Objective
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Be reflexive
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Description
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From the Frankfurt School critique of Karl Manheim to the
work of Michel Foucault this course examines the play between
interpretation and explication. By delving into these debates on
our locatedness in history and language, we will explore how
the place of the rational is negotiated by various models of the
thinking body. We will focus on the problematic of transcoding
(reporting in one context material gathered in an other) and map
out the ideological stakes in theorizing the structure of
experience.
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Readings
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Pierre Bourdieu
"The Intellectual Field: a world apart"
in In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive
Sociology (Polity Press, 1990)
not yet in the UWO system
Leon Bailey
Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge: A
Comparative Study in the Theory of Ideology
(Peter Lang, 1994)
BD175.B34 DBW
Susan Hekman
Hermeneutics and the Sociology of Knowledge
(Polity Press, 1986)
BD241.H35 DBW
Nicholas Abercrombie
Class, structure, and knowledge: problems in the
sociology of knowldege (New York UP, 1980)
HM24.A24 DBW
Tim Dant
Knowledge, Ideology And Discourse: A Sociological
Perspective (Routlege 1991)
HM24.D35 DBW
Fredric Jameson
The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially
Symbolic Act (Cornell UP, 1981)
PN81.J29 DBW
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Assignments
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20%
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500-750 words discussion of a discursive aspect of the following
document:
Wittgenstein: The Terry Eagleton Script; The Derek
Jarman Film (British Film Institute, 1993)
PN1997.W586 DBW
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40%
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In a paper of 2500 words, compare the deployment of anecdote
and the declarations of observer/reporter persepective in one of
the following sets:
Mary Catherine Bateson Composing A Life
(Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989) BD431.B32 DBW
Evelyn Fox Keller A Feeling for the Organism: the Life
and Work of Barbara McClintock (W.H. Freeman,
1983) QH429.2.M38K44 DBW
OR
John Briggs and David Peat Turbulent Mirror: An
Illustrated Guide to Chaos Theory and the Science of
Wholeness (Harper & Row, 1990) not yet in UWO
system
James Gleick Chaos: Making a New Science
(Viking, 1987) Q172.5C45G54 DBW
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40%
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Term Project: group dialogue on the Adorno-Benjamin
debate
Refer to the research aid and supporting materials. Conduct a
sustained e-mail discussion launched by the following exerpt.
Edit the exchange. Submit in an appropriate form (print,
hypertext, audio).
Adorno's criticism of Benjamin's studies [...] had to do with a
much deeper issue: whether the form of the presentation of
insights should be intuitively or reflectively directed. Adorno's
and Benjamin's quite different approaches to this issue reflected
their investment in two distinct methods (derived from art rather
than from philosophy) of presentation; Benjamin's in
montage (associated with surrealism) and
Adormo's in construction (associated with
12-tone music). Benjmain's method of montage proceeded
intuitively, seeking to generate sudden unexpected flashes of
illumination; Adorno's method of construction proceeded by
conceptual labour on a resistant object requiring a convertible
act of critical reception and interpretation. [...] Adorno was very
wary of Benjamin's claims for the emancipatroy possibilities of
new media and cultural forms. In Adorno's theory the internal
structure of every technical advance carries with it the
possibility of a dialectially reserved regression.
Nikolas Kompridis
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