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