Introduction to Literary Theory: Suspicion, Ideology, Deconstruction
ENGL 245
Spring 2025
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01
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There are ways of reading concerned with fixing, policing, and reifying assumed meanings, as well as the violent, normative structures that ground them, and there are ways of reading to the limits of what is (un)certain yet articulatable--reading that renders visible so as to destabilize antiblack, colonial, sometimes literalist and other times deceptively metaphorical constraints on language and invention. This course is devoted to the latter, as it is to disturbing normativity's self-entrenched truths, for normativity's colonial and imperial impunity and sedimentation are not the same things as eternal. While some approaches to language, and the ideologies they shroud and animate, might promise the seeming comforts of sudden breaks with history and complicity, or safekeep status quo notions of prophetic fulfillments of history as it was allegedly supposed to be, the texts of this course are less pious, and move more slowly, suspiciously, and "weirdly" with the linguistic structures of being and time. The reading modes featured in the course (i.e., deconstruction, black critical theory, Afro-Caribbean negative thought, speculative theories, and mysticism) would compel ideologically gnarly forces to tremble--exposing their violence and suspending any swift retrenchment to the very mechanisms that made such possible. And they ask us: what transformations might be necessary to not restore power to the very juggernauts we, as readers, have worked to possibly make tremble? In other words, how do we read literature and theory to learn how to read any use of language for ideology and not only locate, say, representations of sovereign violence in such, but even--dare we think it?--initiate depositions of power, and invent? |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Discussion | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (CSCT) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 75% - 89% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
This course's readings will be bound in a Course Pack. We will read deconstructive, black critical, and Afro-Caribbean literary theory, philosophy, and political meditations by: Aime Casaire, Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, Barbara Johnson, Peggy Kamuf, Cynthia Chase, Ronald Mendoza-de Jesus, Axelle Karera, Tyrone Palmer, David Marriott, Selamawit Terrefe, Dixa Ramirez D'Oleo and Jamaica Kincaid.
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Examinations and Assignments:
Reading notes journal, In-class presentation, Short close-reading paper, Final paper |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This course contributes to the fulfillment of the following English major requirements:
Literary History 3, Theory, World Literature |
| Instructor(s): Ellis Neyra,Ren Times: .M.W... 10:50AM-12:10PM; Location: ALLB004; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: 2 | JR major: 3 | | |
| Seats Available: 2 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 0 | JR non-major: 3 | SO: 5 | FR: 2 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 2 | 1st Ranked: 2 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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