Questionable and unquestionable problems regarding the text and outside-of-the-text in the literary theory of the XXth and XXIst century 1500-SZD-PSTPL
The neologism used in the title: “outside-of-the-text” refers to the well-known and doubly interpreted phrase by Jacques Derrida: “II n'y a pas de hors-texte”. The sentence accumulates the basic problems that stem from the main category of modern literary theory and even humanities as such – the category of text. The first interpretation implies text’s autonomy, limitation and delimitation. The second – inversely: its heterogeneity and correlations with all cultural texts which, in effect, transform the text into a textoid. This explication refers to questionable questions and issues of the textuality of culture and nature, and therefore to the problems of text’s agency and performative power. Both interpretations enable us to represent the dominant rival propositions for the text studies, among them formalistic, structural, semiotic, hermeneutical, psychoanalytical, deconstructional, neopragmatistic and postcolonial. They also encompass various basic problems of the politics of science (linking and intertwining literary theory with other fields of humanities, social and natural sciences, combining it with artistic and social practices). Furthermore, they touch on the very controversies regarding languages of humanities, including the debatable status of the name: “literary theory” – its historical semantics and the semantics of its alternative names. Concentrating the aforementioned issues on various conceptions of text, grasping them in the punctum – studium perspective provides access to and the possibility of insight into the range of problems that are in fact trouble spots of modernity and its postmodern dis-continuations
Type of course
Mode
Assessment criteria
The lecture is not graded. Passing the lecture requires participant’s attendance, pre-reading, taking part in discussions.
Two absences are acceptable.
Requirements of attendance: pre-reading, preparation for discussion, active participation.
zasady zaliczania zajęć i przedmiotu (w tym zaliczania poprawkowego): attendance at lectures, active participation, assessment of oral or written assignment
metody weryfikacji efektów uczenia się: questions and answers, contribution to discussions
Bibliography
- a selection of scholarly articles by i.a.: G. Bachelard, R. Barthes, C. Brooks, J. Butler, J. Caputo, H. Cixous, J. Derrida, M. Foucault, S. Greenblatt, S. Hall, J. Kristeva, J. Lacan, Ph. Lacoue-Labarthe, P. de Man, S. Fish, S. Freud, P. Ricoeur, E. Showalter, G.Ch. Spivak, R. Williams, H. White
Articles assigned for particular meeting will be chosen according to the issues discussed during subsequent lectures.
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