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Vanderbilt-en-Aix, printemps, 2008 Vanderbilt University, Courses for Fall 2007 Div 388/French William Franke
Fall 2007 Office: 203 Furman
W 3:10-5:00 Hours: W 5-6; T 4-5, and by appt.
Tel: 2-6902; 3-6659
Post-Modern Theory: In the Wake of the Death of God
This course will serve as a general introduction to recent theory tailored to students of religion.
If modernism is understood to be the age of the subject, the age that begins when self-consciousness says, “I think, therefore I am” (Descartes, 1638), making itself the foundation of its very existence, postmodernity begins when this postulate of the autonomous, self-grounding subject enters into crisis and collapses. Without the individual subject as secure foundation, the presumably stable values of modern tradition since the Renaissance are undermined in all domains from market economies based on the free choices of independent individuals to aesthetic styles of subjective self-expression familiar, for example, in Romantic and Expressionist art. The new sense of a lack of foundations, of no tangible or knowable reality underlying and grounding the flux of appearances in experience, opens thought and praxis in the diverse directions that have become recognizable as characteristically “postmodern.” Simulacra, inauthenticity, lack of origins or originals, hence proliferating pluralities which nevertheless evince no real distinctions from one another in a consumer society of mass production are some of the typical manifestations of this postmodern milieu. We will undertake to survey important theoretical statements concerning these developments by authors such as Derrida, Baudrillard, and Mark C. Taylor. We will also inquire into the limits and alternatives to postmodernism that may be present on the scene today. Religious sources and manifestations will be particularly emphasized in order to help us comprehend postmodernism as the era of the Death of God.
A couple of films, particularly The Matrix, Part I (1999, dir. Andy and Larry Wachowsky), The Truman Show (1998, dir. Peter Weir), and perhaps Angels in America (2003, dir. Tony Kushner), emphasizing especially the role of religion in postmodernity, will be discussed.
The main text, from which most of the assignments will be drawn, is:
From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology, ed. Lawrence Cahoone (Blackwell 2003)
This text will be supplemented with readings from The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader, ed. Graham Ward (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), abbreviated: PMG.
Also recommended:
Kevin Hart, Postmodernism: A Guide for Beginners (Oneworld Publishers, 2004)
Thomas J. J. Altizer, Godhead and the Nothing (State University of New York Press, 2003)
John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006)
Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology. Eds. John Milbank, Graham Ward, and Catherine Pickstock. (London ; New York : Routledge, 1998). ISBN 041419699X (pbk)
Secular Theology: American Radical Theological Thought, ed. Clayton Crockett (New York: Routledge, 2001)
Schedule of Readings:
1. Introduction: Postmodernism and its Others
Theoretical Paradigms
2. Definitions of the Postmodern: From the Power of “Now” to the Potencies of “Post”
Lyotard, From The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge 259-77
Ihab Hassan, “POSTmodernISM: A Practical Bibliography” 410-20
Charles Jencks, From “What is Post-Modernism?” 458-63
John Milbank, “Postmodern Critical Augustinianism,” PMG 265
3. The Subversion of the Sign
Ferdinand de Saussure, From Course in General Linguistics, 122-26
Jacques Derrida, “Différance” 225-40
[+ “How to Avoid Speaking” PMG 167]
Wittgenstein, From Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 143
Michel de Certeau, “How is Christianity Thinkable Today?” PMG 142
4. Death of God and Demise of Values and Civilization
Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Madman,” “How the World Became a Fable,”
“The Dionysian World” 116-17
Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” and From “Truth and
Power” 241-53
Mark C. Taylor, From Erring: A Postmodern Atheology 435-46 Sigmund Freud, From Civilization and its Discontents 144-49
Jacques Lacan, “The Death of God,” PMG 32
5. Simulations and Alterities
Baudrillard, From Symbolic Exchange and Death 421-34
Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as
Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” 195-99
René Girard, “The God of Victims” PMG 105
Social/Political/Cultural Applications
6. Postmodern Feminisms
Luce Irigaray, “The Sex Which is Not One” 254-58
Sandra Harding, “From Feminist Empiricism to Feminist Standpoint
Epistemologies” 342-53
Susan Bordo, “The Cartesian Masculinization of Thought and
Sevententh-Century Flight from the Feminine” 354-69
Irigaray, “Equal to Whom?” PMG 198
Rebecca S. Chopp, “From Patriarchy into Freedom: A Conversation
between American Feminist Theology and French Feminism,” PMG 235
7. Constructions of Identity
Iris Marion Young, From “The Scaling of Bodies and the Politics of
Identity” 370-82
Cornel West, “A Genealogy of Modern Racism” 298-301
Judith Butler, “Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of
‘Postmodernism’” 390-401
Michel Foucault, from The History of Sexuality, PMG 123
8. Postmodern Economy and Society
Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, “Bourgeois and Proletarians” 75-82
Daniel Bell, From The Coming of Post-Industrial Society 209-18
Fredric Jameson, “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” 564-74
[Adam Smith, From The Theory of Moral Sentiments 38-44]
Georges Bataille, From Theory of Religion, PMG 15
9. Postmodern Architecture and Art
Le Corbusier, From Towards a New Architecture 132-38
Charles Jencks, From “The Death of Modern Architecture” 457-58
Robert Venturi, From Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture 403-9
Hal Foster, “Subversive Signs” 310-18
10. Postmodern Science: Irrealities and Hyper-realities
Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation” 127-31
Thomas Kuhn, From “The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolution”
200-08
David Ray Griffin, From “The Reenchantment of Science” 482-95
Donna Haraway, From “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology,
and Socialist Feminsim in the 1980s” 464-81
[Niklas Luhmann, “The Cognitive Program of Constructivism and a
Reality that Remains Unknown” 496-511]
[Richard Rorty, “Solidarity or Objectivity?” 447-56]
Genealogies of Postmodernism
11. The Attack on Humanism and Some Alternatives
Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism” 174-94 Brief über den Humanismus Identiät und Differenz
Jean Paul Sartre, From “Existentialism” 169-73
Alasdair McIntyre, “The Virtues, the Unity of a Human Life, and the
Concept of a Tradition” 550-63
Habermas, “An Alternative Way Out of the Philosophy of the Subject:
Communicative versus Subject-Centered Reason” 592-600
12. Crisis of Secular Enlightenment Rationalism and Secular Theology
Edmund Husserl, from The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology 149-58
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, from Dialectic of Enlightenment 159-68
Clayton Crockett, Secular Theology
Thomas J. J. Altizer, Godhead and the Nothing
Altizer, Radical Theology and the Death of God
Thomas Altizer, "Apocalypticism and Modern Thinking," Journal for Christian Theological Research, 2/2 (1997) 13. Radical Orthodoxy Orthodoxie Radicale
Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, chapter 10: Ontological Violence or the Postmodern Problematic” pp. 278-327
+ chapter 6: “For and Against Hegel”
Radical Orthodoxy. Eds. John Milbank, Graham Ward, and Catherine Pickstock
pp. 1-37
14. Literary and Liturgical Epistemologies
Roland Barthes, “Wrestling with the Angel,” PMG 84
Jean-Ives Lacoste, “Liturgy and Kenosis,” PMG 249
Catherine Pickstock, “Asyndeton: Syntax and Insanity,” PMG 297
Julia Kristeva, from In the Beginning Was Love PMG 223
15. Postmodern Theology as Critique of Philosophy
Emmanuel Levinas, “God and Philosophy” PMG 52
Jean-Luc Marion, “Metaphysics and Phenomenology: A Summary for
Theologians,” PMG 279
Graham Ward, Introduction to PMG (p. xlii)
Wittgenstein, “Lecture on Ethics” 139-42
For graduate students in French:
French theory has in many respects been the driving force of postmodern thought. This course features selections by Lyotard, Derrida, Baudrillard, Irrigaray, Kristeva, Sartre, Deleuze, Le Corbusier, Saussure, Lacan, Levinas, Marion, and others, together with the broader postmodern movement in which they have played a catalyzing role. It is proposed for graduate students in French with the specifications that they should read these authors in French and that their research paper focus on some author(s) or aspect(s) of French literary and/or cultural theory. Graduate students in French are encouraged to write their essays in French.
Irrigaray, “Égales á Qui” Critique 480 (1987): 420-437
“ “Femmes Divines” Critique 454 (1985): 295-308 (supplementary)
“ Ce sexe qu nén est pas un, pp. 23-32
Derrida, “Comment ne pas parler: Dénégations”Psyche, pp. 535-594
“ “La Différance,” Marges de la philosophie, pp. 41-66
Foucault Histoire de la sexualité vol. 1, pp. 76-98
“Nietzsche, la généalogie, l’histoire,” Dits et écrits 1971
Levinas, “Dieu et la Philosophie,” De Dieu qui vient à l’idée, pp. 93-127
Lacan, “La mort de Dieu,” L’Éthique de la psychanalyse, pp. 197-208
Bataille, “Le sacrifice, la fete et les principes du monde sacré,”Oeuvres complètes, vol. VII, pp. 307-318
De Certeau, La Faibless de croire, pp. 208-226
Girard, “Le Dieu des victimes,”La route antique des homes pervers, pp. 225-246
Barthes, “La lutte avec lánge”Oeuvres competes, vol. IV pp. 157-169
Kristeva, Au commencement etait l’amour
Marion, Jean-Luc. “Métaphysique et phénoménologie: une relève pour la théologie,” Bulletin de literature ecclésiastique XCIV/3 (1993): 189-206.
Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale
Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture
Baudrillard, L’exchange symbolique et la mort
Lacan, “Le stade du miroir” http://perso.wanadoo.fr/espace.freud/topos/psycha/psysem/miroir.htm
Lyotard, La condition postmodern, pp. 7-9, 54-68, 98-108
Fall 2007 Office: 203 Furman
T R 2:35-3:50 Hours: W 5-6; T 4-5, and by appt.
BT 301 Tel: 2-6902; 3-6659
GREAT BOOKS OF LITERATURE AND RELIGION:
FOUNDATIONS OF WESTERN HUMANITIES TRADITION
GENERAL DESCRIPTION: This course serves as a general introduction to outstanding "great books" of the Western world. They constitute founding texts of the "humanities." This intellectual tradition will be traced from its origins in both Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian (Bible) literature. These two cultures will then be viewed in their synthesis in the medieval period.
Our attempt to assimilate these works, which have been basic to liberal education in the West since its inception, will stimulate effort to develop and refine our own powers of reading and interpretation. We will engage the strongly literary quality of the works, moreover, by the exercise of producing writing of our own nourished by critical reflection upon them. Their fundamentally theological vision, expressed in prophetic poetry, will be a constant focus of the lectures.
BASIC TEXTS (in order of use):
_________ The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha
Homer The Odyssey (Cook translation)
Virgil The Aeneid (Fitzgerald translation)
Augustine The Confessions (Sheed translation)
Dante The Inferno (Mandelbam translation)
ASSIGNMENTS:
8/29 Introduction: The Humanities and Personal Knowledge Introductory Lecture
9/4 GENESIS, Chapters 1-11 (verse 9) + PSALMS 8, 18, 19, 22-24, 110, 114, 119
9/6 EXODUS, Chapters 1-20, 24, 32-34
9/11 ISAIAH, Chapters 1-14, 34-44, 52-55, 60-62
+ DANIEL, Chapters 2, 3, 7, 10-12
9/13 SONG OF SOLOMON and ECCLESIASTES
9/18 GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW
9/20 Homer, ODYSSEY Books I-IV
9/25 “ “ Books V-VIII
9/27 Homer, ODYSSEY Books IX-XII
10/2 “ “ Books XIII-XVI
10/4 Homer, ODYSSEY Books XVII-XX Lectures on the Odyssey
10/9 “ “ Books XXI-XXIV
10/11 Virgil, AENEID Book I-II
DUE: PAPER #1
10/16 “ “ Books II-III Lectures on the Aeneid
10/18 Virgil, AENEID Books IV-V
10/23 OCTOBER BREAK
10/25 “ “ Books VI-VII
10/30 Virgil, AENEID Books VII-IX
11/1 Virgil, AENEID Books X-XII
11/6 Augustine, CONFESSIONS Books I-II Lectures on Confessions
11/8 Augustine, CONFESSIONS Books III-IV
11/13 “ “ Books V-VII
11/15 Augustine, CONFESSIONS Books VIII-IX
11/20 “ “ Books X-XI
11/22 “ “ Books XII-XIII
11/27 ------------THANKSGIVING HOLIDAYS-----------------------
11/29
12/4 Dante, INFERNO Cantos I-VIII Lectures on Dante
12/6 " " Cantos IX-XIX
12/11 Dante, INFERNO Cantos XX-XXVI
12/13 " " Cantos XXVII-XXXIV
FINAL DUE DATE: PAPER #2 Concluding Lecture
EVALUATION AND REQUIREMENTS: About every other week there will be a brief quiz consisting in short answer questions to check on basic familiarity with the reading. The average of the quiz grades will count as the equivalent of a paper in calculating final grades.
Papers are to be expository essays, 5-7 pages in length, interpreting one or more of the works studied. Suggested paper topics will be issued at least a week prior to each due date, however students are free to write on a topic of their own choosing. Each student is required to turn in a total of TWO PAPERS.
Presence and participation of each student in every class is expected.
The Vanderbilt University Honor Code applies to all work submitted for this course.
RECOMMENDED METHOD OF STUDY: The interpretation of assigned texts may begin by the student's formulating and analyzing main ideas in a notebook at the conclusion of each reading assignment. Another entry likewise composed of 1) summary statements and 2) evaluative remarks--on facing pages--may be made punctually after lectures and discussions of each class. These notes can be reviewed and discussed with instructor for the purpose of focusing essay topics based on the student's own emergent interests.
OBJECTIVES TO KEEP IN MIND: Remember that in reading/writing you are competing only against yourself. The goal is to discover personal significance in the universal human experiences conveyed by great books and to develop your own discourse for articulating your experience of these texts and of life and human concerns generally.
University of Salzburg, Fakultät für katholische Theologie, *Postmodernreligionsphilosophien
Ausgehend von klassischen Debatten zwischen Hegel und Kierkegaard, Schleiermacher und Schelling, beziehen sich diese Vorlesungen auf Spannungen unter Religionsphilosophien heute, insbesondere zwischen Amerikanischen säkularisationtheologer in der Nachflolge von der “Death of God” Theologie und der Bewegung der “Radical Orthodoxy,” die von Cambridge, England herströmmt. Die Frankfurter Schule, insbesondere Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas, wird auch in Betracht gezogen als bahnbrechend für eine postmoderne kritische negative Theologie. Es wird erklärt, wie eine solche Theologie Dialog zwischen verfeindeten Kulturen ermöglichen kann, bzw. zwischen abendländischen säkularisierten Intellektuellen und radikalen Islamisten.
Im allgemeinen, geht es um postmoderne Theorien und ihre theologische Bedeutung. Die entscheidenden Texte und Ideen seit Saussure, von Foucault, Derrida, Irigaray, Adorno, etc., werden als Ablehnung der Aufklärung angesehen. Die neuen Perspektiven für religiöses Denken und Leben, die dadurch göffnet sind, werden erprobt. (Sehe unten “Post-Modern Theory: In the Wake of the Death of God” für detaillierten Inhalt--auch auf dem Syllabus . Vertagung
Übersetzte Bruchstücke aus: Postmodernism Lectures, Salzburg 2007 Vorlesung 1 Vorlesung 2 Vorlesung 3 *Dantes Paradiso im Theologischen Hinblick
Eine “close reading” von dem letzten Teil Dantes “Göttliche Kommödie” fokalisiert auf die Poetik des Schweigens, sowie auf die negative politische Theologie, die Dante vertret in seiner visio Dei. Die geistliche Reise Dantes zur mystischen Anschauung Gottes durch seine dichterische Sprache wird gelesen auf den Hintergrund des mittelalterlichen Mysticismus, aber auch in Bezug zu aktuellem theologischen Denken, besonders im Bereich der negativen Theologie (zum Beispiel von Jean-Luc Marion).
Die göttliche Komödie Dantes Werke
Deutsche Dante-Gesellschaft: Texte, Darstellungen, Erläuterungen Courtney Langdon trans. und Kommentar *Apophatische oder negative Theologie in der Kultur Platon und Neuplatonismus; mittelalterlicher Mysticismus; Kabbalah,
Sufis; Baroque Mystiker wie Johann von Kreuz und Silesius Angelus;
Apophasis der Romantiker (Schelling, Kierkegaard, Hölderlin, Emily Dickinson); Denker und Schrifsteller vom Schweigen in der Moderne und Postmoderne, wie Wittgenstein, Derrida, Bataille, Heidegger, Celan, Blanchot, und andere. Vergleiche zu orientalischem Denken insbesondere im Bereich von Indischen Advaita Vedanta und Chinesischen Taoismus. Es wird betonnt wie die negative Theologie Passagen öffnet zwischen verschiedenen Kulturen jenseits ihren unterschiedlichen Begrifflichkeiten. Advaita Vedanta VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
Vanderbilt Courses for Fall 2006Divinity 3880 William Franke Fall 2006 Comparative Literature Program Office: 203 Furman (tel: 2-6902) Hours: T 1:30-2:30 & W 2-3:00
Post-Modern Theory: In the Wake of the Death of God This course will serve as a general introduction to recent theory tailored to students of religion. If modernism is understood to be the age of the subject, the age that begins when self-consciousness says, “I think, therefore I am” (Descartes, 1638), making itself the foundation of its very existence, postmodernity begins when this postulate of the autonomous, self-grounding subject enters into crisis and collapses. Without the individual subject as secure foundation, the presumably stable values of modern tradition since the Renaissance are undermined in all domains from market economies based on the free choices of independent individuals to aesthetic styles of subjective self-expression familiar, for example, in Romantic and Expressionist art. The new sense of a lack of foundations, of no tangible or knowable reality underlying and grounding the flux of appearances in experience, opens thought and praxis in the diverse directions that have become recognizable as characteristically “postmodern.” Simulacra, inauthenticity, lack of origins or originals, hence proliferating pluralities which nevertheless evince no real distinctions from one another in a consumer society of mass production are some of the typical manifestions of this postmodern milieu. We will undertake to survey important theoretical statements concerning these developments by authors such as Derrida, Baudrillard, and Mark C. Taylor. We will also inquire into the limits and alternatives to postmodernism that may be presenting themselves on the scene today. Religious sources and manifestations will be particularly emphasized in order to help us comprehend postmodernism as the era of the Death of God. A couple of films, such as The Passion of the Christ (2004, dir. Mel Gibson), The Omega Code (1999, dir. Rob Marcarelli), Terminator 2 Judgment Day (1991, dir. James Cameron), Angels in America (2003, dir. Tony Kushner), emphasizing especially the role of religion in postmodernity, may be screened and discussed. The main text, from which most of the assignments will be drawn is: From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology, ed. This text will be supplemented with readings from The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader, ed. Graham Ward (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), abbreviated: PMG; and from Religion, Modernity and Postmodernity, ed. Paul Heelas (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), abbreviated: RMP Schedule of 1. Introduction: Postmodernism and its Others + Two Paradigms of Divine Death 2. Definitions Lyotard, From The Postmodern Condition A Report on Knowledge 259-77 Ihab Hassan, “POSTmodernISM: A Practical Bibliography” 410-20 Charles Jencks, From “What is Post-Modernism?” 458-63
John Milbank, “Postmodern Critical Augustinianism,” PMG 265 3. The Subversion of the Sign Ferdinand de Saussure, From Course in General Linguistics, 122-26 Jacques Derrida, “Différance” 225-40 [+ “How to Avoid Speaking” PMG 167] Hal Foster, “Subversive Signs” 310-18 Wittgenstein, From Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 143 Michel de Certeau, “How is Christianity Thinkable Today?” PMG 142 4. Death of God and Demise of Values and Civilization Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Madman,” “How the World Became a Fable,” “The Dionysian World” 116-17 Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” and From “Truth and Power” 241-53 Sigmund Freud, From Civilization and its Discontents 144-49 Jacques Lacan, “The Death of God,” PMG 32 5. Simulations and Alterities Baudrillard, From Symbolic Exchange and Death 421-34 Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” 195-99 René Girard, “The God of Victims,” PMG 105 6. Postmodern Feminisms Luce Irigaray, “The Sex Which is Not One” 254-58 Sandra Harding, “From Feminist Empiricism to Feminist Standpoint Epistemologies” 342-53 Susan Bordo, “The Cartesian Masculinization of Thought and Sevententh-Century Flight from the Feminine” 354-69 Irigaray, “Equal to Whom?” PMG 198 Rebecca S. Chopp, “From Patriarchy into Freedom: A Conversation between American Feminist Theology and French Feminism,” PMG 235 7. Constructions of Identity Iris Marion Young, From “The Scaling of Bodies and the Politics of Identity” 370-82 Cornel West, “A Genealogy of Modern Racism” 298-301 Judith Butler, “Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of ‘Postmodernism’” 390-401 Michel Foucault, from The History of Sexuality, PMG 123 8. Postmodern Economy and Society Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, “Bourgeois and Proletarians” 75-82 Daniel Bell, From The Coming of Post-Industrial Society 209-18 Fredric Jameson, “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” 564-74 [Adam Smith, From The Theory of Moral Sentiments 38-44] Georges Bataille, From Theory of Religion, PMG 15 9. Architecture and Humanism Le Corbusier, From Towards a New Architecture 132-38 Charles Jencks, From “The Death of Modern Architecture” 457-58 Robert Venturi, From Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture 403-9 Jean Paul Sartre, From “Existentialism” 169-73 Texte français 10. Postmodern Science: Irrealities and Hyper-realities Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation” 127-31 Thomas Kuhn, From “The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolution” 200-08 [Donna Haraway, From “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminsim in the 1980’s” 464-81] David Ray Griffin, From “The Reenchantment of Science” 482-95 [Niklas Luhmann, “The Cognitive Program of Constructivism and a Reality that Remains Unknown” 496-511] Richard Rorty, “Solidarity or Objectivity?” 447-56 11. Secular Theology, Liberal Atheology, and Post-Christianity [Zygmunt Bauman “Postmodern religion?” RMP] Don Cupitt, “Post-Christianity” RMP Mark C. Taylor, “Terminal Faith” RMP [Kevin Hart, “The Impossible” RMP] 12. Radical Orthodoxy Graham Ward, “Kenosis and naming beyond analogy and towards allegoria amoris” RMP John Milbank, “Sublimity: the modern transcendent” RMP Phillip Blond, “The primacy of theology and the question of perception” RMP
13. Literary and Liturgical Epistemologies Roland Barthes, “Wrestling with the Angel,” PMG 84 Jean-Ives Lacoste, “Liturgy and Kenosis,” PMG 249 Catherine Pickstock, “Asyndeton: Syntax and Insanity,” PMG 297 Julia Kristeva, from In the Beginning Was Love PMG 223 14. Postmodern Theology as Critique of Philosophy Emmanuel Levinas, “God and Philosophy” PMG 52 Jean-Luc Marion, “Metaphysics and Phenomenology: A Summary for Theologians,” PMG 279 Graham Ward, Introduction to PMG (p. xlii) [Thomas Carlson, from Indiscretion]
For graduate students in French: French theory has in many respects been the driving force of postmodern thought. This course features selections by Lyotard, Derrida, Baudrillard, Irrigaray, Kristeva, Sartre, Deleuze, Le Corbusier, Saussure, Lacan, Levinas, Marion, and others, together with the broader postmodern movement in which they have played a catalyzing role. It is proposed for graduate students in French with the specifications that they should read these authors in French and that their research paper focus on some author(s) or aspect(s) of French literary and/or cultural theory. Graduate students in French are encoraged to write their essays in French. Irrigaray, “Égales á Qui” Critique 480 (1987): 420-437 “ “Femmes Divines” Critique 454 (1985): 295-308 (supplementary) “ Ce sexe qu nén est pas un, pp. 23-32 Derrida, “Comment ne pas parler: Dénégations”Psyche, pp. 535-594 “ “La Différance,” Marges de la philosophie, pp. 41-66 Foucault Histoire de la sexualité vol. 1, pp. 76-98 “Nietzsche, la généalogie, l’histoire,” Dits et écrits 1971 Levinas, “Dieu et la Philosophie,” De Dieu qui vient à l’idée, pp. 93-127 Lacan, “La mort de Dieu,” L’Éthique de la psychanalyse, pp. 197-208 Bataille, “Le sacrifice, la fete et les principes du monde sacré,”Oeuvres complètes, vol. VII, pp. 307-318 De Certeau, La Faibless de croire, pp. 208-226 Girard, “Le Dieu des victimes,”La route antique des homes pervers, pp. 225-246 Barthes, “La lutte avec lánge”Oeuvres competes, vol. IV pp. 157-169 Kristeva, Au commencement etait l’amour Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture Baudrillard, L’exchange symbolique et la mort Lacan, “Le stade du miroir” http://perso.wanadoo.fr/espace.freud/topos/psycha/psysem/miroir.htm Lyotard, La condition postmodern, pp. 7-9, 54-68, 98-108 Texts available on-line:
Immanuel Kant, "Beantwortung auf die Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?" Max Weber, "Wissenschaft als Beruf" Edmond Husserl, "Die Krisis des Europäischen Menschentums und die Philosophie" Jean-Paul Sartre, "L'existentialisme est un humanisme" Jacques Lacan, "Le stade du miroir" Descartes, Méditations
Fall 2006 Comparative Literature Program T R 2: 35-3: 50 Office: 203 Furman (tel: 2-6902) Hours: T 4-5:00 & W 5-6:00
General Description: An introduction to Dante’s 3-part poetic oddysey, the cultural world it embodies, and the literary, philosophical and theological questions it raises. Topics will include the descent into the self in Inferno, the transition from profane to sacred love in Purgatory, and the problematic of language and transcendence in Paradise. Required Text: The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, trans. Alan Mandelbaum (includes three volumes: Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise) The Convivio of Dante AlighieriAssignments: 8/24/06 Introduction: Dante as “poeta-theologus” 8/29/06 Inferno Convivio I. i [x-xiii] 8/31/06 “ 9/5/06 “ Convivio II. i 9/7/06 “ 9/12/06 “ Convivio IV. iv-v 9/14/06 “ 9/19/06 “ 9/21/06 “ 9/26.06 Purgatory Convivio III. v 9/28/06 “ 10/3/06 “ 10/5/06 “ Convivio IV. xii - xiii 10/10/06 “ Convivio IV. xxi 10/12/06 “ Due: Paper #1 10/17/06 “ FALL BREAK 10/19/06 “ “ “ 10/24/06 “ Convivio II. ii, xii, and xv 10/26/06 “ 10/31/06 Paradiso Convivio III. i-ii, vii 11/2/06 “ 11/7/06 “ 11/9/06 “ 11/14/06 &n |