This is the public-facing rhetorical move par excellence of the radical academic theorist: revel in your radicalism in the seminar room and peer-reviewed journals, but describe your program in the most bland, banal, who-could-possibly-object way for general audiences. Did you know that Marxism is “a refusal to take things for granted”? Why not “follow your dreams” while we’re at it? Never mind the part where “[w]e shall put you in front of a good wall and shoot you,” to quote a poem of Brecht’s. You see this today, too, with the left-identitarians, thinkers who have a nihilistically extensive critique of liberal society—who posit in fact the urgent need to destroy this society—and then, when queried by the public or its representatives, will reply that it’s just about treating people fairly, dude.
But to give the formulation its due, if you truly take nothing for granted, if you never silence the critical intellect, you will in your own mind delegitimize your state and every state, the lives of your neighbors and then your very own life, and you will shoot yourself in the head, as in the aforementioned fictional case of Leo Naphta and the nonfictional one of Mitchell Heisman, possibly after you’ve shot some others à la Brecht or Naptha’s model Lukács, because the critical intellect left to its own devices will annul first the world and then itself. Which is why the profoundest thinkers, i.e., novelists and poets and playwrights, have always suggested a plunge into contact with reality to arrest deconstructive thought processes, from Hamlet to Herzog. Make art, make crafts, have sex, have a child, take a walk, take a drink, dig a garden, plant a tree, get revenge, get a cat—anything at all to remind you that the critical intellect allows itself to be annihilatingly disappointed at the world’s corruption only because it has lost touch with it, literally, and that criticism’s proper service to humanity is as guide and guardrail to action, not as universal solvent.
(Note the details of Hamlet’s example: he only had to kill one person, but deconstructive thought processes made him responsible in whole or part for at least four other deaths and made him suicidal as well; only when he resolved to “let be” could he strike his sole legitimate target, but by then the collateral damage was so great that he forfeited his own life and his country was conquered. A parable for the would-be revolutionary.)
Deconstruction at its best reminded us of these truths, as implied by the quotation from Montaigne that introduces Derrida’s epochal essay on “Structure, Sign, and Play,” but because it was premised on the very purity it set out to debunk—the centered structure organized by neat binary oppositions—it became a very purist argument for impurity. There’s always another binary to undermine over the horizon, always something else and more you could be doing to decenter; so deconstruction finally lent itself to the deranged purity spirals that have marred intellectual life recently. What deconstruction says about strong texts’ essential non-essentialism is basically right, but strong texts achieve this irreducible complexity on tides of emotion that criticism of all sorts has always been bad at capturing, making them elements of reality as well as interpretations of it.
I append all of the above to Leo Robson’s excellent essay-obituary for J. Hillis Miller, from which I draw the opening quotation. This witty catalogue is my favorite paragraph in the piece:
You might say that the effect of deconstruction, in its literary-critical mode, was to augment a presiding canon of largely B-writers (Baudelaire, Benjamin, Borges, Blanchot, etc) with a group of H-figures (Hölderlin, Hegel, Heidegger, Hopkins, to some degree Hawthorne and Hardy), and to replace a set of keywords beginning ‘s’ – structure, sign, signifier, signified, semiotics, the Symbolic, syntagm, Saussure – with a vocabulary based around the letter ‘d’: decentring, displacement, dislocation, discontinuity, dedoublement, dissemination, difference and deferral (Derrida’s coinage ‘différance’ being intended to encompass both). And there was also a growing role for ‘r’: Rousseau, rhetoric, Romanticism (one of de Man’s books was The Rhetoric of Romanticism), Rilke, and above all reading, a word that appeared, as noun and participle, in titles of books by de Man, Hartman, and most prominently Miller: The Ethics of Reading, Reading Narrative, Reading for Our Time, Reading Conrad.
Also this fun fact: “as late as 2012, [Miller] had never read anything by Samuel Richardson.” I am always fascinated by the gaps in brilliant scholars’ reading, and the more time I spent in academe the more I noticed how large the gaps really were. A generalist-dilettante, I try to read a little bit of everything and am consequently bad at being a completist of any one subject or author that a scholar necessarily is. I’ve read Pamela but not Clarissa; for that matter, I’ve read around in Derrida and De Man but, except for his rather psychedelic 2002 primer On Literature, not so much in the late and lamented J. Hillis Miller.
Further reading: my short story, “White Girl,” a dramatization of deconstructive thought processes in action, partially inspired by what I was seeing right here on Tumblr a little less than a decade ago.
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Literature and Philosophy
MA IN LITERARY STUDIES
Literature and Philosophy (EN71021A): Course Outline Spring 2019
Tutor: Julia Ng
Teaching Mode: 2-hour seminar
Seminar Wednesday 9-11
St James Hatcham G02
NB: Please acquire a print copy of Walter Benjamin’s Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. J. Osborne (Verso, 1998/2009), as we will be studying this text in its entirety. Other materials for this course will be posted to the course’s learn.gold page.
Week 1, Wednesday 16
th
January – Introduction; “intention” in Brentano and Husserl
Introductory discussion
Franz Brentano, “The Distinction between Mental and Physical Phenomena,” in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint [1874], trans. A. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell and L. L. McAlister (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1995), Bk. 2, chap. 1, pp. 59-77.
Edmund Husserl, “Philosophy as a Rigorous Science," in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, trans. Quentin Lauer (Harper & Row, 1965), section on “Naturalistic Philosophy,” pp. 79-122.
Week 2, Wednesday 23th January – Husserl
Edmund Husserl, “Philosophy as a Rigorous Science," in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, trans. Quentin Lauer (Harper & Row, 1965), excerpt from “Historicism and Weltanschauung Philosophy,” pp. 122-129.
Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, I, trans. F. Kersten (Martinus Nijhoff, 1983), §§87-90, 93-95.
Week 3, Wednesday 30th January – Benjamin
Benjamin, OGT, “Epistemo-Critical Prologue”
References
Plato, Symposium
Scheler, “On the Tragic”
Wek 4, Wednesday 6th February – Benjamin
Benjamin, OGT, “Trauerspiel and Tragedy,“ I
References
Schmitt, Political Theology
Gryphius, Leo Armenius
Calderon, Life is a Dream
Week 5, Wednesday 13th February – Benjamin
Benjamin, OGT, “Trauerspiel and Tragedy,“ II
References
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
Lukács, Soul and Forms
Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption
Scheler, “On the Tragic”
Benjamin, “Fate and Character”; “Toward the Critique of Violence”
Week 6, Wednesday 20th February
Tutorial Week – No seminar
Week 7, Wednesday 27th February – Benjamin
Benjamin, OGT, “Trauerspiel and Tragedy,“ III; „Allegory and Trauerspiel,“ I
References
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Panofsky and Saxl on Dürer’s Melancholia I
Giehlow on Melancholia I; The Humanist Interpretation of Hieroglyphs
Warburg
Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”
Week 8, Wednesday 6th March – Benjamin
Benjamin, OGT, “Allegory and Trauerspiel,“ II and III
References
Benjamin, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man”; “The Role of Language in Trauerspiel and Tragedy”; “Trauerspiel and Tragedy”
Gryphius, Leo Armenius
Week 9, Wednesday 13th March – Adorno
Adorno, “The Actuality of Philosophy” (May 2, 1931), in Telos 31 (1977), 120-133.
Adorno, “The Idea of Natural History” (1932), in Telos 60 (1984), 111-124.
Week 10, Wednesday 20th March – Adorno
Adorno, “III.2 World Spirit and Natural History,” in Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton, Continuum, 1973, pp. 300-360.
Week 11, Wednesday 27th March – Conclusion
General discussion
Preparatory Reading
Gryphius, Leo Armenius
Calderon, Life Is A Dream
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Hofmannsthal, The Tower
Further Reading
Benjamin
On Language as Such and on the Language of Man (1916)
The Role of Language in Trauerspiel and Tragedy (1916)
Trauerspiel and Tragedy (1916)
Fate and Character (1919)
Toward the Critique of Violence (1921)
Calderon's El mayor monstrue, los celos and Hebbel's Herodus and Mariamne (1923)
General
Adorno, Theodor. "Portrait of Walter Benjamin," in: Prisms. Trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber. MIT Press, 1981.
Adorno, Theodor. Against Epistemology: A Metacritique. Trans. Willis Domingo. Oxford: Blackwell, 1982.
Adorno, Theodor, and Walter Benjamin. The Complete Correspondence, 1928-1940. Ed. Henri Lonitz. Trans. Nicholas Walker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999.
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford UP, 1998.
Cascardi, Anthony J. "Comedia and Trauerspiel: On Benjamin and Calderón." Comparative Drama 16:1 (1982), 1-11.
Cobb-Stevens, Richard. “Husserl on Eidetic Intuition and Historical Interpretation,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 66 (1992): 261–75.
Comay, Rebecca. "Mourning Work and Play," in Research in Phenomenology 23 (1993), pp. 105-130.
Drummond, John. “Husserl on the Ways to the Performance of the Reduction,” Man and World 8 (1975): 47–69.
Drummond, John. “The Structure of Intentionality,” in The New Husserl, ed. D. Welton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 65–92.
Derrida, Jacques. "Force of Law."
Fenves, Peter. "Marx, Mourning, Messianity," in: Hent de Vries/Samuel Weber (Hg.): Violence, Identity and Self-Determination, Stanford, 1997, 253–270.
Fenves, Peter. "Tragedy and Prophecy in Benjamin’s 'Origin of the German Mourning Play,'" in: Arresting Language. From Leibniz to Benjamin, Stanford UP, 2001, 227–248.
Foster, Roger. Adorno: The Recovery of Experience. SUNY Press, 2007.
Freud, Sigmund. "Mourning and Melancholia," The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, XIV. The Hogarth Press, 1957, pp. 237-258.
Friedlander, Eli. "On the Musical Gathering of Echoes of the Voice: Walter Benjamin on Opera and the Trauerspiel." The Opera Quarterly, vol. 21 no. 4 (2005), pp. 631-646.
Geulen, Eva. The End of Art : Readings in a Rumor after Hegel. Stanford University Press, 2006.
Giehlow, Karl, and Robin Raybould. The Humanist Interpretation of Hieroglyphs in the Allegorical Studies of the Renaissance with a Focus on the Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I. Brill, 2015.
Hamacher, Werner. "Guilt History."
Hanssen, Beatrice. Walter Benjamin's Other History : of Stones, Animals, Human Beings, and Angels. University of California Press, 1998.
Hanssen, Beatrice. "Philosophy at Its Origin: Walter Benjamin’s Prologue to the 'Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels,'" in: Modern Language Notes 110 (1995), 809–833.
Haverkampf, Hans-Erhard. Benjamin in Frankfurt : Die Zentralen Jahre 1922-1932. Societäts-Verlag, 2016.
Helmling, Steven. "Constellation and Critique: Adorno's Constellation, Benjamin's Dialectical Image." Postmodern Culture 14:1 (2003).
Johnson, Barbara, The Wake of Deconstruction, Cambridge, Mass, 1994.
Johnson, Christopher D. “Configuring the Baroque: Warburg and Benjamin.” Culture, Theory and Critique, vol. 57, no. 2, 2016, pp. 142–165.
Kantorowicz, Ernst H. The King's Two Bodies : a Study in Mediaeval Political Theology. Princeton University Press, 1997.
Klibansky, Raymond; Panofsky, Erwin; Saxl, Fritz. Saturn and Melancholy : Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art. Basic Books, 1964.
Lacan, Jacques. "Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet," in: Shoshana Felman (ed.): Literature and Psychoanalysis. The Question of Reading: Otherwise, Baltimore, 1982, 11–52.
Lindner, Burkhardt. "Habilitationsakte Benjamin. Über ein 'akademisches Trauerspiel' und über ein Vorkapitel der "Frankfurter Schule" (Horkheimer, Adorno)/"Walter Benjamins's attempt of a Habilitation. On an 'academic Trauerspiel' and on other preliminaries of the "Frankfurter Schule" (Horkheimer, Adorno)." In: Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 14.53 (1984): 147-166.
Lukács, György. Soul and Form. MIT Press, 1978.
Lukács, György. Theory of the Novel.
Marin, Louis. Food for Thought. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
McFarland, James. “Presentation.” Constellation: Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin in the Now-Time of History. Fordham University Press, 2012, pp. 67-102 (Chapter 2).
McLaughlin, Kevin. "Benjamin's Barbarism." The Germanic Review: Literture, Culture, Theory, 81:1 (2006), 4-20.
Menke, Christoph, and James. Phillips. Tragic Play : Irony and Theater from Sophocles to Beckett. Columbia University Press, 2009.
Merback, Mitchell B. Perfection's Therapy : an Essay on Albrecht Dürer's Melencolia I. Zone Books, 2017.
Miller, J. Hillis. »The Two Allegories«, in: Morton Bloomfield (ed.): Allegory, Myth and Symbol, Cambridge, 1981, 355–370.
Mininger, J. D., and Jason Michael Peck. German Aesthetics : Fundamental Concepts from Baumgarten to Adorno. Bloomsbury, Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
Nägele, Rainer. Theater, Theory, and Speculation: Walter Benjamin and the Scenes of Modernity, Baltimore, 1991.
Newman, Jane O. Benjamin's Library: modernity, nation, and the Baroque. Cornell UP, 2011.
Newman, Jane O. "Tragedy and 'Trauerspiel' for the (Post-)Westphalian Age." In: Renaissance Drama 40 (2012), pp. 197-208.
Newman, Jane. “Enchantment in Times of War: Aby Warburg, Walter Benjamin, and the Secularization Thesis.” Representations, vol. 105, no. 105, 2009, pp. 133-0_4.
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
Pensky, Max. Melancholy Dialectics: Walter Benjamin and the Play of Mourning. U Mass Press, 1993.
Plato, Symposium.
Rosenzweig, Franz, and Barbara Ellen Galli. The Star of Redemption. University of Wisconsin Press, 2005.
Scheler, Max. "On the Tragic." CrossCurrents 4.2 (1954), 178-191.
Schmitt, Carl, et al. Hamlet or Hecuba : the Intrusion of the Time into the Play. Telos Press, 2009.
Schmitt, Carl. Political Theology : Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Szondi, Peter. An Essay on the Tragic. Stanford University Press, 2002.
Weber, Samuel. Benjamin's -Abilities. Harvard University Press, 2008.
Willard, Dallas. “The Paradox of Logical Psychologism: Husserl’s Way Out,” American Philosophical Quarterly 9 (1972): 94–100.
Woodfield, Richard (ed.) Art history as cultural history: Warburg's projects. G+B Arts International, 2000.
Learning Outcomes
- You will have a grasp of the place of literature in the modern Continental philosophy tradition.
- You will have a good understanding of how this tradition challenges and transforms Classical philosophical conceptions of literature.
- You will be able to expound and analyse the textual and conceptual styles of the three key thinkers on the course.
- You will have a sound grasp of the literature of and on both the broad relationship between literature and philosophy, and the three specific thinkers addressed on the module.
- You will be able to use the ideas and texts explored in the module to inform your readings in literary and cultural texts.
Assessment Criteria
- Students should show a clear command of traditional conceptions of the literary in the history of philosophy, and of how the modern Continental tradition challenges these.
- Students should show a detailed critical knowledge of at least one of the module’s key thinkers’ ideas.
- Students should show a knowledge and capacity to use a good range of secondary literature on both general issues in the field and on the specific thinkers and texts they address.
- Students should be able to read the relevant texts from both literary critical and conceptual perspectives.
- Students should show an awareness of the relevance of the issues and texts studied on the course to contemporary debates in literary theory.
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