Theory in Anthropology: Anthropology and the Experience of Limits
ANTH 295A
Spring 2023 not offered
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| This course may be repeated for credit. |
| Course Cluster and Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate |
Theory in Anthropology courses are core courses for the major, designed to elucidate historical influences on contemporary anthropological theory. While precise topics may vary from year to year, the overall goal of the courses remains the same: to familiarize students with the main traditions from which the discipline of anthropology emerged and to explore the diverse ways in which contemporary anthropological practice defines itself both with and against them.
This course considers the possibilities of an anthropology of transgression, excess, and unreason. This is an anthropology of all things cultural that work outside the logic of function and utility--that is, of actions and events that, while being eminently social, exceed reason and rational explanation. We will take as our point of departure an understanding of political economy that no longer has production and rationality as its core principles but rather consumption and waste. For this "general economy," as Georges Bataille called it in opposition to a "restricted economy" focused on utility, he drew from the anthropology of his time and its study of societies organized around complex systems of gift-giving, collective ritual, and periods of wasteful consumption (through festivals, for example). Ultimately, Bataille sought to formulate a critique of the early-20th-century European political and economic order, which emphasized individualism, rationality, and profit and which, he believed, fostered disenchantment with liberal democracy, totalitarian impulses, and war and calamity.
Class readings and discussions will be organized around topics such as profitless expenditure and the festival; gift-giving and sacrifice; taboo and transgression; formlessness and abjection; sex and erotism; and subjectivity, excess, and the experience of limits. Students will develop research projects on these and other topics of their interest, which could include theoretical and ethnographic explorations of, for example, particular festivals, games of chance, religious experience, the writing of poetry, nonreciprocal giving (organ donation, surrogate motherhood), and the experience of extreme sports and high-risk tourism. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS ANTH |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: ANTH101 |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (ANTH)(CSCT)(STS) |
Major Readings:
Readings by Bataille, Nietzsche, Hegel, Kojève, Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Lévi-Strauss, Roger Caillois, Michel Leiris, Derrida, Foucault, Julia Kristeva, and Hélène Cixous, as well as ethnographic or ethno-historical texts by Inga Clendinnen, Alan Klima, Pierre Clastres, and Michael Taussig.
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Examinations and Assignments:
Short papers, class presentation, final research paper, and final research presentation.
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Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
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