Course syllabus

French 711 - Special Topic: Theory and Text

This seminar introduces students to representative examples of “French Theory” from the 1960s onwards, focusing first on texts by “first-generation” theoreticians Bourdieu, Lacan, Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard as well as slightly later ones by Wittig, Kristeva, Nancy and Rancière. As we go we will map out the different positions and philosophical traditions that the term “French Theory” covers, but, at the same time, question whether the very concept is an Anglo invention. Is the fact that these theoreticians all challenge rationalistic Enlightenment-based philosophy truly sufficient to make them a coherent group? 

In addition to situating the various theories in relation to each other we will be very interested in the purposes of theory and why it is so important, today more than ever. The seminar will be very “hands-on,” with students considering the texts studied in relation to their own work and/or interests, whatever these happen to be.   

The seminar will be conducted in English (time and venue to be agreed upon). Readings, all accessible on-line or through the department, will be available in both French and English translation.

Class schedule

Week 1:

Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30 (2004): 225-48; Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Existentialism is a Humanism.”

 

Week 2:

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Spivak. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1997 (1967). 100-128. Barthes, Roland. “Death of the Author.”

 

Week 3:

Critchley, Simon. The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1992 (with two expanded reprints). Chapter one: “The Ethics of Deconstruction: The Argument.” 1-48.

 

Week 4:

Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function.” Écrits. Trans. Bruce Fink. New York: Norton and Co, 2006.

 

Fink, Bruce. “The Creative Function of the Word: The Symbolic and the Real;” “The Subject and the Other’s Desire.” The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. 24-31;49-68.

 

Week 5:

Kristeva, Julia. Black Sun: Depression and Melancholy. Trans. Leon Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. 1-68.

 

Week 6:

Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. New York: Vintage Books, 2011. “Introduction.” 23-39.

 

Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Trans. Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen. Signs 1: 4 (1976): 875-893.

 

Week 7:

Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. London: Pluto Press, 1986. 109-140. Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism. Trans. Joan Pinkham. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972. 35-78.

 

Week 8-9:

Badiou, Alain. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. Trans. and intro. Peter Hallward. London: Verso, 2001.

 

Week 10:

Lyotard, Jean-François. Libidinal Economy. Trans. Iain Hamilton Grant. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. 1-42.

 

Week 11:

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 1 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 2 vols. 1972-1980.

 

Week 12:

Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Time. Trans. Richard Beardsworth and George Collins. 3 vols. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. 1: 1-27; 82-133.