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
Wednesday 28 October 2009
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.
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
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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