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.
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
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."
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