The Act of Interpretation - Fall 2008 - Prof. Steve Evans

Reading Syllabus • Subject to change; check back frequently. Current week here.

week 1 - classical precedents

2 Sept | Introduction to course.

Shape of the semester. The main "chapters" of the syllabus. • Introductory remarks on hermeneutics (the study of interpretation) and semiotics (the study of signs). • Listening to, marking up, and discussing a first pop song: "Viva la Vida" by Coldplay. Manifest text and latent text.

4 Sept | Norton: Gorgias (29-33, on-line); Plato, "Ion" (35-48; on-line). Proust, Swann's Way (3-9).

(I) Anecdotes from the English "core curriculum": English 170, Foundations of Literary Analysis, and English 222, "Reading Poems." • Translation as interpretation. Texts in the Norton anthology composed in Greek and Latin, German and French, presented to us in English. • Continuation of preliminary remarks on "mimesis" or representation.

(II) Revisiting "Viva la Vida." Manifest and latent content. What is our culture's investment in the pop song? What is the genre "for," beyond the delivery, often enough ignored, of lyrical content? If you could abolish the genre, would you? Why don't they play Chinese music in Wal-Mart? • Digression on Zhang Yimou and Zhang Jigang's opening ceremony for the Olympics. What was being communicated? How did you receive it? • Semiotic systems: linguistic, sonic, visual; the traffic system, the erotic code ("I never said that I loved you").

(III) Remarks on and discussion of Gorgias's encomium of Helen. Reversing the received opinion about Helen: removing blame, if not conferring praise. Rhetoric as art of persuasion. Power of words: incantatory (magic), narcotic.

week 2 - classical precedents

9 Sept | Norton: Plato, "Republic" (49-80), "Phaedrus" (81-85). Proust 8-48. Critical Terms: "Representation" by WJT Mitchell.

(I) Review of "hermeneutics" (messages and their interpretation), "semiotics" (signs), and "mimesis" (representation). A sign is something you can lie with (Umberto Eco). X stands for Y. • A few anecdotes involving (mis)interpretation. "I'll meet you there," "I'll be right down."

(II) Lecture on Plato's "Ion" and (excerpts from) The Republic. What kinds of knowledge does poetry accommodate? What do poets and rhapsodes know? • The charisma of the poet, inspired by the Gods, beyond the reach of reason. • Socrates as teacher. The dialogic method, and elenchus. Midwifery metaphor. Analogy to Freudian psychoanalytic model. • Twin theses of God's goodness and oneness used to censor much of the Homeric canon. • The irony of citing what one would censor. • Two "metaphors": the magnet and the rings ("Ion"); the analogy of the cave (Republic, book 7). • The three orders: ideal, actual, representational. Plato's staggering philosophical "move": to remove truth from the realm of experience and equate it with the suprasensible. Nietzsche: "Christianity is Platonism for the masses." • Aside on Tynnichus of Chalcis, the one-hit wonder.

(III) Getting started with Proust. The reading-dreaming subject. Not being able to call to mind all one's lived experience. The search for lost or wasted time. The drama of the good night kiss—and the scene of reading that follows. The "fading" of one's past, as it contracts to a few well-worn incidents voluntarily recalled. The madeleine as sensual portal to a fuller, more finely-articulated memory, involutarily provoked.

11 Sept | Norton: Aristotle, "Poetics" and "Rhetoric" (86-121). Proust 48-100. Critical Terms: "Representation" by WJT Mitchell.

(I) Review of Tuesday's discussion of Plato's "Ion" and Republic. Did Plato "betray" Socrates's teaching in committing it to writing? The charge of hypocricy. • Plato, Aristotle, and Horace as exemplars of particular stances toward literary criticism: the philosopher (literature and truth; reception), the formalist critic (form and function; reception), the writer (standpoint of production, practical "know-how").

(II) WJT Mitchell's "Representation" essay. Let X (sign) stand for Y (thing) to Z (receiver) in A (situation). The sender is implicit in the imperative "let": W (sender) says, let X.... Axis of representation (thing—sign) and axis of communication (sender—receiver). • Three kinds of signs, according to C.S. Peirce: icon (sign resembles thing; e.g. a portrait in oil paint or pixels), index (sign caused by or existentially linked to thing; e.g. a bullet hole, weather vane), and symbol (sign linked to thing by convention; e.g. most if not all linguistic signs). Onomatopoeia as instance where symbol (phonetic language) strives to approximate icon.

(III) Introducing Aristotle's Poetics. Less pejorative view of mimesis than Socrates-Plato (cf. section 4). Object of mimesis: (humans in) action. • Six dimensions of analysis: plot (muthos), character (ethos), thinking-through (dianoia), spectacle (opsis), soundtrack (melopoeia), diction (lexis).

(IV) Assignment (due electronically by midnight on Monday, in hardcopy in class on Tuesday). Identify five scenes of message exchange in the "Combray" sections (I and II) of Proust's Swann's Way. Name the participants (sender, would-be receiver) and describe both the content of the particular message and its fate (interpreted as intended, interpreted in a manner other than intended, misinterpreted, unheeded, etc.). A few sentences for each scene should do.

week 3 - classical precedents

16 Sept | Norton: Aristotle, "Poetics" and "Rhetoric" (86-121). Proust 100-150. Critical Terms: "Representation" by WJT Mitchell (focus on interpretation of Browning's "My Last Duchess").

(I) Scenes of message exchange in Proust's "Combray" (sections one and two). Informal oral reports on writing assignment due today. The powers of prohibition and taboo: Odette (Lady in Pink), her daughter Gilberte. Before laying eyes on her, the narrator has an array of powerful associations with Gilberte. Prejudice and the the "already interpreted" aspect of most phenomena. The Dreyfus Affair and anti-semitism in France. Dynamics of social recognition. Legrandin the snob—and his self-image as anything but. The arts in these early pages: Vinteuil (musical composer), Bergotte (novelist), Giotto (painter), the magic lantern. Swann's perceptions mediated by artistic precedents ("Giotto's Charity").

(II) "My Last Duchess" (1842) by Robert Browning, as discussed in the latter part of WJT Mitchell's essay on "Representation." Peirce's typology of signs: symbol, icon, and index. All three "registers" mobilized in this text. How the text marks itself off from everyday discourse: lexis, syntax, syllable and beat counting, end-rhyme and enjambment. Possessive pronoun: "my." The series implied by reference to "last." That "spot of joy"—too easily produced for the Duke's liking. The "envoi" or "stand-in" for the father whose daughter is being transfered (an exchange of dowry for lineage) to the speaker.

18 Sept | Norton: Norton: Horace, "Ars Poetica" (121-135). Proust 150-200. Critical Terms: "Writing" by Barbara Johnson (39-49).

(I) Reading check: six passage identifications and two other questions. Review and discussion of "Ion," Horace's mockery of would-be poets, "My Last Duchess," "Viva la Vida," Socrates's "break up" with poetry, Peirce's typology of signs (index-icon-symbol), Marcel's adoration of the "lady in pink" (with aside on the petit bleu), and Aristotle on mimesis.

(II) Terms from Aristotle's Poetics (see also log for 11 September III). Muthos or plot, ethos or character, dianoia or thinking-through, lexis or diction, melopoeisis or song/"soundtrack," opsis or spectacle. Peripeteia or reversal; anagnorisis or recognition. Application to "My Last Duchess." And Coldplay's "Viva la Vida."

(III) Horace's Ars Poetica. Written from the standpoint of production or "know-how." To please and instruct: perhaps easier said than done? Ut pictura poesis.

(IV) Assignment (due in hardcopy on Tuesday). Prepare, in the manner that best suits your thinking, three sheets of notes (one side of a piece of paper each) on, respectively, Plato, Aristotle, and Horace.

week 4 - what is language?

23 Sept | Norton: Saussure (956-977). Proust 200-250. Critical Terms: "Writing" by Barbara Johnson (39-49).

(I) Course business: Returning Proust assignment & reading check of 18 September. Collecting "Reading Notes" assignment. The proper name as organizational principle in the humanities (looking ahead to our "chapter" on authorship).

(II) The Hermeneut's Guide to Song: "You Will. You? Will...." by Bright Eyes. Listening, mark-up, and discussion. Structural metaphor of "book." And dream. The verb "to have." Might as well be Proust? First crushes. Who's speaking? Re-interpret as duet? Aside on Nina Gordon's cover of "Straight Outta Compton" (YouTube clip and Gordon cover). And Nouvelle Vague.

(III) Saussure and modern linguistics. Language (langue) as a game, speech (parole) as move within game. Sign as union of signifier and signified. The arbitrary relationship between signified and signified. Arbitary, yet intimate (two sides of same sheet of paper). The syntagmatic axis (axis of combination) and the paradigmatic axis (axis of selection). A spoken sentence as "chain" of signs unfolding linearly. "I never said I loved you" (redux). In the fashion system: paradigm=closet or wardrobe, syntagm=outfit. Saussure's distinction between "signification" and "value." A lexical field related to "intoxication": same signification, differing values.

25 Sept | Norton: Jakobson (1254-1269). Proust 250-300.

(I) Reading Check: Terms from Aristotle's Poetics and imagining a "sequel" to Browning's "My Last Duchess."

(II) Saussure and Jakobson. The linguists' answer to the question, "What is language?" Jakobson's travels: Moscow, Prague, Harvard. Early acquaintance with poets, including Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov. • Review of Saussure's definition of sign (conjunction of signifier and signified). Paradigm (selection, substitution) and syntagm (combination, contiguity). Jakobson's article on "Aphasia"—disorder along one or the other axis: paradigm (metaphor), syntagm (metonymy). The paradigm as "fuzzy" set, organized by semantic "family resemblance." • A linear "chain" of signs: rewriting "I never said I loved you" (importance of "paradigm" to all revision). • Can there be thought before or beyond language? Saussure's diagram on p. 967. The "cut" that unites ideas and sounds. • Semiotics (a theory of any and all signs) and linguistics (theories of the linguistic sign): the relationship a theme in Saussure & Jakobson. • What is meant by the claim that language is a system of differences without "positive" (or substantial) terms? Example of phonemes /t/ and /d/ (learn more here). The International Phonetic Alphabet (analogy to Periodic Table of Elements).

(III) Jakobson's "six functions" of message exchange ("Linguistics and Poetics" plus handout). Digression on Large Hadron Collider (unmissable rap version). To be continued (Jakobson, not Hadron!) on Tuesday.

week 5 - what is language?

30 Sept | Norton: Levi-Strauss (1415-1427); Austin (1427-1442). Proust 300-350.

(I) Reading Check: Describe three focal points of your reading experience since Thursday, naming (a) source, (b) key claim or theme, and (c) brief explanation of importance or interest. Collected in class. • Reading notes on Plato, Aristotle, Horace, and previous reading checks returned.

(II) Jakobson, cont'd. Language acquisitition (in children) and loss (in aphasic disorders). Disorders along the paradigmatic axis (substitution, similarity, metaphor) or the syntagmatic axis (combination, contiguity, metonymy). Stimulus and response: "hut," "dog," and "beer." Drinking beer with my dog in the bathtub of my hut when a bat swooped in? Lesson on metonymy. Its role in advertising. Johnny Depp's wrist watch—or fountain pen. Contagious transfer of meaning through contiguity.

(III) Jakobson's six functions (cf. handout). Facebook "poke" as phatic function in a pure, isolated form. Having a channel: cell phone culture. • Poetic function as "set toward the signifiers" (the material sound-shape of the message, distinct from—though perhaps contributing to—its semantic content). "I intend to support Dwight D. Eisenhower in the upcoming presidential election" vs. "I like Ike." • Set toward receiver (conative function): the imperatives, like "close the window." Not true or false, done or not done (or undone). • The primacy of "metalinguistic" function (set toward the "code") in educational contexts. Our shared code (early 21st-century American English) and our metalinguistic efforts to add the specialized code(s) of hermeneutics, semiotics, literary theory. Gaps in the code, repaired through discourse: what does X mean in that code? • Preview of Austin's theory of "performative" speech acts. The infelicity of Steve's claim (on an earlier draft of this syllabus) that fall break begins this Friday! • Aside on Austin's humor.

(comic interlude) Not a bat, but a bee. General Marx Brothers-like mêlée. Steve Martin's proof that "the brick" has practical applications!

(IV) For Thursday: Consider Levi-Strauss's reflections on the origin of written language in light of Plato's "Phaedrus" and Barbara Johnson's essay on "Writing." Complete first reading of Heidegger essay. Steve's remarks will begin with Austin, turn to Levi-Strauss, and end with a preview of Heidegger.

2 Oct | Norton: Heidegger (1118-1135). Proust 350-400.

(I) Reading check: Praise or blame for a particular sentence (of your choosing) in Heidegger's "Language." Collected in class.

(II) Review of Jakobson's six functions: phatic, conative, emotive, metalinguistic, referential (with disgression on deixis and context-independence), and poetic.

(III) Austin on performatives. Doing things with words. Rewriting our formula for mimesis: W (sender) says, let X (sign) stand for Y (thing) to Z (receiver) in A (situation). Adaptation to "performatives": W (properly invested with the right to do so) "hereby declares" that X (former case) is now Y (the new case) as recognized by Z (receivers) in A (appropriate ritualized situation). Swearing in the next vice president: position in symbolic order has changed, but physical entity has not. Wedding and other vows: "I am not reporting on a marriage, I am indulging in it" (1432). Congratulations and insults. Perhaps most difficult of all—the apology. "I apologize but I'm not sorry."

(IV) Levi-Strauss: "Writing is a strange invention" (1422-23). Thesis that language serves not solely, or primarily, to communicate, but to dominate. Discussion of literacy and power, drawing on Phaedrus, Barbara Johnson's closing anecdote about Frederick Douglass, and Levi-Strauss.

(V) Coda on Heidegger's claim to be the decisive Western philosopher of the twentieth century, inseparable from his political decision to ally his person, his reputation, and his thinking with the Nazi party.

Upon reading these words, send Steve an e-mail via FC or here saying you've done so. (If you replied previously, no need to repeat.)

week 6 - what is hermeneutics?

7 Oct | Norton: Schleiermacher (610-626). Proust 400-444. Main lecture will be on Heidegger, with introduction to Schleiermacher to follow.

(I) Hermeneut's Guide to Song: "Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead, selected by Michelle.

(II) On Heidegger's "Language."

9 Oct | Norton: Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lying..." (870-884). Proust 400-444.

(I) Reading check: Changing views on Heidegger; updating the reading check of October 2.

(II) Heidegger's "Language," continued.

week 7 - what is hermeneutics?

14 Oct | Fall Break - no class.

16 Oct | Norton: Poulet (1317-1333). Freud: Interpretation of Dreams, chap. 2.

(I) Reading check: Your response to this passage from Poulet on the act of reading:

“JE est un autre [I is an other],” said Rimbaud. Another I, who has replaced my own, and who will continue to do so long as I read. Reading is just that: a way of giving way not only to a host of alien words, images, ideas, but also to the very alien principle which utters them and shelters them.
            The phenomenon is indeed hard to explain, even to conceive, and yet, once admitted, it explains to me what might otherwise seem even more inexplicable. For how could I explain, without such take-over of my innermost subjective being, the astonishing facility with which I ought not only understand but even feel what I read. When I read as I ought, i.e., without mental reservation, without any desire to preserve my independence of judgment, and with the total commitment required of any reader, my comprehension becomes intuitive and any feeling proposed to me is immediately assumed by me.
—Georges Poulet, “The Phenomenology of Reading” (Norton 1323)

(II) Poulet's lyrical evocation of the fusion of consciousnesses that can take place in the act of reading. Books and other objects.

(III) Schleiermacher's treatise on hermeneutics. Diagramming the terms. Encountering the "otherness" of languages—distant in time, often fragmentary. Handout with fragments from Egyptian and from Sappho's Greek.

(IV) Adrian's log supplement: Nietzsche's opening to Truth and Lying analogous to Kurt Vonnegut. To what extant did this brainy German influence the wacky German-American and others? No objective truth for Nietzche. We're stuck with truth as the outcome of self-preservation. Time to grow up and adjust to the creative powers of our own interpretations.

week 8 - what is hermeneutics?

21 Oct | Norton: Iser (1670-1682). Freud: Interpretation of Dreams, chap. 3.

(I) Reading check: "In This House, on July 24th, 1895 / the Secret of Dreams was Revealed / to Dr. Sigm. Freud." What was the secret? Why did it warrant a plaque?

(II) Paper assignment and MLA Format handout. Discussion of which theorists different students would choose, and why.

(III) Introduction to Freud. Arguments for (and against) making Interpretation of Dreams the sole text used in Eng 271. • Schleiermacher's "Vorkenntnis" or pre-knowledge, prejudice, "received ideas." That he's "antiquated." And sexist (the problem of his "prescription" or "description" of patriarchal conditions). And generally just a little icky. Sexualizes everything, including family relationships. • The "Freudian slip" (or parapraxis) as text. Dreams, jokes, symptoms also considered as texts. • The Cartesian "Cogito ergo sum," and Freud's more perplexing formula: "Wo Es war, soll Ich werden" (Where it was, shall I be"). "Es" (German impersonal pronoun meaning "it," here indicating "the unconscious") and "Ich" (German first person pronoun, here indicating the conscious mind or ego). If the Cartesian model identifies our "being" with our "thinking," Freud's splits the two and considers them "out of synch." Note: it was, I will be (i.e. no present tense). • The psycho-analytic situation. One who suffers, desires, and talks (the patient or analysand); one who receives the discourse—and collects the money (the analyst). Freud in impossible position: occupying both positions in what should be a dialogue. • "A dream is a fulfilment of a wish."

23 Oct | Norton: Jauss (1547-1565). Freud: Interpretation of Dreams, chap. 4. Critical Terms: "Interpretation" by Steven Mailloux (121-134).

(I) Hermeneut's Guide to Song: In Dreams by Roy Orbison. Very late footage of Orbison with Springsteen, Elvis Costello, others. Clip from David Lynch's Blue Velvet. Longer clip (warning: graphic language; song starts at 5'16"). A trailer for Blue Velvet using same song.

(II) Discussion of Freud, cont'd. Whiteboard shot. Manifest content (syntagmic axis) and latent content (paradigmatic axis). Censor, or "secondary agency," and control of access to consciousness. Primary agency (creative) vs. secondary agency (defensive). Analogies to political life.

week 9 - what is an author?

28 Oct | Norton: Gramsci (1135-1144); recommended: Sartre (1333-1350). Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, chap. 5. Critical Terms: "Interpretation" by Steven Mailloux (121-134).

(I) Reading check: Three theoreticians of language, and a fourth whom you considered but reluctantly decided against including. The three Marx Brothers we remember (Groucho, Harpo, Chico)—and the rest. • Return of a slew of song mark-ups and reaching checks.

(II) Closing our chapter on "hermeneutics." Poulet—Iser—Jauss. An arc of increasing complexity in reader-response theory. • Focus on Iser. An account of textuality not unrelated to Plato's Phaedrus. Inexperienceability of others' experience, in ordinary life, and in literature. "In literary works...the message is transmitted in two ways, in that the reader 'receives' it by composing it" (1674). Assigning the reader "responsibility" for the co-creation of meaning. Looking ahead to Roland Barthes: the death of the author...and the birth of the reader. Moving from manifest text (plot) to latent text (story), based on cues on the printed page. Gaps, blanks, elisions in manifest text solicit reader's ideation. The segmentation of the plot (chapter and episode breaks), shifts in narrative perspective, redirection of attention from one thing to a next ("theme" and background). • Digression in praise of Groundhog Day.

(III) Gramsci and the question, "what is an author, who gets to be called an intellectual." The dominant, the dominated. Mental and manual labor. Traditional intellectuals and "organic" intellectuals. Organic, that is, to a situation, class, or movement. Illustrations from the US Civil Rights movement, people like Rosa Parks, Fanny Lou Hamer.

30 Oct | Norton: Barthes (1466-1470), Foucault (1622-1636). Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, chap. 5. Critical Terms: "Author" by Donald Pease (105-117).

(I) Reading check: Three insights about the role of the reader in making textual meaning (names, claims).

(II) Discussion based on reading check, focusing on Poulet and Barthes. Connection between "reader-response theories" and actual course work. Approaches that stress historical contexts, group formations (like "the Beats"), biographical information. And approaches that stress the text considered apart from such contexts. Author names ("signatures") as organizational principle in the humanities, compared to discourses—such as advertising (where "brand" replaces author name), religion, science—that don't make the same use of "the author function." • Asides on Bob Dylan, Nike's "swoosh-stika," and other matters.

(III) Gramsci on the division of manual and mental labor. "All men are intellectuals, one could therefore say: but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals" (1140). Homo faber, homo sapiens. • The role of "ideas" in securing "spontaneous consent" of masses for direction set for society by dominant classes (1143). Brecht's definition of politics as "the art of thinking in other people's heads." Coercion and the state's monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence. • Connection to Levi-Strauss's thesis that language functions to dominate as well as to communicate. • Closing digression on the Pentagon's "active denial system."

week 10 - what is an author?

4 Nov | Norton: Foucault (1622-1636), cont'd. Freud: Interpretation of Dreams, chap. 6. Critical Terms: "Determinacy/Indeterminacy" by Gerald Graff (163-76). Recommended: Bakhtin (1186-1220). Paper due in class.

(I) In-class writing: "How my paper really got written." Discussion of intellectual work and the conditions needed to engage in it. Skhole (Grk. "leisure"). A quite space conducive to concentration. And a functioning computer. In praise of deadline-induced panic? Its focusing effect. And its aid in outwitting the censorship that keeps us from writing sometimes. Composing and revising. • Doing intellectual work outside "the academy." Skills developed in this exercise that are transferable to a future career or vocation?

(II) Freud on the source materials (chapter 5) and creative mechanisms (chapter 6) of dream production. Recent and indifferent materials from the dream day. Materials from infancy and childhood that shaped the subject. Sophocles & Shakespeare on incest. The incest taboo and the imperative of exogamy at the origin of civilization, according to Levi-Strauss. Inadmissible sexual desires. The processes of condensation, displacement, and overdetermination.

6 Nov | Norton: Gilbert & Gubar (2023-2035). Freud: Interpretation of Dreams, chap. 6. Critical Terms: "Unconscious" by Françoise Meltzer (147-62).

(I) Reading check: Major sources and mechanisms involved in the production of the dream-text according to Freud.

(II) Discussion of Freud's fifth and sixth chapters. Recent and indifferent experiences, childhood events and experiences, underlying unconscious "wishes." The work of condensation and displacement. Considerations of representability (darstellung). • Anxieties animating our author: founding a science; establishing intellectual credibility; struggling against anti-semitic prejudices. • Close reading of first two pages of the dream-work chapter. Translation between languages. Rules governing passage from "original" to "translation." Rebus analogy. • Digression on previous owner of Steve's hardback copy of Interpretation of Dreams. Many identifying marks. A single underlined sentence. • Digression on Levi-Strauss's hundredth birthday (this November 28).

(III) Coda on "the author." Barthes, Foucault, Gilbert & Gubar. Barthes's valorization of textuality freed from constraint ("brake") of "author" and related concepts. Foucault's focus on "author" as historically-produced, and sharply regulated, "function," central in some discourses, marginal or unknown in others. Special case of founders of discourses; Freud and psychoanalysis, Marx's political economy.

(IV) Assignment for Tuesday, November 11. Select from your recent dreams one that you are comfortable presenting. The "manifest content" is due Tuesday, with interpretive work to follow.

week 11 - identities and interpretations in conflict

11 Nov | Norton: Hegel, "The Master Slave Dialectic" (630-36); Marx & Engels (759-789). Freud: Interpretation of Dreams, chap. 7. Critical Terms: "Unconscious" by Françoise Meltzer (147-62).

(I) In lieu of a "reading check," informal questions for Freud, based on experience of fashinoning own dream-texts.

(II) Hegel on the struggle to the death for recognition. Or rather, the struggle to the death to avoid certain recognitions.

(III) Marx and Engels: transposition of Hegel's "master-slave dialectic" into "material" terms.

13 Nov | Norton: Lacan, "The Mirror Stage..." and "The Agency of the Letter..." (1278-1302); Althusser, "from Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" (1483-1509). Freud: Interpretation of Dreams, chap. 7. Critical Terms: "Unconscious" by Françoise Meltzer (147-62).

(I) Reading check: Two or three insights from recent readings in Marx & Engels, Lacan, and Althusser.

(II) Remarks on Lacan, with emphasis on "mirror stage." Primary identification facilitating subject formation. Recognizing one's "self" in the mirror. Assuming an identity in the specular, or imaginary, realm. Later assuming one's identity in linguistic-symbolic realm through recognizing one's "self" in name (patronym, name of the father). • Am I that name?

(III) Marx and Engels on "modes," "forces," and "relations" of production. Connection to Gramsci.

(IV) Sustained remarks on Althusser and the ideological state apparatuses. Whiteboard shot. The process of "interpellation" or hailing. "Hey, you there!" (1504). From "individual" to "subject" in a 180-degree turn (that has "always already" been taken).

week 12 - identities and interpretations in conflict

18 Nov | Norton: Althusser (1483-1509), cont'd. Jameson (1932-1975). Freud: "The 'Uncanny'" (Norton 929-52).

20 Nov | Assigned: Norton: Wollstonecraft (582-94); de Staël, "On Women Writers" (604-610); Woolf (1017-1030). Freud: "The 'Uncanny'" (Norton 929-52). Actual: Freud, Althusser, Jameson.

week 13 - identities and interpretations in conflict

25 Nov | Assigned: Norton: de Beauvoir (1403-1415); Rich (1759-1781). Freud: "The 'Uncanny'" (Norton 929-52). Actual: Class cancelled.

Freud Assignment - Due electronically by midnight on Tuesday, November 25.

Demonstrate your familiarity with the protocols of Freudian dream analysis by presenting both the manifest content and a relatively complete interpretation of a single dream, drawn preferably from your recent dream life. Freud's method of presenting "The Dream of Irma's Injection" in chapter II can serve as your model, but be sure to account for the dream sources & mechanisms discussed in chapters V and VI of The Interpretation of Dreams. Exercise the discretion you feel our historical moment and the situation dictate—as Freud himself was forced to do. Suggested length: five conventionally-formatted pages.

27 Nov | No Class- Thanksgiving Break

week 14 - identities and interpretations in conflict

2 Dec | Norton: Wollstonecraft (582-94); de Staël, "On Women Writers" (604-610); Woolf (1017-1030).

4 Dec | Norton: de Beauvoir (1403-1415); Rich (1759-1781); Wittig (2014-21). Recommended: Kolodny (2143-54).

week 15 - identities and interpretations in conflict

9 Dec | Norton: Spivak (2193-2208); Haraway (2266-99).

Brick Assignment - Due electronically by 11:59pm on Tuesday, December 9

Browse through the Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism and select an essay or excerpt that looks interesting to you. Read through the selection carefully and more than once, then prepare a position paper arguing for or against the adoption of the text on future syllabi for English 271. Your position paper should begin with a brief summary of the selection's content, then address questions of how the text might (or might not) reinforce some of the essential objectives of the course (as you understand them); what it might (or might not) add to lectures and class discussions that would otherwise be missed; what problems, if any, you foresee my facing as I try to help students understand the piece. Your writing should be clear and error-free but need not be overly formal. Suggested length: 1000 to 1500 words.

11 Dec | Norton: Sedgwick, "Epistemology..." (2438-45); Butler (2485-2502). Conclusions.

finals week

Cumulative Final Exam on Thursday, December 18, 9:30am-11:30am in Merrill 335 (our usual room). To consist of one or more brief essay questions, numerous passages for identification and discussion, and one pop song, of Professor Evans's chosing, for you to interpret.