ENG 6076
LITERARY
THEORY: THEORISTS
Fredric
Jameson:
Dialectics,
Modernism, and Utopia
Professor
Phillip Wegner
Wednesday
9-11 (4:05-7:05 p.m.)
Turlington 4112
Office:
Turlington 4115
Office Hours:Tuesday,
3-5 p.m.;
and
by appointment
Phone:
392-6650. ex. 261 (office); 392-0777 (dept.)
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/pwegner/home.htm
In Hegel nothing can be understood in isolation, everything is to be understood only in the context of the whole, with the awkward qualification that the whole in turn lives only in the individual moments.
Theodor Adorno, "Skoteinos, or How to Read Hegel"
The peculiar difficulty of dialectical writing lies indeed in its holistic, "totalizing" character: as though you could not say any one thing until you had first said everything; as though with each new idea you were bound to recapitulate the entire system.
Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form
In this course, we will take
these claims about the nature of dialectical thought as a starting
point for an
examination of the work of one of the most prolific and influential
U.S,
literary and cultural critics of the second half of the twentieth and
first
part of the twenty-first centuries.
We will read Jameson's work this semester with the aim not only
of
appreciating its insights into an incredible range of literary,
cultural, and
theoretical phenomena, but also of using his striking (re)formulation
of the
dialectic as a model for our own intellectual practices.
At the same time, we will pay
particular attention to the central significance of two deeply
interrelated
categories' modernism and utopia'in much of his work.
We will first read the four major statements in Jameson's
project'Marxism and Form: Twentieth Century Dialectical Theories of
Literature (1971); The
Political
Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981); Postmodernism, or, the
Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism (1991); and Archaeologies
of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (2005)'with an eye toward what they have
to teach us
about the changing fortunes of 'theory' and engaged critical thought
over the
course of the last forty years.
Then we will look at his most recent 'quartet' of books'along
with Archaeologies,
Brecht and Method (1998), A Singular Modernity: Essay
on the
Ontology of the Present
(2002), and the forthcoming, The Modernist Papers (2007)'in order to tease out
further his
current thoughts about the cultural logics of a diverse range of
'modernist'
practices.
Texts
Marxism and Form: Twentieth
Century Dialectical Theories of Literature
The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act
Adorno, or the Persistence of the Dialectic
Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called
Utopian
and Other Science Fictions
The Seeds of Time
Brecht and Method
A Singular Modernity
The Modernist Papers
All of these texts are available at Goerings Book Store Campus Location (1717 NW 1st Avenue, next door to Bageland; 372-3975; goerings@bellsouth.net). Other readings will be made available, at various spaces and places, as the semester progresses.
Aims and Methods
1. Full presence in every spatial, ontological, existential, and intellectual sense of the word, as well as active and engaged participation in the seminar discussions. Given your presence here, I assume that all of you are looking forward as much as I am to having the opportunity for a serious and careful engagement with these texts. Thus, the most general expectation that I have for this semester is that all of you intend to read these works, and to do so in a responsible and rigorous fashion, and in a spirit of good faith and intellectual camaraderie. I would ask then that you make every effort to engage in, to use a much abused term, a dialogue with these works, being attentive to their respective voices, acknowledging their particular historical and otherwise contingent beings in the world, and finally working to imagine how we today might best retool the insights and modes of analysis of their various 'unfinished projects.' In this way, I hope that we will develop a much more complex and profitable understanding of both the power and originality of these arguments and traditions.
2. In order to facilitate and enrich our discussion of these works, I want to ask each of you to be responsible for introducing and situating each week's readings. As I imagine all of our work fundamentally to be a collective project, you will do this in groups of three, with each group being responsible for the readings on two different occasions. Each group will be asked both to provide a brief introduction to the material and to serve as general 'experts' on the readings for that week. Your group can take a variety of approaches to this task: you may want to highlight some of the central issues the readings address; briefly outline their main arguments; note the ways they engage with what has come before; place them in historical, intellectual, and political contexts; note connections to other models and practices; give overviews of some of the secondary readings on these works; offer some questions for discussion; and so forth. I only ask that you keep the opening comments brief (15 minutes maximum total) so that we can begin our general discussion as soon as possible. I also hope that your groups will continue to work together throughout the semester, sharing ideas, giving support, discussing research projects, drinking beer, and other important tasks. I will be very happy to meet with your group beforehand to suggest some secondary readings and discuss approaches and tactics.
3. The Ninth Annual Conference of the Marxist Reading Group will be held the weekend of March 29-31, with a keynote address by Fredric Jameson. As there will be a great deal of discussion relevant to our class'not only at the keynote but throughout the weekend'I ask that all enrolled students plan to attend some of the sessions and events.
4. For the major written component of the course, I will ask each of you to develop an independent research program, which will take one of two forms: either a) two shorter essays of 10-15 pages in length examining the questions or issues raised by the material in more depth, or drawing connections between these works and other areas of interest; or, b) a major critical research project of some 25-30 pages in length. The aim of the longer project will be one of the following: 1) a sustained engagement with some of the works we discuss in class; 2) a further independent examination of the issues raised by the work we have looked at; 3) a discussion drawing upon some of the recommended secondary or additional readings; or 4) an original reading of some other texts of interest 'be they literary, theoretical, filmic, architectural, cultural, or otherwise' deploying the concepts and models we elaborate during the course of the semester. I would also like to ask that all Ph.D students plan to pursue option b, with the goal of producing an essay that will serve either as the basis of a dissertation chapter or a publishable essay (or even both). I ask each of you who choose this second option to turn in a detailed paper proposal, complete with bibliography, about a month before the paper is due. If you require additional time to work on this project, I am happy to allow you to do so. However, in order to avoid extending the course indefinitely, I expect that the project will be completed by the end of the summer terms; work turned in after that time should not expect to receive extensive comments.
Tentative
Discussion
Schedule
1.
January
10 Introduction
Readings from The Jameson Reader
2. January 17 NO CLASS
