This course is designed to tackle the two main complaints about theory: one, that it is alienatingly abstract; and two, that theory doesn’t make sense once you try to explain it to people outside the English major. How to make theory an extension of self-making, and remove it from the role of merciless taskmaster? And is it possible to communicate theoretical ideas in “plain English”?
The general theme for the quarter circles around the issue of pain, which is so viscerally real and rooted in the body that it seems to be the anti-thesis of cerebral and intangible theory. Stephen Greenblatt, Elaine Scarry, and Eric Hayot all examine how bodily feeling translates into the impulse to narrate, and then finally how these narrations pull out into cultural systems of feeling that are the basis of power distribution. The small number of texts for this quarter means that we will have the luxury of time to think about form and motivation, as well as content. Each of the authors selected are not only pondering similar philosophical questions, but (at least to my mind) do better than most in using different approaches to communicate ideas with clarity. We will be doing a lot of exploratory writing this quarter so that you each have the chance to see how you, and others, work theoretical language into a grammar and syntax that makes sense to your own thinking about how identity fits into critical practice.