Marxist Literary Theory 4219-SB148
The aim of the course is to provide literature and culture majors with seminal philosophical texts which situate cultural and literary production in a historical and ideological context. The course opens with a presentation of the sources of the specificity of Marxist discourse and methodology on the examples of the writings of K. Marx, F. Hegel, I. Kant. All subsequent classes focus on examining the works of M. Weber, T. Adorno, M. Horkheimer, W. Benjamin, H. Marcuse, J. Habermas, L. Althusser, J. Rancière, A. Gramsci, G. Debord, J. Baudrillard, P. Macherey, R. Williams, F. Jameson, T. Eagleton, and on clarifying concepts offered by individual thinkers. The course’s extensive list of texts concerning the complex relation between aesthetics, politics, and economy will help students to increase their terminological and analytic competence in their literary and cultural research projects, and, by the same token, to deepen their understanding of the contemporary tendencies within the field of literary and cultural criticism.
Mode
Course coordinators
Type of course
Learning outcomes
Knowledge: a graduate knows and understands in-depth
K_W01 - the significance of cultural studies, religion studies, history, literary studies, sociology, political science and administration, their position in the scholarship system, the specificity of these fields, and their relations to other fields of study within humanities and social sciences; the paradigm of interdisciplinary research and the need to integrate perspectives and research
methods in the field of American Studies
K_W03 - the terminology, methods, tools and techniques of data gathering, select research traditions and schools, and the directions in which they are developing, crucial for studying cultural phenomena in the Americas
Skills: a graduate is able to
K_U01 - use their knowledge to formulate and creatively solve complex and unusual research tasks and problems, formulate and test related hypotheses by selecting and applying appropriate sources and information, assessing, critically analyzing, synthesizing them, and creatively interpreting in the context of interdisciplinary American Studies
K_U02 - apply appropriate research methods and tools, adjust existing tools and methods as well as develop new ones for the purposes of interdisciplinary American Studies
Social Skills: A graduate is prepared to
K_K02 - use the interdisciplinary knowledge they gained in the field of American Studies in order to formulate their own opinions
K_K03 - accept the significance of knowledge in solving cognitive and practical problems and to seek out expert opinions when they are unable to solve them on their own
Assessment criteria
Being prepared for classes (reading the assigned texts)
Participation in class discussion
A maximum of 3 absences is allowed
Final test: written test
Make-Up: written test or spoken exam.
Bibliography
Adorno, Theodor. Aesthetic Theory (1970). Trans. R. Hullot-Kentor, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
---. Negative Dialectics (1966). Trans. E. B. Ashton, New York: Seabury Press, 1973.
---. The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, ed. J. M.
Bernstein, London: Routledge, 1991.
Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. London: New Left Books, 1971.
Baudrillard, Jean. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. (1972). Trans. Charles Levin. St. Louis: Telos, 1981.
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1968.
Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Ken Knabb. London: Rebel Press, 1983.
Eagleton, Terry. The Body as Language: Outline of a 'New Left' Theology. London: Sheed & Ward, 1970.
Habermas, Jurgen. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. F. Lawrence, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987.
Hegel, G.W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Horkeimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (1947). Ed. G. S. Noerr. Trans. E. Jephcott, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.
Jameson, Frederic. The Political Unconscious. Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. 1981.
Macherey, Pierre. A Theory of Literary Production. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978.
Marcuse, Herbert. Technology, War and Fascism: The Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse. Vol. 1 ed. Douglas Kellner. London: Routledge, 1998.
Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (1867). New York: International Publishers, 1967.
Rancière, Jacques. Politics of Aesthetics. Continuum, 2006.
Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.
---. Marxism and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: