing the Subject-as-a-biography-dominated-by-consumerism.
PSYCHO:
Looking forward to going through this week's Lacanian Hitchcock text. Don't worry, all will be revealed. Please have a go at reading it through, alone or together with colleagues. If you know any student for whom English is their 2nd language it might be rewarding to help them read it through as teaching and helping others is often the best way to learn for ourselves. Mark anything of interest, difficulty or clarity. also, of course, watch the classic movie in light of the essay's points and note the scenes that Kaja Silverman refers to in the essay.
FILMS IN GENERAL: The use of films in this course is important and if you look down through the curriculum you can pull out a list that are worth watching. there seems to be a special showing of Michael Haneke's 'Cache' (Hidden) at the Renoir cinema (a groovy independent in Bruswick Square just off Russell Square). It's on next Sunday morning and followed by a discussion with a professor who recently published a book on Haneke (thehottest name in cunema right now) so should be worth attending! see: http://socialistfilm.blogspot.com/ re this event. Unfortunately we will not have tome to see all the suggested films during class times so this kind of thing is a good opportunity. Good also that someone mentioned the 'Colours' films by Kieslowski as a way of theorising the current possibilities of a Subject.
Finally, I made a hash of quoting David Hume on skepticism last week (when trying to explain Deleuze's interest in Hume's refusal of Knowledge, so here is a version of the quote from - James Boswell 'An Account of my last interview with David Hume, Esq.
Partly recorded in my Journal, partly enlarged from my memory 3 March 1777':
LAST WEEK:
Reflecting on last week's dense reading of Mauss's text it seemed useful to note a certain 'class' distinction among those Romans who were subjects because they had access to accumulated family 'persons' or masks (as cultural property). Here the subject is an inherited privilege it seems.
The notion of 'ancestors' suddenly jumped off the page -as something I hadn't expected to discuss- and seems exciting, particularly according to our multicultural seminar group who may all have different cultural responses to this idea.
I also wanted to note interesting suggestions last week re DNA (that I've overlooked in my 'subject' interpretations and essay questions so far) and also encourage you to see Grayson' Perry's amazing 'brandscape' piece currently installled at Victoria Miro (well worth a look) showing the Subject-as-a-biography-dominated-by-consumerism.
PSYCHO:
Looking forward to going through this week's Lacanian Hitchcock text. Don't worry, all will be revealed. Please have a go at reading it through, alone or together with colleagues. If you know any student for whom English is their 2nd language it might be rewarding to help them read it through as teaching and helping others is often the best way to learn for ourselves. Mark anything of interest, difficulty or clarity. also, of course, watch the classic movie in light of the essay's points and note the scenes that Kaja Silverman refers to in the essay.
FILMS IN GENERAL: The use of films in this course is important and if you look down through the curriculum you can pull out a list that are worth watching. there seems to be a special showing of Michael Haneke's 'Cache' (Hidden) at the Renoir cinema (a groovy independent in Bruswick Square just off Russell Square). It's on next Sunday morning and followed by a discussion with a professor who recently published a book on Haneke (thehottest name in cunema right now) so should be worth attending! see: http://socialistfilm.blogspot.com/ re this event. Unfortunately we will not have tome to see all the suggested films during class times so this kind of thing is a good opportunity. Good also that someone mentioned the 'Colours' films by Kieslowski as a way of theorising the current possibilities of a Subject.
Finally, I made a hash of quoting David Hume on skepticism last week (when trying to explain Deleuze's interest in Hume's refusal of Knowledge, so here is a version of the quote from - James Boswell 'An Account of my last interview with David Hume, Esq.
Partly recorded in my Journal, partly enlarged from my memory 3 March 1777':
"I had a strong curiosity to be satisfied if he persisted in disbelieving a future state even when he had death before his eyes. I was persuaded from what he now said, and from his manner of saying it, that he did persist. I asked him if it was not possible that there might be a future state. He answered it was possible that a piece of coal put upon the fire would not burn; and he added that it was a most unreasonable fancy that we should exist for ever."
Wednesday 28 October 2009
INFO for Next Week
First, thank you again for great attendance, please keep it up.
Last night was perhaps too crammed to be a properly productive seminar session, and felt like a good example of the way that the large numbers in the seminar can make it difficult to maintain a seminar format and atmosphere. Nevertheless it was good to spend some time with artists and images, as well as philosophy and ethnography.
But next week I think it is important to start with YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU & YOU. i.e. we will start by hearing a little more about you and your practice, and in what way you feel the 'Subject' might play a part in your own practice.
Plus, if you spend half and hour or an hour with this Blog posts below you should be able to come with a little more information about what is working for you in the seminar (including any problems you are having), and more about what essay questions, quotes, ideas, bibliography have caught your attention.
Next week we will maintain a more leisurely pace and once we have heard from you we will just concentrate on the Kaja Silverman essay and se the relevamt clips form Hitchcock's 'Psycho'. If we are still running one week behind we will just have to catch up without cramming the session as I did last night.
If you have copies of the Kaja Silverman essay of course read it, make notes and highlights on it (mark what catches your eye, don't worry if you don't understand it all at firtst reading) and please watch Psycho too. If anyone has a copy of 'Psycho' as DVD or VHS, or if you have a good You Tube or download link for 'Psycho' that might be useful please bring them all along.
If you picked up the Mauss essay and the little biography of Mauss's life and work you should find it rewarding to read through after we made some tracks into it last night.
If the Deleuze essay still confuses you please read through mnyy gloss below. and finally, if anyone knows or is reading or would like to find out a littl about Kashuo Iriguro's novel 'Never Let Me go' please bring that information knowledge with you too.
best wishes and see you soon,
Paul O'Kane
Last night was perhaps too crammed to be a properly productive seminar session, and felt like a good example of the way that the large numbers in the seminar can make it difficult to maintain a seminar format and atmosphere. Nevertheless it was good to spend some time with artists and images, as well as philosophy and ethnography.
But next week I think it is important to start with YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU & YOU. i.e. we will start by hearing a little more about you and your practice, and in what way you feel the 'Subject' might play a part in your own practice.
Plus, if you spend half and hour or an hour with this Blog posts below you should be able to come with a little more information about what is working for you in the seminar (including any problems you are having), and more about what essay questions, quotes, ideas, bibliography have caught your attention.
Next week we will maintain a more leisurely pace and once we have heard from you we will just concentrate on the Kaja Silverman essay and se the relevamt clips form Hitchcock's 'Psycho'. If we are still running one week behind we will just have to catch up without cramming the session as I did last night.
If you have copies of the Kaja Silverman essay of course read it, make notes and highlights on it (mark what catches your eye, don't worry if you don't understand it all at firtst reading) and please watch Psycho too. If anyone has a copy of 'Psycho' as DVD or VHS, or if you have a good You Tube or download link for 'Psycho' that might be useful please bring them all along.
If you picked up the Mauss essay and the little biography of Mauss's life and work you should find it rewarding to read through after we made some tracks into it last night.
If the Deleuze essay still confuses you please read through mnyy gloss below. and finally, if anyone knows or is reading or would like to find out a littl about Kashuo Iriguro's novel 'Never Let Me go' please bring that information knowledge with you too.
best wishes and see you soon,
Paul O'Kane
Wednesday 21 October 2009
My Reading of Deleuze's text 'A Philisophical Concept ...' (from the book 'Who Comes After The Subject? edited by Eduardo Cadaver.)
Hi, I understand that some of you will have found Deleuze's text a very difficult way to start the seminar, but I think it's worthwhile using it to raise some profound questions at the level of philosophy before we move to more 'Cultural -studies -type papers and look at artworks and artists etc. But we don't have to know or understand every text so much as use them as vehicles for our own discussion and questions and ideas.
Nevertheless, if anyone wants to read the text in tandem with my reading here you may find it more illuminating and useful. Anyway, here it is for those who may be interested. You may find it even more confusing but I hope it will help and may significantly change your thinking.
My reading of Gilles Deleuze’s short essay ‘A Philosophical Concept …’ (taken from Eduardo Cadaver’s ‘Who Comes After the Subject’)
Paragraph 1.
First Deleuze is saying that he is going to talk about a ‘concept’ and that concepts are subject to variables (change in the ‘states of things’, Historical changes), both internal and external changes affect the concepts we use to orient ourselves. It’s not up to us to just say a concept such as ‘Subject’ is dead (he is writing in answer to the question ’Who Comes After The Subject?’), no, we have to wait for the variables to change in such a way that the concept no longer exists or no longer applies (perhaps we experience this in a less profound way when a cool word or band or style becomes stale, we don’t make it that way but things change and suddenly its no longer cool).
Paragraph 2.
The concept ‘Subject’ has for a long time served two useful functions. First it worked as a useful universal way to address the self, even after we stopped grounding reality in objective universals like Truth and God, Essence etc. and began instead to believe reality is grounded only in Acts -acts of reason and acts of language. Here Deleuze illustrates by showing admiration for philosopher David Hume (1711-1776), the Scottish empiricist who changed and challenged the idea of a Subject by asking whether it is ever accurate for us to use the words ‘always’, or ‘necessary’ when really all we can ‘know’ is immediate, present experience. Hume was sceptical enough to dismiss the idea of ‘knowing’ and preferred to believe in things he experienced directly, as if for the first and only time. Deleuze suggests this changed our model of the Subject because, influenced by Hume’s model we are no longer grounded by reliable, objective universals but rather led by experience. The ‘Subject’ is just a series of experiences and acts –events we might say. Belief in these acts, experiences and events becomes our basis for reality, not reliable ‘knowledge’. The concept ‘Subject’ served the function of representing this kind of person or human. Second, in a modernising world in which we no longer thought of the self as a soul or a mere thing, the concept ‘Subject’ helps us to individuate the self even though. As someone who speaks and is spoken to, the self has several terms of address, including ‘I’, ‘You’ and ‘Me’. He raises the question of a difference between ‘I’ and ‘me’, asks if they refer to the same thing and suggests there is a conflict between them. When we use ‘I’ Deleuze says it is more universal, but when we use ‘me’ it is more individual. It is these questions which introduce the debate that became a philosophy of the subject and he says Hume, Kant, Husserl and Descartes all raised this question.
Paragraph 3.
Rather than simply say the Subject is dead, redundant etc. Deleuze asks if we can find new variables to change our idea of the concept ‘Subject’. As one example he mentions new 20th century notions of time (I think he means Einstein and Bergson and the ways that time may now be considered as variable according to Relativity, speed, or subjective experience). He states that this is an example of the way in which today singularities have become more important than universals. A singularity is not just the opposite of a universal but something we can use to make connections with other singularities (Here we could think of Hume again and of the modern Subject as someone who shares and compares singular experiences to ascertain and maintain reality rather than grounding it in an abstract universal of Knowledge or Truth). 20th century thinking doesn’t necessarily rest on ‘knowledge', or belief, but on more mathematical ‘arrangements’, ‘contrivances’, and assemblages. When we think of the world in this way the Subject doesn’t figure (as it does in ‘knowledge' or belief), the world runs with or without the Subject, beyond the human) and Deleuze calls this “ a transcendental field without Subject”. Philosophy may then be able to dismiss the Subject from its considerations and understand the world as arrangements of singularities, multiples that, once conveniently brought together become a new kind of singularity that he calls a Multiplicity. Now, there is no need to oppose singularity with universal, we have a new term -‘Multiplicity’- which is both singular and multiple - ‘a Multiplicity’ - and this might be the best way to consider the Subject, it is another arrangement, contrivance or assemblage. Things that recur and repeat, that are regular (in this more mathematical world of experiences and events) are more important than ‘knowledge’ or the old distinction between ‘true and false’. We forget about true and false and we forget universals, all we work with are these arrangements, these Multiplicities. Interestingly the Law works like this, appealing, not to essential truth but to repetitions, patterns and precedents brought together to prove a point. The truth, reality or identity of the ‘Subject’ doesn’t concern the Law because the law is only made up of a series of examples and precedents that can be configured in certain ways to make someone guilty or innocent.
Paragraph 4.
These are some of the variables that, through History have changed or are changing what we thought of as the self and have come to think of as the ‘Subject’. There are types of individuation that are not personal, ways of singling a self out that are not innate or within. If we see the word in terms of multiplicities we may wonder what individuates a multiplicity. We speak of a life, an event, a season, 5 o’clock, and there is a useful word to use here -‘Hecceities’ which means something like ‘a this’ or ‘thisness’, it is useful because we can use it to refer to a thing as an event. A this is only this, a this is an event that may repeat but will never be 'this' again. What we called the Subject is no longer a person or ego, we are only a ‘this’ a ‘thisness’ - a hecceity. Compared to calling myself a hecceity or a ‘this’ the Anglo-American word ‘me’ seems to Deleuze to be a “grammatical fiction” (think of the unconvincing explanation by Maria in The Sound Of Music - “Me, a name I call myself”). When we see ourselves as a ‘this’ we see ourselves as an ‘a’, as an event which, like other events is best understood in terms of relative speed and slowness, longitude and latitude, power and affect (exerted force and sensual response). Everything becomes “impersonal”, so that we are an ‘it' (as might be used to refer to other events). ‘It’ replaces ‘me’ in as Deleuze says that ‘it’ better describes our self and our exchanges with a community than ‘I’ and ‘You’ (perhaps the self as part of a Facebook group, seminar or other community is better described as an ‘it than as ‘me’). The reason we might today ask the question ‘Who Comes After The Subject?’ is that we are today aware of the important influence upon us of things less than the Subject (atoms, genes, acts) which nevertheless determine what and who we are, as well as impersonal arrangements greater than and external to the Subject (community, time, language) that form a modern understanding of the world without the Subject at its centre (with knowledge, truth, God or law to rely upon). But, as Deleuze said at the beginning, there is no point in just replacing one concept with another, or simply saying any particular concept is dead, we have to look at the problems and questions that a concept was previously used to answer or solve (which is what he has done in this short essay) and see how those problems and questions have changed to make the concept seem outmoded. Then we might see what the new problems and questions demand instead today (perhaps this is what the seminar is all about). In conclusion, Deleuze notes that nothing the great philosophers have written on this problem is dead either, the History of thought doesn’t work like that, it is the fact that past philosophers have asked questions so deeply and rigorously that allows us to continue asking such questions, and he compares philosophy to both science and art because, like them it only survives and thrives by having new questions to answer and it serves a changing world by creating new representations to accommodate and orient our experience.
END
Nevertheless, if anyone wants to read the text in tandem with my reading here you may find it more illuminating and useful. Anyway, here it is for those who may be interested. You may find it even more confusing but I hope it will help and may significantly change your thinking.
My reading of Gilles Deleuze’s short essay ‘A Philosophical Concept …’ (taken from Eduardo Cadaver’s ‘Who Comes After the Subject’)
Paragraph 1.
First Deleuze is saying that he is going to talk about a ‘concept’ and that concepts are subject to variables (change in the ‘states of things’, Historical changes), both internal and external changes affect the concepts we use to orient ourselves. It’s not up to us to just say a concept such as ‘Subject’ is dead (he is writing in answer to the question ’Who Comes After The Subject?’), no, we have to wait for the variables to change in such a way that the concept no longer exists or no longer applies (perhaps we experience this in a less profound way when a cool word or band or style becomes stale, we don’t make it that way but things change and suddenly its no longer cool).
Paragraph 2.
The concept ‘Subject’ has for a long time served two useful functions. First it worked as a useful universal way to address the self, even after we stopped grounding reality in objective universals like Truth and God, Essence etc. and began instead to believe reality is grounded only in Acts -acts of reason and acts of language. Here Deleuze illustrates by showing admiration for philosopher David Hume (1711-1776), the Scottish empiricist who changed and challenged the idea of a Subject by asking whether it is ever accurate for us to use the words ‘always’, or ‘necessary’ when really all we can ‘know’ is immediate, present experience. Hume was sceptical enough to dismiss the idea of ‘knowing’ and preferred to believe in things he experienced directly, as if for the first and only time. Deleuze suggests this changed our model of the Subject because, influenced by Hume’s model we are no longer grounded by reliable, objective universals but rather led by experience. The ‘Subject’ is just a series of experiences and acts –events we might say. Belief in these acts, experiences and events becomes our basis for reality, not reliable ‘knowledge’. The concept ‘Subject’ served the function of representing this kind of person or human. Second, in a modernising world in which we no longer thought of the self as a soul or a mere thing, the concept ‘Subject’ helps us to individuate the self even though. As someone who speaks and is spoken to, the self has several terms of address, including ‘I’, ‘You’ and ‘Me’. He raises the question of a difference between ‘I’ and ‘me’, asks if they refer to the same thing and suggests there is a conflict between them. When we use ‘I’ Deleuze says it is more universal, but when we use ‘me’ it is more individual. It is these questions which introduce the debate that became a philosophy of the subject and he says Hume, Kant, Husserl and Descartes all raised this question.
Paragraph 3.
Rather than simply say the Subject is dead, redundant etc. Deleuze asks if we can find new variables to change our idea of the concept ‘Subject’. As one example he mentions new 20th century notions of time (I think he means Einstein and Bergson and the ways that time may now be considered as variable according to Relativity, speed, or subjective experience). He states that this is an example of the way in which today singularities have become more important than universals. A singularity is not just the opposite of a universal but something we can use to make connections with other singularities (Here we could think of Hume again and of the modern Subject as someone who shares and compares singular experiences to ascertain and maintain reality rather than grounding it in an abstract universal of Knowledge or Truth). 20th century thinking doesn’t necessarily rest on ‘knowledge', or belief, but on more mathematical ‘arrangements’, ‘contrivances’, and assemblages. When we think of the world in this way the Subject doesn’t figure (as it does in ‘knowledge' or belief), the world runs with or without the Subject, beyond the human) and Deleuze calls this “ a transcendental field without Subject”. Philosophy may then be able to dismiss the Subject from its considerations and understand the world as arrangements of singularities, multiples that, once conveniently brought together become a new kind of singularity that he calls a Multiplicity. Now, there is no need to oppose singularity with universal, we have a new term -‘Multiplicity’- which is both singular and multiple - ‘a Multiplicity’ - and this might be the best way to consider the Subject, it is another arrangement, contrivance or assemblage. Things that recur and repeat, that are regular (in this more mathematical world of experiences and events) are more important than ‘knowledge’ or the old distinction between ‘true and false’. We forget about true and false and we forget universals, all we work with are these arrangements, these Multiplicities. Interestingly the Law works like this, appealing, not to essential truth but to repetitions, patterns and precedents brought together to prove a point. The truth, reality or identity of the ‘Subject’ doesn’t concern the Law because the law is only made up of a series of examples and precedents that can be configured in certain ways to make someone guilty or innocent.
Paragraph 4.
These are some of the variables that, through History have changed or are changing what we thought of as the self and have come to think of as the ‘Subject’. There are types of individuation that are not personal, ways of singling a self out that are not innate or within. If we see the word in terms of multiplicities we may wonder what individuates a multiplicity. We speak of a life, an event, a season, 5 o’clock, and there is a useful word to use here -‘Hecceities’ which means something like ‘a this’ or ‘thisness’, it is useful because we can use it to refer to a thing as an event. A this is only this, a this is an event that may repeat but will never be 'this' again. What we called the Subject is no longer a person or ego, we are only a ‘this’ a ‘thisness’ - a hecceity. Compared to calling myself a hecceity or a ‘this’ the Anglo-American word ‘me’ seems to Deleuze to be a “grammatical fiction” (think of the unconvincing explanation by Maria in The Sound Of Music - “Me, a name I call myself”). When we see ourselves as a ‘this’ we see ourselves as an ‘a’, as an event which, like other events is best understood in terms of relative speed and slowness, longitude and latitude, power and affect (exerted force and sensual response). Everything becomes “impersonal”, so that we are an ‘it' (as might be used to refer to other events). ‘It’ replaces ‘me’ in as Deleuze says that ‘it’ better describes our self and our exchanges with a community than ‘I’ and ‘You’ (perhaps the self as part of a Facebook group, seminar or other community is better described as an ‘it than as ‘me’). The reason we might today ask the question ‘Who Comes After The Subject?’ is that we are today aware of the important influence upon us of things less than the Subject (atoms, genes, acts) which nevertheless determine what and who we are, as well as impersonal arrangements greater than and external to the Subject (community, time, language) that form a modern understanding of the world without the Subject at its centre (with knowledge, truth, God or law to rely upon). But, as Deleuze said at the beginning, there is no point in just replacing one concept with another, or simply saying any particular concept is dead, we have to look at the problems and questions that a concept was previously used to answer or solve (which is what he has done in this short essay) and see how those problems and questions have changed to make the concept seem outmoded. Then we might see what the new problems and questions demand instead today (perhaps this is what the seminar is all about). In conclusion, Deleuze notes that nothing the great philosophers have written on this problem is dead either, the History of thought doesn’t work like that, it is the fact that past philosophers have asked questions so deeply and rigorously that allows us to continue asking such questions, and he compares philosophy to both science and art because, like them it only survives and thrives by having new questions to answer and it serves a changing world by creating new representations to accommodate and orient our experience.
END
Tuesday 20 October 2009
Fire Alarm Event...
Hi,
thanks for the almost 100% attendance today, please keep it up and pass on what happened to anyone you know who didn't attend. There really is a rich and growing conversation to be had with this seminar I believe, in dialogue with these texts and your own interests and practices on the way to making a good final essay.
It was a shame about the fire alrm which made the Deleuze essay probably seem more difficult as I didn't get time to summarise and clarify my reading, but be asured that this is the most difficult text we will encounter.
Next week I will begin by summarising Delezue (there's only 2 main points to make really) then quickly glossing the Marcel Mauss essay. Then we can look at Kaja silverman's essay on cinema and try and see a clip form 'Psycho'. If you can prepare for that and find out a bit about Ishiguro's novel 'Never Let Me Go, and again, use the handbook to think about your essay Qs, check the booklist for prompts, re=read the quotes there or see the Otaku link that will help us all to have something to say.
I Will do a big PhotoCopying session so everyone gets all the texts (or Scan them to put on Blackboard) before the next session.
Please check this Blog again before Tuesday as I amy add some more gloss on the texts and general ideas we've covered so far.
Hang in there!
Paul O'Kane
thanks for the almost 100% attendance today, please keep it up and pass on what happened to anyone you know who didn't attend. There really is a rich and growing conversation to be had with this seminar I believe, in dialogue with these texts and your own interests and practices on the way to making a good final essay.
It was a shame about the fire alrm which made the Deleuze essay probably seem more difficult as I didn't get time to summarise and clarify my reading, but be asured that this is the most difficult text we will encounter.
Next week I will begin by summarising Delezue (there's only 2 main points to make really) then quickly glossing the Marcel Mauss essay. Then we can look at Kaja silverman's essay on cinema and try and see a clip form 'Psycho'. If you can prepare for that and find out a bit about Ishiguro's novel 'Never Let Me Go, and again, use the handbook to think about your essay Qs, check the booklist for prompts, re=read the quotes there or see the Otaku link that will help us all to have something to say.
I Will do a big PhotoCopying session so everyone gets all the texts (or Scan them to put on Blackboard) before the next session.
Please check this Blog again before Tuesday as I amy add some more gloss on the texts and general ideas we've covered so far.
Hang in there!
Paul O'Kane
Tuesday 13 October 2009
Thanks and Reading Groups
Thanks for today to all ETS (Exploring The Subject) students. Please see below the reading groups we have arranged.
If you are reading for next week, and particularly if English is your second language, don't be intimidated by the texts or think you have to 'know' or 'understand' them all, simply work through them noting anything of interest to you, even any small section that is clearer to you than the rest. Then try if you can, to have some kind of exchange with your group members before the next seminar.
If you are not reading for next week please print out and study the seminar handbook (bring it along), you could look at the essay questions and think about which interests you, re-read the quotes that I went through today, look at the long reading list and just mark anything that particularly interests you -these could all be ways to bring you into the conversation next week.
In addition to this you could find out a little about Shakespeare's Hamlet, or Saint Thomas More, or read my little essay at the bottom of the Blog titled 'ONE' or follow the link (further down the blog) to the essay on Japanese 'OTAKU' culture. Do one or some of these, whatever you fancy, just come along next Tuesday having made a little progress please. Now, here are your reading groups:
Reading Group 1.
Alexandra Bettison
Michael Chea
Ana Malofy-Medwed
Daniella Russo
Suetfi Shi
Tatiana Dalla Bona
Olesza Sevtsenko
Reading Group 2.
Ezra Santos
Suzanne De Emmony
Jonathan Morgan
Harry Sanderson
Molly Goddard
Reading Group 3.
Sophia Georgiou
Teague Flannery
Karen Stafko
Riyohei Kawanishi
Zoe Wulfsohn-Dunkley
Ryulei
Dae Ki Shim
Reading Group 4.
Roman Khripko
Tzu-Chia Lai
Riyo Nemeh
Roisin Yin-Poole
Luigi Lancellotti
Hyo Jun Shim
Reading Group 5.
Emma-Lee Luketic
Barnaby Lambert
Angela Parslow
Sabine N'Guessan-Le Marchand
Maria Turkhas
If you are reading for next week, and particularly if English is your second language, don't be intimidated by the texts or think you have to 'know' or 'understand' them all, simply work through them noting anything of interest to you, even any small section that is clearer to you than the rest. Then try if you can, to have some kind of exchange with your group members before the next seminar.
If you are not reading for next week please print out and study the seminar handbook (bring it along), you could look at the essay questions and think about which interests you, re-read the quotes that I went through today, look at the long reading list and just mark anything that particularly interests you -these could all be ways to bring you into the conversation next week.
In addition to this you could find out a little about Shakespeare's Hamlet, or Saint Thomas More, or read my little essay at the bottom of the Blog titled 'ONE' or follow the link (further down the blog) to the essay on Japanese 'OTAKU' culture. Do one or some of these, whatever you fancy, just come along next Tuesday having made a little progress please. Now, here are your reading groups:
Reading Group 1.
Alexandra Bettison
Michael Chea
Ana Malofy-Medwed
Daniella Russo
Suetfi Shi
Tatiana Dalla Bona
Olesza Sevtsenko
Reading Group 2.
Ezra Santos
Suzanne De Emmony
Jonathan Morgan
Harry Sanderson
Molly Goddard
Reading Group 3.
Sophia Georgiou
Teague Flannery
Karen Stafko
Riyohei Kawanishi
Zoe Wulfsohn-Dunkley
Ryulei
Dae Ki Shim
Reading Group 4.
Roman Khripko
Tzu-Chia Lai
Riyo Nemeh
Roisin Yin-Poole
Luigi Lancellotti
Hyo Jun Shim
Reading Group 5.
Emma-Lee Luketic
Barnaby Lambert
Angela Parslow
Sabine N'Guessan-Le Marchand
Maria Turkhas
Seminar Handbook Materials
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
Cultural Studies Electives Programme
Unit 7, HE2 Credit Rating: 10 Credits Autumn 2009
Paul O’Kane
Strand: Time & Space
30
Exploring the Subject
Seminar Description
First, some quotes:
The motivation for this seminar began with a quote from the philosopher Gilles Deleuze in which he implied that the Subject is in fact “an event”, something similar to a wind, a season or a time of day. Ever since then I have wanted to work through some current interpretations of the subject with a group of students.
I see teaching in an art school as always necessarily creative and explorative, so students should be ready to take part in a group exploration. The essays you will write at the end of this course will be speculations and hypotheses, not right or wrong answers, and the aim is to appreciate that thinking, reading and writing -as well as being academic- are also practice. i.e. they are creative, personal, and you can keep developing them throughout your career and as part of your life
Weekly Reading and Research
We have 7 weeks, one of which is for guidance in writing the essay. This leaves us with 5-6 themes and readings on which to focus. There is however, also an extensive reading list here, informing our discussion and available for you to develop your ideas within a broad historical context.
Advice about reading will be provided and weekly handouts will be supplied. It is best for every student to have read the same text before each seminar, and for this reason we will keep weekly reading short, easy and to the point, emphasising use of the reading as a starting point for productive discussion. We don’t want to scare anyone away from this kind of work, but on the contrary, show how productive and stimulating it can be.
The weekly handout is a staring point for a discussion that could lead us anywhere, It will help start you thinking about your essay question and how your essay will form a response. You will developing research skills and methods by pursuing related texts and images that come up in discussion, asking librarians to help you locate them.
Online support
Some online support will be provided to enable students to access course materials and/or view reflections via Blackboard and/or a Blogspot blog dedicated to our seminar.
Images
Never forgetting that we are primarily visual artists we will use images extensively and, when possible, retain a period at the end of each seminar for suggesting further examples of Art, Cinema and Literature to which our themes and readings can be applied. Students are again invited to contribute to this activity, which will serve as a model for illustrating your essays
Seminar Programme
N.B. This is a planned weekly schedule but we have the freedom to develop the curriculum in response to developments in our discussion, e.g. we might substitute a film viewing of A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt, and discuss its implications for the subject the following week rather than the designated text.
WEEK 1 13th Oct 08
Tutor’s introduction, relating a
history of notions of the subject to a history of philosophy and aesthetics.
WEEK 2 20th Oct 09
We will use Deleuze’s short essay ‘A Philosophical concept’ from a collection by Cadava called ‘Who Comes after The Subject?’. By way of introduction we can also consider Marcel Mauss’ essay ‘A Category of the human mind: the notion of ‘person’; the notion of Self’ (in Open University reader -see booklist)
WEEK 3 27th Oct 09
We will devote to a discussion of Cinema and Literature themselves; their particular forms and processes in relation to other visual arts and how this might affect the way we see the subject through them, as well as how we might use them as examples for our writing. In preparation we will read Kaja Silverman’s essay ‘Suture: The Cinematic Model (in Open University reader -see booklist) while considering Deleuze’s Cinema books, the history of the novel, and Kashuo Ishiguro’s recent novel ‘Never Let Me go’.
WEEK 4 3rd Nov 09
We will read a text by Franz Fanon, the psychoanalyst and theorist of postcolonial identity (in Open University reader -see booklist). We can also consider Ali la Pointe, the hero of the 1966 film ‘Battle of Algiers’ and compare his image with subjectivities portrayed in Michael Haneke’s 2005 film ‘Hidden’
WEEK 5 10th Nov 09
We will confront the task of writing in good time for you to prepare your essays. But we will devote the seminar not only to questions of academic form but also the interface between the subject’s tendency to personal or creative writing and the demands of Academia. The reading will be ‘The Death of the Author’ by Roland Barthes.
WEEK 6 17th Nov 09
We will discus ‘Feminine Sexuality’ with the help of an essay of that name by Jacqueline Rose and ‘Critically Queer’ by Judith butler (in Open University reader -see booklist). Meanwhile we can look at works by Cindy Sherman, Francesca Woodman, Leigh Bowery, Karen Klimnik and Chantal Joffe (see also Ryan Trecartin, Marcus Coates, Kalup Linsey, Lindsay Seers, Marcus Coates).
WEEK 7 24th Nov 09 Presentations
WEEK 8 1st Dec 09 Essay Submission
Room: G12
Time: 10.00 to 16.00
The door will be shut at 16.00, any submissions after this will be regarded as LATE.
Assessment
Essay
Essay presented in academic form with bibliography 2,000 words.
Please choose ONE of the following:
1. In what ways have visual artists explored their own subjectivity as influenced by cinema and literature?
2. Using examples, discuss how the invention of cinema might have transformed notions of subjectivity?
3. Using examples, discuss how the popularity of the mass-produced novel might have transformed notions of the subject?
4. Is there such a thing as a subject primarily defined by Nationality, race, sexuality, or gender? Answer using examples form visual art, cinema, or literature
5. In what ways do contemporary artists, filmmakers and writers question the enduring possibility of the subject?
6. Consider the subject in an age of suicide bombers, and of Myspace, Facebook, iPods, Blogging, Yahoo, Google and Wiki. How might these factors and examples change the way we think of self and identity? Do artists, writers, filmmakers successfully represent this?
7. In what ways have artists used History, memoir or biography to establish or mythologise a subject or enhance our idea of the subject.
Deadline: 1st December 2009
Room: G12
Time: 10.00 to 16.00
The door will be shut at 16.00, any submissions after this will be regarded as LATE.
Presentation
The presentation is open ONLY to students from Drama Centre London and involves preparing and giving a 20-minute presentation responding to ONE of the questions above. Students also submit a bibliography and short description of their presentation on the due date, 1st December 2009 Rm G12, to fulfil the requirements of the assessment.
Readings
Arabian Nights, The. 1990, translated by Husain Haddawy, based on the text of the Fourteenth-Century Syrian Manuscript edited by Mushin Mahdi; New York : Norton.
Agamben, Giorgio. 1998, Homo Sacer : sovereign power and bare life. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen; Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.
Almodovar, Pedro. Talk to her = Hable con ella El Deseo. Via Digital / Antena 3, 2002. Videocassette.
Badiou, Alain. c2005, Etre et l'événement. English Being and event translated by Oliver Feltham. London ; New York : Continuum.
Barthes, Roland. 1977. Image, music, text; essays selected and translated [from the French] by Stephen Heath. [London] : Fontana.
Matsuo, Basho, 1985, On love and barley / Haiku of Basho ; translated from the Japanese with an introduction by Lucien Stryk. Harmondsworth : Penguin, Penguin classics.
Baudelaire, Charles. ‘Correspondences’
http://www.doctorhugo.org/synaesthesia/baudelaire.html’ Accessed 19/01/08
Beckett, Samuel. 1992, The theatrical notebooks of Samuel Beckett. Vol.2, Endgame / general editor: James Knowlson ; with a revised text, edited with an introduction and notes by S. E. Gontarski. London : Faber & Faber, 1992.
Benjamin, Walter. 1969.Illuminationen. English, Illuminations / edited and with an introduction by Hannah Arendt ; translated by Harry Zohn. New York : Schocken.
Benjamin, Walter. 2000. One-way street and other writings. London ; NewYork : Verso
Bogdanovich, Peter (director) Larry McMurtry (writer) 1971 The Last Picture Show, Columbia (Video)
Bolt, Robert. 1966. A man for all seasons. Directed by Fred Zinnemann. Columbia/Highland, 1966. VHS / DVD (120 mins.)
Bourriaud, Nicolas. 2005 Postproduction: culture as screenplay : how art reprograms the world. New York: Lukas & Sternberg,
Burke, Seán. 1999, The death and return of the author : criticism and subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
Buzzati, Dino. 1952. Il deserto dei tartari. English, The Tartar Steppe ; translated by Stuart C. Hood. New York : Farrar, Straus and Young,
Cadava, Eduardo (ed. with Peter Connor & Jean-Luc Nancy. Who comes after the subject? New York: Routledge, 1991.
Calvino, Italo. 1995. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller. Minerva Paperback.
Cumming, Laura, 2009. A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits
Harper Collins
Defoe, Daniel. 1994. Robinson Crusoe. London : Penguin ,
Deleuze, G. 2003. Francis Bacon: the logic of sensation. London: Continuum.
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. 1988, c1987.Mille plateaux. English A thousand plateaus : capitalism and schizophrenia / translation and foreword by Brian Massumi. London : Athlone Press.
Deleuze, G. 1995. Negotiations. Columbia University Press: New York
Deleuze, G & Guattari, F.. c1986. Kafka : toward a minor literature / and Félix Guattari ; translation by Dana Polan ; foreword by Réda Bensmaïa. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. 1986Cinéma 1. English
Cinema 1 : the movement-image / translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam.
London : Athlone,
Deleuze, G. 1989. Cinéma 2. English Cinema 2 : the time image / translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. London : Athlone,
Deleuze, G. 2004. Actual and the virtual. Desert islands and other texts (1953-1974) / edited by David Lapoujade ; translated by Mike Taormina. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).
Derrida, Jacques. 1976. De la grammatologie. English, Of grammatology / translated [from the French] by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore ; London : Johns Hopkins University Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1982. Marges de la philosophie. English. Margins of philosophy / Jacques Derrida; translated with additional notes by Alan Bass. Hemel Hempstead : Harvester Press.
Descartes, René. 1968. Discours de la méthode. English, Discourse on method ; and, The meditations / translated with an introduction by F.E. Sutcliffe. Harmondsworth : Penguin.
Fante, John, 1985. 1933 Was A Bad Year. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press
Freud, Sigmund. 1990, Art and literature : Jensen's Gradiva, Leonardo da Vinci, and other works / translated from the German under the general editorship of James Strachey; the present volume edited by Albert Dickson. London : Penguin.
Gogolʹ, Nikolaĭ Vasilʹevich. 1979. Shinelʹ English, The overcoat / translated [from the Russian] by David Magarshack ; with decorations by John Edward Craig. London : Journeyman Press.
Grassmuck, Volker. 1990. "I'm alone, but not lonely": Japanese Otaku-kids colonize the Realm of information and Media A Tale of Sex and Crime from a faraway Place http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/grassmuck/texts/otaku.e.html
Heidegger, Martin. 1962 (2001). Sein und Zeit. English Being and time / translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson. Oxford : Blackwell.
Holmes, Richard, 2005. Footsteps : adventures of a romantic biographer. Harper Perennial.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. 2001. An artist of the floating world. London : Faber & Faber.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. 2005. Never Let Me Go. London : Faber & Faber.
James, Henry. 1986. The Aspern papers; and The turn of the screw / edited with an introduction by Anthony Curtis. London : Penguin.
Kafka, F. 1971.The Complete Short Stories. Schocken Books, New York.
Kafka, Franz. 1991. The blue octavo notebooks / edited by Max Brod ; translated by Ernst Kaier and Eithne Wilkins. Cambridge, Mass. Exact Change,
King, Stephen, 2001. Misery : [videorecording] / directed by Rob Reiner; screenplay by William Goldman based on the novel by Stephen King [S.I] : MGM Home Entertainment.
Lee, Hermione, 2009. Biography : a very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
Lee, Hermione, 2005. Body parts : essays in life-writing. Chatto & Windus.
Lyotard, Jean-François. c1984. Condition postmoderne. English, The postmodern condition: a report on knowledge / translation from the French by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi; foreword by Fredric Jameson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Machiavelli, Niccolò. 1979. The portable Machiavelli / newly translated [from the Italian] and edited and with a critical introduction by Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa. Harmondsworth : Penguin.
Melville, Herman. 1948.Piazza Tales (‘Bartleby’) / edited by Egbert S. Oliver. New York : Hendricks House.
Mishima, Yukio. 2001 c1959. Kinkakuji. English The temple of the golden pavilion / translated by Ivan Morris. London : Vintage. Vintage classics)
Morrison, Toni. 1998. Sula / Toni Morrison. London: Vintage.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. 1969. Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book For Everyone And No One. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale. Penguin books London.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. 1979. Ecce homo : how one becomes what one is / translated with an introduction notes by R.J. Hollingdale. Harmondsworth : Penguin Books.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. 1998. Jenseits von Gut und Böse. English
Beyond good and evil: prelude to a philosophy of the future / translated and edited by Marion Faber ; with an introduction by Robert C. Holub. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
Allen-Poe, E. 1986. The Fall of the house of Usher and Other Stories. Odhams Press: London.
Potter, Dennis. 1996. Karaoke ; and, Cold Lazarus. London : Faber.
Proust, Marcel. 1983, c1981. À la recherche du temps perdu. English. Remembrance of things past / translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. Hardmondsworth : Penguin. Volumes 1 & 3
Proust, Marcel. 1996. À la recherche du temps perdu. English. Remembrance of things past / translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. Vintage. Volume 3
Rayson, David, 2003. Somewhere else is here. Kettle's Yard.
Richardson, Samuel. 1985.
Clarissa, or, The history of a young lady / edited with an introduction and notes by Angus Ross. [Harmondsworth] : Viking.
Redman, Peter (ed. With Paul du Gay and Jessica Evans) ‘Identity: A Reader’
The Open University 2007
Salinger, J. D (Jerome David) The Catcher In The Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, 1951
Santoka, Tenada. 1991. Mountain Tasting. Translated by john Stevens. Weatherill, New York 1991
Schrader, Paul (writer), Scorsese, Martin (director) 1976 Taxi Driver Columbia,1976 (DVD).
Sebald W.G. 2002 Austerlitz Translated by Anthea Bell. Penguin.
Shakespeare, William. 2006. Hamlet / edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor. London: Arden Shakespeare.
Shaw, George. 2003. This was life : collected writings 1996-2003. Ikon Gallery.
Taylor, Charles 1989 Sources of the self : the making of the modern identity. Cambridge University Press,.
Toole, John Kennedy, The Neon Bible. Viking, c1989.
Tournier, Michel, Friday, or, The other island. translated from the French by Norman Denny. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984
Warhol, Andy. 1975. The philosophy of Andy Warhol : from A to B and back again.
London: Cassell, 1975.
Woolf, Virginia. 2000. Mrs Dalloway / with an introduction and notes by Elaine Showalter; text edited by Stella McNichol. London
Cultural Studies Electives Programme
Unit 7, HE2 Credit Rating: 10 Credits Autumn 2009
Paul O’Kane
Strand: Time & Space
30
Exploring the Subject
Seminar Description
First, some quotes:
" It has frequently been remarked by psychoanalysts that the period in which hysterics and patients with phobias and fixations formed the bulk of their clientele, starting in the classical period with Freud, has recently given way to a time when the main complaints centre around “ego loss”, or a sense of emptiness, flatness, futility, lack of purpose, or loss of self-esteem." (Taylor, Charles. 1989 Sources of the Self p.19)
" Oblomov hmself is not sure he is a person. He thinks he may be a type, and that is what he is usually taken to be. Early in the novel he looks at his fabulously slovenly servant and thinks 'well, brother, you're more of an Oblamov than I am' - as if he has read the book and recognised himself. "
(Michael Wood's review of ‘Oblomov’ by Goncharov LRB August 2009 p. 8.)
"Why write a play about St. Thomas More? [...] For this reason: A man takes an oath only when he wants to commit himself quite exceptionally to the statement, when he wants to make an identity between the truth of it and his own virtue; he offers himself as a guarantee. And it works. There is a special kind of shrug for a perjurer; we feel that the man has no self to commit, no guarantee to offer. Of course it’s much less effective now that for most of us the actual words of the oath are not much more than impressive mumbo-jumbo than it was when they made obvious sense; we would prefer most men to guarantee their statements with, say, cash rather than with themselves. We feel—we know—the self to be an equivocal commodity. There are fewer and fewer things which, as they say, we 'cannot bring ourselves' to do. We can find almost no limits for ourselves other than the physical. "
(Robert Bolt)
"What is a self? Is it the rings of experience that grow within the tree? Is it the soul begotten and not made in the womb, or the being nurtured in the world outside? Is it the narrator in one’s head, the teeming consciousness that keeps one sleepless at night or distracted during the day, brave in danger or paralysed in a crisis? Is it the source of that anger that flames spontaneously at slights to one’s honour, or the source of this honour in the first place? Is it in one’s capacity to love, forgive or endure, or in one’s desire to lead a moral life? Is it the will that governs everything one ever says or does, or something far bigger than that?"
(Laura Cumming A Face To The World –On Self Portraits p. 262)
" Oblomov hmself is not sure he is a person. He thinks he may be a type, and that is what he is usually taken to be. Early in the novel he looks at his fabulously slovenly servant and thinks 'well, brother, you're more of an Oblamov than I am' - as if he has read the book and recognised himself. "
(Michael Wood's review of ‘Oblomov’ by Goncharov LRB August 2009 p. 8.)
"Why write a play about St. Thomas More? [...] For this reason: A man takes an oath only when he wants to commit himself quite exceptionally to the statement, when he wants to make an identity between the truth of it and his own virtue; he offers himself as a guarantee. And it works. There is a special kind of shrug for a perjurer; we feel that the man has no self to commit, no guarantee to offer. Of course it’s much less effective now that for most of us the actual words of the oath are not much more than impressive mumbo-jumbo than it was when they made obvious sense; we would prefer most men to guarantee their statements with, say, cash rather than with themselves. We feel—we know—the self to be an equivocal commodity. There are fewer and fewer things which, as they say, we 'cannot bring ourselves' to do. We can find almost no limits for ourselves other than the physical. "
(Robert Bolt)
"What is a self? Is it the rings of experience that grow within the tree? Is it the soul begotten and not made in the womb, or the being nurtured in the world outside? Is it the narrator in one’s head, the teeming consciousness that keeps one sleepless at night or distracted during the day, brave in danger or paralysed in a crisis? Is it the source of that anger that flames spontaneously at slights to one’s honour, or the source of this honour in the first place? Is it in one’s capacity to love, forgive or endure, or in one’s desire to lead a moral life? Is it the will that governs everything one ever says or does, or something far bigger than that?"
(Laura Cumming A Face To The World –On Self Portraits p. 262)
The motivation for this seminar began with a quote from the philosopher Gilles Deleuze in which he implied that the Subject is in fact “an event”, something similar to a wind, a season or a time of day. Ever since then I have wanted to work through some current interpretations of the subject with a group of students.
I see teaching in an art school as always necessarily creative and explorative, so students should be ready to take part in a group exploration. The essays you will write at the end of this course will be speculations and hypotheses, not right or wrong answers, and the aim is to appreciate that thinking, reading and writing -as well as being academic- are also practice. i.e. they are creative, personal, and you can keep developing them throughout your career and as part of your life
Weekly Reading and Research
We have 7 weeks, one of which is for guidance in writing the essay. This leaves us with 5-6 themes and readings on which to focus. There is however, also an extensive reading list here, informing our discussion and available for you to develop your ideas within a broad historical context.
Advice about reading will be provided and weekly handouts will be supplied. It is best for every student to have read the same text before each seminar, and for this reason we will keep weekly reading short, easy and to the point, emphasising use of the reading as a starting point for productive discussion. We don’t want to scare anyone away from this kind of work, but on the contrary, show how productive and stimulating it can be.
The weekly handout is a staring point for a discussion that could lead us anywhere, It will help start you thinking about your essay question and how your essay will form a response. You will developing research skills and methods by pursuing related texts and images that come up in discussion, asking librarians to help you locate them.
Online support
Some online support will be provided to enable students to access course materials and/or view reflections via Blackboard and/or a Blogspot blog dedicated to our seminar.
Images
Never forgetting that we are primarily visual artists we will use images extensively and, when possible, retain a period at the end of each seminar for suggesting further examples of Art, Cinema and Literature to which our themes and readings can be applied. Students are again invited to contribute to this activity, which will serve as a model for illustrating your essays
Seminar Programme
N.B. This is a planned weekly schedule but we have the freedom to develop the curriculum in response to developments in our discussion, e.g. we might substitute a film viewing of A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt, and discuss its implications for the subject the following week rather than the designated text.
WEEK 1 13th Oct 08
Tutor’s introduction, relating a
history of notions of the subject to a history of philosophy and aesthetics.
WEEK 2 20th Oct 09
We will use Deleuze’s short essay ‘A Philosophical concept’ from a collection by Cadava called ‘Who Comes after The Subject?’. By way of introduction we can also consider Marcel Mauss’ essay ‘A Category of the human mind: the notion of ‘person’; the notion of Self’ (in Open University reader -see booklist)
WEEK 3 27th Oct 09
We will devote to a discussion of Cinema and Literature themselves; their particular forms and processes in relation to other visual arts and how this might affect the way we see the subject through them, as well as how we might use them as examples for our writing. In preparation we will read Kaja Silverman’s essay ‘Suture: The Cinematic Model (in Open University reader -see booklist) while considering Deleuze’s Cinema books, the history of the novel, and Kashuo Ishiguro’s recent novel ‘Never Let Me go’.
WEEK 4 3rd Nov 09
We will read a text by Franz Fanon, the psychoanalyst and theorist of postcolonial identity (in Open University reader -see booklist). We can also consider Ali la Pointe, the hero of the 1966 film ‘Battle of Algiers’ and compare his image with subjectivities portrayed in Michael Haneke’s 2005 film ‘Hidden’
WEEK 5 10th Nov 09
We will confront the task of writing in good time for you to prepare your essays. But we will devote the seminar not only to questions of academic form but also the interface between the subject’s tendency to personal or creative writing and the demands of Academia. The reading will be ‘The Death of the Author’ by Roland Barthes.
WEEK 6 17th Nov 09
We will discus ‘Feminine Sexuality’ with the help of an essay of that name by Jacqueline Rose and ‘Critically Queer’ by Judith butler (in Open University reader -see booklist). Meanwhile we can look at works by Cindy Sherman, Francesca Woodman, Leigh Bowery, Karen Klimnik and Chantal Joffe (see also Ryan Trecartin, Marcus Coates, Kalup Linsey, Lindsay Seers, Marcus Coates).
WEEK 7 24th Nov 09 Presentations
WEEK 8 1st Dec 09 Essay Submission
Room: G12
Time: 10.00 to 16.00
The door will be shut at 16.00, any submissions after this will be regarded as LATE.
Assessment
Essay
Essay presented in academic form with bibliography 2,000 words.
Please choose ONE of the following:
1. In what ways have visual artists explored their own subjectivity as influenced by cinema and literature?
2. Using examples, discuss how the invention of cinema might have transformed notions of subjectivity?
3. Using examples, discuss how the popularity of the mass-produced novel might have transformed notions of the subject?
4. Is there such a thing as a subject primarily defined by Nationality, race, sexuality, or gender? Answer using examples form visual art, cinema, or literature
5. In what ways do contemporary artists, filmmakers and writers question the enduring possibility of the subject?
6. Consider the subject in an age of suicide bombers, and of Myspace, Facebook, iPods, Blogging, Yahoo, Google and Wiki. How might these factors and examples change the way we think of self and identity? Do artists, writers, filmmakers successfully represent this?
7. In what ways have artists used History, memoir or biography to establish or mythologise a subject or enhance our idea of the subject.
Deadline: 1st December 2009
Room: G12
Time: 10.00 to 16.00
The door will be shut at 16.00, any submissions after this will be regarded as LATE.
Presentation
The presentation is open ONLY to students from Drama Centre London and involves preparing and giving a 20-minute presentation responding to ONE of the questions above. Students also submit a bibliography and short description of their presentation on the due date, 1st December 2009 Rm G12, to fulfil the requirements of the assessment.
Readings
Arabian Nights, The. 1990, translated by Husain Haddawy, based on the text of the Fourteenth-Century Syrian Manuscript edited by Mushin Mahdi; New York : Norton.
Agamben, Giorgio. 1998, Homo Sacer : sovereign power and bare life. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen; Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.
Almodovar, Pedro. Talk to her = Hable con ella El Deseo. Via Digital / Antena 3, 2002. Videocassette.
Badiou, Alain. c2005, Etre et l'événement. English Being and event translated by Oliver Feltham. London ; New York : Continuum.
Barthes, Roland. 1977. Image, music, text; essays selected and translated [from the French] by Stephen Heath. [London] : Fontana.
Matsuo, Basho, 1985, On love and barley / Haiku of Basho ; translated from the Japanese with an introduction by Lucien Stryk. Harmondsworth : Penguin, Penguin classics.
Baudelaire, Charles. ‘Correspondences’
http://www.doctorhugo.org/synaesthesia/baudelaire.html’ Accessed 19/01/08
Beckett, Samuel. 1992, The theatrical notebooks of Samuel Beckett. Vol.2, Endgame / general editor: James Knowlson ; with a revised text, edited with an introduction and notes by S. E. Gontarski. London : Faber & Faber, 1992.
Benjamin, Walter. 1969.Illuminationen. English, Illuminations / edited and with an introduction by Hannah Arendt ; translated by Harry Zohn. New York : Schocken.
Benjamin, Walter. 2000. One-way street and other writings. London ; NewYork : Verso
Bogdanovich, Peter (director) Larry McMurtry (writer) 1971 The Last Picture Show, Columbia (Video)
Bolt, Robert. 1966. A man for all seasons. Directed by Fred Zinnemann. Columbia/Highland, 1966. VHS / DVD (120 mins.)
Bourriaud, Nicolas. 2005 Postproduction: culture as screenplay : how art reprograms the world. New York: Lukas & Sternberg,
Burke, Seán. 1999, The death and return of the author : criticism and subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
Buzzati, Dino. 1952. Il deserto dei tartari. English, The Tartar Steppe ; translated by Stuart C. Hood. New York : Farrar, Straus and Young,
Cadava, Eduardo (ed. with Peter Connor & Jean-Luc Nancy. Who comes after the subject? New York: Routledge, 1991.
Calvino, Italo. 1995. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller. Minerva Paperback.
Cumming, Laura, 2009. A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits
Harper Collins
Defoe, Daniel. 1994. Robinson Crusoe. London : Penguin ,
Deleuze, G. 2003. Francis Bacon: the logic of sensation. London: Continuum.
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. 1988, c1987.Mille plateaux. English A thousand plateaus : capitalism and schizophrenia / translation and foreword by Brian Massumi. London : Athlone Press.
Deleuze, G. 1995. Negotiations. Columbia University Press: New York
Deleuze, G & Guattari, F.. c1986. Kafka : toward a minor literature / and Félix Guattari ; translation by Dana Polan ; foreword by Réda Bensmaïa. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. 1986Cinéma 1. English
Cinema 1 : the movement-image / translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam.
London : Athlone,
Deleuze, G. 1989. Cinéma 2. English Cinema 2 : the time image / translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. London : Athlone,
Deleuze, G. 2004. Actual and the virtual. Desert islands and other texts (1953-1974) / edited by David Lapoujade ; translated by Mike Taormina. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).
Derrida, Jacques. 1976. De la grammatologie. English, Of grammatology / translated [from the French] by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore ; London : Johns Hopkins University Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1982. Marges de la philosophie. English. Margins of philosophy / Jacques Derrida; translated with additional notes by Alan Bass. Hemel Hempstead : Harvester Press.
Descartes, René. 1968. Discours de la méthode. English, Discourse on method ; and, The meditations / translated with an introduction by F.E. Sutcliffe. Harmondsworth : Penguin.
Fante, John, 1985. 1933 Was A Bad Year. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press
Freud, Sigmund. 1990, Art and literature : Jensen's Gradiva, Leonardo da Vinci, and other works / translated from the German under the general editorship of James Strachey; the present volume edited by Albert Dickson. London : Penguin.
Gogolʹ, Nikolaĭ Vasilʹevich. 1979. Shinelʹ English, The overcoat / translated [from the Russian] by David Magarshack ; with decorations by John Edward Craig. London : Journeyman Press.
Grassmuck, Volker. 1990. "I'm alone, but not lonely": Japanese Otaku-kids colonize the Realm of information and Media A Tale of Sex and Crime from a faraway Place http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/grassmuck/texts/otaku.e.html
Heidegger, Martin. 1962 (2001). Sein und Zeit. English Being and time / translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson. Oxford : Blackwell.
Holmes, Richard, 2005. Footsteps : adventures of a romantic biographer. Harper Perennial.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. 2001. An artist of the floating world. London : Faber & Faber.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. 2005. Never Let Me Go. London : Faber & Faber.
James, Henry. 1986. The Aspern papers; and The turn of the screw / edited with an introduction by Anthony Curtis. London : Penguin.
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Welcome To Exploring The Subject
‘ONE’
Paul O’Kane
Why am I lonely without my laptop? Why is it so difficult to wait in a queue? Why, when I sneeze or when I yawn, does it seem like some other creature or force has taken over control of my body, my self? And what does all this have to do with being an artist or a designer?
An artist or a designer is surely some one with a special sense of self, some one who feels they have something special to offer, and some one who nurtures a special relationship with the self, a special relationship that enables them to create, to innovate, to re-shape the world and to displace reality. All this takes a certain courage, an artist or designer needs to be able to take risks without fear of failing or appearing foolish, to change things, including the self, without fear of what that change will bring.
For the 19th Century philosopher Nietzsche, or for philosophers like Deleuze and Guattari who are influenced by Nietzsche, any idea of a fixed, unchanging ‘self’ has to be replaced by some understanding of ourselves as a constant becoming. The uninterrupted flow of time itself is falsely described as distinct, cinematic or photographic moments, seconds, minutes, hours, divided like increments on a ruler, which are surely a misrepresentation of the constant flow of passing time. And, just as time is never a ‘this’ or a ‘that’ so we ourselves, persisting in time, cannot maintain any conviction as to a fixed identity, persona, or one-ness.
‘Subject’ is the word commonly used in a history of debates in which artists and writers have explored what it means, what it is to be a person, an ‘I’, a self, a me, an identity, a ‘One’. There are many ways to refer to and to name the elusive experience we have of the self. In English it is regarded as more sophisticated and polite to use the word ‘One’ in place of ‘I’ e.g. “ when one gives a lecture to students of Central St Martins College, one invariably approaches the task with trepidiation born of the utmost respect for one’s audience.” Or something like that. The Queen of England, meanwhile -who may be thought of as the pinnacle or prime user of what is sometimes referred to as ‘Queen’s English’, can shift this tendency even further by using what is called ‘the Royal We’. Queen Victoria used it most famously, saying ‘we are not amused’, and here the ‘we’ stands for the ‘One’ of the self but it makes the Queen unlike any other person, also awarding her a regal distance from having or being such an ordinary thing as a self. At the same time, the Royal ‘we’ seems to implicate the Queen’s role as nothing if not a representative of others, someone who stands for others, who does not choose their life for themselves but has it thrust upon them, and who represents, not only the whole royal family and its line, but potentially every British subject and every member of what was once an enormous British empire. In the case of Victoria the Royal ‘we’ spoke for many millions.
While we are talking Historically, it is important to also recollect that the 20th Century was defined by the relationship of the one to the many, of the ‘man in the street’, and of the singular figureheads –neither royal nor religious- who arose to divert the uncertainty of new modern masses. The resulting totalitarian states today continue to define us as the legacies of Hitler, Stalin and Mao inform the ethics and designs of our society, if only as negative examples, as all that we must steer clear of becoming. Today, each individual, harnessed as a potential dictator is celebrated as a consumer. Wars are even fought today to defend the right to consume as consumerism and individual liberty are rhetorically fused into one vision of a ‘globalised’ and ‘free’ world. Meanwhile, the planet has developed a personality, a subjectivity, a unique-ness and a vulnerability that increasingly diverts our attention from the one of the self towards the one of the planet. My ‘one’ has become a guilty consumer, recycling my cartons and ‘staycationing’ out of respect for the ‘One’ of the planet.
Ambiguously, technology seems to connect us, instantly, to potentially everyone else, while, at the same time, increasing our isolation. The old joke about two people bumping into each other physically while speaking to each other on mobile phones is still poignant because we haven’t fully understood these new ways of being a self, that is increasingly a ‘one (a ‘one’ that can of course be convinced to pay to be ‘One-to-One’). The more I can connect with others, the more time I spend alone facing a screen. I summarise myself each day in the little Haiku of my ‘status bar’ on Facebook and feel I know so many people. Meanwhile traditional bars are closing at a rate of 5 per day perhaps because we are increasingly discouraged and diverted from traditional forms of social activity.
To ‘Be’ on line, is of course to pay to be, and also to spend a kind of private time no-less sprinkled with advertising while complying with the will of others to be connected through their site, their network. It is as if making a phone call and watching TV had conspired, combined, and become, not occasional diversions or interruptions but our way of life and the site of identities. To be myself I need Myspace, to have a face I need Facebook, to be together, I must first make myself alone, log in, to a single screen, then use a password to escape my isolation and enter the technological privilege of freely connecting to others (OTAKU).
But let’s get back to art, to art and the artist, and to that special self or ‘One’ that makes ‘One’ an artist. According to the understanding of Romanticism, we continue to inherit an idea of the artist as creative genius (Born Under Saturn, Myth and Magic in the Image of the Artist) responsible for exceptional bursts of productivity which raise the self above the ordinary idea of what a human can be and do. This is an idea that we today keep at a distance, but which, I believe, we secretly, and justifiably, continue to entertain. Some tendencies in modernism perpetuate this Romantic idea, while others contradict it, so that, a Jackson Pollock remains a singular Romantic figure of genius, while Russian Constructivists or Andy Warhol might prefer to be regarded as rather uninspired, anonymous, machine-like artists. Today, we pick and choose from all these models of the artist, treating them all with post modern sceptical irony.
When Eduardo Cadava edited a book of essays on ‘the subject’ in the mid 1990s he gathered together his material by asking all the leading philosophers of his time to write in answer to the same question: ‘Who comes after the subject?’ clearly, the ‘subject’ has then already been rigorously deconstructed, even before this question was asked. But if we are the kind of selves or ‘ones’ who have already satisfactorily thought through or thought away our self-hood and our one-ness, we might still justifiably ask, ‘well, what kind of a self or what kind of a one is that?’ Gilles Deleuze’s answer to Cadava’s question was brief, and within it he insisted that the subject must be an event, we should forget the idea of the self as a ‘thing’ and replace it with the idea of the self as event. In this way, I am an event, one is an event, and therefore no different from other events. Deleuze says the subject is the same as “a season, a wind’ or 5 o’clock”, I am a wind, a season, a time of day –and I feel that I can live with that.
Nietzsche –who inspired Deleuze’s thinking- admired the Ancient Greeks for having many gods –not just the Christian One- gods that were believed to enter into and influence human affairs. For these Greeks it seems the self was not at all singular, and nor was it fully responsible for itself in the way we think of a Christian or a modern Freudian identity taking responsibility for the self. Rather than neurotically or guiltily address my actions, I might explain them as caused by the gods –the god of love perhaps, or of wine, or of war, or of several of these gods arguing within me. Nietzsche considered this to be a far more appropriate, useful and accurate account of experience, even though this idea was controversial and out of step with late 19th Century thinking. The self is not only always becoming, it is always many, and, in being many, is no longer one, no longer a ‘self’. (SHIVA)
We can assert then, that any cherished or habitual notion of a singular self might be culturally specific, it might be modern, Western, European etc. The famous words of 17th Century thinker Rene Descartes ‘I think therefore I am’ are seen by many of the philosophers in Cadava’s book to be a mistaken source of a modern idea of the subject and the self. So too is the character of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, who’s inner anxieties compete with the objective realities of his surroundings as a sense of injustice or paranoia. Hamlet is seen by many as so exceptional a figure for the time in which he first appeared, that he can also be seen as the source of a the modern idea of the self.
It might be obvious at this point to refer to recent and contemporary artists who use the subject as the focus of their work. Artists like Cindy Sherman, Orlan, Francesca Woodman, Leigh Bowery or Nikki s. Lee (Ryan Trecartin, Marcus Coates, Lindsay Seers, Marcus Coates) would all be good candidates to be used in essay-writing on this theme, however, I’m going to cite an artist who’s work I find more surprising because it emerges from within a culture that we do not usually associate with a critical exploration of subjectivity. The artist is Xavier Messerschmidt, a sculptor, employed to produce busts of the great and the good of the Austrian court in the 17th century. Messerschmidt, in his late career, increasingly produced busts made of his own face grotesquely contorted into extraordinary grimaces. Here you can see a man and an artist who is not concerned with art’s ability to freeze and cherish his best and most noble image (according to the traditions of the death mask, or the stiff Victorian photographic portrait) but is, instead, sincerely engaged with accepting the many dynamic possibilities of being a self, for better or for worse. There is nothing cool about Messerschmidt’s faces, they appear rather ugly and foolish, publicising embarrassing possibilities that we would rather keep hidden, and yet, they do insist that, beneath the surface of art’s ability to maintain a stylish and entertaining record or critique of experience, art can also be a field in which we express uncomfortable contradictions, uncertainties, multiplicities which might otherwise go unseen and repressed.
Messerschmidt’s busts are, after all, not a million miles away from the contortions of our favourite soul singer, or from images of celebrities –each of whom own a face literally worth a fortune- caught jumping in mid-air by Philippe Halsman, or caught yawning or stumbling on the catwalk by the convenience and speed of digital photography. We can see the revered icons of our age giving-in to moments of becoming other, reaching beyond the self, and submitting to other forces, reminding us that we do not know what art can be, nor what an artist is, nor what the self, subject or a ‘One’ really is.
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