Course Descripton

What is the “politics” of desire and power?  How do we go about getting what we desire?  How is human desire formed?  Do we really control our own desires?  What is power?  What conditions shape it?  How does one get it?  How does one lose it?  How do desire and power actually function in personal relationships, in the larger cultural and political arena?  These are some of the questions we'll be investigating in this course this term.

Specifically, the course will focus on the dynamics of desire and power, as reflected in a broad spectrum of Western literary, philosophical, and pictorial works (novels, poetry, essays, paintings, film, and commercial advertisements).  You will occasionally be asked to work in groups and to augment your knowledge of various themes with information gathered from the internet or other sources.  Using the various texts and other learning opportunities provided in the course, you will (1) study and try to understand the technical interrelationships between structure and meaning in the text and thus the varied and complex ways by which human “themes” and reactions emerge—in short, what texts mean and how they come to mean what they mean; (2) apply the principles presented in these works in various “laboratory” or “game” situations.  Using the “world” of specific works of art (and other models), we will try to probe the assumptions which underlie those “worlds”—the “why’s” implicit in the authors’ approaches to themes of desire and/or power, as well as the themes themselves; and (3) at the end of the course write a final paper analyzing the way desire or power (or both) function in western culture today, based on the principles that the various readings introduced.
 

Goals And Expectations

All knowledge begins with and depends on the ability to read data accurately and logically.  Therefore, throughout this
course, but certainly by the end of it, you will be expected to be able to demonstrate, with respect to any particular subject
matter, that you can
 

• Read accurately what the work says, and determine how it goes about saying what it says effectively;

• Establish what the premises of the work seem to be, that is, what the implicit concerns of the writer/culture are, what world-view is implied or assumed;

• Trace how these thematic patterns and philosophical issues or problems differ from writer to writer, or culture to culture; and

• Based on those patterns and differences, develop and articulate some synthesized understanding of what desire and/or power is and how they operate in modern western culture.

The course assignments (and other requirements detailed below) are designed to ensure that you will have every opportunity to achieve (or enhance) these skills during the course of the term, assuming a normal amount of conscientious effort.

While you will surely learn in this course a great deal about the implicit philosophical assumptions underlying western culture, I believe it is even more important for you to learn sophisticated skills that will transfer valuably to almost any subject matter—particularly, a precision in critical thinking and a sensitivity to the subtleties and nuances of language.  I intend that the texts in the course, however interesting they may be in themselves, will also serve as the raw material on which you can hone such skills.