Violence: Spoken and Unspeakable
ENGL 344
Fall 2010
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01
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Two powerful but conflicting accounts have animated contemporary discussions about violence. On the one side have been those, from Walter Benjamin to Michel Foucault, who have insisted that violence is intimately related to and even primarily disseminated through discourse. Increasingly powerful in recent years has been a very different view that--paradoxically--may have emerged from the former. In this account, violence is essentially unspeakable, resistant to the organizing mechanisms of cognition and representation. What theories of language, violence, cognition, and history underwrite these views? In what kinds of political arguments are they enmeshed? What is at stake in claiming that violence is either all we speak or always unspeakable? This course will trace out these views as they are articulated by both theorists and novelists, paying particular attention to role literature has played in shaping and playing out these competing conceptions of violence. |
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Essential Capabilities:
Effective Citizenship, Interpretation |
| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Major Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Art Spiegelman, IN THE SHADOW OF NO TOWERS
Kazuo Ishiguro: A PALE VIEW OF HILLS
Maggie Nelson: JANE
Cynthia Ozick: THE SHAWL
Phillip Roth: THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA
Selected Theory and Criticism:
Shoshanna Felman: TESTIMONY
Michel Foucault: DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH
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Examinations and Assignments:
Multiple essays and short writing assignments |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This course meets the English department's theory requirement. However, this is an advanced seminar that will work best for students who have already studied some literary or cultural theory. |
| Instructor(s): Bachner,Sally Times: ..T.R.. 01:10PM-02:30PM; Location: CRT285; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: 8 | JR major: 5 | | |
| Seats Available: 0 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 1 | JR non-major: 1 | SO: 0 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 1 | 1st Ranked: 1 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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