ENG 6077

Forms: Notebooks

In this course, we will undertake an examination of three of the most influential statements in contemporary cultural and political theory: Karl Marxπs Grundrisse, Walter Benjaminπs Arcades Project, and Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mauπs S, M, L, XL. What unifies these otherwise quite disparate textsãcomposed, respectively, by the most important political and economic thinker of the nineteenth century, an early twentieth century literary and cultural critic who toiled in relative obscurity throughout his own lifetime, and one of the most celebrated architects of the last decadeãis the fact that all are ≥notebooks.≤ They come to us in the form of drafts, fragments, and the raw materialsãnot published in the first two cases until many years after the authorsπ deathsãof a project that finally appears in a very different form (Marxπs three volumes of Capital), or remains unfinished as a result of the authorπs premature death (Benjaminπs work). Only Koolhaas and Mauπs massive ≥accumulation of words and images≤ organized simply ≥according to size≤ represents the final form of the text ≥intended≤ by the authors. Along with these three primary texts, we will refer to a select group of commentaries or related works, such as Antonio Negriπs Marx Beyond Marx, Susan Buck-Morssπs The Dialectics of Seeing, and Koolhaasπs Delirious New York. In addition to raising the question of the notebook as a generic formãone whose fragmentary, unfinished nature and sheer massive extent throw into disarray conventional reading strategies and notions of authorial intent (a large part of the attraction, as Koolhaas and Mau write, is that these books ≥can be read in any way≤), and which thereby becomes especially attractive to our postmodern sensibilitiesãthese works also open up onto issues of special interest in our moment, including modernization, urbanism, globalization, the nature of the image, and cultural revolution.

Approximately one-third of the semester will be devoted to each text, and as this course is meant to be an experiment in reading, the form of our approach will be determined by the energy, interest, and motivation of the seminarπs participants. However, everyone will be expected to take part in our discussions, lead at least two class meetings as part of a ≥discussion group,≤ and produce a formal seminar paper.