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HUM 270 |
"Critical & Performative Theory: Nietzsche/Blanchot/Derrida/Lyotard(Beckett)"
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Stephen Barker |
The imperatives of Postmodern
discourse mandate a close consideration of the relationship
between text and performance, action and stasis, agency
and enervation. In the Postmodern, the question of
performance pervades the textual space and focuses it; the
discourse of the subject is subverted. How are we
to see this performative space of language and theory, where
words are appropriated for their gaps and mimesis has become
parodic exercise? What does this shift mean in terms
of the place and space of the subject, and of subjectivity
(and, by extension, intersubjectivity) in general?
What does it mean in terms of the very notion of performance,
rethought in this new context? And how is the contemporary
reader—at least any reader desiring to stand apart
from the anti-theoretical marketplace—to deal with
the contingencies of writing and performance when both are
so radically called into question?
In this course we will examine what it means to perform,
linguistically and semantically, what performance and critique
have in common and what bridges must be built between them.
We will examine a series of exemplary texts to see how they
position themselves vis. various aspects of performativity,
and will examine the relationship between performativity
and theory.
Discussion and reading will assume familiarity with speech-act
theory (particularly Austin's and, by extension, Searle's)
and some initial responses to it (e.g. Iser's).
Required texts:
Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche
The Space of Literature, Blanchot
Spurs/Éperons, Derrida
The Differend, Lyotard
In addition, we will have peripherally before us, throughout
the course, Beckett's trilogy of novels, Molloy/Malone
Dies/The Unnameable, paying particularly close attention
to the last. These works will be the canvas on which
we will doodle, to use an image caught between Modernism
and Paramodernism, as we ruminate about the theoretical
texts on which we are working and with which we are playing.
One class presentation; short "position papers"
on each of the four major texts; one paper; no exams.
