The Act of Interpretation - Spring 2006 - Prof. Steve Evans

Reading Syllabus • Subject to change; check back frequently • click here for current week

17 January— Tuesay

Log: Introduction to course and one another. • Something you'd preserve about American culture, something you'd destroy. • Welcome to the department of rock and roll, film, and gaming studies? • The distinction between manifest content ("plot") and latent content ("story"). • Axiom: the act and art of intepretation can be learned. Hence, our work together this semester. Once learned, this art can be applied to any sign system, not just linguistic and/or "literary" ones.

19 January — Thursday — a soundfile of this class is available

Introduction: Purloined Letters, Paths of Nature and Artifice
§ Poe, "The Purloined Letter: Text with Notes by Thomas Ollive Mabbott" (The Purloined Poe 3-26)
§ Recommended: from Geoffrey of Vinsauf's "Poetria Nova," the page or two pertaining to "Ordering the material" (NATC 230-231)

Log: First lesson in rock & roll studies: Elvis Costello's "Watching the Detectives." Listen through, mark up, discussion. • The hermeneutic circle: from part to whole (and back to part), from manifest to latent (and back to manifest). Patient building up of a totalizing hypothesis. • Axiom: all interpretations (not just "bad" ones) generate remainders. • Preliminary analysis of Poe's "Purloined Letter." Principle characters and actions. Manifest (plot) and latent (story); the same distinction in French, récit and histoire. Order of presentation, order of "actual" occurrence. • The canonical narrative tempos: scene (n plot = n story), summary (n plot < n story), ellipsis (0 plot, n story), stretch (n plot > n story), pause (n plot, 0 story). • Axiom: a text opens a field of possiblities, only some of which it concretely realizes. • Axiom: All texts propose and populate a world and set it in motion.

Exercise (hardcopy due in class on Tuesday) — In this course we will distinguish between two terms often used synonymously: plot and story. The plot is the manifest text, the actual words presented in the particular order chosen by the author. The story is the latent text as reconstructed imaginatively by the reader on the basis of cues and clues in the manifest text. For this exercise, you will need to identify the major actions and events (no fewer than a dozen, no more than twenty-six) narrated in Poe's "The Purloined Letter." Write them out in the order of their narrative presentation (the telling or plot), then indicate their order of "actual" occurence (in accordance with the temporality of the imaginatively constructed story). Also mark any instances of the five canonical narrative tempos you see.

24 January— Tuesday — no soundfile — notes on FC

Chapter I: Freud + The Classical Precedents: Plato
§ Plato, "Ion" (NATC 33-48)
§ Macrobius, "Commentary on a Dream" (NATC 196-201)
§ Freud, chapters 1 (recommended) & 2 (required) of Interpretation of Dreams

Log: Today's song, "Soldier's Things" by Tom Waits, selected by Brian Sylvester. • Disambiguation. Deixis (pointing). Every poem produces a world, populates it, and sets it in motion. • Plato on mimesis (imitation, representation; in German, vor- and dar-stellung). Socrates and Plato. Three beds (ideal, made, mimetic). What the rhapsode knows. And the poet. Socrates vs. Homer. Listing what lines have to go: censorship—or preservation? What use would the community of the good have for mimesis? Two films: Equilibrium (Melissa) and Zardoz (Steve). Writing as a particularly troubling form of mimesis.

26 January — Thursday — soundfile available — notes on FC

Chapter I: Freud + The Classical Precedents: Plato
§ Plato, from "The Republic" and "Phaedrus" (NATC 49-86)
§ Freud, chapters 1 (recommended) & 2 (required) of Interpretation of Dreams

Log: Today's song, "The Act of the Apostle, Part I" by Belle & Sebastian, selected by Ian Cayer. Intertextuality. Modes of address: who speaks? • Plato, continued. The case against mimesis, and our many objections to that case. That gadget that can shut off any television. Prospects of censorship. How prevent dreams? Phaedrus and the case against writing. Memory and knowledge. • Glimpses ahead to Freud.

31 January— Tuesday — soundfile available — notes on FC

Chapter I: Freud + The Classical Precedents: Aristotle
§ Aristotle, Poetics, NATC 86-117
§ Freud, chapters 3-4 of Interpretation of Dreams

Log: Today's song, "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen, chosen by Shannon Dohar. • Small lesson on Baruch Spinoza, pantheism and atheism, the Enlightenment. • Aristotle's six aspects of tragedy: muthos (plot), ethos (character), dianoia (thinking), lexis (speech), melopoeia (song), opsis (spectacle). The "god out of the machine," deus ex machina. • Socratic "elencthus" and Freud's practice. • Psychoanalysis as dialogical process and prototype for hermeneutics. Its "texts": symptoms, jokes, dreams. The unconscious as radical alterity: not self, not language. The analysand (suffering, desiring, chattering). The analyst (silent, paid). Wunsch is lustier than our "wish." Latent dream thoughts and manifest dream text. The dreamwork: work of condensation, work of displacement, work of representation (Darstellung). • Mark-ups and Poe assignments returned.

2 February — Thursday — soundfile available — notes on FC

Chapter I: Freud + The Classical Precedents: Aristotle
§ Aristotle, Poetics, NATC 86-117
§ Freud, chapters 3-4 of Interpretation of Dreams

Assignment Choose one of the four songs we've analyzed in class and compose a brief entry (300-500 words) describing its structure, value, and meaning for our Hermeneut's Guide to Song.

Log: Three levels of analysis: describe structure (patterns, repetitions); assess and assign value (values internal to text, your evaluation of text), and interpret meaning (making sense). Applies to song analyses due on Tuesday, but to textual analysis more generally as well. • Today's song: "Two-Headed Boy" by Neutral Milk Hotel, selected by Ethan Lavandier. Eulogy and elegy. • Discussion question: Should there be restrictions placed upon the kinds of songs submitted for analysis in this class? Academia and the community of the good. • Freud's hypothesis that dreams are representations of wishes fulfilled. Even when the dreamer disavows the wish and is made uncomfortable by the representation. • Remarks on Greeks and tragedy.

7 February — Tuesday — no soundfile — notes on FC

Chapter I: Freud + The Classical Precedents: Horace, Longinus
§ Horace, Ars Poetica, NATC 124-35
§ Longinus, from On Sublimity, NATC 135-55
§ Freud, chapter 5 of Interpretation of Dreams

Log: Opening exercise in editing. Circulation of submissions to the Hermeneut's Guide to Song. Peer critique. Recommended actions: accept (with small corrections), revise and resubmit. Printing costs and word counts. Signed entries vs. unsigned entries. Anecdotes about Times Literary Supplement, Publishers Weekly, etc. • Today's song: "Aenima" by Tool, selected by Melissa Reagan. Profanity as deliberate rhetorical choice, or sign of a limited intelligence? • Freud's assertion: "a dream is a (disguised) fulfilment of a (suppressed or repressed) wish" (close of chapter IV). Reports from dreamers in the class. Descartes's "cogito, ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am) and Freud's "wo es war, soll ich werden" (where It was, I'll come to be). A Copernican revolution: from revolution around ego, to revolution around unconscious. Decentering the ego and formulating a new model of subjectivity: It/I.

9 February — Thursday — soundfile available — notes on FC

Chapter I: Freud + The Classical Precedents: Horace, Longinus
§ Freud, chapter 5 of Interpretation of Dreams

Log: Song of the day, "Wiseman" by James Blunt, selected by Julie Hunter. Distinction between thematic and rhematic content of message (repetition of the known, introduction of the unknown). The Prague School. Theoretical work is performed in (often turbulent) social conditions. Practice as prior to theory. How to wipe sonic viruses from your mind. The problem of "Tiny Dancer." "I am only pronouns, but I am all of them" (Ted Berrigan). Steve's assertion: a pop song is a (disguised) fulfillment of a (suppressed or repressed) wish (on the part of the person whose head it's in). Widespread dissent among class members. Aside on operatic arias. Moebius strip of desire and mimesis. Show me what I want? • Desire, its expression, the many limitations on that expression. Laura Kipnis's concept of "the domestic gulag" in Against Love. • Unsettling, upsetting, so unsaid. • Horace and the Ars Poetica, focus on NATC 132-133: to please and instruct, "the man who doesn't know how to make verses still has a go," ut pictura poesis ("Poetry is like painting," NATC 132). • Longinus and the "five sources of subliminity" (NATC 140): Thinking, feeling, figurative language, lexis, and syntax.

Assignment By Sunday evening, write up the manifest content of a dream—preferably recent—and post it to the FC folder.

week five

14 February — Tuesday — notes on FC

Chapter II: Freud + What Is Language?
§ Saussure, from Course in General Linguistics NATC 956-977
§ Freud, chapter 6 of Interpretation of Dreams (Sections A-D, H-I)

16 February — Thursday — notes on FC

Chapter II: Freud + What Is Language?
§ Saussure, from Course in General Linguistics NATC 956-977
§ Levi-Strauss, "A Writing Lesson," NATC 1415-1427
§ Freud, chapter 6 of Interpretation of Dreams (Sections A-D, H-I)

week six

21 February — Tuesday

Chapter II: Freud + What Is Language?
§ Jakobson, from "Linguistics and Poetics," NATC 1254-1265
§ Jakobson, "Two Aspects of Language & Two Types of Aphasia," NATC 1265-1269
§ Freud, chapter 7 of Interpretation of Dreams

23 February — Thursday

Chapter II: Freud + What Is Language?
§ Heidegger, "Language," NATC 1118-1135
§ Freud, chapter 7 of Interpretation of Dreams

week seven

28 February — Tuesday

Chapter II: Proust + What Is Language?
§ Heidegger, "Language," NATC 1118-1135
§ Proust, "Combray" section of Swann's Way

2 March — Thursday

Chapter II: Proust + What Is Language?
§ Austin, "Performative Utterances," NATC 1427-1442
§ Proust, "Combray" section of Swann's Way

week eight

21 March — Tuesday

Chapter III: What Is An Author? Who Can Be (Called) an Intellectual?
§ Barthes, "The Death of the Author," NATC 1466
§ Foucault, "What Is an Author," NATC 1622
§ Proust (cont'd), "Swann In Love"

23 March — Thursday

Chapter III: What Is An Author? Who Can Be (Called) an Intellectual?
§ Class visit by poet Fred Wah

week nine

28 March — Tuesday

Chapter III: What Is An Author? Who Can Be (Called) an Intellectual?
§ Gramsci, "The Formation of the Intellectuals," NATC 1135-1144
§ Sartre, "What Is Literature?," NATC 1333-1350
§ Proust (cont'd), "Swann In Love"

30 March — Thursday

Chapter IV: The Act of Interpretation
§ Schleiermacher, "Hermeneutics," NATC 610-626

week ten

4 April — Tuesday

Chapter IV: The Act of Interpretation
§ Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense," NATC 870-895
§ Eichenbaum, from "The Theory of the 'Formal Method,'" NATC 1062-1088

6 April — Thursday

Chapter IV: The Act of Interpretation
§ Eichenbaum, from "The Theory of the 'Formal Method,'" NATC 1062-1088
§ Todorov, "Structural Analysis of Narrative," NATC 2099-2106
§ Proust, "Swann In Love" (finish)

week eleven

11 April — Tuesday

Chapter IV: The Act of Interpretation
§ Proust, quiz & discussion

13 April — Thursday

Chapter IV: The Act of Interpretation
§ Proust, discussion

Paper due in class: Introduction to the Hermeneut's Guide to Song (see FC for details)

week twelve

18 April — Tuesday

Chapter IV: The Act of Interpretation

§ Poulet, "The Phenomenology of Reading," NATC 1320-1333
§ Iser, "Interaction between Text and Reader," NATC 1673-1682
§ Jauss, fr. "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory," NATC 1550-1565

20 April — Thursday

Chapter IV: The Act of Interpretation
§ Jameson, from "The Political Unconscious," NATC 1932-1960
§ Williams, from "Marxism and Literature," NATC 1565-1575

week thirteen

25 April — Tuesday

Chapter IV: The Act of Interpretation
§ Hall, "Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies," NATC 1898-1910
§ Hebdige, from "Subculture: The Meaning of Style," NATC 2445-2458

27 April — Thursday

Chapter IV: The Act of Interpretation
§ Lacan, "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter,'" Purloined Poe 28-55
§ Lacan, selections in NATC 1278-1310

week fourteen

2 May — Tuesday

Chapter IV: The Act of Interpretation
§ Derrida, from "The Purveyor of Truth," Purloined Poe 173-213
§ Derrida, from "Plato's Pharmacy," NATC 1830-1876

4 May — Thursday

Chapter IV: The Act of Interpretation
§ Derrida, from "The Purveyor of Truth," Purloined Poe 173-213
§ Derrida, from "Plato's Pharmacy," NATC 1830-1876

Finals Week

11 May — Thursday

Final Examination, 10:30am - 12:30pm, Little 220