The era of structuralism, followed by that of poststructuralism, has yielded a large repertoire of new critical terms and approaches. As a result, concepts such as ‘the reality effect’, ‘the death of the author’, ‘intertextuality’, ‘episteme’, ‘the writerly text’ (as opposed to ‘the readerly text’), ‘heteroglossia’, ‘polyphony’, as well as the method of ‘discourse analysis’ are today common currency among academics. Unfortunately this development has also entailed a loss in critical momentum. After all, who still reads the thinkers to whom we owe these concepts and methods? Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Mikhail Bakhtin: all during the sixties and seventies these intellectuals ranked as cultural gurus whose texts were absolutely required reading for any student of philosophy, arts, and the social sciences. Yet to present generations of students their names hardly ring a bell. This is not to say that their work has become dated or devalued. Quite the contrary: their ideas have become generally accepted, albeit in a familiarized form.
To counter this tendency, we propose to go back to the authors themselves. Our first purpose in doing so will be to become acquainted with (a selection of) their original texts and breathe new life into them. In addition, we will try to establish what these texts still have to offer to the humanities in general, and to literary studies in particular.
Method of Instruction
Seminar
Course objectives
This course aims at providing knowledge of, and insight into, the work of three major theoretical thinkers who have played a major role in literature and cultural studies over the past thirty years.
Examination
Mid-term assignment (30%); paper (70%).
Information
Please contact the instructors, mailto:e.minnaard@hum.leidenuniv.nl or mailto:p.w.j.verstraten@hum.leidenuniv.nl