Introduction to Literary Studies

Prof. Małgorzata Myk

Wednesday 10:00-11:45
0.06
11.10.2023

The penultimate class – in-class quiz – general orientation who was doing what in terms
of theory; the issues the theorists have been thinking about; Multiple choice quiz (one
answer correct);

• Terry Eagleton “The Rise of English”:

- A renowned English philosopher, critic, a Marxist, interested in literature against
social, economic, political backgrounds. Studied the importance of ideology. Concerned
with particular social classes (especially the working class).
- Sublime – a power-related concept;
- Preoccupation with aesthetics, form, and style  social impact on literature and its
development in history;
- His attitude towards New Criticism – the New Critics approached literature in such a
way that they perceived it as autonomous and pure, rather than ideological (as Eagleton
did);

• Lydia Davis “A Position at the University”:

- A prose writer, short stories.
- Numerous repetitions of the phrase “A position at the university” – catches a reader’s
attention, makes them delve deeper into its meaning.
- The position of a teacher at the university is compared to literature – both can be
interpreted differently by different people. Literature is a kind of an ideology; it might be
a sort of religion for some people as well  an assumption that English literature
teachers might be too conservative and religious. Literature teachers’ life is boring
(because the literature itself is boring for some people), no one wants to explore it in
greater detail  since the presupposition that very few people know what literature
teachers are like in real life.
- An idea of existentialism;
- Insufficiency in how people identify and perceive things;
- A poet who does not like fixed concepts;
- Dismantling things that people would expect from her as a female writer;

18.10.2023

• Formalism and New Criticism (key issues):

- Wanted literature to be seen as pure and autonomous;

• Shklovsy “Art as technique” 1917 – an example of early Formalist thought:

- Shklovsky’s idea of defamiliarization (or ostranienie) – “a making strange” – as tearing
the object loose from its place in life, robbing it of its usual associations and rotating it in
its semantic space – as “one would turn a log in the fire”;
- Poetic/literary language vs. Practical language;
- Investigated the workings of our perception and habit – perception becomes
unconsciously automatic, habitual, minimal. We become desensitised;
- Breaking the habit – creation of renewed perception that would overcome
automatization. Art demands a focus on its artfulness by obstructing, confusing, and
prolonging perception. Poetical language creates a vision of the image: defamiliarization
is the reversal of presenting the unknown in terms of known;
- Preoccupied with style and form – which should free us from habit, and habitual way of
perceiving reality and literature; Regenerating perception; Privileges form over content;
Renewed perception, awareness;

• Mathew Arnold – 1920s:

- Close reading – a method of reading a text regardless of the content;
- Disinterested, politically detached, and uncommitted literature;
- Key critical-literary device: The Touchstone – he suggests that his Touchstone method
should provide the basis for the “real” rather than “historic”;

• T. S. Eliot:
- “Tradition and the Individual Talent” – the poet should not focus on the intimate aspect
of their life as material for their poems, they should be emerged in tradition; A great
poet, mostly worked with tradition; Tradition becomes a major importance for Eliot;
- The notion of the “dissociation of sensibility” – separating thought from feeling;
- The notion of poetic “impersonality” – sceptical towards originality (tradition leaves no
space for originality);
- The notion of “objective correlative” - the best way of expressing an emotion in art is to
find some vehicle for it in gesture, action, or concrete symbolism, rather than
approaching it directly or descriptively;

• I. A. Richards – 1930s to the 1970s and New Criticism:

- Practical Criticism – close reading, literature in its decontextualised form;
- Intentional fallacy – term used in the 20 th-century literary criticism to describe the
problem inherent in trying to judge a work of art by assuming the intention or purpose
of the artist who created it (you fail if you ascribe a text to some kind of intention behind
writing it);
- Affective fallacy – according to the followers of New Criticism, the misconception that
arises from judging a poem by the emotional effect (no emotional approach in reading
literature – looking for something more universal);

- Emphasis on formal elements;

- A literary work seen as timeless, autonomous (self-sufficient) verbal object;
- Heresy of paraphrase – an assumption that the meaning of a work of art (particularly
of poetry) can be paraphrased;
- Organic unity;
- Close reading, the scrupulous examination of the complex relationship between text’s
formal elements and its theme;
- A belief that the literary text can be understood primary by understanding its form
(hence formalism);
- A clear understanding of the definitions of specific formal elements is important. The
linguistic devices of paradox, irony, ambiguity, and tension. Different kinds of figurative
language: images, symbols, metaphors, and similes – understanding how the text works;
- Can a literary text be independent of the history and culture that produced it? – the
context is something that shaped us therefore we cannot entirely break free form it;
Everything is a product of history and culture; New Critics would claim the authority of
a text; They wanted to free a text from the context, objective reading, an organic form –
idealised thinking about literature;
- Can it have a single, objective meaning?

• Theory:
- Selfhood, identity, as well as literature itself as constructs that stable, fixed entities;
- Contingent rather than absolute;

• Sylvia Plath “Daddy”:

- The concept of defamiliarization;
- Father-daughter relationship compared to Holocaust, Nazi and Jews –
defamiliarization – making our perception of the entire relationship quite out of the
ordinary;
- Estranging the reader through a radical perspective, shock, intensity and Plath’s
working with the language;
- No class next week

Homework:
• Walter Benjamin “The Flâneur”:
- The concept of the flâneur, the casual wanderer, observer and reporter of street-life in
the modern city, was first explored, at length, in the writings of Baudelaire. Baudelaire’s
flâneur, an aesthete and dandy, wandered the streets and arcades of nineteenth-century
Paris looking at and listening to the kaleidoscopic manifestations of the life of a modern
city. The flâneur’s method and the meaning of his activities were bound together, one
with the other.
- Taken from a French word, meaning to "stroll" or "loaf", the concept of the flâneur
developed in Paris in the mid nineteenth century and later spread to other European
cities, particularly Berlin. First and foremost a leisurely observer of urban life, a flâneur
was someone that walked through a city, watching, but not participating in the things
they saw. This allowed the viewer to experience and analyse city life from a detached, or
external viewpoint. Despite their status as observers, early flâneurs retained and valued
a sense of their own individuality and identity and many displayed flamboyant styles of
self-presentation.
- The nineteenth century was a period of rapid change in terms of industrialization,
urbanization, city planning, and a rise in consumer spaces. Flâneurs are seen as
embodying this change, recording, reflecting, and commenting on ideas of modern life
and people's changing relationships with urban areas, architecture, and each other.
- Benjamin's critical analysis of the flâneur focused on the figure's connection to
consumerism, capitalism, class tensions, and the way in which the individual is alienated
in the modern metropolis. He saw capitalist society, as well as the push for increased
productivity and consumption, as a threat to the way of life of the flâneur.

• Teju Cole “Open City”:

- The novel begins with the narrator, Julius, discussing how he began going on walks
around the boroughs of New York City during the last year of his psychiatry fellowship.
This new routine has, at least for the time being, replaced his former interests in bird
watching, listening to classical radio shows from other countries, and reading aloud.
Initially, Julius is overwhelmed by the density of people in the city. One night, he tries to
understand the different boroughs by walking around in them.
- On a Sunday morning, he finds his walk interrupted by crowds gathered for the New
York Marathon. He tries to avoid them by going into stores in the Upper West Side, then
by visiting a former professor named Saito, who lives in an apartment on Central Park
South. Saito taught English literature at the fictional Maxwell College, where Julius was a
student. While Julius did not excel in his class, he did become friends with Saito.

8.11.2023

• Walter Benjamin:
- The notion of the modern; Interested in French symbolist poet Baudelaire, numerous
writings on Baudelaire (19th century Paris), fascination of the modern city, exploring the
faster pace of life, positioning the flaneur against the modern city, the shock it brings
(because it is so fast, because of its overstimulation and overwhelming nature);
Interested in the writings by Poe (fascination of the detective figures who go to the
darker spheres of a city life); Preoccupied with the ambivalence between the boredom
of a modern city and its fast pace and danger; 1930s; Committed a suicide;
- Two important works by Benjamin – “Illuminations” (a collection of essays about life in
the concept of the modern, showing admirations for reading and thinking), “The
Arcades Project” (not finished by the author, published posthumously) - a volume of
fragments and notes, a modernist text about different aspects of the modernist culture;
- “Flaneur” – a figure perceived as a privileged wealthy man who walks observing the
city;
- Preoccupied with consumerism, dialectics;

• Teju Cole “Open City”:

- A more conscious, self-aware observer of the city-life; a non-white immigrant who
chose “loneliness” over engaging with the masses;
- The professor – the narrator might have imagined what his life could be in the future (a
lonely old man); Contrast between the narrator and the professor – the flaneur’s way of
living was Julius’s own choice, whereas the Professor ended up being alone due to his
illness (he was no longer capable of giving lectures and meeting up with others);

• Lisa Robertson “The Baudelaire Fractal”:

- A woman in a hotel room reading, encountering intellectual life; A traveller; The act of
exploring the room she is in; A female protagonist without responsibilities who has a
freedom to stay in hotel rooms, to travel, to choose how to live, to flirt; She seems to be
alone but not lonely;
- The concept of the flaneur – exploring, but not the city life (exploring books);
- Lisa Robertson – a Canadian writer involved in the Kootenay School of Writing; Also
associated with the group of Language Poets in the US;
- Pierre Bonnard – decadence of domesticity (paintings of women in domestic
surroundings);

Homework:
• Jacques Lacan’s “Mirror Stage”:
- The “The Mirror Stage” (also called the “mirror phase”) is a developmental stage
theorized by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Occurring between six and eighteen months,
Lacan’s mirror stage is the process during which we understand ourselves as
individuals, whole and distinct from the people around us, and begin taking active part
in sign systems (language, culture, normative behaviour, etc.). The mirror stage marks
our entry into the realms of the Imaginary and the Symbolic and the development of the
ego and the Subject — the “I.”
- Lacan’s mirror stage is inspired by Henri Wallon’s developmental psychology. Wallon
described how, compared to other animals, humans are born prematurely, requiring up
to eighteen months of development before we can stand, walk, handle objects usefully,
or understand our body as a whole in its environment. Wallon observed that when faced
with their reflections, young primates like chimpanzees quickly lost interest with or
tried to attack the images, while human children remained fascinated. Lacan theorized
that, by seeing an image of the self, perceiving itself as others do, the child develops a
sense of its body and its identity.
- In conclusion we can see that Jacques Lacan believed the mirror stage was a crucial
stage in a child's development. To create an identity, we are required to see our
reflection and both identify with it but also realise that it is not truly ourselves.

15.11.2023

• Psychoanalysis:

• Jacques Lacan:
- Preoccupied more with language; A student of Freud; Considered himself to be a
Freudian but, in fact, he departed from Freud’s ideas; Founded his own school of
psychoanalysis in France; The therapy session based on the idea of talking (Freud;
talking too much, focusing on the language too much without focusing on what patients
really experienced – Lacan’s criticism of Freud) – experience cannot be grasped in
language (Lacan);
- Interested in different stages of the development of the psyche;
- Building his entire theory to the Cartesian sense (cogito) of a stable, thinking, rational
subject – according to Lacan, the subject is no longer rational, because it is forever split;
- Interested in the gender roles, how women and men functioned in the society –
Phallus; Women were not presented favourably by Lacan; Depriving them of self-
awareness of what they have;

• “The Mirror Stage”:

- Comes from a larger book of his; The topic of the “eye”;
- Imago (image);
- Children start perceiving themselves as separate from their mothers during the mirror
stage (6-18 months);
- Idea of the split subject;
- The mirror functions as a barrier between who we really are and the illusional image
of us  the conflict between who we are and what the society wants us to be;
- A sense of lack – there is always something missing in the sense of who we are; We feel
unfulfilled;
- Real – the time we get disconnected from the moment we are confronted with the
society and language; Something we have never really had access to;
- Symbolic – we confront the Other;
- Imaginary – connected to narcissism and to identifications; When we start demanding
things (the demands are never fulfilled);
- The split eye, unconscious;

• Leslie Scalapino “The Woman Who Could Read the Minds of Dogs”:
- North American poet, experimented with language, interested in perception and self-
awareness, the degree to which we understand ourselves;
- A form of realism; Kind of realism that assumes that the reality is a fiction, everything
is a matter of perspective, the reality is always mediated by our perception; Reality does
not exist, everything is a formation of our mind (including our own perception of
ourselves); The way realism could be very unsettling;
- Another book of poetry of her on homeless people – observing homeless people in LA;
- The title “hmmmm____” – being sceptical or uncertain of what something is or means,
slowing down;
- “Dog” – a kind of an everyday situation, seeing a dog walking outside, mimicking it;
Gesturing towards the unconscious (the first line – thinking about something without
realising that you think about something  confronting the impossible); Identification
with the dog; “We” – assuming that the reader would identify with the author; Starting
to get wild from a mundane situation; Embracing the animalism that she meets; The
motif of the tongue – embodies language, speech;

- “Consider certain emotions such as falling asleep, I said” – the motif of the tongue,
animals, detaching herself from the human species; Falling asleep is not an emotion (if
so, what kind of emotion is it?); reversing the order of what we consider familiar and
making it unfamiliar (standing on one’s feet is not associated with sleeping); “I” –
emphasis; “Feeling sleep” – defamiliarizing ordinary things and sensations;

- “So slowly, up and down, the way a woman’s breasts will move” – deconstruction of
the woman’s own perception of herself; The poem about trauma; The image of a woman
walking; Objectification; Men and women interactions; Seeing her own body and feeling
threatened; Exploring the realm where the fear/anxiety is born;

- “Seeing the Scenery” – philosophical poem; Seeing the scenery of oneself in the
mirror; Bringing the outside (scenery) inside (mirrors are usually found in the home
interiors); Blurring the boundaries between the outside and the inside; Social realm –
criticising the social as the sphere that construct our life and makes us not free;
Dissolving a common image of seeing yourself in a mirror; The human perception
changes everything (last line); Nature and the human form – the human gives form to
the mountain; The author makes everything dependent on human perception; The
mountain perceived by a human – it’s perception has already changed; The unconscious
wish to touch something that is not humane;

22.11.2023

- Next week -next class;

- Mid-term assignment – in-home; 4 questions to be developed briefly (2 weeks to
complete the assignment);

• Marxist literary criticism:

- Marx “Capital”: a German (materialist) philosopher, the significance of the economic
sphere (capitalism); reflecting on capitalism, the significance of commodities;
- All the social relationships are influenced by capitalism;
- Cooperated with Angles (Communist manifesto);
- Monumental work – “Capital” - the 1 st part of the 3 planned by Marx (died after the
completion of the 1st part);
- The issue of the commodity – a product of labour, something that is outside of us that
makes a human being satisfied; The moment people produce something they become
alienated from the product of their labour; The boss – the only person who owns all the
goods, not the workers (the system); Marx perceives the bosses as the bourgeois;
- The use-value – the utility of a product; Use-values become a reality only by use or
consumption;
- Exchange-value – there has to be a social relation; The commodities participate in the
social exchange (connected with desires so that people crave particular
products/commodities  commodity Fetishism); Labourers (proletariat) – the owners
of the means of productions and of the products;
- The proletariat needs to take over the power (revolution), but it is too weak, so the
intellectuals should help create the conditions for the revolution to occur; Commodity
and ideology; Tracing the relations within the social structure;

- Gramsci “Hegemony”: ideology as something connected to the material conditions of

life; Hegemony should not necessarily be connected to force (soft pressure);

- Althusser “Ideology and Ideological State”: a philosopher, interested in different

social groups, created 2 important terms – “apparatus” as a certain structure that holds
power and “repressive state apparatus” (police force, army, government, have hegemony
and use force to dominate and suppress the social unrest) “ideological state apparatus”
(different institution, power, shapes particular social groups, soft power but also force
[e.g. university]) According to Althusser, the hegemony is everywhere; Ideology as
something quite abstract and imaginable; The notion of interpellation – we are
subjective to the higher power, we are afraid, we are subjects; Hegemony should not
necessarily be connected to force (soft pressure);

- Kevin Davies “Lateral Argument”: the notion of technological hegemony;

- Anne Boyer “Garments Against Women”:

- Diagnosed with stage 4 cancer;
- Reflections on her being a patient of the health care system (the other book of her);
- Speaking about freedom (but does not feel free);
- Eating in the cage – not being free;
- The title “Garments against Women” – relates to the literary establishment; The
fashion industry – some sort of a cage; For the author – the literary industry is this kind
of cage; The literary industry is not welcoming to characters like her (working-class
single mother in debt);
- Epigraph – Marry Wollstonecraft – a feminist; A passage about reading – reading as the
activity that can help escape sorrow and harsh reality; Boyer does the opposite – writing
is not always liberating; As a writer, she does not always think that writing is available to
her; The speaker – someone who wants to write (potentially an author), a mother
(domestic activities mentioned, emphasis on the work, work of an author – writing);
- The chapter “Not Writing” – writing is not something you can do when you are in
poverty; She needs the means to actually be a writer (Marxist critique of life conditions,
of feminine writing); Not writing about the imagined reality but about the economic
conditions of writing (Marxist view); Women’s labour in many of their aspects, domestic
aspects, the work associated with taking care of others – all of these things produce
“non writing” because she has no time for this; Unromanticised view on writing;
- Preoccupied with essays, their form;
- Addresses the material conditions of her life; Reserving writing to those privileged
ones;

5.12.2023

Homework:

• Michel Foucault “The Archaeology of Knowledge”:

- The unities of Discourse:
- Discursive Formations:
- Description of a specific kind of approach to history - a “way of speaking” about
history;
- This chapter establishes a twin set of partial metaphors that represent for Foucault the
right and wrong ways to approach history. The first is an image of history as a realm of
silence and darkness, the space in which all of the immaterial, spiritual, "secret" notions
of history posited by traditional historians are supposed to move and function. The two
such notions addressed here specifically are the "linked, but opposite" ones of origin
and the "already-said."
- The issue of Foucault's own authorship is again in the background here, particularly in
light of his rejection of things like the book, the oeuvre, and author’s psychology as tools
of reading history.

- Applies the ideas of difference to his own discussion of discourse information;

- Discourse – a particular way of using language that is organised around its own
concepts (legal discourse, philosophical discourse, the discourse of science/literature);
- Archaeology as the way of discussing history as a way of looking at things in a more in-
depth way (vertical perspective, digging deeper, interest in what has been hidden from
our view of history);
- Method of thinking about history in terms of language and how language creates
history and us;
- Preoccupied with life as art that needs to be cultivated; Experimenting with his own
body;

• Friedrich Nietzsche “Will to Power”:

- The metaphysical meaning behind Nietzsche's will to power is that the entire world is
driven by the will to power. That is, the will to power is not a feature inherent in any one
person's mind, but rather, it is a principle that drives all things.
- It is best understood as an irrational force, found in all individuals, that can be
channelled toward different ends;

6.12.2023

• Structuralism/Post Structuralism:

• Friedrich Nietzsche:
- Witnessed a major shift regarding ideology, change of perspective and perceiving the
world;
- His father (priest) died; Nietzsche’s mother expected him to follow his father’s career;
Originally deeply religious; Witnessed his father’s suffering (although the Christian
religion says if you are religious, you will not be suffering)  Nietzsche’s
disappointment in religion; (God is dead – famous phrase of Nietzsche; We have killed
him; People became abandoning religion; The shift of the paradigm – if there is no
religion, there is no hope, no security, no stable ground, no guidance; Without religion
all these ideas are dispersed; The person who abandons religion believes that God is
dead and he is left on his own  the aspect of Modernity; Disillusion of the religious
worldview);
- Did not want to be associated with Nazis;
- Uncertainty that comes with views that Nietzsche promoted after his transformation;
Uncertainty about what is truth, what is stable;
- Observing the society; Started writing about the Christian society/religion (religion as
opium for the masses; something that enslaves people with collective religiousness –
sign of weakness, dependence upon someone); Exploring the idea of an individual who
does not need any kind of dependence  the idea of the overman (someone who is
above the Christian mentality; focusing on life rather than on life after death;
- The concept of truth/the concept of lying: “On Truth and Lying in an Extra-moral
Sense”: Nietzsche proposes that there is no universal objective truth, and that the
concepts of language are powerless to communicate total truth. Nietzsche highlights
that there was a universe that existed before man and his intellect, and there will
continue to be the same universe, almost entirely unaffected, after man has died out.
The intellect operates in such a way as to deceive man into believing he has an
importance in the universe which he simply lacks. Nietzsche describes the
establishment of “truth” as a “peace pact” created between individuals because humans
are, by necessity, social creatures. These individuals set conventions of “truth” in order
to establish any means of interaction. Therefore, those who adhere to these constraints
speak the “truth”, and those who do not are “liars”. However, it is only in forgetting that
these designations were made arbitrarily that man can believe himself to possess any
notion of truth.
- Preoccupied with the idea of freedom (religion as the opposite of freedom – it enslaves
people); Truth is something that is usually imposed on us; Nietzsche wanted to find his
own truth; Truth and lying are arbitrary metaphors (language); Nietzsche makes these
concepts relative (there are not absolute anymore); In the absence of religion all things
become relative (since there is no one to tell you what you should you, what is right and
what is wrong);
- Questioning language, its mechanisms, and the reality it creates (“Is language the
adequate expression of all realities”); Language constructs our reality (“Language
speaks us” Heidegger – takes the autonomy and power from us; We are thrown into
language, we are formed by language  Post Structuralist position; Having to conform
the language; Transforming language transforms reality);
- The relativity is all around us; Everything depends on our position, on what shapes us
as individuals, on what we believe in;
- Morality – a fixed convention/social habit; There are many ways in which morality can
be defined in different societies  the morality is something very relative; Encourages
people to free themselves from this fixed morality so they start to believe that it no
longer serves them; Everyone has an obligation to strive towards overcoming these fixed
positions  associated with art and artistic activity; One becomes free when s/he
becomes an artist – the aesthetic perspective, the art of living;
- Promoted the cult of mental strength and resilience;
- Influenced Heidegger’s and Foucault’s works;

• Martin Heidegger “Identity and Difference”:

- Was a Nazi, supported fascism, abandoned everybody just to safe himself;
- Critique of technology and its impact on people’s lives; We are all dependent/enframed
by technology; We become a resource for technology (another essay of his on
technology);
- Speculating about the difference between Existence (simply registering the fact that
we exist) and Being (progressive tense, suggests activity; experiencing the world in a
more meaningful way); Seeing Being in action;
- Difference as a fundamental condition of Existence; Whatever exists – differs; (We are
different to ourselves because we change throughout the time);
- We should stop applying our subjective filter (our expectations, preconceptions, biases,
ideas of what things really work  we are limited because all those things control our
perception of things/the world) when approaching the notion of Being; Heidegger
wants us to approach the concept of Being in an objective, innocent, less subjective way;
People have become so preoccupied with the necessity of Existence that they stopped
thinking about Being, about what it means to Be;
- Language as a realm of difference;

• Michel Foucault “The Archaeology of Knowledge”:

- Interested in madness, darkness, criminality;
- A poststructuralist thinker, alienated, interested in language (in a broader sense, how
language translates in culture). A concern in discourse;

• Documentary: “Michel Foucault Beyond Good and Evil 1993” (Nietzsche was
important, Foucault was interested in morality; Punishing certain types of behaviour
and tolerating other types);
- Post-War generation of French thinkers;
- Examining the nature of society, nature of man;
- Exploring states that were beyond normal every day experience (drugs, eroticism);
- Criminals as a mirror of society;
- Suicide attempts;
- 1947 – birth of the new generation of thinkers – theatrical performance;
- Visited the Death Valley in America – change in Foucault’s thinking  interest in death;
- California, San Francisco – bars, gays, sexuality, homosexual;
- Rejected Christianity;
- Aesthetics of existence – life should be treated as a work of art;
- Hit by a car – injuries, being on the death’s doorsteps was one of the most pleasurable
experiences in his life;
- Testing the limits of existence;
- Interest in extremity, in reinventing himself, in being a radical philosopher;
- Spirituality, out of ordinary activities;
- Interest in discourse – fundamental to his understanding of how language is organized;
Discourse of the prison, discourse of the clinic (interested in how the clinic works, in the
patients, in science and education, advancement of a certain body of knowledge,
discourse of the madness) – discourse of formations – power involved in creation of a
particular discourse; Looking for the gaps, things that destroy a smooth progress of a
given discourse; Archaeological approach (as opposed to linear and chronological) – in
order to understand what history is, we have to consider a vertical approach, going
deeper, excavating the hidden, repressed, denied, withdrawn because it was
uncomfortable; Structuralism – investment in patterns, structures, something that
organizes things in an easy, accessible way; Poststructuralism – replaced by the notion
that the structures do not hold anymore (“the centre does not hold anymore” – any
central ideas, truths – we are bound to be uncertain about it since there are different
sets of truths depending on a culture)  Structure in a literary text (novel) – what kind
of social order is described; Familiar structures – family relations, political structures,
historical events; Poststructuralist text – how those structures are dismantled,
disintegrated (the concept of a nuclear family does not hold any longer);

Homework: Derrida’s “Difference”

12.12.2023

Homework:

- The ⟨a⟩ of différance is a deliberate misspelling of différence, though the two are
• Jacques Derrida “Difference”:

pronounced identically;
- This misspelling highlights the fact that its written form is not heard, and serves to
further subvert the traditional privileging of speech over writing as well as the
distinction between the sensible and the intelligible.
- Words and signs are not identical with what they signify, and only acquire meaning
through their differences from other words and signs; Meaning arises from the
differentiation of words from one another, and the consequential engendering of binary
oppositions and hierarchies. Thus, meaning is forever "deferred" or postponed through
an endless chain of signifiers. Derrida refers to this process as espacement or "spacing"
and temporisation or "temporising".
- Differance undermines the unity and coherence of a text when a deconstructive
reading is performed. Consequently, meaning is disseminated across the text and can be
found only in traces, in the unending chain of signification. In the free play of meanings,
one signifier leads to a signified, which itself becomes a signifier for another signified
and so on, such that the ultimate signified (the “Transcendental Signified”), that which
transcends all signifiers is never attained.
- Giving rise to multitudes of meanings in each aspect;
- In the case of speech and writing, we have attributed to speech the positive qualities of
originality, centre and presence, whereas writing has been relegated to a secondary or
derived status. Ever since Plato, the written word has been considered as a mere
representation of the spoken word: this is what Derrida calls the logocentric tradition of
Western thought.

- The term "poststructuralism" refers to a critical perspective that emerged during the
seventies which has dethroned structuralism as the dominant trend in language and
textual theory. In order to understand poststructuralism, we need to examine it in
relation to structuralism. Deconstructionist criticism subscribes to the poststructuralist
vision of language, wherein the signifier (the form of a sign) does not refer to a definite
signified (the content of a sign), but produces other signifiers instead.
- Derrida rejected structuralism, and as a result, the Saussurean schema (the
signifier/signified relationship) has been rethought.
- Disintegration of patterns (poststructuralism);

14.12.2023

• Jacques Derrida:
- Interested in how meaning works; Meaning cannot be stabilised, it is never fixed;
Binary oppositions (good-bad, rich-poor, nature-culture) interested in how they work;
The component with which we begin is more privileged (the hierarchies within the
oppositions);
- Nature – culture: we think about both in different terms (nature – pure, innocent, in
need of protection, is destructed  culture [culture is destroying nature])  overlap;
Poststructuralist idea – language changes everything; The oppositions are no longer
seen as opposite, instead – dynamic, intertwined;
- Male – female: used to be kept separate, but nowadays some people identify
themselves as being somewhere in between;
- Truth – lies:
- Destabilising the oppositions which have been taken for granted (according to Derrida,
taking them for granted is a simplistic view of reality because you do not realise that
these terms are in flux, you just ascribe certain meaning to them);
- Interested in archetypes (because structuralists were interested in archetypes;
Literature – a character of villain) – for Derrida, archetypes should also be examined
because they can never be fixed (a villain can also become a victim);
- Interested in how often people take words for granted – some words might have layers
of meaning; The meaning might change over time (synonyms are never truly
interchangeable because nearly every word has to be used in a specific context);
- Interested in how many meanings exist in a single word – talking about structure
becomes much more complicated than structuralists thought;
- Born in Algeria to a Jewish family, a political prisoner – his own identity was so
complicated  the idea of identity as something that is not fixed (although many people
believe it is), for him it is never stable, it can change every moment because the
circumstances shape us; Dismantling structure of identity as a notion;
- Living in a country under occupation;
- Preoccupied with the notion of the archive – people were turning to archives to get to
the truth, they started being more accessible;
- The figure of the author is someone who produces the archive, who is a part of it – the
moment the author disappears, people will remember them  a linguistically based
idea;
- Destabilisation of the notion of identity, presence, the figure of the author,
- The concept of hospitality – the willingness to accept someone in your home; For
Derrida (politics) - are politicians creating hospitality?  thinking beyond our limits;
- How language is impactful in different domains of our life; Can I tell other people who I
am?
- “Differance”: his style of writing (écriture) – reconsidering things, thinking through
writing; performance of his way of thinking, when he is writing, he is exploring, looking
for things; Poetic; Active exploration of ideas, these ideas are shaping as we write;
“Differance” – the term invented by Derrida;
- Speech – writing: speaking is immediate, with writing there is a bigger time lap
between our thoughts and writing them down  therefore, speech has been privileged;
Derrida wanted to argue that writing is superior to speaking;
- The moment we say something – it escapes; Difference and Deferral (in French, both
words are pronounced in the same way) – you can only see the difference when it is
written  writing becomes more privileged (privilege is language – Nietzsche,
Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida – how language shapes our reality); Writing is
fundamental;
- Interested in the voice, particularly the voice in writing;

- Poststructuralism - seeing that Structuralist were wrong;

Homework: to watch the documentary about Derrida; “The laugh of the Medusa”

19.12.2023

Homework:

• Hélène Cixous “The Laugh of the Medusa”:

- A French feminist author (1970s);
- In Helene Cixous' "The Laugh of the Medusa" Cixous speaks of feminine repression
which results from phallocentric structures inherent in our culture's discourse. To
illustrate these repressions, Cixous depicts an image of a dark, unexplored room. This
room is representative of female language and sexuality, two areas women fear to
explore as a result of both male warnings and dominance. She explains that if women
will question their fears, if they will turn on a light, they will discover that there is
nothing to be frightened or intimidated by. They will discover that all their fears and
shortcomings were based on images and standards created by men.
- To overcome these obstacles women must allow themselves to speak with and through
their bodies. Cixous explains that by using the body as a medium of communication,
they can acquire the ability to gain their own voice. However, this ability to speak in
their own voice faces multiple restrictions, primarily the absence of a feminine
discourse.
- In "The Laugh of the Medusa" Cixous attempts to show the reasons behind female
repression, the way in which women can reclaim their own voice, and finally, how they
can most effectively penetrate the constraining structures created by a phallocentric
discourse.
- The author builds on ideas developed by fellow Algerian-born French philosopher
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). He was the one who coined the term "phallogocentrism,"
which refers to the focus given to the masculine point of view through language.
- For the feminist author, there is a direct connection between freeing woman's writing
and the liberation of their personal sexuality, as both woman's writing and masturbation
were too long associated with shame; they could only be done in secret, and
accompanied by a feeling of guilt.
- The essay refers to the Greek myth of Medusa, a monster with venomous snakes for
hair, whose gaze turned men to stone.

For Cixous, men's narrative portrayals of Medusa - a symbol of seduction and power -
turned her into a symbol of the threat of castration. Medusa represented their fear of
female desire. Medusa represents the power of women’s sexuality, which has been
feared and repressed by men throughout history. "My text was an update of Greek
mythology. There is no better example to describe the position of women and the
murderous battle men take up against women. Medusa was one of three Gorgons
[powerful, winged daemons], the daughters of Phorkys and Keto. She was the only mortal
among them. Men were afraid of her. When they looked at her, they turned to stone,"
Cixous told DW in December 2022, referring to her famous essay.
- At the heart of Cixous’s argument is the concept of écriture feminine, or “feminine
writing.” According to Cixous, écriture feminine is a style of writing that embraces the
sensual, the emotional, and the irrational. It is a form of writing that rejects the linear,
logical, and rational structure of traditional Western writing in favour of a more
intuitive, playful, and subversive approach.

- Critique of Freudian psychoanalysis;

- Freudian element in Cixous – mastery, stable sense of identity; These things need to be
destabilised; Freud and Lacan – speaking about female sexuality in negative terms;
Cixous - women – darkness, they do not understand themselves  critique of Freud and
Lacan;
- Lacanian concept of desire – women are constantly ashamed of having a desire and to
write;
- Manifesto, call for reinvention of how women express themselves and pursue what
they truly want;
- Building on the maternal element – pregnancy is creation (women are in power, they
give life); Preoccupied with the issue of judgement of women;
- Logocentrism – logos (word, language) – critique of poststructuralists;
Phallogocentrism – the position of power; Intensification of logocentrism – pursuing an
object that you can never have; Not excluding or victimising all men – but the whole idea
of it;
- Three questions about the text:
1. What does the Medusa stand for?  fear of women, their bodies, the power of
their sexuality, their desires;
2. How does Cixous define the new feminine?  the old (the darkness, dark
continent in which women were not able to see themselves, notice their true potential)
 new feminine;
3. What is the relation between Cixous and Boyer as regards the publishing
houses?
09.01.2024

Homework:

• David Markson “Wittgenstein’s Mistress” 1988:

- Markson's work is characterized by an unconventional approach to narration and plot.
While his early works may draw on the modernist tradition of William Faulkner and
Malcolm Lowry, Markson says his later novels are "literally crammed with literary and
artistic anecdotes" and "nonlinear, discontinuous, collage-like, an assemblage."
- Features of postmodern literature: fragmentation, intertextuality, obscurity, innovative
structures;

- Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson is a highly stylized, experimental novel in

the tradition of Samuel Beckett. The novel is mainly a series of statements made in the
first person; the protagonist is a woman named Kate who believes herself to be the last
human on earth;
- Though Markson's original manuscript was rejected fifty-four times, the book was
finally published in 1988 by Dalkey Archive Press;
- The novel explores many themes, most notably memory, language, and loneliness;
- Highly distinctive in form, Wittgenstein’s Mistress consists of a series, or better an
accumulation, of mostly one- or two-sentence paragraphs;
- The reader learns only that one morning the sole protagonist and narrator, Kate,
awakes as the last person on earth and begins searching the globe for signs of human
life. In the narrative’s present, Kate has abandoned her desperate yet futile search for
“anybody, anywhere at all” (Markson 17) and, using a found typewriter, has started
writing a journal that becomes the narrative offered to the reader, as well as a message
to the world;
- The language is subject to erasure: sentences are short, usually occupying no more
than one indented line; often they are unfinished, digressive, and associative;
- Interestingly, in the completely empty world, the museum— or rather what is left of it
—becomes the protagonist’s home, while her mode of survival is her journal: her
private archive of names, places, and memories;

10.01.2024

• Jean François Lyotard “The Postmodern Condition”:

- The book commissioned by the French government to comment on the state of
knowledge in that point of time;
- Derrida’s “Difference” – postponement of meaning, how the meaning cannot be
grasped (dynamics of language)  poststructuralism; Structure is dismantled as a
reliable concept because there is always a postponement of meaning, structure is not
organising things (we cannot rely on it);
- Uncertainty, instability, difference (if things are different, they cannot be fully
identified);
- Activist, born in France (Versailles); Taught in Yale; Hated the Nazis, participated in the
liberation of France (anti-nazist movements);
- 1968 – revolt of students in France in which Lyotard participated;
- Interested in the social sphere, technology;
- Postmodernism for Lyotard – the phase in the history marked by “incredulity (a
mixture of suspicion, doubt, disbelief) toward metanarratives” – metanarratives are
not what people tended to believe in anymore; Narrative – discourse (Foucault in terms
of discourse) that is legitimated by those in the society; Metanarrative – science,
religion (examples given by Lyotard (Nietzsche in terms of religion)); Religion can be
referred to as a metanarrative because it is no longer reliable as a structure of thought
that shapes your life/forms a foundation for our life; Dismantling/incredulity of
metanarrative’s power of organising people’s life (such as religion, education, science);
- Language games – practise something that is organising our life; Takes the concept
from another philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein “Philosophical Investigations” –
interested in the games we play in the social sphere (in every social group people play
such games which depend on the rules created by the same group: e.g. talking/writing
in a particular way (scholars, artists); The practice of how people communicate in a
given social sphere; The rules of the games are very often unclear/unknown to the
outsiders;
- Lyotard - interested in how the metanarratives no longer hold – instead, people play
the language games; Connected to knowledge, how it is formed in post-industrial society
(fragmentation, a lot of different knowledges, ideas about different things); Knowledge
is dispersed into smaller structures;
- Lyotard – seeing how technology influences the contemporary society; Concerned with
the machines’ taking over the tasks performed by people; Space exploration was
progressing at the times of Lyotard (also interested in that);
- Postmodern condition in finding ourselves in metanarratives that no longer hold;
Science is not objective, it is another discourse that is being constructed by those who
are in power (the authorities may refuse funding your research – they have power over
you  subjective, situated);
- The social – can be seen as a whole, or as separate (people as atoms, they are
separated, alienated;
- One of the most influential voices of the postmodernism;
- Indifference – as a problem;
- Existential philosophy (Lyotard) – living as a certain practice;
- Metafiction in literature – literature that is self-aware; A writing that addresses/is
preoccupied with the process of writing;
- Legitimation – comes from those who are in power; Is needed so that others believe
in something; There is no way to verify it;

• David Markson “Wittgenstein’s Mistress” 1988:

- Postmodern work of fiction;
- An Apocalyptic text;
- Postmodern/post-catastrophic reality;
- Her life is in pieces – the narrative reflects that (fragmentation);
- Her leaving messages, then she stops doing that  incredulity in the process of leaving
messages; Looking for others you are also looking for yourself;
- “Naturally, to tell the truth, however, possibly” – frustration because of the inability to
relate; We no longer have things we can rely on (religion, state, science);
- Being unable to construct a coherent narrative – counter-narrative;
- Some statements appear out of nowhere  amusement;
- Linguistic markers of uncertainty – “doubtless” – she is looking for facts, certainty,
stability; The more she repeats the phrase, the more the reader becomes aware of her
uncertainty, of her being lost;
- The archive of material with which the narrator cannot make any sense;
- Lack of logic – the things the narrator mentions do not connect logically in the text;
- Ahistorical, non-linear, uncoherent, structure;
- The excess of information, material – things come to and go from our head
(fragmentation);
- The language game (discourse) of art, history, etc.

17.01.2024

- “Postmodern Blackness” Bell Hooks 1990:

- A Marxist, a leftist;
- Critique of Beyonce – represents capitalist production and wealth;
- Postmodernism;
- Difference in a critical sense;
- Stresses the importance of black studies in postmodernism;
- The importance of pleasure in one’s life (her other work) – wholesome reflection on
pleasure;
- “Lack studies scholar”, race in literature and theory;
- The main points of her argument:
* The absence of blackness in the theories of postmodernism (according to her,
this issue deserves a closer look); Imbalance and disproportion how white theorists
were colonising the discourse whereas black authors were absent in it);
* Invisibility of black people;
* Privileging the freedom of expression; Shifting the public attention from
discrimination and instead creating space for their creativity and expression;
* A misconception that Black artists, writers, etc. explored ONLY the social issue
of discrimination in their works;
* “The idea that there is no meaningful connection between black experience and
critical thinking about aesthetics or culture”;
* Intersectional perspective – different levels of discrimination based on
“otherness” – the skin colour (the question of race) + the fact that it is a woman
(discrimination against women); Race, labour, and feminism; Not just one problem is
focused on, but the number of problems which are interconnected;
* She is trying to make more space for serious intellectual reflection on
blackness;
* How to introduce blackness to the postmodernity; How to approach blackness
showing its multidimensional characters and contexts;
* Positioning blackness in the centre;

• Zora Neale Hurston:

- Harlem renaissance;
- Essays about the position of black people;
- “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” – focus on slavery, history, lack of rights;

• Claudia Rankine “Citizen”:

- Instead of reflecting on invisibility of Black people, she focuses on the hypervisibility of
them;
- Black hood – references a big social problem of police brutality against young Black
men who have been targeted by the police (because they are immediately suspicious,
they are associated with criminality);
- Collecting an archive of different stories (contemporary US) in which these situations
can be observed;
- Micro-aggression – smaller situations that can be equally harmful;
- The author: Black, associated with academic environment;
- Racism as an immanent reality in America;
- The “otherness” in the images included – they represent extreme “otherness”;
Blackness as monstrosity;
- Multimedia text;
- “I feel the most coloured when I am thrown against a sharp background”;
- Making form an extension of the content;