Ideas are customarily thought to stay untouched by the passage of time or/and the traits of various cultures in which they are seen at work. This belief goes back a long way in our Western tradition, Plato being the uncontested father of this vision: the world of ideas is immutable and as such to be resorted to as a sure point of reference. While this is a tenable stance, the 20th century saw new developments in our vision of the world, basically by considering the time factor (nothing exists in our world other than in time), but also by taking into account the variegated nature of cultural institutions, beliefs, practices, values, rituals, likes and dislikes identifiable as forms of cultural specificity. In the early-mid 20th century the American scholar Lovejoy laid the foundations of a new discipline called the history of ideas now a central component of Cultural Identity Studies and of Cultural Studies.
On these premises I teach Cultural Identity as a modern project stemming from a number of theoretical contributions, whether as schools of thought or ideatic trends, from Nietzsche, Heidegger and the Frankfurt School thinkers to the French Annalists, Bakhtin and Foucault. The new stances adopted by postmodern critics are then looked into in lectures dedicated to Deconstruction, New Historicism, Representations, Race Studies and Postcolonial Identity/ies.
Course instructor: Prof. Mihaela Irimia
SCHEDULE
First Term
Week 1: HISTORY OF IDEAS (I)
Readings: Lovejoy, Arthur O., ‘The Study of the History of Ideas’, in King, Preston (ed.), The History of Ideas: AN Introduction to Method, London & Canberra, 1983, 179-197
Week 2: HISTORY OF IDEAS (II)
Readings: Mazzeo, Joseph Anthony, ‘Some Interpretations of the History of Ideas’, in Kelley, D. R. (ed.), The History of Ideas: Canon ad Variations, Rochester, 1990, 92-107
Week 3: HISTORY OF IDEAS (III)
Readings: Kelley, Donald R., ‘Introduction: Reflections on a Canon’, in Kelley, Donald R. (ed.), The History of Ideas: Canon ad Variations, Rochester, 1990, viii-xii
Week 4: MODERNITY – A WESTERN PROJECT
Readings: Descartes, René, ‘Meditations on First Philosophy, in Cahoone, Lawrence (ed.), From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology, 1996, 29-40; Kant, Immanuel, ‘An Answer to the Question What Is Enlightenment?, in Cahoone, Lawrence (ed.), From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology, 1996, 51-57
Week 5: FORMALISM – STRUCTURALISM
Readings: Shklovsky, Viktor, ‘Art as Technique, in Newton, K.M., Twentieth-Century Literary Theory: A Reader, London, 1997, 3-5; Jakobson, Roman, ‘The Dominant’, in K.M., Twentieth-Century Literary Theory: A Reader, London, 1997, 6-9
Week 6: PRECURSORS OF CULTURAL STUDIES (1): NIETZSCHE AND DECENTRING
Readings: Kaufmann, Walter (ed.) The Portable Nietzsche, 1968, 104-120
Week 7: PRECURSORS OF CULTURAL STUDIES (2): MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND BEING-IN-TIME
Readings: Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, 1996, 178-183; Heidegger, Martin, Letter on Humanism, in Cahoone, Lawrence (ed.), From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology, 1996, 274-308
Week 8: PRECURSORS OF CULTURAL STUDIES (3): THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL
Readings: Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Logic of Capitalism, in Appleby, Joyce et al. (eds), Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective, 1996, 215-240; Benjamin, Walter, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in Ryan, Kiernan (ed.), New Historicism and Cultural Materialism, London, 1996, 32-41
Week 9: PRECURSORS OF CULTURAL STUDIES (4): THE ‘ÉCOLE DES ANNALES’ AND MENTALITÉS
Readings: Vovelle, Michel, L’histoire et la longue durée, in Le Goff, Jacques (ed.), La Nouvelle Histoire, Paris, 1988, 77-104; Le Goff, Jacques, Constructing the Past: Essays in Historical Methodology, Cambridge, 1985, 166-176
Week 10: PRECURSORS OF CULTURAL STUDIES (5): BAKHTIN & BAKHTINIANISM
Readings: Bakhtin, Mikhail, Rabelais and His World, Bloomington, 1984, 315-336; Bakhtin, Mikhail, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Minneapolis,1984, 181-204
Week 11: PRECURSORS OF CULTURAL STUDIES (6): MICHEL FOUCAULT AND THE DISLOCATION OF THE ‘GRANDS RÉCITS DE L’HISTOIRE’
Readings: Foucault, Michel, ‘Qu’est-ce les Lumières?’, in Magazine littéraire, No. 309/ 1993; Eng. Trans. ‘What Is Enlightenment’, in Rabinow, P.(ed.), The Foucault Reader, London, 1991, 32-48; Foucault, Michel, Folie et déraison, 1961; Eng. Trans., Madness and Civilization, 1988, 38-64
Weeks 12-13: revision and discussion of essay topics
Second Term
Weeks 1-2: POSTMODERNISM (1)
Readings: Lyotard, Jean Fr., The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, 1984, 55-68; Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulations, 1988, in Brooker, Peter (ed.), Modernism / Postmodernism, London & New York, 1996, 151-161
Weeks 3-4: POSTMODERNISM (2)
Readings: Hutcheon, Linda, The Politics of Postmodernism, 1995, 1989, 1-28; Hassan, Ihab, The Postmodern Turn, 1987, 84-96
Weeks 5-6: DECONSTRUCTION, OR THE DECENTERING OF THE WORLD
Readings: Derrida, Jacques, Of Grammatology, Baltimore, 1976, 1-26; Derrida, Jacques, Writing and Difference, Chicago, 1878, 196-215
Weeks 7-8: NEW HISTORICISM AND CULTURAL MATERIALISM
Readings: Greenblatt, Stephen, ‘Towards a Poetics of Culture’, in Veeser, Aram (ed.), The New Historicism, NY & London, 1989, 1-12; Greenblatt, Stephen, Shakespearean Negotiations, Los Angeles, 1988, 1-20; Fineman, Joel, ‘The History of the Anecdote: Fiction and Fiction’, in Veeser, Aram (ed.), The New Historicism Reader, NY & London, 1994, 49-64
Weeks 9-10: REPRESENTATIONS
Readings: White, Hayden, Metahistory, 1973, 31-38; White, Hayden, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, 1978, 81-99; White Hayden, Figural Realism, Baltimore, 1991, 43-65
Weeks 11-12: RACE STUDIES
Readings: Said, Edward, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, NY, 1978, 49-72; Todorov, Tzvetan, The Conquest of America, NY, 1982, 34-49
Weeks 13-14: POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES
Readings: Bhabha, Homi, The Location of Culture, London & BY, 1994, 139-170.
REQUIREMENTS AND EVALUATION
- A minimum of 50% attendance
- Participation in class discussions, counting for 25% of the final mark
- An end-of-term written essay or written test, counting for 75% of the final mark
British Cultural Studies 