LITS3304 (E33D) PAST EXAM PAPERS

2007-2008

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2006-2007

Course not taught.

2005-2006

Answer TWO (2) questions.

• the social formation and governance;

• knowledge; or

• the self.

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2004-2005

Answer TWO (2) questions.

1. Referring to “Linguistics and Grammatology” and / or “Différance,” outline Derrida’s critique of Saussure’s model of signification.
2. Comment on Barthes’ assertion in “The Death of the Author” that “writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral space . . . where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost.”
3. Discuss Bloom’s view in “Poetry, Revision, Repression” that “any poem is an inter-poem, and any reading of a poem is an inter-reading. A poem is not a writing, but rewriting.”
4. Explain Bhabha’s comment in “Representation and the Colonial Text” that to “represent the colonial subject is to conceive of the subject of difference, of an-other history and an-other culture.”
5. What are Hall’s reasons in “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” for advocating a model of Caribbean cultural identity based not on the “rediscovery but the production of identity. Not an identity grounded in the archaeology, but in the re-telling of the past”?

2003-2004

Answer TWO (2) questions in all, ONE from section A and THE OTHER from section B.

2002-2003

Answer TWO questions in all, ONE from Section A and THE OTHER from Section B.

Section A: Lacanian Psychoanalysis / Deconstruction

1. Explain Lacan’s claim that what psychoanalysis "discovers in the unconscious is the whole structure of language."

2. Why does De Man argue that "rhetoric radically suspends the logic of grammar and opens up vertiginous possibilities of referential aberration"? What are the implications of this view for critical practice?

3. Discuss the implications of the following quotation by Fish: 

Rhetorically, the new critical position announces itself as a break from the old, but in fact it is radically dependent on the old, because it is only in the context of some differential relationship that it can be perceived as new or, for that matter, perceived at all.

Section B: Feminist and Post-colonial Perspectives

1. Discuss Cixous’ claim that all binary opposites are reducible in the final analysis to the "couple man / woman."

2. Assess the implications for Caribbean criticism of Hall’s view that cultural identity is "not a fixed essence . . . lying unchanged outside history and culture."

3. Exactly how, according to Gates, does Frederick Douglass’s autobiography initiate an "inversion of . . . oppositions" as a result of which "slave has become master, creature has become man, object has become subject"?

2001-2002

Answer TWO questions in all, ONE from Section A and ONE from Section B.

Section A: Lacanian Psychoanalysis / Deconstruction

1. Why, according to Barthes, is the Author ‘dead’?

2. Discuss the implications for feminist criticism of Irigaray’s efforts to "step outside the dominant phallic economy."

3. How does Hall make use of Derrida’s concept of ‘différance’ to rethink the nature of Caribbean culture?

Section B: (Post-)Structuralist Marxism:

1. Compare Althusser’s notion of ideology with traditional Marxist concepts.

2. Discuss Eagleton’s view that ideology "exists because there are certain things which must not be spoken" as a result of which it is "present in the text in the form of its eloquent silences."

3. On what grounds does Bhabha reject the approaches to criticism advanced by both Rohlehr and Ramchand?

2000-2001

Course Not Offered.

1999-2000

Extended Research Paper; No Exam.

1998-1999

Answer TWO of the following questions:

1. With reference to TWO theorists whom you have studied this semester, consider the view that "all contemporary theorists of literature are necessarily engaged in a dialogue with Saussure’s critique of the sign."

2. Compare TWO major conceptions of ‘discourse’ which you have come across this semester.

3. Discuss some of the reasons why Bakhtin’s views on both language and the novel have been particularly well received by Post-colonial, African American, and/or Feminist critics.

4. Barthes once asserted that the meaning of a literary text lies less in its origin than in its destination. Discuss, in the light of this claim, some of the implications of Derrida’s notion of différance for literary criticism.

5. "He shows us not only how we were constructed as ‘Other’ by Western regimes of knowledge but also, more importantly perhaps, how we were made to internalise these views to our own detriment."  Is this an apt description of Edward Said’s Orientalism?

1997-1998

Answer TWO of the following questions:

1. "Many contemporary schools of philosophy and literary criticism seek to 'decentre' the notion of an 'essential self' in a way that frequently makes the Post-colonial critic more than a little uneasy."  Discuss with reference to ONE such school exactly why this might be the case.

2. Discuss some of the similarities and differences between Saussure's and Bakhtin's views of language.

3. "For the Longinian notion of original authorial genius, Bakhtin and his Post-colonial interlocutors substitute a different view of authorship, one characterised by 'parody,' 'abrogation and appropriation,' 'Signifyin(g),' and their other synonyms."  Discuss.

4. "Unreadability arises from that surplus of signification which undermines authorial intention."  In the light of the preceding statement, discuss the role of the reader in the production of meaning.

5. "Barthes strips the author of agency which Bakhtin, at least partially, had restored."  With which view, Barthes's or Bakhtin's, might the Post-colonial critic be more comfortable and for what reasons?

1996-1997

Answer TWO of the following questions:

1. Would you agree that the theorists whom you have studied in this course "exist in a relationship of 'abrogation and appropriation' to each other: each 'writes back' to his / her predecessors"?

2. Examine TWO reading methodologies inspired by Derrida's notion of 'differance.'

3. "Recent Postmodernist attempts to rethink the relationship between history and literature have important implications for the Post-colonial project."  Discuss.

4. Discuss some of the reasons why Bakhtin's dialogical concept of language has proved itself to be particularly attractive to Post-colonial and African American literary critics.

5. Discuss some of the ways in which Post-colonial critics have appropriated Foucault's notion of 'dicourse' to their own ends.

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