Annotation
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This year's course will examine the intersection between writing, literature & theory in the work of Derrida, Ranciere, Kristeva, Barthes, Cixous, Foucault, Deleuze & Guattari, & Sartre.
"Who can write? What can writing do? We sense that the advanced) form of these questions can be, already on its own, diverted. It harbours a ruse, of writing, and this is not accidental. What would it divert from? Fostering the belief that writing befalls power (one can, in general, and one can write if occasioned to), that it can ally itself to power, can prolong it by complementing it, or can serve it, the question suggests that writing can come [arriver] to power or power to writing. It excludes in advance the identification of writing *as* power or the recognition of power from the onset of writing. It auxiliarizes and hence aims to conceal the fact that writing and power never work separately, however complex the laws, the system, or the links of their collusion may be. Now what is astonishing is not writing's power but what comes, as if from within structure, to limit it by a powerlessness or an effacement." [Derrida, "Scribble (writing-power")]
SCHEDULE 5.10 INTRODUCTION 12.10 Plato, "Phaedrus" 19.10 Jacques Derrida, "Plato's Pharmacy" 26.10 Jacques Ranciere, "The Politics of Literature" 2.11 Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?" 9.11 Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author" / "To Write, an Intransitive Verb"
*16.11 NO SEMINAR 23.11 Helene Cixous, "Sorties" / Julia Kristeva, "Novel as Polylogue"
*30.11 NO SEMINAR 7.12 Jacques Derrida, "The Law of Genre"
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REQUIRED READING
Plato, "Phaedrus" / Jacques Derrida, "Plato's Pharmacy"
Jacques Ranciere, "The Politics of Literature"
Jean-Paul Sartre, "What is Literature?"
Deleuze & Guattari, "What is a Minor Literature?"
Gilles Deleuze, "Literature & Life"
Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?"
Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author"
Roland Barthes, "To Write, an Intransitive Verb"
Helene Cixous, "Sorties"
Julia Kristeva, "Novel as Polylogue"
Jacques Derrida, "Différance"
Jacques Derrida, "The Law of Genre"
ASSESSMENT 1. attendance 2. proactive weekly contributions to discussion + a 300-word critical response to a key concept from the assigned week's reading (due each corresponding week no later than midnight Wednesday) 3. essay focused on an agreed topic from the seminar readings (3,000 words, due 10 January 2024) (for their extended credit, either 2 essays of 3,000 words or one essay of 6,000 words)
**NB assessment is cumulative: 2 failures to attend, failure to participate in discussion, non-submission of critical responses &/or late or non-submission of essay will result in a fail.