Transforming Tradition: Baroque Ventures,
Identities and Values in Literature and Theory I
Charles University, Autumn Semester 2005
Erik S. Roraback:
Pomona program at Univ.
Coll., Oxford (1988)
B.A., Pomona Coll. (1989)
Rotary Scholar, Univ. of
Western Australia (1993)
Visiting Ph.D. student, École
Normale Supérieure-Paris (1995)
Ph.D., Univ. of Oxford (1997)
Adjunct Prof., Vermont Coll.
Union Institute & Univ. (2002-present)
Visiting Prof., Univ. de
Provence (Aix-Marseille-1) (2005)
SNAPSHOT:
“Articulating the past
historically does not mean recognizing it ‘the way it really was.’ It means appropriating a memory as it
flashes up in a moment of danger.
Historical materialism wishes to hold fast that image of the past which
unexpectedly appears to the historical subject in a moment of danger. The danger threatens both the content of the
tradition and those who inherit it. For
both, it is one and the same thing: the danger of becoming a tool of the ruling
classes. Every age must strive anew to wrest tradition away from the conformism
that is working to overpower it [emphasis added]. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer; he comes as the
victor over the Antichrist. The only
historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is
firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if
he is victorious. And this enemy has
never ceased to be victorious.”
--Walter Benjamin, culture critic 1892-1940, “On the
Concept of History”
“Whatever
can be done while poetry and philosophy are separated has been done and
accomplished. So the time has come to unite the two.”
--Friedrich Schlegel, Jena Romantic critic and author
1772-1829
TWO ACADEMIC HOURS PER WEEK
E-mail: erik.roraback@praha1.ff.cuni.cz
or erikroraback@hotmail.com
Time and Place: Mon. 11.40-13.15, Room 105 + OPTIONAL
VIDEO SERIES ON THE BAROQUE CULTURAL FORM OF AMERICAN FILM NOIR, 1945-1958
Office hours: Mon. 15.00-16.35, Room 110, after
seminar and by appointment
Special program: Intercultural Studies (English and
American Studies, Charles Univ.); Suffolk University Program (Charles Univ.);
Institute of Philosophy and Religion (Charles Univ.); ERASMUS (Charles Univ.)
Objectives:
We shall use the operative concept of the
Baroque as a periodizing category to find new points of approach to some major
figures and movements in primarily continental European literary and
theoretico-philosophical culture from the last three hundred and fifty years
(which is to say since the birth of the modern age: the long baroque modern). In so doing, this interdisciplinary seminar
that dialectically deconstructs the opposition between literature and
theory/philosophy seeks to elucidate some of the major contours of a Baroque or
of a postbaroque aesthetic and world-picture that would speak to our
contemporaneity by showing how we are not only still terraced and demarcated by
discoveries of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth-centuries, but also
that this epoch produced concepts with unlimited developments. The question for these thinkers and writers
of how to forge an effective mode of being over against the great powers of the
modern baroque world and of how these authors interrogate the fact/value
distinction, will here be engaged in particular. Therefore, the thematic trio of ventures, identities and values
will be explored in some depth. Students of literature without formal
training or background in theory or in philosophy are welcome to attend, for
the course also aims to give some background knowledge in intellectual history
for the concepts that helped to form the history and development of literature
in English and in other European languages. Thinkers and writers explored include Benedictus de Spinoza
(1632-77), G.W. Leibniz (1646-1716), G.W.F. Schlegel, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976),
Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), Ernst Bloch (1880-1979), Theodor
W. Adorno (1903-69), Gilles Deleuze (1925-95), Luce Irigaray (1932-present),
Jean-Luc Nancy (1940-present) and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (1940-) all of whom
today are enjoying interest in their writings both in and outside of
departments of literature and philosophy.
The course is conducted in English and stands on its own as a separate
seminar from the others that have already been offered as part of a cycle of
seminars I am giving across a several-year period around the topic of the
literary and philosophical baroque.
Material:
Selections from some of the following texts
will be available in a course reader, or available as single texts on reserve,
at the English department library; others of the texts the instructor will
refer to in the seminar and students are encouraged to pursue their own interests
accordingly even beyond the life of the course:
Adorno,
Theodor W. “A Portrait of Walter Benjamin” from Prisms (trans. MIT P, 1967).
Aesthetic Theory (trans. U of Minnesota
P, 1997).
Ariew,
Roger: “G.W. Leibniz, life and works” pp. 18-42 from The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz (Cambridge,
1995).
Astruc,
Alexander et. al.: Magazine littéraire. Special
issue: Leibniz: philosophe de l’universal
(Paris, Janvier 2003).
Balibar,
Etienne: Spinoza
and Politics (1985, trans.
Verso, 1998).
Benjamin, Walter: “A Berlin Chronicle”, “One-Way Street”,
“Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century”, “Critique of Violence”, “The
Destructive Character”, “Fate and Character”, “Theologico-Political Fragment”,
“On Language as Such and on the Language of Man”, “On the Mimetic Faculty” from
Reflections (trans. New York:
Schocken, 1986).
“Experience”,
“Goethe’s Elective Affinities” from Walter
Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume 1, 1913-1926 (trans. Harvard UP, 1996).
“Unpacking My
Library”, “The Image of Proust”, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction”, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” from Illuminations (trans. London: Pimlico, 1999).
Buck-Morss, Susan: The Dialectics of
Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (MIT P, 1989).
Caputo, John D.: Heidegger and Aquinas: An Essay on
Overcoming Metaphysics (New
York: Fordham UP, 1982).
Deleuze,
Gilles: Expressionism
in Philosophy: Spinoza (1968,
trans. Zone, 1990).
“Spinoza and the three ‘Ethics’ pp. 138-51
from Essays Critical and Clinical (1993,
trans. Minnesota 1997).
Spinoza:
Practical Philosophy (1970,
trans. City Lights, 1988).and
Spinoza: immortalité et eternité, 1 (CD, Gallimard, 2001).
Spinoza: immortalité et eternité 2 (CD, Gallimard, 2001).
Hanssen,
Beatrice: Walter
Benjamin’s Other History: Of Stones, Animals, Human Beings, and Angels (California, 1998).
Heidegger, Martin: Being and Time (trans. Albany: SUNY, 1996).
The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics:
World, Finitude, Solitude (Indiana, 1995).
Jacobs,
Carol: In the Language of Walter Benjamin (The Johns
Hopkins UP, 1999)
Jaspers,
Karl: Spinoza
(1957, trans. Harvest,
1966).
Jolley,
Nicholas,: “Introduction” pp. 1-17 from The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz.
King, Magda: A Guide to Heidegger=s Being and Time (Albany: SUNY, 2001).
Lambert,
Gregg: The
Return of the Baroque in Modern Culture (Continuum, 2004).
Leibniz,
G.W.: Monadology: An Edition for Students (trans.
1991, Pittsburgh, 1991).
New
Essays on Human Understanding (1765, trans. Cambridge, 1996).
Theodicy
(1710, Open Court, 1985,
original translation from 1875-90).
Writings
on China (trans. Open
Court, 1994).
Mates,
Benson: The
Philosophy of Leibniz: Metaphysics and Language (Oxford, 1986).
Missac,
Pierre: Walter Benjamin’s Passages (trans. MIT P, 1995).
Montag,
Warren: Bodies,
Masses, Power: Spinoza and his Contemporaries (Verso, 1999).
Mulhall,
Stephen: Routledge
Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and ‘Being and Time’ (Routledge, 1996).
Nancy,
Jean-Luc: Hegel:
The Restlessness of the Negative (U of Minnesota P, 1997).
Roraback,
Erik S. --Review article on The Return of the Baroque in Modern Culture by Gregg Lambert
(Continuum Press, 2004) forthcoming in EREA 3.2 (automne 2005), Univ. de
Provence.
--“A Frankfurt School Baroque” work-in-progress.
--“Interdisciplinarity and Gilles Deleuze’s Le pli: Leibniz et le baroque (The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque). Published in Litteraria Pragensia 15.1
(2005) 39-47.
--“Jean-Luc Nancy, Being-in-Common and the Absent
Semantics of Myth” given as a talk for a conference on “Mythologies, Foundation
Texts and Imagined Communities, Prague, Czech Republic, 5-7 November 2004. Forthcoming from Charles University
Press.
--“Heretical Capital: Walter Benjamin’s Cultic Status
in Cultural and Theoretical History” forthcoming as part of the proceedings for
an international colloquium on “Cult Fictions, Film and Happenings”, Palacky
University, Olomouc, Czech Republic, 4-9 September 2005.
--“Nancy, Irigaray, Heidegger, and the
Non-Fascist Fold of Mitsein (Being-With)” work-in-progress.
--“The Spinozan Opportunity of Existence
qua Deleuze” work-in-progress.
Schelling, Friedrich W.J.: The Ages of the World, trans. with an intro. Jason M. Wirth
(Albany:
SUNY, 2000).
Schlegel,
Friedrich: Philosophical
Fragments, trans. Peter
Firchow, foreword Rodolph Gasché (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1991).
Spinoza,
Benedictus de: The Ethics (1677, trans. 1994) pp. 85-265 in A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works, ed. and trans Edwin
Curley (Princeton UP, 1994).
Letters
to Friend and Foe (trans.
Philosophical, 1966).
Wolin, Richard: Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption (California,
1994).
SNAPSHOTS:
“[The great philosophies] are
towering mountains, unclimbed and unclimbable.
But they endow the land with what is highest and show its primeval
bedrock. They stand as the aiming point
and forever form the sphere of sight; they bear transparency and
concealment. When are such mountains really
what they are? Certainly not when we
have supposedly climbed and conquered them.
Rather, only when they truly persevere for us and for the
land. But how few are capable of this,
of letting the most lively soaring emerge in the stillness of the mountain
range and of remaining in the sphere of his soaring-over? This alone is what thinking’s genuine
setting-into-perspective must strive for.”
--Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning)
“Nowhere
has thought raised so vast a claim, nowhere has philosophical thought attained
such heights of happiness.”
--Karl
Jaspers, Spinoza
“Ontologically
and logically, Deleuze locates the philosophical basis for modern literature in
Leibniz. Leibniz conceives of the world
as a ‘pure emission of singularities,’ and individuals (monads) are constituted
by the convergence and actualization of a certain number of these
singularities, which become its ‘primary predicates.’”
--Daniel
W. Smith, introduction to Essays:
Critical and Clinical
“Existence is creation, our
creation; it is the beginning and end that we are. This is the thought that is the most
necessary for us to think. If we do not
succeed in thinking it, then we will never gain access to who we are . . .”
--Nancy, “Of Being Singular
Plural”
Assessment:
To receive credit for the seminar students
will be required to have no more than three absences and to submit a final
composition of 2000-2500 words on a topic of their creative choice. (Specialization students will be required to
submit another longer final essay of 3000-3500 words that may also be marked as
písemná práce.)
Schedule;
more precise readings to be announced:
3 October, 10 October, & 17
October:
Immanence and Life; or,
Benedictus de Spinoza and Gilles Deleuze
Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza:
Practical Philosophy and Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza
Roraback, Erik S. “The Spinozan
Opportunity of Existence qua Deleuze”
Spinoza, Benedictus de: The
Ethics
24 October & 31 October: An Interdisciplinary Cultural Baroque:
Leibniz and Deleuze
Deleuze, Gilles: The
Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque
Roraback, Erik S.: “Interdisciplinarity and Gilles
Deleuze’s Le pli: Leibniz et le baroque (The Fold: Leibniz and the
Baroque)”
7 November & 14 November:
A Jena Romantic Baroque for
the 21st Century
Nancy, Jean-Luc: Hegel:
The Restlessness of the Negative
Roraback, Erik S.: “A
Jena Romantic Baroque: Nancy’s Hegel: The Restlessness of the
Negative, Schlegel’s Philosophical Fragments, and Schelling’s Ages of
the World”
21 November, 28 November, &
5 December:
Walter Benjamin & a
Frankfurt School Baroque
Benjamin: “A Berlin Chronicle”, “One-Way Street”,
“Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century”, “Critique of Violence”, “The
Destructive Character”, “Fate and Character”, “Theologico-Political Fragment”,
“On Language as Such and on the Language of Man”, “On the Mimetic Faculty” from
Reflections (trans. New York:
Schocken, 1986).
“Experience”,
“Goethe’s Elective Affinities” from Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings,
Volume 1, 1913-1926 (trans.
Harvard UP, 1996).
“Unpacking My
Library”, “The Image of Proust”, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction”, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” from Illuminations
(trans. London: Pimlico, 1999).
Bloch, Ernst: The
Spirit of Utopia
Marcuse, Herbert: Eros and Civilization
Adorno, Theodor W. Minima Moralia and Aesthetic
Theory
Roraback, Erik S.: “A Frankfurt School Baroque”
“Heretical Capital: Walter Benjamin’s
Cultic Status in Cultural and
Theoretical History”
12
December, 19 December, & 9 January:
A Baroque Existential
Dimension: Luce Irigaray and French feminism, Heidegger and Nancy
Nancy, Jean-Luc: Being Singular Plural
Irigaray, Luce The
Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger
Heidegger, Martin:
Being and Time
Roraback, Erik S. --“Nancy,
Irigaray, Heidegger, and the Non-Fascist Fold of Mitsein (Being-With)”
--“Jean-Luc Nancy, Being-in-Common and the
Absent Semantics of Myth”
Essays due 31 January
2006.