COURSE DESCRIPTION
In describing this course, I should probably start with the three words in its title. By "contemporary," I simply mean "post-1965." By "critical," I mean to suggest something like "analytical." And finally, by "theory," I mean a "set of generalizations or questions, usually rather abstract, about the nature or value of a particular practice or set of practices." Thus, the term "contemporary critical theory" is meant to suggest that we'll be dealing with late twentieth-century writings about the nature of writing, reading, and related human activities.
To give you a better sense of what I have in mind, let me offer some examples of the kinds of questions we'll discuss:
To give some shape and direction to our pursuit of these questions, I've decided to begin with readings from a number of writers who paved the way for contemporary theory. These writers include Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ferdinand de Saussure. (Saussure, whose name is probably less familiar than the others, is considered the "founder" or "father" of structuralist linguistics and indeed of structuralism generally.)
Once we've taken a brief--and I do mean brief--glance at these writers, we'll begin to focus on three more recent figures: Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Mikhail Bakhtin. These figures are often lumped together, especially by their most hostile critics, and we'll want to see if we think their similarities really do outweigh their differences.
Finally, in the last half of the term, we'll sample a number of very recent developments, including postcolonial theory, gay and lesbian theory, and cultural studies. Here, we'll want to see how people working in these new, supposedly more specialized areas have been influenced by the "grand theory" produced by people like Derrida, Foucault, and Bakhtin. The death of theory is almost always being announced, and such announcements are all around us these days. Let's see if we think the announcement isn't a bit premature.
WHAT NEXT?