Today’s Plan:
- Paper Night
- Postmodern Theory
- Postmodern Freedom Rock
- Article Review
Paper Night
I revised something quite long. I can do that.
Postmodern Theory
Recall Lyotard’s (terse) definition in 1979: “An incredulity toward meta-narratives” (xxiv).
How about Latour’s swipe: “I have not found words ugly enough to designate this intellectual movement–or rather, this intellectual immobility through which humans and non-humans are left to drift” (We Have Never Been Modern, 61).
The struggle to define postmodern theory. Selections from:
Postmodern Freedom Rock
The name for this unit stems from an old television commercial that would play during Saturday morning cartoons. We could probably talk about this ad for quite awhile; example: “Remember the good times, war, protest, going to jail?” I mean, how postmodern is that? Is it ironic? parodic? idiotic? All three?
Anyways, the relay here is the idea of the Greatest Hits compilation. I think we all realize that Greatest Hits aren’t necessarily the best songs, they’re often just the most popular, the most likely to be familiar. Same with the list below. These aren’t necessarily the best pieces written by these authors, but they are the most common, recognizable, cited pieces.
Let me reiterate here what I wrote in my introduction to the course: contemporary rhetoric is no longer invested in postmodern theory in the way that it was in the 1990’s and the early 2000’s. But so many of the scholars and teachers writing today were influenced by postmodern theory in that era. Understanding those debates/concerns/ideas will help us better grasp what 21st century rhetoric is working with and against.
Here’s how this will work: we will go around the room and everyone will select one reading as their central reading.
Then, we will go around the room and everyone will choose to be second reader on one of those initial five readings.
We will do one more round, so we will have five readings that each have a first, second, and third reader.
If everyone wants to read the same articles, then we can make that work, too.
Barthes “Death of the Author”*
Burke “Terministic Screens”
Burke “Definition of Man”
Cixous “Laugh of the Medusa”
Derrida “Sign, Structure and Play”*
Derrida “Signature, Event, Context”
Fiske, “Cultural Studies and the Culture of Everyday Life”
Foucault “What is an Author”*
Foucault “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”
Foucault “Intellectuals and Power”
Foucault “Essay on Discourse”*
Haraway, “Cyborg Manifesto”*
Haraway, “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others”
Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism”
Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking”
Heidegger, “The Way to Language”*
Irigaray, “The Question of the Other”
Irigaray, “The Wandering of Man”
Irigaray, “Women’s Exile”
hooks “Postmodern Blackness” (and “Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination”)
Horkheimer & Adorno “The Culture Industry as Mass Deception”
Kristeva, “Women’s Time”
Levinas, “The Awakening of the I”
Rorty “The Contingency of Language”
Spivak, “Can the Sub-Altern Speak?”*
West “Black Culture and Postmodernism”
Zizek, “The Seven Veils of Fantasy”
Reading Review
For next week, I will ask that you write a one-page write review for one of our postmodern freedom rock selections. You should have this review completed before Sunday.
Sunday morning you will email your review to a second reader, who will provide feedback and email the review back to you (alternatively, you can voice chat with your second reader). What matters is that you draft a review, share it with a peer, and then revise. Before we leave tonight, we should identify who you are going to email and make sure you have their email.
You can use this template for your review.
