Literary and Cultural Studies Tutorium

Literary and cultural studies Tutorium What is literature? Possible Criteria 1. Possible criterion: fact/fiction-divide, a text provides the reader with signals of fictionality  Textual: allusions to other literary texts  Contextual: publisher, reception  Paratextual: subtitle (e.g.: A Novel), legal disclaimers (e.g.: any similarities are coincidental) 2. Possible criterion: form(alism) 3. Possible criterion: context (Literature announces itself, publishers, book sellers but also in context of reading) 4. Possible criterion: valorization (embedded in a system of values)  Canon: perceived good literature What is literature? – (c.f. Eagleton)  “Literature, in the sense of a set of works of assured and unalterable value, distinguished by certain shared inherent properties, does not exist” - Literature is a social construct (created by society) - Literature with shared inherent properties does not exist - Literature and literary canon are constructs established by the society Functions of literature - Providing aesthetic pleasure, - educational e.g.: teaching empathy Acceptance of social hierarchies or trigger of revolt Literary Theory: - Literary theory provides you with a framework for reading and interpretation Plurality of approaches, theoretical assumptions Literary History: Literary history (re-)constructs the development of literature  Emplotment: Literary histories construct continuities and ‘organic’ evolutions, neglecting random developments Canon (Matthew Arnold): Evaluative selection of superior authors, genres and texts, form of hegemonic cultural self-affirmation (Critique of mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion) - Conservative position: based on inherent value and trans-historical standards by which new works are measured Liberal position: opening the canon, including works by marginalised groups, sees canon as socially representative rather than adhering to a notion of aesthetic value Radical position: against any form of canon (hierarchization), everyone must decide for themselves what they consider central Literary Theory – Background classical theory - Plato: sees poets as liars. Leading away from the truth, Literary as detrimental Aristotle: considers poetry as moral and therapeutic, Literary as beneficial Mimesis = Imitation of reality Humanism – 15th – 16th century - Anthropocentric assumption: ‘man’ stands at the center of creation, “crown of creation” Violent exploration of the globe First landmark literary criticism in English? – Sir Philip Sydney An Apology for Poetry (c. 1579/1595)  furthering virtue in the reader - argues that poetry is superior to philosophy and poets are no liars - Poetry combines the general notion (philosopher) with the particular example (Historian) (Age of) Enlightenment and Literature 18th century: René Descartes (1596-1650) - Increasing literacy rates and growing importance of literature as a form of education Development of the Bildungsroman Anglophone Literary Studies - Institutionalization    - - Until 18th-century: only Latin and Greek Institutionalization of English Studies: North America: Late 18th century India: 19th century UK: early 19th century Traditional academic canon of English Literary Studies: limited & exclusionary (no ethnic minorities, no colonized cultures, no women’s literature etc.) Timeline of British Literary History: Old English (450 - 1066) Renaissance (1500 - 1660) Romantic (1785 - 1832) Edwardian (1901 - 1914) Modern (1914 - 1945) - Middle English (1066 - 1500) - Neoclassical (1600 - 1785) - Victorian (1832 - 1901) - Georgian (1910 - 1936) - Postmodern (1945 - present) Hermeneutics of suspicion (cf. Paul Ricoeur) - "[Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche] share a commitment to unmasking 'the lies and illusions of consciousness'; they are the architects of a distinctively modern style of interpretation that circumvents obvious or self-evident meanings in order to draw out less visible and less flattering truths…” (Rita Feld - "Critique and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion” 2012) Marxism - Human history as a series of struggles between classes (the exploited vs the exploiting) Capitalism is based on exploitation of labour The workers’ revolution is the inevitable result of exploitation and the means of emancipation Aim: to bring a classless society, common ownership of the means of production Marxist Literary Theory - Key concepts: 1. Capitalism: - Free market economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods - Bourgeoisie owns the capital and controls the base (wohlhabendes Bürgertum) - Proletariat hired/ exploited by Bourgeoisie (but never own nor control the base) 2. Socialism: - Change from capitalism to communism (stage in between) - Proletarian revolution (people control means of production) 3. Base – and Superstructure: - Structure of human society  Superstructure: (everything not to do with production in society) Education, family, religion. Politics, media = maintains and legitimates the base  Base: (economics) machines, factories, land, raw materials, People’s relations to production = shapes the superstructure 4. - Ideology: Set of ideas of the ruling class The ruling class express the dominant material relationships (brings together 1. Material mods of production + 2. Cultural mods of communication) 5. Alienation: - The estrangement from one’s own nature, one’s own labour, and the products of that labour - Communism: political theory in which all property/wealth belongs to a classless society Dialectic: process of two opposing thoughts become combined in a unified whole Dialectic materialism: to opposing historical forces struggle to bring about a self-reflective society Marxist Literary Theory    Focus: issues of power and money, unequal distribution, oppression Sample questions: What role does class play in the work; what is the author's analysis of class relations? How do characters overcome oppression? In what ways does the work serve as propaganda for the status quo; or does it try to undermine it?  What does the work say about oppression; or are social conflicts ignored or blamed elsewhere?  Does the work propose some form of utopian vision as a solution to the problems encountered in the work? Psychoanalysis – Sigmund Freud - Freud began his psychoanalytic work in the 1880s while attempting to treat behavioral disorders - He began treating them by listening to his patients talk through their problem (talking cure) - Freud asserted that people's behavior is affected by their unconscious  believed that our unconscious was influenced by childhood events - Psychoanalysis interprets the psyche as the site of the unconscious conflict between primal desires, the demands of moral authorities, and traumatic realities - Repression: conflicts are put out of one’s conscious mind - Unconscious: part of the psyche where these conflicts are repressed The Relationship between Freud’s Theory and Literary Criticism - Psychoanalytic theory refers to literary criticism which is influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud Psychoanalytic criticism can focus on one or more of the following: 1. The author:  what does the text tell us about the author’s life?  What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author? 2. The reader:  What are possible psychological motives of the reader? 3. The character:  How can characters’ behaviour be explained in terms of psychoanalytic concepts of any kind (e.g.: fear, trauma or sexuality?)  Freud identified three areas of the mind that wrestle for dominance: - Id (Instincts: I need to eat right this second!) - Ego (Reality: mediates between the desires of the Id and the superego) - Superego (Morality: You can’t do that because you’re in the middle of an important meeting.)  Basic disorders: Neurosis (ego supresses traumatic experiences it cannot manage), Psychosis (the ego forecloses upon and remodels reality under permanent crisis) and Perversion (ego substitutes real sexual pleasure for a symbolic action due to traumatic experience) Psychoanalytic criticism: - Focus: - Sample questions:  How can characters' behavior, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms of psychoanalytic concepts of any kind (for example, fear or fascination with death, sexuality which includes love and romance as well as sexual behavior - as a primary indicator of psychological identity or the operations of ego-id-superego)?  What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author?  What might a given interpretation of a literary work suggest about the psychological motives of the reader? Semiology/Semiotics, Structuralism, and Post-Structuralism What is Semiology/Semiotics? - The study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation Concerned with the interrelationships between signs themselves — within sign systems or codes of signification. Cultural texts are analyzed as assembles of signs (such as words, images, sounds, or gestures) Semiology (cf. Ferdinand de Saussure): - Synchronic study of language Study of language rather than speech (“langue vs. parole”) Linguistic signs are arbitrary Meaning is relational rather than referential Language creates the world by coding it (never a direct mimetic representation)  the signifier gains meaning by its difference from other signifiers (shed – hut – house – mansion – palace) Semiotics (cf. Charles Sanders Peirce) - Iconic sign: (Physical) signifier imitating, resembling what is signified, e.g.: sculptures Indexical sign: Physical connection (directly related) between a signifier and the signified, e.g.: medical symptoms (pain) Symbolic sign: Learned connection between signifier and signified, e.g.: human language Structuralism vs. Post-Structuralism Structuralism:     World constructed through language (arbitrary signification) but can be ‘decoded’ Language as a system! They relate the literary text to some larger containing structure, rule, or order, e.g. ... to conventions of a genre model of an underlying narrative structure (Narratology) a narrative’s cultural code/connotations Post-Structuralism: - “universe of radical uncertainty” No truth, multiplicity of meanings  questioning the notion of fixed structures in the process of linguistic processing  Reading texts not as “unified artistic artefacts” but as “fragmented, self-divided, and centreless (Reading against the grain) Test yourself: True or False? Structuralism vs. Post-Structuralism - Structuralism questions our way of organizing reality in order to distrust the notion of reason [false] Structuralists see the world as an orderly system in which signs float free of the concept they are supposed to designate [false] Post-Structuralists tend to see meaning as slippery and multiple. [true] Structuralists do not believe in the importance of the author, instead stressing that the reader creates the text as they read it [false] Introduction to Literary and cultural studies I #7 Discourse Analysis and New Historicism 20.11.2019 1. Reading-Power-Knowledge: Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (Michael Foucalt) - Genealogy: widespread notion of what normal values or truths is not the essence of any abstract morality or reason, but the result of historical inventions related to the “will of power” - Ideology: does not obscure reality but forms it (institutionally based ‘symbolic controller’) - Hegemony: dominance of the ruling class by cultural meanings  historicizes basic assumptions of structuralism  knowledge as historical products of institutionalized practices  how is meaning produced and re-adjusted in contexts Key concepts: - discursive formation: material and non-material conditions (rules) under which certain kinds of statement are made discursive practice: linguistic and institutional practices restricted by discursive formations Key concepts: Archive: - an analytic and systematic concept a real institution Key concepts: Archeology: - traces historical assembles to describe the historical coming into being archives and changes of archival contents. Key concepts: (Foucault) - Historical a priori: material conditions and practices (positivities) that constitute discursive formations Power-Knowledge: power and knowledge forming complex dynamics Subjectification: classification and shaping of human beings into “subjects” Four phases of Foucault and Literature: 1. archaeological phase: Literature as “counter-discourses”, associated with experience of madness 2. archaeological phase: literature as one of the many discourses governed by an anonymous set of rules 3. phase: questions formations such as embodiments of power relations and the production and formation of subjects 4. late phase: problems of self-formation and subject agency = possibility of “aesthetics of existence” Foucault: What is an author? - Inaugurates the notion of author function  An individual person’s writing began to be treated legally as his or her property as an author (copyright legislation)  Notion of the individual author functions as an important tool for the construction of textual unity After Poststructuralism - Poststructuralist argued that texts are inevitably self-contradictory Many Poststructuralists ignored the historical contexts within which literary works are written and read  New Historicists set focus on “the historicity of texts and the textuality of history” 2. Re-Reading Hi/Stories: New Historicism Hayden White: historiographical texts as emplotments: narratives which draw on patterns literary fiction - Romance, Satire, Comedy and Tragedy 2. New Historicism: weaknesses & strengths Weaknesses Strengths - Lacking theoretical precision - understanding of sources and rejection of the priorization of aesthetic value - choice of co-texts is often arbitrary - as a practiceit is flexible with other theoretical frameworks - interpretation often seen as spceulative Slide 24: Reading Heart of Darkness side by side with biological Darwinist and social Darwinist texts of the 19th century  Contemporary debates on evolution and evolutionary hierarchies of human races Slide 25: reading citizen as an intertextual collage of the everyday experience of racism in the US today - Rankines writing is a collage of the real world experience of racist discrimination Timely book that sustains Americas current conversation about race and Session 8: Feminism, Gender, Queer theory – 27 November 2019 Feminism/feminist theory: three waves of Feminism  Early western feminism (18th and 29th century) - Ideology of separate spheres  men: public sphere of world  women: domestic sphere of home 1. First-Wave-Feminism (1840 - 1920) - Reform of women’s social and legal inequalities - Key concerns: education, employment, equal voting rights 2. Second-Wave-Feminism (1960 - 1980) - Increased feminist activity - Key concerns: equal pay, abortion rights, sexual liberation Feminist literary criticism: male canon (Non-representative of female writers) [Hélène Cixous] 3. Third-Wave-feminism (1980 - today) - Challenges homogenous and unifying view of women - Emphasis on difference and heterogeneity (black feminism, muslim feminism, etc.)  Intersectionality: theory of how different types of discrimination interact (Kimberlé Crenshaw) Simone de Beauvoir: The second sex - Social constructionist critique of essentialism and sexism “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman” 2. Gender Studies Gayle Rubin - sex: biologically constituted (‘given’) - gender: socially and culturally constituted (‘constructed’) Michael Foucault - sex is no less a socio-culturally constructed category than ‘gender’ - both sex and gender depend on discursive practices (discourse of sexuality) Key assumption: ALL literary writing and reading is gendered, marked by our gender identities, perceptions and stereotypes. 3. Queer theory (1990 - today) - critique of heteronormativity, homophobia and transphobia destabilization and intentional subversion of socially constructed norms and categories Judith Butler: Gender Trouble (1990) - gender as an effect of linguistic, discursive and bodily practices Gender identity a variable construct mandated by “performativity” (expected practices by a certain individual (gender))  Making gender trouble as critical commitment Queer theory – the many afterlives of queer theory - Focuses on mismatches between sex, gender and desire Demonstrates the impossibility of any ‘natural’ sexuality (questions “man” and ”woman”) Queer theory has moved beyond challenging sexual norms: it claims identities without essence Session 9 – Postcolonialism 1. The emergence of postcolonial studies - Takes beginning from the activist writings of various anti-colonial struggles - Main focus: history and continuing effects of imperialism/colonialism, neo-colonialism and racism on all cultures and societies - Postcolonialism: after colonialism ended/ decline of colonial empires  historical and political understanding - Analysis and critique of colonial discourse  stressing the need of continuing decolonization (“decolonization of the mind”) = critical understanding 1. - Key concerns of postcolonial studies How is cultural/racial difference constructed? How does the western construct the non-western as inferior? How is this construction justifying and stabilizing racist hierarchies, colonial rule and imperialist modes of exploitation? What are ongoing effects of colonialism and colonial racism among former colonised/colonisers?  Two strands of development - Canon expansion  Postcolonial literatures: Inclusion of anglophone literatures of Africa, the Indian subcontinent, the Caribbean, the pacific region, etc. - Political and theoretical: Critical engagement with the political and cultural history of colonialism and resistance to colonialism and the continuing effects of this history Anti-colonialism and decolonization Frantz Fanon – The Wretched of the Earth (1961) - Anti-colonial activist scholar from Martinique Wrote on effects of colonialism & racism on black men Supported various African independence struggles Work is used as key reference in postcolonial theory  Distinguished 3 phases in the development of anti- and postcolonial national culture 1. Unqualified assimilation: colonized copy the colonizers’ culture (e.g. language) 2. Pre-battle phase: critique of colonialism by the educated, attempt to reconnect to indigenous traditions (self-reflexion (back to roots)) 3. Fighting phase: Revolution = writers/artists reconnect with the masses by participating in their emancipation struggle, taking them as a main target audience 2. Colonial Discourse Analysis and Postcolonial Theory Recap on discourse: (according to Foucault) - Discourses are linking power relations and knowledge production Organizing knowledge systems (categories of knowledge) and form archives Discursive formations control which statements can be made and which cannot  Discourse analysis: seeks to lay open the rules of discourse and their relation to worldly power structures  Colonial discourse analysis: seeks to uncover the rules that regulate colonial representations and practices 4.a Edward Said - Palestinian-American comparativist and literary theorist Inaugurator of ‘colonial discourse analysis’/ founding figure of ‘postcolonial studies’ criticizes Foucault’s methodological eurocentrism, applies his discourse analysis to modern Orientalist power-knowledge  The 1978 study Orientalism: an archaeology of Orientalist (un-)reason and the inaugural text of colonial discourse analysis in literary and cultural studies. 4.a Edward Said’s interconnected notions of Orientalism (1978) a) Scientifically: a Western academic discipline, deals with languages, literatures, cultures, etc. ‘of the East’. b) Imaginatively: western cultural practices, of imagining and constructing the Oriental in writing, fiction, film, etc. c) Sociologically and Politically: a Western corporate institution of material domination, and colonial rule based on military and power.  The West constructs the Orient as an inferior other, with the aim of justifying Western imperialism. - Non-western people are not born as Orientals but become Orientalized. - Orientalism as a discursive formation; the Orient as a discursive construction 4.a Orientalism - The Oriental was linked to elements in Western society (delinquents, the insane, women, the poor). Orientals were seen as problems to be solved or confined, or—as the colonial powers openly coveted their territory—taken over. 4.b Homi K. Bhabha – the location of Culture (1994) - Indian-British-American cultural theorist - Has worked on the ambivalence of colonial discourse, racism, construction/deconstruction of national identities  (similar to Edward Said’s position) “[T]he objective of colonial discourse is to construe the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest […]” 4.b Homi K. Bhabha – Hybridity of the colonial situation - Hybridity of colonial identifications: opposition of the colonisers and the colonised is not clearcut. No clear cut between two identities. Two identities merge to an hybrid (transcultural form). - main reason: Mimicry (a tool for the execution of colonial power and a strategy resistance against this very power) = colonized is expected to imitate the coloniser, which is desired but also causes uncertainty & anxiety because of (intentionally) failed imitation  might be subversive mockery  colonizers reassert difference and stereotypes and contradict themselves  Ambivalence of colonial discourse: colonized is expected to be almost the same, but not quite (resembles but also differs from colonizer) 4.c Gayatri Chakravorty Spiva – Can the Subaltern speak? - Indian-American literary theorist - Non-white women live under conditions of double oppression (racism & sexism) - Seminal essay: “Can the Subaltern Speak?”  Yes, but nobody from the western society is listening so there’s no point in speaking. 5. Postcolonial Literary and Cultural Studies - focuses on writing by authors from formerly colonized regions, diasporic communities of color, racialized minority group - foregrounds postcolonial tensions - challenges the ideological world view of the imperial ‘centre.’ - shows how the colonized ‘write back’  ‘Writing-back’ as a key paradigm in literary postcolonial studies: ➢Postcolonial writing as literary counter-discourse 5.b Postcolonial Criticism, Comparative Empire Studies and Ethnic-Immigrant Literatures - Application of postcolonial theory to other empires & to the multicultures of the postcolonial Western metropolis - Analysis of ethnic-immigrant literatures and diasporic texts and contexts (diaspora = community of people who have been dispersed from their homeland, e.g. because of forced migration/slavery or indentured servitude) Session 11 – Cultural studies 18.12.2019 Theories and Models: Jean Baudrillard  Three orders of simulation 1. The Image is the reflection of a profound reality (e.g. map or painting) 2. The image masks and denatures a profound reality and the boundaries between reality and representation become blurred (e.g. film set) 3. The image masks the absence of a profound reality. It produces a ‘hyperreal’ “without origin or reality” (e.g. Disneyland, fantasy film, prisons, fantasy computer game) Definitions of culture 1. 2. 3. 4. Neutral (non-evaluative) Material (evaluative) ‘Cultivation’ (evaluative) Normative (highly evaluative) people growing crops, animals, etc. material products of a group of humans Improvement of human mind through education Quality/high culture! Be like us! How has culture been studied in the past?  Evaluative approaches to culture: - Much colonial ethnography/ colonial anthropology - Matthew criticism (19th century)  Practical criticism though they wrote about both elite and non-elite culture, they often denigrated the latter  Frankfurt School Cultural studies today 1. - ‘Recovery’ of culture, which is marginalized in dominant discourses about culture Expansion  feminist queer, postcolonial, diasporic, and other marginalized texts Working class cultures, everyday cultural artefacts, non-literary culture, popular culture Critique of the (literary) canon Reciprocal –if critical –relation to literary studies Industrially produced forms (cinema, television, radio, magazines) 2. Making visible the ideologies that inform such cultures 3. Asking: How do these signify? Principal subjects of cultural Studies 1. Cultural practices: Subcultures, Traffic, Social interactions, dance, etc. 2. Media: Television, Film, Newspapers, Games, etc. 3. Cultural artifacts: Architecture, Cities, Spaces, Fashion, Material Design, Cars, etc. Connections to other theories and approaches - culture as signifying practices of representation within the context of social power (Semiotics) culture and ideology –relations of culture and power in different societies: (New Historicism) how are collective identities, discourses, and forms of social organization influenced by specific historical and structural conditions? (Discourse Analysis) Connections to other theories and approaches ll - - forms of power – gender/ race/ class, colonialism  how are these forms connected and how can they be thought about in order to facilitate change? (Gender, Ethnic, postcolonial Studies) aims: empowerment of marginalized groups, break-up of power structures Session 10 - Diaspora Studies and Transnationalism 11.12.2019 1. Diaspora: “to scatter or disperse across”, referring to “a people living outside of their traditional homeland”  Now: a community with shared traumas and a shared (imagined) homeland or origin Four phases of diaspora studies (migration studies) 1. 2. 3. 4. The Jewish experience and then Notion of Victim Diasporas Diaspora as ‘Metaphoric Designation’ Social Constructionist Critique Consolidation Phase Victim Diasporas The dispersal following a traumatic event of forced displacement from the homeland of a community to one or more geographical locations. - Examples: Armenian, African, Irish, Palestinian diaspora. Characteristics of victim diaspora - “[…] Strong orientation to the lost homeland in the collective memory of a forcibly dispersed group […]” (Cohen 4) Diaspora as ‘Metaphoric Designation’ Concept of diaspora was employed to describe a vast array of people and communities, including… - Expatriates, expellees, political refugees, alien residents, immigrants and ethnic and racial minorities.  These groups were experiencing similar circumstances surrounding their departure from their ‘home land’ and of their limited acceptance in their places of settlement Diaspora as ‘Metaphoric Designation’ ll - Labour diasporas, Trade diasporas, Imperial diasporas Who gets to decide who is being viewed as a ‘diaspora’?  Self-description versus observer views Social Constructionist Critique - Notion of diaspora widely used for and in diverse groups, in scholarly and non-scholarly discourse. Newly emerging groups claimed the term as a self-descriptor: Queer diaspora     Critique of diaspora theorists: constructing diasporas without sociohistorical evidence expanding and thus emptying the concept of diaspora of any meaning holding back the full force of the original concept Social Contructionist Critique ll -  re-conceptualization of the concept of diaspora ongoing globalization process traditional is successively eroding attachments to geographically bounded spaces Notions of ‘home’ and ‘ethnic/religious community’  attached to more symbolic spaces rather than an actual homeland Consolidation Phase theoretical dilemma: If almost anything counts as a diaspora, then nothing actually does. - Self-critically modified reaffirmation/ readjustment of the classic of diaspora concept Tölölyan: “[…] Diasporists like myself, who want to argue that attachment to place was indispensable to diasporic life […] must tread carefully in order to avoid the charge that we are either imitating discredited nationalist rhetoric about the link between land, people, and culture, or that we remain naive about the global spaces […]” Consolidation Phase ll – three core characteristics of diaspora communities - Dispersion = either traumatically of voluntarily and generally across state borders Homeland orientation = whether to a real or imagined homeland Boundary maintenance = the processes whereby group solidarity is mobilized and retained Example: Turkish families in Germany Common features of diasporas 1. Dispersal from an original homeland (in search of work, pursuit of trade, etc.) 2. Collective memory and myth about the homeland (location, history, etc.) 3. Idealization of the real or imagined ancestral home (commitment to its maintenance) 4. Frequent development of a return movement to the homeland 5. Strong ethnic group consciousness 6. Troubled relationship with host societies (lack of acceptance) 7. Sense of empathy and co-responsibility with co-ethnic members in countries of settlement 8. Hope for a distinctive creative, enriching life in host countries Diasporic Writing/Literature -  Broad umbrella terms for literary works written by writers outside their native country  Characteristics: Strong orientation towards the writers/characters country of origin, its history and cultural and religious heritage Memories of the original homeland and the memory of often traumatically dispersal from that very homeland - difficult relationship with the character’s host society (discrimination and exclusion) a sense of empathy with co-ethnic members in their struggle Salman Rushdie – “Imaginary homelands” - ‘After physical alienation from India; We will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities of villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind’ How can we read texts as being ‘diasporic’? - Author’s biography/self-identification Narrative plot, content and topicality Narrative’s character constellation Multilingual storytelling Literary traditions in which it places itself Narrative’s settings (cross-cultural) setting/s The inter-texts it uses Literary form in which it is written Transnationalism - - Starts with the critique of “methodological nationalism”  stresses the importance of social and cultural spaces which cannot be sufficiently grasped with the old container of the nationstate “transnational” indicates a methodological approach that can be understood as “non-state”, “cross-border” or “beyond the historical moment of the nation-state as we know it”  Transmigrants are immigrants whose lives depend on multiple interconnections across international borders; public identities are configured in relationship with more than one nation-state.  Transnational migration: process by which immigrants forge and sustain simultaneous multistranded social relations linking together their societies of origin and settlement. Transnationalism in Literary Studies - Transnationalism is productively complicating “the nationalist paradigm long dominant in these fields” focusing our attention on ‘forms of cultural production that take place in the liminal spaces between real and imagined borders’ - Transnationalism becomes a methodology which requires “a wholesale remapping of the locations we study” Transnationalism in Literary Studies ll - transnational approach provides a framework for studying literatures and cultures beyond older Eurocentric models of “comparative analysis” globalization in our time will appear to be the extension of relationships with a long and complex history both within and outside the West Transnationalism in Literary Studies  Transnationalism sensitizes scholars of literature for the relational dynamics of literary writing rather than tracing clear origins or national locations - Interconnectedness of literary geographies explains cultural dynamics that cannot embrace single roots, ethnic coherence or linguistic purity develops a “globalectic” politics of knowing relational approach aims at an interdisciplinary polylogue which transcends narrow linguistic, ethnic or nation-state analytical frameworks Slide 27: Transnational reading of heart of darkness - Biographical perspective one can argue that Conrad was “an English writer who, as a transnational novelist, manipulated the forms and genre conventions specific to the English novel” - Transnational narrative: Kurtz as a representative not of British colonialism but of transnational imperialism. The European characters of the novel as members of the European imperial diaspora. Slide 29: Transnational reading of Citizen - Biographical: Rankine was born in 1963 in Kingston, Jamaica and moved to NYC at the age of seven Introduction to Literary and cultural studies I – Session 13: Media & Film Film studies theory: Key terms Intermediality  Broad sense: any kind of relation between different media (medial equivalent of ‘intertextuality’)  Narrow sense: participation of more than one medium (or sensory channel) in one work (e.g. opera or film) - Hollywood does not want you to think: How/Why did they do this? Eyeline matching (show what the characters see) We do not see certain edits: invisible editing Transmediality  Refers to phenomena that are non-specific to individual media (e.g. motifs, myths)  Transmedia storytelling  stories are told in games/comics that are not told in the movie (Matrix)  Transmedia Franchise (Star Wars, Marvel (all movies take place in the same universe)) Adaptation -  Refers to the translation of one work into another medium  E.g. a lot of Romeo and Juliet adaptation Formal entity or product, an adaptation is an announced and extensive transposition of a particular work, often involving a shift of medium As a process of creation, an adaptation always involves both (re-) interpretation and (re-) creation Seen from the process of reception, an adaption is a form of intertextuality: we experience them as palimpsests through our memory of other works Session 13: Evaluative approaches to culture: Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy (1869) - simply appreciate the object as in itself it really is. dissatisfaction with British society Practical criticism 1. High culture (cultural elite) 2. Folk culture (traditional culture) 3. Popular culture (product of urban)  Leavises demand: formation of competent academic elite to discriminate between these 3 Jean Baudrillard: Simulacra and Simulations Simulacrum: (masks the absence of a basic reality) 1st order of simulation: “a representation of imitation of something” (e.g. map or painting) 2nd order of simulation: image masks a profound reality and the boundaries between reality and representation become blurred (e.g. film set) 3rd order of simulation: Image masks the absence of a profound reality, produce a ‘hyperreal’ “without origin or reality” (e.g. Disneyland, animation fantasy film) - Wild west: product of mediated images passed down to us Hollywood films and television  Our beliefs about “the wild west” are more real to us than the reality of this period in American history (hyperreality: loss of the real)  Influence of images from film, TV, and advertising has led to a loss of the distinction between real and imagined Media - everything we know is learned in… 1. Direct sensory perception of our environment 2. Indirect knowledge we gain through someone or something  mediated knowledge “What we know about our society, indeed, about the world we live in, we know it through the mass media” – Niklas Luhmann Marshall McLuhan – “The medium is the message.” - Extension of human capacities Examples: bicycle, car > human foot; clothing > human skin Stuart Hall – Encoding/Decoding - - So far… Criticizes theories that understood communication in terms of a linear transmission model, e.g. Ferdinand de Saussure’s Sender = encoder Receiver = decoder Cultural codes (language) we interpret the message in a shared framework Active interpretation Dominant-Hegemonic Position: acceptance of the preferred reading Negotiated Position: preferred reading is partially modified and rejected according to receiver’s own cultural framework Oppositional Position: message is decoded in a contrary way according to an alternative frame of reference (e.g. feminist, postcolonial) Lit/Cult – Recap, Last Session Video games – texts with rules - How is the Game interactive  what to play? Foucault Discourse - Properties of literature depends on time/place etc. (variable)  Consequences of literature  Why define something as literature and why not  How to use language = close to literature, very certain way Liberal humanism vs. hermeneutics of suspicion      Demonstrate what literature is Radically questioning literature Marks negative point of departure for what theory we now today More brief theoretical practice of theory than a real theory Negative aspect of what we understand as doing literary theory Marxism      Literary criticism cannot be politically disinterested Critics interested in what the world reproduced Heart of darkness  laying the brutal realities of imperialist exploitations Brutal business of taking away treasures from colonized people Freud: conflict in dreams (Unconscious) Structuralism vs. Poststructuralism          Not needed to be an expert Difference: S interested in rules regulating linguistic meaning (literary science) P: beyond  of meaning: question fixed structures of notion P: change of meaning!!!!!!! Discontinuities/ Ambivalences (uninterested in fixing certain structures) Shifting of meaning of one signifier to the next one: Discontinuities P: Discourse of condition; trespassing boundaries of inside and outside of the text P: discourse analysis: Foucault: closer look at power relations: deconstructive reading of texts  reading against themselves Historically determined P: questioning boundary of texts of outside and inside  do not analyse implicit structures (narrative rules) Michael Foucault: What is an author? New invention that came with capitalism and the need to determine Textual unity and consistency One person’s name: function of discourse Do not identify in what phases of Foucault career he came up with theories BUT Foucault notion of discursive formations of power/ tape of literature  Literature as part of the overall discourse     New Historicism     Directly drawing on poststructuralist concepts Context within historical texts are written/read Literary approaches to textuality: historian draw on literary Nothing to do with practical/new criticism (movement of middle decades) Feminism/Queer theory     Poststructuralist feminism Temporal locations do not matter (approximately, not exactly; also not for diasporas) Biologically sex = gender is both constructed by society (Foucault) Essentialist see discursive construct in gender/sex Postcolonialism  Critics analyse postcolonial discourse from colonial period until today  Analyse the history of resistance  Highly politically committed practice which stresses the need of decolonization until today = decolonize our racist/colonial thinking  Holy trinity  Bhabha,  Orientalism Said  Subalternity (Gaya) Diaspora studies vs. Transnationalism D experience of traumatic displacement of homeland plus a strong orientation D diverse ray of people: anything counts as diasporas? = nothing does D Heart of Darkness: European members Not coherent definition of diasporas Victim diasporas: Competing notions of diasporas T shifts the focus away from one way migration T social and cultural spaces made by continuing back and forth moving between nations! Regular migration (one way) vs. Transmigrations (moving back and forth between various locations)  T social lives and cultural works between more than one location           T analyse the dynamics by which transnationalism: place of settlement and origin get more and more blurred  D stresses the difference between homeland  Transnational critique of methodological nationalism KEY (no literal geography) Various questions: - Matthew Arnold: appreciate the thing as it is = Literature is one way or another  everything has one meaning Liberal humanism: important for canon information Ideology vs. Hegemony: ruling class needs to Why does Jean Baudrillard not like the Matrix? His Idea is to not be able to distinguish between reality and simulation anymore  no difference  Matrix faints hyperreality  doesn’t actually deal with hyperreality = clear distinction between reality and simulation once they left the Matrix  Baudrillard would see this distinction to be lost