E33D / E60C SEMINAR NOTES

All lecture notes are copyright © Richard L. W. Clarke 2000-Present and may not be quoted or reproduced in any way without his express permission.

Please click on the links below to download the relevant seminar notes.

If you are unable to attend particular seminars, you may record them.  At the very least, please study my detailled notes (below) in conjunction with the primary sources upon which they are based.  Feel free, of course, to come and discuss any aspect of them with me during my office hours.

(In printing the notes, you may find that your printer cuts off the end of each line as a result of which words may be missing, even though you may see the text fully displayed on the monitor screen.  This happens sometimes for technical reasons which we are trying to understand and remedy.  In the meantime, you may wish to cut and paste the notes into your regular word-processing programme [e.g. Wordperfect] and to print those up.)

Module I: Semiotics / Structuralism

Week 1: Saussurean Linguistics / Structuralist Model of Cultural Identity

• 1A: Saussurean Linguistics (What is Linguistics?  Please click here.)
• 1B: the Structuralist Model of Cultural Identity: Levi-Strauss (What is Anthropology?  Please click here and here.)

Week 2: the Paradigmatic Axis: Semiotics

• 2A: Paradigmatic Axis I: the Saussurean Critique of Realism: Barthes
• 2B: Paradigmatic Axis II: the Saussurean Critique of Self-Expression: Benveniste
  • Stanley Fish's Critique of Self-Expression (Chronicle of Higher Education 21/6/02)

Week 3: the Syntagmatic Axis: Structuralism

• 3A: Syntagmatic Axis I: Todorov's Structuralist Narratology
• 3B: Syntagmatic Axis II: Jakobson on Linguistics and Poetics

Module II: Lacanian (Structuralist) Psychoanalysis / Deconstruction

Week 4: from Freud to Lacan

• 4A: Freud's Influence on Lacan
• 4B: Lacan "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I" (these notes to be posted shortly)

Week 5:

• 5A: Lacan "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis" ("The Symbolic Order") (these notes to be posted shortly)
• 5B: Lacan "The Agency [Instance] of the Letter in the Unconscious" (these notes to be posted shortly)
• 5C: A Comparison of Freudian Psychoanalysis and Lacanian Psychoanalysis (these notes to be posted shortly)

Week 6:

• 6: Deconstruction: Derrida

Week 7:

• 7A: Deconstructive Critical Theory I: Roland Barthes
• 7B: Deconstructive Critical Theory II: De Man / Fish / Bloom

Module III: Feminist & Post-colonial Perspectives: Structuralist / Lacanian / Deconstructive Emphases

Week 8:

• 8A: French Feminist Cultural Theory I--Irigaray
• 8B: French Feminist Cultural Theory II--Cixous and Rubin

Week 9:

• 9A: Feminist Critical Theory I: Rethinking Feminist Representation: Cixous
• 9B: Feminist Critical Theory III: Feminist Narratology: Lanser

Week 10: 

please note: don't be in a hurry to print up the handouts from this point on--I intend to modify / add to them prior to each class

• 10A: Post-colonial Cultural Theory I: Bhabha "The Commitment to Theory"
• 10B: Post-colonial Cultural Theory II: Bhabha "Interrogating Identity"  / "The Other Question"

Week 11:

• 11A: Post-colonial Cultural Theory III: Hall
• 11B: Post-colonial Critical Theory I: Rethinking Representation: Bhabha "Representation and the Colonial Text"

Week 12:

• 12B: Post-colonial / African American Critical Theory II: Rethinking Authorship: Gates
• 12C: Post-colonial Critical Theory III: Rethinking Post-colonial Literary History / Intertextuality: Clarke