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
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