Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Advanced seminar in literary, critical, and/or cultural theory. May be repeated if a different topic is taught, though students who obtained credit for English 465W prior to Summer 2015 may not take this course for further credit. Students with credit for ENGL 465 may not take this course for further credit. Writing.

COURSE DETAILS:

Psychoanalysis, colonialism, and gender

This course takes a deep dive into psychoanalytic theory, primarily engaging with the work of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan as an inquiry into ideas of the unconscious, desire, the libido and anxiety. By way of grounding our work in the literary, we will also read Michelle de Kretser’s 2024 novel Theory and Practice. We begin with Freud, reading key texts on an outline of psychoanalysis, negation, fetishism, mourning and melancholia, and hysteria. What we know, and why we do things, Freud tells us, is always a mystery: a mystery we can begin to understand precisely with the tools of literary criticism: reading and interpretation. Freud is in turn revised by Lacan, who argued that the unconscious is not individual but social, "the discourse of the other": we will read Lacan's écrits on time, on Edger Allen Poe, on metaphor and metonymy, and on the structures of desire. These concepts we will then "apply" in a reading of de Kretser’s novel, which, set at an Australian university, concerns a Sri Lankan student who discovers the colonial underside of British modernism, all in the context of the growth of literary theory in the 1980s. What is it about the encounter between theory and literature that so troubles us, that gives rise to anxieties and desires? These are questions we will seek to answer and, along the way, learn about our own libidinality, wishes, aggressions and dreams. As an added bonus, there will be a psychoanalytic conference in town, “Feminine Desire: Honoring the Life and Work of Anne Dufourmantelle and Mari Ruti,” on October 17-18. You will be asked to attend one of the two days of the conference and to present, in class, a brief report on one of the sessions.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

To better understand the relevance of psychoanalysis to literary studies.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

All three books have been ordered at SFU bookstore; but it is fine to order your copies through your local indiependent bookstore or online. Please note that you should use the Bruce Fink translation of Lacan (the Alan Sheridan translation from the 70s is only a "Selected") and the Penguin edition of Freud.

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: