PHI 4804

PHI 4804: Honors Critical Theory & Practice

Daniel White

This course is designed to fit into the interdisciplinary, writing-intensive curriculum of the Honors College. It may be linked to courses in other disciplines, enhanced by a one-hour writing module, and, if approved, may contribute to Honors concentrations in philosophy, literature, and cultural studies. (This course will be complemented by PHI 4802: Critical Theory, which will focus on aesthetics and literary theory in Europe from antiquity through the 18^th century. It is recommended that students take PHI 3882: Philosophy of Literature, as a prerequisite to both.)

The class provides students with a challenging sequence of readings in interdisciplinary critical theory and cultural studies, including selected texts from the 18^th century through the present. Its contents may vary from term to term. Its purposes are, first, to study the relationship between key theories in traditional aesthetics and the expansive literature, drawn from across the arts and sciences, relevant to contemporary ideas of "culture"; second, to allow students to develop the critical sensibility emergent from historical and thematic perusal of the relevant critical literature; third, to provide a series of problems in criticism, so that students may develop a viable critical practice; fourth, to build students' skills as writers of expository prose; fifth, to prepare students to write honors theses in the humanities.

Gordon Rule Writing Requirement:

Because students in the Honors College may take upper-level courses as substitutes for lower-level ones in their core, it is appropriate to offer Gordon Rule classes at the junior and senior levels.

Writing will be the principal mode of evaluation here. An online guide to documentation styles will be employed (students may choose the style , e.g., MLA / Chicago, commensurate with their proposed concentration). A series of critical essays will be assigned, focusing on the interpretation of primary sources. Essays will be evaluated in terms of grammar, mechanics, organization, style, and content. Each student will write a minimum of 6,000 words.

Assignments:

1) Four essays, each at least 1,000 words in length, each 15% of final grade: 60% total.

2) Seven reading responses, each at least 300 words in length, altogether 20%.

3) A Presentation: 15%.

4) Quality of class participation: 5%.

4) Total minimum word-count for the class: 6,100.

Essays and Reading Responses: Each student will be expected to choose critical problems relevant to her or his chosen course of study, as the subject of assigned essays. These texts will be selected in consultation with the instructor, in addition to materials which appear on the syllabus. Reading responses will be brief essays relevant to assigned texts.

Levels of Difficulty: As the list of readings below indicates, the contents of this class are extensive. Most students taking the course will be on the verge of graduate study and, therefore, should develop a sense of the true dimensions of their proposed field of study. Students are not expected to master all the materials presented here. Rather, each person will be encouraged to find his or her own depth. In a given term, we as a class will cover as many of these sources as we find reasonable.

Required Texts:

Adams, Hazard & Leroy Searle, Critical Theory Since 1965. Tallahassee: U P of

Florida, 1986.

Hayles, Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and

Informatics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999.

Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology & Other Essays. Trans. William

Lovitt. New York: Harper Collins, 1977. ISBN: 0061319694

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. New York: Prometheus, 2000. ISBN: 1573928372

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Twilight of the Idols. Trans. Duncan Large. New York: Oxford, 1998.

Spivak, Gayatri .C. Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing

Present. Harvard: Harvard UP, 1999. ISBN: 0674177649

Reserve Readings: (ISBN appear for books being ordered for the MacArthur Campus library)

Adams, H. Critical Theory Since Plato. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994. ISBN 0155161431

Adorno, T. The Adorno Reader. B. O’Connor, ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.

---. Aesthetic Theory. Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997.

ISBN 0-8166-1800-3.

---. Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords. Trans., Henry W. Pickford. European

Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism. New York: Columbia

UP, 1997

Allison, David B. The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation. Cambridge: MIT

Press, 1990. ISBN: 0262510340

Ashcroft, Bill, et al. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 1995. ISBN:

0415096227

Banham, Gary. Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics. St. Martins, 1999. ISBN: 0312227485

Benhabib, Seyla. Critique, Norm, and Utopia : A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory.

New York: Columbia, 1994.

Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry,

Evolution & Epistemology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000. ISBN: 0226039064.

Baudrillard, Jean. Simlation and Simulacra. Trans. Sheila Glaser. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan

P, 1995. ISBN: 0472095218

Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Trans. Rolf Tiedemann. Cambridge: Harvard UP,

1999.

---. Selected Writings, 1913-1926. Vol. 1. Ed., Marcus Bullock. Trans., Gary Smith. Cambridge:

Harvard UP, 1996.

---. Selected Writings 1927-1934. Ed., trans. Gary Smith et al. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999.

Bernstein, J.M. The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno.

Philadelphia: Penn State UP, 1992. ISBN: 0271008385.

Buck-Morss, Susan. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project.

Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991.

Butler, Judith. Antigone's Claim: Kinship between Life and Death. New York: Columbia UP,

200.

During, Simon. Cultural Studies Reader. 2^nd Edition. New York: Routledge, 1999.

ISBN: 0415137535 (Hardcover)

Eagleton, Terry. Criticism & Ideology: A Study in Marxist Literary Theory. 2^nd Edition. London:

Verso, 1998. ISBN: 1859842178

---. The Idea of Culture. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. ISBN 0631-21966-8

---. Literary Theory. 2^nd Edition. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. ISBN: 081661251X

---. Review of Spivak's Critique of Postcolonial Reason. NYT

Frank, Manfred. The Subject & the Text: Essays on Literary Theory & Philosophy. Trans. Helen

Atkins. Cambridge: Cambridge U P,1998. ISBN: 0521561213

---. What is Neostructuralism? Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1989. ISBN: 0816615993

Freud, Sigmund. “Creative Writers and Daydreaming.” In Adams (1994) 711-716.

---. Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay. New York: Norton, 1989.

---. Leonardo da Vinci and a Dream of His Childhood. Ed.James Strachey. New York: Norton,

1990.

---. On Character and Culture. Ed. Philip Rieff. New York: Collier, 1963.

---. On Dreams. Ed. James Strachey . New York:

Norton, 1976. ISBN: 039300144X

Foucault, M. The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow. New York: Random, 1984.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. 2^nd Revised Edition. Ed., Joel C. Weinsheimer and

Donald G. Marshall. New York: Continuum, 1990.

Gless, Darryl J. Barbara H. Smith, eds. The Politics of Liberal Education

Grossberg, L. et al, eds. Cultural Studies. NY: Routledge, 1992.

Guha, R. Social Ecology. Oxford: Oxford U P, 1998.

Guyer, Paul, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.

Habermas, J. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Trans. Frederick Lawrence.

Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987. ISBN 0-262-08163-6

---. Theory of Communicative Action. Trans. Thomas McCarthy. 2 vols. Boston: Beacon, 1985,

1989.

Haraway, D. Modest-Witness, Second-Millennium : Femaleman Meets Oncomouse :

Feminism and Technoscience NY: Routledge, 1997.

---. Simians, Cyborgs and Women. NY: Routledge, 1991.

Harrow, Kenneth W., ed. African Cinema : Postcolonial and Feminist Readings. Africa World

Press, 1999. ISBN: 0865436967

Hayles, C. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,

Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999.

Hegel, G.W.F. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Trans. T.M. Know. 3 vols. New York: Oxford

UP, 1888.

Henrich, Dieter. Aesthetic Judgment and the Moral Image of the World. Stanford: Stanford UP,

1992. ISBN: 0804720541.

Hollingdale, R.J. Nietzsche: The Man and his Philosophy. 2^nd Edition Cambridge: Cambridge

UP, 1999. ISBN: 0521640911

Ihde, Don. Consequences of Phenomenology. Albany: SUNY, 1991. ISBN: 0887061419

---. Expanding Hermeneutics : Visualism in Science. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1999.

ISBN: 0810116057.

---. Instrumental Realism: The Interface between Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of

Technology. Indiana UP, 1994. ISBN: 025320626X

Irigaray, L. The Irigaray Reader. M. Whitford, ed. D. Macey, trans. Oxford:

Blackwell, 1991.

---. I, You, We : Toward a Culture of Difference. Trans., Martin Alison. New York: Routledge,

1992.

Irmgard, Sherer. The Crisis of Judgment in Kant's Three Critiques : In Search of a Science of

Aesthetics, Vol. 16. Peter Lang, 1995. ISBN: 0820421553

Jameson, F. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke

UP, 1991.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Hackett, 1990. ISBN:

0872200256

---. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Cambridge Edition of the Works of

Immanuel Kant. Trans. Eric Matthews and Paul Guyer. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,

2000. ISBN: 0521344476

---. Critique of Practical Reason. Trans. Mary Gregor. Cambridge Texts in the History of

Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. ISBN: 0521599628

---. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. W.H. Pluhar. Hackett, 1997. ISBN: 0872202577

Kristeva, J. Crisis of the European Subject: Cultural Studies. Other Press: 2000.

Kusno, Abidin. Behind the Postcolonial : Architecture, Urban Space and Political Cultures.

New York: Routledge, 2000. ISBN: 0415236142

LJvi-Strauss, C. The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology.

Trans. John Weightman. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986.

Magnus, Bernd and Kathleen Higgens. The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. Cambridge:

Cambridge UP, 1996. ISBN: 0262240327

Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society.

Boston: Beacon, 1992.

Marx, Karl. Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Ed. Maurice Dobb. New York:

International, 1987.

---. The German Ideology: Including Theses on Feuerbach & Introduction to the Critique

of Political Economy. Prometheus, 1998. ISBN: 1573922587

Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels on Literature & Art: A Selection of Writings. Ed. Lee Baxandall.

Documents on Marxist Aesthetics Ser. New York: International, 1974. ISBN: 0884770001 Nietzsche, F. The Gay Science. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1974.

Poster, Mark. The Mode of Information. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990.

Rampley, Matthew. Nietzsche, Aesthetics and Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.

ISBN 0-521-65155-7

Rochlitz, Rainer. The Disenchantment of Art: The Philosophy of Walter Benjamin. Trans. Jane

Marie Todd. Guilford, 1996. ISBN: 0898624088

Said, E. Culture and Imperialism. NY: Vintage, 1994. ISBN: 0679750541

Saussure, F. Course in General Linguistics. W. Baskin, trans. NY: McGraw-H, 1986.

Smith, Barbara and D. J. Gless. The Politics of Liberal Education, Post-Contemporary

Interventions Ser. Durham: Duke UP, 1992. ISBN: 0822311992

Spivak, G.C. Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing

Present. Harvard: Harvard UP, 1999.

---. The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. New York: Routledge,

1995. ISBN: 0415910013.

Szilard, Leo. "On the Decrease of Entropy in a Thermodynamic System by the Intervention of

Intelligent Beings." Translation of Über die Entropieverminderung in einem thermodynamischen System by Eingriffen intelligenter Wesen, Zeitschrift für Physik, 1929, 53, 840-856. English translation reprinted from Behavioural Science, vol. 9, no. 4 (1964), in. English translation and German text reprinted in The Collected Works of Leo Szilard: Scientific Papers. Ed. Bernard T. Feld and Gertrude W. Szilard. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972. 120-133.

Thacker. E. "../bio_informatics.html/materiality & data between information theory and

genetic research." Ctheory, Article 63, 28 October 1998; www.ctheory.com/a63.html

Trinh, Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism.

Bloomington: Indiana U P, 1989.

Wallis, B. and M. Tucker. Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. Godine, 1986.

ISBN: 0879236329

Wiggerhshaus, Rolf. The Frankfurt School: its History, Theories, and Political Significance.

Trans. Michael Robertson. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994. ISBN 0-262-73113-4.

Wilden, Anthony. The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis.

Translation of and commentary on Lacan’s text. Johns Hopkins, 1998. ISBN:

0801858178

---. System and Structure: Essays in Communication and Exchange. 2^nd Edition.

London: Tavistock, 1980. ISBN: 042276700X

Zuidervaart , Lambert. Adorno's Aesthetic Theory: The Redemption of Illusion. Cambridge:

MIT, 1991. ISBN: 0262240327

Online Resources for Writing:

Academic.writing: interdisciplinary perspectives on communication across the curriculum:

http://aw.colostate.edu/index.html

MLA Style: http://www.mla.org/

Assignments

Week Activities

1 Critical Backgrounds: the Enlightenment: Kant's Critique of Judgment.

2 Critique of Judgment, continued. Readings from Kant, Guyer, Henrich, Pluhar, Irmgard, Banham. 19^th Century constructions of History, Progress, and Culture: Hegel, from Philosophy of Fine Art, in Adams, 533-545; Marx, from German Ideology and Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in Adams, 624-628; Hegel and Marx, on Reserve. From Eagleton, The Idea of Culture, on reserve.

Response 1 due.

3 The Counter-Enlightenment, precursor to postmodernity: Nietzsche's

Twilight of the Idols. "The Entry into Postmodernity: Nietzsche as a Turning Point," Habermas, 83-105. Readings from Nietzsche, Habermas, Magnus & Higgins, Allison, Rampley, Hollingdale, Benhabib.

4 Twentieth-century perspectives: The Death of God and the Relationship between Art and Technology: "The Word of Nietzsche: 'God is Dead'," Heidegger, 53-112, "The Question Concerning Technology," Heidegger, 3-35; Chapter VI, "The Undermining of Western Rationalism through the Critique of Metaphysics: Martin Heidegger," Habermas, 131-160. Reserve Readings in Nietzsche, Habermas. Essay 1 Due.

5 Cultural Hermeneutics: Heidegger, Gadamer, Idhe.

"The Age of the World Picture," Heidegger, 115-154, "Science and Reflection," Heidegger, 155-182; "from Truth and Method," Gadamer in Adams & Searle, 840-855. Cultural Hermeneutics: Ricoeur and "The

Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling," Ricoeur in ,

424-434; Gadamer, in Adams, 840 ff.; Heidegger in Adams 758 ff. Reserve

reading, Idhe. Response 2 Due.

6 Marxism and the Critique of the Culture Industry: Bejamin, "The

Function of the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in

Wallis and Tucker, on reserve; Angela McRobbie, "The Place of Walter Benjamin in Cultural Studies," in During; Adorno, Adams & Searle 232 ff. "Classics & Canons," Gless & Smith 223-231; 2. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" in During. Carolyn Steedman, "Culture, Cultural Studies and the Historians" in During. Grossberg Ch. 1, "Cultural Studies: An Introduction"; from Eagleton, The Idea of Culture, on reserve.

7 Structuralism and Poststructuralism: from Course in General Linguistics," Saussure in Adams & Searle, 646-656; Lévi-Strauss in Adams & Searle, 824 ff.; Derrida, "Structure, Sign & Play," Adams & Searle 83 ff.; Roland Barthes, from The Empire of Signs, on Reserve, “The Structuralist Activity,” in Adams 1127-1130. Foucault, "Discourse on Language," Adams & Searle 148 ff.; : Derrida; "from Of Grammatology," Derrida in Adams & Searle, 94-119, "Différance," Derrida in Adams & Searle, 120-136. Essay 2 Due.

8 French Neopsychoanalysis, French Feminism and Cultural Studies. Freud: “Creative Writers and Daydreaming,” in Adams on reserve; Lacan, “The Mirror Stage,”in Adams 897-901, and Adams & Searle 734 ff.; Kristeva in Adams & Searle, 471 ff. and from Crisis of the European Subject, on reserve; Cixous in Adams & Searle, 309 ff.; Grossberg Ch. 23, "Body Narratives, Body Boundaries"; Grossberg Ch. 26, "Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture"; Irigaray, from I, You, We, and Reader, on reserve; Foucault: "Space, Power, Knowledge," in During. Response 3 Due.

9 The critique of Eurocentrism, postcolonialism, and the postmodern: Grossberg, Ch. 4, "Postcolonial Authority." Postcolonialism and postmodernism: Spivak, "Scattered Speculations on the Question of Cultural Studies," Bhaba, "The Postcolonial and the Postmodern: The Question of Agency," Appadurai, "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy," all in During; Guha, from Social Ecolog, on reserve; Grossberg Ch. 3, "Angels Dancing," Benjamin, Adams & Searle 680 ff.; Grossberg Ch. 5, "Engaging with the Popular"; Grossberg Ch. 10, "The Culture of Everyday Life,"; Edward Said, "The World, The Text and the Critic," in Adams 1210-1222, from Culture and Imperialism, on reserve. Kant, Hegel, and Marx revisited: Spivak, Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Eagleton, Review of Spivak, on reserve. Response 4 Due.

10 Feminism, Postcolonialism, Multiculturalism: Grossberg Ch. 6, "I Throw

Punches for my Race but I Don't Want to Be a Man"; Grossberg 9, "What is Real and What is Not: Female Fabulations in Cultural Analysis"; Grossberg Ch. 19, "Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination"; Grossberg, Ch. 22: "Cultural Theory, Colonial Texts: Reading Eyewitness Accounts of Widow Burning"; Trinh, from Woman, Native, Other, on Reserve; Spivak, Critique of Postcolonial Reason.

Presentations.