English 350-885-001
Seminar in Critical Theory: Readings in (‘Post’)Modern
Literary Theories: For the Fun of It
Instr:
Cam Tatham
Office:
CRT 392, 229-4504
e-mail:
ctatham@uwm.edu
Office hours: by appointment.
Course Information:
MW, 3:00-4:15, CRT 368
Required Texts:
Ihab Hassan, Paracriticisms
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
Jacques Derrida, Nietzsche’s Spurs
Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément , The Newly
Born Woman
Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes
Trinh Minh-Ha, Woman, Native, Other
Larry McCaffery et al, Federman A to X-X-X-X
Jane Gallop, Thinking Through the Body
Course Requirements:
1. Attendance, participation in discussion.
2. Presentation of one of the assigned texts.
3. Participation in an online Discussion Forum, to which you post a
minimum of twice per week.
4. ‘Paper.’ Ca. 25 pages in length. You are encouraged
(but not required) to write a paper that is itself in some interesting
sense ‘postmodern’ – that is, that “does the multiple.” You are also
encouraged to get feedback from me and from your classmates (via the Forum)
at any stage along the way of its production. And you are certainly
encouraged to produce a piece that is potentially publishable, or at least
to think of it in those terms.
Course Description:
You will note that the title of this course simultaneously calls attention
to an aspect of the word postmodernism and puts it under erasure, with
the necessary trace remaining. But really, the goal of the course
is not to engage in polemics concerning what is or is not to be celebrated
or condemned through assigning literary labels.
Rather, the possibility of such a course was inspired by a comment of
Gilles Deleuze to Claire Parnet: “In my earlier books, I tried to describe
a certain exercise of thought; but describing it was not yet exercising
thought in that way. (Similarly, proclaiming ‘Long live the multiple’ is
not yet doing it, one must do the multiple. And neither is it enough to
say, ‘Down with genres’; one must effectively write in such a way that
there are no more ‘genres,’ etc.)” (Dialogues 16).
This course, then, seeks to engage certain texts which are not simply
lucid expositions of socalled postmodern theories; they are texts which
themselves “do the multiple.” They insist, through a variety of strategies,
on their own textuality; they may be less puzzles to figure out than games
to be played. Or events inviting our participation. These, then,
are texts which suggest mapping new territories, not for purposes of mastery
and conquest, but rather – for the fun of it.
