LITS3304 CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL THEORY:
(POST-)STRUCTURALISMS AND POST-COLONIALISMS

MODULE THREE: DECONSTRUCTION
 

WEEK  NINE:  DECONSTRUCTION
(Week of November 1*)
 

REQUIRED READINGS:

• Jacques Derrida "Différance" [1968] (pp. 120-137 in Adams and Searle)

• 09 Derrida "Differance"

• Jacques Derrida "Différance" Continued

RECOMMENDED READINGS:

• Norris, Christopher.  Deconstruction: Theory and Practice.  London: Methuen, 1982.
• Norris, Christopher.  Derrida.  London: Fontana, 1987.

PHILWEB RESOURCES:

• Deconstruction:
  • Derrida

• * Don't forget that we are roughly a week ahead of where we should be, having skipped over the Bhabha readings.  Hence, though this week is Week 9 (November 1), we are in fact in Week 8 of the semester (the week commencing October 25).
• This week we examine Derrida's seminal essay "Differance" in which Derrida introduces the key concept of 'differance' and which is the key to understanding 'deconstruction' as a school of thought.

WEEK TEN: DECONSTRUCTIVE LITERARY THEORY
(Week of November 8)
 

REQUIRED READINGS:

• Roland Barthes
  • "The Death of the Author" [1968] (pp. 1130-1133 in Adams)
  • "The Reality Effect" [1968] (pp. 141-148 in The Rustle of Language)

• 10A Barthes "The Death of the Author"
• 10B Barthes "The Reality Effect"

• Roland Barthes
  • "From Work to Text" [1971] (pp. 56-64 in The Rustle of Language)
  • "Textual Analysis of a Tale by Edgar Allan Poe" [1973] (pp. 261-293 in The Semiotic Challenge)

• 10C Barthes "From Work to Text"
• 10D Barthes "Textual Analysis of a Tale by Edgar Allan Poe"

RECOMMENDED READINGS:

• Culler, Jonathan.  On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism.  Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982.
• Lentricchia, Frank.  "Paul De Man: the Rhetoric of Authority."  After the New Criticism.  Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.  282-317.
• Culler, Jonathan.  Roland Barthes.  Oxford: OUP, 1983.

PHILWEB RESOURCES:

• Barthes

• This week we return to the literary theory of Roland Barthes whose work is located at the intersection of Structuralism and Deconstruction (with a healthy dose of Structuralist Psychoanalysis thrown in).  Where his focus in "Introduction to the Structuralist Analysis of Narrative" (which we looked at in Module One) is, as a narratologist, on the syntagmatic axis of the literary text (the progressive development of the narrative), he is engaged here in what he called 'semiological criticism' the focus of which is on the paradigmatic axis.
• On Tuesday, we will focus on Barthes' famous attempt to deconstruct the notion of the author as well as his critique of conventional notions of realism.
• On Thursday, we will examine another seminal essay, "From Work to Text," where Barthes contrasts the the notion of a literary text with the traditional notion of a literary work, before moving on to look at an essay, which anticipates a longer study of his along the same lines entitled S/Z, that offers a deconstructive approach to narratology which, even though it builds on, is also quite different in some ways from the Structuralist approach.

WEEK ELEVEN: DECONSTRUCTIVE LITERARY THEORY CONTINUED
(Week of November 15)
 

REQUIRED READINGS:

• Paul De Man "Semiology and Rhetoric" [1973] (pp. 222-231 in Adams and Searle)

• 11A De Man "Semiology and Rhetoric"

• Harold Bloom Poetry and Repression [1976]: "Poetry, Revisionism, Repression" (also pp. 331-344 in Adams and Searle)

• 11B Bloom "Poetry, Revisionism, Repression"

RECOMMENDED READINGS:

• Culler, Jonathan.  Roland Barthes.  Oxford: OUP, 1983.
• Norris, Christopher.  "Harold Bloom."  Deconstruction: Theory and Practice.  London: Methuen, 1982.  116-125.

PHILWEB RESOURCES:

• De Man
• Bloom

• This week we turn our attention, on Tuesday, to a seminal essay by one of Derrida's key epigones, Paul De Man, in which he argues that the differance intrinsic to signification along the paradigmatic axis (he equates this with 'rhetoric') undermines or deconstructs the truth claims thought to be established along the syntagmatic axis (which he equates with 'grammar').
• On Thursday, we explore the topic of 'intertextuality' addressed by another important member of the so-called 'Yale School of Deconstruction' comprising, in addition to De Man and Bloom, two other theorists and critics named J. Hillis Miller and Geoffrey Hartmann.

WEEK TWELVE: DECONSTRUCTIVE POST-COLONIAL / AFRICAN AMERICAN THEORY
(Week of November 22)
 

REQUIRED READINGS:

• Homi Bhabha "Representation and the Colonial Text: Some Forms of Mimeticism" [1984] (pp. 93-122 in Frank Gloversmith, ed. The Theory of Reading)

• 12A Bhabha "Representation and the Colonial Text: Some Forms of Mimeticism"

• Stuart Hall "Cultural Identity and Diaspora" [1993] (pp. 392-401 in Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: a Reader, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman)

• 12B Hall "Cultural Identity and Diaspora"

RECOMMENDED READINGS:

• Moore-Gilbert, Bart.  "Homi Bhabha: 'the Babelian Performance.'"  Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics.  London: Verso, 1997.  114-151.
• Clarke, Richard L. W. "From Dialectic to Différance: Rethinking Creolisation in the Later Work of Stuart Hall."  Shibboleths: Journal of Comparative Theory 1.1 (2006): 37-53.

PHILWEB RESOURCES:

• Postcolonial Theory:
  • South Asian Theory (Indian):
    • Bhabha
  • Caribbean Theory:
    • Hall

• Before we do the readings scheduled for this week, we will return to the readings originally scheduled for Week 8, the final week of Module 2.