LA 3007: Modern Tragic Lives

Semester 1, 2014-15: Outline 18.09.2014.Contents:This module is the last of the three-module series featuring tragedy as a central theme (updated outlines for the two earlier modules can be sent to you on request.) As the title suggests, in contemporary tragedies the focus often turns away from the crisis points in the lives of great heroes, variously consorting with the Gods and, to a lesser extent, it also turns away from the projected realisation of plans for correction or reform of ‘the way things are’ to feature instead the lives of such ‘dreamers’ and their failures, e.g. the film The Mosquito Coast. In general, then, in focusing on the individual and their subjective life, smaller scale events take on much greater significance even though the structure may mirror earlier examples, e.g. the adventures of Joyce’s small-time business man, Leopold Bloom, substituting for Homer’s Ulysses, and Molly Bloom substituting for Penelope. In other words, the genre of modern tragedy (which may be no genera at all!) largely follows and reflects the development of sensibilities and techniques that have accompanied the evolution of the novel form since the late Seventeenth Century. But if our principal focus is to be representations of the subject, then what kinds of predicaments feature in this subject’s experience that collectively would be called tragic? As you might expect by now, there is a philosophy here, but also a politics and economics, as well as an ethics of resistance and submission.

What follows does not conform to the previous module outlines for this series. Over the last two years I have worked with small groups of students who were already committed to particular fields of study through their dissertations and who therefore had, in most cases, specific interests in tragedy. What has emerged as a result of their work and the views expressed has been a module that splits its subject into two halves: a first-half that has a set progression of topics – which has conveniently focussed on Modernism – and a second half which has been conducted through a series of student presentations, discussions, and my own contributions by way of proposals for new directions, etc. So, that having been said, there is a strong case for starting from two familiar points of departure and one obvious addition – given the module title:-

1. A review of Ancient Greek Tragedy, and an equivalent reminder of the forms of analysis employed in the second year Utopia and Tragedy presentation;

2. A consideration of contemporary understandings of tragedy;

3. And an initial review of what constitutes the ‘Modern’.

A web site featuring the work of Anthony Giddens in summary form offers an initial set of ideas about Modernity and troubling formations for self-identity. After reviewing the first two ‘points’ given above we will discuss some of his opening statements and make some preliminary judgements about the rest of this website in relation to the following five weeks:-

Modernity – changes our social life and our in-world experiences.

Self and society – mechanisms of self-identity are shaped and shape the institutions of modernity

Modern social life – time and space reorganisation + expansion of disembedding mechanisms.

Doubt and reflexivity – radical doubt – all knowledge open to revision. As with the self. Uncertainty, multiple choice, trust, risk

Globalisation and media – distant happenings with influence on local life. The significance of mediated experiences.

Reflexive self-identity – lifestyle-choices and biographical narratives.

Transformation of intimacy -“pure relationships” – exist for the mere value of the relationship. Trust and mutual disclosure and commitment.

Personal meaninglessness – a fundamental psychic problem. Due to lack of moral resources? A life on one’s own? Authenticity as a morally undersized process.

The Contours of High Modernity

The self in modernity – the reflexive struggles of life, which shape our biographical narratives.

Modernity: some general considerations

The rise of organisation: size, bureaucratic character, concentrated reflexive monitoring.

Dynamic modern life:-

1. Separation of time and space, no longer connected through the situatedness of place

2. The disembedding of social institutions. “the ‘lifting out’ of social relations from local contexts and their rearticulation across indefinite tracts of time-space” (18).Symbolic tokens: media of exchangeExpert systems: modes of technical knowledgeDepends on trust.

3. Modernity’s intrinsic reflexivity. The regularised use of knowledge about circumstances of social life as a constitutive element in its organisation and transformation.

An alternative way of thinking through the ‘art’ of tragedy is provided by Niklas Luhmann, in

Dimensions – industrialisation and capitalism.

his book Art as a Social System. Again, these fairly extended quotations will be reviewed during the first, and probably returned to in the second seminars.

Here is Luhmann, then, writing – in passing – about tragedy, but mainly specifying what for him is society’s ‘function-system’ of art, i.e., what its role is within social experience – his account is reminiscent of Kant’s, and perhaps we should not be very surprised by that:-

This leads us back to the ancient topic of astonishment, which affects not only the observer of art but also the artist. The observer may be struck by the work’s success and then embark on a step-by-step reconstruction of how it came about. But the artist is equally struck by the order that emerges from his own hands in the course of a rapidly changing relationship between provocation and possible response, problem and solution, irritation and escape. This is how order emerges from self-irritation, which, however, requires the prior differentiation of a medium of art to decide that this order differs in its stakes from what occurs elsewhere in reality.

The real world is always the way it is, nothing otherwise. It interferes with human purposes in its own way, but always with reference to the specific differences established by these purposes. Once the choice of purpose ceases to be self-evident and becomes subject to varying preferences (interests), purposes cannot be ordered unless they are subsumed under general purposes. Art opposes not only the status quo but also any attempt to introduce purposes into the world. The artistic rendering of the real solidifies reality in order to contrast the possible as a realm capable of order, of an order without purpose.

One such possibility is to show that striving for purposes ends in tragedy. Another is to render in a comic light what others take seriously. Such moves convince only if they succeed aesthetically and as form, that is, when they manage to offer an alternative order. In the language of a tradition that is still effective today, one might say that the aesthetic means, not the objects of art, must elicit conviction.

So long as art is bound by a reality that guarantees the compatibility of objects and events, the problem is solely one of imitation. To the extent, however, that art begins to work with feigned realities, it becomes difficult if not impossible to decide whether the objects depicted – blue horses, talking cats, dogs with nine tails, an irregular time that leaps forward or does not move at all, or other such ‘psychodelic’ realities – can coexist side by side. When reality can no longer secure their coexistence, art must supply aesthetic guarantees of its own. This is relatively harmless so long as art is concerned with altering the colour of objects in the manner of expressionism or with presenting unrealistic narrative contexts. But such strategies already suggest that hetero-references merely serve as a pretext for displaying alternate possibilities of order. One can go even further and reduce hetero-reference to the material – colour, wood, stone, or garbage – thus demonstrating an improbable order at the material level.

Within the gravitational field of its function, modern art tends to experiment with formal means. The word formal here does not refer to the distinction which first guided modern art, between form and matter or form and content, but to the characteristics of an indicating operation that observes, as if from the corner of its eye, what happens on the other side of form. In this way the work of art points the observer towards an observation of form. This may have been what was meant by the notion of ‘autotelic’. However, the social function of art exceeds the mere reconstruction of observational possibilities that are potentially present in the work.

Rather, it consists in demonstrating the compelling forces of order in the realm of the possible. Arbitrariness is displaced beyond the boundaries of art into the unmarked space.

(Luhmann, N. (2000) Art as Social System Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 146-8; Luhmann’s italics.)

What emerges (if one adopts what is essentially a sociological perspective) is a sharpened sense of the boundary separating art from everything else in society. But this formulation is, of course, inadequate. Instead, two points need to be made at this juncture: one familiar, the other less so. In terms of familiarity, you are all used to the idea that the negative of any definition contains and conditions the possibility that is represented by the positivity identified. In less exalted language, if I say that Fred is a good captain the implied conditionality of this qualification can be explored by making further distinctions within the realm of the unspoken negative – that he does not crush incipient talent, that he does not exclude team members from his decisions, that he does not assume that his task is always to lead from the front, etc. Luhmann uses the semiotician’s phrase ‘unmarked term’ to designate this field of the negative, and he makes the further point that if one is tempted to introduce into the positivity some component from with the field of the negative, then the condition of its entry – at least within the realm of art – is the translation of the object’s hetero-reference within the negative field into an extension of the existing positivity’s homo-referential order: we now know not only that Fred is a good captain but one notable for his capacity for clear explanation and analysis as the game progresses. In terms of any artistic depiction what this means is that as I extend the complexity and variety of the homo-referentiality of my representation I risk losing control over the increased complexity and may as a consequence fail to make my depiction of Fred, this paragon of captaincy, ‘believable’.

The second point raises a related set of problems, but does so in terms of the observer and practitioner of art: essentiality the function of the art object is to offer a vehicle for evoking second-order observations – the art lover loves the world as depicted by the observations of the artist: the artist is fascinated by the iterations of content and relationship that follow from depicting the world observed in the manner that follows from imposing a particular representational order on the development of her painting, poem, novel, etc. This seems straight-forward enough, but it implies, of course, that no observation can be conducted without reference to an order. Luhmann continues by emphasising further the distinction to be made between the world and the art-object, and the cost of making such a distinction:-

Contrary to widely held notions, the function of art is not (or is no longer) to represent or idealise the world, nor does it consist in a ‘critique’ of society. Once art becomes autonomous, the emphasis shifts from hetero-reference to self-reference – which is not the same as self-isolation, nor l’art pour l’art. Transitional formulations of this type are understandable. But there is no such thing as self-reference (form) without hetero-reference. And when art displays a self-positing order in the medium of perception or imagination, it calls attention to a logic of reality which expresses itself not only through the real but also in fictional reality. Within the difference real/fictional reality, the unity of the world (the unity of this difference) escapes observation by presenting itself as the order of the distinction’s form.

Art has no ambition to redeem society by exercising aesthetic control over an ever-expanding realm of possibility. Art is merely one of society’s functional systems, and even though it may harbour universalistic ambitions, it cannot seriously wish to replace all other systems or force these systems under its authority. The functional primacy of art holds exclusively for art. This is why, protected by its operative closure, art can focus on its own function and observe, from within ever-expanding boundaries, the realm of possibility with an eye toward fitting form combinations.

Art makes visible only the inevitability of order as such. That it draws on trans-hierarchical structures, on self-referential circularities, on different versions of trans-classical logic, and on overall greater degrees of freedom, corresponds to the conditions of modernity and signals that a society differentiated along functional lines must do without authority and representation. Contrary to what traditionalists might suspect, art demonstrates that modernity does not necessarily imply a renunciation of order.

The function of art, one could argue, is to make the world appear within the world – with an eye toward the ambivalent situation that every time something is made available for observation something else withdraws, that, in other words, the activity of distinguishing and indicating that goes on in the world conceals the world. It goes without saying that striving for completeness or restricting oneself to the essential would be absurd. Yet a work of art is capable of symbolising the re-entry of the world into the world because it appears – just like the world – incapable of emendation.

The paradox unique to art, which art creates and resolves, resides in the observability of the unobservable. Today, this no longer means that art must focus on Ideas, on ideal forms, on the concept in the sense of Hegel’s aesthetics. To our contemporary sensibility, it makes no sense to show the bright side of the world. Even the self-reference of thought is no longer directed toward perfection (in an Aristotelian manner). But it does make sense to broaden one’s understanding of the forms that are possible in the world. Emphasising such an understanding requires suppressing any hint of utility, for the world has no utility. Rather, the world displays all the qualities that Nicholas of Cusa ascribed to his God: it is neither small nor large, neither unity or diversity, it neither has a beginning nor is it without beginning – and this is why the world needs forms.

(Luhmann, N. (2000) Art as Social System Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 148-50; Luhmann’s parentheses.)

If we follow Luhmann’s earlier aside, then, the task of tragedy is to depict a striving for purpose to the point of failure. The depicted ordering of these events must be credible, in some sense. By this we would mean that the art work embodied within its form a virtual world of possibility – one depicting a closed interplay of thwarted purpose. But at this point the separation between art and reality cuts in, and a simple example may suggest what will be the nature of the demand that you will be accepting if you follow this line of analysis. Jean Anouilh’s entitled his version of Sophocles’ Antigone the ‘infernal machine’, i.e., it achieved perfection of outcome through form. The depiction of possibilities which his play was intended to ‘mesh’ with were simulacral forms of what existed in Paris during the Occupation. And its ‘resonance’ amounted to this: although refusal to co-operate with the German authorities might end in one’s individual death, it might also lead to a broader, more

universal understanding of what was at stake for all surviving French men and women, and for the German authorities themselves – cast as they were not merely as brutal guards, but as the appeasing civil governor, Creon – and even Antigone and Creon’s wife were, in each case, ‘one of us’ – as may well be although sad men and women populating the novels and films of the Twentieth Century. (Only in the second half of this module will we begin to tackle what might be intended by ‘post-Modern tragedy – assuming that this is more than simply the erosion of established meanings or the collapse of previously ‘solid’ systems of hierarchical order, etc.)

(A useful reminder from the second year module on aesthetics: Eagleton, T. (1990) The Ideology of the Aesthetic Oxford: Blackwell; the start of his chapter 3 in particular - the entire book is available at http://www.scribd.com/doc/57870323/Terry-Eagleton-The-Ideology-of-the-Aesthetic - an alternative formulation that ends up locating you in a very similar place, but with more explicit recognition of Kant, Schiller, and Hegel, is in Jacques Ranciere’s book (2013) Aesthetics and its Discontents Cambridge: Polity Press, in the chapter ‘Aesthetics as Politics’.)

AssessmentThe module description indicates there are two assessments, both carrying the same number of marks. As with all assessment in the Liberal Arts programme, the first one is restricted in scope, being set by myself, while the second one is subject to negotiation. As indicated above, previous form would suggest that most of you will end up wanting to pick a title that has some possibilities for contributing to your dissertation work. Depending on the nature of these question, these are some of the general characteristics that the assessment process will focuss on:-

show an ability to employ theorists critically in relation to issues;

show an ability to use concepts as critical tools in discussing issues and questions as appropriate;

show an ability to employ theoretical perspectives as critical tools;

therein, to develop a critical voice informed and deepened by appropriate use of theory as critique;

sustain a critical relationship to ideas related to the module.

In coming to decide about an initial assignment I have assumed that the basic ‘collective’ requirement can be reduced to an explicit philosophy of tragedy, a concept of ‘figurability’, and a ‘take’ on the project of Modern subjectivity. This perspective suggested the following title (the second one adopts a compilation of previous suggestions):-

Assignment 1: due week 5, 24th. Oct.

Review Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (novella and/or film) as an example of modern tragedy.

Sources for this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_in_Venice

http://www.scribd.com/doc/985179/Death-in-Venice

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_in_Venice_(film)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067445/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4N8B1ggYc4

Assignment 2: due week 12, Thursday, 11th. Dec.

Respond to one of these questions:

1.) Do you still believe there is some contemporary relevance in representing Modern tragic lives?

2.) Does tragedy require a ‘human’ and an ‘organic’ substrate, i.e., is it the case that no animal can recognise tragedy, and no form of artificial life can experience it?

3.) Illustrating your response to this question, what might count as an aesthetic structure of figuration and sensibility for a post-Modern tragedy?

4.) If Roland Barthes was correct in proclaiming the death of the author (and Pierre Macherey correct in denying the possibility of authorial unity within any literary production), does this mean that contemporary representations of the tragic all amount to making statements of grief and mourning for a lost form of sensibility?

Lecture/Seminar series

Part One: works that assume Modernist idioms of representation

Week 1. – Lecture: A Theory in Ruins?

Theme: what can be ‘rescued’ from a review of Ancient ‘canonical’ tragedy, and Utopia and the tragic – leading to a discussion of the two extracts given above.

Principal texts referenced: selected reading from Williams, R. (1966) Modern Tragedy London: Chatto & Windus; Part One; Eagleton, T. (2003) Sweet Violence: the idea of the tragic Oxford: Blackwell.

Additional reading:Fenn, R. (2001) Beyond Idols: the shape of a secular society Oxford: Oxford University PressHardwick, H. & Harrison, S. J. eds. (2013) Classics in the Modern World: a ‘democratic turn’? Oxford: Oxford University PressKinney, A. (2001) Lies Like Truth: Shakespeare, Macbeth, and the cultural moment Detroit: Wayne State University Press; of interest as an argument for internet-style re-membering of a past cultural moment.Mittelman, A. (2009) Hope in a Democratic Age: religion, politics, and liberal society Oxford: Oxford University Press

Week 2. – Lecture: A Modern Tragic Life?

Theme: If tragedy today is both secular and small-scale in its representations of experience, is it still tragic?

Principal texts referenced: Franz Kafka (1992) ‘Metamorphosis’ in Metamorphosis and Other Stories London: PenguinFitzgerald, F. S. (1994) The Great Gatsby London: PenguinDVDAlbee, E. (1965) Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Harmondsworth: PenguinDVD (2006) Warner, Mike Nichols (1966) film of the same title.Also available at http://www.scribd.com/doc/44638239/Who-s-Afraid-of-Virginia-Woolf-The-Full-Text

Additional reading:Albee, E. (1962) The Zoo Story and Other Plays London: CapeBowlby, R. (2007) Freudian Mythologies: Greek tragedy and modern identities Oxford: Oxford University PressCarringer, R. (1996) The Making of Citizen Kane London: University of California PressDe Bolla, P. (2009) Aesthetics and the Work of Art: Adorno, Kafka, Richter Basingstoke: Palgrave MacmillanEilitta, L. (1999) Approaches to Personal identity in Kafka’s Short Fiction: Freud, Darwin, Kierkegaard Helsinki: Suomalainin TiedeakateminKlover, E. (2000) Performing Television: contemporary drama and the media culture Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University PressMayberry, B. (1989) Theatre of Dissonance: Beckett, Albee, and Pinter London: Fairleigh DickensonMulvey, L. (1992) Citizen Kane London: BFIPavis, P. (1992) Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture trans. L. Kruger London: Routledge

Simkin, S. (2005) Early Modern Tragedy and the Cinema of Violence Basingstoke: Palgrave MacmillanRobertson, R. (2004) Kafka: a very short introduction Oxford University PressRoose-Evand, J. (1989) Experimental Theatre: from Stanislavsky to Peter Brook London: RoutledgeWelsh, A. (2001) Hamlet in His Modern Guises Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University PressDVD Welles – film - Citizen KaneZischlev, H. (2003) Kafka Goes to the Movies University of Chicago Press

Week 3. – Lecture: The Individual and the State

Theme: Do Modern tragedies demand specific forms of public address?

Principal texts referenced: Williams, R. (1966) Modern Tragedy London: Chatto & Windus; chapter 7 – ‘A Rejection of Tragedy: Brecht’; Greene, G. (2004) The End of the Affair London: VintageDVD (2000) Columbia Tristar, Neil Jordan (1999) film of the same title. PDF: http://mahirbarut.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/greene-graham-the-end-of-the-affair.pdf

Additional reading:Beinart, P. (2010) Icarus Syndrome: how American triumph produces American tragedy New York: HarperBrooker, P. (1988) Bertolt Brecht: dialectics, poetry, politics London: Croom HelmCasey, J. (2010) After Lives: a guide to heaven, hell, and purgatory Oxford: Oxford University PressDreiser, T. (2003) An American Tragedy New York: Library of AmericaFrodon, J-M (2010) Cinema and the Shoah: an art confronts the tragedy of the Twentieth Century Albany: State University of New York PressGardiner, S. (2011) A Perfect Moral Storm: the ethical tragedy of climate change Oxford: Oxford University PressGreene, G. (1990) Brighton Rock London: Penguin + the original filmHammond, P. (2009) The Strangeness of Tragedy Cambridge: Cambridge University PressMarshall, C. (2002) The Shattering of the Self: violence, subjectivity, and early modern texts Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University PressMcNamara, R. (1995) In Retrospect: the tragedy and lessons of Vietnam New York: Times BooksNichols, J. (2005) Tragedy and Farce: how the American media sell wars, spin elections, and destroy democracy New York: New Press

Pizzato, M. (1998) Edges of Loss: from modern drama to postmodern theory Ann Arbor: University of Michigan PressReinelt, J. (1996) After Brecht: British epic theatre Ann Arbor: University of Michigan PressSorley, L. (1999) A Better War: the unexamined victories and final tragedy of America’s last years in Vietnam New York: Harcourt BraceWeisberg, J. (2008) The Bush Tragedy London: BloomsburyWilliams, R. (1966) Communications London: Chatto & WindusWilliams, R. (1990) Culture and Society London: Hogarth PressWilliams, R. (1991) Drama in Performance Milton Keynes: Open University PressWilliams, R. (2001) The Raymond Williams Reader Oxford: Blackwell

Week 4. – Lecture: Freud’s ‘Civilisation and its Discontents’

Theme: A single issue presentation with plenty of additional documentation which will be sent to you.

Principal text referenced: Freud, S. (1963) Civilisation and its Discontents London: Hogarth Press (There are many more recent versions of this essay available in the library and on the internet – this one makes a convenient source of photocopying.)

Additional reading:Amin, A. (2002) Cities: re-imagining the urban Cambridge: Polity PressBauman, Z. (1997) Postmodernity and its Discontents Cambridge: Polity PressCaygill, H. (1998) Walter Benjamin: the colour of experience London: RoutledgeCayglill, H. (2013) On Resistance: a philosophy of defiance London: Bloomsbury AcademicDe Certeau, M. (1986) Heterologies: discourses on the other Minneapolis: University of Minnesota PressDe Certeau, M. (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life Berkeley, Calif.: University of California PressFrisby, D. (1985) Fragments of Modernity: theories of Modernity in the works of Simmel, Kracauer, and Benjamin Cambridge: Polity PressLefebvre, H. (2004) Rhythmanalysis: space, time, and everyday life London: ContinuumLefebvre, H. (1996) Writings on Cities Oxford: BlackwellLefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space Oxford: BlackwellGrosz, E. (1990) Lacan: a feminist introduction London: Routledge; good introduction to Freud

Hird, L. (2006) Hope: and other urban tales Edinburgh: CanongateKasinitz, P. (1995) Metropolis: centre and symbol of our times Basingstoke: MacmillanKleniewski, N. (1997) Cities, Change, and Conflict: a political economy of urban life Belmost, Cal.: Wadworth PublicationsParker, S. (2002) Urban Theory and the Urban experience: encountering the city London: RoutledgeSadler, S. (1999) The Situationist City Cambridge, Mass.: MIT PressStevenson, D. (2003) Cities and Urban Cultures Maidenhead: Open University PressThorns, D. (2002) The Transformation of Cities: urban theory and urban life Basingstoke: PalgraveWatson, S. & Bridge, G. eds. (2002) The Blackwell City Reader Oxford: BlackwellWeinstein, D. (1993) Postmodern(ized) Simmel London: Routledge

Week 5. – date of submission for the first assignment. I will be available for discussion, etc. related to the assignment from Monday of this week onwards, and I will also be in the seminar room on the Friday at 10.30 for 30 minutes or longer, as required.

Week 6. – Lecture: Tragic Subjectivity and Its Figuration

Theme: Marxism, feminism, other theories of representation – the pertinence of Donna Haraway

Principal texts referenced: http://www.egs.edu/faculty/donna-haraway/articles/donna-haraway-a-cyborg-manifesto/Haraway, D. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs and Women: the reinvention of nature London: Free AssociationHaraway, D. (1997) Modest_witness@second_millennium: ; femalehuman_meets_oncomouse: feminism and technoscience London: Routledge(If you have not yet come across Donna Haraway, I will be introducing her, and her cyborgs. The first version of her essay was written in the 1980s before the Terminator films and Hollywood’s take-over of the figuration. AI’s David may be more helpful, but not all that much; I would far rather that you use Shelley’s representation of Frankenstein’s monster: remove the gothic elements and you reach the outskirts of Haraway’s own arguments. Subsequently, Haraway developed the substitute image of the coyote, but she can explain these ideas for herself. (It’s also worth noting for the second half of the module that if you simply put Haraway in our library’s searchfield, after the ones given above, it throws up collections under the titles of incorporations, posthumanism, cyberculture, etc.)

Here is a selection of websites students have found useful in the past:

http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/whatever-happened-to-cyborg-manifesto

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/Courses/keen2.html

http://www.stumptuous.com/comps/cyborg.html

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffharaway_pr.html

http://www.lynnrandolph.com/ModestWitness.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/con/summary/v009/9.1bartsch.html

http://www.departmentofbiologicalflow.net/snowboarding-and-strategies-of-refusal-goddess-cyborg-switch/ (!?)

Additional reading:Basterra, G. (2004) Seductions of fate: tragic subjectivity, ethics, politics Basingstoke: Palgrave MacmillanGordon, P. (2001) Tragedy after Nietzsche: rapturous superabundance Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois PressMacpherson, S. (2010) Harm’s Way: tragic responsibility and the novel form Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University PressNancy, J-L. (2000) Being Singular Plural Stanford, Calif.: University of Stanford PressPickstock, C. (2013) Repetition and Identity Oxford: Oxford University PressTrilling, L. (2008) The Liberal Imagination: essays on literature and culture New York: New York Review of Books

There are, in addition, many relevant websites – please let me know of any that are particularly useful, as well as those in this list which are dead, or simply useless in your opinion!

The influence of Tragedy on Philosophy.This site gives easy access to relevant selections. The focus is such as to give you a good appreciation of the historical tradition up to and including the Nineteenth Century, but only a sketched list of names for the Twentieth. Nevertheless, I think that for this week the site should be your first port of call http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/blf10/links/trag-theory.htmlA possible guru – or a bête noireYoutube of Simon Critchley talking in general terms about the relationship of philosophy to tragedyhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSSJ2RhdCmEand on Tragedy as a Medium http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYicoEd84As&feature=relmfu

and on Hegel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liKQFMkr4-0

In terms of texts, it seems that Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics feature in the work of most commentators, but some have argued that there is another, complementary theory that can be extracted from his Phenomenology of Spirit. Here is a set of overviews:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectures_on_Aestheticshttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/index.htmhttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel-aesthetics/http://philosophy.eserver.org/hegel-summary.html(this one contains a tape on Antigone amongst other ideas)http://bernsteintapes.com/hegellist.htmlhttp://www.phaenex.uwindsor.ca/ojs/leddy/index.php/phaenex/article/view/222/229So, by way of a reminder, Antigone by Sophocleshttp://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/antigone.htmlhttp://www.temple.edu/classics/antigone/index.htmlhttp://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/netshots/antigone.htmBut inevitably you get Hegel on Antigone and Tragedy!http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780791481134http://mason.gmu.edu/~lsmithg/ahegel.htmhttp://voices.yahoo.com/antigone-sophocles-perfect-hegelian-tragedy-400869.html?cat=9http://cms.skidmore.edu/fye/summer_reading/2005/hegel.cfmhttp://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/philosophy/ANtig.short.wpd.htmAnd a very useful PDF text, available here:http://www.phaenex.uwindsor.ca/ojs/leddy/index.php/phaenex/article/view/222or here http://www.pdfport.com/view/140626-introduction-to-hegel-s-theory-of-tragedy-mark-w-roche.htmlalternative source for the same document.http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&sugexp=les%3B&gs_nf=3&pq=mark%20w.%20roche&cp=22&gs_id=22&xhr=t&q=mark+w.+roche+hegel's&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&oq=mark+w.+roche+hegel's+&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=42a9cab81fb1e963&bpcl=37643589&biw=1280&bih=929

Mark Roche draws attention to the last lectures of Hegel’s Aesthetics as containing his most mature thoughts on tragedy.http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel-aesthetics/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twb9JgLG_Hghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgRCxUo8eFE&feature=relmfuhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnWWYClii-E&feature=relmfue-text: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/index.htmand an e-text for lectures on Fine Art: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/contents.htmKierkegaard responds to Hegelhttp://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7tu1ZAJzl-sC&pg=PA218&lpg=PA218&dq=hegel+tragedy+antigone&source=bl&ots=QTcvvklbjY&sig=QQDdPdUbHZsExYeS4qK_1AEywqk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ty6ZUPCVIqSm0AW_g4DYAw&ved=0CDQQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=hegel%20tragedy%20antigone&f=falseYoutube on Heideggar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2mYDza3xIYMore Heideggar (you can never have enough!)http://www.jstor.org/stable/302153

http://www.springerlink.com/content/h6l9343nv77v2717/http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=heideggar+on+tragedy&oq=heideggar+on+tragedy&gs_l=serp.12..0i13i30.3196.14979.0.16839.37.26.0.1.1.5.272.2735.16j7j2.25.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.H40ZP3jJNhw&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=b3dcdf85a090b5ff&bpcl=37189454&biw=1280&bih=929http://www.iwm.at/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=120&Itemid=125http://www.jstor.org/stable/30224283http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v7n3/tabachnick.html

OK – and on feminism – note that many commentators slide back into some version of psychoanalysis as this point. As a corrective, read the Communist Manifesto if you have not already done so, taking particular note of how the comrades thought the ‘problem’ of women could best be resolved. Next up is Fredric Jameson’s essay ‘Periodizing the Sixties’ – feminism at its most strident is seen to be riding on the back of the Black Power movement.http://www.jstor.org/stable/466541http://www.scribd.com/doc/134784864/Jameson-Periodizing-the-60shttps://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/18986757/frederic-jameson-periodizing-the-60s-doublesessionhttp://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.500/10.3helmling.txtBut now read Juliet Mitchell’s essay ‘Women: the longest revolution’http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/mitchell-juliet/longest-revolution.htmhttp://newleftreview.org/I/40/juliet-mitchell-women-the-longest-revolutionhttp://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/mitchell-juliet/womens-estate.htmMarkedly separated from these lines of thought is that which might be broadly described as French semiotic studies. These start with Simone de Beauvoir, but as was suggested, most tend to get seriously caught up with psychoanalysis – particularly that of the Lacanian variety, e.g. Julia Kristeva. For many of these writers the combination of semiotics, psychoanalysis, and Fine Art, Low Art, or just cinema, provides a rich source of cultural ‘symptoms’, e.g. Laura Mulvey. From Lacan, by the way, the principal thought is usually said to be that language is intrinsically phallocentric and that any woman wishing to speak and write in the public sphere is bound to adopt the language being used in the Men’s Common Room – or Changing Room. (Elizabeth Grosz’s Lacan: a feminist introduction is still one of the best in terms of making clear what has to be accepted, rejected, or re-negotiated; and it also contains an excellent introduction to Freud.) Luce Irigaray is most well-known for her attempt to argue for a feminine language that is not simply a feminised version of existing discourse forms, while Julia Kristeva is more pessimistic and has, like Juliet Mitchell, retreated into psychoanalysis before attempting to break back into politics with a small ‘p’ – in her case through the novel form – and then there’s always Germaine, of course. But if psychoanalysis is becoming your dope of the day, then the usual starting point, apart from Freud, is to kick-off from a little essay written by Joan Riviere before the last World War.http://www.mariabuszek.com/kcai/DadaSurrealism/DadaSurrReadings/RiviereMask.pdfhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/38635989/Riviere-Joan-Womanliness-as-Masquerade-International-Journal-of-Psychoanalysis-Vol-10-1929-303-13http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic722023.files/FEMININITY/Heath_on_Riviere.pdfBy way of a well developed and interesting figuration to think about – one that might even encourage your own creative responses – there is the book which stimulated the film A Dangerous Method. If you can get over Kiera Knightly, the film is not too bad, the script is intriguing, but the book by John Kerr is much more interesting and ambivalent. The

figuration of Spielrein in the centre of the Jung/Freud confluence has intrigued a number of people and you will find a small but growing field of notes on the internet.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1571222/http://www.filmcomment.com/article/david-cronenbergs-a-dangerous-methodhttp://www.simplyscripts.com/2013/10/27/a-dangerous-method-screenplay/http://www.sonyclassics.com/awards-information/screenplays/adangerousmethod_screenplay.pdfhttp://psychology.about.com/od/profilesmz/a/sabina-spielrein.htmhttp://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/spielrein-sabinaHowever, do be careful. The book’s Afterword contains the following comments:-Transparently, the fact that Freud and Jung could ultimately arrive at two different schools of depth psychology indicates that psychoanalysis, despite its claims, was not a science. In fact, no sooner had they first institutionalised their endeavour than the two men began to realise, Freud perhaps more wittingly than Jung, that it was only by enforcing ideological conformity upon their followers that they could create the appearance of generating homogenous results.…Clearly, the data of the consulting room, from ‘Little Hans’’s fear of horses to Spielrein’s adolescent hallucinations of a hand about to strike her, were real. And equally clearly, the two men did more than any of their contemporaries to shed light on what these and other ‘nervous’ ailments might mean. There was no problem with the reality of the data.…The problem lay between the theory and the data; it lay in the method (Kerr 1993: 508-9).

Kerr makes the point in his book that Spielrein may have identified a new way forward with respect to method – but this got lost in the squabble between the two prelates. (Before leaving this part of the arena, there is Jung himself – he conjectured (re-established) the concepts of the anima and the animus – male and female principles governing certain aspects of psychic operations. Perhaps his Symbols of Transformation might help – but I suggest you see me first – your entire degree could vanish down this black hole!)

Part Two: works that assume Post-Modernist idioms of representationWeek 7. – To be discussed and negotiated.