G45.2790"The Seventies Forever: Radical Literature and Militant Thinking"Professor: Emily Apter However problematic it may be to think in terms of periods, the French 1970's is fascinating "to think" as a decade. Questions of time, historicity, and epistemological break - much debated prior to May 1968 - gained new urgency. A sense of revolutionary failure and untested modes of living found a strange concurrence. How to theorize equality (before identity politics), how to redefine politics (large P and small p), how to square psychoanalysis with anti-instituionalism - such concerns left their imprint on the culture and counter-culture of a decade marked by Marxism, Maoism, and feminism. The course will devote special attention to the way literature and theory worked off each other. Genres of militant expression will be a focal point: political and aesthetic manifestos, philosophy, theories of the subject, critiques of history, and radical, experimental writing. Authors will include: Althusser, Foucault, Godard, Kristeva, Cixous, Deleuze, Guattari, Rancière, Badiou, Derrida, Guyotat, Roche, and Rollin. Reading knowledge of French a prerequisite. Course work will include an oral presentation and a short mid-term paper that will be developed into a longer final paper. |

